The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (44 page)

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Next morning Mr. Darby ordered Punnett to get out his oldest suit, chose a glaringly inappropriate tie which he tied carelessly, and, in short, deliberately made the worst of himself. He was resolved on the strictest discretion, even at the expense of personal dignity.

Mr. Darby, arms akimbo, was leaning idly against the rail: for the last half-hour he had been watching the gradual approach of Port Said, ‘a town,' Mr. Amberley had told him, ‘which unites the typical beastlinesses of east and west.' From what he saw of it now he was inclined to think that Mr. Amberley, when allowances had been made for his habitual exaggeration, was not far wrong. He was disgusted to observe on the sordid houses and warehouses of the front the huge familiar English advertisements which, he had supposed, he had left hundreds and hundreds of miles behind him. The
Utopia
had now come to a standstill, and a tender like a clumsy sprawling broad-bellied beetle had crawled out to meet her and now lay nestling under her huge side, belching out coils of dirty brown smoke. Mr. Darby peered down into her to see who was leaving the ship. A slow stream of passengers, some of whom he knew by sight, others—the majority—totally unknown, was dribbling sluggishly on to the tender. Suddenly, with a start of surprise, he recognized a slim blue figure, the figure of a girl. It was Violet Renton. She was following her mother on to the tender and behind her came Tim. They carried suitcases, there were coats over their arms. They were going, then; leaving the
Utopia?
He hadn't known they were travelling no further than Port Said. Mr. Darby felt suddenly melancholy, and not only melancholy but hurt. They hadn't, apparently, thought it worth while to say goodbye to him. Tim perhaps was still angry with him, despite the fact that he had proved to be right about Lady Gissingham; but Violet at least, after their friendly talks, might, he thought, have bidden him goodbye. He saw them put their bags down on the crowded deck and, standing there in a little group, turn to look up at the
Utopia.
They were remarking, Mr. Darby felt sure, upon how huge she looked from below. Then Tim recognized him. Mr. Darby waved a hand, Tim smiled, waved back and turned to his sister. Then Violet and her mother looked up and Violet waved to him. They lowered their heads and turned away, and Mr. Darby saw the two young people talking and laughing. With a pang he felt that they were laughing at him. Well, after all, they were young, and no doubt they thought him a tiresome old man. He sighed and turned his eyes from them to other arrivals on the tender. Suddenly his attention was caught by a tall, grey-suited young man. Surely it couldn't be …? But it
was
; yes, it was Sir Alistair Gissingham. He carried a coat, a rug, and a stick, and he was alone.

Mr. Darby was gazing down, enthralled by this astonishing development in the Gissingham drama, when a hand tapped him on the shoulder. It was Mr. Amberley. ‘Come on shore, my dear Darby. We have a couple of hours, and you ought not to miss the opportunity of visiting one of the squalidest outposts of our European civilization. But we must hurry: the tender will be off in a minute.'

‘Right!' said Mr. Darby, all agog. ‘I think I'll do as I am. I'll come at once.'

They hurried along decks and down companion-ladders and caught the tender by the skin of their teeth. It was packed, and Mr. Darby, lost in a tall grove of human bodies, could see nothing of the Rentons or Sir Alistair, but when he turned and gazed up at the monstrous
Utopia
towering sheer above them his eye at once detected Lady Gissingham, faultless, self-possessed, coldly and aloofly amused, looking down upon them. As he looked, she made a casual, faintly-mocking gesture of farewell with her left hand. Not to him. No, thank God, not to him. But to whom? Was it to her husband or to Tim Renton? Again Mr. Darby searched the crowd on the tender, but in vain. He saw nothing but the backs, shoulders, heads fencing him in, obscuring his view.

‘Have you noticed,' he said,
sotto voce,
to Mr. Amberley, ‘that Sir Alistair Gissingham has left the ship?'

‘Left the ship?' said Mr. Amberley, amazed. ‘But they were going to Colombo. And where's our Baroness?'

‘On board,' said Mr. Darby. ‘You'll see her if you look. They had something of what I should call an alternation a night or two ago which I accidentally overheard. She said, sarcastically of course, that if he was tired of the … ah … honeymoon he'd better get off at the next stop.'

‘And he's done so, taken her at her word. Well done, Sir Alistair. I didn't think he had it in him. A very pretty piece of repartee; not so telling perhaps, as poor Bluthner's, but much less trying to himself. But do look at the sea front of our Europe in Africa, Darby. Did you ever see anything so fascinatingly disgusting? Pure Clacton, isn't it, with all the dear familiar advertisements.'

They visited the shops; tried Turkish cigarettes and bought some, inspected ostrich-feathers of which Mr. Darby bought a monstrous blue one for Sarah, drove round the town through squalid streets, past patches of waste ground strewn with garbage and then back to the hotel in the main street, where they sat in the lounge and had drinks. A dirty little Arab boy ran up to them, knelt before their chairs, conjured two newly-hatched chickens out of empty air, and was promptly turned out by a waiter.

‘But how did he do it?' said Mr. Darby, astounded.

Mr. Amberley shook his head. ‘I have no idea, my dear Darby. But, you may be sure, by no honest means.'

They walked back to the tender. ‘A curiously beastly hole, isn't it, Darby?'

Mr. Darby nodded. ‘To be shaw,' he said. ‘A place I should call more curious than beautiful.'

Across the intervening water, reclining superbly upon the blue of sea and sky, the
Utopia,
with her scarlet funnels, lay serenely awaiting them. And on her, also awaiting them, as Mr. Darby remembered with a sudden sting of apprehension, was Lady Gissingham.

‘You have seen the sink, Darby,' said Mr. Amberley as they got on board the tender. ‘We shall now, mere offscourings of Europe that we are, go down the drain.'

‘The … ah … drain?' Mr. Darby raised enquiring spectacles to his friend's face.

‘The Suez Canal. The name is ominously suggestive.'

• • • • • • • •,

When Mr. Darby woke next morning Punnett informed him that he was in the Red Sea. It was immediately apparent to him that the Red Sea was a very disagreeable place. The weather was hot and windy, the
Utopia
lurched unpleasantly, and the word perspiration began to take on for Mr. Darby a new and terrible meaning. ‘Literally one never stops,' he said to Mr. Amberley, mopping a streaming face with a large silk handkerchief. The stifling heat and the unsteadiness of the ship made him disinclined to do anything but sit in the lounge or under the awning on the shady side of the deck. The passengers became moody and silent. The great Gudgeon, an unappetizing spectacle, purpler and more irritable than ever, consoled himself with enormous whiskies. Mr. Darby, sipping a John Collins and blessing its inspired namesake, felt that the conditions, despite their extreme unpleasantness, had their advantages, for the prevailing exhaustion could hardly fail to render the redoubtable Lady Gissingham less enterprising. In fact he saw nothing of her except at meals when she occupied a table to herself, a table that displayed to her impassive regard a vacant chair in memory of the vanished Sir Alistair. Mr. Darby as he glanced at her cautiously from time to time from the table which, ever since the day they had visited Toulon, he had shared with Mr. Amberley, found himself wondering what she could be feeling and thinking: but her face told him nothing and his imagination told him no more than her face.

But though Lady Gissingham's enterprise was probably dormant, it would have been the greatest rashness, Mr. Darby knew, to relax his precautions, and when Punnett, in view of the stifling heat, advised him to keep his cabin door ajar at night, on the hook provided for the purpose, Mr. Darby wisely refrained.

‘No, Punnett!' he said. ‘No! Heat or no heat, I prefer to shut and bolt it.' He hesitated for a moment and then added: ‘Not but what I wouldn't prefer to keep it ajar; but, as I need hardly remind
you
who are accustomed to travel by sea, one has to be extremely careful. Strange things happen on ships. I may tell you, in strictest confidence, Punnett, that a lady thought fit to enter my cabin some nights ago. Of course I sent her about her business pretty quick; but I have reason, good reason, to think that she may try again, and I prefer to … ah … well … meet her half way.'

A faint surprise appeared in Punnett's face, and seeing that he might have given a wrong impression, Mr. Darby hastened to add: ‘By locking the door, I mean, Punnett.'

‘Quite so, sir!' said Punnett. ‘I remember that Professor Harrington had a good deal of trouble with a lady as we were returning from Mandratia, sir. A very bare-faced person, she was.'

‘Indeed, now!' said Mr. Darby.

‘Yes, sir. Professor Harrington, as I've told you, sir, was a very striking-looking gentleman, and we had a lot of trouble at one time or another.'

‘I hope, Punnett,' said Mr. Darby, ‘that if any lady on this ship should … ah … apply to you …'

Punnett slightly inclined his head. ‘Leave her to me, sir. I thoroughly understand these cases.'

‘Whether it can be the … ah … the sea air,' said Mr. Darby ruminatively, ‘or possibly … ah …!'

‘It's having so little occupation,' Punnett replied with authority. ‘Ladies soon get tired of deck-quoits. But, if I might advise, sir, it's better not to keep out of their way too much. That only leads them on. By making yourself pleasant, sir, and at the same time showing them the kind of gentleman you are, you make it more difficult for them to take liberties.'

‘Indeed, now, Punnett!' said Mr. Darby, much struck. ‘That's very interesting, very interesting indeed, very what I should call … ah … pipsicological. I must see if I can't
… ah …! At the same time … ah …! However, I'll think over your advice. I trust,' he said as he trotted to the door on a downward lurch of the ship, ‘that you yourself have not been … ah … molested?'

Punnett shook his head sadly. ‘The second-class, sir, is no better than the first.'

With a gait into which the Red Sea unjustly insinuated an air of inebriety Mr. Darby made for the smoking-room where he dropped, perspiring profusely, into a chair. How far away now seemed Europe, England, and home; the gentle, temperate days and nights, the varied and soothing colours, the pleasant habitableness of the Mediterranean. On the wall opposite him a design both decorative and useful on a soft blue ground displayed the
Utopia's
course, and gazing at it now, as he lay back in his chair, he felt how true had been Mr. Amberley's remark. From the pleasant, airy basin of the Mediterranean they had been sucked into the narrow drain of the Suez Canal and were now being rolled along the seething and stifling sewer of this abominable Red Sea. What other system of sewers awaited them? When and where, if ever, would they emerge, the long drain over, into the fresh air? Not, it was to be feared, in the China Seas, for those ominous parts were, he had learned from Punnett, infested by typhoons. Would the seas that washed the shores of Eutyca and the Mandratic Peninsula be as hot and dusty and restless as this? Mr. Darby was too ignorant and too tired to guess. Slowly his spectacles grew dim, unoccupied. He fell asleep.

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He was roused by a noise which his scattered wits could not at first diagnose, a strange growling, barking noise which filled him with alarm. Was it a dog-fight? But he had seen no dogs on the
Utopia.
He opened his eyes and discovered Mr. Amberley in the chair next him. But Mr. Amberley was not making the noise: he sat silent, a mildly cynical, mildly disgusted smile on his face, watching something. Mr. Darby roused himself and turned his eyes in the direction of Mr. Amberley's gaze.
At a table three yards away from them sat two men, one of them the man with a face like a lawyer's whom Mr. Darby had seen dancing with Lady Gissingham; and at the next table, but leaning away from it towards these two, sat the great Gudgeon with his invariable double whisky. It was from Gudgeon that the noise was proceeding. Mr. Darby began to hear words instead of barks. ‘Damned nonsensical rot!' Gudgeon was shouting. ‘It's fools like you, fools that push their noses into what doesn't concern them, that lead them on. If they ask for more pay, give'em less, that's what I say; and if that doesn't bring them to their senses, turn machine-guns on'em. It makes me sick, absolutely
sick…
.' He beat the table with his hand till his double whisky danced … to hear all the bloody …!' He gasped: again words were lost in incoherent noises: Gudgeon was struggling with a violent fit of coughing. The cough shook him and belaboured him like a storm wrestling with a tree. His face grew a darker purple, his eyes bulged, his lips shuddered as he gasped for breath. Conversation died in the smoking-room: everyone, shocked and coldly curious, was watching the noisy struggle of the distorted crimson face and convulsively heaving shoulders. By slow degrees the struggle died down, the cough coughed itself out, leaving Gudgeon, a hideous spectacle, glowering stupidly at the two men. Mr. Darby heard a creak behind him. He turned his head and saw poor, repellent Mrs. Gudgeon holding ajar one half of the swing-doors and gazing imploringly at Gudgeon. But Gudgeon did not see her. ‘I must tell him,' thought Mr. Darby, ‘I must tell him his wife wants him.' But just as he was about to get up and do so there fell into the silence the cold, calm, dry voice of the man with the lawyer's face.