On other nights heavy rain came on unexpectedly, and I discovered how
pleasant a bed may be made just under the framework of a bridge. The
bridge is a favourite resort of the Russian tramp and pilgrim, and I
have often come across their comfortable hay or bracken beds there.
Indeed I seldom go across a bridge at night without thinking there may
be some such as myself beneath it.
When the weather is wet it is much more profitable to sleep in a
village--there is hospitality there, and the peasant wife gives you
hot soup and dries your clothes. But often villages are far apart, and
when you are tramping through the forest there may be twenty miles
without a human shelter. I remember I found empty houses, and though I
used them they were most fearsome. I had more thrills in them than in
the most lonely resting-places in the open. Some distance from Gagri
I found an old ruined dwelling, floorless, almost roofless, but still
affording shelter. I had many misgivings as I lay there. Was the house
haunted? Was it some one else's shelter? Had some family lived there
and all died out? You may imagine the questions that assailed me, once
I had lain down. But whether evil was connected with the house or
no, it was innocuous for me. Nothing happened; only the moon looked
through the open doorway; winds wandered among the broken rafters, and
far away owls shrieked.
Again, on the way to Otchemchiri I came upon a beautiful cottage in
the forest and went to ask hospitality, but found no one there. The
front door was bolted but the back door was open. I walked in and took
a seat. As there were red-hot embers in the fire some one had lately
been there, and would no doubt come back--so I thought. But no one
came: twilight grew to night in loneliness and I lay down on the long
sleeping bench and slept. It was like the house of the three bears but
that there was no hot porridge on the table. But no bears came; only
next morning I was confronted by a half-dressed savage, a veritable
Caliban by appearance but quite harmless, an idiot and deaf and dumb.
I made signs to him and he went out and brought in wood, and we remade
the fire together.
I have slept out in many places--in England, in the Caucasus where
it was amongst the most lawless people in Europe, in North Russian
forests where the bear is something to be reckoned with--but I have
never come to harm. The most glorious and wonderful nights I ever had
were almost sleepless ones, spent looking at the stars and tasting
the new sensations. Yet even in respect of rest it seems to me I
have thriven better out of doors. There is a real tranquillity on a
mountain side after the sun has gone down, and a silence, even though
the crickets whistle and owls cry, though the wind murmurs in the
trees above or the waves on the shore below. The noises in houses are
often intolerable and one has to wait all every noise in the house
and in the street has died away. It is marvellous how easily one
recuperates in the open air. Even the cold untires and refreshes.
Then, even if one lies awake, the night passes with extraordinary
rapidity. It is always a marvel to me how long the day seems by
comparison with the night when I sleep out of doors. A sleepless night
in a house is an eternity, but it is only a brief interlude under the
stars. I believe the animal creation that sleeps in the field is so in
harmony with nature and so unself-conscious that night does not seem
more than a quarter of an hour and a little cloudy weather. Perhaps
the butterflies do not even realise that night endures; darkness
comes--they sleep; darkness flees--they wake again. I think they have
no dreams.