it was evening and we had arrived at petrograd. for many years i had wanted to see the northern capital. i had thought of it as a town planned by a genius, slowly growing amid surrounding swamps, and in my childhood i had pictured that genius as steadily working as a carpenter—in a white paper cap—having always in his mind's eye the town that was to grow on the baltic sea, the seaport that should give his country free access to the civilisation of the west. he was a great hero of mine because of his efficiency; after all i see no reason why i should dethrone him now that i realise he had the faults of his time and his position.
but in life i find things always come differently to what one pictures them. the little necessities of life will crop up and must be attended to first and foremost. the first thought that came to me was that i had to part with the friends i had made on the journey. right away from the borders of china the cossack officer and i had travelled together; i had met the hussar officer and his wife soon after i had joined the train, and we seemed to have come out of one world into another together. it made a bond, and i for one was sorry to part. they were going to their own friends or to a russian hotel, and the general consensus of opinion was that i would be more comfortable in a hotel where there were english or at least french people.
“go to the grand hotel, madame,” suggested the hussar officer's wife, she who spoke perfect french.
so buchanan and i loaded our belongings on to a droshky that looked smart after the ones i had been accustomed to in asia, bade farewell to our friends “till after the war”—the cossack was coming to england then “to buy a dog”—and drove to the grand hotel.
the grand hotel spoke perfect english, looked at me and—declined to take me because i had a little dog. i was very much astonished, but clearly i couldn't abandon buehanan, so i went on to the hotel d'angleterre, which also declined. i went from hotel to hotel and they all said the same thing, they could not think of taking in anyone accompanied by a dog. it was growing dark—it was dark, and after a fortnight on the train i was weary to death. how could i think of the glories of the russian capital when i was wondering where i could find a resting-place? i couldn't turn buchanan adrift in the streets, i couldn't camp in the streets myself, and the hotel porters who could speak english had no suggestions to make as to where i could bestow my little friend in safety. six hotels we went to and everyone was firm and polite, they could not take a dog. at last a hotel porter had a great idea, the hotel astoria would take dogs.
“why on earth didn't someone tell me so before?” i said, and promptly went to the hotel astoria. it was rather like going to the hotel ritz, and though i should like to stay at the hotel ritz i would not recommend it to anyone who was fearing an unlimited stay in the country, who had only forty pounds to her credit and was not at all sure she could get any more. still the hotel astoria took little dogs, actually welcomed them, and charged four shillings a day for their keep. i forgot peter the great and the building of the capital of russia, revelling in the comforts of a delightful room all mirrors, of a bathroom attached and a dinner that it was worth coming half across the world to meet. my spirits rose and i began to be quite sure that all difficulties would pass away, i should be able to get back to england and there would be no need for that desperate economy. it was delightful to go to bed in a still bed between clean white sheets, to listen to the rain upon the window and to know that for this night at least all was well. i had seen no english papers; i knew nothing about the war, and it is a fact one's own comfort is very apt to colour one's views of life. buchanan agreed with me this was a very pleasant world—as a rule i do find the world pleasant—it was impossible anything could go wrong in it.
and the next day i received a snub—a snub from my own people.
i went to the british consulate full of confidence. every foreigner i had met all across the world had been so pleased to see me, had been so courteous and kind, had never counted the cost when i wanted help, so that i don't know what i didn't expect from my own countrymen. i looked forward very mueh to meeting them. and the young gentleman in office snubbed me properly. he wasn't wanting any truck with foolish women who crossed continents; he didn't care one scrap whether i had come from saghalien or just walked down the nevsky prospekt; i was a nuisance anyway, his manner gave me to understand, since i disturbed his peace and quiet, and the sooner i took myself out of the country the better he would be pleased. he just condescended to explain where i could get a ticket straight through to newcastle-on-tyne; people were doing it every day; he didn't know anything about the war, and his manner gave me to understand that it wasn't his business to supply travellers with news. i walked out of that office with all the jauntiness taken out of me. possibly, i have thought since, he was depressed at the news from france, perhaps someone was jeering him because he had not joined up, or else he had wanted to join up and was not allowed. it was unlucky that my first englishman after so long should be such a churlish specimen. i felt that unless my necessity was dire indeed i should not apply to the british consulate for help in an emergency. i did not recover till i went to the company who sold through tickets, across finland, across sweden and norway, across the north sea to newcastle-on-tyne. there i bought a ticket for fifteen pounds which was to carry me the whole way. it was a swedish company, i think, and the office was packed with people, poles, letts, lithuanians and russians, who were naturalised americans and who wanted to go home. everybody took the deepest interest in buchanan, so much interest that the man in charge asked me if i was going to take him, i said “of eourse,” and he shook his head.
“you will never get him through sweden. they are most strict.”
poor buchanan! despair seized me. having been to the british consulate, i knew it was no use seeking advice there. i suppose i was too tired or i should have remembered that americans are always kind and helpful and gone there or even dared the british embassy. but these ideas occurred to me too late.
you may travel the world over and the places you visit will often remain in your mind as pleasant or otherwise not because of any of their own attributes, but because of the emotions you have suffered in them. here was i in st petrograd, and instead of exploring streets and canals and cathedrals and palaces my whole thoughts were occupied with the fate of my little dog. i “had given my heart to a dog to tear” and i was suffering in consequence. all the while i was in petrograd—and i stayed there three days looking for a way out—my thoughts were given to james buchanan. i discussed the matter with the authorities in the hotel who could speak english, and finally buchanan and i made a peregrination to the swedish consulate. and though the swedish consulate was a deal more civil and more interested in me and my doings than the english, in the matter of a dog, even a nice little dog like buchanan, they were firm—through sweden he could not go.
i read in the paper the other day that the world might be divided into men and women and people-who-hate-dogs, and these last will wonder what i was making such a fuss about, but the men and women will understand. my dear little companion and friend had made the lonely places pleasant for me and i could not get him out of the country save by turning round and going back across europe, asia and america!
i went back to the place where i had bought my ticket. they also were sympathetic. everyone in the office was interested in the tribulations of the cheerful little black and white dog who sat on the counter and wagged a friendly tail. i had many offers to take care of him for me, and the consensus of opinion was that he might be smuggled! and many tales were told me of dogs taken across the borders in overcoats and muffs, or drugged in baskets.
that last appealed to me. buchanan was just too big to cany hidden easily, but he might be drugged and covered up in a basket. i went back to the astoria and sent for a vet. also i bought a highly ornamental basket. the porter thought i was cruel. he thought i might leave the dog with him till after the war, but he translated the vet's opinion for me, and the vet gave me some sulphonal. he assured me the little dog would be all right, and i tried to put worrying thoughts away from me and to see petrograd, the capital of the tsars.
but i had seen too much. there comes a moment, however keen you are on seeing the world, when you want to see no new thing, when you want only to close your eyes and rest, and i had arrived at that moment. the wide and busy streets intersected with canals, the broad expanse of the neva, the cathedral and the winter palace were nothing to me; even the wrecked german embassy did not stir me.
i was glad then when the fourth morning found me on the finland station. the finland station was crowded and the finland train, with only second and third class carnages and bound for raumo, was crowded also, and it appeared it did not know its way very well as the line had only just been opened to meet the traffic west diverted from germany. a fortnight before no one had ever heard of raumo.
and now for me the whole outlook was changed. this was no military train, packed as it was, but a train of men, women and children struggling to get out of the country, the flotsam and jetsam that come to the surface at the beginning of a war. and i heard again for the first time since i left tientsin, worlds away, english spoken that was not addressed to me. to be sure it was english with an accent, the very peculiar accent that belongs to russians, lithuanians, poles and letts americanised, and with it mingled the nasal tones of a young musician from central russia who spoke the language of his adopted land with a most exaggerated accent and the leisurely, cultivated tones of oxford.
i had come from the east to the west!
the carriage was open from end to end and they would not allow buchanan to enter it. he, poor little man, in the gorgeous basket that he objected to strongly, was banished to the luggage-van, and because the carriage was hot, and also because i felt he would be lonely separated from me, i went there and kept him company.
and in that van i met another russian naval officer and deepened my obligations to the russian navy. he sat down beside me on one of the boxes, a tall, broad-shouldered, fair man who looked like a viking with his moustache shaved off. i found to my joy he spoke english, and i confided to him my difficulties with regard to breakfast. i was so old a traveller by now i had learned the wisdom of considering carefully the commissariat. he was going to the forts on the finnish border of which he was in command, but before he left the train we would arrive at a refreshment-room, and he undertook to arrange matters for me. and so he did.
petrograd does not get up early, at least the hotel astoria did not, and the most i could manage before i left was a cup of coffee, but i made up for it at that first refreshment-room. the naval officer took entire charge and, revelling in his importance, i not only had a very good breakfast but made the most of my chances and, filling up my basket with a view to future comforts, bought good things so that i might be able to exchange civilities with my fellow-passengers on the way to raumo. i had eggs and sausages and new bread and scones and a plentiful supply of fruit, to say nothing of sugar and lemons and cream and meat for buehanan—the naval man looking on smiling—and when i had really done myself well i turned to him and demanded what i ought to pay.
“nothing, madame. in russia when a gentleman takes a lady for refreshment he pays!”
imagine my horror! and i had stocked my basket so lavishly!
my protests were useless. i was escorted back to our luggage-van and my thoughts led gently from the coffee and eggs i had consumed and the sausages and bread i had stowed away in my basket to the state of the war as it struck the russian naval mind.
had i heard about the sea fight in the mediterranean? not heard about the little gloucester attacking the goeben, the little gloucester that the big german battleship could have eaten! a dwarf and a giant! madame! madame! it was a sea fight that will go down through the ages! russia was ringing with it!
“do you know anyone in the english navy?”
i said i had two brothers in the senior service, a little later and i might have said three.
“then tell them,” said he earnestly, “we russian sailors are proud to be allies of a nation that breeds such men as manned the gloucester!”
the finnish border was soon reached and he left us, and the day went on and discipline i suppose relaxed, for i brought buchanan into the carriage and made friends with the people who surrounded me. and then once again did i bless the foresight of the polish jewess in kharbin who had impressed upon me the necessity for two kettles. they were a godsend in that carriage. we commandeered glasses, we got hot water at wayside stations and i made tea for all within reach, and a cup of tea to a thirsty traveller, especially if that traveller be a woman, is certainly a road to that traveller's good graces.
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.
it began to rain, and through the mist which hid the moonlight to-night we could see the loom of the ships; they were all white and the lights from the cabin ports showed dim through the misty rain. the wharf was littered with goods, barrels and bales, and as there was more than one steamer, and apparently no one to guide us, or the scots finn had not returned, we tackled the russian gens d'arme who seemed to be in charge of the wharf and who was leaning up against the train.
“can you speak finnish?”
“ah! now you have my secret first shot,” said he, with a smile. he, their guardian, was no more equal to communicating with these people than we were. and then, to our dismay, before our messenger could return, the train which considered not a parcel of refugees put on steam and started back to raumo!
a dozen voices were raised in frantic protest, but we might as well have spared our breath, the train naturally paid no attention to us, but went back at full speed to the town proper. it was a comfort when it stopped, for, for all we knew, it might have gone straight back to petrograd itself. and buchanan, shut up in a basket, was left behind, i knew not where! they dumped us on that station, bag and baggage, in the rain. we were worse off here than we were at the wharf, for there the steamer and comfort at least loomed in the distance. here was only a bare and empty station, half-a-dozen men who looked at us as if we were so many wild beasts on show, and a telephone to the wharf which we were allowed to use as long as we pleased, but as far as i could gather the only result was a flow of bad language in many tongues. we might be of many nations, but one and all were we agreed in our dislike of the finns and all things finnish. if i remember rightly, in the middle ages, most people feared and disliked magicians.
we managed to get our baggage into the hall of the station, whieh was dimly lighted by electric lights, and in anticipation of our coming they had filled up the station water-carafes. but that was all the provision they had made. if there was a refreshment-room it had been locked up long ago, and as far as we could make out, now our interpreter had gone, there were no hotels or boarding-houses. our scots finn had said it was impossible to stay in raumo. we looked at one another in a dismay in which there was, after all, something comic. this that had befallen us was the sort of aggravating thing a mischievous magician would cause to happen. we were tired and hungry and bad-tempered, and i for one was anxious about my little dog and i began to seek, with cash in my hand, somebody who would find me buchanan.
how i made my wants known i don't now realise, but money does wonders, and presently there came in a man bearing his basket and a rapturous little dog was let out into the room. where he had been i have not the faintest idea, and i could not ask, only i gathered that the man who brought him professed himself perfectly willing to go on fetching little dogs all night at the same rate, and the musician remarked in his high nasal twang that he supposed it was no good expecting any more sympathy from mrs gaunt, she was content now she had her little dog. as a matter of fact, now that my mind was at ease, i was equal to giving my attention to other people's woes.
we tackled the men round us.
where was our messenger?
no one knew.
where could we get something to eat?
blank stare. they were not accustomed to foreigners yet at raumo. the station had only just been opened. the musician took out his violin and its wailing tones went echoing and re-echoing through the hall. the audience looked as if they thought we had suddenly gone mad, and one man came forward and by signs told us we must leave the station. that was all very well, we were not enamoured of the station, but the port we judged to be at least four miles off, and no one was prepared to start down an unknown road in the dark and pouring rain. there was a long consultation, and we hoped it meant food, but it didn't. out of a wilderness of words we at last arrived at the interesting fact that if we cared to subscribe five marks one of these gentlemen was prepared to conduct us to the police station. there appeared to be no wild desire on the part of any of us to go to the police station, the violin let out a screech of scornful derision, and one of the officials promptly turned off the electric lights and left us in darkness!
there were many of us, and vexations shared are amusing. we laughed, how we laughed, and the violin went wailing up and down the octaves. no wonder the finns looked at us askance. even the darkness did not turn us out, for we had nowhere else to go, and finally a man who spoke english turned up, the agent for the swedish steamer. he had thought there would be no passengers and had gone to bed, to be roused up, i presume by the stationmaster, as the only person likely to be capable of dealing with these troublesome people who were disturbing the peace of this finnish village.
we flew at him—there were about a dozen of us—and showed our tickets for the finnish steamer, and he smiled in a superior manner and said we should be captured by germans.
we didn't believe much in the germans, for we had many of us come through a country which certainly believed itself invulnerable. then a woman travelling with her two daughters, americans of the americans, though their mother spoke english with a most extraordinary accent, proclaimed aloud that if there was a swedish steamer she was going by it as she was afraid of “dose yarmans.” she and her daughters would give up their tickets and go by the swedish steamer. protest was useless. if we liked to break up the party we could. she was not going by the uleaborg. besides, where were we to sleep that night? the finnish steamer was three or four miles away down at the wharf and we were here along with the swedish agent.
the swedish agent seized the opening thus given. there were no hotels; there were no boarding-houses; no, it was not possible to get anything to eat at that hour of the night. something to drink? well, in surprised tones, there was surely plenty of water in the station—there was—and he would arrange for a train for us to sleep in. the train at ten o'clock next morning would take us down to the steamer.
we retired to that train. only one of the carriages was lighted, and that by general consent we gave up to the lady whose fear of the germans had settled our affairs for us, and she in return asked us to share what provisions we had left. we pooled our stores—i don't think i had anything left, but the others shared with me—and we dined, not unsatisfactorily, off sardines, black bread, sausages and apples. the only person left out of the universal friendliness was the yiddish lady. out of her plenty she did not offer to share.
“she cannot,” said the musician. “she is saving for the voyage to america. you see, she can eat none of the shipboard food.” he too came of the same strict order of jew, and his grandparents, with whom he had been staying in little russia, had provided him with any amount of sausage made of kosher meat, but when he was away from his own people he was evidently anything but strict and ate what pleased him. he shared with the rest of us. possibly he was right about the yiddish woman, and i suppose it did not really do us any harm to go short till next morning, but it looked very greedy, and i still wonder at the nerve of a woman who could sit down and eat sausage and bread and all manner of such-like things while within a stone's-throw of her people who had helped her in every way they could were cutting up apples and pears into quarters and audibly wishing they had a little more bread. the oxford man and musician had always helped her, but she could not find it in her heart to spare them one crumb. i admire her nerve. in america i doubt not she will acquire wealth.
after supper buchanan and i retired to a dark carriage, wrapped ourselves in my eiderdown and slept till with break of day two capable but plain finnish damsels came in to clean the train. i think the sailors' ideas must have been wrong: every finn cannot be a magician else they would not allow all their women to be so plain. i arose and dressed and prepared to go out and see if raumo could produce coffee and rolls, but as i was starting the violinist in the next compartment protested.
“i wouldn't. guess you haven't got the hang of these finnish trains. it might take it into its head to go on. can't you wait till we reach the steamer.”
i gave the matter my consideration, and while i was considering the train did take it into its head to go on four hours before its appointed time. on it went, and at last in the fresh northern dewy morning, with the sun just newly risen, sending his long low rays streaming across the dancing waters of the bay, we steamed up to the wharf, and there lay the white ships that were bound for sweden, the other side of the baltic.
