The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (43 page)

‘Ah … certainly, to be shaw!' Mr. Darby replied with a little bow, reaching out his hand to push the door open.

Mrs. Gudgeon hesitated again and then said: ‘I hear him arguing in there. He oughtn't to get excited; the doctor said so; and he oughtn't to take much whisky. Please try not to lead him on. And if you could tell him now …'

‘Certainly! Certainly,' said Mr. Darby, ‘If I can.'

He felt suddenly sorry for the repellent Mrs. Gudgeon. There was something pathetic about her waiting humbly and anxiously outside the door, and her repellence somehow made her the more pathetic. ‘Be sure,' he said as he left her, ‘I'll do what I can, Mrs. Gudgeon.'

He found Gudgeon, purple in the face, with his customary double whisky beside him, in hot argument with Mr. Amberley. He was leaning forward in his chair with one huge flat hand on the table. Mr. Amberley cool, quiet, imperturbable, leaned back, the tips of the fingers of one hand pressed gently against the fingers of the other. Two or three other men were standing round them with their hands in their pockets, smiling.

‘But that's all tommy-rot,' Gudgeon was shouting as Mr. Darby joined the group; ‘all damned nonsense.'

Mr. Amberley smiled his faintly cynical smile and made no reply.

‘You see,' roared Gudgeon, ‘you haven't a leg to stand on; not a word to say for yourself, have you, eh?'

Mr. Amberley's smile slightly increased. ‘There's no point, Mr. Gudgeon,' he said quietly, ‘in replying to a thunderstorm. One simply waits, doesn't one, till it has thundered itself out? You don't prove your case by shouting; you merely provide light entertainment for your audience. I can't think why you are so anxious to make me believe in the excellence and high-mindedness of your business. Even if you were to succeed, I should not buy your Nerve Food. My nerves are not in need of food, and even if they were, I should not give them yours. It's simply publicity thrown away; and wastefulness—I'm sure we agree in this at least—wastefulness is always bad business.'

Gudgeon seized his glass in a trembling hand and drank. ‘Yes,' he said, a trickle of whisky running from the corner of his mouth to his chin. ‘Yes, you're right there. It's pure waste of time talking to … a … to a man like you, Mr. Amberley.'

Mr. Amberley became persuasive. ‘Then why do so, Mr. Gudgeon? Why not ignore me? I only upset your nerves, it seems. If you
will
keep on at me we shall have you taking your own Food before long. But things needn't go as far as that. Leave me alone. You may have noticed that I always leave
you
alone.
When I can
,' he added quietly.

Mr. Darby laid his hand on Gudgeon's shoulder. ‘Mrs. Gudgeon asked me to tell you,' he said, ‘that she's waiting for you.'

‘Eh? What? Wants me, you say? Mus' be off.' Gudgeon struggled from his chair and lurched unsteadily to the door.

Mr. Darby took his vacant seat and ordered a drink.

‘Mr. Darby,' said Mr. Amberley, ‘I'm ashamed of myself. Bull-baiting is a degrading sport. But the fellow won't let me alone. He has an unquenchable longing, it appears, to force me to approve of him. Ugh!' Mr. Amberley shuddered. ‘What a swine! It's strange, isn't it, that the law should come down so heavily on murderers and thieves and
embezzlers, and yet allow a fellow like that to make a fortune out of swindling the public?'

Mr. Darby laughed in reply. He was feeling pleased at the instant success of his attempt to assist Mrs. Gudgeon: the poor woman had looked so fearfully worried. It was evident to him once more that Mr. Amberley was a character, a character who had disproportionately strong feelings about patent medicines. Undeniably Gudgeon was rather a dislikable man, but it seemed to Mr. Darby unnecessary to make such a fuss about it; and Mr. Amberley, for all that his manner was calm, did make a fuss about his feelings towards Gudgeon. And so Mr. Darby laughed and made no reply. The steward brought his drink. It was a John Collins, a drink to which, since he had made its acquaintance on the
Utopia
, Mr. Darby had become extremely partial. He raised it to his lips at once and half emptied it in a single pull.

Mr. Amberley watched him and nodded sympathetically. ‘A good drink!' he said.

‘An extremely good drink!' said Mr. Darby with a satisfied sigh.

‘Finish it and have another,' said Mr. Amberley. ‘I want to get the taste of Gudgeon out of my mouth, and a talk with you, Mr. Darby, will do it for me quicker than anything else.'

Mr. Darby accepted and they sat and talked till the smoking-room was empty.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

After Mr. Darby had retired to his cabin, undressed, got into bed, and switched out the light, a very unpleasant event took place. He was already in that vague half-dreaming, half-waking state in which idiotic and disconnected ideas float across even the sagest mind, when he was brought abruptly to himself by a small, distinct sound. He was almost sure that his door had been opened. With fluttering heart he lay motionless, all ears. The throbbing of the ship's engines was like a giant heart that shared his apprehension. After a few seconds the sound repeated itself. This time there was no doubt. It
was
his door. Still he lay motionless, listening
for all he was worth. Not the smallest sound was perceptible through the pulse of the ship, but Mr. Darby felt, felt unmistakably, that someone was in the room. Very cautiously he glided a hand to the electric-light switch and clicked it on.

For the moment he was so dazzled that he saw nothing: then, when his sight had grown as clear as it ever was without his spectacles, he saw a figure in a rich Chinese robe standing near the door. It was Lady Gissingham. Mr. Darby was definitely alarmed. He sat up in bed, staring at her with a palm extended as if to ward her off. Speechless, her feet rooted to the spot, Lady Gissingham stared back at him.

Then Mr. Darby closed his extended palm, all except one finger, the index finger. ‘There,' he said in a slightly tremulous whisper, ‘is the door!'

To his intense relief Lady Gissingham turned from him. She had accepted her dismissal. Then she turned again. ‘I beg your pardon,' she whispered, ‘I seem to have lost my way.'

Mr. Darby, sitting up in bed, pink and unspectacled, bowed, and she went out as cautiously as she had entered.

As soon as the door had closed on her, Mr. Darby skipped out of bed, went to the door, and bolted it. Then, already much calmer, he got back into bed and switched out the light. Of course her whispered excuse had not deceived him in the least. She had made it merely to save her face. That was the way to deal with a woman like that. Already in his mind his timid whisper had become a loud command: ‘There, madam, is the door!' He rehearsed an account of the event: ‘Of course I ordered her out of my room at once. “There, madam,” I said, “is the door”; and she turned and slank … I should say
slunk
… out.' A dangerous woman! An exceptionally dangerous woman! And so cunning too. Never, by so much as the stirring of an eyelid, had she shown in public the smallest awareness of him. As for her carrying-on with young Renton, Mr. Darby saw the meaning of it now, he plumbed to the depths the woman's shrewd guile. It was a blind, simply a blind to divert attention from her true object, himself. Mr. Darby, lying there in the dark,
coughed slightly. He could not help feeling a little flattered. But he was also genuinely alarmed. He would have to be extremely careful. That kind of woman would hardly give in after a single rebuff. There was an old proverb: ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.' Nowadays, no doubt, that proverb applied equally to the other sex. Yes, he would have to be extremely careful.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

When Mr. Darby awoke next morning he at first found it difficult to believe that the exciting and disturbing event of the previous night had been anything more than a dream. Except perhaps in dreams, such a thing had never occurred to him before. Well, after all, it was an experience, and, he could not prevent himself from feeling, rather a flattering experience. While brushing his hair in the mirror he instinctively examined his appearance with a new interest. He checked the impulse to get out and put on his smartest tie, for that would simply have been to court disaster.

As he stepped out on deck after breakfast he met Lady Gissingham. What a depth of guile there was in the woman: she passed him without the faintest flicker of recognition. At the other end of the deck he passed young Renton who cut him dead.

As the day advanced it became clear, as Mr. Darby had anticipated, that his attempt to snatch young Tim Renton from the clutches of Lady Gissingham had had precisely the opposite effect. He had thrown him into her arms. On the following day they were hardly seen apart except at meals when Tim formed with his mother and sister a dismal and embarrassed trio and Lady Gissingham sat opposite a scowling and taciturn husband. Mr. Darby was much upset. The fact, known only to himself, that Tim Renton was not the real object of Lady Gissingham's machinations did not lessen the unhappiness of Violet and Mrs. Renton, nor did it mean that Tim was not still running a serious risk, for it was hardly likely that Sir Alistair realized that his wife's preoccupation with the young
mm
Was only a blind. Yet
how could Mr. Darby enlighten either Tim or Violet? To tell them that he himself was the object of Lady Gissingham's unlawful desires would sound like a fantastic and boastful delusion. Modest little man that he was, he couldn't bring himself to commit such a breach of modesty. Tim, of course, would simply laugh and refuse to believe him: it would seem to him, in his youthful arrogance, too ridiculously impossible. But to Mr. Darby himself it did not seem improbable. After all, he was much closer in age to Lady Gissingham than this boy who was barely out of his teens. But what could he do about it? There was nothing, it seemed, that he could do: accordingly he did nothing. But the whole thing was very upsetting and he spent a somewhat restless and unhappy day.

That night, after he had retired to rest, Mr. Darby was again disturbed, but not, this time, by a visit from his pursuer. That would have been impossible, because his door was locked. He was disturbed on this occasion by subdued talk in the next cabin, Tim Renton's. Mr. Darby had not been asleep, though it was already midnight, when he heard young Renton's door open and then shut, just as his own had done the night before. There was a pause and then he heard young Renton's voice, sharp and apprehensive, as if he had suddenly woken. ‘Who's that?'

‘S … h! All right! It's only me.' The reply was little more than a whisper, but Mr. Darby, with a thrill of apprehension, recognized the voice.

There was a sudden snap on the partition wall, and the grid that ran along the top of the partition threw an oblong fretted pattern of light on Mr. Darby's ceiling. Young Renton had turned on the light.

‘You?' said young Renton's surprised voice. ‘What do you want?'

By straining his ears Mr. Darby could just hear their subdued voices. There was a faint laugh. ‘What do I want? Not a very gallant question, Tim. I want you, of course, my dear. I mean, I want to talk to you.'

‘But, I say,' said the boy, ‘you oughtn't to … to be here, you know.'

‘Oughtn't I? On the contrary, I feel I oughtn't to be anywhere else when you're looking as charming as you are at present. You're wise to wear blue pyjamas.'

There was silence for a moment. Then Tim Renton's voice came again. ‘Look here, Lady Gissingham, you must go. Besides, I want to go to sleep.'

Lady Gissingham laughed again: it was no more than a hiss. ‘What a good boy it is!' she whispered.

Tim's voice grew more urgent. ‘No, it's no good, Lady Gissingham: you must go. I don't want you.'

‘Oh, you don't want me, don't you? ‘Even though she spoke so softly Mr. Darby could hear the sharp change in her voice. ‘Then what have you been …'

The words broke off short and Mr. Darby in his bed started violently, for the door of young Renton's cabin opened again with a smart click. There was a long pause during which it seemed to Mr. Darby that the people next door must hear the beating of his heart above the throb of the engines.

At last a man's voice spoke. ‘I thought I should find you here.'

‘Indeed, Ally? Then it's lucky I didn't disappoint you.' Young Renton's voice broke in.

‘Why did you expect to find her here? I don't see why you should.'

Sir Alistair laughed contemptuously. ‘You must either be a liar or a very simple young man.'

‘I don't know what you mean. But
I
didn't expect her. I never asked her to come.'

‘You must have realized by this time, I should have thought,' said Gissingham, ‘that she doesn't wait for an invitation.'

‘Well, I wish you'd take her away.' Young Renton's voice and the things he said sounded frank and boyish beside the acid tones of the others.

‘You seem to have so much to say to each other that I think I'll leave you,' said Lady Gissingham. ‘You're a pretty pair, one a bore, the other a prig.'

There was a faint sound as if she were moving, then a pause as if she had turned, ‘One a common sneak, the other a cur.'

The door opened and shut, loudly this time. ‘I advise you to steer clear of my wife,' said Gissingham's voice.

‘The advice is not needed, thanks!' said young Renton, and again the door opened and shut. Nothing more disturbed the monotonous pulse of the engines, nothing more except, after a few moments, a smart click on the partition, which suddenly abolished the fretted pattern of light on Mr. Darby's ceiling.

Well, really! The way people went-on on ships. Mr. Darby felt himself surrounded by adventure: the air was thick with mysteries and dangers. Mandratia and jungles seemed almost superfluous, when an ordinary English liner, even when the sea was calm, provided you with adventures enough to supply a Sunday paper. However, it was a blessing to know that Tim Renton had shaken off that sinister woman. Mr. Darby chuckled. The boy had stood up for himself capitally against those two nasty people, and, what with him and Sir Alistair, Lady Gissingham had had a very thin time of it. ‘My wife doesn't wait for an invitation!' That was a good one. Mr. Darby's mind, like a cinema, began to unroll a fantastic drama of Lady Gissingham paying uninvited and unsuccessful visits to cabin after cabin. It faded out, leaving him more, instead of less, wakeful. He began to reflect, to reason. If she had been using Tim Renton as a blind, why had she gone to the length of paying him a visit? For a moment it seemed to Mr. Darby that his cinematographic fancy was correct, that Lady Gissingham actually went round indiscriminately. But that, of course, was absurd. The fact was, of course, that he himself had repelled her successfully; his loud, authoritative ‘There, madam, is the door!' had actually convinced her, hardened libertine as she was, that her quest was hopeless, and she had fallen back on young Renton in desperation. At that point Mr. Darby's reasoning presented him with a formidable question. What would she
do now? Would she boldly throw off her mask and pursue him openly, as she had pursued young Renton? It would be awkward, extremely awkward. It would be far more difficult and embarrassing to keep her at bay publicly, in the presence of an interested, amused, and gossiping audience, then it had been in the privacy of his cabin. The whole situation was exceedingly disquieting. He would have, now, to be even more on his guard than before.