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

by Martin Armstrong

  Thursday was early closing day in Savershill, and perhaps it was not by an altogether random choice that Mr. Darby had fixed on the afternoon train on Thursday April the twenty-third, for the journey to London. But whether it was, or not, it enabled Mr. and Mrs. George Stedman and one or two other friends who were in trade, to come to the Central Station to see them off. McNab and Pellow came too. Mr. Marston had allowed them half an hour off to enable them to do so. Sam Cribb, unfortunately, was not there (the railway does not recognize early closing days); but Mrs. Cribb was, and, to Mr. Darby’s thinking, she did not treat the occasion with all the gravity it demanded. She addressed the Darbys as Mr. and Mrs. Whittington which, as Mr. Darby pointed out with a touch of haughtiness, was singularly inappropriate, for Dick Whittington went to London to seek his fortune, ‘whereas we, I am glad to say,’ remarked Mr. Darby, ‘are very … ah … differently situated.’

  Mr. and Mrs. Darby had been comfortably settled by their porter in a first-class carriage, and now they stood at the open door chatting to the small group on the platform. Sarah stood behind her husband (had she not done so, he would have been invisible) and, a somewhat shadowy figure, conversed with her friends for the most part by signs. But Mr. Darby was clearly visible. He stood framed in the doorway, black hatted and coated. A single pearl adorned his figured grey tie: he wore shammy leather gloves. There was a certain aloofness about him, a touch of the grand seigneur consistent with his new circumstances; yet he gazed down on his friends benignly, and a hint of moisture gleamed in his blue, spectacled eyes, for the parting was painful to him.

  ‘Now mind you don’t get into mischief, Jim,’ said George Stedman. ‘But I can trust Mrs. D. to keep an eye on you.’ He signed to Sarah who bent her head and looked over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Keep an eye on him,’ said Stedman. ‘You know what he is!’

  ‘Trust me!’ said Sarah.

  Mr. Darby smiled complacently. Such jokes were really jokes now. No one, not even Sarah, could keep him out of mischief now: he was a free man.

  ‘Come back soon,’ said Mrs. Stedman, her thin kindly face smiling up at him. Mr. Darby smiled back and made a gesture of acquiescence with his gloved hand. ‘Sooner or later,’ he said, and he addressed this reassurance not only to Mrs. Stedman, but to all, ‘Sooner or later I shall … ah … return.’

  ‘That’s right, Jim,’ said Stedman; ‘and let it be sooner rather than later. We shall miss you badly. Savershill won’t be the same place.’

  A porter passed, shutting the doors. Mr. Darby stepped back with dignity and appeared, next moment, a head and shoulders portrait, at the open window. The hissing of the engine made further conversation impossible. He saw that Mrs. Cribb was shouting at him, but her words were lost in the roar. Mr. Darby made a gesture indicating deafness. She came nearer. ‘They’re getting up a lot of steam,’ she shouted affably. But the words were annihilated in the all-pervading roar. Mr. Darby put a hand to his ear. ‘Getting up quite a lot of steam,’ he heard.

  ‘Ah, quite! Quite! One of these new … ah … locomotives, no doubt.’

  It was Mrs. Cribb’s turn to be deaf.

  ‘One of these new … ah … locomotives!’ shouted Mr. Darby, and she nodded vigorously, and shouted the statement to her companions.

  ‘One of the new locomotives!’ They all leaned back and looked towards the engine. Then a shrill whistle sounded above the roaring whistle of steam, the roar suddenly stopped and with the power and leisure of a great wave the train heaved slowly into motion. Mr. Darby, framed in the window space, raised his hat with his right hand while with the other he waved a majestic farewell. It was a moment he had long foreseen. Sarah was waving over his shoulder. The little group of friends waved back, and as they began slowly to recede from him, Mr. Darby noticed, a few feet beyond them, the figure of a man holding before his chest with both hands a black box. Next moment he had lowered it: it was a camera. Mr. Darby was swept, as a mountain is swept by flying sunshine, by a blaze of satisfaction. But in a moment his eyes and his thoughts flew back to his friends. There they stood, a pathetic and isolated little group. They were waving handkerchiefs. How small they looked already: even George Stedman looked small. A long signal cabin suddenly blotted them out and Mr. Darby turned his attention into the carriage. Sarah had already settled herself in a window seat: he sank into the seat opposite her. ‘Well!’ he said conclusively, as one might imagine the Almighty saying it at the close of one century and the opening of another; and, after a moment’s silence, he could not help adding: ‘I fancy I … ah … observed a photographer.’ Sarah knit her brows.

  ‘From the … ah … the Press, the Chronicle no doubt. Rather nice of them, I thought.’

  ‘Do you mean they were taking us?‘said Sarah.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Darby. ‘In fact I saw it occur.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Sarah. ‘Taking us? Whatever for? ’

  ‘For the Chronicle no doubt,’ said Mr. Darby. ‘The back page, you know.’

  Sarah snorted. ‘I wonder what you’ll be fancying next Jim,’ she said. ‘Lord Mayor of London meeting us at King’s Cross perhaps.’

  Mr. Darby did not reply. Sarah could say what she liked; she couldn’t alter the … ah … gratifying fact, and he spent the next fifteen minutes reflecting on it. He must make sure not to miss the photograph when it came out. But how? He couldn’t very well write to George Stedman and ask him to look out for it: that would betray too much excitement about it. But whether he wrote or not, George would see it, he was a man who always read his paper thoroughly, and when he saw it he would certainly cut it out and send it with some comic remark attached. Having settled that in his mind satisfactorily Mr. Darby began to play variations on the theme, after his usual fashion. ‘Mr. and Mrs. James Darby,’ he thought, ‘left Newchester by the afternoon train for London yesterday. We learn, on enquiry, that they intend to spend some months in the Metropolis.’

  But did they? Abandoning poetic fancy and turning his thoughts for a while to prosaic actuality, Mr. Darby admitted that any such statement was highly controversial. It was his own intention to spend some months in London, but it seemed unlikely that Sarah would stand it for long. All her references to their forthcoming holiday had implied that it was to be a short one. She clung tenaciously to Number Seven Moseley Terrace. However, Mr. Darby had never been one to allow distant possibilities to mar present enjoyment, and he was certainly not going to do so on the occasion of the launching of his career. Everything had gone, was still going, exactly as he could have wished. The little group on the platform and the recording and preservation by photography (public photography) of the brief but impressive moment of farewell, were things that, though Mr. Darby would certainly himself have supplied them in imagination, he had not dared to hope for in actual fact. And now, here he was in this perfectly delightful first-class carriage, in a seat as comfortable as the most comfortable armchair and opposite him a wife in every way worthy of the occasion both in dress and appearance, bowling along swiftly but with hardly perceptible movement towards the Metropolis. He leaned back luxuriously with a sigh. The train was gaining speed. It wheeled to the left and he rolled over with it, aware of the comfortable pressure of the cushions against his side and back. In a moment they would cross the Redvale bridge, the viaduct spanning the deep glen of the Dole, which for Mr. Darby was still the new bridge, though King Edward had ceremoniously opened it in 1906. The train straightening itself swayed majestically forward, the buildings on the left and right fell away, Mr. Darby turned in his seat and looked through the window on his left. There it lay below him, the crowded valley of the Dole, a huddle of piled, smoke-grimed masonry tumbling to the river on either slope and barred by the gaunt iron screen of the High Level Bridge and, where the buildings ceased, the huddle of masts and funnels. With a little pang Mr. Darby realized that the Quayside itself was invisible. If only he could have seen it now and spotted The Schooner in the long line of buildings fronting the river! Suddenly he was
overcome by the sense of all that the scene meant to him. How often he had carried his hopes and despairs down to the Quayside; and there, at the sight of the ships, the loading and unloading, the stir of departure, at the smell of the chill, watery, smoky air full of the muted noises of the town and the sharp cries of gulls broken sometimes by the deep, resonant bay of a steamer’s siren, his hopes had been mysteriously fed and his despairs mysteriously soothed away, and he had climbed back into the town, returning to the changeless routine of his life, heartened and refreshed. Could it have been that he had really known, in some dark corner of his heart, that the miracle for which he had foolishly hoped was really going to happen? Why, otherwise, had he gone on hoping without the smallest warrant for hope? And now here he was, setting out, as he had so long hoped to set out, and that other life, lit only by a stubborn hope which was little better than a fantastic madness, had already begun to seem unreal, a long troubled dream from which he had wakened to the secure reality of daylight.

  But though it seemed to him already a dream, it was a dream from which he could not escape and did not wish to escape, for his heart was deeply involved in it. He loved Newchester, he loved the office, and, he only now realized how much, he loved his home; and those old haunts of his and the life he had lived among them began already to take on a rich, emotional significance of which, at the time, he had only rarely been conscious. The train had already flung the bridge and the Dole Valley and Newchester behind it, and in Mr. Darby’s mind too Newchester fell back into distance, shrank to a small compact city crowded into which the Stedmans, the Cribbs, Mr. Marston, McNab, Pellow and his other friends pursued their busy uneventful lives like bees in a hive. The rich melancholy belonging to things of the past enveloped them. Mr. Darby paid them the tribute of a sigh and immediately roused himself. This, the very moment of the launching of his career, was no time for melancholy reflection, for gazing backward. The good ship Darby had just had her wedges knocked from under her, had slowly creaked into motion from her cradle in Number Seven Moseley Terrace, and now, having flung off the prisoning enclosure of walls and sheds and land-lumber, was sliding swiftly, effortlessly down her well-greased slipway, into the open breezy waters of the world. Mr. Darby glanced at one window then at the other. On either side of him the land was sliding away smoothly behind him. This was pioneering, if you like. He was forging ahead, driving an irresistible wedge into the unknown; discovering, every moment, and recklessly flinging his discoveries behind him, impatient for more. And not only was there this condition of constant change to be enjoyed; there was also this delightful first-class carriage, with its luxurious cushions, its mirrors and photographs of notable places, its fascinating knobs and levers for controlling the ventilation and the heating, stopping the whole train if he so desired (though at the risk of forfeiting £5. But what was £5 to a millionaire?) and the little bell labelled ‘Attendant.’ A bolder spirit no doubt would have pulled the Alarm and stopped the train, had his five-pounds-worth out of it just for the pleasure of tasting his power, but Mr. Darby did not feel himself able to dominate a situation of that sort yet. Besides if one pulled it when the train was going at this speed, goodness knows if the sudden stop would not produce a ghastly accident? No, he would let the Alarm alone. And the temperature of the carriage was just right, so he wouldn’t meddle with the heating apparatus. But soon, without a word to Sarah and as if the action was a mere matter of routine, he would press the little button labelled Attendant and, when the attendant came, casually order tea. He smiled and suddenly caught Sarah’s eye. He had forgotten her. She was watching him and was smiling too.

  ‘Well,’ she said; ‘enjoying yourself?’

  Mr. Darby felt a little guilty at the question, for Sarah spoke almost as if she were speaking to a small boy. Had he been too obviously gloating? After all, one ought outwardly to take things for granted: it would be … well, not quite dignified to make too much of a fuss about them, whatever one might feel privately.

  He shrugged his shoulders and made a gesture implying equanimity tinged with indifference. ‘Are you?’ he asked.

  Sarah nodded. ‘Very much,’ she said. ‘There’s no denying that first-class makes all the difference.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Darby admitted, ‘these carriages are very well … ah … appointed. Some of the new rolling stock, I fancy.’

  ‘The best thing about it, to my mind,’ said Sarah, ‘is those clean white antimacassars. I never could bear the idea of leaning my head against a third-class cushion. You never know what you might get from them.’

  Mr. Darby indicated the slightly open window with a gloved hand, ‘You don’t feel the draught?’

  ‘Not at all,’said Sarah. ‘We must have a little air.’

  Mr. Darby took up an illustrated paper from the seat beside him.

  ‘Quite! Quite!’ he said. ‘Care to see The Tatler? ‘ Sarah accepted it with a faintly amused smile, and Mr. Darby gravely selected The Sketch for himself.

  At York a liveried footman invaded them, bestowed bags and umbrellas on the rack and made way for a lady and gentleman who took the seats at the other side of the carriage. The gentleman’s face was vaguely familiar to Mr. Darby but where or when he had seen it he couldn’t for the life of him remember. Was he, perhaps, a client of Mr. Marston’s, and had he seen him in the office? He hoped not, for in his present mood he did not relish the idea of being recalled in his old role with a pencil behind his ear. It might impair the effect of this new role in the performance of which he was at present absorbed. And so Mr. Darby enclosed himself within the pages of The Sketch and there preserved a discreet incognito. It was not until an attendant appeared in the doorway demanding orders for tea that, hearing his fellow traveller order tea for two, he ventured to emerge and somewhat timidly hold up two gloved fingers and signal tea for another two to the attendant. After a while the attendant returned, neatly contrived a table down the centre of the carriage and then brought a tea tray for each pair. The lady and Sarah and Mr. Darby began to take off their gloves. The gentleman was gloveless already. Then Sarah began to pour out tea and so did the lady. She was a large woman, as tall, though not quite as broad as Sarah, and she poured out tea with the quick, decisive movements of a person of vigour and determination. She was not good-looking, but her face was striking and more distinguished than those of most good-looking women. The high cheekbones, the fine beaklike nose, the blue eyes that looked straight and challengingly at whatever they looked at, would not easily be forgotten; and her talk, in the few phrases she had addressed to her husband, was straight, precise, and to the point. Mr. Darby thought her a formidable person, and though now, as she sat on the same side of the carriage as he did, he could not easily see her, her voice and manner of speech made him feel ill at ease. The gentleman looked much more reassuring, and Mr. Darby wished heartily that he had left the lady at home. He started visibly when, having handed a cup to the gentleman, she suddenly turned and said to Sarah:

  ‘Tea is a great help on these occasions, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a help at any time,’ said Sarah.

  It helps to kill time,’ said the gentleman, ‘and that’s a blessing on a dull journey like this one.’

  ‘I don’t find it dull,’ said Mr. Darby; ‘but then I’m always … ah … entertained when travelling. The view and so on! ‘he waved a hand to the window.

  ‘But such a dull view,’ replied the gentleman. ‘However, perhaps you haven’t to do the journey as often as we have. I generally prefer to do it by night and sleep through it. It saves time. Some day, no doubt, we shall all fly it, as a matter of course, in a couple of hours or so.’

  ‘No flying for me,’ said Sarah with decision.

  ‘Nor for me,’ said the lady. ‘I prefer terra firma.’

  Mr. Darby declared his willingness and intention to fly. Travelling, he explained, was his hobby.

  ‘You’ve done much?’ asked the gentleman.

  ‘No … ah … no, not much. In fact, re
markably little. But I hope to. And, having recently retired from … ah … business, I shall have more opportunity.’

  The conversation turned to foreign parts. It appeared that their new acquaintances knew India and parts of Africa, and Mr. Darby made certain enquiries about jungles, in consequence of which many of the less pleasant details of Major Blenkinsop’s information were confirmed.

  ‘It’s all very well when you’re young,’ said the gentleman, ‘but for people of your and my age, it doesn’t do.’

  Mr. Darby enquired if he knew Australia. ‘Not at all,’ said the gentleman. ‘Do you know it yourself?’

  ‘No,’said Mr. Darby; ‘though doubtless I shall have to go there sooner or later. I have a good deal of property there,’ he added, throwing out the information in a casual and somewhat blase tone.

  When both parties had finished their tea the gentleman declared his intention of having a smoke. ‘I think there’s room in the smoking carriage next door,’ he said, and asked Mr. Darby if he would join him. Mr. Darby rose with alacrity and followed the gentleman out of the carriage fingering his breast pocket for his cigar case.

  As soon as the two women were alone, the lady turned to Sarah and said: ‘I know your face quite well. We’ve met before, more than once.’

  ‘I recognized your ladyship directly you came into the carriage,’ said Sarah. ‘Your ladyship saw me often at Blanchford in old days. I was head housemaid there for some years.’

  ‘Of course you were. And your name was … Crouch … no, not quite Crouch. Bouch.”