The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife by Martin Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page B

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 songand brandishing a tumbler flitted through Mr. Marston’s imagination. It was this that had caused him to smile.
    â€˜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