Hildegarde learned other things the next morning besides how to do your
marketing for two years in an hour. She brought away from Baumgarten’s
the renewed impression that Mrs. Blumpitty was a person of some practical
sense, and that Mr. Blumpitty, though he might be an authority upon
the Mother Lode and an estimable character to boot, did in reality
himself need a good deal of looking after. It is impossible to say just
how the “unlogical” feminine mind—in this case young and ignorant as
well—may arrive at so definite a conclusion out of a small assemblage
of apparently trifling data. For Hildegarde’s judgment was not founded
merely upon the outer man. Nor was it contributed to very largely by Mr.
Blumpitty’s indifference to small economies, as shown in his readiness
to order gallons of expensive “olive” when cotton-seed oil was as cheap
as wholesome to cook with, and Mr. Blumpitty convicted by his wife of
inability to detect any difference in taste. It was not merely that Mrs.
Blumpitty was the one to offer reasons why methylated spirit, though
cheap on the bill, was dearer in actual use than alcohol. It was not that
he had forgotten after sixteen months’ experience, “what a cravin’ you
get up there fur sweet and fur sour,” and what a failure the California
dried fruit had turned out the year before. _Had_ he complained he
couldn’t eat such insipid stuff till Mrs. Blumpitty had “livened” it with
a dash of vinegar as well as sugar and spice? Wa-al, p’raps he had!
“You mustn’t give me dried apples from any place nearer here than
Michigan,” said Mrs. Blumpitty.
The Baumgarten Brother had smiled a little, and said, “She knows.”
The upshot of the morning was to give Hildegarde an inkling that the
chief use of Mr. Blumpitty, so far as she was concerned, might be that he
would keep her family soothed by the illusion that this respectable man,
pledged to her service, was “going to see that everything was all right.”
For the rest, should she not perhaps do well to imitate his spouse, and
not expect any one to be wide awake in her interest who was half asleep
before his own? Although he had said, “Ya-as, it’s all right about the
ticket,” Miss Mar interviewed the steamship people on her own behalf.
“Quite right!” they indorsed Mr. Blumpitty’s account of the matter.
And as to the berths, Mr. Blumpitty already had twenty-eight, and had
sent word he wanted a twenty-ninth, “a pertickler good one fur a lady.”
“Noospaper woman I presoom,” said the agent politely. It seemed to be
only the press that inspired such respect. She was more glad than ever of
the offer that had come that morning from Eddie Cox, editor, now, of the
“San Miguel Despatch.” “Yes,” she told the agent, “I am to be a Regular
Correspondent.” In all sorts of ways she saw her status incomparably
improved by falling in with Eddie Cox’s suggestion. It appeared to be
necessary to stand well with a “noospaper” woman. “What accommodation can
I have?”
“Why, the best we got.”
“Is there much choice?”
“We put you down here, with Mr. Blumpitty’s party.” A number was
indicated.
“I’d like to see the cabin.”
“_See_ it?”
“Yes, before I decide.”
Impossible. If she didn’t take and pay for the berth now, in an hour
it would be in other hands. But seeing her quite unhustled by this
horrid alternative, the agent said he would make a great, an unheard-of
exception in her case, and promised to take her over the ship as soon as
the _Los Angeles_ came up from Tacoma, where she was being elaborately
refitted, “new paint, electric light, everything.” It would be a pity for
a “noospaper” woman to go in any meaner vessel.
The crowds that composed the sailing list besieged the offices day by
day, wildly impatient at the date of departure being “a little postponed”
while the _Los Angeles_ was further embellished for their reception.
“Style’s all very well. But gettin’ there’s the thing.”
And among them this girl, with only half her ticket paid for, coming in
twice a day to keep track of events.
At last, after a night of riot, when the office was very nearly pulled
about the company’s ears, all Seattle knew that the much-heralded
steamer had been brought up from Tacoma and was at the Seattle wharf.
The crowds on the water front could see her, glaring and white and
respect-inspiring, but guarded like the gate of Paradise.
“Let’s go and see our quarters,” Hildegarde suggested, meeting Mr.
Blumpitty in the street.
“Wish we could,” said Blumpitty sadly. “No one allowed aboard till
sailin’ time, nine o’clock to-morrer.”
Hildegarde spoke of the agent’s promise.
“Promise! Oh, yes, promise anything.” And Blumpitty moved gloomily away
in the crowd.
Hildegarde found the agent without loss of time. He was overwhelmed with
work. Didn’t she see!
What she saw was a clay-faced individual, with a slight bulge in one
lean jaw where he stored his tobacco—red-eyed, unwashed, and obviously
irritated by her reappearance. His promise—quietly she insisted. The
anæmic visage twitched, and he attended to another customer. But she
stood waiting, and she looked as if she were prepared to camp there till
she’d had her way. Oh, these women! They wus always like that—fussin’ and
naggin’ and goin’ on!
He attended to two other customers. _They_ didn’t expect such things
of him. But there she still stood with her eyes fixed upon the agent,
blockin’ up the way, waitin’, waitin’. “What’d I do if they all expected
me to go runnin’ round the wharves with ’em!” he demanded in an angry
undertone.
“You promised,” she began, glancing at the fact that there were three
other clerks in the office.
“Mr. Blumpitty’s satisfied!” he said severely, pointing out the
lamentable contrast. And he’d taken her for a lady. A lady would believe
a gentleman when he told her it was all right—and not worry him. But
though she must have seen plainly how she was still further lowering the
agent’s lofty ideal of how a lady should behave, there she stood looking
at him with a grave steadiness that held no hope of her yielding her
point. “Promise! promise!”—why, it was damned good-natured of him to
make a promise, but to expect him to— He bent toward her. “Look yere,” he
said in an angry whisper, “I ain’t got a special permit yet.”
“I’ll wait till you get it.”
“Can’t have it yere before three.”
“Very well, I’ll come at three, but you must please not disappoint me
again, or else I—” He jerked away. As he saw her going out—Now what did
she mean?—“or else she—” You never know what pull these noospaper women
have got.
He had forgotten all about her when— O Lor! There she was upon the
stroke, like fate.
Well, well, did she promise not to tell none o’ the rest o’ the
passengers? All right, then. Come ahead.
He led the way to the docks with every circumstance of secrecy; dodging
through back streets, lying to acquaintances as to where he was going,
and gradually growing cheerfuller, pausing to exchange humorous asides
with friends along the wharf. Hildegarde, waiting, silent, patient,
during these passages, was entirely aware of the curious looks bent
upon her, and saw that her expedition with this little rat of a man was
held by some to have a “larky” aspect (save the mark!). She saw it was
incredible to these people that the agent should take this trouble for
any other reason than that she was an attractive young woman who had
smiled upon this poor little drink-sodden creature, and was giving him
the rare sensation of being “a sad dog with the ladies.” Even playing at
the idea had quite transformed the agent. Poor little misery! She knew
instinctively she had nothing to fear from him, and even if he had been
a different type she had no doubt but what she would have known how to
keep him in his place when they were alone. But before these pals of his
the agent put on sly looks, carried himself rakishly, and tipped his
hat very far back on his head. Well, it was an odd world evidently, but
Hildegarde Mar had come out to see it. Now, after various formalities,
they were going on board.
“See! paint’s wet yet. That’s why I didn’t want y’ to come. Spoil y’
clo’es, sure ’s a gun.” Apparently to-morrow the paint would be dry as a
bone. Past the strangely few decent, though cramped, state-rooms of the
first saloon, each ticketed with the names of prospective occupants, down
into the dim region of the second saloon, down into the intermediate,
further down, clinging on to ladders, down, down, into the bowels of
the ship, Hildegarde and the ferret-faced agent went, looking for
Mr. Blumpitty’s quarters. And lo! though that gentleman had paid for
first-class accommodation—as the agent admitted—he’d been “glad to get
the only accommodation left,” and that was in the hold! The twenty-nine
berths were twenty-nine sections of deal shelves, ranged in tiers five
deep, and set so close one on top of the other you could not believe it
possible for a good-sized man to insert his body between the unsheeted
ticking of his chuck-mattress and the board above his head. Hildegarde
stood stooping in the awful hole and staring as one not crediting her
eyes.
“It’ll look better,” says the agent, a little shamefaced, “when the beds
are made. The company supplies a piller each, and a pair o’ blankets.”
No ventilation. No light of day. One electric burner to illumine the
horror of the gloom.
“You don’t mean to say—” began Hildegarde, turning such a look upon the
agent that he said hurriedly: “No, no. This won’t do for a noos—fur a
lady.” And they climbed the ladders back to day.
He found the lady up-stairs quarters on the saloon deck.
“But there are only five berths here.”
“Best cabin on the ship,” said he, spitting with decision through the
port.
“But on this card on the door there are five names already.”
“One’s comin’ out,” and he saw to that by the simple process of drawing
an indelible pencil across “Miss Tillie Jump,” and substituting “Miss H.
Mar.”
Still the young lady studied the card. “Look at this.”
He looked.
“Here, at the very top.”
“Don’t see nothin’.”
“You don’t see _Mr._ and Mrs. David M. Jones.”
“Oh, yes, I see them.”
“Surely that’s a mistake.”
“Mistake? No. I ’tended to them folks myself.” As the young lady stared
incredulous, he reassured her. “They’re comin’ all right. Tip-top folks.
He wus governor of—”
“They’re not coming in here?”
“Why not?”
“_Mr._ Jones?”
“Yes, David M. He wus governor of—”
“In here, with all these—ladies!”
“Well, one’s his wife. Don’t you be afraid. _He’s_ all right.”
“He can’t possibly come in here.”
“He’s got to. No other place. Him an’ his wife wus almost the first
passengers on the list.”
“Well, give them a cabin to themselves.”
“Oh, see here! There ain’t room fur no style like that on _this_ trip.”
“Then put back Miss Jump and take out Mr. Jones.”
She saw the agent blink at such cool juggling. “Mr. Jones must go in a
man’s cabin,” she explained.
“Don’t you know they’re all full?”
“He can’t come in here,” said the young lady inflexibly.
“He’s got to, that’s all there is about it. I can’t go playin’ no monkey
tricks with David M. Jones.”
“Then please find me some other place.”
“Ain’t I already told you? They ain’t no—”
“You mean you can’t, after all, accommodate me on this ship?”
“Lord! Lord!” The agent seemed to pray for patience and for light.
“You were prepared to make Miss Tillie Jump—” and in spite of herself,
gravity went by the board. But the agent’s smile was wan.
“That was different,” he assured her. “Well, here goes!” With the air of
one who has cast the last shred of prudence to the winds, he wrote out
a new card from which you might gather that David M. Jones had not been
reëlected for this berth. And so, exit the former governor!
“_Now_ you can’t say we ain’t done everything.”
“Thank you,” said Hildegarde. “There’s only one thing more. I should like
to bring my steamer trunk in to-day and get settled.”
The agent gaped, and then, with a gesture of comic feebleness before the
spectacle presented by this young lady, he sat down on the edge of the
berth labeled, “T. Jump,” and grinned.
“The paint’s nearly dry up here,” urged Miss Mar, as one meeting the only
possible objection.
It must be because she was on a “noospaper.” Nothing else could give a
woman a nerve like this. Well, it was positively refreshin’! Out of pure
gaiety of heart the agent added a little new tobacco to the store already
accumulated in his cheek. “’Tain’t a bad idear,” he said. “More’n you’d
like to try it on. But it wouldn’t hardly do.”
“Why?”
“Make a nawful rumpus.” As still she seemed not to understand the
enormity of her proposal. “’Twouldn’t be fair to let some and not let
others.”
She could see that. “But why not let them all?”
“Oh, haw! haw!” The thing was somehow deliciously comic. But a compromise
might be possible—“fur a noos—” Luckily the purser happened to be on
deck. Hildegarde, to her stark astonishment, heard the agent reply
confidentially to some question, “Well, y’ wouldn’t think so, but from
one or two things she let drop, I guess she’s one o’ ——’s hustlers, an’
special correspondent fur the ‘New York Herald,’ I guess, an’ Gawd knows
what else.” She was forthwith presented to Mr. Brown, and it was arranged
that the “noospaper” woman should send her baggage down to the purser’s
care, and herself be allowed to come on board a couple of hours before
the mob—say at seven o’clock in the evening.
* * * * *
At a quarter before that hour the street near the wharf where the _Los
Angeles_ lay was dense with packed humanity. So much time and tact it
took to worm one’s way through the mass, that Madeleine, who had come
down to see her friend off, began to despair. Already she had been longer
away from her invalid than she had meant. Hildegarde urged her to turn
back now. Madeleine looked about with anxious eyes. “It’s worse even than
I imagined. It’s terrible to leave you here.”
“It’s much more terrible for you to leave Mr. Dorn.”
Madeleine didn’t deny that.
“And if you come further there’s no telling _when_ you’ll get out. It
will be worse going back against the tide.”
But Madeleine hesitated, with harassed face.
“I’d much rather you went now,” Hildegarde urged, taking her suit-case
from her friend. “Good-by.”
Madeleine clung to her with filling eyes. “I _hate_ leaving you.”
Hildegarde kissed her. “Good-by, dear. And thank you a thousand times.”
In the act of going, Madeleine whispered, “Oh, I _hope_ nothing will
happen to you. But I’m frightened to death. Good-by. Oh _dear_!”
And that was the last of the old familiar life.
* * * * *
As slowly Hildegarde got herself and her suit-case through the crowd,
it was borne in upon her that perhaps she had been wrong to insist that
neither of her brothers should come and see her off, as each had nobly
suggested, in spite of their unwavering opposition to the enterprise.
She had made a point of their trusting her “to do it alone.”
Besides, she wasn’t alone. In every letter she flourished the Blumpittys.
Where were those Blumpittys now? No sign of them since yesterday.
Anyhow, she had prevented the boys from coming. Her fear, not of course
formulated to them, had been that if they came, somehow, at the last
moment they would try to prevent her going. Well—she looked about—they
probably would. She pressed on, inwardly exulting, outwardly modest and
asking pardon. And all the time she kept a sharp lookout, as if, in spite
of everything, she was expecting some one. A Blumpitty? Not a bit of it.
* * * * *
“It’s no use,” said a red-faced man, with a wheezy voice, “not a _bit_ o’
use yer tryin’ to get through yere.”
“There would be,” said the young lady, “if you helped me a little.”
That was different. But, “Ye’ll only get to stand a yard or two further
on till nine o’clock. They wouldn’t open them gates fur President
McKinley.”
“I want to see if my baggage got here all right. I sent it hours and
hours ago.”
“Same bright idear’s occurred to the rest of us,” said a sharp-faced
youth. But they let the young lady pass. And in the uncertain light they
looked after the tall, striking figure, dressed in close-fitting dark
green, wearing a perfectly plain green felt hat, which was somehow more
distinguishable and more distinguished set upon a head like that than if
it had been furbelowed after the fashion of the other feminine headgear
that flowered and feathered in the throng. Public opinion would have set
her down as “stuck up,” from the way she carried herself, had it not been
for something too gentle in the face to support that view. The delicately
molded chin, with the end softly turned up, gave an almost childish look
to the face, and the long-lashed eyes, at once eager and abstracted, why
were they always looking, looking? “Lost her party, I guess.”
On she went, changing her suit-case from one tired hand to the other,
looking here, looking there, just as she had done in the Seattle streets.
She had gone about all these last days consciously braced for a final
encounter with Cheviot—a last attempt on his part to make her abandon the
undertaking. That, of course, was the reason he had not written, nor even
telegraphed, to say good-by. There was nothing surly, or even sullen,
about Cheviot. Though they had parted “like that,” he wouldn’t be willing
she should go without his making some sign. Not having done so could only
mean—Oh, she knew what it meant.
She dramatized the coming scene—saw herself being “quite firm,”
defeating, utterly routing him. But in order to carry out the program she
mustn’t let him take her by surprise. And as now over this shoulder, now
over that, she scrutinized the faces in the crowd, she felt her heart
beat as she thought of the coming conflict. And the pink color rose in
her face. She had been afraid “the boys” might want to turn her back. In
her heart of hearts she was afraid that Louis, in some way not clearly
foreseen, would succeed. She went forward with the sense of one escaping
from a definite peril. At last, rather out of breath, she dropped her
suit-case before the door of the brightly lighted baggage-room. Just
inside was a man in his shirt-sleeves, and beyond him—
“_There’s_ my trunk!” she cried out, with the cheerful air of one
descrying a valued friend.
“Want it checked?”
“Yes, please.”
“Where’s it goin’?”
“To Nome, of course,” answered Hildegarde, panting a little and
straightening her hat. “Nobody is going anywhere else, are they?” she
added, a little impatient at the man’s staring and delay.
“N-no. I guess not. But—” He grinned good-humoredly. “I didn’t think you
looked like a Nomer.”
Here was a blow at the very start. Hildegarde glanced down at her plain
clothes, and decided the man was mistaken. But he checked her trunk, her
provision-box, her bag, her deck-chair, and her roll of wraps, and she,
declining to give up the suit-case, turned about to make her way among
the people, massed thicker than ever in this direction. For over yonder,
hidden by the crowd, was the gate whose opening would give access to the
_Los Angeles_. Progress here more difficult than ever.
Courage! Now if Louis were somewhere in the crush, if those critical
blue-gray eyes were on her, he would be wondering to see how well she
made her way, keeping her footing and her temper, gaining inch by inch
her goal. She went the more unflinching as under the gray-blue eye.
When it became obvious that this pink and white gentle-looking girl
was intent, if you please, on working her way to the barrier in front
of people who had been there an hour, she was treated to an experience
of unyielding backs, sharp elbows, and surly looks. Why shouldn’t she
wait her turn? Yes, Hildegarde reflected, it was natural they should
feel that, especially the women. Why, how many women there were! But no
Mrs. Blumpitty, and no— Hildegarde looked at her watch. How the time had
flown. It really was rather odd about Cheviot. He might, of course, come
still later, but suppose he didn’t. It was almost incredible, and yet—
If he did come, he’d see, at all events, there were some quite
nice-seeming women here. But perhaps they weren’t going. This one, with
the white, white face under the orange hat—what little young voice
was that beside her? Why, the woman was holding a boy by the hand. He
reminded Hildegarde of Cheviot’s small nephew, Billy. She smiled down
into the solemn little face. “Are you seeing some one off?”
“Nop!” said the Curlyhead sturdily. “Goin’ to Nome meself.” And the crowd
cheered. Either that demonstration frightened him, or he was tired and
indifferent to popular approval. He began to fret and then to whimper.
Was it his father who spoke so roughly and so thickly? Curlyhead’s
whimper blossomed into wailing. His father began to shake him.
“Oh, wait a minute,” said the tall young lady, as if meaning only to
delay the operation for a second. She set down the suit-case on her own
toes, and out of a pocket in the close-fitting green jacket came a cake
of chocolate, all glorious in silver foil. Hildegarde held it before the
child’s distorted little face. The features righted themselves as by
magic. The youngest pioneer no longer took a gloomy view of his prospects.
The father’s been drinking heavily, Hildegarde said to herself as she
went on. Poor wife. Poor little boy. She would know Curlyhead better on
the ship.
How strange if Louis were to harbor such deep resentment as not to write
and not to appear. That _he_ should be the only one of her familiar
circle that had not to be dissuaded from coming to see her off! If
suddenly now in the crowd she should see him she would be almost glad.
After all, he couldn’t prevent her sailing. What was he thinking of to
let her go off like this, without—Had her mother been right? Just then a
woman, in a sealskin jacket and with diamonds twinkling in her ears, not
only refused flatly to let Hildegarde pass but angrily admonished the men
about her to stand firm.
The tall young lady only changed her course a little, and made obliquely
for the barrier, but the encounter with that woman affected her more
unpleasantly than the elbowing and jostling of the others. She had a
distinct vision of Louis Cheviot’s face as he had said “the kind of woman
that goes to Nome.” It had been horrible to him that Hildegarde was not
daunted. For she hadn’t let him see that she was. And now that woman,
with the hard face and the diamond ear-rings!—and Louis too disgusted to
want to come and see his old friend off, or even to send her a message of
good-by.
She began to see how foolish it was to expect to see him here. He had
washed his hands of her.
And still, in the back of her head, she thought he might come—even built
upon it. She looked back. No, he wasn’t in sight; but a tall, grizzled
man had given the youngest pioneer a seat on his shoulder. That was nice
of the grizzled man.
But it was saddening to go on so great a journey without the good-will of
so close a friend as—
There was something very hard about Louis. He could enjoy himself quite
comfortably, since he had washed his hands of her. Her mother—(why was
this man in front of her dressed in oilskins?) Yes—washed his hands of
her. Her mother had told her as much. Bella and Mrs. Wayne had come up
from the country to the Valdivia G. H. Charity Ball. They had stayed
at the great new hotel. Bella had worn pink at the ball, and danced
constantly with Louis Cheviot. She stayed on for several days, and they
drove together every evening. People had begun to talk. Well, it had
seemed very possible once. Why not? And here was Hildegarde actually
expecting he might have left Bella and come all that way from Valdivia
just to wish Hildegarde God-speed on a journey he had loathed the
very mention of. Idiocy. Of course he was out driving with Bella this
soft, beautiful evening. He would be thinking: “Bella could never do
anything so unfeminine as to go to a horrible place like Nome!” Bella
and Louis. Why did she, the girl struggling here in the crowd, feel this
half-incredulous aching at the thought? Bella and Louis. Natural enough.
Even inevitable. The reason that she, Hildegarde, felt like this was that
she wasn’t accustomed yet to being alone, and it was so hard to reach the
barrier yonder. Jack Galbraith. Would he, too, join them—the sensible
stay-at-home folk? Curiously, Jack was grown as dim as last year’s
dreams. For weeks she had felt him fading out of the old picture. And in
the new he had no place at all. Why was that? Perhaps he was dead. It
seemed hardly to matter. Should she ever get to the barrier?
Oh, how they pushed and crowded upon her. It made her feel quite angry.
Not so much with these poor struggling people. But with Cheviot. If
he were here now, instead of driving about with Bella, if those broad
shoulders of his were between Hildegarde and— “Oh, please, please, you’re
crushing me.”
“Then stand back,” said a man angrily.
_And he wasn’t even drunk._
Over an hour it had taken her to penetrate from the outer fringes of the
crowd, by way of the baggage-room, to this gate in the barrier, chained
and barred. On the other side of it, an irate dragon on guard, ready to
breathe fire and brimstone at the mere notion of letting anybody by.
When Hildegarde signed to him, he only roared out over the heads of the
people, “Nine o’clock’s the time everybody was told to come on board. If
you don’t like waitin’ outside till the proper time you can go home.”
Hildegarde tried to convey across the barrier that she was acting under
instructions. “Keep back,” roared the dragon, quite as if he feared the
tall figure might contemplate vaulting over.
“It is a special arrangement,” she said quite low, “made by the purser
himself.”
“Yes, yes, very likely.”
“I assure you the purser—”
“God A’mighty, what purser?”
Still Hildegarde spoke as confidentially as possible. “The purser of this
ship.”
“What’s the name o’ the purser who could do a thing like that?”
“Mr. Brown is his name.”
“Brown ain’t the name o’ the purser o’ this ship. Guess again!”
The crowd exulted. The dodge had failed.
“Isn’t this the _Los Angeles_?”
“Yes, by—!” A gush of oaths before which the girl gasped as if a bowl of
ice-cold water had been, dashed in her face. “Oh-h!—if Louis heard that!
Luckily he will never know. He’s out driving with Bella.”
She took her courage in both hands. “I shall report you if you don’t let
me by. Your own agent introduced me to the _Los Angeles_ purser, and
called him Mr. Brown.”
“Purser, purser”—more blasphemy—“I wouldn’t let the _owner_ of this ship
on board before nine o’clock.”
“Mr. Brown said—”
“Brown! Brown!” shouted the man, goaded to frenzy by this feminine
obstinacy. “Look yere, if he was Black and the devil himself I wouldn’t
let ye in after the orders I’ve had.”
The crowd chuckled and swayed.
The tall girl craned her neck over the barrier in the uncertain light.
She had caught sight of a lurking figure uncommonly like the fat
purser’s, seeming to seek shelter behind a bale of merchandise. “Why,
there he is now,” she said quite low. “Mr. Brown!” No answer, and the
figure vanished. “Mr. Brown!” she called, in a clear, penetrating voice.
“I’m here, as you told me to be. Mr. B—”
Hurriedly the tun-bellied figure reappeared and whispered to the
dragon. A brief low-voiced altercation between the two men. Only one
word distinguishable to the girl on the other side of the barrier,
“noospaper.” A growling menace of “trouble sure” from the dragon, and
then the gate opened a cautious crack. The noospaper woman and her
suit-case were plucked from the murmuring crowd and set upon the ship.
She turned to thank her rescuer. For all his amplitude he had melted into
air. On the far side of the barrier, under the electric light, the crowd
murmured and swayed, coupling the name of Brown with opprobrium.
The ship was badly lit and silent as the grave. Hildegarde felt her way
down into the saloon, where a single light was burning. She found her
cabin, and she put a jacket and a suit-case in her berth. On reflection,
to make it look the more occupied, she added a green felt hat with her
card stuck in the narrow band. Then out into the dim saloon. How strange
for her to be in this place. So strange, she had a fleeting notion she
would presently wake up and find herself in the little white room at
home. But no, for the purser, who appeared and disappeared like some
incorporeal essence, was standing at the door of the saloon with a pile
of letters and telegrams, and little packets, saying: “There’s flowers,
too, an’ a box o’ fruit an’ a basket. When the steward comes, I’ll send
them to your room.”
Last letters from the few who had been allowed to know the name of her
ship, from her mother and the boys, from Bella, from Eddie Cox—no one had
forgotten her except— He might come yet. Even Bella’s mother had sent a
telegram, saying she hoped Hildegarde would find the traveling tea-basket
a slight solace. Bella sent fruit, and wrote: “Come back as much the same
Hildegarde as you can. You won’t be quite the same I know. No one is
after a great journey. Too much happens. No, I shan’t ever see you again,
dearest of all my friends, but let the Hildegarde that you bring home be
as much like the old Hildegarde as you can manage.”
These letters, the last echo of the old voices. Why did she hear plainest
of all the one who was silent.
What was this! Homesick already, and the anchor not yet weighed?
She would go on deck. At the foot of the companionway she took heart of
grace, breathing in gratefully the whiff of fresh air that came down to
greet her. But half-way up she paused. What was that—that sound like the
deep groundswell of the sea? Why, that must be the crowd—those people on
the other side of the barrier and the ever-augmenting legions all along
the water front. It was the sharp-featured youth, with the shifty little
eyes, who had called her wish to check her baggage “a brilliant idear”;
it was the drunken man who had shaken his little tired child; the woman
with the white, white face; that other woman with the ear-rings, who
hated anybody who went in front of her—all the people who had jostled and
elbowed and tried to force her back. Soon they would be here, her daily
companions. No escape. They were to become as familiar as people she had
known all her life, as those home people who already seemed as far off as
the dead folk are. But the home people weren’t dead; they were driving
and dancing, and they had nothing more in common with Hildegarde Mar. She
was henceforth to be companioned by that hungry crowd out there, with
its vague murmuring, like the sea at Monterey. Dancing and merrymaking
fell back into that far-off world that she had left so long ago, before
she came all by herself to Seattle, all by herself was setting sail for
Nome. Even when she reached the top of the companionway the noises on
the wharf still sounded muffled for the most part and seemed to come
from afar. But every now and then a single anger-sharpened note—or a
cheer it might be—went up into the still air as startling as a rocket,
and like a rocket seemed to burst in that higher region and come falling
down to earth in a shower of sharp broken cries and strange, unnerving
noises. She remembered the man who had set the child on his shoulder, and
a woman with gray hair. She seemed to see them trampled under foot. The
woman in the sealskin jacket looked on. Something menacing even in the
muted cries, as though they presaged some mighty uprising of a trampled
people. Had there been sounds like these abroad in Paris streets in the
days of the Revolution? The solitary girl lent herself for a moment to
that terror of the mob which dimly feels that no physical danger on the
earth can match the peril you may stand in before the fury of the mass.
Any single creature, however angry or debased, is a human being. But the
mass!—the mass is a monster, and the monster was at the gate.
Along the deserted deck she went, making hardly any noise, and listening
with tense nerves.
How strange for her to be in this place alone.
Oh, Louis! Louis! and suddenly she had stopped. She was leaning her head
against a stanchion, and the tears were running down her face.
But very soon she was ashamed.
Drying her eyes, she went aft on the upper deck. The air was soft and
wooing. All the harbor full of shipping; and lights—lights everywhere.
The arch of heaven was very wide and filled with an infinite dusk. It was
like some soothing and benignant presence. She faced about, still looking
up, and saw the keen little crescent of the young moon hanging aslant,
seeming to bend down over the _Los Angeles_. The sight of the little moon
comforted the girl curiously. It seemed to be shining so hopefully, so
gallantly, setting its tiny horns for a signal just over Hildegarde’s
ship. She turned a silver coin in her pocket while she wished, and in the
dusk she curtsied to her Moonship. Feeling a little less forlorn after
performance of these rites, she walked the silent deck with firmer step
and the hornèd moon for company, trying not to listen to those sounds
down there upon the wharf—trying to recapture her early zest in this
enterprise. Now there were dim figures moving about the shadowy deck, and
in the smoking-room a light was turned on. Through the window she could
see a group of four men. They stood before a big sheet of paper laid
upon the table, and they argued some point with anger. Why, one of the
men was the little agent! “I swear it’s all right”—he raised his voice
excitedly—“all quite regillar an’ legal.”
A snigger near where the girl stood made her aware of the presence of two
men behind her there in the dusk, one indifferent, half turned away; the
other, through spectacles that caught the smoking-room light, looked in
over Hildegarde’s shoulder at the angry group.
“What are they arguing so about?” asked the girl, a little anxiously. If
either of the men outside answered she didn’t hear, for the noise below
on the wharf had been growing louder. Surely there was a riot going on!
“Oh, what is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter down there?”
“The matter is it’s close on ten o’clock,” said the man with the
spectacles.
“But they promised to let the people in at nine!”
“That’s the trouble.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“That’s why.” The spectacled face nodded toward the smoking-room window.
The voices in there were held down now, but three of the faces were
angrier than ever. The fourth was sullen and set.
“Won’t you tell me what is happening?”
“Only a little false swearing.”
“What about?”
“The size of the passenger list. The _Los Angeles_ is chartered to carry
three hundred. They’ve sold over five hundred first-class tickets.”
“Is that the inspector in there?”
The spectacles moved up and down, making “Yes” with flashes of light, and
the lowered voice said: “He’s refused to sign our clearance papers.”
“Then we won’t get off?”
“Oh, probably.” The reply rang so cynical, as the spectacled stranger
walked after his silent companion, that Hildegarde stared the more
earnestly through the window at the drama going on within.
Did they “square” the inspector? She only knew the party broke up and
melted away, and a few minutes after, a change came over the crowd
below. A sudden animation that exploded in yells. Was it triumph? Or was
it rage? Or was it pain? Yes, surely some one was crying “Help,” and
a woman shrieked, and now a sound like a flood breaking all barriers
and deluging the world. The lights went up on a sudden all over the
ship, and down below the gates gave way. In an incredibly short time
the ship that had seemed so lonely—it was full. And the torrent of
humanity that swept in looked so wild-eyed and disheveled, angry, and
possessed by evil passion, that Hildegarde turned and fled down the
companionway, and hid herself in her cabin. Ah, yes, she wasn’t much
of a heroine. It had been the work of a few seconds to turn the dim
and silent ship into a howling, flaring pandemonium, hundreds of angry
voices clamoring, complaining, threatening, shouting questions, muttering
hoarse abuse. “The company”—everybody was blaming the company. Dozens
of people tried to force their way into the cabin for five, at the foot
of whose authorized list of occupants stood the name of “Miss H. Mar,”
and in one of whose berths that intrepid adventurer was sitting in the
midst of her possessions, cross-legged like a Turk, staring, listening,
wondering what was going to happen when Governor David M. Jones appeared.
Was this he? No, only a huge young woman, in a man’s hat and ulster,
who growled and muttered unintelligibly—a foreigner, who seemed to be
cursing in Dutch. But this other, breathing American fire and biblical
brimstone, this must be Mrs. Governor Jones, holding up her skirt, half
torn out of its gathers. Would she wreak vengeance for that as well as
for graver misfortunes on the Turk in the upper berth? As the night
wore on the people sorted themselves. Hildegarde came to distinguish
between the interlopers and the women who belonged in here; battered and
breathless and worn out, but held together by a common bond of fearsome
experience in getting on board, and agreed, besides, in regarding none
too benevolently the person who sat up there in the farther top berth,
staring with wide eyes at the stories of what the others had suffered,
and herself saying never a word, till some one came to the door to ask if
Miss Mar was “there all right.” “_I_ don’t know,” said the nearest woman
crossly.
“Oh, yes, yes,” said the Turk, tumbling out of the top berth. “Is that
you, Louis?” Now she knew how sure she had been, and how hugely glad
of his coming. But there at the door only the fat purser, who seemed
to have gone mad. He stared vacantly at the young lady, pulled off his
cap, and polishing his shining crown with a large handkerchief, muttered
abstractedly: “Oh—a—_that’s_ all hunky-dory!” and hurried away. As soon
as she recovered her breath, Hildegarde caught up her hat and went after
him to explain and to inquire.
But he was swallowed in the crowd. She made a tour of the deck. But no,
one couldn’t stay long, and anyhow Cheviot wasn’t there. Not even the
Blumpittys seemed to be there. Curlyhead was refusing to come and be put
to bed, refusing in terms incredibly sulphurous for one of such tender
years. It turned you sick to hear such language from baby lips.
“Where you off to?” said one man to another just in front of Hildegarde.
“Goin’ to report to the authorities.”
“Report what?”
“The rat hole they’re askin’ me to sleep in.”
“Plenty o’ time. We ain’t goin’ to get off till to-morrer, anyway.”
“_What!_ Why, we’re a week late a’ready.”
“Some of us’ll be later’n that. The authorities are goin’ to hold back a
couple of hundred fur the next ship.”
“Who says so? _I_ ain’t goin’ to wait.”
“Well”—he lowered his voice—“there’s inconvenient questions about
over-crowdin’.”
The raging malcontent of the moment before was straightway tamed. You saw
in his face that he would do his share in hushing up the conditions under
which he was to make the voyage.
As Hildegarde sped along the last stretch of the deck before going
below, her astonished eyes fell upon the giant. Then he hadn’t got off
by the _Congress_! She was about to ask him if he’d seen the Blumpittys,
but some one else was surprised to find the giant on board the _Los
Angeles_—a puffing, excited individual, with a red beard, in the act of
pushing past, stopped, stared, and then clapped the giant on the back.
“Gawd A’mighty! Is that you!”
“No,” says the giant calmly. “I’m Ford O’Gorman.”
Again Hildegarde hurried down the companionway, and very much as an
agitated tabby seeks refuge in the attic, she clambered into the top
berth furthest from the door.
And Cheviot had never come!