The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (35 page)

A few minutes later he was hurrying past the back of the town hall. At the other side of the small square the Cathedral tower soaring majestically to the clouds nodded to the returned prodigal. Even in the eyes of the new Darby it was impressive and the new Darby admitted it. ‘A noble monument!' he said. ‘Incontrovertially a noble monument!' But the church itself, he now saw, was no match for it. Huddled beneath that towering mass of stone crowned with the stone lantern lifted high on flying buttresses, it showed itself now for what it really was, a parish church; for it was only in recent times that it had been promoted to a cathedral. Mr. Darby compared it with Westminster Abbey, with Peterborough, York and Durham which he had seen from the train as he journeyed between Newchester and London, and wondered at his old acceptance of it. ‘Very provincial!' he said to himself now. ‘Very provincial indeed!'

Arrived at Ormerod & Sparsdale's he hovered for a while outside the windows. One was devoted to Georgian silver. ‘Very handsome! Very massive! ‘he said, as he inspected it with approval. He passed over a silver-gilt dinner-set in the next window, ignored a display of gold watches, gold cigarette cases, gold matchboxes, studs, sleeve-links, pencil-cases, and paused at a window full of jewelry. Rather a nice pearl and diamond ring, that! But
what a
. price! Really, a hundred and fifty guineas for a ring, however rich
you were, was pretty steep. Ormerod & Sparsdale's seemed rather a dangerous shop. Ah! That was better: twenty pounds for quite a nice diamond and ruby ring. And there was another, better still,—three quite decent diamonds, set close together; fifteen guineas! Mr. Darby left the window, glanced up and down the street, and entered the shop. He had never been inside it before and was amazed to find it so large and imposing. It was quite a walk to the nearest counter. ‘I want to see some small diamond brooches,' he said to the lordly, middle-aged gentleman who attended him. ‘Just a … ah … comparatively inexpensive trifle.'

‘Quite so, sir!' The middle-aged gentleman turned, drew a totally noiseless drawer out of a cabinet, and placed on the glass counter a velvet-lined tray thickly sprinkled with diamonds, diamonds clustered into the shapes of stars, crescents, wings and flowers. As he pushed it softly towards Mr. Darby the diamonds caught the light and flashed from blue to rose. Mr. Darby pored over them, breathless with wonder. For a moment his attention was arrested by a glittering pair of wings. ‘That one is fifty pounds, sir. But there are others less expensive. This, for instance, is only five guineas. That, that, and that one are each ten guineas.'

After long and ecstatic scrutiny Mr. Darby chose a ten-guinea diamond heart.

It was not until he was briskly descending Cliff Street and felt the watery air, blown up from the Quayside, upon his face that it occurred to him that it might have been better to choose another shape. A heart, after all, ran the risk of being taken too seriously, or, on the other hand, too frivolously, or it might prove to be merely embarrassing. However it was too late now. He would be able, perhaps, to suggest the proper point of view by some timely remark: ‘A small present, Miss Sunningdale, to keep the heart in the right place.' Mr. Darby smiled blandly and unconsciously at a passer-by. Rather good, that, on the spur of the moment, he thought. But the whole business would require careful handling. He was so occupied with the problem that he had lost consciousness of his surroundings. He turned a corner and
was roused by a sudden buffet of wind. The familiar scene burst upon him with the suddenness of a revelation, the towering black skeleton of the High Level Bridge, the smoke-grimed houses of Portshead stepping sharply to the bright restless lead-coloured river, the whirling smoke, the whirling gulls, the masts and rigging and funnels, the cranes crooked above their little wheeled sheds. A broad-beamed tug, black as the houses, was thrusting its powerful way down stream, drawing a great bright javelin of furrowed water after it. All the old wonder, all the old inexhaustible romance was here: yes, this was the one thing that not London itself had been able to give him, the true home of his imagination. It was here that he had lived and felt most intensely: this mean little smoke-fouled valley, more than any place in the world, had fed his enthusiasms and soothed his sorrows. Mr. Darby stood still and took the place to his heart: his spectacles glittered in the bleak northern light. Then, the heart satisfied, the belly asserted its claim. What the belly claimed was lunch, and Mr. Darby's eye sought The Schooner. As he entered the porch he remembered the diamond heart in his pocket and a sudden overwhelming shyness assailed him.

But his shyness was quickly and disconcertingly extinguished, for he found himself faced, across the bar, by a large dark woman of unattractive appearance. She was amiable and ready to be talkative, but Mr. Darby was not interested. He ordered his Bass and sandwiches and fell upon them, not, it is true, without relish, but mournfully. It was not until he had finished his Bass and ordered another that he spoke to the new barmaid. ‘Is Miss Sunningdale away?'

‘Miss Sunningdale? Gone!' said the barmaid. ‘Left last week. Gone to Canada, I believe.'

‘Indeed? Dear me!' said Mr. Darby glancing dreamily at the bottles behind the woman's head.

‘Friend of yours? ‘she asked.

Mr. Darby did not like her tone. ‘We were … ah … old acquaintances,' he replied loftily.

He did not stay long in The Schooner. Its charm was gone, though its sandwiches were as good as ever. He finished his
second Bass and, half an hour before he had expected to, he went out on to the Quayside and there indulged a romantic and not altogether unpleasant melancholy.

Then he again remembered the diamond heart in his pocket. What could he do with it now? To drop it, together with a few tears, into the Dole would be poetical but wasteful. But he could not take it home, for Sarah would be almost certain to light upon it sooner or later: he had no private desk or drawer, and so it would be a continual source of anxiety to him. Then an idea occurred to him. Why not forestall Sarah's discovery of it by giving it to her? But no, that wouldn't do. That, Mr. Darby felt, even though Sarah would never know the secret of it, would be both unkind and dishonest. For a few minutes he toyed with the idea of exchanging it at Ormerod & Sparsdale's for another brooch for Sarah. But even that, he found, offended his nicer feelings. It was a difficult matter. He ended by taking the heart back to Ormerod & Sparsdale's, explaining that it was unsuitable, and that he would return in the course of the week and take his ten pounds out in something else. Perhaps after the lapse of a few days it might turn out to be possible to get something for Sarah, something that he might have got for her in any case.

He glanced at his watch. Important affairs again demanded his attention, and he set off gravely for his interview with Mr. Lingard, his Bank Manager.

‘
W
hat I say,' said Mrs. Cribb who sat on Mr. Darby's left, ‘is that England's good enough for me, and even if it wasn't, I'd put up with it rather than trust myself on one of these liners. I went by sea once from Dolemouth to Saltburn and back—at least, we didn't, as it happens, come back—with my poor old auntie … a woman of eighty-five now, Mr. Darby, and a wonder for her years … one of these cheap day excursions it was,
and
… well, they say Britannia rules the waves, but she didn't, not on that occasion. Ugh!' Mrs. Cribb pressed a hand on her chest. ‘Never again, thank you, Mr. Darby! “Do what you like, Emma,” said my poor old auntie when we got off the boat at Saltburn, “do what you like, my girl, but I go back by train.” I'm with you, auntie, I said. I'm with you every time. The train for me, I said, and bother the expense; because, as I said just now, Mr. Darby, it was an excursion and we'd return tickets on the boat. Yes, the train for me, auntie, I said, and cheap at the price, and believe me, Mr. Darby, if you'd offered me five pounds down to get on that boat again, I wouldn't have taken it. No, not for a moment! Money is money, and sea-sickness, if you'll excuse my mentioning it at meals, is sea-sickness; and what I say is, there's no comparison.'

There was a certain loftiness in Mr. Darby's smile. ‘Well,' he said,' it's a question, isn't it, Mrs. Cribb, of what I should call … ah … adaptabiliousness? Anyone can do what they really want to do.'

‘And I only do it, as you know, Mrs. Darby,' Samuel Cribb was saying in his quiet confidential voice,' in a purely amatewerish sort of way. Just in my spare time. It's money for nothing.'

‘Well, you
may think so, Mr. Cribb,' said Sarah, ‘because it's your hobby: but I don't. Keeping an eye on the market, as you call it, and hunting about among second-hand books that have never seen a duster in their lives, would drive me crazy. It's like everything else; you've got to have a taste for it and you've got to have the proper knowledge, and if you haven't the taste for it you haven't the knowledge either. It's a highly skilled job, that's what it is, and it only seems child's play to you because it happens to be your hobby.'

Mr. Darby, after his brief response to Mrs. Cribb, a response which had checked for a moment the current of her eloquence, took a sip of champagne and fell into detachment. ‘How extraordinary some people are!' he thought to himself. ‘More like clockwork toys than human beings. Astonishing changes, incredible events … ah … occur, things as … ah … as shattering as earthquakes, and they go on just as if nothing had happened.' Mr. Darby, whatever it may have been that provoked this reflection, had confined himself to generalization; but we may be allowed to particularize. Take the present case, for instance, of Mr. Darby's guests. The unbelievable event of Uncle Tom Darby's fortune had recently exploded like a thunderclap among them with all its astonishing consequences, nothing was any longer as it had been before, the whole aspect of life had been, as you might say, completely changed, and yet Emma Cribb goes on chattering about her old auntie, and Sam Cribb still gets excited over a few second-hand books. Is there any wonder that Mr. Darby should sit silent, meditative, in the presence of this astounding obtuseness, with his eyebrows slightly raised. ‘It would take dynamite,' he thought to himself, ‘nothing less than dynamite, to change them.'

‘And so our young spark's really off this time,' said Stedman to Sarah under cover of the hum of talk. ‘Booked his ticket, he tells me.'

‘Yes, and he's started this jungle nonsense again,' replied Sarah. ‘He's going to call at some outlandish place on the way home.'

‘Indeed?' said Stedman. ‘He didn't mention coming
home to me. He just said he was going to
cut loose
,—that was the expression he used. Oh, so he's coming home again? That's good.'

‘Yes,' said Sarah impatiently, ‘if he's not gobbled up by a tiger.'

Stedman laughed. ‘Tigers don't gobble up millionaires, Mrs. D.'

‘Don't be too sure,' said Sarah, more than half in earnest.

‘Oh, but it's sure enough. They don't get the chance: the millionaires see to that. Don't you worry, Mrs. D. Let him see the jungle: once he's seen it, he'll be only too glad to come home and settle down. I read a book once about life in the jungle. I've forgotten the name of it, but I remember the book well enough and, you can take my word for it, it's not the kind of life our Jim'll take kindly to.'

‘That's a comfort,' said Sarah. ‘And there's another lucky thing: he's managed to get hold of a man, a valet, to go with him who's been there before. He was valet, it seems, to some scientific man.'

‘Hm, so Jim keeps a valet nowadays, does he?'

‘Oh dear me, yes,' said Sarah; ‘and needs one, what's more, now that he hasn't got me.'

‘But won't it be very dangerous, Mr. Darby, going into those wild, outlandish places?' asked the quiet, precise voice of Jane Stedman.

‘Oh, dangerous, of
course,'
Mr. Darby replied. ‘That goes without saying. But a … ah … a sprinkling of danger gives a … what shall I call it? … a spice to travel, like … ah …' he pointed at the pepper-pot that stood between them, ‘like peppah!'

‘Not for me, Mr. Darby,' Emma Cribb's harsh voice broke in. ‘Give
me
a sprinkling of safety.' She pointed at the sugar basin in front of her; ‘Sugar, as you might say.'

‘We're no travellers, Emma and I,' said Mrs. Stedman, smiling, ‘and that's the truth. We're the stay-at-home sort, and it's just as well we are, for there's little chance we get of travelling, whether we want to or not.'

‘I don't know about that,' replied Mr. Darby. ‘If you
were keen on travelling, I'd take the whole lot of you round the world.' He made a comprehensive circular gesture with the right arm.

The two women looked at him with amused smiles. ‘I'm not joking,' he went on. ‘After all, it's simple enough,—simply a matter of buying tickets.'

‘And
of us going round the world, Mr. Darby,' added Emma Cribb. ‘It's that part of it I shouldn't like, thanking you very much all the same.' Once more she pressed her hand to her chest and threw up her eyes. ‘Ugh! When I think of that voyage from Dolemouth to Saltburn with my poor old auntie. And, would you believe it, they called it … that is to say, the advertisements did … a
pleasure
trip.'

George Stedman's loud, emphatic voice suddenly drew everyone's attention to the other end of the table. ‘Well, I'm prepared to bet any one here … and they can name the odds, mind you …'

Mr. Darby heard no more. His eyes had fixed themselves on the burning ruby which glowed in the centre of his full port glass. But he was not thinking of that. His thoughts were busy with that lavish suggestion he had, quite on the spur of the moment, launched a minute ago. How wonderful it was to be able to speak casually yet in perfect seriousness of taking a party of people round the world. Yet what he had said was true, it would be a perfectly simple matter. He knew that it was not practicable, because none of them had the smallest wish to go round the world, but he toyed with the idea, just for the fun of the thing, and followed it into some of its ramifications. What would happen to the Stedmans' shop in the meantime? George might very well return to find his business gone to pieces. As for Sam Cribb, the Railway Company would, of course, give him the sack. And then the extraordinary thought occurred to Mr. Darby that neither of these events would matter in the least. He made a few rapid mental calculations. Yes, it was true enough: he could, without the smallest inconvenience to himself, settle upon the Stedmans and the Cribbs sums that would produce incomes even larger than those they had lost. The horizons
of his wealth suddenly enlarged themselves enormously before his wondering gaze. Never yet had his fortune and the power it brought with it seemed to him so vast as at this moment. Then came another discovery, rather a shocking one this time: for the first time he realized that he had never even thought of settling money on his friends. He had been so accustomed to regard them as his equals, that the idea had never entered his head. He felt his face burning. This was not due merely to the singularly delicious port of which he now pensively drained his first glass: he was thoroughly ashamed of himself. How greedy, how monstrously stingy they must think him. He must put the thing right at once. They should both have five hundred a year—more if they could do with it.