There are shops and streets, lit streets through which
blackeyed Senoritas pass in their lace mantilas; there are _cafes_ too; and
faro for those who reck of it; and bull fights, and newspapers younger
than six weeks; and in the harbour, taking in their fill of nitrates, many
ships, not to be considered without envy, because they are coming, within
a limit of days to England. But Iquique had no charm for Michael Garth,
and when one of us must go, it was usually I, his subordinate, who being
delegated, congratulated myself on his indifference. Hard-earned dollars
melted at Iquique; and to Garth, life in Chili had long been solely a
matter of amassing them. So he stayed on, in the prickly heat of Agnas
Blancas, and grimly counted the days, and the money (although his nature, I
believe, was fundamentally generous, in his set concentration of purpose,
he had grown morbidly avaricious) which should restore him to his beautiful
mistress. Morose, reticent, unsociable as he had become, he had still, I
discovered by degrees, a leaning towards the humanities, a nice taste,
such as could only be the result of much knowledge, in the fine things of
literature. His infinitesimal library, a few French novels, an Horace,
and some well thumbed volumes of the modern English poets in the familiar
edition of Tauchnitz, he put at my disposal, in return for a collection,
somewhat similar, although a little larger, of my own.
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