It is good to live ever in the sight of the sea. I have been tramping two months along seashores, and living a daily life in the presence of the Infinite. From Novorossisk to Batoum, eight hundred and fifty versts, I have explored all that coast of the Black Sea that lies at the feet of the Caucasus—to left of me the snow-peaked mountains shoulder to shoulder under heaven, to right the resplendent, magnificent sea.
"The sea cannot be described," wrote Chekhov; "I once read in a child's copy-book an essay on the sea, four words and a full stop—'The sea is large'—and whenever I attempt a description, I am obliged to confess that I can do no better than the child." The fact is, the sea describes us; that is why we cannot describe it. It is, itself, language and metaphor for the telling of our own longings and our own mysteries. In the sound of the waves is only the song of man's life; in the endless variety of its appearance only the story of our own mystery.
Thus the sea is all things. They call this the Black Sea, and at evening when the clouds in the high heaven are reflected in it, it is indeed black. But it should be called the many-coloured, for indeed it is all colours. In the full heat of noon, as I write, it is white; it is covered with half-visible vapour through which a greenness is lost in pallor. The horizon is the black line of a broken arc. Other days it is blue as a great ripe plum, and the horizon is faint-pink, like down. On cloudy afternoons it is grey with unmingled sorrow; in early morning it is joyous as a young child. I have seen it from a distance piled up to the sky like a wall of hard sapphire. I have seen it near at hand faint away from the shore, colourless, lifeless, in the heart-searching of its ebb tide. It is all things, at all times, and to all persons.
At Dzhugba the sea was quiet as a little lake; at Dagomise it was many-crested and thundering in the majesty of storm. At Gudaout the sun rose over it as it might have done on the first morning of the world.
Every dawning I bathed, and each bathing was as a new baptism. And in multifarious places it was given to me to bathe; at Dzhugba, where the sun shone fiercely on green water and the dark seaweed washed to and fro on the rocks; at Olginka, the quietest little bay imaginable, where the sea was so clear that one could count the stones below it, the rippling water so crystalline that it tempted one to stoop down and drink—a dainty spot—even the stones, on long curves of the shore, seemed to have been nicely arranged by the sea the night before, and far as I swam out to sea I saw the bottom as through glass.
How different at Dagomise! All night long it had thundered. I slept under a wooden bridge that spanned a dried-up river. The lightning played all about me, the rain roared, the thunder crashed overhead. The storm passed, but as the thunder died away from the sky, it broke out from the sea and roared deafeningly all around. I could not bathe, for the sea was tremendous. A grand sight presented itself at dawn, the sea foaming forwards in thousands of billows. Along five miles of seashore the white horses galloped forward against the rocks, as if the whole sea were an army arrayed against the land. How the white pennons flew!
Later in the morning I undressed, and sitting in moderate safety on a shelf of rock, let the spent billows rush over me. The waves rushed up the steep beach like tigers for their prey, their eyes turned away from mine, but full of cruelty and anger. I was, deep in myself, afear'd.
At what an extraordinary rate the waves rushed up the shore, fast galloping after one another, accomplishing their fates! There is only one line I know that tells well of their rate, that glory of Swinburne:—
Where the dove dipped her wing and the oars won their way,Where the narrowing Symplègades whiten the straits of Propontiswith spray.
At Osipovka, where I spent a whole long summer day sitting on a log on the seashore, I saw a vision of the sea and nymphs—a party of peasant girls came down and bathed. They were very pretty and frolicsome, taking to the water in a very different style from educated women. They were boisterous and wild. They went into the sea backwards, and let the great waves knock them down; they lay down and were buffeted by the surf; they ran about the shore, sang, shouted, yelled, waved their arms; they dived headlong into the waves, swam hand over hand among them, pulled one another by the legs. The sea does not know how to play games: it seemed like an ogre with his twelve princesses. They made sport of him, pulled his beard and his hair, tempted and evaded him, mocked him when he grabbed at them, befooled him when he captured them. I used to have an idea of nymphs behaving very artistically with really drawing-room manners, but I saw I was wrong. Nymphs are only artistic and alluring singly—one nymph on a rock before a gallant prince.
In numbers they are absolutely wild and have no manners at all. Lucky old ogre, to possess twelve such princesses, I thought; but as I looked at the gleam of their limbs as they mocked, and heard their hard laughter, I found him to be but a pitiable old greybeard, for he looked at beauty that he could scarce comprehend and never possess. The beauty of life has power greater than the beauty of the sea.
One night after I had made my bed on a grassy sand-bank above the sea and was waiting, in the thrilling and breathless twilight, to fall asleep, I suddenly heard a sound as of a child weeping somewhere. My heart bounded in horror. I lay scarce daring to breathe, and then when there was silence again, looked up and down the shore for the person who had cried. But I saw no one. I listened—listened, expecting to hear the cry again, but only the waves turned the stones, broke, rolled up, and turned the stones again. Evening crept over the sea, and the waves looked dark and shadowy; the silence grew more intense. I turned on one side to go to sleep, and then once more came a sad, despairing human cry as of a lost child. I sat bolt upright and looked about me, and even then, whilst I stared, the cry came again, and from the sea. "Is it possible there is a child down by the waves?" I thought, and I tried to distinguish some little human shape in the darkness that seemed hastening on the shoulders of the incoming waves. There came a terrible wail and another silence. I dared not go and search, but I lay and shuddered and felt terribly lonely. The waves followed one another and followed again, ever faster and faster as it seemed in the darkness—
Still on each wave followed the wave behind,And then another behind,And then another behind….
They came forward fantastically, and I felt as if I were lying in the presence of something most ancient, most terrible.
Presently a bird with great dark wings flew noiselessly just over my head, and then over the sea rose the moon, young, new drest, and I forgot the strange cry in the presence of a familiar friend. It was as if a light had been brought into one's bedroom. Probably the cry was that of an owl; it came no more. I slept.
There was my walk to the forlorn and lonely monastery of Pitsoonda on the promontory where the great lighthouse burns. Along the seashore were swamps overgrown with bamboos and giant grasses, twelve feet high. The sea was grey and calm. Lying on the sand, one saw the reflection, or the refracted images, of the grey stones at the bottom of the sea for twenty yards out and more. The sea had no power, it splashed in weak and hopeless waves, sucked itself away inward, came back again with a little run, and feebly toppled over. The high-water line was shown by a serpentine strip of jetsam winding along the whole of the shore. There was no yellow in the sands; clouds and sunshine struggled overhead, but beneath them all was grey. The wind rustled in the giant grasses like the sound of men on horseback, so that I was continually looking behind in apprehension.
A land that is lonelier than ruin,A sea that is stranger than death.
At a lonely house, half-way to the monastery, I thought to obtain bread, but as I approached it twelve large brown mastiffs rushed out and assailed me. I was in a pitiable plight, warding them off with my stick, and did not escape without bites. I called for help, and some one then whistled from a window and called the dogs back. I don't fear dogs, but these were powerful animals, and withal a tremendous surprise. I must have had a bad time had no one called them away.
I came to the river Bzib, deep and fast-running, and rowed myself across in a leaky and muddy boat. I ploughed my way through deep sand, or stepped from boulder to boulder, or crushed through miles of sea-holly and prickly shrub. I came to the sacred wood in which the Ahkbasians used to pray when they were pagans, but in which, since their conversion, they have chiefly committed murder. I passed through three strange woods, the first of juniper and wild pear; the second, all dead, bleached and impenetrable, of what had once been hawthorn, but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; the third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and the wild fruit; the second, haggish, full of witches whose finger-nails had never been clipped; the third, queenly, as if beloved of Diana.
Evening grew to night as I plodded past these woods or struggled through them. The temptation was to go into the wood and walk on firmer soil—but the thickets were many, and not a furlong did it profit me. Then there were thorns, you must know, and abundant long-clawed creepers that grasped the legs and kept them fixed till they were tenderly extricated by the hand. When I came to the pine-wood it was night, and the many stars shone over the sea. I walked easily and gratefully over the soft pine needles, and I constantly sought with my eyes for the monastery domes. The moonlight through the pines looked like mist, and the forest climbed gradually over rising cliffs. Far away on the dark cape I saw the flash of the lighthouse….
No houses, no people, only a faint cart-track. That track bade me hope. I would follow it in any case. At last, suddenly, I thought I saw the cloud of white smoke of a bonfire. It was the far-away monastery wall, high and white, with a little lamp in one window. I bore up with the distance, forms grew distinct in the night; I entered the monastery by a five-hundred-yard avenue of cedars.
I met a novice in a long smock. He took me to the guest-rooms of the monastery, and there, to my joy, I was accommodated with a bed—the first for many weeks. I was introduced to a very fat and ancient monk who carried at his belt a bunch of keys. Though very stupid, and, as I learnt afterwards, quite illiterate, he was the spirit of hospitality. He kept the larder, and very gladly brought me milk and bread and cheese, roast beef, wine, and would apparently have brought me anything I asked for—all "for the love of God": no monastery charges anything for its hospitality.
After my supper I was glad to stretch my limbs and sleep. I opened my window and lay for a while looking at the mysterious dark masses of the cedars and listening to the low sobbing of the waves. In the monastery buildings I heard the turnings of heavy keys. I slept. Next morning at sunrise I had breakfast in the refectory, and the abbot deigned to come in and talk about Pitsoonda. His was an ancient and beautiful monastery, built by the same hand that erected St. Sophia at Constantinople, Justinian the First. It was indeed a replica of that famous building, a fine specimen of Byzantine architecture. It had changed hands many times, belonging to the Greeks, the Turks, the Cherkesses, and finally to the Russians. Here formerly stood the fortified town of Pitius, scarcely a stone of which was now standing, though many were the weapons and household implements that had been found by the monks. It was now the scene of the quiet life of twenty or thirty brethren. No one ever visited them or sought them from without. Steamers never called—only occasional feluccas came in bringing Caucasian tribesmen from neighbouring villages, and there was no carriage-way to any town.
We talked later of present-day matters, the abbot being at once omniscient and omni-ignorant, and I finished my breakfast in time to accompany him to church. I went to morning service in the great high-walled cathedral and saw all the brothers pray. Of the people of the neighbourhood there were only three; these with the monks formed the whole congregation—there is no village at Pitsoonda. Imagine a gigantic and noble building fit to be the living heart of a great metropolis, and inside of it but a few little pictures, brightly painted, and a diminutive rood-screen, scarcely higher than a five-barred gate. On the ceiling of the great dome was painted a lively and striking picture of Christ, probably done of old time, but in countenance resembling, strangely enough, the accepted portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson—a Christ with a certain amount of cynicism, one who might have smoked upon occasion. No doubt it was painted by a Greek: a Russian would never have done anything so Western.
The monks, looking ancient and dwarf-like, for they had never cut their beards, were accommodated in little pews along the walls, and they could stand and rest their shoulders upon the high arms of the pews and doze, but could not sit, for there were no seats.
The service was beautiful, though I had little feeling of being in church—one needs many people in such a cathedral. I was more interested in the monks, their faces and appearances, and in the atmosphere of the monastery. Most of the monks were peasants, dedicated to the religion of Christ and leading particularly strict lives. It was difficult to understand how they lived. Their faces all bore witness to their religious exercises, and on some were evidences of spiritual meditation. They were all naturally rather stupid, and here more stupid than usual, because they were cut off from society, even from the society of their native villages. They did not study, or read, or write; they had no worldly life to occupy them—there was no means for it. They could gossip—yes, but I doubt if they even did that. Assuredly here the Middle Ages slept.
* * * * *
Round the monastery, behold, the ruins of a great fort, slowlycrumbling away under the hand of Time. No fleets now sail againstPitius, no pirates land on the barren cape—there is nothing to steal.Even the monastery is without gold.
I cannot forget this walk of gloom and mystery, and my stay in this strange, sleeping monastery of the Middle Ages. But over and against it stands the bright morning of Gudaout, four days later.
Gudaout is encompassed by the highest Caucasus—its only refuge is the sea. It is a place most wonderful in the pageantry of dawn. Picture my life of one evening and morning. I left Gudaout at the dusk, and having bought myself a pound of purple grapes, strolled out along the dusty high road eating them. I made my bed on the seashore, and slept away the aches and pains of a heavy day's tramping. Next day, in that sort of reflection of last evening which comes before the morning, I rose, for the coldest of October breezes had come down to me from the mountains. The dawn was all gold—a new dawn, I thought. But when I stood on my feet I saw below the gold the lovely bosom of the East, a beautiful, soft bed of creamy rose. It was an elemental sunrise, a veritablefirstmorning.
Distant mountains lay wrapped in dissolving mists, and seemed like the multifarious tents of a great army encamped on a plain—for the smooth sea was like a plain. The chamber of the dawn seemed gigantic, the mountains having lifted up the roof of heaven higher than I had ever seen it before, the sea having taken it out to a far horizon.
I stood looking over the shore before sunrise, and far out in the bay were three high-masted feluccas, looking like ships of the Spanish Armada. At the water's edge, and yet silhouetted against the dawn sky, were Mahometans, washing themselves and praying—stark, black figures in the strange light.
I welcomed the sun.
He rose swiftly out of the waters, and shone across the bay, lighting up all the mountains that closed in north and south. He came full of promises, and after the coolness and damp of the night I had need of heat. I lay on a bank and gleaned sunshine. The morning came over the sea steadily, equably, like a good ship making for a sure harbour.
Then, ten miles from Gudaout, on a mountain, I looked out from the ruins of the Tower of Iver, over a vast resplendent sea, and saw below me the monastery of Novy Afon and all its buildings, looking like children's toys. That tower was a stronghold of Christianity in the third century, and it was strange to think that Crusaders and mediaeval warriors had looked out from the same tower, over the same glorious sea. Assuredly from the watch-tower of ancient Time all buildings and man's dwellings are but toys. I thought of that when I rowed across the river Phasis, and drank coffee at Poti on the site of Colchis. That Black Sea and that river were the same which Jason sailed with his heroes; and the Golden Fleece, those children's toy, has now, forsooth, become a head-gear in these parts.
We all pass away, but the sea remains the same; and all our empires and literatures, arts and towns, crumble and decay, and are proved toys. Our consolation lies in our unconquerable souls, our glorious after-life beyond this world. But the sea has an immortality in the here and now. I shall never understand its secret.
A stage is reached when I cease to look at the sea, and allow the sea to look into me, when I give it habitation in my being, and am thereby proved, by virtue of my soul, something mightier than it.
But in vain do we try to take the sea's mystery by storm. In vain do we search for its meaning with love. It lies beyond our mortal ken, deeper than ever plummet sounded.
"Is not the sea the very peacock of peacocks?" asks Nietzsche. "Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes it unfoldeth its tail and never wearieth of its lace fan of silver and gold." But the sea is not moved by slander. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!" sings Byron in praise, but the sea is not encouraged. It hearkeneth not, even unto kings. It is that which changes but is itself unchanged. It manifests itself continually in change, and yet it is itself ever the same, ever the same. It reveals itself to man in the majesty and terror of storm, or in the joyousness of peace; when with leaden eye it glowers upward at the leaden clouds, or when the rain sweeps over it in misery. But the secret of the sea lies beyond all these, hidden in the depths, profound, sublime.
I imagine that whilst the prodigal son sat at meat with his father and their guests, there may have come to the door a weary tramp begging food and lodging. The elder brother would probably refuse hospitality, saying, "You are not even my sinning brother, and shall I harbouryou?" The father in his wine might cry a welcome—"Let him come in for the sake of my son found this day; he also was a tramp upon the road." The prodigal would say to his steady-going, sober elder, "You say he is not your brother; but he is mine, he is my brother wanderer." "Oh, come in then," the elder brother would retort; "but you must do some work—we can't encourage laziness. You may have shelter and food, but to-morrow you must work with us in the fields till midday."
This counsel of the elder brother has endured, and is accounted wise. But this type of hospitality is not of that sort that was rewarded, say, in Eager Heart. It is scarcely what the writer to the Hebrews intended when he said, "Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Of those who wander about the world there are many ordinary men who would be ready to do a morning's work for their board, but there are also gods in disguise. There are mysterious spirits who cannot reveal the necessities of their fate; souls whom if we could recognise in their celestial guise we should worship, falling down at their feet with the humility of the cry, "I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof."
There is another important objection to the complexion of the elder brother's hospitality. Perhaps the tramp would of his own accord have volunteered to work with them next morning. If so, the tramp was deprived of his chance of giving in return. What would have been his gift has been made his price. He should not have been asked to pay. No one asks a brother to pay for food and shelter. And are we not all brothers? True hospitality is a sign of the brotherhood of man, and the open threshold symbolises the open heart. Inhospitality is the sign that man will not recognise the stranger as his brother.
There are two sorts of hospitality, that which gives all it has and that which gives what you want—the former growing out of the latter. The one is prodigal and overflowing generosity, almost embarrassing in its lavishness, the other the simple and ordinary kindness that will always give what it has when there is need; the one the hospitality of Mary who poured out the precious ointment, the other the simple hospitality and homely kindness of Martha; the one is the glory of sacrifice and is of one day in a year or of one day in a life, the other is a sacred due and is of every day. The latter should at least be universal hospitality. It ought to be possible for man to wander where he will over this little world of ours and never fail to find free food and shelter and love. I know no greater shame in national development than the commercialisation of the meal and the night's lodging. It has been our great disinheritance.
But, of course, it would be folly to demand hospitality or to attempt to enforce it. It is like the drunken cobbler who said to his wife, "You don't love me, curse you, but by God you shall if I have to kill you first." Even if a paternal government made a law that hospitality was obligatory and that whoever asked a night's lodging must be given it, then at one blow the whole idea of hospitality would be annihilated. Hospitality must be something freely given, flowing genially outward from the heart. When in theMerchant of Venicethe Duke says, "Then must the Jew be merciful!" and Shylock asks with true Jewish commercialism, "On what compulsion must I, tell me that?" then Portia gives the eternal answer—
The quality of mercy is not strained,It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Need it be said mercy and hospitality are in many respects one and the same, and that when Portia says, "We do pray for mercy and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy," it is like saying, "We pray for hospitality in heaven and that prayer teaches us to render hospitality here," like "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." We shall never be homeless, either here or hereafter, if we love one another.
The shelter and food given one for the love of God are "sanctified creatures." Sleeping in a home for the love of God is more refreshing than sleeping at an inn for a price. One has been blessed and one has also blessed in return; for again, hospitality, like mercy, blesses both those who give and those who take. Throughout a night one has helped to constitute a home, and the angels of the home have guarded one. One has lain not merely in a house but in a Christian home, not only in a home but in the temple of the heart.
It is sweet in a far-away land to be treated like a son or a brother, to be taken for granted, to be embraced by strange men and blessed by strange women. Sweet also is it for the far-away man to recognise a new son or a new brother in the wanderer whom he has received. I remember one night at the remote village of Seraphimo in Archangel Government, how a peasant put both hands on my shoulders and, looking into my eyes, exclaimed, "How like he is to us!"
Tramping across the Crimean moors I lost my way in the mist near the monastery of St. George, and was conducted by a peasant to the Greek village of Kalon, well known to old campaigners—it is between Sebastopol and Balaklava. The village remains the same to-day as it was in the days of the Crimean War, and the same families as lived there then, or their descendants, live there now. I visited thestarosta, and he indicated a home where I might sleep the night. I was taken in by an aged Greek woman and entertained among her family. They brought me bread and wine, and spread out the best couch for me. The sons told me of hunting exploits with the bear and the wild boar; they told me how at Christmas time the wild turkeys fly overhead in such numbers that it is the easiest thing in the world to shoot one's Christmas dinner—and I thought that very convenient. When the sons were silent, or talking among themselves, the old dame told me about her youth: how she was only seventeen years old at the time of the war; how the English were the most handsome of all the soldiers, how the Turks were the most lazy and the most brutal, how the French and the Italians simpered; how the English soldiers were loved by the Greek girls, how they were also more generous than the other troops and gave freely clothes and tea and sugar and whatever was needed in the cottages and asked no money for it whatever; how in these days the little children played with the cannon-balls, rolling them over the moors and up the village street—all manner of gossip the good old lady told me, beguiling the hours and my ears till it was bedtime. Next day I offered to pay at least for my food, but the old lady, though poor, waved her hand and said, "Oh no, it is for the love of God!" How often have I had that said to me day after day in Russia, especially in the North!
Another day in Imeritia, when I passed at evening through a little Caucasian village and was beginning to wonder where I should have my supper and find a night's lodging, a Georgian suddenly hailed me unexpectedly. He was sitting, not in his own house, but at a table in an inn. There were of course no windows to the inn, and all the company assembled could easily converse with the horsemen and pedestrians in the street below. He called out to me and I went up to him. A place was made for me at the table, and he ordered a chicken and a bottle of wine. I was just a little doubtful, for I had never seen the man before and his anticipation of my needs was surprising, but I accepted his invitation, drank his health, and ate my meal. He looked at me very pleasantly, and he was more sensible than a Russian, the sort of person who is marvellously interested in you, but who is so gentle that he will ask no questions lest you find some pain in answering him. But I told him about myself. After the meal he took me along to his house and gave me a spare bed. All was very disorderly and he apologised, saying, "It is untidy, but I am a bachelor. What is a bachelor to do? If I were married all would be different." I spent a whole day with him, and in that short space he conceived for me as it seemed an eternal friendship.
"You are very good," I said at parting. "You have been very hospitable. I don't know how to thank you…." He stopped my words. "No, no," he said, "it is only natural; it is no doubt what any one would do for me in your country were I a stranger there."
"Would they?" I thought.
By the way, a curious example of inhospitality showed itself in this village where I met the Georgian. We were sitting round a pitcher of sweet rose-coloured wine, and one of us signalled to a rather morose Akhbasian prince who was passing, but he took no notice. "He will not drink wine with us," said my friend. "His wife is so beautiful."
"Whatdoyou mean?" I asked.
"His wife is very beautiful and he is as jealous of her as she is beautiful. He is like a dog who growls when he has suddenly got something very good in his mouth: he fears any familiarity on the part of other dogs."
As a tramp I have often felt how little I had to give materially for all the kindness I have received. But even such as myself have their opportunities of reciprocity, though they are of a humble kind. I call to mind a cold, wet day near Batoum, how I had a big bonfire by a stream under a bridge and I warmed myself, cooked food, and took shelter from the rain. A Caucasian man and woman, both tramps, came and sat by my fire a long while. The man took from his breast some green tobacco leaves, dried them by the fire, and put them in his pipe and smoked them. They spoke a language quite unintelligible to me and knew not a word of Russian. But they were nevertheless extremely demonstrative and told me all manner of things by signs and gestures. Very poor, even starving, and I gave them some bread and beef and some hot rice pudding from my pot. In return the man gave me five and a half walnuts! We seemed like children playing at being tramps, but I felt a very lively affection for these strange wanderers who had come so trustingly to my little home under the bridge.
One of the beautiful things about hospitality is that though we do not pay the giver of it directly, we do really pay him in the long run. A is hospitable to B, B to C, C to D, and so on, and at last Z is hospitable to A. It is largely a matter of "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." It is significant that the Russian's parting word equivalent to our "God be with you" is "Forgive!"
When St. Peter said to the beggar, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee," it is not to be thought that he hadn't a few coppers to spare. He meant, "Silver and gold are not my gifts; I have something other and more precious." Thus the apostle indicated the deeper significance of charity.
There is hospitality of the mind as well as of the hand, though both spring from the heart. Hospitality of the hand is having a home with open doors, but that of the mind is having open the temple of the soul.
I once called upon a hermit and we talked of the significance of hospitality. At last he said to me: "You praise hospitality well, my brother, but there is another and a greater hospitality than you have yet mentioned. It is the will to take the wanderer not only into the house to feed but into the heart to comfort and love, the ability to listen when others are singing, to see when others are showing, to understand when others are suffering. It is what the writer to the Corinthians meant by charity.
"Thus—'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal,' is like saying, 'Though I have all possible eloquence and yet do not understand mankind, do not take him to my heart, I am as sounding brass; unless my eloquence is music played upon the common chord I am but a tinkling cymbal.'
"'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing,' is like saying, 'Though I see into the future but misunderstand its significance; though I understand all mysteries, but not the mystery of the human heart; though I am able to remove obstacles by faith, I am simply like Napoleon, finishing up at St. Helena, I am nothing.'
"'And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing,' is like saying, 'Organised philanthropy is not charity, neither is the will to be a martyr, unless these things spring from the will to feel how our brothers suffer.'
"'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
"'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth,' for the truth refutes all uncharitable judgment, the truth shows us all as brothers, shows us all needing the love which one man can give to another.
"'Charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.'"
I understood the hermit though it seemed to me there was much that he left out. Had he been a tramp instead of a hermit he would probably have thought as I do. The world that he talked of was obviously one entirely of men and women, and he left out of account all that world which we call Nature.
It is well to receive men and shelter them and feed them, and well to understand their hearts, but when men are not near there is another beautiful world knocking at our doors and asking hospitality in our souls; it is the world of Nature. Oh ye young of all ages, be hospitable unto Nature, open your doors to her, take her to your hearts! She will rebuild your soul into a statelier mansion, making for herself a fitting habitation, she will make you all beautiful within. Then, when you extend the hospitality of your hearts, yourtemples, to man, they will be spacious temples and rich hearts. Nature comes first, for she heals hearts' wounds; if you have not received her communion first you will not be so fit to receive man. The consumptive-bodied already go to the country, and we are nearly all of us, in this era of towns, consumptive-souled. We need whole hearts just as we need whole lungs. But what am I saying? I am bidding you bargain with Nature for a price, and that is wrong. You must love her, not for anything she can give you. What is more, you can never know what she will give you: she may even take away. When you see her you will love her as a bride. Be receptive to her beauty, be always Eager Heart. When any man receives her into himself there is born in his soul's house the baby Christ, the most wonderful and transfiguring spirit that man has yet known upon a strange world.
On my way to Jerusalem I tramped through a rich residential region where wealthy Armenians, Turks, and Russians dwelt luxuriously in beautiful villas looking over the sea. I had been sleeping out, for the road was high and dry and healthy, but at last, entering a malarial region, I began to seek shelter more from man than from Nature.
One cold and cloudy night I came into the village of Ugba and sought hospitality. There were few houses and fewer lights, and some feeling of awkwardness, or perhaps simply a stray fancy, prompted me to do an unusual thing—to beg hospitality at one of the luxurious villas. I had nearly always gone to the poor man's cottage rather than to the rich man's mansion, but this night, the opportunity offering, I appealed to the rich.
I came to the house of a rich man, and as I saw him standing in the light of a front window I called out to him from a distance. In the dusk he could not make out who I was, but judging by my voice he took me for an educated man, one of his own class.
"Can you put me up for the night?" I asked.
"Yes," he replied cheerfully. "Come round by the side of the house, otherwise the dogs may get in your way."
But when the rich man saw me on his threshold a cloud passed over his eyes and the welcome faded from his face. For I was dressed simply as a tramp and had feet so tired that I had not troubled to take the signs of travel from my garments. I had a great sack on my back, and in my hand a long staff.
The head of the house, a portly old gentleman with a long beard, interrogated me; his son, a limp smiling officer in white duck, peered over his shoulder; two or three others of the establishment looked on from various distances.
"What do you want?" asked the old gentleman curtly, as if he had not heard already.
"A lodging for the night," I said unhappily.
"You won't find lodging here," said the greybeard in a false stentorian voice. And the little officer in white giggled.
"You've made a mistake and come to the wrong house. We have no room."
"A barn or outhouse would serve me nicely," I put in.
The old man waved his hand.
"No, no. You are going southward? You have strayed somewhat out of your path coming up here. There is a short cut to the main road. There you'll find a tavern."
It was in my mind to say, "I am an Englishman, a traveller and writer, and I am on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. You misdoubt my appearance, and are afraid of sheltering an unknown wanderer, but I am one whom you would find it interesting and perhaps even profitable to harbour." But my heart and lips were chilled.
I had taken off my pack, but put it on again humbly and, somewhat abashed, prepared to leave. The family stood by staring. It was a very unusual thing for a poor tramp to come and ask hospitality. Tramps as a rule knew better than to come to their doors. Indeed, no tramp had ever come there before. It rather touched them that I should have believed they would shelter me. Their refusal troubled them somewhat.
"There's always plenty of room in the tavern," said the rich man to his wife. "And they'll be glad to have a customer."
As I turned to go, some one brought a light, and a gleam fell on my face. The company expected to see the cringing, long-suffering face of a peasant in the presence of his master, but the light showed something different….
"He is perhaps one of our own class … or … God knows what …" they thought, one and all. "It is hateful to have refused him. But no, if he is one of us, why does he come clothed like a common man? He has only himself to blame."
The old man, feeling somewhat ashamed, offered to show me the way. He came out and pointed out the short cut to the tavern.
"It is quite clear. I shall find the way," I said. "Thank you."
The old man halted as if he wished to say something more.
"What now?" I asked myself. I said good-bye, and as I moved away he asked:
"You are going far, belike!"
"To Jerusalem," I answered laconically. In Russia there is only one thing to say when a man tells you he is going to Jerusalem. It is, "Pray for me there!" But somehow that request stuck in the old man's throat.
When I got outside the park gates I pulled down my pack and took out of it the only thing that had stood between me and a night's lodging—a grey tweed sportsman's jacket—and I put it on, and with it a collar and tie, and I walked along the road in real sadness. For I felt wounded.
I could forgive the man for doing so unto me, but it was hard to forgive him for doing so unto himself, unto us all. He had made life ugly for a moment, and made the world less beautiful. To-morrow the sun and the earth would be less glorious because of him.
But I had only walked a few steps down the road from the rich man's house when I came to a poor peasant's hut where there burned one little light at a little square window.
And I thought, "Please God, I will not go to the tavern, which is possibly kept by a Turk and is very dirty. I will try for a night's lodging here."
I knocked at the door with my staff.
There was a stirring inside.
"Who is there?"
"One who wants a lodging for the night. It is late to disturb you, butI fear there will be rain."
A peasant woman came to the door and unbarred it, and let me in.
"Ah, little father," she said, "you come late, and we have little space, as you see, only one room and a big family, but come in if you will."
She turned up the little kerosene lamp and looked at me.
"Ai, ai," she said, "abarin." She looked at my coat and collar. "It will be but poor fare here."
"Not abarin" I urged, "but a poor wanderer coming from far and going farther still. I generally sleep under the open sky with God as my host and the world as my home, but to-night promises storm, and I fear to take cold in the rain."
The peasant girl, for she was no more, busied herself with the samovar. "You must have something hot to drink, and some milk and eggs perhaps. My husband is not yet home from market, but he will come belike very soon, and will be very glad to find a stranger. He will rejoice. He always rejoices to give hospitality to strangers upon the road."
When she had brought me a meal she fetched fresh hay from a barn and spread a quilt over it and made a bed for me, and would have given me her own pillow but that I pointed out that my pack itself made a very good resting-place for my head.
Then her husband came home, a strong kindly man, full of life and happiness, and he did rejoice as his little wife had promised. He was sorry he had not wine with which to entertain me. Such people drink wine not more than twice in a year.
And with these humble, gentle folk I forgot the rich man's coldness, and healed my heart's wounds. Life was made beautiful again. To-morrow the sun would be as bright as ever.
I slept in the comfortable warm bed on the floor of the poor peasant's hut, and the storm rolled overhead, the winds moaned and the rain fell.
"You are going to Jerusalem," said the good man and woman next morning, "pray for us there. It is hard for us to leave our little hut and farm, or we would go to the Holy Land ourselves. We should like to go to the place where the Christ was born in Bethlehem and to the place where He died."
"I shall pray," I said; and I thought in my heart, "They are there in Jerusalem all the time, even though they remain here. For they show hospitality to strangers."
* * * * *
But as I trudged along my way there seemed to be a pathos too deep for tears underlying my experiences at the hands of the rich man and of the poor man.
That it should occur so in real life, and not merely in a moral tale!
The position of the rich man is so defensible. Of course it would have been ridiculous of him to have sheltered me. Who was I? I had no introduction. What was I? I might have robbed him in the night … or murdered. I was ill-dressed and poor, therefore no doubt covetous of his fine clothes and wealth. They would only have themselves to blame if they sheltered me and I did them harm. Besides, was there not the tavern close by? All reason pointed to the tavern.
But something troubled them, something in my face and demeanour!
Alas for such people! They forget that Christ comes into this world not clothed in purple. They forget that Christ is always walking on the road, and that he shows himself as one needing help. And always once in a man's life the pilgrim Christ comes knocking at his door, with the pack of man's sorrows on his back and in his hand the staff which may be a cross.
* * * * *
I met the young officer in white next morning. He looked at me with a certain amount of surprise. I hailed him.
"Did you sleep well at the tavern?" he asked.
"I found shelter at a peasant's house," I answered.
"Ah! That's well. I didn't think of that. You said you were going toJerusalem. Why is that? Evidently you are not Russian."
I told him somewhat of my plans. He seemed interested and somewhat vexed. "I said we ought to have taken you in," he said apologetically. "But you came so late—'like a thief in the night,' as the Scripture saith."
I sat down on a stone and laughed and laughed. He stared at me in perplexity.
"'Like a thief in the night,'" I cried out. "Oh, how came you to hit on that expression? Go on, please—'and I knew you not.' Who is it who cometh as a thief in the night?"
The officer smiled faintly. He was dull of understanding, but evidently I had made a joke, or perhaps I was a little crazed.
He turned on his heel. "Sorry we turned you away," he repeated, "but there are so many scoundrels about. If you're passing our way again be sure and call in. Come whilst it's light, however."
Dzhugba is an aggregation of cottages and villas round about the estuary of a little river flowing down from the Caucasus to the Black Sea. On the north a long cliff road leads to Novorossisk a hundred miles, and southward the same road goes on to Tuapse, some fifty miles from Maikop and the English oil-fields.
I arrived at the little town too late to be sure of finding lodging. The coffee-house was a wild den of Turks, and I would not enter it; most private people were in bed. I walked along the dark main street and wondered in what unusual and unexpected manner I should spend the night. When one has no purpose, there is always some realprovidencewaiting for the tramp.
The quest of a night's lodging is nearly always the origin of mysterious meetings. It nearly always means the meeting of utter strangers, and the recognition of the fact that, no matter how exteriorly men are unlike one another, they are all truly brothers, and have hearts that beat in unison. Thus did it happen that I met my strange host of Dzhugba.
A hatless but very hairy Russian met me at a turning of the road, and eyeing me with lacklustre eyes asked me gruffly as a rude shopman might, "What do you want?"
"A lodging for the night."
The peasant reflected, as if mentally considering the resources of the little town. At last after a puzzling silence he put one fat hand on my shoulder, and staring into my face, pronounced his verdict—
"The houses are all shut up and the people gone to bed. There is no place; even the coffee-house is full. But never mind, you can spend the night in a shed over here. I shall find you a place. No, don't thank me; it comes from the heart, from the soul."
He led me along to a lumber-room by the side of the plank pier. It contained two dozen barrels of "Portlandsky" cement. The floor was all grey-white and I looked around somewhat dubiously, seeing that cement is rather dirty stuff to sleep upon. But, nothing abashed, my new friend waved his hand as if showing me into a regal apartment.
"Be at your ease!" said he. "Take whatever place you like, make yourself comfortable. No, no thanks; it is all from God, it is what God gives to the stranger."
He thereupon ran out on to the sand, for the shed was on the seashore, and he beckoned me to follow. To my astonishment, we found out there an old rickety bedstead with a much rent and rusted spring mattress—apparently left for me providentially. It was so old and useless that it could not be considered property, even in Russia. It belonged to no one. Its nights were over. I gave it one night more.
The peasant was in high glee.
"Look what I've found for you," said he. "Who could have expected that to be waiting outside for you? Several days I have looked at that bedstead and thought, 'What the devil is that skeleton? Whence? Whither?' Now I understand it well. It is a bed, the bed of the Englishman on the long journey…."
The mattress was fixed to an ancient bed frame—one could not call it bedstead—with twisted legs that gave under weight and threatened to break down. We brought the "contrapshun" in.
"Splendid!" said my host.
"Impossible," I thought, trying to press down the prickly wire where the mattress was torn.
"No doubt you are hungry," my friend resumed. I assured him I was not in the least hungry, but despite my protestations he ran off to bring me something to eat. I felt sorry; for I thought he might be bringing me a substantial supper, and I had already made a good meal about an hour before. What was more, he lived at some distance, and I did not care to trouble the good man, or for him to waken up his wife who by that hour was probably sleeping.
However, he was gone, and there was nothing to be done. I laid some hay on the creaking sorrow of a bed, and endeavoured to bend to safety the wilderness of torn and rusty wire. I spread my blanket over the whole and gingerly committed my body to the comfortable-seeming couch. Imagine how the bed became an unsteady hammock of wire and how the contrivance creaked at each vibration of my body. I lay peacefully, however, looked at the array of cement barrels confronting me, and waited for my host. I expected a plate of chicken and a bottle of wine, and was gradually feeling myself converted to the idea that I wouldn't mind a nice tasty supper even though I had made my evening meal.
What was my astonishment when the good man returned bearing a square-foot slice of black bread on which reposed a single yellow carrot! I looked curiously at the carrot, but my host said, "Nitchevo, nitchevo, vinograd"—"Don't worry, don't worry, a grape, that's all."
He had also brought a kerosene lamp, which, however, lacked a glass. He stood it on one of the grey barrels and turned it monstrously high, just to show his largeness of heart, I suppose. I got up and turned it down because it was smoking, and he waved his hand once more deprecatingly, and turning the wick up and down several times, signified that I was to do with it exactly as I pleased. He left it smoking again, however.
I put the thought of a good supper out of my mind and looked at the black bread with some pathos, as who would not after conjuring before the eyes a plate of chicken and a bottle of wine? However, it was indeednitchevo, to use the Russian phrase, a mere nothing. I averred I was not hungry and put the bread in my pack, of which I had made a pillow, and simulating comfort, said I thanked him and would now go to sleep. My host understood me, but was not less original in his parting greeting than in the rest. He shook hands with me effusively, and pointed to the roof.
"One God," he said. "And two men underneath. Two men, one soul."
He looked at me benevolently and pointed to his heart.
"Two men, one soul," he repeated, and crossed himself. "You understand?"
"I understand."
Then he added finally, "Turn the lamp as high as you like," and suited the action to the word by turning it so high that one saw a dense cloud of smoke beyond the lurid flame.
"Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
My queer guardian angel disappeared. I fastened the door so that it should not swing in the wind, and then climbed back into my wire hammock, stretched out my limbs, laid my cheek on my pack, and slept.
Nothing disturbed me, though I woke in the night, and looking round, missed the Ikon lamp which would have been burning had I been in a home. It was a saint's day. The absence of the Ikon told me the difference between sleeping in a house and sleeping in a home. Perhaps it was because of this difference that my host blessed me so earnestly.
Next morning I sought my host in vain. He had apparently left the town before dawn with a waggon of produce that had to be carted to Tuapse. At breakfast in the Turkish coffee-house I looked with some amusement at the bread and carrot, discarded the latter, but munched the former to the accompaniment of a plate of chicken and a bottle of wine. My imagining, therefore, of the previous night was not altogether vain. All that was needed was that my comical host should look in. As it was, in his absence I drank his health with a Georgian.
I was travelling without a map, never knowing what I was coming to next, what long Caucasian settlement or rushing unbridged river, and I came quite unexpectedly to a town. I had not the remotest idea that a town was near, and when I learned the name of the town I realised that I had never heard of it before—Zugdida.
This is no fairy story. Zugdida veritably exists, and may be found marked on large maps. I came into it on a Sunday evening, and found it one of the largest and most lively of all the Caucasian towns I had yet visited; the shops and the taverns all open, the wide streets crowded with gaily dressed horsemen, the footways thronged with peasants walking out in Sunday best. A remote town withal, not on the railways, and unvisited as yet by any motor-car—unvisited, because the rivers in these parts are all bridgeless.
I was looking for a place where I might spend the night—towns are inhospitable places, and one is timorous of sleeping in a tavern full of armed drunkards—when I was hailed by a queer old man, who noticed that I was a stranger. He kept one of the two hundred wine-cellars of the town, and was able to give me a good supper and a glass of wine with it. He was an aged Mingrelian, bald on his crown, but lank-haired, dreamy-eyed, stooping; he had a Robinson Crusoe type of countenance. I had come to one of the oldest inhabitants of Zugdida, an extraordinary character.
I asked him how the town had grown in his memory.
"When I came here from the hills forty years ago," said he, "long before the Russo-Turkish War, there were three houses here—three only, two were wine-cellars. Now Zugdida is second only to Kutais. I remember how two more wine-cellars were built, and a small general shop, then a bread shop, then two more wine—cellars, two little grocer's shops, some farm-houses. We became a fair-sized village, and wondered how we had grown. The Russians came and built stone houses and a military barracks, a prison, a police-station, and a big church; then came the Hotel of Russia, the Universal Stores. We built the broad, flag-stoned market, and named a Fair day; saddlery and sword shops opened, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, coppersmiths, jewel workers, tailors; Singer's sewing machines came, two more hotels, and we grew and grew. We have now over two hundred taverns. We have offered the Government to pay for all the necessary land, and defray all minor expenses, if they will connect us with Poti by railway, and if it were not that so many people want bribes we should be part of Europe. As it is, we're just a bit of the old Caucasus."
He pointed to a group of drunkards, all armed from head to foot, but now clinging to one another and raising their voices in Asiatic chanting.
After supper—a stew of mutton and maize, with a bottle of very sweet rose-coloured wine—the old man took me aside and made me a long harangue on life and death and the hereafter. Better sermon on a Sunday evening I never heard in church. He told me the whole course of the good man's life and compared it with that of the bad man, weighed the two, and found the latter wanting on all counts, adding, however, that it was impossible to be good.
"How did you come to think so seriously of life?" I inquired.
"In this way," he replied. "Once I was very 'flee-by-the-sky'—I didn't care a rap, sinned much, and feared neither God nor the devil—or, if anything, I feared the devil a little; for God I never had the least respect. But one day I picked up a book written by one Andrew, and I read some facts that astonished me. He said that in eight thousand years after the creation of the world the sun would go red and the moon grey, the sun would grow old and cease to warm the world—just as you and I must inevitably grow old. In that day would be born together, one in the East and one in the West, Christ and the Anti-Christ, and they would fight for the dominion of the world. This story caused me to pause and think. Hitherto I had taken all for granted.
"It had never occurred to me that the sun might stop shining, that the stars might go out. I had scarcely thought that I myself might stop, might die.
"'What happens to me when I die?' I asked people. 'God will judge you,' they said. 'If good, you go to heaven; if evil, to hell.' That did not satisfy me. How did people know? No one had ever come back to tell us how things were done after death.
"I had never thought at all before, but now I began to think so hard that I could not go about the ordinary things of life, I was so wrapped up in the mystery of my own ignorance.
"People said I was under the evil eye. But that again was nonsense. 'Whence comes man?' I asked. 'Where does he go? Where was I before I was born?' I was part of my ancestors. Very well. 'But where shall I go when I die? What shall I be?'
"I nearly learned to disbelieve in religion. You must know I began to go to church every Saturday evening and on all festivals. I listened intently to all the services and the sermons, and I read all that I could find to read, and I asked questions of priests and of educated people—all with the idea of solving this mystery of life. I tried to be good at the bidding of the Church, but I gave that up. I learned that it was impossible to avoid sin.
"You drink wine—this is a sin; give short weight—that is a sin; look on your neighbour's wife—that is a sin; everything you do is sin—even if you do nothing, that is sin; there is no road of sinlessness.
"I went on living as I felt inclined, without care as to whether it were sin or no. But still I asked myself about man's life.
"Some one said to me, 'You will never understand, because you think of yourself as a separate individual, and not as just a little part of the human race. You live on in all the people who come after you, just as before you were born you lived in those who were before you.'
"That was something new, but I understood him, and I asked him a new question: 'If what you say is true—and very likely it is—what, then, is the past of the whole human race, and what its future? What does the life of the human race mean?'
"That he could not answer. Can you answer it? No. No one can answer it."
* * * * *
"You are like Socrates," I said.
"Who was Socrates?"
"He was the man whom the Oracle indicated as the wisest man alive. All men knew nothing, but Socrates was found wiser than they, for he alone knew that he knew nought."
A look of pleased vanity floated over the face of my Mingrelian host.He was at least quite human.
Before going to bed we drank one another's healths.
This is not simply a matter of making pastry, as you shall see.
I was tramping along a Black Sea road one night, and was wondering where I should find a shelter, when suddenly a little voice cried out to me from the darkness of the steppe. I stopped and looked and listened. In a minute a little boy in a red shirt and a grey sheepskin hat came careering towards me, and called out: "Do you want a place to sleep? My mother's coffee-house is the best you'll find. The coffee-house down the hill is nothing to it. There it is, that dark house you passed. I am out gathering wood for the fire, but I shall come in a minute."
Sharp boy! He was only eight years old. How did he guess my need so well?
I retraced my footsteps very happily, and came to the dark inn I had missed. It stood fifty yards back from the road, and had no light except what glimmered from the embers of a wood fire. At the door was a parrot that cried out, "Choozhoï, choozhoï, choozhoï preeshhòl"—"A stranger, a stranger, a stranger has arrived."
The mother, a pugnacious gossip with arms akimbo, looked at me withperturbed pleasure. "Are you a beggar or a customer?" she asked."Because if you're a beggar," etc. I cut her short as soon as I could.I assured her I should be much pleased to be a customer.
I ordered tea. The boy came in and claimed me as his find, but was snubbed. My hostess proceeded to ask me every question known to her. To my replies, which were often not a little surprising, she invariably replied with one of these exclamations, "Say it again, if you please." "Indeed!" "With what pleasure!"
That I was a tramp and earned my living by writing about my adventures pleased her immensely. I earned my living by having holidays, and gained money where other travellers never did anything but spend.
"With what pleasure" did she hear that literary men were paid so many roubles a thousand words for their writings. One could easily write an immense quantity, she thought.
The little boy looked at me with bright eyes, and listened. Presently, when his mother was dilating on the inferiority of painting as a profession, he broke in.
The mother was saying, "Not only does the painter catch cold standing still so long in marshy places, but when he has finished his pictures he has to hawk them in the fairs, and even then he may not be able to sell them."
"What fairs?" asked the boy.
"The fairs of Moscow, Petersburg, Kiev, and the great towns. Some sell for fifty roubles, some for five hundred, some for five thousand and more. A little picture would go for five roubles perhaps."
"What size pictures would one buy for fifty roubles?" asked the boy.
"Oh, about the same size as from the floor to the ceiling."
"What size would one be that cost five thousand roubles?"
"Oh, an immense picture; one could build a country house out of it."
The boy reflected.
"And five hundred thousand roubles?" he asked. But his mother remained profitably silent over the preparation of the family soup. The fire now blazed with the additional wood that had been heaped upon it. The little voice repeated the absurd question, and the mother shouted, "Silence! Don't make yourself a nuisance."
"But how big would it be?" whined the boy. "Tell me."
"Oh, the same, but bigger, stupid!"
Thereupon my little friend was very happy, and he apparently ascribed his happiness to me.
A few minutes later he abruptly asked permission to take me up a mountain to show me a castle next morning, and his mother agreed, pointing out how extremely profitable it would be for me. The little boy rejoiced; he had apparently wanted to go up to that castle for a long while. How excited and happy he was!
His mother paid little attention to her child, however, and her interest lay in the bubbling cauldron where the soup was cooking. "You have a very clever boy," I said, but she did not agree with me. His pranks and high spirits were to her evidence of stupidity. I must say I felt we were the stupid party, and the boy was a little wonder. We went on gossiping, and presently he proved us stupid.
He started up with one finger to his ear and then darted out, leaving the door open and letting the steppe air pour in.
The mother listened, and then said discontentedly after a pause, "That child is not usual."
The boy came back with fifteen shaggy customers, however; fifteen red-faced waggoners, half-frozen in their sheepskins, and all clamoured for food and drink.
The boy, all excitement, danced up to me and said, "Have you a light hand? You must have a light hand!" I didn't know what he meant, but he was off before I had time to ask.
He began serving tea and cutting bread and asking questions. Did any one want soup? Nobody wanted soup at first, but at the boy's solicitations nine of them agreed to have portions at twopence a plateful. The mother persuaded others to have pickled herrings, cheese, wine.
The inn was of two rooms: one a bedroom and retiring-room without a door. The Ikon of this room served the economical hostess for both rooms.
The waggoners were all surly till they had fed. "Show me where we can bow to God," said one of them very gruffly, not seeing the Ikon. The little boy led him and all his mates into the little bedroom, and they all bowed their hairy faces and crossed themselves before the Ikon of St. Nicholas.
Then they returned and consumed the soup and the herrings and bread and cheese and wine and tea. I looked on. My hostess was turning a pretty penny. I was looking on at a very pleasant and surprising interlude.
Every now and then one of the mouzhiks would stump out to see how the horses were, for they had a long train of waggons carrying building materials to the Tsar's estate of Livadia. At length all had supped, and they came up to the counter one by one and thanked the hostess heartily, paying her the while.
Only one of the men was dissatisfied—the last one to come up.
"Your soup is dear," said he.
"Dear! What do you mean?" said the woman. "How much would you pay for such soup in Yalta, and with beef at fivepence a pound, too?"
"In Yalta they give one soup."
"And here!"
"Here … as God wills … something…." The mouzhik slammed the door.
"There's a man," said my hostess, but she wasn't enraged. Had she not just sold the family's soup for eighteenpence, and made tenpence profit on it, and wouldn't her husband be pleasantly surprised when he saw there were three shillings more on the counter than usual? It was not often that such custom had come to her.
The boy explained the reason to her in a whisper: "He has a light hand."
"Very like," said she, looking at me with new interest.
"What do you mean?" I asked the boy.
"Why, don't you know?" said he wonderingly. "Wherever you go you bring good fortune. After I met you on the road I immediately began to find wood much more plentifully. When I came in I learned how to buy pictures. Then mother said she would let me go with you to see the castle. Then, not only are you a good customer staying the night, but after you came all this crowd of customers. Generally we have nobody at all…."
"And I met this wonderful boy," thought I. "I should like to carry him away. He is like something in myself. He also had the light hand, but what a testimony he gave the tramp! Wherever he goes he brings happiness."
As once I wrote before, "tramps often bring blessings to men: they have given up the causes of quarrels. Sometimes they are a little divine. God's grace comes down upon them."