The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (56 page)

‘Oh … well … ah … to the public, to be shaw! To sosarty in general!' His tone changed: it became gentle, appealing. ‘You wouldn't mind
now
, would you, Sarah, spending part of our time in London?'

Mr. Darby's
now
contained volumes. It alluded discreetly to their original separation; it hinted at the immense changes wrought in each of them by their wonderful and appalling adventures; it stressed, with a tinge of something not far from humility, the impossibility of anything like disagreement between them in their present happy state of reunion. It was, indeed, a word, as Mr. Darby had used it, of such potency, such complex allusiveness, that it provided the happiest auguries for his success as a lecturer.

Sarah felt its force and at once reacted to it. ‘I'll live wherever you like, Jim,' she replied heartily, ‘short of going back to the Mandratic Peninsula.'

Mr. Darby's spectacles flooded her with sunshine. ‘Well,' he said, ‘we might put up at the Balmoral and look about us;—Belgravia, Mayfair, and so on.'

But when they had passed Gibraltar (‘One of our national bulwarks, Sarah!') and the Bay was already safely behind them; when they had steamed up the Channel and entered the mouth of the Thames, the Thames that was so unmistakably England—England in the small smoke-grimed huddled houses on its shores, England in its dreary mud-flats, England in the very quality and touch of its draughty air; Mr. Darby's immediate schemes for Mayfair and Belgravia suddenly and surprisingly collapsed.

‘Sarah,' he said to his wife who leaned beside him on the rail, ‘first of all we must go home.'

Sarah's heart leapt. ‘What, to Number Seven, Jim?'

‘Yes,' said Mr. Darby, ‘to Number Seven.'

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

They did not disembark till close on noon and it was two o'clock when the boat-train steamed into St. Pancras. The moment was a solemn one. Throughout the journey from Tilbury Mr. Darby had not spoken a word: it was no time
for talk even of the most serious description. Not that there were any doubts in his mind about the completeness of London's pardon. He was not one to hold back or make reservations on such an occasion: his was an open and unclouded nature. His silence was due solely to the depth of his feelings and his proper sense of the gravity and of the historical quality of the occasion; and the privileged onlookers who, when the train drew up in the station, noted the exuberance with which he sprang from the train to the platform, can have had little doubt of the cordiality and thoroughness of his forgiveness, as, with no false bashfulness, he took London to his heart. And with a proper gratitude, a proper humility, London responded. The busy crowds that climbed Ludgate Hill noticed a becoming pinkness suffuse the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral; the Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Permanent Under-secretaries, M.P.'s and Civil Servants who happened at the moment to be crossing Parliament Square or hurrying south-westward along Parliament Street detected an unusually passionate quality in the tone of Big Ben; the buses as they plied their whirling dance round Trafalgar Square found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly (for the afternoon was overcast) inundated in sunshine; and members of the Stock Exchange stood open-mouthed at an exultant leap in prices unprecedented in the history of finance.

The occasion was as brief as it was pregnant, for the fact was that time was pressing. Only by sacrificing some of his customary dignity did Mr. Darby, accompanied by Sarah and a host of bags and trunks, catch the afternoon train north at King's Cross.

When they reached Newchester it was already dark, so that the ex-King of Mandras's return to his native town was incognito. It was better thus, for Mr. Darby was able, as the train swung on to the Redvale Bridge, to enjoy something of those exquisite sensations with which a mother looks down on her sleeping child. For there below him, utterly unconscious of his benign presence, lay the Quayside and the Valley of the Dole, starred by a thousand twinkling lights.
In the darkness that divided those yellow sparks, a rarer sprinkling of rubies and emeralds told of the unseen river and the ships; and even now, at the thought of the ships, Mr. Darby's heart thrilled. Despite long nights of hideous instability, days of headlong flight from typhoons, despite the appalling plunge overboard and the damp and precarious trip on a bare life-buoy, the old excitement, the old spirit of adventure was still there, ready to flame up, unquenched, at the old unforgettable summons.

They had dined in the train. Tired-out by the emotions of the day they went to bed almost as soon as they reached Number Seven Moseley Terrace.

It has been remarked earlier in Mr. Darby's history that a millionaire is a force. He is also a victim. The very morning after Mr. Darby's return, when any ordinary man would have been able to sleep late and then rise to the quiet and uninterrupted enjoyment of his long-lost home, urgent business called him to town. He obeyed the obligation cheerfully, for Mr. Darby was not one to fly in the face of duty. He even announced his intention of being out for lunch, for it seemed to him impossible that he would be able to despatch all the urgent business upon which he was bent before the afternoon was well advanced. Nor did Sarah stand in his way. She was anxious, in fact, to get the house to herself and with the help of Mrs. Bricketts to give it such a scrubbing and a dusting as it had not had for many a month. It was not only because the house needed it, it was also, and perhaps chiefly, because
she
needed it. At the first glimpse of her home, body and soul had cried out for a taste of good hard physical labour, and the happy chance that Jim thought it necessary to bustle off to town enabled her to satisfy her craving. Mr. Darby was barely out of the front-door when she clapped down a pail of water, a scrubbing brush, and a large cube of soap on the oil-cloth of the back passage and, with a deep sigh of thankfulness and sleeves rolled to the elbows, fell on her knees.

Meanwhile the ex-King of Mandras moved blandly and without haste down Moseley Terrace and proceeded by a series of by-streets to Stedman's, the ironmonger's. Before publicly revealing himself he was going to look in on George.

With the precision of one accustomed to command he
pushed open the shop-door. The shop-bell announced him with a barbaric clang, and in response to the clang there occurred behind the banks of pots and pans, stoves and parrotcages, a comprehensive, vague movement. Next moment George Stedman, large, square and grey-headed, stood behind the counter. He stared, swelled, it seemed, to twice his usual size, and held out a huge paw. ‘God bless us all,' he boomed, and the pots and pans, the stoves and parrot-cages hummed in unison, God bless us all, if it isn't old Jim, back from the bottom of the sea.'

With great dignity Mr. Darby took the proffered hand, and was shaken so cordially, so powerfully that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he kept his footing.

‘And how are you, Jim?' asked George.

‘As well as ever, thank you, George,' Mr. Darby replied; ‘and so, I … ah … observe, are you.'

‘And Mrs. D.?'

‘The same,' said Mr. Darby.

‘We'd given you up, you know, Jim,' said Stedman, oh absolutely. We'd have ordered a wreath if we'd known where to send it to; and when we heard Mrs. D. was going after you, we gave her up into the bargain. “If anyone can bring him back, Sarah will,” my missus said. “True,” I said to her; “but she won't, Jane. You mark my words, she won't! There's some things not even Mrs. D.can do.” Well, seemingly I was wrong, Jim. But I don't mind saying, when we got your cablegram from Sydney, you could have knocked me down with a half-inch nail. The
Chronicle
put you down for dead, you know. It treated you very handsome, Jim; a matter of nearly half a column.'

‘Ah, indeed! To be shaw!' said Mr. Darby with outward indifference, longing, but not liking, to ask George if he had cut out and kept the notice.

‘Well,' pursued Stedman,'and how have you been amusing yourself all this time?'

‘Oh, ruling, mostly,' Mr. Darby replied nonchalantly.

Stedman knit his brow. ‘Ruling, Jim?'

‘Yes,' said Mr. Darby, ruling the … ah … Kingdom
of Mandras. An interesting job, George; but what I should call difficult, very difficult at times.'

Stedman spread his hands on the counter and leaned forward. ‘Now what's the joke, Jim? What are you getting at?'

Mr. Darby's spectacles were as serious as it is possible for spectacles to be.' There's no joke, George. You see before you the King, or I
should
say the ex-King of Mandras.'

‘If we've got royalty in the shop,' replied George, ‘I'd better call the missus.'

But just as he opened his mouth to do so, two customers entered. ‘Bring her round to supper to-night, George,' said Mr. Darby in an undertone, ‘and we'll tell you all about it.'

Stedman nodded, and Mr. Darby made a curt gesture of farewell. ‘Meanwhile …!' he said; and with the same leisurely dignity with which he had entered, he stepped into the Osbert Road and revealed himself to an astonished Savershill.

Instantly the Osbert Road trams, aware of the presence of royalty, began to hurtle up and down the road with the speed and the hum of aeroplanes, while in the railway-cutting electric trains and steam trains raced them in wild and jubilant disorder. The rooks that wove their customary circles round the spire of the Wesleyan Chapel, detecting far below them the small, familiar and absurdly foreshortened little figure of their fellow-townsman, broke into delighted cries. ‘Darby!' they crowed. ‘Darby! Darby! Darby!' But the effect on Mr. Darby of these ovations was curious. At the first sound of them he stood still, bewildered and, it appeared, appalled. He listened, blinked, and listened again as though he could not believe his ears. For the rooks had taken him off his guard and with his thoughts on his far-away Kingdom, and for a few terrible seconds those hoarse cries of ‘Darby' had sounded so exactly like certain other shouts that his mind had reeled and his heart stood still, while his appalled sense perceived again the hoarse and ominous cries that had greeted his coronation. ‘Daabee! Daabee Taan! Aboo Daabee Taan!' It was a matter of a few seconds only. In a
moment he had come to himself and, waving a friendly acknowledgment to the rooks, was continuing his bland progress down Osbert Road.

But though Savershill itself and the dumb, instinctive creatures, the rooks and sparrows, the dogs and cats, that haunted it, recognized and paid their homage to the ex-King; the inhabitants of Savershill and Newchester, the blind, obtuse human beings, streamed past him totally unconscious of the true majesty of the plump figure that moved in their midst; and Mr. Darby, generously unresentful, amused himself by trying to imagine that he was once more a humble managing clerk on his way to the office. But the effort failed: he could not even revert to the sensations of a mere millionaire. The habit of sovereignty, the load of rich and multifarious experience that he carried about him tethered even an imagination so agile and strong-winged as his. Though no longer a king in fact, the august ceremony of coronation had left him a king in spirit, and it was from the summit of Umfo that he surveyed Savershill, the Osbert Road, and the long Savershill Road, Tarras Bridge, and the old familiar streets of Newchester. And here was Thomas Cook's, in spite of whose obstructiveness he had plunged into the very heart of the Jungle; and here, just round the corner in Brackett Street, was Edgington's, the wine-merchant's, into whose doorway Mr. Darby immediately vanished, for he and Sarah had already arranged that the Stedmans and the Cribbs were to be asked to supper.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

Business is always deceptive. Mr. Darby, after paying long and important calls on Messrs. Chepstow & Bradfield, his solicitors, and on his Bank Manager, heard to his amazement the cathedral-clock strike twelve. Surely the explanation must be that the cathedral clock, observing Newchester's illustrious son emerging from his bank, could not refrain from striking the maximum permitted by its mechanism, regardless of Greenwich and the sun? But no; for the clock on the station-porch, which presently moved into distant
view, corroborated the Cathedral. How delightful! For here he was, at large, with four hours at his disposal. In that case he might well attend to-day to two little matters which had occupied his mind ever since he had landed in England. But there would be time enough for them in the afternoon. Now —and a gentle excitement, a delightful glow awoke somewhere inside him at the mere thought—now he would run down and have a look at the Quayside and perhaps take a glass of something at The Schooner. Accordingly he retraced his steps, passed the Cathedral, and soon he was descending the steep declivity of Cliff Street. It was delightful to be back among the old scenes again. Then he sighed. If only Miss Sunningdale were still at The Schooner he would have lunched there and had a little quiet talk. Yes, an … ah … attractive and very superior woman, with a pleasant, self-possessed manner of her own. You could talk of your Lady Savershills and your Lady Gissinghams: she was as distinguished, in her way, as any of them. As he dropped down the slope a draughty air blew up from the unseen river, redolent for Mr. Darby of a hundred rich emotions,— the old romantic longing for foreign lands and strange adventures, the lurking fear that time was passing and these things slipping further and further out of his reach, the sense of frustration and failure, the burden of life's deadly routine, and now, superimposed on all these and robbing them of their power any longer to torture him, the new, satisfied sense of ambition fulfilled, of memories more vivid, more wonderful, more deliciously terrible than anything he had imagined in the old days. He turned the corner at the bottom of the slope and the old scene broke upon him.