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

contemplating the plunge. But the truth was, and had always been, that even while contemplating it and urging himself to take it, Mr. Darby was not in earnest. He knew, even in the very act of urging himself, that he had not really the smallest intention of plunging. He was playing with himself and he was playing with fate.
    But the new Darby, Darby the man, had reached adegree of maturity at which this make-believe had ceased to soothe. In fact, it depressed him, for he felt it now to be a sign and symptom of his ineffectuality. Yes, if he desired adventure, he realised now, he must run to meet it and not simply sit waiting for it to come to him. But what could he do? For in his new and practical mood he saw that there was no meaning in his old dream of taking the plunge. In older and simpler days it was different: then you could, no doubt, step straight off your own back door step, without premeditation or preparation, into the great world. But in these complicated times a man—or anyhow a middle-aged man uninured to hardship and violent muscular effort—needs, as he had come to realize during his meditation on the Quayside, some sort of material backing. The most modest plunge, at least of the kind that he, at his age, was capable of taking, would involve—it was useless to blink the absurd, ugly fact—the purchase of a ticket, and a ticket to any of the places of his dreams—the Sphinx, the Jungle, Vesuvius and so on—would be expensive. Besides, there was Sarah.
    These practical reflections depressed Mr. Darby very much. For days he went to and fro through Newchester-on-Dole with the taste of ashes in his mouth. Still, for brief and unexpected moments—at the sight of an opulent shop-window, at the roar of a train in the Osbert Road cutting, or at the hidden impulse of that faith which, in despite of all reason, still lurked in his soul—happiness leapt irrepressibly in him; but he received these bright gifts now not as his natural right, but humbly and gratefully as balm to his sorrows. But his newly acquired wisdom did not allow him to succumb. It urged him to reflect, to plan, to scheme, to divide the impossibles from the possibles and to discard the former and to permute and combine the latter; and at last, after a careful sifting of pros and cons, Mr. Darby came to the practical decision that the only course open to him was to start a B Account, an Adventure Fund. It would be an awkward business, for Sarah knew all about his modest income. She had a very good head for business and it wouldbe difficult to transfer to the Adventure Fund amounts however small without her knowledge. If only he had kept Uncle Tom Darby’s annual present dark from the beginning. What a nest-egg! If he had saved it merely during the last ten years the Adventure Fund would stand at a thousand pounds. Could he, perhaps, pocket the letter when it arrived this Christmas, before Sarah noticed it, and pretend it had not come? They had always agreed that it was not to be relied on, not to be regarded in any sense as income, since it might stop at any time. Well, why not adopt the simple fiction that it
had
stopped? Mr. Darby blushed slightly to himself, but he disregarded the blush and the feeling that provoked it, for the desperate man must not stick at trifles. Yes, that is what he would do, or try to do. And anyhow, if he failed this year, he would, when writing to thank Uncle Tom Darby, intimate a change of address,—a change to ‘care of Messrs. Lamb & Marston, 37 Ranger Street.’
    Having at last taken a practical step towards the realization of his dreams, Mr. Darby felt better. He could afford now to leave things to develop. But meanwhile he was not going to ignore the comforts and consolations of his present life. Pre-eminent among these stood that midday visit to The Schooner. He would repeat it. It would, in fact, be a good move to accustom Sarah to the idea that, say, once a