But did Blix care for him?
In the retired corner of his club, shut off by the Japanese screen, or
going up and down the city to and from his work, or sitting with her in
the bay window of the little dining-room looking down upon the city,
blurred in the twilight or radiant with the sunset, Condy asked himself
the question. A score of times each day he came to a final, definite,
negative decision; and a score of times reopened the whole subject.
Beyond the fact that Blix had enjoyed herself in his company during the
last months, Condy could find no sign or trace of encouragement; and
for that matter he told himself that the indications pointed rather in
the other direction. She had no compunction in leaving him to go away
to New York, perhaps never to return. In less than a month now all
their companionship was to end, and he would probably see the last of
her.
He dared not let her know that at last he had really come to love
her--that it was no pretence now; for he knew that with such
declaration their "good times" would end even before she should go
away. But every day; every hour that they were together made it harder
for him to keep himself within bounds.
What with this trouble on his mind and the grim determination with
which he held to his work, Condy changed rapidly. Blix had steadied
him, and a certain earnestness and seriousness of purpose, a certain
STRENGTH he had not known before, came swiftly into being.
Was Blix to go away, leave him, perhaps for all time, and not know how
much he cared? Would he speak before she went? Condy did not know. It
was a question that circumstances would help him to decide. He would
not speak, so he resolved, unless he was sure that she cared herself;
and if she did, she herself would give him a cue, a hint whereon to
speak. But days went by, the time set for Blix's departure drew nearer
and nearer, and yet she gave him not the slightest sign.
These two interests had now absorbed his entire life for the
moment--his love for Blix, and his novel. Little by little "In
Defiance of Authority" took shape. The boom restaurant and the club of
the exiles were disposed of, Billy Isham began to come to the front,
the filibustering expedition and Senora Estrada (with her torn calling
card) had been introduced, and the expedition was ready to put to sea.
But here a new difficulty was encountered.
"What do I know about ships?" Condy confessed to Blix. "If Billy Isham
is going to command a filibustering schooner, I've got to know
something about a schooner--appear to, anyhow. I've got to know
nautical lingo, the real thing, you know. I don't believe a REAL
sailor ever in his life said 'belay there,' or 'avast.' We'll have to
go out and see Captain Jack; get some more technical detail."
This move was productive of the most delightful results. Captain Jack
was all on fire with interest the moment that Condy and Blix told him
of the idea.
"An' you're going to put Billy Isham in a book. Well, strike me
straight, that's a snorkin' good idea. I've always said that all Billy
needed was a ticket seller an' an advance agent, an' he was a whole
show in himself."
"We're going to send it East," said Blix, "as soon as it's finished,
and have it published."
"Well, it ought to make prime readin', Miss; an' that's a good fetchin'
title, 'In Defiance of Authority.'"
Regularly Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, Blix and Condy came out to
the lifeboat station. Captain Jack received them in sweater and
visored cap, and ushered them into the front room.
"Well, how's the yarn getting on?" Captain Jack would ask.
Then Condy would read the last chapter while the Captain paced the
floor, frowning heavily, smoking cigars, listening to every word.
Condy told the story in the first person, as if Billy Isham's partner
were narrating scenes and events in which he himself had moved. Condy
called this protagonist "Burke Cassowan," and was rather proud of the
name. But the captain would none of it. Cassowan, the protagonist,
was simply "Our Mug."
"Now," Condy would say, notebook in hand, "now, Cap., we've got down to
Mazatlan. Now I want to sort of organize the expedition in this next
chapter."
"I see, I see," Captain Jack would exclaim, interested at once. "Wait
a bit till I take off my shoes. I can think better with my shoes off";
and having removed his shoes, he would begin to pace the room in his
stocking feet, puffing fiercely on his cigar as he warmed to the tale,
blowing the smoke out through either ear, gesturing savagely, his face
flushed and his eyes kindling.
"Well, now, lessee. First thing Our Mug does when he gets to Mazatlan
is to communicate his arrival to Senora Estrada--telegraphs, you know;
and, by the way, have him use a cipher."
"What kind of cipher?"
"Count three letters on from the right letter, see. If you were
spelling 'boat,' for instance, you would begin with an E, the third
letter after B; then R for the O, being the third letter from O. So
you'd spell 'boat,' ERDW; and Senora Estrada knows when she gets that
despatch that she must count three letters BACK from each letter to get
the right ones. Take now such a cipher word as ULIOH. That means
RIFLE. Count three letters back from each letter of ULIOH, and it'll
spell RIFLE. You can make up a lot of despatches like that, just to
have the thing look natural; savvy?"
"Out of sight!" muttered Condy, making a note.
"Then Our Mug and Billy Isham start getting a crew. And Our Mug, he
buys the sextant there in Mazatlan--the sextant, that got out of order
and spoiled everything. Or, no; don't have it a sextant; have it a
quadrant--an old-fashioned, ebony quadrant. Have Billy Isham buy it
because it was cheap."
"How did it get out of order, Captain Jack?" inquired Blix. "That
would be a good technical detail, wouldn't it, Condy?"
"Well, it's like this. Our Mug an' Billy get a schooner that's so
bally small that they have to do their cooking in the cabin; quadrant's
on a rack over the stove, and the heat warps the joints, so when Our
Mug takes his observation he gets fifty miles off his course and raises
the land where the government forces are watching for him."
"And here's another point, Cap.," said Condy. "We ought to work some
kind of a treasure into this yarn; can't you think up something new and
original in the way of a treasure? I don't want the old game of a
buried chest of money. Let's have him get track of something that's
worth a fortune--something novel."
"Yes, yes; I see the idea," answered the Captain, striding over the
floor with great thuds of his stockinged feet. "Now, lessee; let me
think," he began, rubbing all his hair the wrong way. "We want
something new and queer, something that ain't ever been written up
before. I tell you what! Here it is! Have Our Mug get wind of a little
river schooner that sunk fifty years before his time in one of the big
South American rivers, during a flood--I heard of this myself.
Schooner went down and was buried twenty feet under mud and sand; and
since that time--you know how the big rivers act--the whole blessed
course of the river has changed at that point, and the schooner is on
dry land, or rather twenty feet under it, and as sound as the day she
was chartered."
"Well?"
"Well, have it that when she sank she had aboard of her a cargo of five
hundred cases of whiskey, prime stuff, seven thousand quart bottles,
sealed up tight as drums. Now Our Mug--nor Billy Isham either--they
ain't born yesterday. No, sir; they're right next to themselves! They
figure this way. This here whiskey's been kept fifty years without
being moved. Now, what do you suppose seven thousand quart bottles of
fifty-year-old whiskey would be worth? Why, twenty dollars a quart
wouldn't be too fancy. So there you are; there's your treasure. Our
Mug and Billy Isham have only got to dig through twenty feet of sand to
pick up a hundred thousand dollars, IF THEY CAN FIND THE SCHOONER."
Blix clapped her hands with a little cry of delight, and Condy smote a
knee, exclaiming:
"By Jove! that's as good as Loudon Dodds' opium ship! Why, Cap., you're
a treasure in yourself for a fellow looking for stories."
Then after the notes were taken and the story talked over, Captain
Jack, especially if the day happened to be Sunday, would insist upon
their staying to dinner--boiled beef and cabbage, smoking coffee and
pickles--that K. D. B. served in the little, brick-paved kitchen in the
back of the station. The crew messed in their quarters overhead.
K. D. B. herself was not uninteresting. Her respectability incased her
like armor plate, and she never laughed without putting three fingers
to her lips. She told them that she had at one time been a "costume
reader."
"A costume reader?"
"Yes; reading extracts from celebrated authors in the appropriate
costume of the character. It used to pay very well, and it was very
refined. I used to do 'In a Balcony,' by Mister Browning, and 'Laska,'
the same evening! and it always made a hit. I'd do 'In a Balcony'
first, and I'd put on a Louis-Quinze-the-fifteenth gown and
wig-to-match over a female cowboy outfit. When I'd finished 'In a
Balcony,' I'd do an exit, and shunt the gown and wig-to-match, and come
on as 'Laska,' with thunder noises off. It was one of the strongest
effects in my repertoire, and it always got me a curtain call."
And Captain Jack would wag his head and murmur:
"Extraordinary! extraordinary!"
Blix and Condy soon noted that upon the occasion of each one of their
visits, K. D. B. found means to entertain them at great length with
long discussions upon certain subjects of curiously diversified
character. Upon their first visit she elected to talk upon the Alps
mountains. The Sunday following it was bacteriology; on the next
Wednesday it was crystals; while for two hours during their next visit
to the station, Condy and Blix were obliged to listen to K. D. B.'s
interminable discourse on the origin, history, and development of the
kingdom of Denmark. Condy was dumfounded.
"I never met such a person, man or woman, in all my life. Talk about
education! Why, I think she knows everything!"
"In Defiance of Authority" soon began to make good progress, but Condy,
once launched upon technical navigation, must have Captain Jack at his
elbow continually, to keep him from foundering. In some sea novel he
remembered to have come across the expression "garboard streak," and
from the context guessed it was to be applied to a detail of a vessel's
construction. In an unguarded moment he had written that his
schooner's name "was painted in showy gilt letters upon her garboard
streak."
"What's the garboard streak, Condy?" Blix had asked, when he had read
the chapter to her.
"That's where they paint her name," he declared promptly. "I don't
know exactly, but I like the sound of it."
But the next day, when he was reading this same chapter to Captain
Jack, the latter suddenly interrupted with an exclamation as of acute
physical anguish.
"What's that? Read that last over again," he demanded.
"'When they had come within a few boat's lengths,'" read Condy, "'they
were able to read the schooner's name, painted in showy gilt letters
upon her garboard streak.'"
"My God!" gasped the Captain, clasping his head. Then, with a shout:
"Garboard streak! garboard streak? Don't you know that the garboard
streak is the last plank next the keel? You mean counter, not garboard
streak. That regularly graveled me, that did!"
They stayed to dinner with the couple that afternoon, and for half an
hour afterward K. D. B. told them of the wonders of the caves of
Elephantis. One would have believed that she had actually been at the
place. But when she changed the subject to the science of
fortification, Blix could no longer restrain herself.
"But it is really wonderful that you should know all these things!
Where did you find time to study so much?"
"One must have an education," returned K. D. B. primly.
But Condy had caught sight of a half-filled book-shelf against the
opposite wall, and had been suddenly smitten with an inspiration. On a
leaf of his notebook he wrote: "Try her on the G's and H's," and found
means to show it furtively to Blix. But Blix was puzzled, and at the
earliest opportunity Condy himself said to the retired costume reader:
"Speaking of fortifications, Mrs. Hoskins, Gibraltar now--that's a
wonderful rock, isn't it?"
"Rock!" she queried. "I thought it was an island."
"Oh, no; it's a fortress. They have a castle there--a castle,
something like--well, like the old Schloss at Heidelberg. Did you ever
hear about or read about Heidelberg University?"
But K. D. B. was all abroad now. Gibraltar and Heidelberg were unknown
subjects to her, as were also inoculation, Japan, and Kosciusko. Above
the G's she was sound; below that point her ignorance was benighted.
"But what is it, Condy?" demanded Blix, as soon as they were alone.
"I've the idea," he answered, chuckling. "Wait till after Sunday to
see if I'm right; then I'll tell you. It's a dollar to a paper dime,
K. D. B. will have something for us by Sunday, beginning with an I."
And she had. It was Internal Revenue.
"Right! right!" Condy shouted gleefully, as he and Blix were on their
way home. "I knew it. She's done with Ash--Bol, Bol--Car, and all
those, and has worked through Cod--Dem, and Dem--Eve. She's down to
Hor--Kin now, and she'll go through the whole lot before she's
done--Kin--Mag, Mag--Mot, Mot--Pal, and all the rest."
"The Encyclopaedia?"
"Don't you see it? No wonder she didn't know beans about Gibraltar! She
hadn't come to the G's by then."
"She's reading the Encyclopaedia."
"And she gets the volumes on the installment plan, don't you see?
Reads the leading articles, and then springs 'em on us. To know things
and talk about em, that's her idea of being cultured. 'One must have
an education.' Do you remember her saying that 'Oh, our matrimonial
objects are panning out beyond all expectation!"
What a delicious, never-to-be-forgotten month it was for those two!
There in the midst of life they were as much alone as upon a tropic
island. Blix had deliberately freed herself from a world that had
grown distasteful to her; Condy little by little had dropped away from
his place among the men and the women of his acquaintance, and the two
came and went together, living in a little world of their own creation,
happy in each other's society, living only in the present, and asking
nothing better than to be left alone and to their own devices.
They saw each other every day. In the morning from nine till twelve,
and in the afternoon until three, Condy worked away upon his novel, but
not an evening passed that did not see him and Blix in the dining-room
of the little flat. Thursdays and Sunday afternoons they visited the
life-boat station, and at other times prowled about the unfrequented
corners of the city, now passing an afternoon along the water front,
watching the departure of a China steamer or the loading of the great,
steel wheat ships; now climbing the ladder-like streets of Telegraph
Hill, or revisiting the Plaza, Chinatown, and the restaurant; or taking
long walks in the Presidio Reservation, watching cavalry and artillery
drills; or sitting for hours on the rocks by the seashore, watching the
ceaseless roll and plunge of the surf, the wheeling sea-birds, and the
sleek-headed seals hunting the offshore fish, happy for a half-hour
when they surprised one with his prey in his teeth.
One day, some three weeks before the end of the year, toward two in the
afternoon, Condy sat in his usual corner of the club, behind the
screen, writing rapidly. His coat was off and the stump of a cigar was
between his teeth. At his elbow was the rectangular block of his
manuscript. During the last week the story had run from him with a
facility that had surprised and delighted him; words came to him
without effort, ranging themselves into line with the promptitude of
well-drilled soldiery; sentences and paragraphs marched down the
clean-swept spaces of his paper, like companies and platoons defiling
upon review; his chapters were brigades that he marshaled at will,
falling them in one behind the other, each preceded by its
chapter-head, like an officer in the space between two divisions. In
the guise of a commander-in-chief sitting his horse upon an eminence
that overlooked the field of operations, Condy at last took in the
entire situation at a glance, and, with the force and precision of a
machine, marched his forces straight to the goal he had set for himself
so long a time before.
Then at length he took a fresh penful of ink, squared his elbows, drew
closer to the desk, and with a single swift spurt of the pen wrote the
last line of his novel, dropping the pen upon the instant and pressing
the blotter over the words as though setting a seal of approval upon
the completed task.
"There!" he muttered, between his teeth; "I've done for YOU!"
That same afternoon he read the last chapter to Blix, and she helped
him to prepare the manuscript for expressage. She insisted that it
should go off that very day, and herself wrote the directions upon the
outside wrapper. Then the two went down together to the Wells Fargo
office, and "In Defiance of Authority" was sent on its journey across
the continent.
"Now," she said, as they came out of the express office and stood for a
moment upon the steps, "now there's nothing to do but wait for the
Centennial Company. I do so hope we'll get their answer before I go
away. They OUGHT to take it. It's just what they asked for. Don't
you think they'll take it, Condy?"
"Oh, bother that!" answered Condy. "I don't care whether they take it
or not. How long now is it before you go, Blix?"