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

by Martin Armstrong

  Mr. Darby, his bowler tipped on to the back of his head, blinked owlishly up at a large grinning navvy. ‘Very sorry, very sorry I’m sure! ‘he babbled.

  ‘Don’ mention it,’ said the navvy, releasing Mr. Darby. ‘Only yer wanner keep them ‘eadlights goin’.’

  Mr. Darby took this practical advice: he kept his headlights going, and it was the more necessary now for him to do so as he had reached the crossing at Westminster Bridge, and day-dreams, as he had already had occasion to discover more than once, are not to be recommended when one is crossing a London thoroughfare.

  Having negotiated the crossing, and described a quarter circle round Big Ben, he soon found himself between Westminster Hall and the Abbey. He had the pavement almost to himself and he paused for a moment to survey the scene and give scope to his feelings. What a place London was! The vast mass of buildings on his left with its leaping towers and spires— ‘the very hub,’ as Mr. Darby strikingly put it, ‘of our Empire’—was enough, more than enough, to thrill a man to his foundations. But to have the Abbey too— that other great national centre—towering just across the way, well, it was almost too much. Pigeons, busy and self-important, bowed and bustled about his feet, and in the lofty regard of Big Ben and the Abbey, Mr. Darby was merely a slightly larger specimen of the same species. But in this they were mistaken. For to the pigeons they themselves were no more than convenient perches and roosting-places, while to Mr. Darby they were an inspiration and an ecstasy. He had already made the Abbey more particularly his own. Not only had he twice visited every nook and corner of it, but in all his available spare time, while Sarah was deep in her David Copperfield, he had read and re-read a comprehensive guide to the Abbey until he had acquired a very creditable knowledge of the building, its history, and its contents. In a company where the Abbey became the theme of conversation (and it would not be Mr. Darby’s fault if it did not do so at the next opportunity), he would have astonished his listeners. ‘It is the duty of every Englishman,’ he had said to Sarah when she had remarked sardonically on his insatiable taste for guide books, ‘to … ah … familiarate himself with our national heritage.’ After which pronouncement he had immersed himself again in his reading, unconscious of Sarah’s amused contemplation.

  But picture galleries were a much more difficult job. The names of the artists, for instance, were a heartbreaking business. It was not only that there were so many of them: it was the names themselves that almost drove you mad. What could a man do about Pollaiuolo, Ghirlandaio, Hondecoeter, Wowerman? There was no good trying to remember what you didn’t know how to pronounce. It was true, fortunately, that they were divided into schools, and Mr. Darby had done something towards making a corner in the Dutch School. But he had not been very long in the Tate before he found to his relief that the vast majority of the names here were English, and, better still, that two immense rooms were taken up by a single painter. This simplified matters enormously. In his gratitude to Turner, Mr. Darby rapidly became enthusiastic about his work, and spent an inspiring and profitable afternoon in studying it. A conversation with a custodian, too, was very helpful. ‘A great master, Sarah,’he said when he had joined her in the lounge of the Balmoral for tea. ‘A very great master! Our greatest English painter, I’m inclined to think.’

  Sarah tucked David Copperfield away on the sofa beside her. ‘Well, Jim,’ she said, ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  They had now, as we have said, been in London ten days and Mr. Darby clearly saw that a change was coming. For Sarah was obviously becoming bored. She had enjoyed St. Paul’s Cathedral, she had enjoyed one visit to the Abbey (but one, she had said, was enough) and she had enjoyed especially the theatres and the shops. More than once she had sent Mr. Darby about his business saying that she would walk out by herself and look at the shops, and generally, after these expeditions, a parcel would arrive for her subsequently at the Balmoral. But to-day she had stated that she had had enough of the shops and she refused Mr. Darby’s suggestion of another theatre. Things were obviously banking up for a crisis.

  And next morning the crisis suddenly matured.

  Chapter XIII

  Sarah In Revolt

  They had breakfasted, and Mr. Darby, with an after-breakfast cigarette and a morning paper, was awaiting Sarah in the lounge. She had gone to get ready to go out. She had not been very willing to go out at first, but when Mr. Darby had pressed the point, suggesting a stroll in St. James’s Park, she had consented.

  ‘After all,’ she had said, ‘one must do something,’

  It was not until he had got to the end of his paper that Mr. Darby realized that Sarah was being rather a long time. She was not one to dawdle. To reach their bedroom, put on hat and coat and return to the lounge was usually, for her, a matter of ten minutes, but this time it must have been at least twenty minutes since she had gone up. Mr. Darby fidgeted in his chair, cleared his throat, and then looked challengingly round the room. It was not worth while getting another paper from the table in the middle of the room, so he lit another cigarette and sat watching the door, while, at irregular intervals, people who began by being Sarah and ended by proving to be anything from a schoolgirl to a bishop, pushed the door open and came in. But really, where had Sarah got to? She had been half an hour now: more. After waiting forty minutes Mr. Darby rose from his chair, pink with annoyance, puffed slowly and importantly across the room, and went to investigate. He climbed a flight of stairs, steamed down a long corridor, turned left into another. As he approached their bedroom he saw that the door was half open. Voices came from within. As he reached the door he heard Sarah’s voice: ‘Well, my girl, thank you for the loan of the apron.’ He entered and saw Sarah take off an apron and hand it to a maid who stood near the bed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s done me no end of good.’ The maid giggled and looked at Mr. Darby who glared back at her. Then, throwing the apron over her arm, she made for the door, smiling at Sarah as she went and saying: ‘Thank you very much, madam.’

  Mr. Darby waited till the maid had gone and closed the door behind her. Then, turning with great dignity to Sarah, he asked: ‘And what, pray, is the meaning of this? ’

  ‘The meaning of it, if you want to know, Jim,’ she replied with an expansive smile, ‘is that I’ve just finished the first honest bit of work I’ve done since I got to London.’

  ‘I … ah … I fail to understand,’ said Mr. Darby in lofty bewilderment.

  ‘Then don’t bother to try, Jim,’ said Sarah. ‘Now off you go and get your hat and stick. I’ll be with you in the entrance hall in two minutes.’ With a hand on his shoulder she pushed him unceremoniously to the door, and, by force of long habit, Mr. Darby opened it and went obediently out.

  • • • • • • • •

  Sarah, on reaching her bedroom forty minutes earlier, had found it occupied by two maids who were just beginning to make the bed. She had paused with her eye on them, and they, intimidated by that formidable lady, had made as if to stop their work and leave the room free for her.

  But Sarah stopped them. ‘No, don’t go,’ she said. Then, overcome by a sudden irrepressible impulse, she held out her hand to the nearest maid. ‘Here, lend me your apron,’ she said.

  The girl stared at her in bewilderment.

  ‘I mean it,’ said Sarah. ‘For ten blessed days I’ve been simply dying for a job like this.’ Both the girls looked pleased and amused. The one spoken to took off her apron and handed it to the large smiling lady who put it on. ‘Now,’ said Sarah to her, ‘if you like to be getting on with something else I’ll give our friend here a hand with the bed.’

  So saying, she fell to, attacking the bed with her usual vehemence. Pillows and bolsters were punched and shaken, sheets and blankets flapped and whirled like sails in a hurricane across which the servant helping at the other side of the bed was often totally invisible. The two girls were thrilled and invigorated by the descent among them of this master-spirit. The other one got to work with a broom, infect
ed by Sarah’s tempestuous energy. In a few minutes the room was finished. A sudden calm fell upon it in which it was discovered to be miraculously restored to cleanliness and freshness, like a garden after a night of rain.

  ‘Now how many more beds are there to do?’ said Sarah, flushed and exhilarated with the exercise.

  ‘We’ve four more rooms to do in this corridor,’ said her assistant.

  ‘Come along then!’ said Sarah. ‘Nobody’ll know. And if anyone comes in when we’re in the other rooms, they’ll see my apron and think I’m one of the staff. Now one of you come and help me with the first two, and the other one with the other two.’ She sailed masterfully out of the room. ‘Which way? ‘she said.

  ‘Next room on the left, madam!’ said the girl behind her. In a moment the bed next door was in the throes of just such another turmoil. ‘Now up with the sheet. Now that blanket. No, not so high. You want it a good twelve inches from the top. That’s it.’ Sarah’s commands and exhortations rose sharp and clear above the storm. In a moment the second bed was finished and the girl, flushed and breathless, laughed at Sarah across it. ‘We’ll be through in no time at this rate,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ said Sarah, ‘there’s a saying Slow but sure, but what I say is Swift but sure. The proper way to work is to go for your work and beat it, not dawdle about it and let it beat you. If you dawdle it just tires you out, but if you put your back into it, it does you good, and, what’s more, you get it done in half the time. I’ve always been accustomed to work and it suits me. What doesn’t suit me is sitting about in the lounge downstairs reading the paper.’

  ‘You’d not find many ladies agree with you, madam,’ said the girl who was dusting.

  ‘No, and the more’s the pity,’ said Sarah. ‘It’ud be better for you and better for them if they did. Now come on! Next door!’

  When the next bed was finished the other girl took over as Sarah’s assistant and the first went to put the wash-basins to rights in the other rooms. In another quarter of an hour the last two beds were made, and Sarah stood upright, stretching her back. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I must be off. My husband’s been waiting this half hour. Good bye, my girl.’

  ‘Good bye, madam, and thank you ever so much.’ With shining eyes the girl watched Sarah go.

  Sarah hurried straight to her own room where she found the other maid drying out the wash-basin. ‘So much for that,’ she said.

  At that moment Mr. Darby in righteous indignation was steaming down the corridor. Sarah went to the wardrobe to get out her hat and coat, and then remembered that she was still wearing the maid’s apron. She put her hands behind her back to untie it. ‘Well thank you, my girl, for the loan of the apron,’ she said, and hearing a footstep looked up and saw Mr. Darby.

  • • • • • • • •

  Though Mr. Darby had gone obediently down to the entrance hall at Sarah’s command, his spirit was not quelled. It takes more than a slight repulse to quell a millionaire. When Sarah joined him they neither of them spoke, but in the excessive politeness with which he stepped aside to usher her through the revolving door his determined disapproval was manifest. Northumberland Avenue, the difficult crossings at Trafalgar Square, and the Admiralty Arch were traversed in silence. It was not until they were already three-quarters of the way down the long path in St. James’s Park which slopes gently towards the ornamental lake that Mr. Darby spoke. ‘Well, all I have to say, Sarah,’ he said conclusively, ‘is that that isn’t the way to behave in a first-class hotel.’

  ‘Hm!’said Sarah. ‘Then all I have to say, Jim, is that a first-class hotel is no place for me’

  Mr. Darby by a valiant effort kept cool. ‘Our … ah … circumstances have changed,’ he said, ‘and we’ve got to … ah ‘—he waved an acquiescent hand—’ to accept the change. When you’re at Rome, Sarah, you’ve got to do as Rome does.’

  ‘Time enough to talk about that when we get to Rome, Jim,’ said Sarah.

  Mr. Darby felt his face flush. How exasperatingly stupid Sarah could be. His head seemed to boil inside his bowler. His lips twitched with anger, but he wisely remained silent. Sarah glanced down at him and noted the noiseless tumult.

  ‘Look at the ducks, Jim,’ she remarked irrelevantly.

  But Mr. Darby did not cease to stare straight in front of him. ‘I’m in no mood to look at ducks, Sarah,’ he said sternly, and his articulation of the word ducks was charged with scorn.

  ‘Well, I’d rather look at ducks any day than at a whole lot of pictures and museum stuff,’ said Sarah, ‘and that’s the difference between you and me, Jim.’ She pointed with her umbrella to a park seat. ‘Let’s sit down,’ she said.

  She suited the action to the word and Mr. Darby rather aloofly sat down beside her. Then, no longer evasive and flippant, she turned to him.

  ‘The fact is, Jim, I’ve had enough of this, as much as ever I can stand of it. I’ve had my holiday and I’ve enjoyed it— some of it, that is—and now I want to go home.’

  ‘Home?’ said Mr. Darby in outraged interrogation.

  ‘Yes, home!’ said Sarah. ‘Number Seven Moseley Terrace, Savershill!’

  He had expected it all along, but now that he was confronted with the absolute fact it staggered him. That any rational person, in the very moment of liberty, on the very threshold of the great world, after years of drab, impotent, humdrum obscurity, after a spectacular farewell (with a press-photographer in attendance) to the old scenes, the old life, the old man, should wish to turn round and ignomini-ously go back to it all, as a dog to his vomit, passed his comprehension.

  ‘Well,’ he said with a sigh of astonishment, ‘there’s no accounting for tastes.’

  ‘There’s no accounting for my tastes and there’s no accounting for yours, Jim; but there they are, and they’re different. But tell me, what are your plans? What are you thinking of doing? You can’t want to go on like this for ever, living in an hotel with no home of your own and just mooning about and looking at London all day long?’

  For the first time Mr. Darby felt a little chill at his heart. Such a life, as sketched now by Sarah, appeared dreary to the last degree. Certainly if Sarah went away and left him he would be thrown very much on his own resources. He would be lonely, very lonely. But if she would go, what possible alternative was there? He couldn’t give in and go back with her to Savershill: anything rather than that. It would be flinging the munificent gift of Providence back in Providence’s face. It would be a craven denial of all his hopes, all his dreams, yes, of his innermost nature.

  When he did not reply, Sarah spoke again. ‘You’d better make up your mind to come back with me, Jim,’ she said. ‘London’s no place for people like us, except just for a bit of a holiday. Why, surely you’ve got some feelings for Newchester and your own home? Come, make up your mind to come back with me. You can enjoy yourself every bit as much there; and if you feel like it you can always come up here for a week.’

  ‘No, Sarah, no!’ said Mr. Darby with tears in his eyes. ‘I couldn’t go back now. Why, we’ve only just got started. I’ve never said much to you about it, I know, because you always laughed at me when I mentioned it, but all my life I’ve longed to see something of the world: it’s been a regular hunger with me. London’s just a beginning. I want to travel, to see foreign lands, to visit the … ah … tropics,’ (he had been on the point of mentioning the Jungle, but remembered Sarah’s scorn and checked himself); ‘and now, just when I’ve got the chance, how can I turn my back on it all? I hoped you’d feel the same. I hoped you’d like to travel, not as far as the … ah … tropics, perhaps, but to other places,’ he waved a hand airily, ‘The Alps, Vesuvius, the Sphinx, and so on.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No, Jim,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t do it, not even though I’ve got to go and live at home alone if I don’t. There’s something in me that just says No. It seems we’re made differently, you and me. Why, even these few days in London are almost more than I can stand. You see yourself w
hat they’ve driven me to—taking a hand with the housemaids in bed-making, and disgracing you, it seems. If I stayed here idling any longer, well, you’d find me so bad-tempered, so thoroughly nasty that you’d be praying Heaven to be rid of me. It’s not my fault: I’m just made like that. I’ve got to have work whether we’re millionaires or not. So I’ll just take myself off the day after to-morrow and leave you to rummage about here alone. Don’t imagine I want to leave you, Jim. It won’t be much fun for me going home to an empty house after I’ve had you there for twenty years. But I’ve come to this conclusion: there’s no good people trying to act against their nature, because it can’t be done. I’m willing to admit it’s the same with you. If you feel as much as all that about seeing the world, well, you’d better see it and be done with it. I shall be waiting for you at home, remember, and glad I shall be, I can tell you, to see you back.’ She stopped, and then added with an impatient sigh, ‘If only your Uncle Tom had given his money to a charity or something better deserving than us, we should be peaceful and happy at home at this minute and nobody any the better or any the worse.’