It was after the Utopia had steamed out of Gibraltar that the world began to live up to Mr. Darby’s expectations. It was a calm warm evening and Mr. Darby, abandoning the human herd that strolled or sat on the promenade deck, climbed to the high boat deck and stood, his hands clasped behind his back, contemplating the great luminous furrow that the Utopia drew after her in the pale, crystal-green Mediterranean. The furrow was visible for miles, a bright snail-track on the clear watery floor, and as it visibly lengthened, Mr. Darby saw himself drawn further and further from Sarah and England, further and further into the mysterious unknown. It was harrowing, yet it was thrilling. He felt himself to be alone, yet confident in his loneliness: he had for the moment forgotten, and was content to forget, the reliable Punnett. He turned his eyes to the left and there, far away to the south-west, pale and transparent as though carved from an aquamarine, rose the distant mountains of Africa. On his right, much closer, rose Europe, the snowy summits of the Sierra Nevada, an unearthly vision of rose and violet, floating high above a bank of dove-grey vapour that hid the coastline. Mr. Darby heaved a deep-drawn sigh. To stand there alone between two continents, two continents bathed in the visionary loveliness of a dream, was surely one of the most marvellous experiences that could befall a man. His heart expanded until it seemed that it would burst his waistcoat: his whole being felt uplifted. From the height, the moral and emotional height, at which he now stood, his quarrel with England sank into insignificance. He could think even of the National Gallery and its Trustees and Director without bitterness. Yes, Mr. Darby, totally divested now of the narrow garment of self, forgave them; and Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean bore witness to his forgiveness. The roses and violets of the Sierra Nevada faded to the stark whiteness of unilluminated snow, but Mr. Darby’s august and elevated mood still held him alone and motionless under the monstrous scarlet funnels.
And so he might have stood, far into the night, had not a bugle-note from below called the soaring spirit down to its earthly prison and sent the little man hurrying to his cabin to dress for dinner.
• • • • • • • •
After Gibraltar Mr. Darby felt himself to be indeed in the south. Throughout the day the sea was a deep summery blue, and at night, where it was whipped and churned about the Utopia’s thrusting hull, it glowed and glimmered with a ghostly phosphorescence. And the nights were deliciously warm: coats, wraps and rugs disappeared, and as the ship swam, a great glittering pavilion, through the warm darkness, the ship’s orchestra made a small glittering oasis of revelry in the huge desert of silence, and the passengers, in evening dress, like twirling, gliding exotic flowers, danced on the decks. Mr. Darby sat solitary in a deck-chair watching them. Their rhythmical movements soothed him, the moving show of faces and bright dresses enthralled him. The lady whom Mr. Amberley had called the bold, bad Baroness wore a dress of shimmering blue, the blue of a wild hyacinth: her eyes were half closed, her face was like a mask, ‘a dead woman dancing,’ thought Mr. Darby with a little shudder. Her partner was a tall, thin, clean-shaven man with a face carved out of wood,—a lawyer, Mr. Darby suspected.
The two young Rentons, the handsome young man and the vivacious girl, were dancing together. Their mother sat in a deck-chair separated from Mr. Darby’s by two that were unoccupied. A charming couple, so natural, so alive. Mr. Amberley, who seemed to know everything about everybody, had told him that their name was Renton, and he himself had overheard their mother calling the boy Tim and the girl Violet. Mr. Darby watched them. The girl in her pale yellow dress had the delicious freshness of a spring flower: what a contrast with the Baroness. Mr. Darby could discover no signs of Mr. Amberley, but in a couple of chairs, intermittently eclipsed and revealed by the dancers, the great Gudgeon and his woman sat watching immovably like a pair of obscene pagan idols. Suddenly Mr. Darby found himself violently shaken: a couple had cannoned into his chair. Scarlet from the shock he raised angry spectacles and found the two young Rentons looking down at him. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said the boy with a charming smile, ‘I hope …!’
‘Pray don’t mention it,’ replied Mr. Darby. His anger had vanished, his spectacles had suddenly grown bland.
They took the two empty chairs between him and their mother, and the girl, who had taken the chair next Mr. Darby, turned to him with spontaneous friendliness. ‘I’m afraid we must have shaken you up horribly.’
‘Not at all! Not at all!’ he said. ‘It’s good for old people to be shaken up occasionally.’
‘Is it?’ she said, laughing. ‘Then you ought to be dancing.’
Mr. Darby shook his head gravely. ‘I fear my dancing days are over.’
Violet looked at him. ‘They oughtn’t to be,’ she said, and it was clear from her tone that she was expressing a frank opinion, not paying a compliment.
Mr. Darby’s heart glowed with gratitude. He glanced at her face, he was going to speak, but he saw that her attention was suddenly absorbed in the dancers. After a moment she turned to him again. ‘Who is that woman in blue?’ she asked.
Mr. Darby had a sudden pang of misgiving. He hated to think that this fresh, innocent girl was attracted by that cold, hard, forbidding woman.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was told her name the other day. Let me see! Lady something or other! Gissingham! Yes, that’s it: Lady Gissingham! She used to be a baroness. Do you … ah … admire her?’
‘No,’ answered the girl with conviction. ‘I don’t.’
Mr. Darby was delighted and relieved. ‘Neither do I,’ he said with a conviction equal to hers.
‘She keeps staring at Tim and me,’ said Violet angrily, ‘as if she’d like to eat us.’
Mr. Darby snorted. ‘What I should call bad manners, very!’ he said.
After a few minutes the young people got up to dance again. ‘We’ll be more careful this time,’ the boy said to Mr. Darby.
But Mr. Darby too rose from his chair. ‘I’ll save you the trouble,’ he said with a friendly nod. ‘I’m going for a little walk.’
He wandered away to the other side of the deck, stepped suddenly out of the noise and movement and glitter of crowded humanity into the immense and solemn presence of stars and ocean. He strolled down the deserted deck and tucking himself into the angle between the deck-rail and the rail that divided the first-class from the second-class, gazed down into the seething, glimmering water. His mind, after his talk with the young girl, was as warm and fluid as the sea; her innocence, her friendliness, her frankness had filled and refreshed it. ‘Charming girl!’ he said to himself. ‘Charming little thing!’ If only he and Sarah had had a child, a daughter, she might have been the age of this girl by now.
Mr. Darby stood leaning there for a long time, gazing down into the dark water. The glittering noise of the band came to him here dulled and muted by the outer silence, and in that silence he felt in his simple inarticulate soul a basic security beneath all the fluctuations of life. Whatever came to him and whatever went from him in the course of life did not really matter: the only thing that mattered was this utter security that underlay all the changes and chances. If the Utopia went down in a typhoon in the China Seas, if he actually reached the Mandratic Peninsula, underwent terrible experiences there, even died violently there, none of these things would really matter. In the strength of his security he was ready for whatever might befall.
Gradually his mind rose out of these refreshing depths to the surface of things. He became aware that his legs and his arms were growing stiff from his long immobility. He straightened his back, looked about him, and began to stroll round to the other side of the deck. Again the noise and stir rushed back upon him. It seemed to him that he had been away for hours; yet they were still dancing, still revolving feverishly to the feverish music. He stood, silence and stillness behind him, agitation and noise in front, and watched them. Suddenly his attention was arrested. The Baroness swam past, dancing still, but her eyes were no longer half-closed and she no longer looked dead. She was smiling, her lips moved, her eyes were wide open and gazing intensely, languishingly into her partner’s face. Yes, she was alive now, and she was dancing with young Renton.
Mr. Darby’s whole nature rebelled against it. It was wrong, all wrong. He recalled the girl’s instinctive aversion, her convinced ‘No, I don’t!’ and he longed to rush up to the couple and tear them apart. Their dancing together seemed to him a threat and an insult to the girl.
But where was she, the girl? He glanced over to where he had been sitting with them, and saw her and her mother sitting silent together. It was dreadful, dreadful, and he could do nothing. He turned away and went back to his solitary nook on the other side of the deck.
• • • • • • • •
Mr. Darby had not gone ashore at Gibraltar, but when they touched at Toulon, he landed, under Mr. Amberley’s wing, and visited for the first time in his life a foreign town. The experience delighted him: everything was charmingly fantastic. The people, so different from ordinary people, with their comical chatter and gestures, the absurdly baggy trousers of the men, the lively shops and cafés, separated from the water’s edge only by the broad pavement; the launches of the French Navy with their tall, bright, polished funnels, that bustled from point to point in the wide harbour, full of sailors; the long narrow market, shaded by autumnal plane trees, full of slow business, all these delighted Mr. Darby. ‘Charming!’ he said, as he and Mr. Amberley sat, drinking a Bock, under the awning of a café: ‘Quite charming! Like one of these … ah … exhibitions, to be shaw! ‘He listened with respectful awe when Mr. Amberley conversed fluently with the waiter, and he was amazed to observe that the very dogs and cats understood French. ‘Hearing nothing else they get accustomed to it, I suppose,’ he said.
Mr. Amberley agreed. ‘No doubt the necessity of coping with a foreign language sharpens their wits.’
Yes, Mr. Darby was delighted with Toulon: he wirelessed to Sarah and told her so.
Before dinner that evening Mr. Amberley pointed to a mountainous island ahead of them. ‘Corsica!’ he said. ‘An island famous for its association with a great historical character.’
Mr. Darby gave a little bow. ‘Ah, indeed! And who, if I may enquire?’
‘Boswell, the immortal Bozzy. If people mention other names, Napoleon Bonaparte for instance, you may be sure they’re talking nonsense. Avoid worthless imitations, Mr. Darby: insist on Boswell.’
‘I certainly shall,’ said Mr. Darby. Once again Mr. Amberley was talking Double Dutch: once again Mr. Darby felt that he was something of a character. But he had already discovered that by adroitly changing the subject it was always possible to bring Mr. Amberley back to sanity and commonsense. Accordingly he cleared his throat and said: ‘I trust we shall find Vesuvius active.’
‘Not too active, I hope,’ said Mr. Amberley. ‘Vesuvius when very active is an appalling spectacle. I saw it so once, at the beginning of the last great eruption in fact, and the sight was appalling. It is painful to be reminded so ruthlessly of man’s utter insignificance in the presence of nature. No, I prefer to keep away from active volcanoes and regard myself as the lord of creation.’
‘Still,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘I have always wished to witness some great … ah … what I might call convolution of nature.’
Mr. Amberley made a definite gesture of dissent. ‘No convolutions for me, thank you, Mr. Darby,’ he said. ‘However, let me reassure you. If Vesuvius lets us escape, there is always the chance that the Island of Ischia may blow us and itself to smithereens as we leave Naples. And failing Ischia there remains Stromboli and Etna. I sometimes wonder whether science will some day discover some method of cosmic vaccination to cure these distressing cosmic pimples.’
It might almost have been believed that the vaccination predicted by Mr. Amberley had already been discovered and applied, for except for a white plume like an ostrich-feather twirling from a point on its summit, Vesuvius looked as peaceable as Parliament Hill. Ischia was as bad, Stromboli worse; it was an indistinct but quite commonplace hill floating on the sea. Etna was worse still; it wasn’t there at all. It withdrew with unpardonable incivility into a misty night and though Mr. Darby stood on deck for over an hour in pyjamas and dressing-gown wielding his formidable telescope, it remained totally invisible. No wonder he wired to Sarah: ‘Etna disappointing.’
• • • • • • • •
Mr. Darby referred to this regrettable inactivity of the volcanoes while conversing next morning with Violet Renton. She had found him installed in a deck-chair and had sat down beside him.
‘I had been hoping that at least one of them would be what I should call eruptious,’ he said.
‘So did I,’ she replied. ‘I woke up specially for Etna.’
‘I not only woke up,’ said Mr. Darby; ‘I took the trouble to go up on deck and stand there for an hour, and, further, I took with me my telescope, a great heavy … ah … contraption, difficult to manage.’ Mr. Darby spoke with warmth for he felt that he had a personal grievance against the volcanoes. He had behaved with due recognition of their importance and one and all they had failed to return the compliment. ‘I’m inclined to think,’ he said, ‘that volcanoes have been exaggerated.’
He spoke seriously and was at first surprised and then pleased at Violet’s laughter. Evidently he had, as he sometimes did, accidentally made a joke.
‘We must hope for better luck on the return voyage,’ said the girl. As she spoke, Tim Renton and Lady Gissingham came on deck and strolled past them. Violet’s talk and laughter froze: Mr. Darby too became silent and constrained. He longed to speak, to say something to reassure her, but he was shy of intruding. Tim and Lady Gissingham, talking and laughing, strolled to and fro in front of them; Violet and Mr. Darby sat speechless and unhappy: then with a quick, troubled glance at him the girl rose. ‘I think I’ll go in,’ she said in a voice that pierced him to the heart; then turned and left him. It was dreadful, too dreadful! What could he do to restore her happiness? He sat there alone and helpless, burdened with his unexpressed and inexpressible sympathy.
• • • • • • • •
‘I observe,’ said Mr. Amberley to Mr. Darby as they sat together on deck midway across the Ionian Sea, ‘that our Baroness has got young Renton well hypnotized. She’s managed to secure a very callow one this time.’
Mr. Darby flushed. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ he replied hotly. ‘Everybody’s watching them and talking about them. She’s no better than a … ah … well, a woman of the streets.’
‘No better? You underrate our Baroness, Mr. Darby. She’s fifty times worse. A woman of the streets is no more dangerous than a bus. She merely announces her presence and you can take her or leave her, for all the world like Gudgeon’s Nerve Food. But the Baroness is a racing car deliberately driven to the danger of the public. She makes a dead set at you and entangles you hopelessly if you happen to be young and inexperienced or a fool. I shouldn’t say that boy was a fool; I like the look of him; but he’s very callow, poor young devil.’
Mr. Darby was silent. Then he asked: ‘Did you say her last husband shot himself?’
‘He did,’ said Mr. Amberley, ‘and now she’s evidently trying the same method with the present one. He’s been looking very pale about the gills for the last few days.’
‘You mean, he shot himself because she ran after someone else?’
‘Precisely. I forget the name of the someone else. He belonged to a good family and the whole business made a good deal of noise at the time. I’m surprised you don’t remember it.’
‘Are you sure of it?’ Mr. Darby enquired with great seriousness.
‘But absolutely. As sure as that I’m sitting here smoking in my unpardonable way this excellent cigar of yours.’
‘I shall warn him,’ said Mr. Darby with determination.
‘My dear Mr. Darby, warn whom? Gissingham?’
‘No, young Renton.’
‘Take my advice, my friend, and do nothing of the sort. It’s always wiser to keep out of complications of this kind. It’s a pity, I admit, but it’s not your business.’
‘But it is my business,’ said Mr. Darby warmly.
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. His sister’s a … ah … a friend of mine, and it’s upsetting her dreadfully. She’s wretched. All her happiness is gone.’
‘And you feel …?’
‘I feel it very deeply,’ said Mr. Darby. ‘I can’t allow it to … ah …!’
Mr. Amberley sighed. ‘Well, my dear fellow, all I can say is, I wish I had your goodness of heart. At the same time,’ he added with a return to his usual dry tone, ‘I’m rather glad I haven’t.’
• • • • • • • •
‘The first question to be settled, Punnett,’ said Mr. Darby while dressing for dinner that evening, ‘will be how to … ah … approach the Peninsula. The trading vessel calls only once a year. If we hadn’t to wait too long, if it was starting say a month or so after we reached Sydney, we might … ah … avail ourselves, so to speak.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Punnett sadly. ‘But were you thinking of spending a year there, sir?’
‘A year, Punnett?’
‘Till the ship called again, sir?’
Mr. Darby was silent. His thoughts had been exclusively concerned with getting to Mandratia. The fact, the rather disagreeable fact, that if they took the trading vessel he and Punnett would be willy-nilly marooned on the Peninsula until its next visit occurred to him now for the first time. He fell into a reverie. Suppose, he thought, some event or series of events were to occur that made it highly desirable for them to leave the Peninsula quickly, it would be extraordinarily unpleasant to know that this was impossible. A year, a month, even a day is a serious interruption if you happen to be running for your life. Reflecting, there in his cabin, Mr. Darby suddenly realized with intense vividness—such is the power of the imagination—the sensation of being completely cut off from salvation when pursued by howling savages. It was an unpleasant, an extraordinarily unpleasant sensation.
‘We shall have to charter a boat of our own, Punnett,’ he said decisively. ‘We might find, might we not, that we tired of the place, or possibly of the people? In that event it would be convenient to have some means of … ah … conveyance in what I should call the offing.’
‘It would, sir,’ replied Punnett. ‘I remember one occasion, the occasion of the great feast—they have a great feast once a year, sir, when they … well, they roast a human being, sir. On that occasion, Professor Harrington and I would have been very glad of a conveyance. It was a very near thing with us that time, sir. The king, the king of the Mandrats, was against us from the first, and he egged on the natives to get hold of Professor Harrington, with the object of roasting him, sir. It was the camera that saved us. I turned the camera on them, as it might have been a machine-gun, and they fell back. They daren’t face it. But it was a very near thing: for a moment I thought the camera wasn’t going to work. You see, they were very much wrought up, sir. Quite hysterical they were.’
Mr. Darby gave a little shudder. ‘But why was the king against you, Punnett?’
‘Well, sir, the king was a foreigner. They always choose a foreigner for their king, or, failing a foreigner, some freak of their own, a hunchback or what not. And this particular king was a sort of half-caste, quite a different colour from the natives he was, a kind of dirty yellow-grey, sir; and he had an idea, I think, that the natives might do away with him and make Professor Harrington king instead, or perhaps me. They were very much impressed with Professor Harrington, you see, sir, him speaking the language and all that, and I’m not sure but what the king’s suspicions weren’t pretty near the mark. Not that Professor Harrington would have accepted the throne, sir, nor me either. It would have been a great inconvenience, a great interruption to work.’
‘Still, Punnett, an experience, a very unique experience!’ said Mr. Darby, shocked by Punnett’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘I’m not sure, Punnett, if I had been in your place …’
But the dinner bugle sounded and the nature of Mr. Darby’s uncertainty remained uncertain.
After dinner he repaired to his obscure nook on the deck for further reflection. It was a cooler evening this time and Mr. Darby wore a coat. Propped there motionless against the rail, his face averted from the deck and bent downwards upon the hissing, glimmering water, he resembled, in the dimness, a tarpaulin sack rather than a man. That, no doubt, was why the two figures that came slowly down the deck and stood leaning over the rail not five yards away from him, did not lower their voices.
‘If you think I’m going to sit still and be made a fool of, you’re mistaken.’ Mr. Darby could hear the man’s voice distinctly.
The woman’s, when it came, hard and clear, he recognized instantly; it was Lady Gissingham’s. ‘My dear Ally, no one’s making a fool of you but yourself. You seem to expect me to hang round your neck all day long.’
‘God forbid! But I object to your hanging all day long round the Renton boy’s.’
‘In fact, I’m forbidden to make friends.’
‘There’s no good your trying sham innocence on me, Rhoda. You know perfectly well what I mean. I forbid you to make a fool of yourself and me with that boy.’
Mr. Darby heard a hard, mirthless, woman’s laugh. ‘Forbid away, Ally. I shall do as I feel inclined.’
‘Will you? ‘The man’s voice trembled with suppressed fury. ‘Then you’ll take the consequences.’
‘Threats don’t frighten me, Ally. Do as you like. But if you’re so sick of our honeymoon already, heaven knows what you’ll be by the time we’ve been to Colombo and back. Hadn’t you better get off the boat at the next stop and go home?’
‘That’s the first sane thing you’ve said yet,’ said Gissingham.
For a moment Lady Gissingham did not reply. His sudden acceptance of her cynical suggestion had evidently taken her aback. When she spoke, her tone was cold, bored, weary. ‘In that case I shall have to console myself for your absence.’
Gissingham’s sudden and brutal rejoinder horrified Mr. Darby. He had never thought that titled people used such words. But though the words horrified him, they apparently produced no effect on Lady Gissingham. Her cold laugh was heard once more. ‘My dear Ally,’ she said, ‘you excel yourself.’
There followed a sound of footsteps and Mr. Darby, turning his head without moving his body, saw Lady Gissingham move away slowly and indifferently down the deck. In another minute Sir Alistair went off in the opposite direction.
What he had heard increased Mr. Darby’s determination to speak to young Renton at once. There was danger in the air, he was sure. If Gissingham left the Utopia at Port Said (the next stop), his wife, as she had just coldly announced, would console herself, and she would console herself of course with young Renton. But if Gissingham stayed on the ship, then there would be those ‘consequences’ of which he had darkly spoken. He must try to have a word with young Renton at once.
Mr. Darby accordingly made a complete circuit of the promenade deck and then glanced both into the lounge and the smoking-room. In vain: young Renton was nowhere. Perhaps, thought Mr. Darby, he was in his cabin. The boy’s cabin, as Mr. Darby had already noticed, was next door to his own. If he went to his own he would very likely be able to hear whether young Renton was in his. Mr. Darby went to his cabin, switched on the light and sat down. Yes, he was there. After a minute or two he heard on the partition one of those bumps so familiar on ships,—an elbow or a shoulder striking the wall. He hesitated for a moment, then rose from his chair, left his cabin and tapped on the door of young Renton’s.
The boy was sitting on his bed with a book in his hand: he was still fully dressed. Mr. Darby, standing with his hand on the door-handle made a little bow. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘but could you … ah … spare me a few minutes?’
The boy raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Certainly,’ he said in a tone that had more of question than acquiescence in it. ‘Will you … er …?’ He pointed to a chair.
‘Wouldn’t it be pleasanter on deck?’ said Mr. Darby. ‘That is, if you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all!’
They proceeded in silence to the more deserted side of the promenade deck. Mr. Darby had suggested the deck for privacy; one is so easily overheard in a cabin; but now he wished he hadn’t, for the silence and suspense of their progress down corridors and up stairs had raised the occasion to one of great formality, so that when Tim Renton turned to him and asked: ‘Now, sir, what was it you wanted? ‘he felt extremely embarrassed.
‘Well … ah …’ he began, ‘I … ah … in point of fact I find it rather … ah … rather what I should call difficult to … ah … to say.’
Young Renton, looking down on to Mr. Darby’s spectacles, raised his eyebrows in surprise and amusement.
Mr. Darby pulled himself together. ‘I wanted to talk to you of something which is … ah … well … none of my business, in fact of Lady Gissingham.’
The young man’s face hardened at once.
‘I don’t see … ‘he began, all the cordiality gone from his voice.
Mr. Darby held up a hand. ‘Please let me say my say, and try not to think me too … ah … too what I should call nosey. I felt, you see, noticing you about so much with Lady Gissingham, that it was only right to … ah … to warn you …’
‘That everyone on the ship is gossiping about it? Yes, I know, thanks. My mother and sister have told me nothing else for the last week. You’re all so desperately old-fashioned. Lady Gissingham’s a very good sort and very intelligent too, which is more than most of the people on this boat are. I don’t see why I should stop talking to her just because a lot of silly people start chattering. Let them chatter: I don’t care. I’m getting a little tired …’
Again Mr. Darby held up a hand. ‘That isn’t what I was going to say,’ he replied. ‘I was going to say … to warn you that Lady Gissingham is rather a … what I should call a dangerous woman.’
Young Renton laughed contemptuously. ‘This all sounds very melodramatic, Mr. Darby.’
‘Perhaps it does,’ answered Mr. Darby, ‘perhaps you think me unduly … ah … perniquitous, but do you happen to have heard about her last husband?’
Young Renton looked at him sternly. ‘Is it decent or honourable, do you think, to tell tales about a woman behind her back?’
But Mr. Darby was not to be put off. ‘Her last husband shot himself,’ he said, ‘and do you know why?’
Tim Renton did not answer. Mr. Darby’s statement had evidently given him a shock: his face was scarlet, his brows knitted. He wanted no doubt to say that Lady Gissingham’s past did not concern him, but he also wanted to hear what Mr. Darby had to say. At last his eyes, which had been angrily fixed on distance, turned rather sheepishly to Mr. Darby’s. ‘No,’ he said shortly, ‘I don’t.’
‘Because,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘she had … well … taken up with another man just as she’s doing with you.’
Again Tim Renton made no reply: once more his brows were knitted and he was angrily gazing into the distance. ‘It seems to me,’ he said at last, ‘that you and my mother are trying to make mountains out of molehills.’
Mr. Darby pursed his lips as when considering an expression of opinion.
‘It wouldn’t be a molehill,’ he said judicially, ‘if Sir Alistair Gissingham shot himself or you.’
Young Renton turned and faced Mr. Darby. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you, sir, that I am quite competent to look after myself?’
Mr. Darby suddenly felt angry. ‘No,’ he said hotly, ‘no, since you ask me, it does not; not by the way you’re behaving.’
‘In that case,’ said young Renton coldly, ‘there’s nothing more to be said, is there? We might as well wish each other good night.’ He turned on his heel and left Mr. Darby to himself.
Mr. Darby’s anger was immediately turned upon himself. How lamentably he had mismanaged the whole thing. And now, worst of all, he had lost his temper and alienated the boy completely. It would have been better, far better, if he had kept his mouth shut: so far from putting a stop to the thing he had most probably made it worse, put the boy on his mettle to show that he despised his warnings. And he had totally forgotten, fool that he was, to mention that he had actually heard Gissingham threaten his wife—’ Then you’ll take the consequences.’ That would have been a very telling point: it would have corroborated everything he had said. For a moment Mr. Darby had an almost irresistible impulse to run after young Renton with that piece of information. It was, after all, of such vital importance. What, in Heaven’s name, could have made him forget it? But next moment he realized that, as things were now, it would be useless. He would only irritate him still more.
He heaved a long, deep sigh. The business, brief as it had been, had taken it out of him. And it had made him thirsty. A drink! Yes, a drink was emphatically what he needed. He turned his back on the sea and toddled towards the smoking-room.