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

by Martin Armstrong

  ‘Ah … pantechnically speaking, Mrs. Cribb, you ought; but I don’t expect it among friends, in fact I don’t desire it. That kind of thing is necessary, of course, on ceremonious occasions, but at ordinary times it’s pleasanter for everyone, don’t you think, to … ah … what I should call drop it.’

  Mrs. Cribb tittered. ‘We might make it Your Madge for short, Mr. Darby.’

  But the wine that had made Mrs. Cribb frivolous had made Mr. Darby serious. Very properly, he was not amused, and his spectacles showed this to Mrs. Cribb so unmistakably that she instantly abandoned her levity. ‘No offence, I’m sure, Mr. Darby; and if there was, don’t blame me. Blame your champagne and the port on top of it; for the truth is, my poor head’s in such a buzz that I couldn’t guarantee not to forget myself, not if King George himself was to step in at the door and join the party. But you ought to write a book about it, Mr. Darby, for I’m sure the story you can tell—and every word of it true, mind you—’ud be more exciting than half the books you get at Smith’s and Boots’ and suchlike places.’

  ‘That’s what I say, Jim,’ said Sam Cribb’s mild voice from the other end of the table. ‘I know something about books, specially since you started me with my bookshop, and I’m as sure as I’m sure of anything that it’ud sell like hot cakes. And you’d have a limited edition, of course, numbered and signed by the author.’

  ‘There you are, Jim,’ roared George Stedman, ‘straight from the horse’s mouth. You’d better get started with it quick.’

  Mr. Darby cleared his throat. ‘I have … ah … comp-cons-contemplated a book,’ he said, ‘and no doubt, in course of time I may decide to … ah … publish one.’

  ‘In Darkest Mandras,’ Jim, said Sam Cribb. ‘Not a bad title that. Or Lost Among the Savages!’

  Mr. Darby nodded tolerantly over Sam’s suggestions. ‘I had thought, myself,’ he said, ‘of … ah … My Eastern Kingdom or, more simply … ah … Dungle Ways I mean … ah … Wungle Jays. That is … ah … what’s the word? Jungle! That’s the word I want: Jungle!’ He paused and then announced with great clearness: ‘Jungle Days and … ah … Jungle Ways’

  The company applauded loudly and Mr. Darby passed his table-napkin across his brow.

  ‘Ha, ha!’ Stedman roared. ‘Just the name for it, Jim. But mind you get the spelling right.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Sarah, with a dry smile, ‘that it’s about time we went into the other room. And it seems to me,’ she added, looking at Stedman, ‘that you gentlemen oughtn’t to be too long after us.’

  Stedman nodded to her. ‘Right you are, Mrs. D.,’ he said in an undertone, as the women filed out of the room.

  And, thanks to Stedman’s obedient diplomacy, the gentlemen did not delay much longer over their port. But as they reached the parlour door, Mr. Darby, with a muttered’ Excuse me a moment,’ left them and went upstairs.

  ‘Oh, it’s true enough, as far as it goes,’ Sarah was saying as Stedman and Cribb entered the room. ‘For the matter of that, I was Queen into the bargain, not of Jim’s place but of the place next door.’

  ‘You were a Queen, Mrs. D.?’ shouted Stedman. ‘Well all I’ve got to say is, you’ve kept pretty quiet about it.’

  ‘Yes, and small wonder,’ said Sarah. ‘It was nothing more than a kind of dumb crambo: not the sort of thing you could take seriously.’

  The talk ran on. The guests, enthralled by Sarah’s answers, plied her with questions.

  ‘What I was, really,’ she explained, ‘was a schoolmistress in charge of a badly behaved school-treat. There was precious little King or Queen about it, I can tell you. But you know what Jim is. He can’t get Mandras out of his mind. When he isn’t talking about it, he’s thinking about it, and when he isn’t thinking about it, he’s dreaming about it.’

  As if to corroborate her statement, the door was suddenly flung open and, framed in the doorway, cloaked in green parrot-feathers, his jewelled head-dress on his head and his spectacles radiating majesty, stood the King of Mandras. Mrs. Cribb tittered, half amused, half frightened; Jane Stedman smiled her cold, gentle, indulgent smile, and the men stared open-mouthed.

  ‘Bless my heart and soul, Jim!’ roared Stedman at last.

  ‘There now, what was I saying?’ exclaimed Sarah.’ The only place for you, Jim, is the parrot-house at the Zoo.’

  Mr. Darby, disregarding this opinion, advanced solemnly into the room, while his friends, fascinated by the strange, exotic clothes, clustered round him.’ Umfo, ompà, iggarù, Umwaddi Taan,’ said Mr. Darby hieratically, making use, for the purposes of the moment, of the few miscellaneous Mandratic words that sprang to his memory.

  ‘And what does that mean, Mr. Darby?’ Mrs. Cribb asked brightly.

  ‘Umbahla!’ replied Mr. Darby with a slight hiccough.

  Chapter XL

  Turn Again Darby

  ‘It’s wonderful, Jim,’ said Sarah next morning, fixing a keen, inquisitorial eye on him as she laid down the Daily Chronicle, ‘it’s wonderful how quickly news travels, don’t you think so?’

  Mr. Darby saw that subterfuge was useless and so did not attempt it. ‘There’s no good … ah … blinking the fact, Sarah,’ he replied sententiously, ‘that publicity is what I should call inavertable; and that being so, I consider it better, far better, to meet it half way. Goodness knows what nonsense would have got into the papers if I hadn’t… ah … forestalled it. We must move with the times, you know, Sarah.’

  ‘Well, you can move with the times as much as you like, Jim,’ Sarah replied, ‘so long as you allow me to move in my own way. I’m glad to see you’ve left me out of it: one royalty’s enough in this house, and even if it wasn’t, you’d be enough for two.’

  ‘The fact is, Sarah,’ Mr. Darby gravely replied, ‘you and I think differently in that matter. I take the view that when one finds oneself in a position of … ah … grave responsibility, one ought to take it with a proper seriousness. Suppose Queen Mary were to … ah … announce that the British Nation was nothing better than a school-treat, what, may I ask, would you say to that?’

  ‘I should say,’ replied Sarah, ‘that she wasn’t far wrong.’ Mr. Darby made a gesture of pained despair and at that moment the telephone-bell rang. ‘That will be for me,’ he said. ‘I was expecting a … ah … communication.’

  He left the room, closing the door after him, and Sarah heard him close the door of her work-room also.

  After a few minutes he returned. ‘I have a business engagement, Sarah,’ he said, ‘and shall probably not be back for lunch. I have just ordered a car.’

  A few minutes later Mr. Darby left the house carrying a suitcase.

  ‘You’re not returning to Mandras, by any chance, Jim?’ Sarah enquired as he went out.

  Mr. Darby’s spectacles broke into a smile. ‘No, not exactly, Sarah; not exactly, but you’re not so far out as you might think.’

  • • • • • • • •

  During the following ten days Mr. Darby led a very active life. The formidable pile of letters which now reached him every morning often kept him busy till lunch time. And he had calls to pay and various engagements for lunch. He called at the office and was taken by Mr. Marston to lunch at the Club where, happening to run across Major Blenkin-sop, he was able to give that gentleman a great deal of valuable information about conditions of travel in Mandratia. McNab and Pellow were each booked for lunch with him on succeeding days, and the evenings were taken up by dinners with the Marstons and the Savershills and suppers with the Stedmans and the Cribbs. More than once he lunched alone at The Schooner, and, besides all this, the business which had called him from home with the suitcase occupied an hour or two of each day. Mr. Darby was enjoying himself thoroughly.

  So too was Sarah. She had resumed her activities on the H.C.S. and was quite as busy as Mr. Darby. ‘Now what more can he want than this?’ she thought to herself, for obviously they were both as happy as could be. When they were alone together, they found themselves gl
ad to be together and alone. For their terrible experiences had made them malleable, had brought to the surface all their old love, had made each indulgent and even affectionate towards those idiosyncrasies in the other which had grown to be points of antagonism. Besides they had endless things to talk about. Sarah was far from averse to recalling her months in Eutyca and Tongal, and though she ridiculed her title to royalty, for her too the experience had been an enthralling one. She had loved life before, but her adventures had brought to life a value greater than ever. And what could be better than the life they were now living? What more could Jim want than this?

  But no doubt Jim had his plans and schemes. Things were obviously afoot. She had noticed with amused curiosity that the suitcase he had carried off with him some mornings ago had not returned. Well, whatever his schemes were, she would be able now to fall in with them, though none of them could be so perfect as the life they were leading at the moment.

  When this mode of life had continued for ten days Mr. Darby returned one evening in a car, bringing the suitcase.

  ‘Back from Mandras, Jim?’ said Sarah with her charming, grim smile.

  ‘To be shaw!’ said Mr. Darby, and opening the bag then and there he displayed the parrot-robe and jewelled head-dress.

  Sarah regarded them sternly. ‘Now I wonder what you’ve been up to,’ she said.

  Mr. Darby held up a hand. ‘Wait and see,’ he said.

  At supper he raised the question of the London house. ‘Something must be done about it,’ he said.

  He had been saying so to himself constantly during the last ten days, and the more he said it the less he felt inclined to do anything. For the fact was that he had settled back so comfortably into Savershill and among his friends, that, just as when a man has established himself in a very deep, very comfortable chair, he found that it would demand an enormous effort to mobilize himself again.

  ‘It’s a duty,’ he added rather vaguely to Sarah.

  ‘A duty? To who, Jim?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘To … ah … well … to our position, Sarah. I don’t suppose you realize it, but our balance at the bank is quite appalling. During that year in Mandras I spent nothing, literarily nothing. One doesn’t, of course, as a King; and you don’t seem to have got through much.’

  “I got through a few thousands running after you,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Quite!’ Mr. Darby replied. ‘Quite! A few thousands, but nothing appreecious. The fact is, Sarah, we’ve got to alter what I should call our scale.’

  ‘But if we’re to get through forty thousand a year, Jim, we’ll have to take Buckingham Palace and some other palace into the bargain.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘we’ll have a house in London and a house here. That’ll help. And as a start, suppose we run up to London on Thursday for a bit and have a look round?’

  Sarah considered this for a moment. ‘How would it be, Jim,’ she said, ‘if you go and hunt in London and I stay and hunt here? Then, when you’ve settled on one or two likely houses, you can send for me to come up and help you to choose. Meanwhile perhaps I’d have found something here for you to look at.’

  Mr. Darby pursed his lips, and knit his brows. ‘Not a bad idea!’ he said. ‘Not at all a bad idea!’

  Accordingly on the following Thursday Mr. Darby proceeded to London, took rooms at the Balmoral, and flung himself with his usual energy into the absorbing task of house-hunting. ‘I require,’ he informed those house-agents into whose hands he unsuspectingly yielded himself, ‘a somewhat … ah … commodious mansion in a fashionable quarter.’

  As a result of this statement Mr. Darby found himself deluged with printed information which summoned him to Carlton House Terrace, Eaton Square, Grosvenor Square, Park Lane, Chester Square, and a vast number of other squares and streets where he inspected large, cold houses whose empty rooms chilled him to the soul. He climbed bare, resounding staircases till it seemed to him that his shoes were ballasted with lead. Sometimes in utter exhaustion he sat down uncomfortably and precariously on steps, window-ledges, and the rims of baths: more than once an even less dignified seat offered itself and was not refused. And every afternoon, when he returned to the Balmoral, broken in body and disillusioned in spirit, and sinking into a chair in the lounge called feebly for tea, it was borne in on him more and more forcibly that there were no houses in London of the kind he desired. He recalled how lonely he had often been when he had lived in the house in Bedford Square. Yet that had been a pleasant, comfortable house. How was it that there were no houses to be had nowadays like it? He and Sarah would freeze, body and soul, in one of these huge, inhospitable refrigerators with their joyless white and gold or pale green drawing-rooms, their high ceilings, their icy halls and staircases, so full of cold light, so barren, so bereft, it seemed, of sunshine and colour. ‘But have you no other houses?’ he asked the house-agents plaintively; ‘Something more comfortable, more … ah … what I should call snug?’ Yes certainly, they had more houses; they would send him more addresses, more orders to view; they assured him of their best attention at all times; they were his obediently; their unique desire was to serve him; and they despatched the poor bewildered, exhausted little man to other even more barren, even more uninhabitable, even more heart-chilling mansions whose naked rooms and deserted passages abolished hope and instantly quenched all warmth of heart, all the joy and gusto of life. At the end of an exhausting week Mr. Darby wired to Sarah: ‘Shall reach Newchester three-forty this afternoon.’

  And what a relief it was to get back to his home and to Sarah’s voluble company.

  ‘London’s simply hopeless,’ he told her. ‘There’s not a house to be had that would suit us. And it’s not for want of searching. I’ve been on what I should call the go, Sarah, ever since I left home.’

  ‘I can see you have,’ said Sarah. ‘You look worn out. Well, I’ve found two places here that might suit you. One’s Savershill Manor House. As you know it’s been vacant for the last seven years. I’d never been into the place before. It’s a great big house, Jim, a bit gloomy and out of repair, but something might be made of it. The other is Outwell Hall.

  It’s been for sale almost ever since you started for Australia. We’ll have a look at them both to-morrow.’

  ‘Well, I must say, Sarah,’ Mr. Darby remarked with a contented sigh when, after an excellent tea, he carried his suitcase upstairs to their bedroom, ‘it’s nice to be at home again.’

  Sarah followed him upstairs and when he had deposited his bag she led him across the passage to the spare room, a room which was never used. ‘Just come in here,’ she said. ‘I have a little surprise for you.’

  She threw the door open and Mr. Darby entered.

  The room had been totally transformed. It was brightly painted, papered and carpeted; there was a deep, luxurious armchair on either side of the fireplace; beside one of them a small table for matches, ash-tray, cigar-box. His maps, which had been sent back with the rest of his luggage from the Utopia, had been framed and hung on the walls; his travel-books, collected before his departure for Australia, were arranged in a glass-fronted book-case; across a corner of the room with a window on its left stood a roll-top writing-desk, and in another corner, on a specially devised stand he caught sight of his parrot robe and jewelled head-dress. In the fireplace was a gas-stove of polished steel. ‘Stedman’s latest!’ said Sarah pointing to it.

  Mr. Darby gazed round the room enraptured.

  ‘Well,’ she asked when he had taken it all in, ‘and how does it suit you?’

  ‘How does it suit me?’ he said. ‘But it’s … ah … it’s ideal, my dear Sarah; and everything so very what I should call shick.’

  He trotted to one of the framed maps, touched the frame, scanned it with sagacious spectacles; trotted from it to his kingly robe which he tried between finger and thumb as if doubtful if it were genuine; then once more he surveyed the whole room. What a contrast to all the huge, comfortless, joyless rooms across which, durin
g the last week, he had wandered with a chill at his heart.

  Sarah took a box of matches from the smoking-table, knelt down, and lit the gas-fire. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Cosy, isn’t it?’

  ‘I say,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘let’s sit here after supper this evening.’

  • • • • • • • •

  Man is a comfort-loving creature and for this reason the weather has from the earliest times been a decisive factor in his destiny. Seditious gatherings, which neither wiser counsels nor an excellent police-force has been able to influence, have been quelled by a shower; rain has won and lost battles, crowned and uncrowned kings, and altered the course of history.

  Perhaps it was the heavy rain of the following morning that produced a revolution in Mr. Darby’s mind. Whatever the reason, he found himself very ill-pleased with the two houses Sarah had chosen for his inspection. They drove first to the Manor House. Undeniably the Manor House was not at its best when it was raining. Not only did the rooms appear dismal: the roof leaked, and here and there water could actually be seen running down the walls. Sarah reminded him that he was seeing the house under the worst conditions. ‘It’s really not a bad place on a fine day, Jim,’ she assured him. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if we could make something of it.’

  But nothing she could say would convince Mr. Darby. ‘It’s dreary, Sarah. It’s uncomfortable.’ He shuddered. ‘It reminds me of the houses I saw in London.’

  ‘Well, come and look at the upstairs rooms,’ said Sarah encouragingly.

  But Mr. Darby shook his head. He had, almost at once, taken a great dislike to the place. It gave him precisely those gloomy feelings which had overcome him when inspecting the houses in London. ‘Don’t let us bother, Sarah,’ he said.

  ‘What, not even look over the house, now we’re here?’ asked Sarah in surprise.