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

The Romantic Adventures of

and of Sarah His Wife

BY

MARTIN ARMSTRONG

BOOK I
Mr. Darby at Home

I. Emergence of Mr. William James Darby

II. The Birthday Party

III. The Morning After the Night Before

IV. Mr. Darby's Conversion

V. The Darkest Hour

VI. False Dawn

VII. Suspended Animation

VIII. Animation Still Suspended

IX. Snakes and Spiders

X. Mr. Darby's Farewell

BOOK II
Mr. Darby Cuts the Cable

XI. Mr. Darby Moves on London

XII. At the Balmoral

XIII. Sarah in Revolt

XIV. Mr. Darby as Man About Town

XV. Mr. Darby as Art Patron

XVI. Mr. Darby Enters Public Life

XVII. The Launching of Sarah

XVIII. A Public Meeting

XIX. A Private Discussion

XX. Revolution in Bedford Square

XXI. The Revolution Fails

XXII. Enter Punnett

XXIII. London's Punishment

XXIV. Social Interlude

XXV. Good-bye, Piccadilly

BOOK III
Mr. Darby Assumes the Purple

XXVI. The Widow Darby

XXVII. Mr. Darby on Board

XXVIII. Mr. Darby Abroad

XXIX. Mr. Darby Repels an Invasion

XXX. Mr. Darby Faces Death

XXXI. Mr. Darby Again Faces Death

XXXII. A Halcyon Day

XXXIII. Mr. Darby Aground

XXXIV. Unwaddi Taan

XXXV. Darby King of the Mandrats

XXXVI. Punnett Hands Over

XXXVII. A Royal Conversation

XXXVIII. A Royal Pardon

XXXIX. The King was in the Parlour

XL. Turn Again Darby

Mr. Darby, managing clerk to Messrs. Lamb & Marston, small, plump, pink, clean-shaven, and spectacled, pulled-to behind him the glass-panelled door on which the name of the firm was painted in block capitals and, under it, in flowing italics, the words ‘Architects & Surveyors'. Then, as he always did, he turned the handle and tried to open the door, so as to make sure that the latch had gone home and the door was really locked. It was. Immediately his mind dismissed the office and plunged into the world outside the office door. It was half past five: the day's work was over. The November evening had already set in. As he paused under the electric light, on the bare dismal top landing with his plump, compact shadow blotting the floor and a segment of wall near the floor, he heard, far below, the confused knocking of two pairs of boots descending the stairs, making the great drab-walled well of the staircase sound empty and stark and hollow. The boots belonged to McNab and Pellow, the junior clerks, to whom Mr. Darby had just said goodnight. As his foot touched the first step of the stairs, he heard, in the well below, a familiar clank. It was the brass tread on the bottom step but three. That meant that McNab and Pellow had nearly reached the bottom, for the stairs from the bottom to the first landing were reinforced with brass treads, and the bottom one but three was loose,—always had been, as long as Mr. Darby could remember. That particular flat, unresonant clank punctuated the beginning of Mr. Darby's ascent to the office every week-day morning and his completion of the descent in the afternoon; it also recorded his going out to and coming back from lunch, and it produced in him a set of entirely different sensations according to
whether he heard it on his ascent or his descent. It was a symbol, but a symbol of two contradictory states, for it was a symbol, of the daily return to servitude and, no less, of the daily escape : it produced in him a small, deep-seated twinge of depression and fear, and, alternatively, a little electric thrill of escape and adventure. At the familiar stimulus, he responded at once to the appropriate feeling : which feeling it was depended simply on whether his face was towards the upstairs or the downstairs world. Now it came to him as an alluring invitation to hurry downstairs, himself to sound the symbolic clank, and then to issue into the hurry and glitter of Ranger Street.

But Mr. Darby did not hurry. He descended the stairs with a precise, measured, and responsible tread, and from time to time he lightly touched the banisters (a thing he never did on ordinary occasions) with his right hand. The whole thing was very dignified.

It was not so much that Mr. Darby was deliberately putting it on, as that it was imposed on him. He noted it, he felt it control his actions, but he was not the kind of man to laugh or even smile at it. He accepted it : he believed in it. Besides, there was a reason for it, for to-day was his fiftieth birthday. At odd moments during the day he had been thinking out the speech he would make when they proposed his health at supper to-night. He saw and heard himself already standing at the head of the supper-table looking down, as if from a great height (though actually it was somewhat under five foot three), on the table and seated company, and delivering a leisurely, eloquent, well-considered speech,―a touch of humour here, a touch of pathos there―a speech which seemed to be effortlessly skimmed from a boundless store of rich words and phrases available for every sort of important occasion. It would, of course, be old George Stedman who, at the correct moment, would push back his chair, get on to his feet and propose his host's health. Undoubtedly it would be old George, for George always rose to the occasion when it was a question of speech-making. Speech-making, you might say, was his hobby and it was not
likely on such an occasion as this that he would allow any other guest to forestall him. Mr. Darby knew from long experience precisely what George Stedman would say on the present occasion, and this enabled him to prepare beforehand a perfectly appropriate reply. His speech, he flattered himself, would make at least as much of a hit as old George's : and he was secretly convinced that, as a speech, it would be very much the finer of the two.

The loose tread clanked under his sole, and obediently he thrilled with the old sense of adventure. He had descended the whole flight—four landings, forty-five steps—in a dream. In the open doorway he paused, as he always paused, on the threshold of the world. The whole world, and, in the immediate foreground, the whole great roaring town of Newchester-on-Dole, lay before him. Once more the choice was his. Into what part of it should he plunge? It would be useless to plunge straight ahead, for that would mean merely that he would cross the street and enter the premises of Williamson's Educational Book Store,—not a very interesting nor a very extensive plunge. But if he turned to his right and walked down Ranger Street he would arrive, in five minutes, at the severe Tuscan portico of the Central Station where a ticket might be taken to almost anywhere. Or, still better, if he were to cross Ranger Street and take the first turning to the left along the railings of the churchyard of St. John's Church whose gaunt tower now stood black against a fading sky of grey and pink, down the passage to the right past the
Chronicle
office, and then to the left he could, after a somewhat longer walk past the Cathedral, turn south down the precipitious Cliff Street and reach the Quayside where between the black, high-piled buildings that climbed upon each other's shoulders on either bank, ships made their slow way through smoke and wheeling seagulls, past clanging shipyards and rows of vast cranes like the iron skeletons of huge birds with all their beaks pointing one way, to the open sea and foreign lands. Mr. Darby had always hungered for foreign lands,—not just France or Germany or Belgium, but terrible places beset with parching
deserts, snow-capped mountain-ranges, and green dripping jungles full of scarlet orchids and screeching parrots, lands of fierce, tropical suns and spectacular typhoons, where life was not a safe and unvarying routine but a series of thrilling and unpredictable adventures,—the sort of life that tests a man's mettle, calls into play all his hidden and unused capacities. How simple it was really, thought Mr. Darby, as he had thought hundreds of times before, standing, an absurd pink-faced, blue-eyed, tubby little cock-robin of a man in black coat, black bowler and gold-rimmed spectacles, in the doorway of Number Thirty Seven Ranger Street—how simple, if one could only get oneself to the point of doing it, to turn to the right, cross the road, pass the Cathedral, plunge down Cliff Street and, by buying a ticket or signing-on or … but no, the stowaway method would be tiresome and unnecessary. … Sign on, step aboard and steam for the Equator. Why not take the plunge? Where was the difficulty? Uncle Tom Darby had done it. But he had started younger. He had, in fact, started thirty-three years younger. Already at seventeen he had tired of living at home and so, one fine day, had simply failed to return from work. Just gone, vanished! So simple. And a couple of years later he had written from Australia apologizing and saying that he was doing very well. Mr. Darby remembered his Uncle Tom turning up in Newchester over thirty years ago,—a fine, breezy person with a strange twanging accent, who put up for a month at the Station Hotel, gave them all great dinners there, talked big talk about sheep and mines and building speculations, and behaved like a lord on a holiday. When his brother, Mr. Darby's father, had pressed him to return to England, he had shaken his head. ‘Not me! Not likely! No elbow-room.' And after a couple of months in England he had gone home to Australia. He had taken a fancy to his young nephew Jim and every Christmas, afterwards, had sent him a present of ten pounds. Years later the present suddenly grew to fifty pounds, and for the last ten years it had been a hundred. Every year Mr. Darby wrote him a long letter of thanks, but he never got any reply. The cheque was
always folded in a sheet of notepaper on which was written ‘Jim Darby from his Uncle Tom. A Merry Christmas.'

Mr. Darby, standing in the doorway of Thirty Seven, again focussed the world with his gold-rimmed spectacles. Why not plunge? Uncle Tom Darby had found it simple and refreshing. Then he stepped out from the doorway, turned, not to the right but to the left, and began to walk up Ranger Street, for that, after all, was his way home and the party began at seven.

A few words here must be said of Mr. Darby's origins. Except for Mr. Darby himself, nothing noteworthy is known of the Darby family, indeed the Herald's Office had to confess itself beaten when, in later years, Mr. Darby, by that time Sir James Darby, urged it to pursue the Darbys into the past. A conspiracy of secrecy has, it seems, successfully covered all traces of them prior to the accession of Queen Victoria.

The first discoverable record of them, bearing the date 1839, shows them settled in Newchester-on-Dole (‘Erasmus James Darby of this city'), so that our Mr. Darby could, and frequently did, boast that they were Novocastrians of nearly a hundred years standing. He himself had settled, on his marriage twenty years ago, in the suburb of Savershill, at Number Seven Moseley Terrace, and, unless the weather was very bad, he always walked to and from the office. It took him half an hour. It was understood that he walked for the sake of exercise, but in truth Mr. Darby got on perfectly well without exercise. He would never have dreamed of walking for the sake of walking. He walked to prolong his contact with the town and postpone the hour of his return to Number Seven Moseley Terrace. He loved the streets and the shops, the crowds of people and the crowd of traffic. The walk up Ranger Street, to the right along the brief section of Brackett Street, and then to the left up Newfoundland Street was a long succession of pleasures. Frequently his progress was interrupted by shop-windows, before which he paused to enjoy a leisurely temptation, while in imagination he made extravagant purchases with the easy indifference of
the millionaire. ‘How much are your best peaches?' ‘One and six each, sir.' ‘Then send me a dozen—no, two dozen—please.' ‘Furlined coats? Yes, sir. The one with the astrachan collar is twenty-five guineas, sir.' ‘You haven't anything better?' ‘I'm afraid we haven't, sir.' ‘Then you will have to make me one to order.' Such was the plane on which Mr. Darby's imagination moved. But to-night imagination was not needed, for he was going, in cold fact, to buy a couple of bottles of champagne. There would be port as well, but there was always port in the house. Sarah saw to that. They both of them liked an occasional glass of port and Sarah got it in—two bottles at a time—with the other groceries. But a fiftieth birthday called for something more than port. In Brackett Street, accordingly, Mr. Darby turned into Edgington's, approached the counter with the deliberation that the occasion demanded, and there and then opened the dialogue which, in the past, he had so often rehearsed in silence.