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

by Martin Armstrong

  She glanced now at the absurd little man in the doorway, secretly amused but none the less ready to be strict. She knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to poke and pry round the table, like a cock-robin round a handful of crumbs, to see that everything was all right. On ordinary occasions she didn’t allow this kind of thing. This was her business, not his: ‘and if you haven’t had enough work for the day,’ she would exclaim tartly, ‘you’d better go back to the office.’ But to-day she was willing to be indulgent. Of course, as she knew well enough, the table was all right: he would find nothing wrong, and even if anything had been wrong, he wouldn’t have noticed it. Still, let him amuse himself. There! He was going to begin.

  ‘Very nice, very elegant I’m sure! ’ he said washing his hands in the doorway like a fly. Then with his hands clasped he advanced on tiptoe into the room and began poking and prying round the table, nodding his head with knowing approval. Then his eye glanced a little timidly at the chrysanthemums. A horrible doubt had crossed his mind. Were they too tall? Would the people at the top of the table, namely Sarah and the guests on her right and left, be able to see him when he stood up? ‘I was wondering. … Do you think?’ he began.

  ‘Do I think?’ prompted Sarah.

  ‘That the flowers … the … ah … chrysanthemums … will be too tall? ’ Mr. Darby had early in life acquired from old Mr. Lamb, the senior partner of Messrs. Lamb & Marston, a careful and weighty method of speech, a happy blend of the doctor and the clergyman. Its effect was to invest with apparent importance even the most trivial phrase. Sarah was one of the few people who had never succumbed to its influence.

  ‘Too tall?’ she said sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I suppose there’ll be some … ah … speeches … just a few words, you know … and will they be too tall for … for people to see the … ah … the speakers? ’

  ‘Too tall?’ said Sarah, scornfully. ‘What are you thinking of? Isn’t George Stedman six foot two?’

  Mr. Darby did not like to be more particular. He let the question drop. But it would be awkward, very awkward, if he really was hidden completely, speechifying away in a grove of chrysanthemums to people he couldn’t see and couldn’t be seen by. It would spoil everything.

  ‘Have you got the wine?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘The … ah … champagne? Yes, the parcel’s out in the hall.’

  ‘Parcel? If it’s still a parcel, you’d better get to work and undo it. They’ll be here in just over half an hour; and look at you, not changed yet.’

  Mr. Darby went into the hall, to the table near the hat-rack, and began to undo the parcel. Sarah followed him and turned into the parlour where he heard her putting coal on. He stood the two bottles on the table and, like a conjuror performing a trick, neatly lifted off their straw jackets. Then with a bottle held by the neck in either hand he stepped into the sitting-room. Sarah reappeared.

  ‘There!’ he said to her. ‘A couple of Clicquots,’

  ‘And what’s that?’ said Sarah. ‘I thought you were getting champagne.’

  ‘It is champagne,’ said Mr. Darby. ‘One of the well known brands, you know. A very nice … ah … sound wine!’ he added tolerantly.

  He lifted an eye from one of the bottles to Sarah and noticed for the first time that she was dressed in a brand-new coffee-coloured silk dress. ‘My!’ he said, ‘you’ve got a new dress.’ He moved, still holding his champagne-bottles, to another point of view. ‘Well, I call that handsome, very handsome, I must say.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘O well, I’ve got to have a new dress sometimes? she said.

  Mr. Darby moved to yet another position. ‘Yes, very handsome!’ he said again. ‘Turn round and let’s see the back.

  ‘Oh get along with you,’ said Sarah, indulgent but strict. ‘What do you know about dresses? Here, give me those bottles and off you go and get changed. The whole four of them’ll be here before you’re ready, and that’ud be a nice thing.’ She took the bottles from him and packed him off. ‘You’ll find all your things laid out on the bed,’ she shouted after him as he went out obediently. ‘And mind put on your black tie and not that fancy grey and blue thing.’

  ‘She’s a strange one,’ said Mr. Darby to himself as he climbed the stairs. ‘Now if I’d asked her to get a new dress, would she have got one? Not she.’ And in his mind’s ear he heard her voice: ‘New dress? What do I want with a new dress? I’m good enough as I am, thank you.’ And yet, you could always rely on Sarah to rise to the occasion. She had got that dress, without a doubt, on purpose for the party, though she would have died rather than admit it. And very handsome it was; all, absolutely all, he could have wished. Yes, she laughed at him and his ideas, but leave her to herself and she always rose to the occasion.

  He closed the bedroom door and began to take off his coat and waistcoat.

  • • • • • • • •

  The Stedmans were, of course, the first to arrive. Mr. Darby answered their knock. George Stedman with his great height and width filled the passage as he entered, preceded by his thin, gaunt wife who might almost have got in through the slit of the letterbox.

  ‘Well, Jim,’ shouted George Stedman, ‘I wish you a very happy return. Not many happy returns, mind you, but one happy return. That’ll bring you to a hundred, and that’ll be about as much as is good for you.’

  ‘And I wish you many happy returns, Mr. Darby,’ said Mrs. Stedman in her precise, mild, shadowy voice, offering him a thin hand, ‘for I don’t see why you shouldn’t live to as many fifties as you like.’

  Both removed their coats and Stedman his hat and Mr. Darby ushered them into the parlour, where Sarah awaited them.

  ‘Well Mrs. D.,’ said Stedman, reaching out a huge paw, ‘I hope you’re standing the responsibility pretty well.’

  Sarah raised her eyebrows and gave him her enchanting grim smile. She had a weakness for George Stedman, perhaps because in figure and character he was a match for her and treated her with a breezy, familiar cordiality. ‘And which responsibility is that, Mr. Stedman? ‘ she said, grasping the huge paw.

  ‘Why, Jim, your fifty-year-older.’

  ‘Oh, him! ‘said Sarah. ‘ Being fifty doesn’t make him any more of a responsibility,—or any less, for that matter.’ They smiled at each other, two mature and responsible people smiling over an incorrigible child.

  For George Stedman, even Sarah admitted, was a man. It was not merely that he was six foot two and broad in proportion, that he had a heavy grey moustache and a fine head of curly grey hair, that his manner and speech were downright and confident. It was because his head was screwed on the right way and he ran a flourishing ironmongery business. Stedman’s was the chief ironmonger’s shop in Savershill. If ever Sarah wanted advice on a matter of serious business, it never occurred to her to consult her husband: she went round to Stedman’s and had a word over the counter with the boss. He was one of the people she believed in, a responsible person: you had only to look at him standing there now in his smart black suit—the suit he reserved for funerals and other important occasions—and his spotless turn-down collar and cuffs. Sarah had only just had time to shake hands with Mrs. Stedman when there was another knock at the door and Mr. Darby went out to let in the Cribbs.

  As soon as Mr. Darby opened the door a gust of talk blew in and filled the hall. ‘No mistake who’s coming,’ said George Stedman to Sarah with a wink. Mrs. Cribb had a reputation for wit and humour. That, no doubt, was why Mr. Cribb was a comparatively sad and silent man. Mrs. Cribb’s acquaintances defined her, with mixed implication, as ‘a caution.’ Sarah’s view was that Emma Cribb was all very well once in a way and that it was an advantage not to be her husband. But Mrs. Cribb was at her best at a party, for, on the one hand, she kept things lively, while, on the other, she did not get all the talk to herself. Samuel Cribb, though superficially sad, enjoyed company in his own quiet way, and was found, by those who succeeded in getting at him through his wife’s ceaseles
s chatter, to be a sensible and friendly little man. By profession he was a clerk in a railway office, but his hobby was books. He was a great one for spotting winners in the literary world and picking up first editions.

  Mr. Darby found himself caught up in a whirlpool of congratulations from Mrs. Cribb, so fluent and voluble that his thanks were swallowed up, unheard. He opened the parlour door and it seemed to him that the flood of words at once burst in, relieving the pressure in the hall and carrying Mrs. Cribb herself on the tide. As he passed Mr. Darby, Samuel Cribb, perceptible for the first time, held out a cold, gentle hand, wishing him ‘Good luck, old man!’ in his quiet, friendly voice. The parlour was now full of talk, a swirling confusion of voices in which George Stedman’s jovial booming provided a solid ground-bass for the high watery babble of the women. The sound went to Mr. Darby’s head. He felt that the house was twenty times its usual size, that a vast and fashionable company filled the reception-rooms, that in a moment they would pour into the dining-room where, after a prolonged banquet, the host would rise from his chair and the event of the evening—the event for which all these brilliant people were assembled—would take place. At the mere thought of it, Mr. Darby, following Samuel Cribb into the parlour, cleared his throat.

  Then he heard Sarah’s voice: ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me just a minute …!’ and next moment she bore down upon him and gently but firmly pushed him out of her way in her progress towards the door. She was going to see that Mrs. Bricketts, who came daily to scrub and wash-up and had been retained for the evening, was putting the supper on the table without any of those little lapses from good taste which at once catch the eye of a respectable housewife. A few minutes later she threw open the parlour door. ‘Will you all come this way, please,’ she said, and the two women went out, Mrs. Cribb finishing a sentence over her shoulder which she had been delivering at Mr. Darby. Samuel Cribb stood modestly aside, but George Stedman pushed him to the door with a large friendly paw and then, following himself, gathered up Sarah, who stood outside, and drove her forward too. Mr. Darby, bland and important, shepherded the flock from behind. ‘There was a reception last night,’ he thought to himself, ‘at the house of Sir James Darby on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. Among those present were …’ He closed the door behind him and went to his place at the foot of the table.

  For, strictly speaking, technically speaking, it was, unde niably, the foot. The head of the table is where the carver sits, and Sarah was the carver. Already she was dealing in a masterly fashion with the beef, and the plates travelled down to Mr. Darby who was in charge of the vegetables. The arrival of each plate took him completely by surprise, for whenever he had been called to attention by Sarah’s ‘Now, Jim!’ and had loaded a plate, his mind dismissed vegetables and fell into a seraphic contemplation of the social event in which he was involved.

  At last even the Darbys themselves were fed and the company abandoned talk and fell to. Even Mrs. Cribb was silent. The only sounds in the room came from the vigorous action of knives and forks on plates. Everybody was hungry, for it was well known that Sarah Darby provided good and plentiful food and they had all arrived in a proper state to do justice to it. Mr. Darby himself had been careful to have a light lunch. He raised his eyes now from his plate and observed them all at work. Jane Stedman on his right was belying her shadowy thinness by the excellence of her appetite. He noticed how well she managed her knife and fork, how quietly and how well she was dressed. A very superior woman: much more so, really, than Mrs. Cribb with her chatter, her affected way of holding her knife as if it were a pencil, and her red knitted dress and saucy hat. ‘Very showy,’ thought Mr. Darby fixing blue, innocent eyes on her finery, ‘but not really half as good as Jane Stedman’s. Ready made and probably cost, half the price.’

  He was recalled to himself by Sarah’s voice. ‘Now Jim, aren’t we going to have anything to drink?’

  ‘My!’ he exclaimed, jumping up from his chair. ‘I was forgetting all about it.’ He turned to the sideboard behind him and began to unwire one of the champagne bottles. At that everyone began to chatter again.

  ‘Anyone here for Prohibition?’ asked Mr. Darby jocularly. ‘Because if there is,’—he turned to the table with the bottle in his hand—’ we have a tap in the scullery.’

  Before anyone could take up this sally there was a for-midable report, a shriek from Mrs. Cribb, and a cork struck the ceiling with a smart crack, rebounded, and buried itself in the chrysanthemums, while the bottle in Mr. Darby’s hand burst prodigiously into a cauliflower of foam. Mr. Darby looked at it in terror. It seemed for a moment as if he would drop it, but George Stedman’s voice brought him to his senses: ‘Keep ‘er nose down, Jim. Keep ‘er nose down. Not so much of the fireman!’

  Mr. Darby, always obedient, obeyed, and Mrs. Stedman dexterously snatched a tumbler and held it to the mouth of the bottle.

  ‘Steady now, Jim! Steady! Don’t let her run away with you.’ Thus admonished by George Stedman, Mr. Darby regained control of himself and the bottle and began to go round filling the glasses.

  When he had completed the circuit, filled his own glass, and resumed his seat amid a sudden and complete silence, Mrs. Stedman raised her glass.

  ‘Mr. Darby,’ she said, ‘I look towards you. Many happy returns of the day.’ There was a choral murmur of ‘Many happy returns,’ ‘And many of them,’ and everybody raised their glasses and drank.

  Mr. Darby bowed. ‘My best thanks, ladies and gentlermen,’ he said.

  The first solemn moment was over and the talk broke out again. Through it Sarah’s voice was heard inviting the guests to second helpings. ‘A little more, Jane. Emma, I’m sure your plate’s empty.’ Then plates went up and down the table and were replenished. But now the pace grew steadier: they had all taken the first fine edge off their hunger: they were inclined now not merely to eat but also to talk, and the champagne tuned them up. Everybody started at once and soon the room was as full of fine social hubbub as the parlour had been. ‘Laugh? ‘Mrs. Cribb was saying to Mr. Darby. ‘Well, I thought my poor auntie would have died. And whenever I see her now—and I see her every August. She lives down at Saltburn, you know. Very healthy place, Saltburn. Oh wonderful. The doctors swear by it. Air full of owes-one, or whatever they call it.—And whenever I see my poor old auntie now, she says to me: “Well, Emma,” she says … She was always a great one for laughing, was the aunt … “Well, Emma, and what about those smellingsalts.”’

  ‘Oh no,’ Mr. Cribb was explaining to Sarah Darby, ‘oh dear me no, you don’t have to read them. I don’t suppose I read one in twenty of the books that pass through my hands. You just watch the second-hand catalogues for names and prices. It isn’t the best sellers, you know, that go up in price. Not a bit of it. These valuable chaps are dark horses. Now there’s Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence: I dare say I’ve made as much as thirty pounds out of each of them. And I had a bit of luck a couple of months back. I picked up a book I’d been looking out for a long time, a little flimsy-looking book by a chap of the name of Coppard, called Adam and Eve and Pinch Me. Silly name, isn’t it? Well, believe me or believe me not, Mrs. Darby, I cleared ten pounds on that little job. And a book, mind you, badly bound, that you wouldn’t give tuppence for if you didn’t happen to be in the know.’