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

averted his eyes from the spectacle. Then he raised his glass once more and lowered the second half of the Bass, glancing again at the Mr. Darby oppositehim as he replaced his empty glass on the counter. No, he had been wrong: he looked all right, nothing ridiculous about him at all! And, after all, why should there be?
    So much for his looks. As regards his feelings, he felt magnificent. He was cured, completely cured, as right as rain. What was more, he was extremely hungry. He glanced along the counter and his eye fell upon a glass dish covered by a glass bell, under which was a pile of sandwiches. At that moment the barmaid removed his empty glass. ‘I’ll take a sandwich, please,’ he said promptly, ‘and,’ he added by an inspired afterthought, ‘another Bass.’
    â€˜Ham or beef?’ said the barmaid.
    â€˜One of each,’ said Mr. Darby.
    What an admirable place! How providential that he had happened upon it so casually! What excellent-looking sandwiches! His mouth was watering: he could hardly wait till the barmaid put the plate in front of him. And another Bass: that had been an inspiration, nothing less.
    The barmaid seemed to regard him more favourably. ‘Mustard?’ she asked musically, pushing a mustard-pot towards him.
    â€˜Thank you! Thank you!’ said Mr. Darby and he helped himself and, lifting the lids of his sandwiches, spread the beef and ham liberally with mustard. He was pleased to see how well the meat was cut: no gristle and not too much fat. ‘Nothing so good as a good sandwich,’ he ventured affably, ‘and nothing so bad as a bad one. Coldish, isn’t it!’
    The barmaid smiled amiably. ‘Yes, but what can you expect?’
    â€˜Exactly!’ said Mr. Darby. ‘Exactly! What can we expect? After all we shall have Christmas on us in a month.’
    He said he would take another ham sandwich, ‘just to make up the half half-dozen,’ he added jocularly.
    When he had finished it he felt he could have done with another, but he refrained, for, he told himself, he was one of those men who knew when to stop. With a sigh of satisfaction he finished his second Bass. ‘Really quite a pleasant young person,’ he thought to himself, as he issued from the porch ofThe Schooner, careless of detection now, on to the Quayside.
    He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes past one. There were still twenty-five minutes before he need be back at the office, so he turned and walked in the other direction up the Quayside, then crossed the roadway and stood at the edge of the quay to watch a cargo-boat loading. A steam-crane on a trolly, with a frantic hissing and rattling, lifted a great trayful of bales from the quay. The rattling stopped and the jib of the crane and the little cabin from which it protruded twirled round on its trolly, swung the load with it, and poised it over the open hatchway on the ship’s deck. Another pause: then with a sudden outbreak of rattling, it dropped the load neatly into the hold.
    â€˜Where is she bound for?’ Mr. Darby asked a man in a navy blue jersey.
    â€˜Rotterdam,’ said the sailor.
    â€˜A strange, outlandish name,’ Mr. Darby thought to himself as he moved on. Rotterdam! Marseilles! Port Said! The Isthmus of Panama! The South Sea Islands! What a lot of strange foreign places there were in the world. Once more the old hunger for travel and adventure came over him, a hunger so intense that his heart ached at the thought that he would never be able to satisfy it. ‘To think,’ he said, ‘that I shall die, that I shall certainly die, without ever having seen the Jungle.’ There lay the Jungle—somewhere or other in Africa, was it?—it really existed, it was not a mere fairytale fancy, but an absolute, undeniable reality; and here was he, William James Darby, on the Quayside at Newchester-on-Dole, and never, by any possibility, would he see the Jungle, nor