The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (8 page)

Mr. Darby ate and drank with gusto: the sandwiches were as excellent as before, the Bass had the same stimulating tang. Miss Sunningdale flitted to and fro, distributing beers, stouts, ports, whiskies, affable smiles and lofty disdain in accordance with the needs and deserts of the customers. Then she turned to the shelves behind her. ‘A smart figure!' mused Mr. Darby as she stood with arms raised reaching for a couple of bottles. As she turned with the bottles in her hands his eyes met hers and he opened his mouth to speak. But the words stuck in his throat, for a very disagreeable thing occurred. Framed in the space left by the two bottles he had detected a round, pink, spectacled face crowned by a bowler hat. The face itself was familiar enough: it was its expression, an expression at once timid, ingratiating and
distressingly fatuous, that had frozen his speech. For a moment he felt himself embarrassed, horribly ashamed. But next minute he had pulled himself together, averted his eyes from the lamentable image, cleared his throat, and remarked: ‘We keep you busy here, Miss Sunningdale.'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘it's pretty crowded most days from half past eleven to about two. Still, it doesn't worry
me.
It's a matter of knack, you know: keeping your head and not getting fussed. I'm an old hand, you see. Been at it ten years now.'

‘Ten years! Is it possible?' said Mr. Darby gallantly, looking up from his plate over the tops of his spectacles.

She smiled an arch, lustrous smile. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘sad but true. Do you come from these parts yourself?'

‘Yes,' replied Mr. Darby, ‘I live in Savershill.'

‘Dear me now. My first job was at The Punchbowl in Savershill Road. You know it, I suppose?'

‘I know the … ah … the exterior,' said Mr. Darby. He was saved from confessing that he had never been inside—and he would have been ashamed to have to confess it to Miss Sunningdale—by her being called to the other end of the bar. Except to ask for another Bass and another sandwich he had no further opportunity for conversation.

Already the crowd at the bar was thinning. Mr. Darby, having despatched his second helping, dusted the crumbs from his coat, raised his hat and smiled at Miss Sunningdale who smiled graciously from the far end of the bar, and went out.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

No sooner had Mr. Darby left The Schooner than the door swung open and admitted a tall, rather massive woman, who stood for a moment to take in the scene, and then advanced towards the bar. Miss Sunningdale regarded her with surprise: for Miss Sunningdale had considerable experience of the women who frequent pubs and she saw at once that this was not one of them. It was obvious that she was a very superior person, a person of considerable dignity and perfect
self-possession. Her clothes, Miss Sunningdale noted, were quiet but good. She chose a part of the bar which was away from the small group of drinkers that still remained and Miss Sunningdale went to her at once, for this was a person, she felt, who deserved politeness. She liked the square, stern, handsome face.

‘Excuse me troubling you,' said the lady in an undertone, ‘but did you particularly notice the gentleman who went out just now?'

‘Small, clean-shaven, spectacles, blue eyes?' asked Miss Sunningdale.

‘That's him,' said the lady. ‘He's my husband, and I'd be much obliged if you could tell me what he had.'

Miss Sunningdale hesitated. She did not quite feel that she ought to tell tales about the absurd little man. He was pleasant and chatty and perfectly harmless. She liked him. At the same time she liked this large, dignified, straightforward woman: she liked her manner of speaking and the direct, unsecretive way she had asked her question. She decided to tell.

‘He began with a Bass and a ham and a beef sandwich, and then he had another Bass and another ham sandwich,' she said.

‘Hm!' said the lady grimly. ‘That explains it.' She glanced at Miss Sunningdale. She was inclined to be critical of women of flamboyant appearance, but in the case of Miss Sunningdale she saw through the flamboyancy to a kindred spirit. Yes, she was the right sort, a sensible woman at bottom, a woman who would understand. ‘The fact is,' she said confidentially, ‘he wants watching. Not in the matter of drink, I don't mean,' she hastened to explain: ‘he's always been thoroughly steady. But he's got to have proper meals. Now he's been thoroughly out of sorts lately, and I've been wondering why: but now I know. He generally comes home, you see, and has a good hot dinner, and for a man accustomed to a hot dinner three sandwiches isn't enough. But if I were to ask him what sort of a dinner he had had in town, do you think he'd tell me? “Sarah made a face indicating
the hopelessness of the undertaking. ‘No, you've got to manage him artfully,' she said. ‘He's just like a child!'

‘Most of them are,' said Miss Sunningdale. ‘Won't you take something, madam?'

Sarah shook her head.

‘I've got some quite decent sherry,' said Miss Sunningdale raising her golden eyebrows in friendly persuasion.

Sarah smiled. ‘Well,' she said, ‘if you'll have one too.'

Miss Sunningdale went and filled two glasses. She was unable to prevent Sarah from paying for them. ‘Yes,' she said, resuming the theme they had started, ‘most of them are little better than kids. Of course in places like this you see all sorts and kinds, but they're all much the same in the end. If you was to come in here, or into any public for that matter, and watch them for an hour or two, well, I assure you, you'd be surprised. Of course there's some, like your husband, who just come in for a lunch and go when they've had it: but most of them comes in twos and threes and plants themselves here talking and drinking, drinking and talking—small Scotch and Splash Miss! Another Bass, Miss!—and so on, one after another till you'd think they'd be sick. And it's not as if they were thirsty: thirst's got nothing to do with it. It's just a … well, a kind of formality, as you might say. And the talk! You never
heard
! And all of them as serious and important as they can be; and the more they drink the more important they get. You'd think every one of them was the Prime Minister himself. And yet if you listen for a minute, it's all just nonsense.'

Sarah laughed with grim amusement. ‘O, don't I know it,' she said. ‘They love to hear themselves talking. For instance, there's nothing my husband likes better then getting hold of a big word. If only he can get hold of a nice big word he thinks he's said something worth saying. And the things he says sometimes! Now only the other evening—we were speaking of his job—he said to me, as serious as can be, if you please: “The business that stands still,” he said, “goes back.” He hadn't an idea, you know, that he was talking nonsense.'

Sarah finished her sherry. ‘Well, I'm very much obliged to you,' she said. ‘Now I shall know what to do. He'll have to have a hot supper when he doesn't come home to dinner, that's all.' She held out her hand to Miss Sunningdale and they smiled at one another.

‘Good afternoon,' said Sarah.

‘Good afternoon, madam,' said Miss Sunningdale, and she watched the large, stately figure till the door swung-to behind it.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

Meanwhile Mr. Darby, bland, important, and sublimely unconscious that his existence was being ordered by anyone but Providence and himself, had made his customary inspection of the shipping, given a few passing thoughts to Vesuvius, the Equator, and the Jungle, and pursued his way up Cliff Street towards the office. He was contented and happy, but, even while enjoying this state, he knew that it was merely a temporary condition due to his visit to The Schooner and that his new disillusionment was lurking in the background, waiting a convenient moment to lay hold of him again. That was not a pleasant thought, but neither was it an unbearable thought, for he was no longer without hope, not the old baseless hope in which he had formerly reposed so blindly, but a practical and reasonable hope based on a B Account which, if luck favoured him at Christmastime, would soon be a tangible reality. With this in mind and with his Friday contentment upon him, Mr. Darby passed the Cathedral with all his old portly alertness, pausing before the window of Brown & Philipson to consider a display of electric light fittings, and, further down the street, before that of Harrington & Co., to inspect, and then in imagination to order, a cedar-wood cigar cabinet filled with an attractive selection of cigars. ‘Enter it to my account, please,' he said as he turned along the railings of St. John's Churchyard. A minute later the third step of Number Thirty Seven Ranger Street registered his return to the office.

The days crept on towards Christmas and Sarah noticed something of an improvement in Mr. Darby's condition. The reason was, of course, that he was no longer being starved, for every Friday evening he returned home to find an ample hot supper awaiting him. And it was obvious that he needed it, for he partook of it very heartily. On the first occasion he did not remark upon it, though she noticed that his spectacles shone with pleasure, but when a hot supper greeted him again on the following Friday, he rubbed his hands together and remarked: ‘What, a hot supper again? Well, I must say, Sarah, this is a treat.' They both ate with relish (for Sarah too lunched lightly at midday on Fridays: there was no good making a hot dinner for herself alone) and in the state of well-being that the satisfying of a good appetite produces they chatted with great good humour. Sarah's face had emerged from its habitual sternness and from time to time it broke into that grim, yet indulgent smile of hers that was so irresistibly attractive. Mr. Darby, charmed by it as always, reproached himself for his bitter thoughts of her, and for his machinations in the matter of the B Account (Adventure Fund). But no sooner had he done so than an unfortunate incident occurred. They had finished supper and he rose from his chair.

‘Well, I must say, Sarah,' he remarked, ‘that was a treat.'

Sarah looked at him with a smile, and then a spirit of roguishness stirred the corners of her mouth. ‘Well, Jim,' she replied, ‘what I say
is
that three sandwiches and a couple of Basses is no dinner for a man.'

She had miscalculated the effect of this statement on Mr. Darby. A look of consternation transformed his face; it was
as if he had seen a ghost; and next moment his cheeks and forehead were aflame.

Sarah laughed. ‘It's all right, Jim,' she said, ‘I'm not blaming you.'

But this did little to reassure Mr. Darby. He had received a very disagreeable shock. Had she actually, in some inexplicable way,
seen
him lunching at The Schooner? Had she seen him in conversation with Miss Sunningdale? With distressing vividness he had suddenly recalled the timid, ingratiating and fatuous little man whose face he had seen in the bar-room mirror. It was this that had brought the scarlet to his cheeks. He felt deeply ashamed and also horribly guilty. And it was not only the thought that Sarah had seen him that had so thoroughly upset him. It was also the uncomfortable feeling that, whether she saw him or not, she knew of his movements, that when he issued with that sense of eager joviality from the office at midday on Fridays, he was not really as free as he felt. His feeling of escape, of surreptitious holiday was a delusion. All the time, he was under observation.

And all he could do in reply to Sarah's good-humoured reassurance was to mutter incoherently about ‘quick … ah … lunch,' and—' ah … accumulation of work.' Whether Sarah minded his visits to The Schooner or not, she had effectually ruined his enjoyment of them. Yes, he must certainly persevere in the scheme of the B Account.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

Man proposes but God disposes. Did Providence interpose in order to save Mr. Darby from practising a deceit on his wife, or to punish him by transforming his intended falsehood into the terrible truth, or simply to test his mettle, as it once tested Job's, by an even sterner ordeal? We cannot tell. But the fact remains that, for the first time in thirty-five years, Christmas brought no cheque from Uncle Tom Darby.

For a whole fortnight before Christmas Day Mr. Darby had, by difficult and carefully prepared tactics, contrived to be the first to look over the letters that arrived by the early
post (those that came by the later posts, he knew, were usually local letters only): but all in vain. He might as well have saved himself that daily expenditure of nerve-racking ingenuity. A horrible misgiving now took possession of him, a feeling that was positively physical and situated in the pit of his stomach; but he bore up bravely, reminding himself of the congestion and delays of the Christmas mails, and for another ten days he persevered in his secret inquisition. Then when the New Year was already three days old he gave up. He was convinced of sin, for he felt vaguely that this was a punishment visited on him for his unholy schemes. But the conviction of sin was as nothing beside the black disappointment and the black foreboding. For the fact that the cheque had not come this year must surely mean that it would never come again, that the fountain had at last dried up, as he had told himself so often that it eventually must, that Uncle Tom Darby was dead. Goodbye, then, to the B Account, the Adventure Fund, and to that pale and distant star which, since the moment of his conversion from romance to realism, had been the one illumination of his days.

It was a very crestfallen little man now who travelled to and fro between Number Seven Moseley Terrace and Number Thirty Seven Ranger Street. The old alertness was gone from his step, he tottered rather than walked: the old bright birdlike pleasure in the world about him had withered; he studied only the ground a few feet in front of him, even the glasses of his spectacles looked dim and light-less. Steam trains might have coursed the Osbert Road cutting twenty times a minute: he would not have so much as turned his head. Shop-windows, so far from beguiling his despondency, appeared to him now as a personal affront. His round, cherubic face had shrivelled to a little dry red apple in which the bright blue spectacled eyes were no more than two discoloured blemishes. Everyone in the office noticed the dismal change. Mr. Marston questioned him solicitously.