“No earthly melon can taste as good as this one smells,” said Patsy. “It is as if all the spices of Arabia had been let loose in this room!”
The servants had withdrawn, the clatter of the dishes had ceased. Some one opened a window; from the garden came the music of a guitar played by a master hand, a man’s voice singing a song of Andalusia:
“Me han dicho que tu te casas,
y asi lo dice la gente,
todo sera en un dia
tu casamiento y mi muerte.”
(They have told me thou art to wed, so people say; all shall be in one day, thy marriage and my death.)
Don Jaime’s thimbleful of gin and his two cups of black coffee—he ate scarcely anything—had waked him up wonderfully. He smoked, with my permission, between the courses throughout lunch, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the phenomenally long nail of his little finger; his hands were white, handsome, and exquisitely kept. Lunch over and the serenade finished, Don Jaime settled his old black sombrero jauntily on the side of his head, buttoned up his threadbare coat—its darning was a work of art—and declared himself ready to show us the town.
“You would like to paint it red, wouldn’t you?” said Patsy.
“White better is suited to that climate,” said Don Jaime. His slang was current in the England of the sixties, and he took ours literally, but he laughed buoyantly because Patsy laughed.
Algeciras is a clean, pretty town, with neat, whitewashed houses, handsome iron gratings to doors and casements, and curious metal gargoyles and gutters painted green. Here and there from a window, or, in the more important houses, from a balcony like a small grated out of doors boudoir, leaned a handsome Algeciras girl, her dark, smooth hair beautifully dressed, with a bright flower worn over the middle of the forehead,—a pink rose, a white camelia, or one of the gorgeous red or yellow carnations one must come to Andalusia to see. We walked in the alameda, a well laid out promenade, with neat little gardens, each with a small pavilion on either side. We loitered in the city square, admired its beauties, and the handsome uniforms of the smart, well set up Spanish officers, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes outside the more fashionable cafés.
“Miré (look)! this is the bull-fighters’ café,” said Don Jaime, as we turned into a side street, “and there is Bombito, the first matador in Spain. He has come down from Madrid for the bull-fight to-morrow.”
An open door gave a glimpse of a tawdry interior with large mirrors, red plush seats, and atrocious decorations. At a table near the window sat the matador, a magnificently built man, with a frank, open face and a courageous eye. He was dressed in Andalusian costume,—a short, close-fitting coat like an Eton jacket, red sash, very tight trousers, wide-brimmed hat of hard gray felt. His hair, tied in a cue, was turned up under his hat; his full ruffled shirt was fastened by large diamonds; a superb cabuchon ruby burned on his finger. Around him sat a group of aficionados, the fancy, the young bloods of Algeciras. As we passed, Bombito, looking up, recognized Don Jaime. The matador smiled and nodded, and the aficionados turned to see the fortunate man to whom Bombito waved his hand.