Finland is curiously different from Russia. They used to believe in the old sailing-ship days that every Finn was a magician. Whether they are magicians or not, they have a beautiful country, though its beauty is as different from that of the Amur as the Thames is from the Murray in far-away Australia. Gone were the wide spaces of the earth and the primitive peoples. We wandered through cultivated lands, we passed lake and river and woods, crossed a wonderful salmon river, skirted Finland's inland sea: here and there was a castle dominating the farmhouses and little towns, the trees were turning, just touched gently by Autumn's golden fingers, and I remembered I had watched the tender green of the spring awakening on the other side of the world, more, I had been travelling ever since. It made me feel weary—weary. And yet it was good to note the difference in these lands that I had journeyed over. The air here was clear, clear as it had been in China; it had that curious charm that is over scenery viewed through a looking-glass, a charm I can express in no other words. Unlike the great rivers of Russia, the little rivers brawled over the stones, companionable little streams that 'made you feel you might own them, on their banks spend a pleasant afternoon, returning to a cosy fire and a cheery home when the dusk was falling.
And this evening, our first day out, we, the little company in my carriage, fell into trouble.
We spoke among us many tongues, English, French, German, Polish, Russian, Lettish, and one whose tongue was polyglot thought in Yiddish and came from the streets, the “mean streets” of London, but not one amongst us spoke Finnish, the language of the magicians, or could even understand one word of it. This was unfortunate, for the Films either spoke no language but their own or had a grudge against us and declined to understand us. That didn't prevent them from turning us out that night in a railway station in the heart of Finland and leaving us to discover for ourselves that every hotel in the little town was full to overflowing! Once more I was faced with it—a night in a railway station. But my predicament was not so bad shared with others who spoke my language. There was the Oxford man and the musician with a twang, there was the wife of an American lawyer with her little boy and the wife of an American doctor with her little girls—they all spoke English of sorts, used it habitually—and there were four Austrian girls making their way back to some place in Hungary. Of course, technically, they were our enemies, while the Americans were neutral, but we all went in together. The Russian-American musician had been in Leipsic and was most disgustingly full of the mighty strength of Germany.
The refreshment-rooms were shut, the whole place was in darkness, but it was a mild night, with a gorgeous September moon sailing out into the clear sky, and personally I should not have minded spreading my rugs and sleeping outside. I should have liked it, in fact, but the tales of the insecurity of Siberia still lingered in my consciousness, and when the Oxford man said that one of the porters would put us up in his house I gladly went along with all the others and, better still, took along my bundles of rugs and cushions.
The places that I have slept in! That porter had a quaint little wooden house set in a garden and the whole place might have been lifted bodily out of Hans Andersen. We had the freedom of the kitchen, a very clean kitchen, and we made tea there and ate what we had brought in our baskets. The Austrian girls had a room to themselves, I lent my rugs to the young men and they made shift with them in the entrance porch, and the best sitting-room was turned over to the women and children and me. Two very small beds were put up very close together and into them got the two women and three children, and I was accommodated with a remarkably Lilliputian sofa. I am not a big woman, but it would not hold me, and as for Buchanan, he looked at me in disgust, said a bed was a proper place for a dog and promptly jumped on it. But it was full to overflowing of women and children sleeping the sleep of the utterly weary and he as promptly jumped off again and the next moment was sitting up in front of my sofa with his little front paws hanging down. He was a disgusted dog. He always begged when he wanted me to give him something, and now he begged to show me he was really in need of a bed. There were great uncurtained windows on two sides of that room, there were flowers and ferns in pots growing in it, and the full moon strcamed in and showed me everything: the crowded, rather gimcrack furniture, the bucket that contained water for us to wash in in the morning, the bed full of sleeping women and children and the little black and white dog sitting up in protest against what he considered the discomforts of the situation. What I found hard to bear were the hermetically sealed windows—the women had been afraid of draughts for the children—so as soon as that night wore through and daylight came stealing through the windows I dressed quietly and, stepping across the sleeping young men at the door, went outside with Buchanan to explore Finland.
Our porter evidently ran some sort of tea gardens, for there were large swings set up, swings that would hold four and six people at once, and we tried them, much to Buchanan's discomfiture. We went for a walk up the street, a country town street of little wooden houses set in little gardens, and over all lay a Sabbath calm. It was Sunday, and the people slept, and the autumn sunlight made the whole place glorious. There is such rest and peace about the autumn: everything has been accomplished and now is the fullness of time. I never know which season I like best, each has its own beauty, but I shall always think of Finland as a land of little things, charming little things bathed in the autumn sunlight.
When the whole party were awake we found some difficulty in getting something to eat. The porter could not supply us, and at the station, where they were vigorously sweeping—the Finns are very clean—they utterly declined to open the first-class refreshment-rooms. We could only get something to eat in the third-class. There was a great feeling of camaraderie and good-fellowship among us all, and here I remember the lawyer's wife insisted upon us all having breakfast at her expense, for according to her she owed us all something. It was she who added to our party the Yiddish woman, a fat, square little person hung round with innumerable bundles, carrying as she did a month's provisions, enough to last her across to America, for she was a very strict Jew and could eat nothing but kosher killed meat and kosher bread, whatever that may be. I know it made her a care, for a month's provisions make something of a parcel, and when bedding and a certain amount of clothing has to be carried as well, and no porters are available, the resulting baggage is apt to be a nuisance. All along the line this fat little person was liable to come into view, toiling under the weight of her many bundles. She would be found jammed in a doorway; she would subside exhausted in the middle of a railway platform—the majority of her bundles would be retrieved as they fell downstairs—or she blocked the little gateway through which passengers were admitted one by one, and the resulting bad language in all the tongues of Northern Europe probably caused the Recording Angel a good deal of unnecessary trouble. But the Oxford man and the musician were always ready to help her, and she must have blessed the day the American lawyer's wife added her to a party which had such kindly, helpful young men among its members.
I found presently that the Oxford man and I were the moneyed members of the party, the only ones who were paying our way; the others, far richer people than I, I daresay, had been caught in the whirlpool of the war and were being passed on from one American consul to another, unable to get money from their own country. Apparently this was rather an unpleasant process, meaning a certain scarcity of cash, as an American consul naturally cannot afford to spend lavishly on his distressed subjects. It was the irony of fate that some of them were evidently not accustomed to looking too carefully after the pennies.
It took us two days to cross Finland, and towards the end of the journey, after we had got out to have tea at a wayside station that blossomed out into ham and tea and bread and honey, we made friends with a certain Finn whose father had been a Scotsman. At last we were able to communicate with the people of the country! Also I'm afraid we told him in no measured terms that we did not think much of his compatriots. That was rather a shame, for he was exceedingly kind. He was going to England, he told us, to buy sheepskins for the Russian army, and he took great interest in my trouble about Buchanan. He examined him carefully, came to the conclusion he was a perfectly healthy little dog and suggested I should lend him to him till we reached Sweden, as he was perfectly well known to the authorities, and Finnish dogs would be allowed to enter Sweden, while a dog that had come from Russia would certainly be barred. I loved that man for his kindly interest and I handed over Buchanan in his basket without a qualm.
We were really quite a goodly company when in the dusk of the evening we steamed into Raumo. The station seemed deserted, but we didn't worry much about that, as our new Finnish friend suggested the best thing to do was to go straight down to the steamer, the Uleaborg, a Finnish ship, and have our dinner and spend the night there. Even if she did not go that night, and he did not think she would, we could rest and sleep comfortably. We all agreed, and as the train went on down to the wharf we appointed him our delegate to go on board and see what arrangements he could make for us. The minute the train stopped, off he went, and Buchanan went with him. I was getting easier in my mind about Buchanan now, the thought of drugging him had been spoiling my pleasure in the scenery. And then we waited.