‘It’s wonderful, Jim,’ said Sarah next morning, fixing a keen, inquisitorial eye on him as she laid down the Daily Chronicle, ‘it’s wonderful how quickly news travels, don’t you think so?’
Mr. Darby saw that subterfuge was useless and so did not attempt it. ‘There’s no good … ah … blinking the fact, Sarah,’ he replied sententiously, ‘that publicity is what I should call inavertable; and that being so, I consider it better, far better, to meet it half way. Goodness knows what nonsense would have got into the papers if I hadn’t… ah … forestalled it. We must move with the times, you know, Sarah.’
‘Well, you can move with the times as much as you like, Jim,’ Sarah replied, ‘so long as you allow me to move in my own way. I’m glad to see you’ve left me out of it: one royalty’s enough in this house, and even if it wasn’t, you’d be enough for two.’
‘The fact is, Sarah,’ Mr. Darby gravely replied, ‘you and I think differently in that matter. I take the view that when one finds oneself in a position of … ah … grave responsibility, one ought to take it with a proper seriousness. Suppose Queen Mary were to … ah … announce that the British Nation was nothing better than a school-treat, what, may I ask, would you say to that?’
‘I should say,’ replied Sarah, ‘that she wasn’t far wrong.’ Mr. Darby made a gesture of pained despair and at that moment the telephone-bell rang. ‘That will be for me,’ he said. ‘I was expecting a … ah … communication.’
He left the room, closing the door after him, and Sarah heard him close the door of her work-room also.
After a few minutes he returned. ‘I have a business engagement, Sarah,’ he said, ‘and shall probably not be back for lunch. I have just ordered a car.’
A few minutes later Mr. Darby left the house carrying a suitcase.
‘You’re not returning to Mandras, by any chance, Jim?’ Sarah enquired as he went out.
Mr. Darby’s spectacles broke into a smile. ‘No, not exactly, Sarah; not exactly, but you’re not so far out as you might think.’
• • • • • • • •
During the following ten days Mr. Darby led a very active life. The formidable pile of letters which now reached him every morning often kept him busy till lunch time. And he had calls to pay and various engagements for lunch. He called at the office and was taken by Mr. Marston to lunch at the Club where, happening to run across Major Blenkin-sop, he was able to give that gentleman a great deal of valuable information about conditions of travel in Mandratia. McNab and Pellow were each booked for lunch with him on succeeding days, and the evenings were taken up by dinners with the Marstons and the Savershills and suppers with the Stedmans and the Cribbs. More than once he lunched alone at The Schooner, and, besides all this, the business which had called him from home with the suitcase occupied an hour or two of each day. Mr. Darby was enjoying himself thoroughly.
So too was Sarah. She had resumed her activities on the H.C.S. and was quite as busy as Mr. Darby. ‘Now what more can he want than this?’ she thought to herself, for obviously they were both as happy as could be. When they were alone together, they found themselves glad to be together and alone. For their terrible experiences had made them malleable, had brought to the surface all their old love, had made each indulgent and even affectionate towards those idiosyncrasies in the other which had grown to be points of antagonism. Besides they had endless things to talk about. Sarah was far from averse to recalling her months in Eutyca and Tongal, and though she ridiculed her title to royalty, for her too the experience had been an enthralling one. She had loved life before, but her adventures had brought to life a value greater than ever. And what could be better than the life they were now living? What more could Jim want than this?
But no doubt Jim had his plans and schemes. Things were obviously afoot. She had noticed with amused curiosity that the suitcase he had carried off with him some mornings ago had not returned. Well, whatever his schemes were, she would be able now to fall in with them, though none of them could be so perfect as the life they were leading at the moment.
When this mode of life had continued for ten days Mr. Darby returned one evening in a car, bringing the suitcase.
‘Back from Mandras, Jim?’ said Sarah with her charming, grim smile.
‘To be shaw!’ said Mr. Darby, and opening the bag then and there he displayed the parrot-robe and jewelled head-dress.
Sarah regarded them sternly. ‘Now I wonder what you’ve been up to,’ she said.
Mr. Darby held up a hand. ‘Wait and see,’ he said.
At supper he raised the question of the London house. ‘Something must be done about it,’ he said.
He had been saying so to himself constantly during the last ten days, and the more he said it the less he felt inclined to do anything. For the fact was that he had settled back so comfortably into Savershill and among his friends, that, just as when a man has established himself in a very deep, very comfortable chair, he found that it would demand an enormous effort to mobilize himself again.
‘It’s a duty,’ he added rather vaguely to Sarah.
‘A duty? To who, Jim?’ Sarah asked.
‘To … ah … well … to our position, Sarah. I don’t suppose you realize it, but our balance at the bank is quite appalling. During that year in Mandras I spent nothing, literarily nothing. One doesn’t, of course, as a King; and you don’t seem to have got through much.’
“I got through a few thousands running after you,’ said Sarah.
‘Quite!’ Mr. Darby replied. ‘Quite! A few thousands, but nothing appreecious. The fact is, Sarah, we’ve got to alter what I should call our scale.’
‘But if we’re to get through forty thousand a year, Jim, we’ll have to take Buckingham Palace and some other palace into the bargain.’
‘Well,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘we’ll have a house in London and a house here. That’ll help. And as a start, suppose we run up to London on Thursday for a bit and have a look round?’
Sarah considered this for a moment. ‘How would it be, Jim,’ she said, ‘if you go and hunt in London and I stay and hunt here? Then, when you’ve settled on one or two likely houses, you can send for me to come up and help you to choose. Meanwhile perhaps I’d have found something here for you to look at.’
Mr. Darby pursed his lips, and knit his brows. ‘Not a bad idea!’ he said. ‘Not at all a bad idea!’
Accordingly on the following Thursday Mr. Darby proceeded to London, took rooms at the Balmoral, and flung himself with his usual energy into the absorbing task of house-hunting. ‘I require,’ he informed those house-agents into whose hands he unsuspectingly yielded himself, ‘a somewhat … ah … commodious mansion in a fashionable quarter.’
As a result of this statement Mr. Darby found himself deluged with printed information which summoned him to Carlton House Terrace, Eaton Square, Grosvenor Square, Park Lane, Chester Square, and a vast number of other squares and streets where he inspected large, cold houses whose empty rooms chilled him to the soul. He climbed bare, resounding staircases till it seemed to him that his shoes were ballasted with lead. Sometimes in utter exhaustion he sat down uncomfortably and precariously on steps, window-ledges, and the rims of baths: more than once an even less dignified seat offered itself and was not refused. And every afternoon, when he returned to the Balmoral, broken in body and disillusioned in spirit, and sinking into a chair in the lounge called feebly for tea, it was borne in on him more and more forcibly that there were no houses in London of the kind he desired. He recalled how lonely he had often been when he had lived in the house in Bedford Square. Yet that had been a pleasant, comfortable house. How was it that there were no houses to be had nowadays like it? He and Sarah would freeze, body and soul, in one of these huge, inhospitable refrigerators with their joyless white and gold or pale green drawing-rooms, their high ceilings, their icy halls and staircases, so full of cold light, so barren, so bereft, it seemed, of sunshine and colour. ‘But have you no other houses?’ he asked the house-agents plaintively; ‘Something more comfortable, more … ah … what I should call snug?’ Yes certainly, they had more houses; they would send him more addresses, more orders to view; they assured him of their best attention at all times; they were his obediently; their unique desire was to serve him; and they despatched the poor bewildered, exhausted little man to other even more barren, even more uninhabitable, even more heart-chilling mansions whose naked rooms and deserted passages abolished hope and instantly quenched all warmth of heart, all the joy and gusto of life. At the end of an exhausting week Mr. Darby wired to Sarah: ‘Shall reach Newchester three-forty this afternoon.’
And what a relief it was to get back to his home and to Sarah’s voluble company.
‘London’s simply hopeless,’ he told her. ‘There’s not a house to be had that would suit us. And it’s not for want of searching. I’ve been on what I should call the go, Sarah, ever since I left home.’
‘I can see you have,’ said Sarah. ‘You look worn out. Well, I’ve found two places here that might suit you. One’s Savershill Manor House. As you know it’s been vacant for the last seven years. I’d never been into the place before. It’s a great big house, Jim, a bit gloomy and out of repair, but something might be made of it. The other is Outwell Hall.
It’s been for sale almost ever since you started for Australia. We’ll have a look at them both to-morrow.’
‘Well, I must say, Sarah,’ Mr. Darby remarked with a contented sigh when, after an excellent tea, he carried his suitcase upstairs to their bedroom, ‘it’s nice to be at home again.’
Sarah followed him upstairs and when he had deposited his bag she led him across the passage to the spare room, a room which was never used. ‘Just come in here,’ she said. ‘I have a little surprise for you.’
She threw the door open and Mr. Darby entered.
The room had been totally transformed. It was brightly painted, papered and carpeted; there was a deep, luxurious armchair on either side of the fireplace; beside one of them a small table for matches, ash-tray, cigar-box. His maps, which had been sent back with the rest of his luggage from the Utopia, had been framed and hung on the walls; his travel-books, collected before his departure for Australia, were arranged in a glass-fronted book-case; across a corner of the room with a window on its left stood a roll-top writing-desk, and in another corner, on a specially devised stand he caught sight of his parrot robe and jewelled head-dress. In the fireplace was a gas-stove of polished steel. ‘Stedman’s latest!’ said Sarah pointing to it.
Mr. Darby gazed round the room enraptured.
‘Well,’ she asked when he had taken it all in, ‘and how does it suit you?’
‘How does it suit me?’ he said. ‘But it’s … ah … it’s ideal, my dear Sarah; and everything so very what I should call shick.’
He trotted to one of the framed maps, touched the frame, scanned it with sagacious spectacles; trotted from it to his kingly robe which he tried between finger and thumb as if doubtful if it were genuine; then once more he surveyed the whole room. What a contrast to all the huge, comfortless, joyless rooms across which, during the last week, he had wandered with a chill at his heart.
Sarah took a box of matches from the smoking-table, knelt down, and lit the gas-fire. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Cosy, isn’t it?’
‘I say,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘let’s sit here after supper this evening.’
• • • • • • • •
Man is a comfort-loving creature and for this reason the weather has from the earliest times been a decisive factor in his destiny. Seditious gatherings, which neither wiser counsels nor an excellent police-force has been able to influence, have been quelled by a shower; rain has won and lost battles, crowned and uncrowned kings, and altered the course of history.
Perhaps it was the heavy rain of the following morning that produced a revolution in Mr. Darby’s mind. Whatever the reason, he found himself very ill-pleased with the two houses Sarah had chosen for his inspection. They drove first to the Manor House. Undeniably the Manor House was not at its best when it was raining. Not only did the rooms appear dismal: the roof leaked, and here and there water could actually be seen running down the walls. Sarah reminded him that he was seeing the house under the worst conditions. ‘It’s really not a bad place on a fine day, Jim,’ she assured him. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if we could make something of it.’
But nothing she could say would convince Mr. Darby. ‘It’s dreary, Sarah. It’s uncomfortable.’ He shuddered. ‘It reminds me of the houses I saw in London.’
‘Well, come and look at the upstairs rooms,’ said Sarah encouragingly.
But Mr. Darby shook his head. He had, almost at once, taken a great dislike to the place. It gave him precisely those gloomy feelings which had overcome him when inspecting the houses in London. ‘Don’t let us bother, Sarah,’ he said.
‘What, not even look over the house, now we’re here?’ asked Sarah in surprise.
‘No!’ Mr. Darby replied. ‘I don’t like the place, Sarah. I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t like it, in fact I hate it. It’s gloomy and uncomfortable and what I should call … ah … uncanny. Let’s leave it and try Outwell.’
The rain dripped from the porch as they climbed back into their motor. Mr. Darby shuddered again. ‘A haunted house, Sarah, if ever there was one!’ he said.
• • • • • • • •
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with all the houses on the market at the present time, Sarah,’ said Mr. Darby as they strolled rather aimlessly from room to room of Outwell Hall. ‘You may say this house is modern, replete with what I should call every comfort, and so no doubt it is. But all I can say is, I don’t like it; I don’t what I should call cotton to it. There’s a something about it, a junnersay quor, if you know what I mean, which I find extremely obnocuous. It’s not what I should call snug.’
‘No, Jim,’ said Sarah, ‘you’re right there, it isn’t snug; but then big houses very seldom are.’
Mr. Darby gazed at her sadly and helplessly. ‘No!’ he said. ‘No! I suppose they’re not. It’s a drawback, a very serious drawback.’
They drove home through the pouring rain to an excellent lunch. It seemed to Mr. Darby, delighted to be in his own place again, that all the things he most liked were on the table at once. Rubbing his hands together and drawing in his breath, he sat down to table with great gusto.
‘And now,’ he said with a sigh of heart-felt satisfaction when they had finished their lunch, ‘seeing that it’s still raining, I think I’ll go,’—he made a dignified ascending movement with the left hand—‘to my … ah … my study.’
Having climbed the stairs and shut himself into the room which he had so happily christened his study, Mr. Darby lit the gas-stove, sat down at his desk, and taking a pen and paper wrote, after a good deal of thought and correction, as follows:
‘To the Curator of the Newchester Art Gallery.
‘DEAR SIR,—You may have seen some account in the Newchester Daily Chronicle of my recent adventures in the Mandratic Peninsula, where for the last year I have occupied the position of King of Mandras. Since returning home, John Gilderston, the well-known Royal Academician, has executed my portrait in the royal robes which I then wore. The portrait is life-sized. It occurs to me that the Newchester Art Gallery may care to possess a portrait of a Novocastrian who attained to this interesting position. Being, as I am, much interested in our national art, I should like also to offer a gift of one thousand pounds to the funds of the Gallery. The picture is at present at Messrs. Porson & Gosling’s, where it is being suitably framed. Perhaps you would care to call there and inspect it and communicate your decision to me by telephone.’
Having sealed and addressed the letter Mr. Darby began to reflect on a suitable label for the picture, but no sooner had he begun to do so than he pushed back his chair convulsively. ‘God bless my soul!’ he exclaimed aloud. For what had happened was that he had suddenly remembered the Darby Collection. Since the moment of his return to England he had never once thought of it. The unpleasant events connected with it had done much to alienate it from his affections and also from his memory, and now he realized that even his recent visit to London had failed to remind him of it. There it was, still stored, no doubt, at Hampton’s. What on earth was he to do about it? Should he offer it to the Newchester Art Gallery?
For a moment the idea crossed his mind, but only to be instantly rejected. He was not prepared to admit that the Director and Trustees of the National Gallery were right in their verdict, but neither did he care any longer to maintain his own contention. The Darby Collection was an unfortunate incident, it had unpleasant associations, and it was a thing of the past. Mr. Darby decided that it should remain so. Again he took pen and paper and wrote as follows:
‘To Messrs Hampton & Sons Ltd.
‘DEAR SIRS,—With regard to the Collection of Pictures which you are storing for me, I shall be glad if you will arrange for them to be sold for what they will fetch. I may point out that some of the frames are expensive ones.’
Having sealed and addressed this letter also, Mr. Darby dismissed business affairs from his thoughts. With his hands in his pockets he strolled about his study, glancing now out of the windows at the streaming rain, now at this and that in the warm, pleasantly coloured room. Then he paused before his book-case, opened the glass-panelled doors, and stood for some time blandly considering his books. At last his spectacles settled themselves upon Through Mandratia on a Bicycle by J. N. Mackintosh. The very thing! In the light of his intimate knowledge of the Mandratic Peninsula he would re-read Mackintosh’s book and no doubt he would detect in it all sorts of inaccuracies. These travellers were notoriously given to drawing the long bow. He felt in his waistcoat pocket. Yes, his gold pencil-case was there. He had before now seen books in whose margins some reader out of his superior knowledge had made caustic pencil-notes, exclamation-marks, and that curious syllable sic which, it seemed, was the very symbol and embodiment of scorn. In the past Mr. Darby had felt an awed admiration for people who could thus fly in the face of cold print, but now he himself had joined the ranks of the sceptics. He flattered himself that he would find much to question, much to refute and ridicule in J. N. Mackintosh. He took the book from the shelf and, crossing the room, laid it on his smoking-table. Then he opened the cigar-box and carefully selected a cigar to which he applied the proper tests of eye and ear. The cigar passed the tests and he cut it, put it between his lips, took a puff, removed it, frowned at it, and then replaced it in his mouth. Then, sinking into his armchair, Mr. Darby again took up Mackintosh’s book and with a slightly contemptuous smile opened it.
For three hours he read and annotated, and so absorbed was he in this fascinating occupation that when Sarah knocked for him to open the door and entered bringing tea on a tray he was unable to believe it was so late.
‘I’ve just been looking into this book on Mandratia, Sarah,’ he said, laying it down and regarding her over the top of his spectacles. ‘You should read it.’
‘Oh, it’s all very well in its way,’ he replied, ‘but in parts it’s hopelessly … ah … parabolical. Good enough reading, no doubt, for the ignorant, but for anyone with what I should call inside knowledge … well!’ Mr. Darby shrugged his shoulders and smiled sarcastically.
Left alone again after tea he did not resume his examination of Mackintosh, but allowed himself instead to fall into a reverie. The raindrops clattered like a typewriter on the window-panes: outside it was wet, lifeless, and unutterably dreary; the study, by contrast, was deliciously warm and colourful. He thought of those large, cold, empty houses in London, all white and gold and pale green, and then he thought of the two melancholy houses they had inspected that morning. He shuddered as he thought how the rain would be leaking into the Manor House now. Then his thoughts turned to Mandras and Umwaddi Taan, and the stilted straw-thatched hut, sitting on whose floor he had spent so many monotonous and anxious hours; the terrible days and nights of feverish advance and headlong retreat; the horror of the bloody encounters with the Tongali, and then the long, lurching journey into captivity, the arrival at Aba Taana, poor Punnett’s dreadful death and the bewildering reunion with Sarah. Poor Punnett: it was impossible to realize that he was dead, dead and buried in that grim, cruel land, far, far from England.
Mr. Darby sighed deeply and returned to his secure and comfortable study. What a blessing, what an unbelievable blessing, to remember that Sarah was downstairs within call and that they were in England, where the horrible, the unaccountable, the unpredictable never occurs. All he wanted now was peace and quietness and the company of old friends.
• • • • • • • •
‘I’ve been thinking things over, Sarah,’ said Mr. Darby at supper, glancing up from an admirably grilled cutlet; ‘about this business of a house, I mean.’
Sarah raised her eyebrows. ‘Yes, Jim?’
‘If I had my own way, of course,’ Mr. Darby went on, ‘I don’t think I should bother about a house at all.’
Sarah caught her breath. ‘You mean, Jim …?’
‘I mean I should just simply stay here. In many ways this is a very convenient house, very comfortable, within easy reach of … ah … places of interest; hot and cold water, electric light …’ Unconsciously, as a result of his experiences during the past week, Mr. Darby assumed the descriptive style of the house-agent.
Sarah interrupted him. ‘What do you mean, if you had your own way, Jim? Aren’t you free to do as you like?’
Mr. Darby stared at her questioningly for a moment. ‘No, Sarah! he said at last. ‘No! Unhappily not. Our fortune carries with it certain duties, certain responsibilities. It is our duty, Sarah, to take up a position, to live on what I should call a scale, in accordance with …’
‘Now look here, Jim,’ Sarah broke in;’ I’ve had about enough of this talk of duty and responsibility. The plain fact is, that kind of talk means nothing, absolutely nothing. You have duties to your neighbours, I grant you, but don’t talk to me about your duty to your bank-balance. When you tell me that your money forces you to live in a way you don’t want to live, it’s no more sensible than if I were to tell you that this knife and fork forces me to eat fifty cutlets at a sitting. My advice is, live exactly as you feel inclined and get rid of all the money you don’t need. There’s plenty of others need it: Lord Savershill’ll take the lot from you and welcome for the H.C.S. And what’s the good of it all to us? If we lived as we wanted to live we couldn’t possibly spend more than … what? … three thousand a year, however hard we tried. Three thousand a year! And you have forty thousand a year coming rolling in and heaping itself up. It’s enough to smother you: it’s a perfect nightmare.’
Mr. Darby stared at Sarah, amazed and also very much struck by the force of her remarks. ‘Upon my word, Sarah,’ he said, ‘I sometimes think it is. I’ll … ah … look into the matter.’
• • • • • • • •
The immediate result of his looking into the matter was that two days later Mr. Darby called, by appointment, on the Lord Mayor of Newchester. Sir George Brackett was already in his second year of office, so that it was he who, as Lord Mayor, had received Mr. Darby’s gift of a thousand pounds to his hospital fund over a year ago. Mr. Darby’s request for an interview had therefore been warmly received. In the Lord Mayor’s Parlour Mr. Darby found the Lord Mayor seated at his desk; seated, in fact, in the very chair and at the very desk which he himself, as Sir James Darby, Bart., was to occupy five years later during his own term of office. The Lord Mayor rose on Mr. Darby’s entrance and shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Welcome back to Newchester, Mr. Darby,’ he said with great affability.
Mr. Darby bowed, thanked him, and took the chair to which his host motioned him. ‘And now, my Lord Mayor,’ he said when he had settled himself, ‘to business! I am, as you are no doubt aware, a man of very considerable means.’ The Lord Mayor nodded and Mr. Darby cleared his throat. ‘I have always considered,’ he went on, ‘that great wealth … ah … carries with it grave responsibilities, and now that I enjoy that wealth, I am what I should call conscious, what I should call deeply conscious of that … ah … responsibility. In short, how, I ask myself, can I best benefit my native city?’
Mr. Darby regarded the Lord Mayor with great solemnity. Then, suddenly changing his tone from the ceremonial to the sharply practical, he flung himself back in his chair and asked: ‘Now what about a cathedral?’
The Lord Mayor was gratifyingly astounded. ‘A cathedral, Mr. Darby? But we have a cathedral, haven’t we?’
‘A converted parish church,’ Mr. Darby replied with a touch of contempt. ‘The tower is fine, I grant you, but the church, my Lord Mayor, you must admit, is … well … is what I should call a church, and not, not a cathedral. No!’ he added, in a tone that would brook no contradiction, ‘not by any means! Now why not pull down the church and build a cathedral to suit the tower? Unless you have anything else to propose.’
‘Well, Mr. Darby,’ said the Lord Mayor, ‘I have, as a matter of fact, something else to propose, a thing of which Newchester is much more urgently in need than a cathedral,—only don’t tell the Bishop I said so. I propose, since your intentions towards Newchester are so magnificently generous, that you build us a new Infirmary. The present one, though most efficiently run, is, as you are doubtless aware, lamentably out of date as a building. Does the idea appeal to you?’
‘To be shaw!’ said Mr. Darby.’ Very much so. Why not?’
‘Of course,’ continued the Lord Mayor, ‘it would cost a great deal of money, but so would a cathedral, and you yourself mentioned a cathedral. Might I ask how much you propose to give?’
‘Well, roughly,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘—and, mind you, I’m speaking now in very round figures—roughly nine hundred thousand.’
• • • • • • • •
When Mr. Darby returned home in time for lunch he met his wife in the hall. ‘Well, Sarah,’ he said, ‘I’ve cut us down to five thousand.’
Sarah stood watching him hang up his coat.’ What is it you’ve done?’ she asked.
‘I’ve just been … ah … what I should call closeted with the Lord Mayor—a pleasant enough fellow, Sarah, very friendly and agreeable and so on—and I offered him nine hundred thousand to build a new infirmary.’
‘You did?’ said Sarah, amazed and delighted.
‘I did,’ Mr. Darby replied nonchalantly.
‘But Jim, how splendid,’ said Sarah, suddenly embracing the little man and knocking his bowler over his eyes. ‘You’re a wonder. It’s the very thing of all others you ought to have done. But mind you insist that it’s under the control of the H.C.S.’
‘Oh … ah … certainly, if you wish, my dear,’ said Mr. Darby, removing his hat and straightening his spectacles.
‘Nine hundred thousand,’ he said. ‘That leaves us with about a hundred thousand, a matter of five thousand a year or so.’
Sarah sighed. ‘However shall we spend it, Jim?’ she said. ‘We must do our best, that’s all,’ said Mr. Darby.
THE END