and thanked his stars that he need notplunge
Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in generala good traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felthimself obscurely outraged by these promiscuous contacts.
It was as though all the people about him had taken hismeasure and known his plight; as though they werecontemptuously bumping and shoving him like theinconsiderable thing he had become. "She doesn’t want you,doesn’t want you, doesn’t want you," their umbrellas andtheir elbows seemed to say.
He had rashly vowed, when the telegram was flung into hiswindow: "At any rate I won’t turn back"–as though it mightcause the sender a malicious joy to have him retrace hissteps rather than keep on to Paris! Now he perceived theabsurdity of the vow, and thanked his stars that he need notplunge, to no purpose, into the fury of waves outside theharbour.
With this thought in his mind he turned back to look for hisporter; but the contiguity of dripping umbrellas madesignalling impossible and, perceiving that he had lost sightof the man, he scrambled up again to the platform. As hereached it, a descending umbrella caught him in the collar-bone; and the next moment, bent sideways by the wind, itturned inside out and soared up, kite-wise, at the end of ahelpless female arm.
Darrow caught the umbrella, lowered its inverted ribs, andlooked up at the face it exposed to him.
"Wait a minute," he said; "you can’t stay here."As he spoke, a surge of the crowd drove the owner of theumbrella abruptly down on him. Darrow steadied her withextended arms, and regaining her footing she cried out: "Oh,dear, oh, dear! It’s in ribbons!"Her lifted face, fresh and flushed in the driving rain, wokein him a memory of having seen it at a distant time and in avaguely unsympathetic setting; but it was no moment tofollow up such clues, and the face was obviously one to makeits way on its own merits.
Its possessor had dropped her bag and bundles to clutch atthe tattered umbrella. "I bought it only yesterday at theStores; and–yes–it’s utterly done for!" she lamented.
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