In winter, which was cold in his part of Spain, their happiest time
was in the evening when they would gather before a big fire of oak
logs in their _solar_ and pass the time with books and conversation
and a little music and singing. Naturally, since he had left his
country years ago, the thought of that time and those evenings had
occasionally been in his mind - a passing thought and memory. On this
evening it had come in a different way, less like a memory than a
revival of the past, so that as he sat there among us, he was a boy
back in Spain once more, sitting by the fire with his brothers and
sisters and parents. With that feeling in him he could not go on
playing. And he thought it most strange that such an experience should
have come to him for the first time in that place out on that great
naked pampa, sparsely inhabited, where life was so rough, so
primitive.
And while he talked we all listened - how eagerly! - drinking in his
words, especially my mother, her eyes bright with the moisture rising
in them; and she often afterwards recalled that evening guest, who was
seen no more by us but had left an enduring image in our hearts.
This is a picture of my mother as she appeared to all who knew her. In
my individual case there was more, a secret bond of union between us,
since she best understood my feeling for Nature and sense of beauty,
and recognized that in this I was nearest to her. Thus, besides and
above the love of mother and son, we had a spiritual kinship, and this
was so much to me that everything beautiful in sight or sound that
affected me came associated with her to my mind. I have found this
feeling most perfectly expressed in some lines to the Snowdrop by our
lost poet, Dolmen. I am in doubt, he wrote,
If summer brings a flower so lovable
Of such a meditative restfulness
As this, with all her roses and carnations.
The morning hardly stirs their noiseless bells;
Yet could I fancy that they whispered "Home,"
For all things gentle, all things beautiful,
I hold, my mother, for a part of thee.
So have I held. All things beautiful, but chiefly flowers. Her feeling
for them was little short of adoration. Her religious mind appeared to
regard them as little voiceless messengers from the Author of our
beings and of Nature, or as divine symbols of a place and a beauty
beyond our power to imagine.
I think it likely that when Dolmen penned those lines to the Snowdrop
it was in his mind that this was one of his mother's favourites.
