The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife by Martin Armstrong Page A

heart and mind what McNab had guaranteed that the Bass would do for his body. Accordingly Mr. Darby put himself in motion once more, but his pace was now steadier and more becoming than it had been before. He was aware of himself now, aware of the town through which he moved, aware of the shop-windows which resumed their customary duty of ministering to his sense and his imagination. As he turned down the precipitous Cliff Street a cold wind blew up from below, redolent of the river, and Mr. Darby’s heart thrilled.
    A few minutes later the Cathedral struck the third quarter past noon as he stepped on to the Quayside. As usual his first glance was for the shipping, the thicket of masts and rigging, deck cabins and funnels and bridges, that lined the edge of the Quay. Beyond them, in the fairway, a grimy tug, tall funnel raked as if by the force of its movement, thrust its way powerfully through the steel-bright water, drawing, as it seemed, the whole river after it. The smoke-blackened walls and roofs of Portshead, piled upon the opposite bank, the austere smoke-blackened church standing high above them, frowned across at their neighbour Newchester. High above the squat little Swing Bridge towered the black High Level on which trains and road traffic (the first above the second) rumbled across between town and town.
    With a deep, satisfied sigh Mr. Darby turned his gaze from these enthralling scenes and glanced along the line of haphazard, old-fashioned shops and stores that faced the river. Not twenty yards from where he stood he caught sight of what he sought,—a public-house The Schooner. Without more ado, he made for it and, having reached it, threw a rapid glance up, then down, the street and darted in.
    Mr. Darby was unaccustomed to public-houses: he had been taught, from childhood, to regard them as the homes of drunkenness and disorder. More than once, it is true, he had visited the bar in the Central Station Refreshment Roomand taken a glass of port with a friend, but that was altogether a different matter. He had entered The Schooner, therefore, with a certain amount of trepidation, but he was somewhat reassured as soon as he got inside, for the low-ceilinged room in which he found himself was clean, comfortable, and inviting. The bar was rather crowded, and it took Mr. Darby some time to work his way to the front where he found himself face to face with a rather shockingly magnificent barmaid. She ignored Mr. Darby, for she was occupied in conversation with a man who stood beside him and it was not for half a minute or so that she deigned to drop a supercilious eye on him.
    â€˜A Bass, if you please!’ said Mr. Darby with a touch of loftiness; but his loftiness was as nothing beside hers. She handled bottle, glass, and change with the aloofness of a duchess. Her cold unresponsiveness recalled Sarah’s manner at breakfast that morning and Mr. Darby felt a dumb indignation stir in him. But not for long, for the Bass stood before him, and the Bass and not the barmaid was his concern at the moment. He raised it to his lips, tasted it and, as a result of the experiment, half emptied the glass at a single draught.
    How right, how absolutely right, McNab had been. This was precisely what he wanted: this clean, tonic bitter was what his jaded tongue and stomach had been crying out for all the morning. He smacked his lips and then pressed them tightly together. For a minute or so he surveyed the rows of bottles on the shelves behind the bar. They recalled his visit of the previous evening to Edgington’s, but he did not pursue that memory. Then among the bottles he noticed hats, faces, collars, sleeves: the shelves were backed with mirrors, and next moment his eye fell upon something he had never seen before,—to wit, Mr. William James Darby standing at a public-house bar toying complacently with a half-empty glass. He looked (he noted with displeasure) a little foolish and with a slight blush he