The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife

by Martin Armstrong

  ‘No, Mr. Darby,’ Mrs. Stedman was saying, ‘what I always say is, give me my own fireside. I don’t mind a fortnight at the seaside in the summer-time, but foreign places and foreigners and foreign food, oh dear me no!’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s in my blood,’ replied Mr. Darby. ‘I’ve always been one for adventure and foreign parts. Of course, the wife’s like you. She’s what you might call a home-bird, whereas I’m a bird of passage.’

  ‘But however do you manage to get along,’ said Mrs. Stedman, ‘when no one understands you, nor you them? ’

  ‘Well … er …’ said Mr. Darby, ‘well, people do, you know. Signs, and that, I suppose.’

  ‘And you really enjoy it?’

  ‘Enjoy it? Why travel’s my hobby. The world’s so full of wonderful things. The pyramids and the Sphinx, for example; and then, of course, there’s the Jungle and all that, and the Red Sea.’

  ‘But then you’re a good sailor.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘I think I can say I’m a good sailor. I was in quite a rough sea at Scarborough last year, in no more than a little fishing-boat too.’

  ‘Indeed! ’ said Mrs. Stedman. ‘ But it’s these long voyages that I couldn’t stand. What was your longest on the sea, Mr. Darby? ’

  ‘Oh a matter of two hours, I suppose,’ said Mr. Darby. ‘That time at Scarborough was the longest, I think; and I know that was two hours, because it was one and six an hour and I remember I paid three shillings.’

  Mrs. Stedman glanced at Mr. Darby. She had supposed he was joking. But his candid blue eyes, magnified by the gold-rimmed spectacles into giant forget-me-nots, had the transparency of a child’s: there was not a trace of humour or guile in his innocent pink face.

  ‘Then you’re not really what you might call a travelled man, Mr. Darby,’ she said.

  ‘No, not exactly,’ he replied. ‘No.’ He considered the point. ‘No, Mrs. Stedman, only … ah … portentously, as it were. No, I should be more inclined to call myself a would-be traveller.’

  ‘you open the second bottle,’ whispered Sarah with a nod to George Stedman. ‘You’ll make a better job of it.’

  Stedman rose and went to the sideboard. ‘I’ll manage this one, Jim,’ he murmured confidentially. ‘You’ve got the ladies on your hands.’ And there was so little of the romantic and spectacular in George Stedman’s treatment of the champagne-bottle that they none of them knew that anything was happening till they found him at their elbows filling their glasses.

  Mr. Darby stared in blue-eyed wonder when Mrs. Bricketts appeared, to remove the plates, in a neat black dress and snowy apron. He was accustomed to see her in the slatternly guise of a char with an old tweed cap skewered on to her head with a black hatpin. ‘Now isn’t that Sarah all over!’ he thought to himself.

  The next course was a plum-pudding.

  ‘Plum-pudding before Christmas, Mrs. D?’ said Stedman.

  ‘Plum-pudding after Christmas, Mr. Stedman,’ replied Sarah. ‘This one is two years old. It’s the proper sort. I learnt to make them from my grandmother, and, for all I know, she learnt it from hers.’

  Mrs. Bricketts put a decanter in front of Mr. Darby. He eyed it: it was the port. Suddenly his heart began to beat very fast: the great moment, the event of the evening, was almost upon him. The champagne had gone to his head and he felt vigorous, elated, but a little insecure. He was not in perfect control, but perhaps that was all to the good. ‘Don’t let my mind dwell on it,’ he admonished himself. ‘It’s all there. Don’t worry. When I start talking, it’ll all come back.’ He took up his spoon and fork and fell upon his plum-pudding.

  Sarah’s helpings were large ones, and everyone, though pressed, refused a second. The port had been round. Everybody’s glass was full: Mr. Darby sat with his eyes fixed on his, as though it were a mousetrap likely to go off at any minute. Then George Stedman pushed back his chair and at the sound of it Mr. Darby’s heart leapt with delicious terror. ‘The Baronet’s health,’ his poetic imagination whispered to him, ‘was proposed by his old friend Mr. George Stedman. In the course of a moving speech …’ But George Stedman was on his feet, surveying the company with bland composure. The silence was absolute.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he began with slow and solemn deliberation. ‘We are met together this evening on an Unusual, a unique, occasion. We are met together to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of an old and very valued friend.’ He paused and once more surveyed the company. The faces of all had dropped to an expression of strained and gloomy solemnity. Mr. Darby gazed at his port glass with eyes of melancholy reproach. Then, ending this weighty pause, Stedman’s tone suddenly grew livelier, more confidential. He broke from his funeral pace into an easier movement and simultaneously the faces of his listeners relaxed. ‘I have known Jim Darby now,’ he said, rolling his head back on his deep shoulders, ‘for a matter of twenty years. Now twenty years is a long time, Ladies and Gentlemen; a very long time; a fifth of a century.’ Mrs. Cribb gave a little scandalized shriek and, with an arch glance at Mr. Darby, muzzled herself with the palm of her hand. But Mr. Darby, it appeared, had not heard her. His eyes were still fixed with an infinite sadness on his port-glass. His mood was not to be interrupted by humorous trivialities. ‘I have changed a good deal myself in the last twenty years,’ said Mr. Stedman, running both hands down his ample waistcoat, ‘and so—I would deny it, Ladies and Gentlemen, if I could—has Jim Darby. In those far off days, Jim was a gay young spark.’ Stedman paused for the expected ripple of laughter. Mr. Darby, still deep in meditation, slightly raised his eyebrows and smiled wistfully. ‘Only a few months before we met,’ continued the speaker, ‘he had led his blushing bride,’ he paused to drop a humorous eye on Sarah and all other eyes but Mr. Darby’s followed suit.

  ‘Not me, Mr. Stedman!’ said Sarah. ‘I was never one for blushing.’

  George Stedman withdrew his eye. ‘Led his blushing bride,’ he insisted, ‘to settle in these parts. They were strangers, Ladies and Gentlemen,—foreigners you might say, for they came from the other side of Newchester,—from Jockswood, which, I may tell you, is a matter of five miles from here.’ Stedman paused once more, till the mirth had subsided. Then he dropped back into the more solemn tone of his prelude, swaying the mood of his audience with all the ease of the practised orator. Only Mr. Darby failed to follow, lingering behind in contemplation of that reference to Jocks-wood and his emigration to Savershill. Yes, he had done it then, twenty years ago: he had taken the plunge. But the plunge had carried him only five miles. The mistake had been—yes, he confessed sadly to his port-glass that it was a mistake—to weight himself with Sarah. Uncle Tom Darby had been more practical: he had plunged alone, unhampered, and his plunge had carried him clean across the world. If it had been wet on that Saturday afternoon when he took Sarah Bouch out to Hobblesfield, everything might have been different. That was the worst of being so impressionable. Strong feelings, that was his trouble. He had always been a man of strong feelings. He could feel them boiling and surging in him now like a stormy sea. Yes, the meek, quiet little man, sitting motionless before his port-glass, felt himself tossed, even now, upon high seas of emotion, rising on crests of strange, ecstatic joy, plunging into troughs of indefinable misery, as he sailed before the wind of George Stedman’s interminable eloquence, which came to him in his dream as a slow rise and fall of wordless, windlike sound. He was recalled to himself by the cessation of it, a prolonged silence, followed at last by George Stedman’s concluding phrase. ‘Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, I must stand no longer between you and our host. I conclude by asking you to join me ‘—he raised his glass—’ in wishing Jim Darby and Mrs. Darby long life and every happiness.’

  The toast was drunk. Mr. Darby inadvertently drank it himself, draining his glass at a single gulp. Then, with great caution, he rose to his feet. He felt disquietingly insecure, with an insecurity localized especially in the tongue, the mind, and the legs. This was not at all the state in which he had imagi
ned himself rising to address the assembly. For three or four seconds the room dissolved and swam before his eyes. The moment was critical: only a supreme effort could save him.

  Mr. Darby made that effort. With an almost superhuman determination he stemmed the rising mutiny, imposed his will on vacillating mind and body. ‘Be calm!’ he adjured himself. ‘Be calm! Pull yourself together! Don’t begin yet. Plenty of time.’ He reminded himself that a long pause, however strange and desperate it might appear to himself in his present state, was bound to produce an impression of extreme self-control on his audience. It was this reassuring thought that saved him. He took his time. He stood steady. He could feel, triumphantly, that he was standing steady, that he was quite definitely not swaying. And now he made another comforting discovery. The chrysanthemums were not too tall: nowhere near it. He towered above them. Far beneath him he saw the white expanse of tablecloth, and around it and above it the faces of his guests blossoming like huge flowers against the outer dimness. At the end of the table, straight opposite him, Sarah’s was regarding him sternly. But he did not care. With every moment new strength was being added to him. He smiled defiantly at Sarah’s scowl and then, clasping his hands upon his waistcoat, began as slowly as George Stedman:

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. On behalf of myself and my wife I thank you all. I am sensible, deeply sensible?—he paused, assailed by a sudden horrible doubt about the word sensible. When he had heard himself repeat it for the second time it had seemed to him, in this connection, to be perfect nonsense. But a rapid glance round the table reassured him. If he was talking nonsense, no one had noticed it. ‘… sensible,’ he continued, ‘of the sincerity, and the … ah … cordiality of the congratulations which our friend Mr. Stedman here … ‘Mr. Darby unclasped his hands, neatly indicated George Stedman with an open palm, and reclasped them … ‘has … ah …voiced for you with his customary eloquence. It is a solemn moment, Ladies and Gentlemen—our friend Mr. Stedman has experienced it and will corrod … corrog … corrobulate me … when a man joins the ranks of the kinka … quinco … twinka … ‘Mr. Darby hesitated and, dropping his eyes, accidentally smiled a little weakly at Mrs. Cribb.

  Mrs. Cribb thought the smile intentional, and giggled in response. ‘The kinkajous, Mr. Darby?’ she suggested brightly.

  This unpardonable frivolity gave Mr. Darby the necessary stimulus. He pulled himself sternly together and raised his chin: ‘… of the quinquagenians,’ he said with great seriousness.

  He had equipped himself with several other imposing words to adorn the occasion, but now wisely determined to discard them in favour of more managable vocables. For Mr. Darby had now realized his present limitations: he had discovered what orders he could expect his rallied mutineers to obey, what would be bungled or ignored, and like a wise general he tempered his commands to the condition of his troops. Thenceforward things went without a hitch. He swung his listeners to heights undreamt of by George Stedman, held them there on pinnacles of an almost unearthly eloquence; then plunged them suddenly into dramatic silences, from which, when all hope seemed lost, he calmly rescued them and set them down on the comfortable levels of the commonplace. He was now perfectly at his ease, fully master of himself. He felt that he could easily go on speaking for half the night. But when he had been at it for a quarter of an hour he happened to notice that Sarah’s eye was upon him. He tried to avoid it, but it held him and for a moment his eloquence flagged. He floundered, but instantly recovered himself. But perhaps she was right: the best of things must end. He threw out his chest and raised his chin. ‘In a word, my friends,’ he concluded, enveloping the company in a gaze which was moist and glittering with emotion, while with a fine forensic skill he began gradually to diminish his speed and the volume of his tone, ‘In a word, I thank you, we thank you, both for your good wishes, and for the great privilege you have given us in allowing us … to entertain you here … to-night.’

  With the ponderous slowness of one who sways empires, Mr. Darby resumed his seat.

  Chapter III

  The Morning After The Night Before

  Mr. Darby woke during the small hours feeling strangely ill at ease. Where was he? What was happening? Evidently he was at sea and it was blowing up for rough weather, for now he fell through fathoms of vacuity, now his bed thrust him up, up, upwards till it seemed that he would certainly bump the top of created things. Could it be that he had taken the plunge and was actually now following in the wake of Uncle Tom Darby? He opened his eyes and the ship suddenly and distressingly stood still. Oof! Opposite him shone the faint livid glare, so unmistakably familiar, of the street lamp outside the back door shining through the dark blue bedroom blind. He must be at home. Cautiously he reached out a foot. Yes, there was Sarah. Yes, he was at home; at home, and far from well. His head felt like an india-rubber ball that alternately expanded and shrank. His eyes felt like two screws recently screwed into it. Oo … oof! The room suddenly lurched horribly away from him. Had he better get up at once, for fear. …? But perhaps if he lay quite still, perfectly still! Once more it was a case for self-control. He must take himself in hand. ‘Be calm! ’ he commanded himself. ‘Lie still! You’re in bed, at home. Everything’s perfectly still. It’s nothing but fancy.’ Ooof! Another sickening lurch. No doubt it was fancy, but what a horribly powerful fancy. It was the whisky on the top of everything else that had done it, of course. But, after all, he had to offer them something before they left the house on a special occasion like this. When he had suggested it to George Stedman, George had smiled, winked, and then accepted. ‘Well, just a drop, to settle things down comfortably.’ Settle things down indeed! Well, perhaps it had settled things down for George; but not for himself. Far from it. Whisky, after all …! But he mustn’t think of whisky. A horrible rising of the gorge had warned him that the thought was dangerous. He must lie still and think of nothing, or perhaps count slowly. Perhaps counting would keep the room still. But it would be as well, he felt, not to close his eyes. So he lay and counted, staring myopically at the livid blur of the street lamp on the blind.

  But very soon the numbers trailed away and vanished from his consciousness: counting had become too great an exertion. He sank into a doze, then into sleep.

  • • • • • • • •

  He awoke many hours later and saw with horror that it was light. He could hear Mrs. Bricketts downstairs fighting with the kitchen grate. That meant it was just after seven o’clock. In about ten minutes Sarah would get up: in twenty-five he would have to get up himself. Appalling thought! For though he felt certainly better than when he had woken in the night, he still felt very far from well. If only he could lie and doze till eleven or twelve and let nature take her course, all, he felt, would be well. But that, of course, was out of the question. There was the office. And even if there had not been the office, there was Sarah. She would have little sympathy with a convalescence of this description. Yet, as he realized with alarm, it would be beyond his powers to hide his condition from her, for he already knew positively that he would not be capable of facing breakfast. The thought of breakfast now was like the thought of whisky in the night, a dangerous thought, a thought to be avoided. A cup of tea, perhaps. Yes, he might manage a cup of tea: that might be comforting. It might make it possible for him to face the office and get through a not too discreditable morning. For some minutes he lay quite still, his whole attention concentrated on getting as well as possible before Sarah got up. Then he tested himself by envisaging a cup of tea again. Yes, he could certainly manage a cup of tea, and perhaps a small piece of very crisp toast. But no butter. No, most undoubtedly no butter. He almost shrieked it aloud in the intensity of his feelings about butter. Sarah stirred, heaved, and a current of cold air rushed along his back. She was getting up.

  Mr. Darby lay on his back, apparently asleep, for ten minutes longer: then with desperate determination he spoke. He had realized that it would be better to settle the matter now, instead of having to reveal the truth a
t the breakfast table. ‘Sarah,’ he said weakly, without stirring or opening his eyes, and it was as if a corpse lying in state, were speaking.

  ‘Well? ‘ Her voice came from over beside the dressingtable.

  ‘I shan’t want … very much breakfast.’

  ‘Humph!’ Sarah glanced sharply at the recumbent figure. ‘I don’t suppose you will,’ she said, as a result of her inspection. ‘You don’t look anything to boast of. And small wonder.’

  ‘A cup of tea, and a little bit of dry toast,’ Mr. Darby murmured, his eyes still closed.

  Sarah again eyed him severely. ‘It’s a good thing for you,’ she remarked, ‘that you’re not fifty every day.’

  ‘It was the whisky,’ said Mr. Darby weakly.

  Sarah opened the bedroom door. ‘I wonder you haven’t more respect for your stomach,’ she said as she went out.

  • • • • • • • •

  An hour later a small, compact, middle-aged gentleman with gold-rimmed spectacles, evidently out for the first time after a long and severe illness, tottered along the western edge of Osbert Road, travelling southwards. His interest in the outer world, generally so acute, was in abeyance. His thoughts were turned inwards. A distant rumble arose in the outer world, increased rapidly, grew to a roar, and a train—actually a steam train—rushed past him in the railway cutting on his right, leaving a vast convoluted serpent of white smoke that writhed its way upwards out of the cutting into the sunny air above. A smell of railway stations and travel filled the air. But Mr. Darby did not so much as turn his head. For the first time in the twenty years of his frequentation of Osbert Road the steam train brought him no intimations of good fortune. He disregarded it, as he disregarded all else of the outer world except his nose—a rather red, dyspeptic nose in striking contrast to the blotchy pallor of his cheeks—which he was assiduously following to Number Thirty Seven Ranger Street. Yes, he was telling himself, if all those midnight delusions had been real, if his bed and bedroom had been heaving and lurching in good truth and for the sufficient reason that they were a bunk and a cabin, if his appalling sensations had been due to a rough night in the Pacific, he could have borne them patiently, even gladly. As it was, what was he getting out of them? Nothing. They had come, they were already going, and they left him empty. They had not even left him as he was before, because by some abominable magic they had lifted the painted curtain and left him face to face with the real drabness, ineffectuality, vacuity of his life. The memory of the great events of the evening before and of the crowning triumph of his great speech might have restored the lost glamour, but unhappily that memory was remarkably small. When he tried now to remember what he had said, he could not recall a single phrase. He could only remember that he had had a desperate struggle with a large unwieldy word, a word that had seemed to him then of great importance, and had been beaten by it. What was the word? Quinquagesima Sunday! That had been the key to it. Quinquagenarian! It popped up at once now: the key had opened the lock. How simple, by the cold light of day. But last night he had lost the key. Probably the whole speech had been one long tissue of uncouth and discreditable noises. He remembered how he had found Sarah’s eye fixed coldly and warningly upon him. No wonder. And what had the rest of them thought? No doubt it would be the standing joke among them for years. Turning the corner into Savershill Road Mr. Darby, wrapped in these painful thoughts, collided with an old lady, blinked, apologized, disentangled himself and went on his way much shaken. He tried to reassemble his scattered reflections, to retire again into himself. What had he been thinking of? Some wound, some deep-seated grievance. Ah. Sarah! The memory of her cold scrutiny last night had stirred a whole brood of antagonistic feelings. And there was her behaviour this morning too,—her complete lack of sympathetic indulgence towards his … well, yes, call it folly; her cold silent hostility throughout breakfast. And yet, after all, Sarah was a good wife. She fed him very well: there were all sorts of delightful surprises for dinner and supper. She kept everything in the house very nice, very comfortable: her standard was high, there was a style about everything she did. Yes, it must be admitted she was a good wife. But no sooner had Mr. Darby admitted this than some querulous worm turned in him, raised a head, and annihilated the admission. ‘No,’ said the worm, ‘she is not a good wife. When you say she’s a good wife, you mean she’s a good housekeeper. A good wife gives you something more than a comfortable home and good food: she gives affection and sympathy and companionship. Does Sarah give you that?’