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

by Martin Armstrong

  ‘H … m! Just so. Well, if you want to build up a big business like Gudgeon’s Nerve Food, you’ve not got to let your feelings run away with you. If any of your employees don’t come up to the mark, if they’re weak, always on the sick list or what not, well, they must make room for others. Give ’em the sack. It’s hard I know, but life’s hard and you’ve got to accept it. That’s what I tell them. My jobs are not jobs for weaklings. If I’d been a weakling where would my business have been?’

  ‘But you must remember, Mr. Gudgeon,’ said Mr. Amberley’s quiet voice, ‘that you began with an unfair advantage.’

  ‘Unfair advantage? What d’you mean?’ asked Gudgeon truculently.

  ‘You had Gudgeon’s Nerve Food at your disposal.’

  ‘Never touched it in my life,’ said Gudgeon. ‘Never needed it.’

  ‘But it was there in case of need. That in itself must have been a tonic, for of course you have great faith in it?’

  Gudgeon gave a short hard laugh. ‘Would I offer it to the public if I hadn’t?’ he asked.

  Mr. Amberley shook his head gravely. ‘You ask me a difficult question, Mr. Gudgeon. Candidly, I don’t know.’

  Mr. Gudgeon, with the eye of an ill-conditioned bull, eyed Mr. Amberley suspiciously, but Mr. Amberley’s face wore an expression of flawless innocence.

  ‘If you were to call at my office, Mr. … er …, I could show you thousands, literally thousands, of testimonials. Isn’t that the only proof worth having of the efficacy of the medicine?’

  ‘I’m quite sure it is, Mr. Gudgeon.’ Mr. Amberley’s tone was one of conviction.

  ‘And listen to this,’ went on Gudgeon, bringing his hand down on the table. ‘I never ask for a testimonial. They’re all unsolicited. I don’t ask for testimonials and I don’t force my medicine on any one. The medicine’s there; I tell the public it’s there; you’ve seen me telling them it’s there, Mr. Darby, all over the country …!’

  Mr. Darby nodded vigorously. ‘Your … ah … advertisements are what I may call household words.’

  Gudgeon turned to Mr. Amberley with outstretched hand. ‘There! You hear, Mr. … er …! Household words! The public know it’s there: they can take it or leave it.’

  ‘Yes, happily we can all do that. But you’re leaving out one item, aren’t you, Mr. Gudgeon? You’re running the risk of appearing a humanitarian after all. I mean, in the first case, in the case of their taking it, they also pay for it, don’t they?’

  ‘Ha! Ha! That’s a good one. Mr. Darby, our friend here’s a bit of a wag. Yes, they pay for it, Mr. … er …, as they pay for everything else. You don’t get something for nothing nowadays.’

  ‘Don’t you, Mr. Gudgeon?’ Mr. Amberley looked genuinely surprised.

  Gudgeon leaned forward; there was a horrible concentration about his boiled blue eyes and his brutal mouth. He was about, it seemed, to make an impressive statement, but his eye was caught by something near the door. He snatched his half-full glass and drained it at a gulp. ‘I must be off,’ he said, and got out of his chair. ‘But you gents think over what I’ve told you. I’m a business man, and those are my considered opinions. I give them you for what they’re worth.’

  ‘More than he does with his Nerve Food,’ said Mr. Amberley. They glanced at their retreating companion and saw, framed in the open doorway like an allegorical figure of Gluttony, the abundant Mrs. Gudgeon.

  When they had finished their drinks Mr. Darby and Mr. Amberley went on deck. The sea had ceased to afford Mr. Darby that entertainment which he had found so bracing a day or two ago: it was miraculously calm. With the sheen of a deep blue silk it gently heaved and relapsed in great flat domes, as though giant mermen were slowly and idly nodding their heads below. In the distance the coast of Spain, a continuous mottled ribbon of land, swam parallel with the ship, as if running a losing race with it. Mr. Amberley pointed out a headland. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is Cape Trafalgar.’

  Mr. Darby gazed at it in silence. It aroused in him displeasing thoughts: it reminded him of that home of stagnation and corruption the National Gallery. It was a little hard, after cutting loose and traversing several hundred miles of ocean to find such a memory waylaying him here. He turned his eyes elsewhere.

  ‘Not,’ he said to his companion, ‘a very impressive … ah … feature; and called, I presume, after the well-known Square.’

  Mr. Amberley glanced sharply at the little man. Himself an adept in guileful innocence, he saw at once that Mr. Darby’s innocence was genuine. ‘A born humorist, a man in a thousand,’ he thought to himself.

  That afternoon they touched at Gibraltar.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Mr. Darby Abroad

  It was after the Utopia had steamed out of Gibraltar that the world began to live up to Mr. Darby’s expectations. It was a calm warm evening and Mr. Darby, abandoning the human herd that strolled or sat on the promenade deck, climbed to the high boat deck and stood, his hands clasped behind his back, contemplating the great luminous furrow that the Utopia drew after her in the pale, crystal-green Mediterranean. The furrow was visible for miles, a bright snail-track on the clear watery floor, and as it visibly lengthened, Mr. Darby saw himself drawn further and further from Sarah and England, further and further into the mysterious unknown. It was harrowing, yet it was thrilling. He felt himself to be alone, yet confident in his loneliness: he had for the moment forgotten, and was content to forget, the reliable Punnett. He turned his eyes to the left and there, far away to the south-west, pale and transparent as though carved from an aquamarine, rose the distant mountains of Africa. On his right, much closer, rose Europe, the snowy summits of the Sierra Nevada, an unearthly vision of rose and violet, floating high above a bank of dove-grey vapour that hid the coastline. Mr. Darby heaved a deep-drawn sigh. To stand there alone between two continents, two continents bathed in the visionary loveliness of a dream, was surely one of the most marvellous experiences that could befall a man. His heart expanded until it seemed that it would burst his waistcoat: his whole being felt uplifted. From the height, the moral and emotional height, at which he now stood, his quarrel with England sank into insignificance. He could think even of the National Gallery and its Trustees and Director without bitterness. Yes, Mr. Darby, totally divested now of the narrow garment of self, forgave them; and Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean bore witness to his forgiveness. The roses and violets of the Sierra Nevada faded to the stark whiteness of unilluminated snow, but Mr. Darby’s august and elevated mood still held him alone and motionless under the monstrous scarlet funnels.

  And so he might have stood, far into the night, had not a bugle-note from below called the soaring spirit down to its earthly prison and sent the little man hurrying to his cabin to dress for dinner.

  • • • • • • • •

  After Gibraltar Mr. Darby felt himself to be indeed in the south. Throughout the day the sea was a deep summery blue, and at night, where it was whipped and churned about the Utopia’s thrusting hull, it glowed and glimmered with a ghostly phosphorescence. And the nights were deliciously warm: coats, wraps and rugs disappeared, and as the ship swam, a great glittering pavilion, through the warm darkness, the ship’s orchestra made a small glittering oasis of revelry in the huge desert of silence, and the passengers, in evening dress, like twirling, gliding exotic flowers, danced on the decks. Mr. Darby sat solitary in a deck-chair watching them. Their rhythmical movements soothed him, the moving show of faces and bright dresses enthralled him. The lady whom Mr. Amberley had called the bold, bad Baroness wore a dress of shimmering blue, the blue of a wild hyacinth: her eyes were half closed, her face was like a mask, ‘a dead woman dancing,’ thought Mr. Darby with a little shudder. Her partner was a tall, thin, clean-shaven man with a face carved out of wood,—a lawyer, Mr. Darby suspected.

  The two young Rentons, the handsome young man and the vivacious girl, were dancing together. Their mother sat in a deck-chair separated from Mr. Darby’s by two that were unoccupied
. A charming couple, so natural, so alive. Mr. Amberley, who seemed to know everything about everybody, had told him that their name was Renton, and he himself had overheard their mother calling the boy Tim and the girl Violet. Mr. Darby watched them. The girl in her pale yellow dress had the delicious freshness of a spring flower: what a contrast with the Baroness. Mr. Darby could discover no signs of Mr. Amberley, but in a couple of chairs, intermittently eclipsed and revealed by the dancers, the great Gudgeon and his woman sat watching immovably like a pair of obscene pagan idols. Suddenly Mr. Darby found himself violently shaken: a couple had cannoned into his chair. Scarlet from the shock he raised angry spectacles and found the two young Rentons looking down at him. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said the boy with a charming smile, ‘I hope …!’

  ‘Pray don’t mention it,’ replied Mr. Darby. His anger had vanished, his spectacles had suddenly grown bland.

  They took the two empty chairs between him and their mother, and the girl, who had taken the chair next Mr. Darby, turned to him with spontaneous friendliness. ‘I’m afraid we must have shaken you up horribly.’

  ‘Not at all! Not at all!’ he said. ‘It’s good for old people to be shaken up occasionally.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said, laughing. ‘Then you ought to be dancing.’

  Mr. Darby shook his head gravely. ‘I fear my dancing days are over.’

  Violet looked at him. ‘They oughtn’t to be,’ she said, and it was clear from her tone that she was expressing a frank opinion, not paying a compliment.

  Mr. Darby’s heart glowed with gratitude. He glanced at her face, he was going to speak, but he saw that her attention was suddenly absorbed in the dancers. After a moment she turned to him again. ‘Who is that woman in blue?’ she asked.

  Mr. Darby had a sudden pang of misgiving. He hated to think that this fresh, innocent girl was attracted by that cold, hard, forbidding woman.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was told her name the other day. Let me see! Lady something or other! Gissingham! Yes, that’s it: Lady Gissingham! She used to be a baroness. Do you … ah … admire her?’

  ‘No,’ answered the girl with conviction. ‘I don’t.’

  Mr. Darby was delighted and relieved. ‘Neither do I,’ he said with a conviction equal to hers.

  ‘She keeps staring at Tim and me,’ said Violet angrily, ‘as if she’d like to eat us.’

  Mr. Darby snorted. ‘What I should call bad manners, very!’ he said.

  After a few minutes the young people got up to dance again. ‘We’ll be more careful this time,’ the boy said to Mr. Darby.

  But Mr. Darby too rose from his chair. ‘I’ll save you the trouble,’ he said with a friendly nod. ‘I’m going for a little walk.’

  He wandered away to the other side of the deck, stepped suddenly out of the noise and movement and glitter of crowded humanity into the immense and solemn presence of stars and ocean. He strolled down the deserted deck and tucking himself into the angle between the deck-rail and the rail that divided the first-class from the second-class, gazed down into the seething, glimmering water. His mind, after his talk with the young girl, was as warm and fluid as the sea; her innocence, her friendliness, her frankness had filled and refreshed it. ‘Charming girl!’ he said to himself. ‘Charming little thing!’ If only he and Sarah had had a child, a daughter, she might have been the age of this girl by now.

  Mr. Darby stood leaning there for a long time, gazing down into the dark water. The glittering noise of the band came to him here dulled and muted by the outer silence, and in that silence he felt in his simple inarticulate soul a basic security beneath all the fluctuations of life. Whatever came to him and whatever went from him in the course of life did not really matter: the only thing that mattered was this utter security that underlay all the changes and chances. If the Utopia went down in a typhoon in the China Seas, if he actually reached the Mandratic Peninsula, underwent terrible experiences there, even died violently there, none of these things would really matter. In the strength of his security he was ready for whatever might befall.

  Gradually his mind rose out of these refreshing depths to the surface of things. He became aware that his legs and his arms were growing stiff from his long immobility. He straightened his back, looked about him, and began to stroll round to the other side of the deck. Again the noise and stir rushed back upon him. It seemed to him that he had been away for hours; yet they were still dancing, still revolving feverishly to the feverish music. He stood, silence and stillness behind him, agitation and noise in front, and watched them. Suddenly his attention was arrested. The Baroness swam past, dancing still, but her eyes were no longer half-closed and she no longer looked dead. She was smiling, her lips moved, her eyes were wide open and gazing intensely, languishingly into her partner’s face. Yes, she was alive now, and she was dancing with young Renton.

  Mr. Darby’s whole nature rebelled against it. It was wrong, all wrong. He recalled the girl’s instinctive aversion, her convinced ‘No, I don’t!’ and he longed to rush up to the couple and tear them apart. Their dancing together seemed to him a threat and an insult to the girl.

  But where was she, the girl? He glanced over to where he had been sitting with them, and saw her and her mother sitting silent together. It was dreadful, dreadful, and he could do nothing. He turned away and went back to his solitary nook on the other side of the deck.

  • • • • • • • •

  Mr. Darby had not gone ashore at Gibraltar, but when they touched at Toulon, he landed, under Mr. Amberley’s wing, and visited for the first time in his life a foreign town. The experience delighted him: everything was charmingly fantastic. The people, so different from ordinary people, with their comical chatter and gestures, the absurdly baggy trousers of the men, the lively shops and cafés, separated from the water’s edge only by the broad pavement; the launches of the French Navy with their tall, bright, polished funnels, that bustled from point to point in the wide harbour, full of sailors; the long narrow market, shaded by autumnal plane trees, full of slow business, all these delighted Mr. Darby. ‘Charming!’ he said, as he and Mr. Amberley sat, drinking a Bock, under the awning of a café: ‘Quite charming! Like one of these … ah … exhibitions, to be shaw! ‘He listened with respectful awe when Mr. Amberley conversed fluently with the waiter, and he was amazed to observe that the very dogs and cats understood French. ‘Hearing nothing else they get accustomed to it, I suppose,’ he said.

  Mr. Amberley agreed. ‘No doubt the necessity of coping with a foreign language sharpens their wits.’

  Yes, Mr. Darby was delighted with Toulon: he wirelessed to Sarah and told her so.

  Before dinner that evening Mr. Amberley pointed to a mountainous island ahead of them. ‘Corsica!’ he said. ‘An island famous for its association with a great historical character.’

  Mr. Darby gave a little bow. ‘Ah, indeed! And who, if I may enquire?’

  ‘Boswell, the immortal Bozzy. If people mention other names, Napoleon Bonaparte for instance, you may be sure they’re talking nonsense. Avoid worthless imitations, Mr. Darby: insist on Boswell.’

  ‘I certainly shall,’ said Mr. Darby. Once again Mr. Amberley was talking Double Dutch: once again Mr. Darby felt that he was something of a character. But he had already discovered that by adroitly changing the subject it was always possible to bring Mr. Amberley back to sanity and commonsense. Accordingly he cleared his throat and said: ‘I trust we shall find Vesuvius active.’

  ‘Not too active, I hope,’ said Mr. Amberley. ‘Vesuvius when very active is an appalling spectacle. I saw it so once, at the beginning of the last great eruption in fact, and the sight was appalling. It is painful to be reminded so ruthlessly of man’s utter insignificance in the presence of nature. No, I prefer to keep away from active volcanoes and regard myself as the lord of creation.’

  ‘Still,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘I have always wished to witness some great … ah … what I might call convolution of nature.’

 
; Mr. Amberley made a definite gesture of dissent. ‘No convolutions for me, thank you, Mr. Darby,’ he said. ‘However, let me reassure you. If Vesuvius lets us escape, there is always the chance that the Island of Ischia may blow us and itself to smithereens as we leave Naples. And failing Ischia there remains Stromboli and Etna. I sometimes wonder whether science will some day discover some method of cosmic vaccination to cure these distressing cosmic pimples.’

  It might almost have been believed that the vaccination predicted by Mr. Amberley had already been discovered and applied, for except for a white plume like an ostrich-feather twirling from a point on its summit, Vesuvius looked as peaceable as Parliament Hill. Ischia was as bad, Stromboli worse; it was an indistinct but quite commonplace hill floating on the sea. Etna was worse still; it wasn’t there at all. It withdrew with unpardonable incivility into a misty night and though Mr. Darby stood on deck for over an hour in pyjamas and dressing-gown wielding his formidable telescope, it remained totally invisible. No wonder he wired to Sarah: ‘Etna disappointing.’

  • • • • • • • •

  Mr. Darby referred to this regrettable inactivity of the volcanoes while conversing next morning with Violet Renton. She had found him installed in a deck-chair and had sat down beside him.

  ‘I had been hoping that at least one of them would be what I should call eruptious,’ he said.

  ‘So did I,’ she replied. ‘I woke up specially for Etna.’

  ‘I not only woke up,’ said Mr. Darby; ‘I took the trouble to go up on deck and stand there for an hour, and, further, I took with me my telescope, a great heavy … ah … contraption, difficult to manage.’ Mr. Darby spoke with warmth for he felt that he had a personal grievance against the volcanoes. He had behaved with due recognition of their importance and one and all they had failed to return the compliment. ‘I’m inclined to think,’ he said, ‘that volcanoes have been exaggerated.’

  He spoke seriously and was at first surprised and then pleased at Violet’s laughter. Evidently he had, as he sometimes did, accidentally made a joke.