Episode 3

"Please don't come till thirtieth." The thirtieth--and it was now the fifteenth! She flung back the fortnight on his hands as if he had been an idler indifferent to dates, instead of an active young diplomatist who, to respond to her call, had had to hew his way through a very jungle of engagements! "Please don't come till thirtieth." That was all.Not the shadow of an excuse or a regret; not even the perfunctory "have written" with which it is usual to soften such blows.She didn't want him, and had taken the shortest way to tell him so.Even in his first moment of exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should not have padded her postponement with a fib.Certainly her moral angles were not draped!

"If I asked her to marry me, she'd have refused in the same language.But thank heaven I haven't!" he reflected.

These considerations, which had been with him every yard of the way from London, reached a climax of irony as he was drawn into the crowd on the pier.It did not soften his feelings to remember that, but for her lack of forethought, he might, at this harsh end of the stormy May day, have been sitting before his club fire in London instead of shivering in the damp human herd on the pier.Admitting the sex's traditional right to change, she might at least have advised him of hers by telegraphing directly to his rooms.But in spite of their exchange of letters she had apparently failed to note his address, and a breathless emissary had rushed from the Embassy to pitch her telegram into his compartment as the train was moving from the station.

Yes, he had given her chance enough to learn where he lived;and this minor proof of her indifference became, as he jammed his way through the crowd, the main point of his grievance against her and of his derision of himself.Half way down the pier the prod of an umbrella increased his exasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining.

Instantly the narrow ledge became a battle-ground of thrusting, slanting, parrying domes.The wind rose with the rain, and the harried wretches exposed to this double assault wreaked on their neighbours the vengeance they could not take on the elements.

Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in general a good traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felt himself obscurely outraged by these promiscuous contacts.

It was as though all the people about him had taken his measure and known his plight; as though they were contemptuously bumping and shoving him like the inconsiderable thing he had become."She doesn't want you, doesn't want you, doesn't want you," their umbrellas and their elbows seemed to say.

He had rashly vowed, when the telegram was flung into his window: "At any rate I won't turn back"--as though it might cause the sender a malicious joy to have him retrace his steps rather than keep on to Paris! Now he perceived the absurdity of the vow, and thanked his stars that he need not plunge, to no purpose, into the fury of waves outside the harbour.

With this thought in his mind he turned back to look for his porter; but the contiguity of dripping umbrellas made signalling impossible and, perceiving that he had lost sight of the man, he scrambled up again to the platform.As he reached it, a descending umbrella caught him in the collar-bone; and the next moment, bent sideways by the wind, it turned inside out and soared up, kite-wise, at the end of a helpless female arm.

Darrow caught the umbrella, lowered its inverted ribs, and looked 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 the umbrella abruptly down on him.Darrow steadied her with extended 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, woke in him a memory of having seen it at a distant time and in a vaguely unsympathetic setting; but it was no moment to follow up such clues, and the face was obviously one to make its way on its own merits.

Its possessor had dropped her bag and bundles to clutch at the tattered umbrella."I bought it only yesterday at the Stores; and--yes--it's utterly done for!" she lamented.

Darrow smiled at the intensity of her distress.It was food for the moralist that, side by side with such catastrophes as his, human nature was still agitating itself over its microscopic woes!

"Here's mine if you want it!" he shouted back at her through the shouting of the gale.

The offer caused the young lady to look at him more intently."Why, it's Mr.Darrow!" she exclaimed; and then, all radiant recognition: "Oh, thank you! We'll share it, if you will."She knew him, then; and he knew her; but how and where had they met? He put aside the problem for subsequent solution, and drawing her into a more sheltered corner, bade her wait till he could find his porter.

When, a few minutes later, he came back with his recovered property, and the news that the boat would not leave till the tide had turned, she showed no concern.

"Not for two hours? How lucky--then I can find my trunk!"Ordinarily Darrow would have felt little disposed to involve himself in the adventure of a young female who had lost her trunk; but at the moment he was glad of any pretext for activity.Even should he decide to take the next up train from Dover he still had a yawning hour to fill; and the obvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness in distress under his umbrella.

"You've lost a trunk? Let me see if I can find it."It pleased him that she did not return the conventional "Oh, WOULD you?" Instead, she corrected him with a laugh--Not a trunk, but my trunk; I've no other--" and then added briskly: "You'd better first see to getting your own things on the boat."This made him answer, as if to give substance to his plans by discussing them: "I don't actually know that I'm going over.""Not going over?"

"Well...perhaps not by this boat." Again he felt a stealing indecision."I may probably have to go back to London.

Episodes
1 Episode 1
2 Episode 2
3 Episode 3
4 Episode 4
5 Episode 5
6 Episode 6
7 Episode 7
8 Episode 8
9 Episode 9
10 Episode 10
11 Episode 11
12 Episode 12
13 Episode 13
14 Episode 14
15 Episode 15
16 Episode 16
17 Episode 17
18 Episode 18
19 Episode 19
20 Episode 20
21 Episode 21
22 Episode 22
23 Episode 23
24 Episode 24
25 Episode 25
26 Episode 26
27 Episode 27
28 Episode 28
29 Episode 29
30 Episode 30
31 Episode 31
32 Episode 32
33 Episode 33
34 Episode 34
35 Episode 35
36 Episode 36
37 Episode 37
38 Episode 38
39 Episode 39
40 Episode 40
41 Episode 41
42 Episode 42
43 Episode 43
44 Episode 44
45 Episode 45
46 Episode 46
47 Episode 47
48 Episode 48
49 Episode 49
50 Episode 50
51 Episode 51
52 Episode 52
53 Episode 53
54 Episode 54
55 Episode 55
56 Episode 56
57 Episode 57
58 Episode 58
59 Episode 59
60 Episode 60
61 Episode 61
62 Episode 62
63 Episode 63
64 Episode 64
65 Episode 65
66 Episode 66
67 Episode 67
68 Episode 68
69 Episode 69
70 Episode 70
71 Episode 71
72 Episode 72
73 Episode 73
74 Episode 74
75 Episode 75
76 Episode 76
77 Episode 77
78 Episode 78
79 Episode 79
80 Episode 80
81 Episode 81
82 Episode 82
83 Episode 83
84 Episode 84
85 Episode 85
86 Episode 86
87 Episode 87
88 Episode 88
89 Episode 89
90 Episode 90
91 Episode 91
92 Episode 92
93 Episode 93
Episodes

Updated 93 Episodes

1
Episode 1
2
Episode 2
3
Episode 3
4
Episode 4
5
Episode 5
6
Episode 6
7
Episode 7
8
Episode 8
9
Episode 9
10
Episode 10
11
Episode 11
12
Episode 12
13
Episode 13
14
Episode 14
15
Episode 15
16
Episode 16
17
Episode 17
18
Episode 18
19
Episode 19
20
Episode 20
21
Episode 21
22
Episode 22
23
Episode 23
24
Episode 24
25
Episode 25
26
Episode 26
27
Episode 27
28
Episode 28
29
Episode 29
30
Episode 30
31
Episode 31
32
Episode 32
33
Episode 33
34
Episode 34
35
Episode 35
36
Episode 36
37
Episode 37
38
Episode 38
39
Episode 39
40
Episode 40
41
Episode 41
42
Episode 42
43
Episode 43
44
Episode 44
45
Episode 45
46
Episode 46
47
Episode 47
48
Episode 48
49
Episode 49
50
Episode 50
51
Episode 51
52
Episode 52
53
Episode 53
54
Episode 54
55
Episode 55
56
Episode 56
57
Episode 57
58
Episode 58
59
Episode 59
60
Episode 60
61
Episode 61
62
Episode 62
63
Episode 63
64
Episode 64
65
Episode 65
66
Episode 66
67
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68
Episode 68
69
Episode 69
70
Episode 70
71
Episode 71
72
Episode 72
73
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74
Episode 74
75
Episode 75
76
Episode 76
77
Episode 77
78
Episode 78
79
Episode 79
80
Episode 80
81
Episode 81
82
Episode 82
83
Episode 83
84
Episode 84
85
Episode 85
86
Episode 86
87
Episode 87
88
Episode 88
89
Episode 89
90
Episode 90
91
Episode 91
92
Episode 92
93
Episode 93

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