Chapter Sixty.
Pleasant Hospitality.
I sat enraptured with my fair hostess; rejoicing at the accident that had thrown me into such pleasant company.
Who was she? Who could she be? An Italian, she had told me at first; and in this language we conversed. But she could also speak a little English, which was soon explained by her telling me that her husband was an Inglese.
“He will be so glad to see you,” she said, “for it is not often he meets any of his own countrymen, as most of the English live further down. Henry will soon be home. It can’t be long now. He only went over to the other estancia—I mean papa’s. I fancy he and brother Luigi are gone ostrich-hunting. But that must be over now, as they don’t chase the birds after midday, on account of the shadows. I am sure he will soon be back. Meanwhile, how are you to be amused? Perhaps you will look at these pictures? They are landscapes of the country here. Some of them are by my husband—some by brother Luigi. Try if you can kill a little time over them while I go look after something for you to eat.”
“Pray don’t think of that. I do not feel in any need of eating.”
“That may be, signore; but then there are the ostrich-hunters. Likely enough Luigi will come along with my husband, and won’t they have an appetite! I must see and have dinner ready for them.”
So saying, my fair hostess glided out of the room; leaving me to an impatience, that had very little to do with the return of the ostrich-hunters.
To “kill time,” as I had been requested, I commenced an inspection of the pictures. There were about a dozen of them, hanging against the walls of the apartment, otherwise but sparely furnished—as might be expected of a country house in a remote province on the Parana. As she had said, they were all scenes of the country, and for this reason to me more interesting. Most of them related to the chase or some act of native industry. There were pictures of jaguar-hunting, flamingo-shooting, running wild horses, and capturing them with bolas or lazo.
I was at first only struck with the remarkable truthfulness of their details—the faithfulness displayed in regard of both scenery and costumes. How like to reality were the gigantic thistles, the ombu-trees, the wide-stretching pampas, the ostriches, the wild horses and other animals, the gauchos and their costumes—in short, everything delineated. This was all evident at a glance. But I was not prepared for what I discovered on closer, examination—that the pictures, at least a large number of them, were paintings of high art—fit for any exhibition in the world! It would have been a surprise to me meeting with such paintings upon the remote plains of the Parana; it was something more, to know that they had been painted there.