i was in the train at last, fairly on my way home, and i was glad. but i wasn't glad for very long. i began to wish myself back in the railway station at stretensk, where at least i had fresh air. at first i had the window open and a corner seat. there are only two people on a seat in a russian long-distance train, because when night falls they let down the seat above, which makes a bunk for the second person. but i was second class and my compartment opened without a door into the other compartments in the carriage, also two more bunks appeared crossways, and they were all filled with people. we were four women, two men who smoked, a baby who cried, and my little dog. i spread out my rugs and cushions, and when i wanted the window open the majority were against me. not only was the window shut, but every ventilating arrangement was tightly closed also, and presently the atmosphere was pestilential. i grew desperate. i wandered out of the carriage and got on to the platform at the end, where the cold wind—for all it was august—cut me like a knife. the people objected to that cold wind coming in, and the next time i wandered out for a breath of fresh air i found the door barred and no prayers of mine would open it. in that carriage the people were packed like sardines, but though i was three-quarters suffocated no one else seemed at all the worse. i couldn't have looked at breakfast next morning, but the rest of the company preened themselves and fed cheerfully from the baskets they carried. then at last i found a student going to a western siberian university who spoke a little french and through him i told the authorities that if i could not be transferred to a first-class carriage i was to be left behind at the next station. i had spent a night in a station and i knew all about it; it wasn't nice, but it was infinitely preferable to a night in a crowded second-class carriage.
after a little while the train master came and with the aid of the student informed me that there would be a first-class carriage a little farther on and if there was room i should go in it, also we would know in an hour or so.
so i bore up, and at a little town in the hills i was taken to a first-class compartment. there were three—that is, six bunks—making up half of a second-class carriage, and they were most luxurious, with mirrors and washing arrangements complete. the one i entered was already occupied by a very stout woman who, though we did not know any tongue in common, made me understand she was going to a place we would reach next morning for an operation, and she apologised—most unnecessarily but most courteously—for making me take the top bunk. she had a big irish setter with her whom she called “box”—“anglisky,” as she said—and “box” was by no means as courteous and friendly as his mistress, and not only objected to buchanan's presence but said so in no measured terms. i had to keep my little dog up on the top bunk all the time, where he peered over and whimpered protestingly at intervals. there was one drawback, and so kind and hospitable was my stable companion that i hardly liked to mention it, but the atmosphere in that compartment you could have cut with a knife. wildly i endeavoured to open the windows, and she looked at me in astonishment. but i was so vehement that the student was once more brought along to interpret, and then everybody took a turn at trying to open that window. i must say i think it was exceedingly kind and hospitable of them, for these people certainly shrank from the dangers of a draught quite as much as i did from the stuffiness of a shut window. but it was all to no purpose. that window had evidently never been opened since the carriage was made and it held on gallantly to the position it had taken up. they consulted together, and at length the student turned to me:
“calm yourself, madame, calm yourself; a man will come with an instrument.” and three stations farther down the line a man did appear with an instrument and opened that window, and i drew in deep breaths of exceedingly dusty fresh air.
the lady in possession and i shared our breakfast. she made the tea, and she also cleaned out the kettle by the simple process of emptying the tea leaves into the wash-hand basin. that, as far as i saw, was the only use she made of the excellent washing arrangements supplied by the railway. but it is not for me to carp, she was so kind, and bravely stood dusty wind blowing through the compartment all night just because i did not like stuffiness. and when she was gone, o luxury! buchanan and i had the carriage to ourselves all the way to irkutsk.
and this was siberia. we were going west, slowly it is true, but with wonderful swiftness i felt when i remembered—and how should i not remember every moment of the time?—that this was the great and sorrowful road along which the exiles used to march, that the summer sun would scorch them, these great plains would be snow-covered and the biting, bitter wind would freeze them long before they reached their destination. i looked ahead into the west longingly; but i was going there, would be there in less than a fortnight at the most, while their reluctant feet had taken them slowly, the days stretched into weeks, the weeks into months, and they were still tramping east into an exile that for all they knew would be lifelong. ah! but this road must have been watered with blood and tears. every river, whether they were ferried over it or went across on the ice, must have seemed an added barrier to the man or woman thinking of escape; every forest would mean for them either shelter or danger, possibly both, for i had not forgotten the tigers of the amur and the bears and wolves that are farther west. and yet the steppes, those hopeless plains, must have afforded still less chance of escape.
oh! my early ideas were right after all. nature was jailer enough here in siberia. men did escape, we know, but many more must have perished in the attempt, and many, many must have resigned themselves to their bitter fate, for surely all the forces of earth and air and sky had ranged themselves on the side of the tsar. this beautiful country, and men had marched along it in chains!
at chita, greatly to my surprise, my sotnik of cossacks joined the train, and we greeted eaeh other as old friends. indeed i was pleased to see his smiling face again, and buchanan benefited largely, for many a time when i was not able to take him out for a little run our friend came along and did it for us.
the platforms at siberian stations are short and this troop train, packed with soldiers, was long, so that many a time our carriage never drew up at the platform at all. this meant that the carriage was usually five feet from the ground, and often more. i am a little woman and five feet was all i could manage, when it was more it was beyond me. of course i could have dropped down, but it would have been impossible to haul myself up again, to say nothing of getting buchanan on board. a russian post train—and this troop train was managed to all intents and purposes as a post train—stops at stations along the line so that the passengers may get food, and five minutes before it starts it rings a “make ready” bell one minute before it rings a second bell, “take your seats,” and with a third bell off the train goes. and it would have gone inexorably even though i, having climbed down, had been unable to climb up again. deeply grateful then were buehanan and i to the sotnik of cossacks, who recognised our limitations and never forgot us.
i liked these russian post trains far better than the train de luxe, with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. a russian post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. it was also much cheaper. from stretensk to petrograd, including buehanan, the cost was a little over nine pounds for the tickets, and i bought my food by the way. it was excellent and very cheap. all the things i had bought in kharbin, especially the kettles, came into use once more. the moment the train stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them, and raced for the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of water that are a feature of every russian station on the overland line. these boilers are always enclosed in a building just outside the railway station, and the spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes four in a row, come out through the walls. beside every spout is an iron handle which, being pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out. russia even in those days before the revolution struck me as strangely democratic, for the soldiers, the non-commissioned officers, the officers and everyone else on the train mingled in the struggle for hot water. i could never have got mine filled, but my cossack friend always remembered me and if he did not come himself sent someone to get my kettles. indeed everyone vied in being kind to the englishwoman, to show, i think, their good will to the only representative of the allied nation on the train.
it was at breakfast-time one warm morning i first made the acquaintance of “that very great officer,” as the others called him, the captain of the askold. he was in full naval uniform, and at that time i was not accustomed to seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and he was racing along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent on filling it with hot water to make coffee. he was not ashamed to pause and come to the assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the peasants were shamefully overcharging. they actually wanted her to pay a farthing a piece for their largest cucumbers! he spoke french and so we were able to communicate, and he was kind enough to take an interest in me and declare that he himself would provide me with cucumbers. he got me four large ones and when i wanted to repay him he laughed and said it was hardly necessary as they only cost a halfpenny! he had the compartment next to mine and that morning he sent me in a glass of coffee—we didn't run to cups on that train. excellent coffee it was too. indeed i was overwhelmed with provisions. one woman does not want very much to eat, but unless i supplied myself liberally and made it patent to all that i had enough and more than enough i was sure to be supplied by my neighbours out of friendship for my nation. from the cossack officer, from a hussar officer and his wife who had come up from ugra in mongolia, and from the captain of the askold i was always receiving presents. chickens, smoked fish—very greasy, in a sheet of paper, eaten raw and very excellent—raspberries and blue berries, to say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.
at some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about where the first and second class passengers could sit down and have déjeuner, or dinner, but oftener, especially in the east, we all dashed out, first, second and third class, and at little stalls presided over by men with kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women that were a joy to me after the effete women of china, bought what we wanted, took it back with us into the carriages and there ate it. i had all my table things in a basket, including a little saucer for buchanan. it was an exceedingly economical arrangement, and i have seldom enjoyed food more. the bread and butter was excellent. you could buy fine white bread, and bread of varying quality to the coarse black bread eaten by the peasant, and i am bound to say i very much like fine white bread. there was delicious cream; there were raspberries and blue berries to be bought for a trifle; there were lemons for the tea; there was german beet sugar; there were roast chickens at sixpence apiece, little pasties very excellent for twopence-halfpenny, and rapchicks, a delicious little bird a little larger than a partridge, could be bought for fivepence, and sometimes there was plenty of honey. milk, if a bottle were provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a quart, and my neighbours soon saw that i did not commit the extravagance of paying three times as much for it, which was what it cost if you bought the bottle.
the english, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their belief when they found how i bought milk. hard-boiled eggs were to be had in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. i am reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. these were first-class prices, the soldiers bought much more cheaply. enough meat to last a man a day could be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too—such meat nowadays i should pay at least five shillings for.
was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the steppes? how much hand had they had in the settling of the country? i asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. the stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as it had been along the amur.
and the train went steadily on. very slowly though—we only went at the rate of three hundred versts a day, why, i do not know. there we stuck at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look at the parallel rails coming out of the east on the horizon and running away into the west on the horizon again.
“we shall never arrive,” i said impatiently.
“ah! madame, we arrive, we arrive,” said the hussar officer, and he spoke a little sadly. and then i remembered that for him arrival meant parting with his comely young wife and his little son. they had with them a fox-terrier whom i used to ask into my compartment to play with buchanan, and they called him “sport.”
“an english name,” they said smilingly. if ever i have a fox-terrier i shall call him “sport,” in kindly remembrance of the owners of the little friend i made on that long, long journey across the old world. and the hussar officer's wife, i put it on record, liked fresh air as much as i did myself. as i walked up and down the train, even though it was warm summer weather, i always knew our two carriages because in spite of the dust we had our windows open. the rest of the passengers shut theirs most carefully. the second class were packed, and the third class were simply on top of one another—i should not think they could have inserted another baby—and the reek that came from the open doors and that hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.
i used to ask my cossack friend to tea sometimes—i could always buy cakes by the wayside—and he was the only person i ever met who took salt with his tea. he assured me the mongolians always did so, but i must say though i have tried tea in many ways i don't like that custom.
in kobdo, ten thousand feet among the mountains in the west of mongolia, was a great lama, and the cossack was full of this man's prophecy.
three emperors, said the lama, would fight. one would be overwhelmed and utterly destroyed, the other would lose immense sums of money, and the third would have great glory.
“the tsar, madame,” said my friend, “the tsar, of course, is the third.”
i wonder what part he took in the revolution. he was a balt, a man from the baltic provinces, heart and soul with the poles, and he did not even call himself a russian. well, the tsar has been overwhelmed, but which is the one who is to have great glory? after all, the present is no very great time for kings and emperors. i am certainly not taking any stock in them as a whole. perhaps that lama meant the president of the united states!
we went round lake baikal, and the holy sea, that i had seen before one hard plain of glittering ice, lay glittering now, beautiful still in the august sunshine. there were white sails on it and a steamer or two, and men were feverishly working at alterations on the railway. the angara ran swiftly, a mighty river, and we steamed along it into the irkutsk station, which is by no means irkutsk, for the town is—russian fashion—four miles away on the other side of the river.
at irkutsk it seemed to me we began to be faintly western again. and the exiles who had come so far i suppose abandoned hope here. all that they loved—all their life—lay behind. i should have found it hard to turn back and go east myself now. what must that facing east have been for them?
they turned us out of the train, and buchanan and i were ruefully surveying our possessions, heaped upon the platform, wondering how on earth we were to get them taken to the cloakroom and how we should get them out again supposing they were taken, when the captain of the askold appeared with a porter.
“would madame permit,” he asked, not as if he were conferring a favour, “that her luggage be put with mine in the cloakroom?”
madame could have hugged him. already the dusk was falling, the soft, warm dusk, and the people were hastening to the town or to the refreshment-rooms. there would be no train that night, said my kind friend, some time in the morning perhaps, but certainly not that night. i sighed. again i was adrift, and it was not a comfortable feeling.
if madame desired to dine—— madame did desire to dine.
then if madame permits—— of course madame permitted.
she was most grateful. and we dined together at the same table outside the station restaurant—i like that fashion of dining outside—under the brilliant glare of the electric light. he arranged everything for me, even to getting some supper for buchanan. and i forgot the exiles who had haunted me, forgot this was siberia. here in the restaurant, save for the tartar waiters, it might almost have been france.
“perhaps,” said my companion courteously as we were having coffee, “madame would care to come to my hotel. i could interpret for her and here no one speaks anything but russian.”
again i could have hugged him. i intimated my dressing-bag was in the cloakroom, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“for one night!”
he himself had nothing, so there and then we got into one of the usual decrepit landaus and went to the town, to irkutsk on the angara, in the heart of siberia. if in my girlish days when i studied the atlas of the world so carefully i could have known that one day i should be driving into irkutsk, that map would have been glorified for ever and a day; but i could never have realised, never, that it would be set in a summer land, warm as my own country, and that i should feel it a great step on towards the civilisation of the west.
it was night, and here and there clustering electric lights glittered like diamonds, making darker the spaces in between. in the morning i saw that the capital of eastern siberia, like all the other towns of that country, is a regular frontier town. there were the same wide streets grass-grown at the edges, great houses and small houses side by side, and empty spaces where as yet there were no houses. we went to the central hotel.
“i do not go to an expensive hotel,” my companion told me, “this is a moderate one.”
but if it were moderate it certainly was a very large and nice hotel. russian hotels do not as a rule provide food, the restaurant is generally separate, but we had already dined. that naval officer made all arrangements for me. he even explained to an astonished chamber-maid with her hair done in two long plaits that i must have all the windows open and when i tried for a bath did his best for me. but again, he explained, russians as a rule go to a bath-house, and there was only one bathroom in this hotel; it had been engaged for two hours by a gentleman, and he thought, seeing i should have to start early in the morning, it might be rather late for me to have a bath then, but if i liked in the morning it would be at my service.
if anyone had told me in the old days that going to irkutsk i should be deeply interested in a bath!
i engaged that bath for an hour in the morning as that seemed to be the correct thing to do. then i went to bed and heartily envied buchanan, who did not have to bother about toilet arrangements.
in the morning early there was a knock at the door and when i said “come in,” half expecting tea, there was my naval officer in full uniform smilingly declaring my bath was ready, he had paid the bill, and i could pay him back when we were on board the train. the chamber-maid, with her hair still done in two plaits—i rather fancy she had slept in them—conducted me to the bathroom, and i pass over the difficulty of doing without brush and comb and tooth-brush. but i washed the dust out of my hair, and when i was as tidy as i could manage i joined the captain of the askold and we drove back through the town to the railway station.
the station was a surging mass of people all talking at once, and all, i suppose, objurgating the railway management, but we two had breakfast together in the pleasant sunlight. we had fresh rolls and butter and coffee and cream and honey—i ask no better breakfast when these things are good—and meanwhile people, officials, came and went, discussing evidently some important matter with my friend. he departed for a moment, and then the others that i had known came up, my cossack friend and the hussar officer, and told me that the outgoing train was a military train, it would be impossible for a woman, a civilian and a foreigner at that, to go on it. i said the captain of the askold had assured me i could, and they shook their heads and then said hopefully, well, he was a very great officer, the captain of a ship, and i realised that no lesser authority could possibly have managed this thing for me. and even he was doubtful, for when he came back and resumed his interrupted breakfast he said:
“the train is full. the military authorities will not allow you on board.”
that really did seem to me tragedy at the moment. i forgot the sorrowful people who would gladly enough have stayed their journey at irkutsk. but their faces were set east. i forgot that after all a day or two out of a life would not matter very much, or rather i think i hated to part from these kindly friends i had made on the train. i suppose i looked my disappointment.
“wait. wait. it is not yet finished,” said my friend kindly. “they give me two compartments”—i felt then he was indeed “a very great officer,” for the people were packed in that train, tier upon tier, like herrings in a barrel—“and i cannot sleep in four bunks. it is ridiculous.”
that may have been, but it was kindness itself of him to establish a stranger in one of those compartments. it was most comfortable, and buchanan and i being established, and my luggage having come safely to hand, i proceeded to make the most of the brush and comb that had come once more into my possession, and i felt that the world was a very good place indeed as we sped across the green plain in the sunny morning. i could hardly believe that this goodly land was the one to which i had always been accustomed to think men went as to a living death.
and then i forgot other folks' troubles in my own, for envious eyes were cast upon the spare bunk in my compartment. no one would have dreamt of interfering had the sailor insisted upon having all four for himself, but since he had parted with the rights of one compartment to a foreign woman, it was evident that other people, crowded out, began to think of their own comfort. various people interviewed me. i am afraid i understood thoroughly what they wanted, but i did not understand russian, and i made the most of that disability. also all my friends who spoke french kept out of the way, so i suppose they did not wish to aid and abet in upsetting my comfort. at last a most extraordinary individual with a handkerchief tied round his neck in lieu of a collar and a little tourist cap on the back of his head was brought, and he informed me in french that there was a doctor in the hospital section of the train who had not been in bed for a week, they could not turn the soldiers out, they must have rest, would i allow him to sleep in my compartment?
“madame,” he said, and the officials standing round emphasised the remark, if it needed emphasis, “it is war time. the train is for the soldiers.”
certainly i was here on sufferance. they had a right to turn me out if they liked. so the doctor came and turned in in the top bunk, and his long-drawn snores took away from my sense of privacy.
i don't think he liked it very much, for presently he was succeeded by a train official, very drunk, though i am bound to say he was the only drunken man i saw on all that long train journey from stretensk to petrograd. it was a little unlucky we were at such close quarters. everyone, too, was very apologetic.
he was a good fellow. it was an unfortunate accident and he would be very much ashamed.
i suppose he was, for the next day he too disappeared and his place was taken by a professor from one of the siberian universities who was seeking radium. he was a nice old gentleman who had learned english but had never had the chance of hearing it spoken. where he went in the daytime i do not know, probably to a friend's compartment, and buchanan and i had the place to ourselves. we could and did invite the cossack officer and the hussar officer and his belongings and the naval man to tea, and we had great games with the little fox-terrier “sport” from next door, but when night fell the professor turned up and notified me he was about to go to bed. then he retired and i went to bed first on the lower seat. he knocked, came in and climbed up to his bunk, and we discoursed on the affairs of the world, i correcting his curious pronunciation. he really was a man of the world; he was the sort of man i had expected to meet in siberia, only i had never imagined him as free and sharing a railway compartment with me. i should have expected to find him toiling across the plains with the chains that bound his ankles hitched to his belt for convenience of carrying. but he looked and he spoke as any other cultivated old gentleman might have spoken, and looking back i see that his views of the war, given in the end of august, 1914, were quite the soundest i have ever listened to.
“the allies will win,” he used to say, “yes, they will win.” and he shook his head. “but it will be a long war, and the place will be drenched in blood first. two years, three years, i think four years.” i wonder if he foresaw the chaos that would fall upon russia.
these views were very different from those held by the other men.
“madame,” the cossack would say, laughing, “do you know a good hotel in berlin?”
i looked up surprised. “because,” he went on, “i engage a room there. we go to berlin!”
“peace dictated at berlin,” said they all again and again, “peace dictated at berlin.” this was during the first onward rush of the russians. then there came a setback, two towns were taken and the germans demanded an indemnity of twenty thousand pounds apiece.
“very well,” said the cossack grimly, and the hussar nodded his head. “they have set the tune. now we know what to ask.”
but the professor looked grave. “many towns will fall,” said he.
another thing that struck me was the friendly relations of the officers with those under them. as the only representative of their western ally on the train, i was something of a curiosity, and soldiers and non-commissioned officers liked to make excuse to look at me. i only wished i had been a little smarter and better-looking for the sake of my country, for i had had no new clothes since the end of 1912. however, i had to make the best of it, and the men came to me on the platforms or to my compartment without fear. if by chance they knew a little french they spoke to me, helped out by their officers if their vocabulary ran short.
“madame, madame,” said an old non-commissioned officer, “would you be so good as to tell me how to pronounce the english 'zee'? i teach myself french, now i teach myself english.”
well, they had all been good to me and i had no means of repaying their kindness save vicariously, so i took him in hand and with the aid of a booklet published by the wagons lit train du luxe describing the journey across siberia we wrestled with the difficulties of the english “th.”
it was a long long journey. we crept across the great steppes, we lingered by stations, sometimes there were lakes, sometimes great rivers, but always the great plains. far as the eye could see rolled the extent of green under the clear blue sky; often we saw herds of cattle and mobs of horses, and again and again companies of soldiers, and yet so vast is the country the sensation left upon the stranger is of emptiness, of a rich and fertile land crying out for inhabitants. i looked at it from the train with eager eyes, but i began to understand how there had grown up in my mind the picture of this lovely land as a dark and terrible place. to the prisoners who came here this plain, whether it were green and smiling, or whether it were deep in white snow, could only have been the barrier that cut them off from home and hope, from all that made life dear. how could they take up their broken lives here, they who for the most part were dwellers in the cities?
here was a regiment of soldiers; it was nothing, nothing, set in the vast plain. the buttercups and daisies and purple vetches were trampled down for a great space where men had been exercising or camping; but it was nothing. there were wide stretches of country where the cattle were peacefully feeding and where the flowers turned up smiling faces to the blue sky for miles and miles, making me forget that this had been the land of shadowed lives in the past and that away in the west men were fighting for their very existence, locked in a death-grip such as the world has never before seen.
it was well there was something to look out upon, for that train was horrid. i realised something of the horrors of the post-houses in which the prisoners had been locked at night. we could get good food at every station, but in the train we were too close on the ground and the reek of us went up to heaven. i felt as if the atmosphere of the train desecrated the fresh, clear air of the great plain over which we passed, as if we must breed disease. the journey seemed interminable, and what i should do when it ended i did not know, for opinion was fairly unanimous: they were sure i could not get to england!
with many apologies the captain of the askold permitted himself to ask how i was off for money. i was a total stranger, met on a train, and a foreigner! i told him i had a little over forty pounds and if that were not enough i had thought to be able to send to london for more.
he shook his head.
“i doubt if even letters can get through.”
and i sighed that then i did not know what i should do, for i had no friends in petrograd.
“pardon, madame,” said he remonstrantly, and he gave me the address of his wife and daughters. he told me to go and see them; he assured me that everybody in russia now wanted to learn english, that i would have no difficulty in getting pupils and so do myself very comfortably “till we make a passage to england again.”
just before we reached cheliabynsk he came and told me that he had heard there was a west-bound express with one place vacant, a ship awaited him and speed was very necessary, therefore he was leaving this train. then at one of the greater stopping-places he bowed low over my hand, bade me farewell, made a dash and caught the express. i have never either seen or heard of him since, but he remains in my mind as one of the very kindly men i have met on my way through the world.
at cheliabynsk we spent the livelong day, for there the main part of the train went on to moscow with the soldiers, while we who wanted to go to petrograd caught a train in the evening. i was glad to find that the hussar officer and the cossack were both bound for petrograd. and here we came in touch once more with the west. there was a bookstall, and though i could not buy an english paper i could and did buy an english book, one of john galsworthy's in the tauchnitz edition. it was a great delight to come in contact once more with something i could read. there was a big refreshment-room here with all manner of delectable things to eat, only we had passed beyond the sturgeon, and caviare was no longer to be had save at a price that was prohibitive to a woman who had had as much as she could eat and who anyhow was saving her pennies in case of contingencies.
but one thing i did have, and that was a bath. in fact the whole train bathed. near the station was a long row of bath-houses, but each one i visited—and they all seemed unpleasant places—was crowded with soldiers. after a third attempt to get taken in my cossack friend met me and was shocked at the idea of my going to such a place; if i would trust him he would take me to a proper place after déjeuner.
naturally i trusted him gladly, and we got into one of the usual broken-down landaus and drove away to the other side of the town to a row of quite superior bath-houses. my friend declared he knew the place well, he had been stationed here in “the last revolution,” as if revolutions came as regularly as the seasons.
it was a gorgeous bath-house. that young man bought me soap; he bought me some sort of loofah for scrubbing; he escorted me to three large rooms which i engaged for a couple of hours and, much to the surprise of the people, having had the windows opened, he left me, assuring me that the carriage should return for me in two hours. there was plenty of hot water, plenty of cold, and any amount of towels, and both buchanan and i washed the grime of the journey from us and then rested on the sofa in the retiring-room. i read john galsworthy and punctually to the moment i descended to the street, clean and refreshed, and there our carriage awaited us.
we bought water-melons on our way back to the train, for the streets were heaped up with the great dark green melons with the pink flesh that i had not seen since i left australia. autumn was on the land and here were watermelons proof thereof.
ever as we went west the cornfields increased. most of the wheat was cut and standing in golden-brown stooks waiting to be garnered by old men and boys and sturdy country women and those who were left of her young men, for russia had by no means called out her last lines in 1914. there were still great patches of forest, primeval forest, of dense fir, and i remembered that here must be the haunts of the wolves and the bear with which i had always associated russia. more, though why i know not, my mind flew back to the times of the nomad hordes who, coming out of central asia, imposed their rule upon the fair-haired aryan race that had settled upon the northern plain of europe. those forests for me spelled romance; they took away from the feeling of commonplaceness that the breaking down of my preconceived ideas of siberia had engendered. almost anything might happen in a land that held such forests, and such rivers. not that i was allowed to see much of the rivers now. someone always came in and drew down the blinds in my compartment—i had one to myself since leaving cheliabynsk—and told me i must not go out on the platform whenever we crossed a bridge. they were evidently taking precautions against spying though they were too polite to say so. there were big towns with stations packed to overflowing. at perm we met some german prisoners of war, and there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere, and at last one day in the first week in september we steamed into petrograd.
