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

by Martin Armstrong

  The occasion was as brief as it was pregnant, for the fact was that time was pressing. Only by sacrificing some of his customary dignity did Mr. Darby, accompanied by Sarah and a host of bags and trunks, catch the afternoon train north at King’s Cross.

  When they reached Newchester it was already dark, so that the ex-King of Mandras’s return to his native town was incognito. It was better thus, for Mr. Darby was able, as the train swung on to the Redvale Bridge, to enjoy something of those exquisite sensations with which a mother looks down on her sleeping child. For there below him, utterly unconscious of his benign presence, lay the Quayside and the Valley of the Dole, starred by a thousand twinkling lights. In the darkness that divided those yellow sparks, a rarer sprinkling of rubies and emeralds told of the unseen river and the ships; and even now, at the thought of the ships, Mr. Darby’s heart thrilled. Despite long nights of hideous instability, days of headlong flight from typhoons, despite the appalling plunge overboard and the damp and precarious trip on a bare life-buoy, the old excitement, the old spirit of adventure was still there, ready to flame up, unquenched, at the old unforgettable summons.

  They had dined in the train. Tired-out by the emotions of the day they went to bed almost as soon as they reached Number Seven Moseley Terrace.

  Chapter XXXIX

  The King Was In The Parlour

  It has been remarked earlier in Mr. Darby’s history that a millionaire is a force. He is also a victim. The very morning after Mr. Darby’s return, when any ordinary man would have been able to sleep late and then rise to the quiet and uninterrupted enjoyment of his long-lost home, urgent business called him to town. He obeyed the obligation cheerfully, for Mr. Darby was not one to fly in the face of duty. He even announced his intention of being out for lunch, for it seemed to him impossible that he would be able to despatch all the urgent business upon which he was bent before the afternoon was well advanced. Nor did Sarah stand in his way. She was anxious, in fact, to get the house to herself and with the help of Mrs. Bricketts to give it such a scrubbing and a dusting as it had not had for many a month. It was not only because the house needed it, it was also, and perhaps chiefly, because she needed it. At the first glimpse of her home, body and soul had cried out for a taste of good hard physical labour, and the happy chance that Jim thought it necessary to bustle off to town enabled her to satisfy her craving. Mr. Darby was barely out of the front-door when she clapped down a pail of water, a scrubbing brush, and a large cube of soap on the oil-cloth of the back passage and, with a deep sigh of thankfulness and sleeves rolled to the elbows, fell on her knees.

  Meanwhile the ex-King of Mandras moved blandly and without haste down Moseley Terrace and proceeded by a series of by-streets to Stedman’s, the ironmonger’s. Before publicly revealing himself he was going to look in on George.

  With the precision of one accustomed to command he pushed open the shop-door. The shop-bell announced him with a barbaric clang, and in response to the clang there occurred behind the banks of pots and pans, stoves and parrotcages, a comprehensive, vague movement. Next moment George Stedman, large, square and grey-headed, stood behind the counter. He stared, swelled, it seemed, to twice his usual size, and held out a huge paw. ‘God bless us all,’ he boomed, and the pots and pans, the stoves and parrot-cages hummed in unison, God bless us all, if it isn’t old Jim, back from the bottom of the sea.’

  With great dignity Mr. Darby took the proffered hand, and was shaken so cordially, so powerfully that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he kept his footing.

  ‘And how are you, Jim?’ asked George.

  ‘As well as ever, thank you, George,’ Mr. Darby replied; ‘and so, I … ah … observe, are you.’

  ‘And Mrs. D.?’

  ‘The same,’ said Mr. Darby.

  ‘We’d given you up, you know, Jim,’ said Stedman, oh absolutely. We’d have ordered a wreath if we’d known where to send it to; and when we heard Mrs. D. was going after you, we gave her up into the bargain. “If anyone can bring him back, Sarah will,” my missus said. “True,” I said to her; “but she won’t, Jane. You mark my words, she won’t! There’s some things not even Mrs. D.can do.” Well, seemingly I was wrong, Jim. But I don’t mind saying, when we got your cablegram from Sydney, you could have knocked me down with a half-inch nail. The Chronicle put you down for dead, you know. It treated you very handsome, Jim; a matter of nearly half a column.’

  ‘Ah, indeed! To be shaw!’ said Mr. Darby with outward indifference, longing, but not liking, to ask George if he had cut out and kept the notice.

  ‘Well,’ pursued Stedman,’and how have you been amusing yourself all this time?’

  ‘Oh, ruling, mostly,’ Mr. Darby replied nonchalantly.

  Stedman knit his brow. ‘Ruling, Jim?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Darby, ruling the … ah … Kingdom of Mandras. An interesting job, George; but what I should call difficult, very difficult at times.’

  Stedman spread his hands on the counter and leaned forward. ‘Now what’s the joke, Jim? What are you getting at?’

  Mr. Darby’s spectacles were as serious as it is possible for spectacles to be.’ There’s no joke, George. You see before you the King, or I should say the ex-King of Mandras.’

  ‘If we’ve got royalty in the shop,’ replied George, ‘I’d better call the missus.’

  But just as he opened his mouth to do so, two customers entered. ‘Bring her round to supper to-night, George,’ said Mr. Darby in an undertone, ‘and we’ll tell you all about it.’

  Stedman nodded, and Mr. Darby made a curt gesture of farewell. ‘Meanwhile …!’ he said; and with the same leisurely dignity with which he had entered, he stepped into the Osbert Road and revealed himself to an astonished Savershill.

  Instantly the Osbert Road trams, aware of the presence of royalty, began to hurtle up and down the road with the speed and the hum of aeroplanes, while in the railway-cutting electric trains and steam trains raced them in wild and jubilant disorder. The rooks that wove their customary circles round the spire of the Wesleyan Chapel, detecting far below them the small, familiar and absurdly foreshortened little figure of their fellow-townsman, broke into delighted cries. ‘Darby!’ they crowed. ‘Darby! Darby! Darby!’ But the effect on Mr. Darby of these ovations was curious. At the first sound of them he stood still, bewildered and, it appeared, appalled. He listened, blinked, and listened again as though he could not believe his ears. For the rooks had taken him off his guard and with his thoughts on his far-away Kingdom, and for a few terrible seconds those hoarse cries of ‘Darby’ had sounded so exactly like certain other shouts that his mind had reeled and his heart stood still, while his appalled sense perceived again the hoarse and ominous cries that had greeted his coronation. ‘Daabee! Daabee Taan! Aboo Daabee Taan!’ It was a matter of a few seconds only. In a moment he had come to himself and, waving a friendly acknowledgment to the rooks, was continuing his bland progress down Osbert Road.

  But though Savershill itself and the dumb, instinctive creatures, the rooks and sparrows, the dogs and cats, that haunted it, recognized and paid their homage to the ex-King; the inhabitants of Savershill and Newchester, the blind, obtuse human beings, streamed past him totally unconscious of the true majesty of the plump figure that moved in their midst; and Mr. Darby, generously unresentful, amused himself by trying to imagine that he was once more a humble managing clerk on his way to the office. But the effort failed: he could not even revert to the sensations of a mere millionaire. The habit of sovereignty, the load of rich and multifarious experience that he carried about him tethered even an imagination so agile and strong-winged as his. Though no longer a king in fact, the august ceremony of coronation had left him a king in spirit, and it was from the summit of Umfo that he surveyed Savershill, the Osbert Road, and the long Savershill Road, Tarras Bridge, and the old familiar streets of Newchester. And here was Thomas Cook’s, in spite of whose obstructiveness he had plunged into the very heart of the Jungle; and her
e, just round the corner in Brackett Street, was Edgington’s, the wine-merchant’s, into whose doorway Mr. Darby immediately vanished, for he and Sarah had already arranged that the Stedmans and the Cribbs were to be asked to supper.

  • • • • • • • •

  Business is always deceptive. Mr. Darby, after paying long and important calls on Messrs. Chepstow & Bradfield, his solicitors, and on his Bank Manager, heard to his amazement the cathedral-clock strike twelve. Surely the explanation must be that the cathedral clock, observing Newchester’s illustrious son emerging from his bank, could not refrain from striking the maximum permitted by its mechanism, regardless of Greenwich and the sun? But no; for the clock on the station-porch, which presently moved into distant view, corroborated the Cathedral. How delightful! For here he was, at large, with four hours at his disposal. In that case he might well attend to-day to two little matters which had occupied his mind ever since he had landed in England. But there would be time enough for them in the afternoon. Now —and a gentle excitement, a delightful glow awoke somewhere inside him at the mere thought—now he would run down and have a look at the Quayside and perhaps take a glass of something at The Schooner. Accordingly he retraced his steps, passed the Cathedral, and soon he was descending the steep declivity of Cliff Street. It was delightful to be back among the old scenes again. Then he sighed. If only Miss Sunningdale were still at The Schooner he would have lunched there and had a little quiet talk. Yes, an … ah … attractive and very superior woman, with a pleasant, self-possessed manner of her own. You could talk of your Lady Savershills and your Lady Gissinghams: she was as distinguished, in her way, as any of them. As he dropped down the slope a draughty air blew up from the unseen river, redolent for Mr. Darby of a hundred rich emotions,— the old romantic longing for foreign lands and strange adventures, the lurking fear that time was passing and these things slipping further and further out of his reach, the sense of frustration and failure, the burden of life’s deadly routine, and now, superimposed on all these and robbing them of their power any longer to torture him, the new, satisfied sense of ambition fulfilled, of memories more vivid, more wonderful, more deliciously terrible than anything he had imagined in the old days. He turned the corner at the bottom of the slope and the old scene broke upon him.

  Still, for all the world as though nothing had happened during the last year, the gulls circled and cried in the draughty, smoky air, still the cranes wheezed and rattled and the tugs breasted the black river. And there were the ships, and still he felt, undiminished, their old, thrilling invitation, for all that he had sailed in ships huger and further-travelling than any to be seen here. His travels and adventures had not detracted one jot from the romance of the Quayside: on the contrary, they had strengthened it and enriched it. ‘King of Mandras!’ he said to himself. King James of Mandras!’ and the words thrilled him till his spectacles glared and glittered and it seemed to him that the heart would burst from his waistcoat. With a deep-drawn satisfied sigh he turned into the entrance of The Schooner.

  But inside the door a twinge of regret troubled him again. What should it be? A port? A sherry? Or a Bass, for old sake’s sake? He paused for a moment at the entrance of the saloon, thinking how, if he had been in Mandras, a lane would instantly have been cleared for him through the dense groups of standing figures. But this was not Mandras: this was Newchester. Umwaddi Taan lay under its scorching sun thousands of miles away; and, bowing with a very good grace to democracy, Mr. Darby worked his way politely towards the bar.

  But what was this? In the space between two bowler-hatted heads in earnest conversation, a pile of yellow hair flashed past. Was it possible that …? He pushed himself unobtrusively to the bar and caught the eye of Miss Sunningdale. She raised her eyebrows in astonished pleasure and held out her hand.

  ‘Well, this is a happy surprise,’ she said. ‘I’d given you up for lost, Mr. Darby.’

  ‘And I,’ said Mr. Darby squeezing her hand and giving her a little cock-sparrow bow,’had given you up for lost, Miss Sunningdale. Last time I came here I was told you had gone away, left England.’

  ‘And so I had,’ she said.’ A brother of mine asked me to join him in Canada, all expenses paid. The boss here is a friend of mine, and he promised me that if ever I came back he’d take me on again.’

  ‘And you didn’t … ah … cotton to Canada, as the saying is?’ said Mr. Darby.

  Miss Sunningdale shook her yellow head. ‘I had a very good time, but I didn’t want to stay there. Newchester’s the place for me: I missed my old friends. So back I came. But the Chronicle—I couldn’t do without my Chronicle and I had it sent out to Canada—and the Chronicle said you were drowned.’

  ‘Quite! Quite!’ said Mr. Darby. ‘A little slip! What you might call a typological inexactitude.’

  Miss Sunningdale’s eyes twinkled. ‘Well, thank Heaven for that. And how is Mrs. Darby?’

  Mr. Darby blushed. ‘Wonderfully well, thank you,’ he said. ‘We’ve had rather what I should call an imprecarious time in the Jungle and so on, but we’re both wonderfully well and glad to be back. The same as usual, please,’ he added, seeing that he was detaining her unduly.

  ‘Well,’he thought to himself, as with profound satisfaction he raised a beef sandwich to his mouth and bit a large crescent out of it, ‘well, if this isn’t providentious!’ For the return of Miss Sunningdale had brought back the one thing lacking to the Quayside, the final drop that filled his cup to the brim.

  It was with the nobler repletion which is that of the soul that Mr. Darby finally climbed back into the Newchester of shops and squares. After sandwiches and more sandwiches, a Bass and another Bass, talk and more talk, he had also taken his fill of the Quayside in a leisurely stroll from end to end of it. Now he was bound for Ranger Street where, almost opposite the offices of Messrs. Lamb & Marston, stood the shop of Messrs. Porson & Gosling, picture dealers.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mr. Darby to the assistant who came forward to serve him,’ if you can tell me the name of a good, indeed of a first-rate, portrait painter in this neighbourhood.’

  The assistant thought for a moment, ‘I don’t think, sir,’ he said, ‘you could do better than John Gilderston.’

  ‘John Gilderston?’ said Mr. Darby. ‘Is he … a … ah … a reliable painter?’

  ‘He’s an R.A., sir, a Royal Academician, and that speaks for itself, doesn’t it?’

  Mr. Darby had a moment of misgiving. Then, by a rapid process of thought, he disentangled the Royal Academy from the National Gallery.

  ‘To be shaw!’ he said. ‘It speaks for itself. Could you give me his address?’

  The assistant did not know John Gilderston’s address but was able to find it in the telephone directory. He lived, it appeared, out in the country fifteen miles away. Mr. Darby made a note of the address and, in order to lose no time and to avoid the necessity of writing at home where he was open to interruption, he walked to the Station Hotel, entered the lounge, and ordered a cup of black coffee and writing materials. Between sips of coffee he composed mentally the following letter. ‘To John Gilderston Esqr., R.A. Dear Sir, I am desirous … no, not desirous … I … ah … find myself under the necessity of having my portrait painted and shall be glad … pleased? … glad if you will undertake the … not job … something a little more … ah … the task! Undertake the task. I could visit your studio at any time convenient to you. In the … ah … the event of your being free … or rather, at liberty, will you kindly ring me up at Savershill number 3297 and let me know your terms. We will then … ah … come to terms? … No, not terms again. We will then … ah … make our arrangements! We can then make our arrangements … ah … accordingly’

  Satisfied especially by the final word, Mr. Darby took up his pen, wrote the letter, and posted it on his way out of the hotel.

  Now for the offices of the Daily Chronicle. Mr. Darby had decided, almost as soon as he reached home, that the only thing to do would be to visit the Daily
Chronicle in person. If they sent a reporter to Moseley Terrace, Sarah would undoubtedly drive him away. And if the reporter was forced to pick up the necessary information at secondhand, he would probably get it all wrong, and most likely a very undesirable account of his travels in the Mandratic Peninsula would appear in the paper. To obviate this, Mr. Darby was going to call at the Chronicle offices and report in person.

  When he had made himself known there and explained his business, he was received with great politeness by the editor and listened to with a highly gratifying interest; many questions were asked of him, copious notes were taken, and he left the office doubly convinced of the rightness of his action. Nor had he been forgetful of Sarah and her peculiarities. Out of deference to her feelings he had spared her the publicity she so much disliked. Of the Queen of Tongal, of her victory over the Mandrats and capture of their King not a word had been betrayed. It was stated merely that Mrs. Darby had in due time arrived in a yacht with a search-party and that the King had proceeded on board. And there was this to be said for Mr. Darby’s deference to his wife’s prejudices, that it added to the compactness of his narrative and robbed it of an undesirable anti-climax. He made his way now on foot towards Savershill with the comfortable sense of a duty punctiliously performed.

  • • • • • • • •

  ‘Well I never did,’ said Emma Cribb at the supper-table to Mr. Darby when he had completed a bold and graphic sketch of the more arresting portions of his life in the Mandratic Peninsula. ‘And so, Mr. Darby, I suppose by rights we ought to call you Your Majesty?’