Mr. Incoul and his friend were both men to whom the visible world exists and they followed with lingering surprise. They ascended a sudden slope, bordered on one side by a high white wall in which lizards played, and which they assumed was the wall of some monastery, but which they learned from the boatman concealed a gambling-house, and soon entered a small grass-grown plaza. To the right was a church, immense, austere; to the left were some mildewed dwellings; from an upper window a man with a crimson turban looked down with indifferent eyes and abruptly a bird sang.
From the plaza they entered the main street and soon were at the inn. Mr. Incoul and Blydenburg were both men to whom the visible world exists, but they were also men to whom the material world has much significance. In the hall of the inn a chicken and two turkeys clucked with fearless composure. The public room was small, close and full of insects. At a rickety table an old man, puffy and scornful, was quarreling with himself on the subject of a peseta which he held in his hand. The innkeeper, a frowsy female, emerged from some remoter den, eyed them with unmollifiable suspicion and disappeared.
“We can’t stop here,” said Blydenburg with the air of a man denying the feasibility of a trip to the moon.
On inquiry they learned that the town contained nothing better. At the Casino there were roulette tables, but no beds. Travelers usually stopped at Hendaye or at Irun.
“Then we will go back to Biarritz.”
They sent their valises on again to the landing place and then set out in search of Objects of Interest. The palace of Charlemagne scowled at them in a tottering, impotent way. When they attempted to enter the church, a chill caught them neck and crop and forced them back. For some time they wandered about in an aimless, unguided fashion, yet whatever direction they chose that direction fed them firmly back to the landing place. At last they entered the Casino.
The grounds were charming, a trifle unkempt perhaps, the walks were not free from weeds, but the air was as heavy with the odor of flowers as a perfumery shop in Bond Street. In one alley, in a bower of trees, was a row of tables; the covers were white and the glassware unexceptionable.
“We could dine here,” Blydenburg said in a self-examining way. A pretty girl of the manola type, dressed like a soubrette in a vaudeville, approached and decorated his lapel with a tuberose. “We certainly can dine here,” he repeated.
The girl seemed to divine the meaning of his words. “Ciertamente, Caballero,” she lisped.
Mr. Blydenburg had never been called Caballero before, and he liked it. “What do you say, Incoul?” he asked.
“I am willing, order it now if you care to.”
But the ordering was not easy. Mr. Blydenburg had never studied pantomime, and his gestures were more indicative of a patient describing a toothache to a dentist than of an American citizen ordering an evening meal. “Kayry-Oostay,” he repeated, and then from some abyss of memory he called to his aid detached phrases in German.
The girl laughed blithely. Her mouth was like a pomegranate cut in twain. She took a thin book bound in morocco from the table and handed it to the unhappy gentleman. It was, he found, a list of dishes and of wines. In his excitement, he pointed one after another to three different soups, and then waving the book at the girl as who should say, “I leave the rest to you,” he dared Mr. Incoul to go into the Casino and break the bank for an appetizer.
The Casino, a low building of leprous white, stood in the centre of the garden. At the door, a lackey, in frayed, ill-fitting livery, took their sticks and gave them numbered checks in exchange. The gambling-room was on the floor above, and occupied the entire length of the house. There, about a roulette table, a dozen men were seated playing in a cheap and vicious way for small stakes. They looked exactly what they were, and nothing worse can be said of them. “A den of thieves in a miniature paradise,” thought Mr. Blydenburg, and his fancy was so pleasured with the phrase that he determined to write a letter to the Evening Post, in which, with that for title, he would give a description of Fuenterrabia. He found a seat and began to play. Mr. Incoul looked on for a moment and then sought the reading-room. When he returned Blydenburg had a heap of counters before him.
“I have won all that!” he exclaimed exultingly. He looked at his watch, it was after seven. He cashed the counters and together they went down again to the garden.
The dinner was ready. They had one soup, not three, and other dishes of which no particular mention is necessary. But therewith was a bottle of Val de Peñas, a wine so delicious that a temperance lecturer suffering from hydrophobia would have drunk of it. The manola with the pomegranate mouth fluttered near them, and toward the close of the meal Mr. Blydenburg chucked her under the chin. “Nice girl that,” he announced complacently.
“I dare say,” his friend answered, “but I have never been able to take an interest in women of that class.”
Blydenburg was flushed with winnings and wine. He did not notice the snub and proceeded to relate an after-dinner story of that kind in which men of a certain age are said to luxuriate. Mr. Incoul listened negligently.
“God knows,” he said at last, “I am not a Puritan, but I like refinement, and refinement and immorality are incompatible.”
“Fiddlesticks! Look at London, look at
