Come and Find Me

by Elizabeth Robins

The answer brought Mr. Dorn’s somewhat scornful profession that he knew nothing whatever about the hastily formed San Francisco lines, and little good about the mushroom companies of his own city, but if Hildegarde thought of sailing from Seattle he would look into the matter for her. Seattle was the better port, being the natural gateway to the North (Hildegarde could hear Mr. Dorn saying that), in witness whereof the bustling, booming city swarmed already with more prospective passengers than there were ships to float them—all wisely laying in their provisions, buying machinery and outfit in that best of all places—San Francisco? oh, dear, no! in Seattle, the City of the Future! Hildegarde must at all events come and visit the Dorns. Under the guidance of Madeleine’s husband, she would probably find out that, at best, the journey to Nome was impracticable for a lady.

The middle of April found Miss Mar a guest of the Dorns. Jacob L. seemed presently to abandon all idea of dissuading his wife’s friend from carrying her wild scheme into execution, but he pointed out the little need there was to rush blindly into avoidable difficulties. Better ships were in process of being chartered for the northern service, in view of the undreamed-of demand. The season, moreover, was late this year. Those earlier, inferior vessels (schooners and what not) that were to get off before the middle of May would only spend the time “knocking about the North Pacific, among the icebergs.”

So Hildegarde waited while Mr. Dorn looked thoroughly into the question. Even looking into it seemed perilous. It told on the gentleman’s health, as one might suppose. When Hildegarde had been only a few days under his roof, her host took to his bed with congestion of the lungs.

Madeleine absorbed in nursing the husband had little time for the friend. Hildegarde was suddenly thrown on her own resources. But she felt it would be impolitic to write that fact to Valdivia. From one shipping office to another, from Southwick’s Great Outfitting Emporium to the Baumgarten Brothers’ Wholesale Provision House, she went in quest of information; threading her way through the bustling streets, where among the featureless thousands, day by day she often saw the figure of the frontiersman in broad-brimmed hat and brown boots, laced to the knee; or the weather-beaten miner, in “waders” and brown duck or mackinaw. “They’re coming to Nome!” she would say to herself, looking on them already as fellow-travelers. One feeling much with her is perhaps really rather new in woman’s experience, among the many things called “new” that are yet so old. It seems as if never before her generation could it have been a matter of course to a girl like Hildegarde Mar, that she should feel instinctively it would be as absurd to treat these bearded frontiersmen with condescension, as to be terrified of them. Not that she analyzed the situation. It was too simple for that. Her feeling was merely that these uncouth fellow-creatures were possible friends of hers. As she met and passed them, or in imagination “placed” them in her coming experience, her mental attitude was singularly untarnished by the age-old anxiety of the unprotected female casting about for a champion. Something less self-centered than that, something kindlier, less the child of fear. Cheviot might have qualms, but man was not for Hildegarde her natural enemy. A woman alone was not obliged to peep furtively about for shelter, or for some coign of vantage, like one pursued in a hostile land. Not his immemorial prey, she; but like him the possible prey of circumstance, with ignorance for her arch-enemy as well as his. Those booted and sombreroed men—some of them at least—had already met and overcome the common enemy. They would be masters of the situation up there. Herself the mere ignorant human being, eager to learn, innocent of class-illusion, intensely alive to “differences,” yet knowing which of them were only skin-deep, or rather education-deep; young, yes; attractive, too; a girl going into a strange new world who yet goes fearlessly, hopefully, carrying faith in human nature along for her shield and her buckler. If this is an apparition new upon the earth, then perhaps the modern world has something to be proud of beyond the things it has celebrated more.

Not that she encountered no difficult moments. She was stared at, and she could see that she was speculated about. Well, that was no killing matter. Perhaps it was because she was so tall. When in the thronged and noisy offices she was crowded and pushed by an excited horde—though shown no special disrespect as a woman—she was certainly not comfortable, and was even a little forlorn. When a brow-beating passenger-agent vented his ill-temper upon her refusal to buy a ticket forthwith without waiting “to inquire further,” she felt the man’s rudeness keenly, absurdly. But it was not till some “masher” of a clerk spoke to her with a vulgar familiarity that discomfort went down before humiliation in the thought, “What would Louis say if he knew?” However, the clerk soon saw his error, and the tall, quiet girl was taken at a different valuation. Men, even the most ignorant men, learn these lessons more quickly than is supposed. But, oh, it wasn’t easy to do the work of preparation alone! comparing, eliminating, deciding all by oneself. For at every step, upon every question, one encountered conflicting testimony. Every store-window that one passed displayed things “Indispensable for Nome.” Every ship that sailed was the best, and bound to be first at the goal. Now and then to some one of the besieging hundreds at the offices, Hildegarde would put a question. The women looked askance. The men answered civilly enough. But if they knew little more than Hildegarde, they entertained darker fears. And still, and always, testimony was in conflict. The firm that impressed her most favorably, whose office she had just left “to think it over”—why they, it seemed, were a set of thieves. Passage on one of their ships meant ten to twenty days’ starvation on short rations of sour bread and salt horse. Heavens, what an escape! But that other firm she was on her way to interrogate—they were traffickers in human life! Didn’t she know they had been buying disabled craft of every description, even hauling up abandoned wrecks out of the sea, sweeping the entire Pacific for derelict and rotten craft that they might paint and rename, and make a fortune out of crowding such crazy vessels full of ignorant human cattle for Cape Nome?

But these people, proprietors of the New Line, in whose offices they stood—their ships if starting later were at least seaworthy. Seaworthy? ’Sh! Their ships didn’t so much as exist. These men only waited, postponing sailing dates on one pretext or another, till they had got your money and filled, and over-filled, the lists of their phantom ships. When they’d done that, you’d see! They’d pocket their thousands and abscond into Canada.

While Hildegarde waited hesitating, even on the smallest and least faith-inspiring boats the passenger lists rapidly filled. And still every train that thundered into the Seattle station disgorged its hundreds clamoring to be taken to Nome. Already, since Hildegarde’s arrival, a number of schooners and several steamers, with flags flying and bands playing, had gone forth to meet the early ice floes. Would these daring ones get any further, after all, than the Aleutian Islands before June? “You’ll see they’ll have to put in at Dutch Harbor for a month!” Hildegarde saw men; standing in dense crowds on the wharves, shake their heads, as they watched each ship go forth on the great adventure.

“All my life,” thought the girl, “I shall remember the port of Seattle, when the first boats went to Nome.”

There were those who might seem to have more cause than Hildegarde Mar to remember that unprecedented spectacle. For to the wonderful “Water Front” sooner or later every creature in Seattle found his way—commonly to suffer there some strange, malignant change. Even the quiet ones began to emit strange sounds, and to tear about as if afflicted with rabies; the most self-controlled went mad among the rest. They fought their way through the barriers, men and women alike; they screamed about their freight upon the docks; hurrahing and gesticulating, they saw maniac friends off, on ships whose decks were black with people, whose rigging, even, swarmed with clotted humanity, like bees clinging in bunches to the boughs of a tree.