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

by Martin Armstrong

  ‘No!’ Mr. Darby replied. ‘I don’t like the place, Sarah. I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t like it, in fact I hate it. It’s gloomy and uncomfortable and what I should call … ah … uncanny. Let’s leave it and try Outwell.’

  The rain dripped from the porch as they climbed back into their motor. Mr. Darby shuddered again. ‘A haunted house, Sarah, if ever there was one!’ he said.

  • • • • • • • •

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with all the houses on the market at the present time, Sarah,’ said Mr. Darby as they strolled rather aimlessly from room to room of Outwell Hall. ‘You may say this house is modern, replete with what I should call every comfort, and so no doubt it is. But all I can say is, I don’t like it; I don’t what I should call cotton to it. There’s a something about it, a junnersay quor, if you know what I mean, which I find extremely obnocuous. It’s not what I should call snug.’

  ‘No, Jim,’ said Sarah, ‘you’re right there, it isn’t snug; but then big houses very seldom are.’

  Mr. Darby gazed at her sadly and helplessly. ‘No!’ he said. ‘No! I suppose they’re not. It’s a drawback, a very serious drawback.’

  They drove home through the pouring rain to an excellent lunch. It seemed to Mr. Darby, delighted to be in his own place again, that all the things he most liked were on the table at once. Rubbing his hands together and drawing in his breath, he sat down to table with great gusto.

  ‘And now,’ he said with a sigh of heart-felt satisfaction when they had finished their lunch, ‘seeing that it’s still raining, I think I’ll go,’—he made a dignified ascending movement with the left hand—‘to my … ah … my study.’

  Having climbed the stairs and shut himself into the room which he had so happily christened his study, Mr. Darby lit the gas-stove, sat down at his desk, and taking a pen and paper wrote, after a good deal of thought and correction, as follows:

  ‘To the Curator of the Newchester Art Gallery.

  ‘DEAR SIR,—You may have seen some account in the Newchester Daily Chronicle of my recent adventures in the Mandratic Peninsula, where for the last year I have occupied the position of King of Mandras. Since returning home, John Gilderston, the well-known Royal Academician, has executed my portrait in the royal robes which I then wore. The portrait is life-sized. It occurs to me that the Newchester Art Gallery may care to possess a portrait of a Novocastrian who attained to this interesting position. Being, as I am, much interested in our national art, I should like also to offer a gift of one thousand pounds to the funds of the Gallery. The picture is at present at Messrs. Porson & Gosling’s, where it is being suitably framed. Perhaps you would care to call there and inspect it and communicate your decision to me by telephone.’

  Having sealed and addressed the letter Mr. Darby began to reflect on a suitable label for the picture, but no sooner had he begun to do so than he pushed back his chair convulsively. ‘God bless my soul!’ he exclaimed aloud. For what had happened was that he had suddenly remembered the Darby Collection. Since the moment of his return to England he had never once thought of it. The unpleasant events connected with it had done much to alienate it from his affections and also from his memory, and now he realized that even his recent visit to London had failed to remind him of it. There it was, still stored, no doubt, at Hampton’s. What on earth was he to do about it? Should he offer it to the Newchester Art Gallery?

  For a moment the idea crossed his mind, but only to be instantly rejected. He was not prepared to admit that the Director and Trustees of the National Gallery were right in their verdict, but neither did he care any longer to maintain his own contention. The Darby Collection was an unfortunate incident, it had unpleasant associations, and it was a thing of the past. Mr. Darby decided that it should remain so. Again he took pen and paper and wrote as follows:

  ‘To Messrs Hampton & Sons Ltd.

  ‘DEAR SIRS,—With regard to the Collection of Pictures which you are storing for me, I shall be glad if you will arrange for them to be sold for what they will fetch. I may point out that some of the frames are expensive ones.’

  Having sealed and addressed this letter also, Mr. Darby dismissed business affairs from his thoughts. With his hands in his pockets he strolled about his study, glancing now out of the windows at the streaming rain, now at this and that in the warm, pleasantly coloured room. Then he paused before his book-case, opened the glass-panelled doors, and stood for some time blandly considering his books. At last his spectacles settled themselves upon Through Mandratia on a Bicycle by J. N. Mackintosh. The very thing! In the light of his intimate knowledge of the Mandratic Peninsula he would re-read Mackintosh’s book and no doubt he would detect in it all sorts of inaccuracies. These travellers were notoriously given to drawing the long bow. He felt in his waistcoat pocket. Yes, his gold pencil-case was there. He had before now seen books in whose margins some reader out of his superior knowledge had made caustic pencil-notes, exclamation-marks, and that curious syllable sic which, it seemed, was the very symbol and embodiment of scorn. In the past Mr. Darby had felt an awed admiration for people who could thus fly in the face of cold print, but now he himself had joined the ranks of the sceptics. He flattered himself that he would find much to question, much to refute and ridicule in J. N. Mackintosh. He took the book from the shelf and, crossing the room, laid it on his smoking-table. Then he opened the cigar-box and carefully selected a cigar to which he applied the proper tests of eye and ear. The cigar passed the tests and he cut it, put it between his lips, took a puff, removed it, frowned at it, and then replaced it in his mouth. Then, sinking into his armchair, Mr. Darby again took up Mackintosh’s book and with a slightly contemptuous smile opened it.

  For three hours he read and annotated, and so absorbed was he in this fascinating occupation that when Sarah knocked for him to open the door and entered bringing tea on a tray he was unable to believe it was so late.

  ‘I’ve just been looking into this book on Mandratia, Sarah,’ he said, laying it down and regarding her over the top of his spectacles. ‘You should read it.’

  ‘Is it good?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s all very well in its way,’ he replied, ‘but in parts it’s hopelessly … ah … parabolical. Good enough reading, no doubt, for the ignorant, but for anyone with what I should call inside knowledge … well!’ Mr. Darby shrugged his shoulders and smiled sarcastically.

  Left alone again after tea he did not resume his examination of Mackintosh, but allowed himself instead to fall into a reverie. The raindrops clattered like a typewriter on the window-panes: outside it was wet, lifeless, and unutterably dreary; the study, by contrast, was deliciously warm and colourful. He thought of those large, cold, empty houses in London, all white and gold and pale green, and then he thought of the two melancholy houses they had inspected that morning. He shuddered as he thought how the rain would be leaking into the Manor House now. Then his thoughts turned to Mandras and Umwaddi Taan, and the stilted straw-thatched hut, sitting on whose floor he had spent so many monotonous and anxious hours; the terrible days and nights of feverish advance and headlong retreat; the horror of the bloody encounters with the Tongali, and then the long, lurching journey into captivity, the arrival at Aba Taana, poor Punnett’s dreadful death and the bewildering reunion with Sarah. Poor Punnett: it was impossible to realize that he was dead, dead and buried in that grim, cruel land, far, far from England.

  Mr. Darby sighed deeply and returned to his secure and comfortable study. What a blessing, what an unbelievable blessing, to remember that Sarah was downstairs within call and that they were in England, where the horrible, the unaccountable, the unpredictable never occurs. All he wanted now was peace and quietness and the company of old friends.

  • • • • • • • •

  ‘I’ve been thinking things over, Sarah,’ said Mr. Darby at supper, glancing up from an admirably grilled cutlet; ‘about this business of a house, I mean.’

  Sarah raised
her eyebrows. ‘Yes, Jim?’

  ‘If I had my own way, of course,’ Mr. Darby went on, ‘I don’t think I should bother about a house at all.’

  Sarah caught her breath. ‘You mean, Jim …?’

  ‘I mean I should just simply stay here. In many ways this is a very convenient house, very comfortable, within easy reach of … ah … places of interest; hot and cold water, electric light …’ Unconsciously, as a result of his experiences during the past week, Mr. Darby assumed the descriptive style of the house-agent.

  Sarah interrupted him. ‘What do you mean, if you had your own way, Jim? Aren’t you free to do as you like?’

  Mr. Darby stared at her questioningly for a moment. ‘No, Sarah! he said at last. ‘No! Unhappily not. Our fortune carries with it certain duties, certain responsibilities. It is our duty, Sarah, to take up a position, to live on what I should call a scale, in accordance with …’

  ‘Now look here, Jim,’ Sarah broke in;’ I’ve had about enough of this talk of duty and responsibility. The plain fact is, that kind of talk means nothing, absolutely nothing. You have duties to your neighbours, I grant you, but don’t talk to me about your duty to your bank-balance. When you tell me that your money forces you to live in a way you don’t want to live, it’s no more sensible than if I were to tell you that this knife and fork forces me to eat fifty cutlets at a sitting. My advice is, live exactly as you feel inclined and get rid of all the money you don’t need. There’s plenty of others need it: Lord Savershill’ll take the lot from you and welcome for the H.C.S. And what’s the good of it all to us? If we lived as we wanted to live we couldn’t possibly spend more than … what? … three thousand a year, however hard we tried. Three thousand a year! And you have forty thousand a year coming rolling in and heaping itself up. It’s enough to smother you: it’s a perfect nightmare.’

  Mr. Darby stared at Sarah, amazed and also very much struck by the force of her remarks. ‘Upon my word, Sarah,’ he said, ‘I sometimes think it is. I’ll … ah … look into the matter.’

  • • • • • • • •

  The immediate result of his looking into the matter was that two days later Mr. Darby called, by appointment, on the Lord Mayor of Newchester. Sir George Brackett was already in his second year of office, so that it was he who, as Lord Mayor, had received Mr. Darby’s gift of a thousand pounds to his hospital fund over a year ago. Mr. Darby’s request for an interview had therefore been warmly received. In the Lord Mayor’s Parlour Mr. Darby found the Lord Mayor seated at his desk; seated, in fact, in the very chair and at the very desk which he himself, as Sir James Darby, Bart., was to occupy five years later during his own term of office. The Lord Mayor rose on Mr. Darby’s entrance and shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Welcome back to Newchester, Mr. Darby,’ he said with great affability.

  Mr. Darby bowed, thanked him, and took the chair to which his host motioned him. ‘And now, my Lord Mayor,’ he said when he had settled himself, ‘to business! I am, as you are no doubt aware, a man of very considerable means.’ The Lord Mayor nodded and Mr. Darby cleared his throat. ‘I have always considered,’ he went on, ‘that great wealth … ah … carries with it grave responsibilities, and now that I enjoy that wealth, I am what I should call conscious, what I should call deeply conscious of that … ah … responsibility. In short, how, I ask myself, can I best benefit my native city?’

  Mr. Darby regarded the Lord Mayor with great solemnity. Then, suddenly changing his tone from the ceremonial to the sharply practical, he flung himself back in his chair and asked: ‘Now what about a cathedral?’

  The Lord Mayor was gratifyingly astounded. ‘A cathedral, Mr. Darby? But we have a cathedral, haven’t we?’

  ‘A converted parish church,’ Mr. Darby replied with a touch of contempt. ‘The tower is fine, I grant you, but the church, my Lord Mayor, you must admit, is … well … is what I should call a church, and not, not a cathedral. No!’ he added, in a tone that would brook no contradiction, ‘not by any means! Now why not pull down the church and build a cathedral to suit the tower? Unless you have anything else to propose.’

  ‘Well, Mr. Darby,’ said the Lord Mayor, ‘I have, as a matter of fact, something else to propose, a thing of which Newchester is much more urgently in need than a cathedral,—only don’t tell the Bishop I said so. I propose, since your intentions towards Newchester are so magnificently generous, that you build us a new Infirmary. The present one, though most efficiently run, is, as you are doubtless aware, lamentably out of date as a building. Does the idea appeal to you?’

  ‘To be shaw!’ said Mr. Darby.’ Very much so. Why not?’

  ‘Of course,’ continued the Lord Mayor, ‘it would cost a great deal of money, but so would a cathedral, and you yourself mentioned a cathedral. Might I ask how much you propose to give?’

  ‘Well, roughly,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘—and, mind you, I’m speaking now in very round figures—roughly nine hundred thousand.’

  • • • • • • • •

  When Mr. Darby returned home in time for lunch he met his wife in the hall. ‘Well, Sarah,’ he said, ‘I’ve cut us down to five thousand.’

  Sarah stood watching him hang up his coat.’ What is it you’ve done?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve just been … ah … what I should call closeted with the Lord Mayor—a pleasant enough fellow, Sarah, very friendly and agreeable and so on—and I offered him nine hundred thousand to build a new infirmary.’

  ‘You did?’ said Sarah, amazed and delighted.

  ‘I did,’ Mr. Darby replied nonchalantly.

  ‘But Jim, how splendid,’ said Sarah, suddenly embracing the little man and knocking his bowler over his eyes. ‘You’re a wonder. It’s the very thing of all others you ought to have done. But mind you insist that it’s under the control of the H.C.S.’

  ‘Oh … ah … certainly, if you wish, my dear,’ said Mr. Darby, removing his hat and straightening his spectacles.

  ‘Nine hundred thousand,’ he said. ‘That leaves us with about a hundred thousand, a matter of five thousand a year or so.’

  Sarah sighed. ‘However shall we spend it, Jim?’ she said. ‘We must do our best, that’s all,’ said Mr. Darby.

  THE END

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © Martin Armstrong

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  ISBN: 9781448205936

  eISBN: 9781448205622

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