The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (5 page)

‘No!' said Mr. Darby to the worm. ‘No, I'm bothered if she does. She shows me clear enough that she thinks me no better than a fool.'

‘And are you a fool?' asked the worm.

‘Certainly not,' replied Mr. Darby hotly. ‘I may have my feelings and I may have my ideas, but I am not a fool. Most certainly not.'

‘Do you hurry home every evening after work and does your heart leap when you open the front door?' asked the worm.

‘No!' said Mr. Darby. ‘No, it doesn't. It sinks.'

‘Well, then!' said the worm conclusively, and Mr. Darby went puffing indignantly down the Savershill Road, and as he swept down the slope of Tarras Bridge he glared aggressively at an inoffensive little man, no bigger than himself, who passed him near the post office.

As he skirted the railings of St. Thomas's Church his anger abated. The ocular assault he had made on the inoffensive little man had done him good. And yet, he reflected, how
nice she could be when she liked, when something tickled her sense of humour and her lips twisted into that half-sweet, half-acid smile and she burst out laughing; or when she recalled old memories—Do you remember this, do you remember that, Jim?—and they fell to rebuilding the past together. But these heart-warming moments came … how often? Perhaps once a month. Well—Mr. Darby's mood stiffened again—once a month was not enough. And rebellious discontent broke out again and raged in him for the full length of Newfoundland Street. Again he reviewed his recent ordeal at the breakfast table. Could anyone have been less sympathetic? True, it was his own fault, but in the special circumstances she might have overlooked that. She knew he hadn't done it deliberately. Now a wife—a real wife—would have made allowances and in any case she would have taken into account the fact that he was really very unwell. She would have made him stay in bed, pampered him a little, and sent word to the office that her husband was ill; and afterwards she would have chaffed him gently about it. But not Sarah! Not
her
! As he reflected on her treatment of him he felt lonely, unloved, unprotected. Yes, when all was said and done he led a dog's life. And every mortal day, except Sundays, he tramped down to Thirty Seven Ranger Street and shut himself up there for close on eight hours, purely and simply to keep that life going. He had denied, just now, that he was a fool, but he
was
a fool, a damned fool. Yes, Mr. Darby insisted on the word in the face of his conscience, a
damned
fool. The shop windows of Brackett Street and Ranger Street displayed their allurements in vain. James & Jennings presented wash-leather gloves, the latest hats, their most opulent fur-coats for his imagination to fill them, and he stared right through them. Edgington's set ingenious snares of port-bottles, champagne-bottles, curiously shaped bottles of rare liqueurs; Milsom's cast Comice pears, Cantelupe Melons, peaches at one and six each before his feet. Mr. Darby trampled them underfoot with as little compunction as the Juggernaut.

It was only when he had turned into the entrance of
Number Thirty Seven, nearly knocking down an errand-boy as he did so, and had sounded his daily knell of servitude on the loose tread of the third step, that Mr. Darby suddenly came to himself and climbed the long flight to the office door, the obedient, efficient, and punctual little servant of Messrs. Lamb & Marston, and, as regards the world below, a totally negligible dust-mote in the swarming population of Newchester-on-Dole. The clock of St. John's struck nine as he fished out his key-ring and opened the door. As he did so, he heard footsteps far below him. It was McNab and Pellow, the two clerks, following close upon his heels as usual.

Mr. Darby had taken the letters from the letter-box behind the door and removed his hat and coat when the footsteps reached the top landing. He hung his coat up hurriedly, for he always made a point of doing this before the clerks entered. To do so he was obliged to stand on tiptoe, and this, he felt, was a little out of keeping with his dignity as managing clerk. Not that Mr. Darby stood unduly on his dignity. He was on friendly terms with both the young men: he liked them and they liked him; in fact the general office of Messrs. Lamb & Marston was a quiet and happy family.

He opened the door of the general office and went in. Their voices in the lobby brought life to the empty office, and next moment they joined him. ‘Good morning, Mr. Darby!' ‘Good morning, Mr. Darby!' ‘Good morning both! ' replied Mr. Darby. He took the letters to his desk, opened them, glanced through them, and laid them on one or another of three separate piles. The clerks collected their T squares, set squares and other paraphernalia, lifted on to their high desks heavy drawing boards on which half-finished plans were pinned, and perching themselves on their high stools set to work.

In a few minutes Mr. Darby turned on his stool. ‘Here you are, my boy!' Pellow, a pleasant, red-faced, ginger-haired youth of nineteen, left his stool and took from Mr. Darby one of the piles of letters. It was his duty to take them to Mr. Marston's room and lay them, ready for his arrival, on his desk, and at the same time to give an eye to the fire.
Mr. Darby, when the boy's back was turned, stretched himself and passed a hand slowly across his forehead.

‘Not feeling quite the thing, Mr. Darby?' McNab enquired.

‘No, not exactly,' said Mr. Darby. Then his voice dropped to a confidential tone. ‘As a matter of fact,' he admitted, ‘I had rather a … ah … stiff night last night. A little … well … a commemoration dinner.'

‘It's a rotten feeling,' said McNab sympathetically, and his pale, bony, clean-shaven face crowned by the shock of dishevelled black hair, suggested that he had undergone similar sufferings far more frequently than Mr. Darby. ‘Now, if you'll take my tip, you'll have a small bottle of Bass at dinner-time. That'll do the trick.'

‘Bass?' said Mr. Darby, flinching a little.

‘Yes, a Bass,' McNab persisted. ‘Hair of the dog, as the saying is. You may not like the idea now, but take my word for it, Mr. Darby, you'll be as right as rain after it.'

‘Indeed!' said Mr. Darby. ‘Really now! Well, perhaps I'll try it, McNab. Anything to … ah …!' Mr. Darby made gestures indicating the removal of cobwebs from his face and hair. The door opened. Young Pellow returned and put an end to the subject.

‘A Bass!' thought Mr. Darby to himself. ‘Hair of the dog …!' he chuckled inwardly, feeling for the first time that he really was a bit of a lad. That aspect of his misadventure had not struck him before. It put a new and romantic light on it. Yes, last night, and, for that matter, this morning, he had touched hands for a few hours with all those wild, devil-may-care, swashbuckling fellows whose careers he had read of and secretly envied. He remembered being thrilled by Martin Harvey in
The Only Way.
That was a life, if you like. He recalled the fine drunken tone Martin Harvey had put into the phrase: ‘Bear with a sore head,' as he dipped a towel in a basin and tied it round his aching brow. Well he himself had been a bear with a sore head this morning. He had already forgotten that, towards Sarah at least, his tone had been rather more like that of a lamb. Yes, he would
take McNab's advice and try a Bass. In fact, he would do more, he would not go home for dinner at all. He knew that if he rang up Wilkinson's, the Baker's, at the end of Moseley Terrace, they would send a message along to Sarah. It was only a few yards. He glanced at the clock. Twenty-three minutes past nine. Mr. Marston would not arrive for seven minutes. He went over to the telephone, looked up Wilkinson's number and rang them up. ‘This is Mr. Darby, W. J. Darby of Number Seven Moseley Terrace. I want you to do me a favour. Could you send along and tell my wife I shan't be home for dinner? Yes, that's right. Some special business to see to. Yes. Thank you. Very much obliged to you.'

So much for that. What would Sarah think? Mr. Darby's blue eyes hardened behind his glasses. She could think what she liked. The prospect of spending the dinner hour in town, free and at large (it was an elastic hour: an hour and a quarter frequently), began to seem more and more attractive to him. He was already very much better and by that time he might perhaps be feeling like a bite of something to eat. He heard the outer door open and shut and Mr. Marston's familiar step go down the passage to his room. Half an hour later his bell rang. That was for Mr. Darby. Mr. Marston was Lamb & Marston complete. Lamb had faded from the office and become a sleeping partner ten years ago, and six years later had faded from the world and fallen into a still deeper sleep in Hobblesfield Churchyard twelve miles west of Newchester. Mr. Darby liked and respected his employer and regarded him, besides, as the very pattern of a gentleman. It was not only his lean, aristocratic face with the close black moustache and well brushed hair grizzled at the temples, his pleasant voice and speech which conveyed this impression not only to Mr. Darby but to all who met him: it was also the quiet fastidiousness of his clothes,—the excellent cut of his suits, his immaculate collars and cuffs, his silk handkerchiefs, his inimitable ties which, though usually dark grey or black, produced in some undiscoverable way an effect of subdued richness. He looked up from the letter he was reading as Mr. Darby, important but respectful,
closed the door and approached his desk, some papers in his hand.

‘Good morning, Mr. Darby. A little colder this morning.'

‘Good morning, sir. Yes, a slight frost, I think.'

‘Now what about these specifications for Colethorpe?'

Mr. Marston indicated the letter before him.

‘They're ready, sir. I have them here, if you'd care to look over them. I'll get Pellow to type the letter at once.'

‘Thank you!' Mr. Marston raised his eyes to the little man who offered him the papers. ‘You're not looking at all well, Darby. Anything wrong? '

Mr. Darby coloured. ‘No, no, thank you, sir; nothing to speak of. A touch of indigestion.'

‘I didn't know you suffered from indigestion.'

‘I don't, sir. This was an unusual occasion'; and, seeing that Mr. Marston looked mystified, he added, ‘a little … ah … festivity among friends, sir, at which I was perhaps … ah … a little … ah … injudicial.' Mr. Darby emphasized the felicitous word with a little bow at the third syllable.

Mr. Marston's face relaxed into a smile. The quiet, correct little managing clerk whom he had known and taken for granted for over fifteen years appeared to him suddenly in a new aspect. The Mr. Darby he knew was so round, so complete both in appearance and character that he had forgotten long since that there must exist a Darby apart from the office; that, when office hours were over, his managing clerk did not, like the office desks and chairs and stools and shelves, yield to the darkness, the silence, and the dust, till roused and freshened by the caretaker in the morning; that, after hours, Mr. Darby stepped out into his own particular sphere in the world outside, indulged in a home life and all sorts of activities of which he, Marston, knew nothing, threw off the precise, correct deferential manner which he had ignorantly supposed to be the total Darby, and plunged, it seemed, into wholly unsuspected convivialities. For a brief second, a fleeting wraith of a transformed Darby, a wild-eyed, empurpled, high-stepping Darby, trolling a comic song
and brandishing a tumbler flitted through Mr. Marston's imagination. It was this that had caused him to smile.

‘Ah,' he said, ‘I understand. Well, we can't always stand on our dignity, can we, Darby? We have to let ourselves go sometimes. No doubt it will pass off in the course of the day.'

Mr. Darby, still a little red, smiled back at him. ‘I am glad to say it seems to be passing off already, sir.'

Standing by Mr. Marston's chair he bent over the desk, like a cock-robin eyeing a worm, and began to run through the specification with him.

So the morning progressed, and so did Mr. Darby's convalescence. He did not, even at noon, feel that he could face a normal dinner, the kind of dinner that would have confronted him if he had gone home; but he did feel, definitely, that he had now regained the upper hand and that his disorder was well in control. At dinner-time he would take McNab's advice and try the Bass. It would be a blessing to feel, as McNab assured him he would feel, as right as rain again.

At half-past twelve, with a delightful sense of novelty and adventure, he left the office and descended the stairs. But, halfway down, a horrible doubt took hold of him. Would Sarah have believed his plea of ‘ special business,' or would she at once have realized that he was playing truant and … well, taken steps accordingly? In other words, was she at this moment lying in wait for him outside the door of Number Thirty Seven? This, it cannot be denied, seemed to Mr. Darby extremely likely. It was, besides, extremely disquieting. However there was nothing for it: if she was there he would have to face her. He was alarmed, for he was in no state to-day to deal with awkward situations, but he was also indignant. He was indignant, righteously indignant, at her doubting his word. It was, in his eyes, no excuse for her that his word in this case was gravely open to doubt, that, in short it was a plain uncompromising lie; for even the most liberal interpretation could not bring the drinking of a Bass under the category of ‘business.' Mr. Darby was now nearing the hall. The bottom step but three clanked beneath his heel.
Even if she
were
waiting for him, caution might elude her, for she could hardly stand stock still against the doorpost, she would surely have to walk up and down. If he could watch her, unseen, till she was nearing the end of her beat with her back turned, he might make a successful bolt for it. And so, as he reached the doorway, Mr. Darby halted and then, cautiously protruding no more than his nose and spectacles into the street, he glanced rapidly right and left. Not a sign of her. He was gathering himself for a spring when a tall female figure standing on the opposite side of the street caught his eye. A violent shock travelled from his knees to his feet, but with the lightning resourcefulness of a soldier in peril, his glance had left her as soon as it had lighted on her. Could it be
her
? He critically examined the instantaneous photograph printed on his mind. It was her coat, or very like it, a long brown coat with fur round the bottom. Without moving his head he turned his eyes and glanced at her furtively. The woman was watching him, astonished no doubt by his strange behaviour; but, thank God, she was not Sarah. A warm, luxurious wave of relief broke over him. But he did not lose his head. The fact that this woman was not Sarah did not prove that Sarah was not lurking close at hand. And so, without wasting more time Mr. Darby projected himself suddenly from the doorway of Thirty Seven, clean across Ranger Street, along the railings of St. John's Church, to the
Chronicle
office; then sharp right along the narrow passage, then left, and so towards the Cathedral. He had made, instinctively, for the direction of Cliff Street and the Quayside, as if to escape not merely from Ranger Street and Sarah, but from England itself, and if only his wind had held and his spectacles remained unfogged he might (who knows?) have done the whole journey from Thirty Seven to the Quayside and straight on board the nearest ship in a single spurt. In less then ten minutes he might have been on his way for the Equator. But all of us, after forty or so, have our weaknesses. Mr. Darby's heart was going like a gas engine, he was breathless, he had positively no breath left, his spectacles were dim with steam. He
slackened speed, pulled up short, and removing his spectacles began to polish them with his pocket-handkerchief. Poised upon its four flying buttresses, the lantern of the Cathedral tower surveyed him over the tops of the houses calmly and a little superciliously. Mr. Darby disregarded it: he was busy. But, unspectacled as he was, he would have disregarded it in any case, for the world, in such conditions, was a vague and foggy place.