He was at the table with
us, and hoping and praying that in his wanderings he would meet with
some who would be kind to him.
I remember many of these chance guests, and will give a particular
account of one - the guest and the evening we passed in his company - as
this survives with a peculiar freshness in my memory, and it was also
a cherished recollection of my mother's.
I was then nine or ten years old, and our guest was a young Spanish
gentleman, singularly handsome, with a most engaging expression and
manner. He was on a journey from Buenos Ayres to a part in our
province some sixty or seventy leagues further south, and after asking
permission to pass the night at our house, he explained that he had
only one horse, as he liked that way of travelling rather than the
native way of driving a _tropilla_ before him, going at a furious
gallop from dawn to dark, and changing horses every three or four
leagues. Having but one horse, he had to go in a leisurely way with
many rests, and he liked to call at many houses every day just to talk
with the people.
After supper, during which he charmed us with his conversation and
pure Castilian, which was like music as he spoke it, we formed a
circle before a wood fire in the dining-room and made him take the
middle seat. For he had confessed that he performed on the guitar, and
we all wanted to sit where we could see as well as listen. He tuned
the instrument in a leisurely way, pausing often to continue the
conversation with my parents, until at last, seeing how eager we all
were, he began to play, and his music and style were strange to us,
for he had no jigging tunes with fantastic flights and flourishes so
much affected by our native guitarists. It was beautiful but serious
music.
Then came another long pause and he talked again, and said the pieces
he had been playing were composed by his chief favourite, Sara sate.
He said that Sara sate had been one of the most famous guitarists in
Spain, and had composed a good deal of music for the guitar before he
had given it up for the violin. As a violinist he would win a European
reputation, but in Spain they were sorry that he had abandoned the
national instrument.
All he said was interesting, but we wanted more and more of his music,
and he played less and less and at longer intervals, and at last he
put the guitar down, and turning to my parents, said with a smile that
he begged to be excused - that he could play no more for thinking.
