I
I have been a whole season in the wilds, tramping or idling on the
Black Sea shore, living for whole days together on wild fruit,
sleeping for the most part under the stars, bathing every morning and
evening in the clear warm sea. It is difficult to tell the riches of
the life I have had, the significance of the experience. I have felt
pulse in my veins wild blood which my instincts had forgotten in the
town. I have felt myself come back to Nature.
During the first month after my departure from the town I slept but
thrice under man's roof. I slept all alone, on the hillside, in the
maize-fields, in the forest, in old deserted houses, in caves, ruins,
like a wild animal gone far afield in search of prey. I never knew in
advance where I should make my night couch; for I was Nature's guest
and my hostess kept her little secrets. Each night a new secret was
opened, and in the secret lay some pleasant mystery. Some of the
mysteries I guessed--there are many guesses in these pages--some I
only tried to guess, and others I could only wonder over. All manner
of mysterious things happen to us in sleep; the sick man is made well,
the desperate hopeful, the dull man happy. These things happen in
houses which are barred and shuttered and bolted. The power of the
Night penetrates even into the luxurious apartments of kings, even
into the cellars of the slums. But if it is potent in these, how much
more is it potent in its free unrestricted domain, the open country.
He who sleeps under the stars is bathed in the elemental forces which
in houses only creep to us through keyholes. I may say from experience
that he who has slept out of doors every day for a month, nay even for
a week, is at the end of that time a new man. He has entered into new
relationship with the world in which he lives, and has allowed the
gentle creative hands of Nature to re-shape his soul.
The first of my nights after leaving the town was spent on a shaggy
grass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfoot
was an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with the
scent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and am
writing this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. My
last night was in a deep cavern at the base of a high rock on a desert
shore.
The first night was warm and gentle, though it was followed by several
that were stormy. Wrapped in my rug I felt not a shiver of cold, even
at dawn. As I lay at my ease, I looked out over the far southern sea
sinking to sleep in the dusk. The glistening and sparkling of the
water passed away--the sea became a great bale of grey--blue silk,
soft, smooth, dreamy, like the garment of a sorceress queen.
I slipped into sleep and slipped out again as easily as one goes from
one room to another, sometimes sleeping one hour or half an hour at
a time, or more often one moment asleep, one moment awake, like the
movement of a boat on the waves.
Once when I wakened, I started at an unforeseen phenomenon. The moon
in her youth was riding over the sea as bright as it is possible to
be, and down below her she wrote upon the waves and expressed herself
in new variety, a long splash of lemon-coloured light over the placid
ocean, a dream picture, something of magic.
It was a marvellous sight, something of that which is indicated in
pictures, but which one cannot recognise as belonging to the world
of truth--something impressionistic. To waken to see something so
beautiful is to waken for the first time, it is verily to be in part
born; for therein the soul becomes aware of something it had not
previously imagined: looking into the mirror of Nature, it sees itself
anew.
Where my sleeping-place would be had been a secret, and this was the
mystery in it, the further secret. I was definitely aware even on my
first night out that I had entered a new world.
To sleep, to wake and find the moon still dreaming, to see the moon's
dream in the water, to sleep again and wake, so--till the dawn. Such
was my night under the old yews, the first spent with these southern
stars on a long vagabondage.