The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife Read Online Free PDF

before we met,’ continued the speaker, ‘he had led his blushing bride,’ he paused to drop a humorous eye on Sarah and all other eyes but Mr. Darby’s followed suit.
    â€˜Not me, Mr. Stedman!’ said Sarah. ‘I was never one for blushing.’
    George Stedman withdrew his eye. ‘Led his
blushing
bride,’ he insisted, ‘to settle in these parts. They were strangers, Ladies and Gentlemen,—foreigners you might say, for they came from the other side of Newchester,—from Jockswood, which, I may tell you, is a matter of five miles from here.’ Stedman paused once more, till the mirth had subsided. Then he dropped back into the more solemn tone of his prelude, swaying the mood of his audience with all the ease of the practised orator. Only Mr. Darby failed to follow, lingering behind in contemplation of that reference to Jocks-wood and his emigration to Savershill. Yes, he had done itthen, twenty years ago: he had taken the plunge. But the plunge had carried him only five miles. The mistake had been—yes, he confessed sadly to his port-glass that it
was
a mistake—to weight himself with Sarah. Uncle Tom Darby had been more practical: he had plunged alone, unhampered, and his plunge had carried him clean across the world. If it had been wet on that Saturday afternoon when he took Sarah Bouch out to Hobblesfield, everything might have been different. That was the worst of being so impressionable. Strong feelings, that was his trouble. He had always been a man of strong feelings. He could feel them boiling and surging in him now like a stormy sea. Yes, the meek, quiet little man, sitting motionless before his port-glass, felt himself tossed, even now, upon high seas of emotion, rising on crests of strange, ecstatic joy, plunging into troughs of indefinable misery, as he sailed before the wind of George Stedman’s interminable eloquence, which came to him in his dream as a slow rise and fall of wordless, windlike sound. He was recalled to himself by the cessation of it, a prolonged silence, followed at last by George Stedman’s concluding phrase. ‘Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, I must stand no longer between you and our host. I conclude by asking you to join me ‘—he raised his glass—’ in wishing Jim Darby
and
Mrs. Darby long life and every happiness.’
    The toast was drunk. Mr. Darby inadvertently drank it himself, draining his glass at a single gulp. Then, with great caution, he rose to his feet. He felt disquietingly insecure, with an insecurity localized especially in the tongue, the mind, and the legs. This was not at all the state in which he had imagined himself rising to address the assembly. For three or four seconds the room dissolved and swam before his eyes. The moment was critical: only a supreme effort could save him.
    Mr. Darby made that effort. With an almost superhuman determination he stemmed the rising mutiny, imposed his will on vacillating mind and body. ‘Be calm!’ he adjured himself. ‘Be calm! Pull yourself together! Don’t begin yet. Plenty of time.’ He reminded himself that a long pause,however strange and desperate it might appear to himself in his present state, was bound to produce an impression of extreme self-control on his audience. It was this reassuring thought that saved him. He took his time. He stood steady. He could feel, triumphantly, that he was standing steady, that he was quite definitely not swaying. And now he made another comforting discovery. The chrysanthemums were
not
too tall: nowhere near it. He towered above them. Far beneath him he saw the white expanse of tablecloth, and around it and above it the faces of his guests blossoming like huge flowers against the outer dimness. At the end of the table, straight opposite him, Sarah’s was regarding him sternly. But he did not care. With every moment new strength was being added to him. He smiled defiantly at Sarah’s