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

by Martin Armstrong

  Sarah smiled. ‘Your ladyship has a wonderful memory. It is over twenty years since last we met.’

  ‘I never forget a face or a name,’ said the lady.

  ‘Your lady’s maid Susan Stokes,’ said Sarah, ‘used to be a great friend of mine. I suppose she isn’t still with your ladyship?’

  ‘Indeed she is,’ said Lady Savershill. ‘Stokes would never leave me, except to get married, and it’s rather late for that now. She’s fifty-two. She’ll be glad to hear I’ve met you.’

  ‘I’m sure she will. Please give her my best love, my lady,—Sarah Bouch’s best love.’

  ‘I will. But tell me what your name is now?’

  ‘Darby, my lady. I married James Darby, twenty years ago and we have lived happily and quietly in Savershill ever since until a month or two ago when my husband came in for a very large fortune. That’s how we come to be travelling first-class now.’

  ‘I congratulate you, Mrs. Darby.’

  ‘Don’t congratulate me, my lady,’ said Sarah sardonically. ‘I’d much rather be free of it. I’ve been accustomed to work all my life and I can’t do without it. I couldn’t bear to be idle. If the money was mine I would give most of it away, and glad to be rid of it. Unfortunately my husband is delighted with his forty thousand a year. He wants to travel and, though we haven’t yet discussed it, I’m sure he’ll want a large house and lots of servants. It was all I could do to stop him storing our furniture and getting rid of our little house in Savershill.’

  ‘You don’t care for travelling, then?’

  ‘I’ve never done it, my lady, and I don’t want to begin. I enjoy a short holiday well enough, but I hate the idea of wandering about from place to place idle and with no home to look after, and a great house full of servants, and me in the middle of it with nothing to do. Why, I’d be so envious of my footmen and housemaids and under-housemaids that I’d hardly be able to stop myself snatching the brushes and dusters out of their hands. It’s all very well for your ladyship and others of your position, but for people, like me, accustomed to work and wrapt up in their work, work means … well … everything.’

  ‘I thoroughly understand that,’ said Lady Savershill. ‘In fact, though, as you say, it may be different for some of the people who, like me, have never worked with their hands, I myself have always felt the want of it. I should have been all the better, I should still be all the better, for two or three hours a day of good hard work. You see I’m a strong woman, Mrs. Darby, and a methodical one. I should make an excellent housemaid. But if I were to insist on making the beds and washing the dishes and scrubbing the floors, people would say I was a crank. And the worst of it is, I should be a crank. You, for instance, would think me one, wouldn’t you? ‘

  ‘I’m bound to say I should, my lady,’ said Sarah at once. They both laughed.

  ‘There you are! As things are at present, I should be doing it, not because it had to be done but because it was my hobby, and that would make all the difference.’

  ‘Yes,’said Sarah, ‘it would take all the … well, all the decency out of it.’

  ‘It would. Even if I dismissed one of my housemaids and did her work myself, I should be doing someone out of the employment she needed and for which I could afford to pay her. But though I have to get any exercise I want out of walking and hunting and fishing, I don’t lead an idle life, Mrs. Darby. Don’t run away with that idea. On the contrary I work like a Trojan. I’m at my desk most days from half past nine to half past one, and often for a couple of hours after luncheon too. And when I’m not doing that I’m at Committee Meetings or inspecting hospitals. My husband you see is Chairman of the Hospital Co-ordination Society, and I’m secretary of the northern division. And besides all this I run my own houses. As Stokes may have told you, I don’t approve of leaving the management of one’s own house to others. I prefer to be in control. Besides, if the truth must be told, I manage it better than others would. I need hardly tell you, Mrs. Darby, after your experience at Blanchford, that the management of a large house takes a good deal of skill and experience.’

  ‘I know that, my lady. I often acted as housekeeper at Blanchford when Mrs. Race was away or ill.’

  ‘I remember that you did, and that the Duchess used to say you were better at the job than Mrs. Race.’

  ‘I was more interested in it than she was,’ said Sarah. ‘She found it tiring and worrying. I found it …’

  ‘Exhilarating. I’m sure you did. And my opinion is that you have been wasted, all these last twenty years. What you want …’

  But what Sarah wanted remained unspoken, for at that moment the Ticket Collector looked in and asked for tickets and, immediately after, Lord Savershill and Mr. Darby returned, Mr. Darby glowing beatifically as if he had just emerged from a Turkish bath. But during the remainder of the journey this glow suffered momentary chills, for more than once he found himself to be the subject of Lady Savershill’s inspection. It was not an unfriendly inspection, but he found those bright, direct, amused, analytic eyes disturbing to his composure and felt himself compelled more than once to call up his reserves of dignity.

  When the two couples had separated at King’s Cross and Mr. Darby was settled by Sarah’s side in a taxi, he said: ‘You know, of course, who they were? ’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I was sure I knew his face. One has seen it so often in the papers, of course. They had been staying with the Earl of Malton near York.’

  ‘Lady Savershill recognized me at once. A wonderful memory!’ said Sarah.

  ‘Recognized you, Sarah?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah. ‘She remembered me quite well as head housemaid at Blanchford.’

  She watched him with an amused smile and, as she had expected, saw his face fall. ‘How … ah … how very unfortunate,’ he said.

  ‘Unfortunate for your feelings, Jim,’ said Sarah, ‘but not for mine. I’m not one for play-acting, like some folks I know. I’ve no fault to find with who I am and what I am, and I like plain dealing. It was a relief to me when Lady Savershill spotted me. So any time you feel like pretending you’re a Duke or a Prime Minister, Jim, you’d better leave me behind, remember, for I shall let you down if I can. There’s going to be no humbug when I’m about.’

  Mr. Darby did not reply. He surveyed London with an aggrieved expression of countenance. Sarah’s die-hard policy seemed to him most uncalled-for. That was the worst of Sarah: she had no imagination. Why couldn’t she let herself go, enjoy the miraculous gift that Providence had sent them, instead of taking all the spice out of the thing like this, with her dreary, matter-of-fact notions?

  Chapter XII

  At The Balmoral

  It was getting on towards lunch time and in the large comfortable lounge of the Balmoral Hotel (a few yards, as everyone knows, from Trafalgar Square) there was a fair sprinkling of people and an occasional quiet arrival or departure through the noiseless swing doors. One of such arrivals was a curiously contrasted couple,—a large, handsome, important lady with a natural dignity of which she was obviously quite unconscious, and a small, plump, spectacled, clean-shaven, dapper little man with something of the busy self-consciousness of the pouter-pigeon about him. It was the Darbys of course. They selected a sofa in a corner and sank into it with the deliberate collapse of people exhausted. They had spent the morning at the British Museum.

  Sarah gave a hearty sigh. ‘I must say, Jim, these museums do wear you out. I feel more tired now, after … what? … two and a half hours of it than after a week of spring cleaning. And nothing to show for it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘yes, it’s certainly tiring, Sarah. No doubt about that. But it’s all in a good cause.’

  ‘Hm!’ said Sarah. ‘Where does the good cause come in?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr. Darby judicially, ‘it’s an education, a liberal education. It improves the mind. We are making ourselves acquainted, Sarah,’—he looked at her solemnly over his spectacles—’ with our
… ah … national treasures.’

  ‘Well, it may be improving your mind, Jim, but it’s not improving my feet. I felt ready to drop at the end of it. And as for national treasures, half the stuff in that place would be better burnt, to my thinking. The mummies, for instance! They’re nothing more than a disgrace.’

  Mr. Darby was obviously shocked. ‘The mummies, Sarah, are of the greatest … ah … historical interest. They’re thousands, literally thousands of years old.’

  ‘And look it,’ said Sarah. ‘But I don’t see that that makes it any better. An old corpse, it seems to me, is even worse than a new one. I wonder they have the face to dig the wretched things up and put them under glass-cases. How would you like to see your grandmother in a glass-case for everyone to go and stare at?’

  ‘Ah … no! No! ‘Mr. Darby admitted ‘That would be … ah …!’

  ‘Well then,’ said Sarah, ‘where are you going to draw the line? ‘

  Mr. Darby was unable, at the moment, to suggest a suitable point for the drawing of the line. Besides he was too tired and too hungry to argue. ‘I feel like a … ah … a little pick-me-up,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

  “How long is it till dinner?” asked Sarah.

  ‘Lunch,’ replied Mr. Darby, slightly underlining the word, ‘will be in a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Then I’ll have a glass of Sherry,’ said Sarah decisively. Mr. Darby caught a waiter’s eye and ordered two glasses of Sherry. Sarah’s choice surprised him. He had not known that she had a liking for Sherry.

  ‘And another thing,’ she pursued; ‘all those clubs and axes and painted masks and ridiculous wooden figures and so on, all very well in a toy shop, but the idea of keeping them there, lumbering up the place! Now you’ll tell me, I suppose, that they’re thousands of years old, as if that was any excuse.’

  ‘No!’ said Mr. Darby, ‘No! But for those who study such things, I gather they’re of great… ah … great anthropical interest.’

  ‘Well, not for me, that’s all! ‘said Sarah sharply. ‘Still,’ she added, ‘I will say they’ve some lovely china. Far too much of it, of course, but some lovely bits here and there. I’d like to have had that little bit of Worcester.’

  The waiter brought their Sherry and with the eagerness of dire necessity they raised their glasses simultaneously to their lips.

  ‘A capital idea of yours, Sarah, this Sherry,’ said Mr. Darby, discreetly smacking his lips.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah, ‘it’s very comforting.’ She sipped again, and then glanced with a mischievous smile at her husband. ‘You’d never guess, Jim, the last place I had a glass of Sherry in.’

  ‘At the Stedmans’, perhaps?’ said Mr. Darby innocently.

  ‘No,’ said Sarah, ‘no, not the Stedmans’, though not so very far from the Stedmans’ either. It was in a public-house, called The Schooner I think.’

  The name electrified Mr. Darby. A wave of crimson swept upwards from his collar, enveloping his neck, his ears, his cheeks. He blinked rapidly behind his spectacles as though smoke had got into his eyes: his lips worked nervously. ‘Oh … ah … indeed!’ he said, with disguised evasiveness. ‘Indeed! At The Schooner. Fancy that, now! Dear old Newchester! ’ He raised his glass and drank off his Sherry, as if taking a much needed medicine; then looked hastily at his watch. ‘Well … ah … what about lunch?’ he said.

  He rose from his chair and led the way to the door, and he was still so upset that he quite forgot his manners, quite forgot to pull the door open and stand aside with his customary little bow while Sarah sailed through. He simply drove through the door as through an obstacle to his escape, and if Sarah had not had a hand ready the door would have swung back and separated them. These veiled references to The Schooner made Mr. Darby feel extremely guilty. What did she mean by them? What did she think? What did she know? He wished Sarah would not do it. It never occurred to him that if every word he had ever spoken to Miss Sunningdale had been overheard by the whole world, Sarah included, the revelation would not have stirred the ghost of a suspicion in even the most suspicious; that his sense of guilt came from the memory of his secret feelings, and also, a little, from the spectacled glances which had accompanied his guileless talk; from the small, romantic corner in his heart which still glowed discreetly at the thought of Miss Sunningdale; and from that brief and totally private debate with himself, after the news of his fortune, as to whether or not he should buy her some small token.

  But the long walk down the corridor towards the dining-room, together with the delightful prospect of lunch, served to calm Mr. Darby and to place a gulf between him and the disquieting theme wide enough to make it unlikely that Sarah would seek to bridge it when they had sat down to lunch. Before they had reached their table he had resumed his normal colour and his usual spirits. A waiter hovered about their arrival, they sat down, and Mr. Darby joyously took up the menu.

  Quickly and with one accord they chose kidney soup, and then nibbled voraciously at their rolls, silent from hunger, until the waiter brought their order. And even now they did not speak: they were silent now from absorption in the blessed occupation of feeding. O, the pure blessedness of thick kidney soup! The profound satisfaction in the mere act of eagerly stoking a run-down machine! Under the influence of each added spoonful of that soup they felt themselves change, felt their hearts lifted up, warmed, their tempers smoothed, every internal organ cheered, caressed.

  ‘The best thing about these museums, Jim,’ said Sarah, laying down her spoon at last, ‘is the appetite they give you. Without that, they’d be little better than a burden and a waste of time. You know, it’s a nightmare to me to think of all those cartloads of useless stuff stored away there. If women were in charge of things you’d find precious few museums about, believe me. But men are like children. There’s nothing they like better than collecting a whole lot of useless rubbish that happens to take their fancy. Only, with children, some grown-up comes along sooner or later and tidies the whole lot away, throws it into the dustbin. I’d like to have the tidying of the British Museum.’

  ‘Still, you must admit it’s not all useless, Sarah,’ said Mr. Darby, willing to humour her. ‘Mummies may be useless, but what about that china you admired?’

  Sarah snorted. ‘What’s the good of china, I’d like to know, locked away in a glass case, so that you can’t so much as touch it, much less make yourself a cup of tea with it? No, Jim, I’d clear out the lot; china and all. And as for those naked statues downstairs,—well, if you like to look at that kind of thing I don’t. And the idea of showing them to children too. To see those two school-mistresses with a whole herd of girls, staring as solemn as judges at a great naked man, well, it’ud have been enough to make any decent person blush if it wasn’t more than enough to make them laugh. There were three or four of them in the long gallery at Blanchford. It always surprised me that the Duchess let them stay there. And young girls, young housemaids, having the dusting of them too.’

  Mr. Darby raised his eyes from his grilled steak, eyes bubbling with laughter. His mouth twitched at the corners, and he began to shake all over. At the sight of him Sarah’s righteous indignation suddenly collapsed and Mr. Darby’s symptoms were reflected in her. For some time silent laughter made eating impossible; even after they had recovered themselves, they suffered more than one severe relapse on catching each other’s eye, and it was only by a vigorous self-control that they preserved their gravity when the waiter came to remove their plates. When he had gone, Mr. Darby removed his spectacles and dried them and his eyes with his pocket handkerchief.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘you’ll be the death of me.’

  • • • • • • • •

  They had been in London ten days. Having visited the National Gallery, Sarah positively refused to be persuaded to try the Tate, the Wallace Collection, or the Academy. ‘Nobody likes a nice picture or two better than I do,’ she said, ‘but enough’s as good as a feast, Jim, and too much is worse than nothing. Ho
w you can go on from room to room staring at picture after picture beats me. And I don’t believe you enjoy it: you don’t look as if you did, anyhow. I suppose you do it because you think you ought to. Well, I don’t think I ought to, and what’s more, whether I ought to or not, I’m not going to. When I’ve seen a dozen pictures, I’ve seen all I want to see. As for looking at hundreds and thousands, till you can’t tell one from the other,—well, it’s more than flesh and blood will stand. Believe me, if all the pictures in those last few rooms had been hung upside down I should never have known it. I was far past noticing a trifle of that kind. If you want more pictures, Jim, you must just go by yourself: though how you can want more after all you saw yesterday is more than I can understand. Improving your mind, I suppose: making yourself acquainted with our national treasures. Well, all I’ve got to say is, my mind doesn’t want improving: I’m quite satisfied with it as it is. And as for our national treasures, I’ve seen more than enough of them already to last me a lifetime. So off you go to your Tate or your Wallace and leave me here with my book. I’ll improve my mind with David Copperfield till tea-time.’

  Mr. Darby therefore, after a good lunch, set out alone, bent on the conquest of the Tate. He was relieved at Sarah’s defection. He did not conceal from himself that those visits to the galleries were a laborious business, but without Sarah they would be less so. Her unwilling company added an inertia which doubled his fatigue. He had felt once or twice during that morning in the National Gallery as if he were trying to drag a steam-roller after him. He set out therefore with freedom in his heart and a spring in his step. Sarah had hit the nail on the head. It was not the pictures themselves that aroused his enthusiasm so much as the assurance that by looking at them he was improving his mind, acquiring the polite knowledge which was indispensable to his new state. His map showed him that the Tate was not very far from the Balmoral. It was a bright afternoon, he would walk there. It would be pleasant on the Embankment. He joined it near Hungerford Bridge and as he walked west, enjoying the breeze from the river and the scene before him, the Houses of Parliament, perceiving his approval, towered every moment higher and higher. ‘A noble pile of buildings!’ he thought to himself. ‘Some day, who knows …!’ But a siren from the river diverted his thoughts. A tug with a finely raked funnel was thrusting up the river at a smart speed, and at the sight of it Mr. Darby’s thoughts flew to the Quayside, the Dole, the Sea, foreign travel, the Alps, and the Jungle, the persistently maligned Jungle. It blotted out the Houses of Parliament as in other lands it has blotted out Maya palaces. Tropical trunks replaced the modest plane-trees and lamp-posts of the Embankment: a foot above Mr. Darby’s bowler hat the orchids hung so thick that the sky was invisible, and the hoarse voices crying the evening papers were the voices of green parrots. Suddenly he was seized by the shoulders and brought abruptly to a standstill. At the first shock he had the wild thought that he was being attacked by a gorilla. But the sound of a human voice reassured him. ‘Nah, gov’ner, watcher fink you’re a-doin’ of? Drivin tuvver dynger uvver public an no mistyke!’