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In the cuddy we were only five, but a more uneven quintette I defy
you to convene. There was a young fellow named Ready, packed out
for his health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was
an outrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink
nothing but champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day,
and I have seen him pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour
together. Miss Denison was our only lady, and her step-father, with
whom she was travelling, was the one man of distinction on board.
He was a Portuguese of sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos
by name; at first it was incredible to me that he had no title, so
noble was his bearing; but very soon I realized that he was one of
those to whom adventitious honors can add no lustre. He treated
Miss Denison as no parent ever treated a child, with a gallantry
and a courtliness quite beautiful to watch, and not a little
touching in the light of the circumstances under which they were
travelling together. The girl had gone straight from school to her
step-father's estate on the Zambesi, where, a few months later, her
mother had died of the malaria. Unable to endure the place after
his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to Victoria, there
to seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as my own. He
was now taking Miss Denison back to England, to make her home with
other relatives, before he himself returned to Africa (as he once
told me) to lay his bones beside those of his wife. I hardly know
which of the pair I see more plainly as I write - the young girl
with her soft eyes and her sunny hair, or the old gentleman with
the erect though wasted figure, the noble forehead, the steady eye,
the parchment skin, the white imperial, and the eternal cigarette
between his shrivelled lips.
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