A vagabond in the Caucasus

by Stephen Graham

II

The succeeding week was an orgy of eating and drinking. I had already spent one Christmas in England and had eaten not less than a big man’s share of turkey and plum-pudding, but I was destined to out-do in Russia every table feat that our homely English board had witnessed. On Christmas Day alone I ate and drank, for courtesy, at eight different houses. Nicholas accomplished prodigious feats, and the worthy deacon was as much beyond Nicholas as the latter was beyond me. Let me describe the spread. There were, of course, chicken, turkey and vodka; there was sucking-pig, roasted with little slices of lemon. There were joints of venison and of beef, roast goose, wild duck, fried sturgeon and carp, fat and sweet, but full of bones; caviare, tinned herrings, mushrooms, melons, infusion of fruit and Caucasian wines. The steaming samovar was always on the sideboard, and likewise tumblers of tea, sweetened with jam or sharpened by lemon slices. There were huge loaves of home-baked bread, but no cakes or biscuits, and no puddings. At peasants’ houses the fare was commoner, but not less abundant, than at the squires’, and it was very difficult to escape from either without making a meal equal to an English lunch.

The Russians are a hospitable nation and, above all things, like to keep open house. On the great feast days everyone is at home—and everyone is also out visiting. That is, the women stay at home and superintend the hospitalities and the men go the rounds. At Moscow it is a full-dress function; one drives about the city all day. At Lisitchansk it is less polite and more hearty than in the old capital and one makes no distinction of persons. Nicholas and I went out to the postman, and together with the postman we went to a poor peasant’s dwelling, a one-room cottage where a man and his wife and ten children lived and slept. There was a glorious fire and a pot of soup hanging from a hook over it. Very poor people they were, and the children were thin and wretched, but friends had given them extra coal and food and vodka, and it was as gaily Christmas there as anywhere else. We took a snack of their food and detached the man from his family and went away to the oilman’s home. We were four now, and it seemed as if we were going to increase like a ball of snow, but we dropped the postman with the oilman. Just at the door, as we left, we met the deacon, who arranged to meet us at the soap factory in the afternoon, and whilst we were talking the farmer of the vodka monopoly came up and insisted on all of us coming to his house at night. He forcibly reminded me of my train adventure, for he was the first very drunk man I had seen in Lisitchansk. From the moment he appeared on the scene to his actual parting he kept up a grotesque step-dance, the Kamarinsky Moujik, the deacon said. It seemed to consist chiefly in doing the splitz. After leaving him we went home and were just in time to meet the village police, who had come for Christmas drinks. I think they were all at the fifteenth glass of vodka. It was a matter of speculation to me how far they would get before they finally collapsed. I should think the remoter districts of the village were unvisited by these worthies. One of them had been in Siberia. “Ah, brother, you get vodka out there.” Klick, he smacked his lips. “There was an Englishman took a glass of Siberian vodka and for two days he was drunk. On the third day he drank a glass of water and that made him drunk again.” Klick, he smacked his lips again. “That’s what.” And he blinked his eyes at me with peculiar assurance.

When the police had tottered out the village musicians came in playing carols. The leader played the violin; he was the choir-master, an elderly man with flashing eyes and long black hair. Behind him were four young men with guitars or balalaikas. Then came a group of boys, perhaps the same as those who had followed the Star of Bethlehem the night before. They played some hymns and then received coppers all round. The elders drank a glass of vodka each, and then their leader, by way of thanks, gave the Ukrainsky National Dance on the violin, and stamped his feet and danced to the music. Nearly everyone in the room was moving legs or body to the music, and when the musicians made a move to go the scene was so lively that one might have thought the fairy fiddler had been present. The music ceased and the choir hurried away. They had to visit every house in the village, and so time was precious to them; they certainly couldn’t linger in the deacon’s house. I heard afterwards there was one family they didn’t visit; these were Baptists, and had celebrated their Christmas a fortnight earlier with the rest of Europe.

We met the deacon at the soap factory and there made a great feast off sucking-pig. A Little-Russian girl induced me to drink half a glass of vodka on condition that she drank the other half. I insisted that her half should be the first, and then I did not resist the bribe. But I don’t think her lips allayed the fire. She had the best of the bargain, and the company collapsed with laughter at my expense.

A number of us left the factory to go to the Squire’s, and as we tramped through the snow there was a lively discussion as to the grandeur of the spread and the merits of sucking-pig. The Chief of Police was with us, and he was of opinion that Pavel Ivanovitch was getting too deep in debt.

“What of that,” said a military officer, “everyone is in debt. ‘Not in debt, not decent.’ Don’t you know the proverb?”

“How fond you seem to be of getting together and eating and singing and dancing,” said I. “In England all the people are huddled up close to one another and yet one seldom takes tea with the next-door neighbour even.”

The deacon replied:

“You are all like the people of Moscow or Kiev or St Petersburg, I expect. You have forgotten that you are brothers. Money has come between you and money has made you work. You are all gathered together, not out of love, but out of hate. In England gregariousness, in Russia conviviality.”

“Yes, we live together,” said the Chief of Police; “you die together.”

“You have your pogroms,” I retorted, and everyone looked very grave, for they were all staunch supporters of the Tsar.

“The vine is better for the cutting,” said the deacon, softly.

“But surely you do not approve of shedding blood, you do not think it Christian to fight your enemies?”

“We do not strike them. They are cursed by God, and when they are struck it is by Him. But it is not a matter for argument. You have come to see Russia, you look about, and you will find happiness wherever you go. We are all happy, even the Jews, who are only here to make money out of us. Then, if we are happy you must not object to our Government.”

“But are you really happy? In nine out of every ten provinces you will have famine before the winter is over, and yet you are all wasting your stores by Christmas luxuriance. All these poor people who are gorging themselves to-day will be pinched with hunger to-morrow.”

“He who taketh thought for the morrow is a Jew,” said the officer, and so ended the conversation by flooding it with laughter. Everyone laughed, and I think everyone thought we had been getting too serious.

The Squire was the occupant of a grand old house with many spacious rooms and walls a yard thick. His dining-table, about twenty feet long, was heaped up with cold meats and bottles of wine. We were fortunate enough to escape with a plate of turkey and a glass of port each.

As we came home in the dusk we saw a lover and his lass who had just plighted their troth. The deacon insisted on their coming with us. “How was it done?” I asked.

“Oh, she says ‘What is your name?’; he replies, ‘Foma’; she rejoins, ‘Foma is my husband’s name.’ They are very fond of one another and arranged it of course. It is a custom to plight troth on Christmas Day.”

A few days later I was at the girl’s house and part of the betrothal ritual was concluded. There were about fourteen of us in one room awaiting the ceremony. Presently a knock came at the door, and the starosta, the old man of the village, entered, and with him the bridegroom. They carried loaves of bread in their hands. The starosta commenced a recitation in a sing-song voice. It ran something like this:

“We are German people, come from Turkey. We are hunters, good fellows. There was a time once in our country when we saw strange foot-prints in the snow, and my friend the prince here saw them, and we thought they might be a fox’s or a marten’s foot-prints, or it might be those of a beautiful girl. We hunters, we good fellows, are determined not to rest till we have found the animal. We have been in all cities from Germany to Turkey, and have sought for this fox, this marten or this princess, and at last we have seen the same strange foot-prints in the snow again, here by your court. And we have come in. Come, let us take her, the beautiful princess, for we see her in front of us—or can it be you would keep her till she grows a little older?”

Then the father made a speech in the same style, asking the name and lineage of the proud prince who sued for his daughter’s hand. Then, after considerable hesitation, both parties came to agreement, and the starosta leading the young man forward, and the father bringing the girl to him, the hands of the loving pair were joined and blessing was given. The rest of the evening was given over to carouse.

But to return to Christmas Day. We spent the night at the house of the farmer of the vodka monopoly. When we met the host he was dancing, and when we said good-night he was still dancing, and he had been dancing all the time. Beyond food there was no real entertainment. A young man played the guitar for four or five hours, and played the same tune the whole time. We had two dinners and two teas. At the second dinner the fifth course was roast sturgeon. I protested that I couldn’t eat any more.

“Don’t you think you could make all the other things squeeze up just a little and make room?” said the hostess.

“It’s the Chief of Police,” said the deacon.

“What is?”

“Why, the sturgeon! Don’t you know the story of Gogol? The church was packed full of people, so that not a single person more could find room. Then the Chief of Police came and couldn’t get in. But the priest called out to the people to make room, and then everyone moved up just a little bit closer. So they managed to squeeze the Chief of Police in. Now this sturgeon is the Chief of Police, and you must make the other things move up.”

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CHAPTER III
MUMMERS AT A COUNTRY HOUSE

ON St Stephen’s Day we drove in sledges to a country house. I feasted my eyes on a wonderful sight—high trees standing between the white ground and the great sun, and casting strange shadows on the whitest snow, and between the shadows a thousand living sparkles literally shot flames from the glistening snow. I had never seen anything like it before; it was very beautiful. We left the forest and passed over a vast plain of tumbled snow. There was snow everywhere as far as the eye could see. The sky above was deep glowing blue; the horizon lines a nascent grey darkness. One looked out upon an enchanted ocean of snow; the wind had wreathed it fantastically in crested waves, or left it gently dimpled like the sands of the seashore. Wave behind wave glistened and sparkled to the horizon, and a gentle breeze raised a snow spray from a thousand crests. The snow scud fled from wave to wave. Yes, it was very beautiful and new, and the world seemed very broad and full of peace. I felt it a privilege to exist in the presence of such beauty. It was my nameday, and it seemed as if there were a special significance in all the beauty which lay about me. Pure flame colours were about me as the glistening white robe of a candidate, to whom new mysteries are to be revealed.

The road was hard-beaten snow, a series of frozen cart ruts. The horses scampered ahead and the sledges shot after them. The sledge slipped over the snow like a boat over the reeds of a river. The red-faced driver sat immobile in his seat. We lay back in the sledges and took advantage of every inch of fur and rug. The runners were very low, and we could have touched the snow as we passed. Sometimes we rushed into a drift, and the snow would rise in a splash over us. And wasn’t it cold! My feet became like ice.

Our new host was a Count Yamschin, owner of a large estate in the Government of Ekaterinoslav. We arrived at his house in the afternoon, and I heard the deacon give orders to the sledge-drivers to return for us at midnight.

The house was a large one, the rooms spacious. Like Russian houses in general, it was simply and meagrely furnished. But for the people in them the rooms would have seemed empty. There were no carpets on the floor; only here and there a soft Persian rug. The firelight from the logs blazing on the broad hearth was the only illumination until late in the twilight. One watched the shadows about the high ceiling and in the recesses; animated faces moved into the bright gleam of light or passed into the shade. In a corner darker than the others stood the precious Ikons, the sacred pictures.

There were ten or fifteen people in the room, and we chatted in groups for half an hour. The principal topic of conversation was about a mystery play which was going to be performed in the evening. It was called the Life of Man, and everyone had evidently heard much about it before the performance. “You will see,” said the deacon, “it is an Ikon play. The Ikon speaks.” Presently the eldest son came striding in in jack-boots and besought us to go into the concert-hall. This was apparently part of a separate building, and we had all to wrap ourselves up and step into our goloshes, so as to trip through the shrubbery with no discomfort. It was a large hall and would have easily held all the people of the village. There was a stage curtained off, and in the body of the hall a grand piano. We held an impromptu concert, made up for the most part of songs and recitations in the Little Russian language. Little Russian is to Russian what broad Scotch is to English. I met a student who knew many long speeches from Shakespeare by heart, but Shakespeare in Russian translation. Shakespeare is a compulsory subject in most Russian colleges, and students have, on the whole, as good a knowledge of it as English people have. The young man professed to be extremely enthusiastic over the Life of Man, which was an expansion of Shakespeare’s thought:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.”

“Do you believe in God?” asked the student, abruptly.

“Yes,” I said. “I use the word God and mean something by it.”

“You are old-fashioned.” He laughed. “We don’t believe in God, we students; we are all atheists. You’re coming to Moscow, you’ll see. We don’t believe in anything except Man. We have given too much time to God already; it’s high time we turned our attention to Man. Is it possible you have not yet heard that God is dead? Why, where have you been?”

“I see you have been reading Nietzsche,” I remarked with a smile.

He looked at me with annoyance. “The English also read Nietzsche?”

I assented.

“Well,” he went on, “we’ve got God on the stage, you’ll see. We don’t call him God, but it’s God all the same. We call him the old man in grey. We had to do that so as to smuggle him past the censor. The censor, you know, has just stopped Oscar Wilde’s Salome, not because it’s indecent, but because it deals with a biblical subject. I think we’ve got a better censor than yours, however; he has licensed Ghosts and Mrs Warren’s Profession, and it’s perfectly easy to manage him.”

“What did the deacon mean when he said the Ikon speaks?”

“Oh, that is his way of looking at it. The huge figure in grey, which you will see, is really meant for God. God gives the play for the benefit of mankind. God speaks the opening words. He shows the life of one man and says it is a typical life, and that is man’s life upon this earth, that and neither more nor less. During all the five acts God stands in a dark corner like an Ikon; he is visible to the audience as a God, but the actors on the stage behave, for the most part, as if it were only a sacred picture. God holds a candle, and as the play gets older the candle gradually burns lower and lower until, when Man dies, it finally expires. To Man on the stage this candle is only visible as the little lamp burning before the Ikon. He makes plans, he succeeds, he fails, he prays or curses, he is trivial or serious, and all the while the candle representing his life burns lower and nothing can stop the wasting of the wax.”

At this point Miss Yamschin came and called us all back to dinner. So we all trooped back to the room where the log fire gleamed. Three or four paraffin lamps were now lit, and a pleasant light was diffused through their green shades. An uncle of Nicholas’s had arrived, a station-master from a village ten versts away on a by-line. He waited impatiently while the deacon explained who I was, and then transfixed me with this question:

“Who lost the Japanese War—the Russian Government or the people?”

“The Government, of course,” I replied. Whereupon he unexpectedly flung his arms round my neck and kissed me on both cheeks.

“If I had had charge of the war, whew!” he whistled. “D’you see the palm of my hand there; now, there’s the Japanese Army.” Puff, he puffed out his cheeks with air and blew the Japanese Army off his palm and off the face of the earth. He winked at me with assurance. “That’s what I’d do.” He tapped his head and his chest and said knowingly: “Do you see these, ah-ha, pure Russian, they are.”

“Speak to me in English,” he went on. “I learned English at school, but I’ve forgotten—‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note’—eh? D’ye know that?”

When we got to table the uncle made a long speech, wishing prosperity and happiness to the young Englishman who had come out to Russia to make his fortune. England was the greatest country in the world, next to Russia. If the English soldiers would give up rum and take to vodka they would be the greatest soldiers in the world. When we had all drunk that toast he proposed another, hoping I might find a beautiful Russian girl to love. The count was what we should call a good sort in England. He let everyone do exactly as he pleased, except in the matter of wine, to which no refusals were accepted. It was an uproarious dinner-table; not only the young men, but the girls joined in the conviviality. I was lionised. They drank eleven healths to me all round; it was a matter of wonder what the next plea would be, but the uncle’s brain was very fertile. I counted that in all I drank twenty-six glasses of wine that day, and yet when I had been in England I was not quite sure whether I was a teetotaller or not. I was finally persuaded to make a speech in Russian, in which my Russian gave way, and I was forced to conclude in English. I managed to propose the host’s health, and that was the best thing I could have done. Approbation was uproarious.

When, at last, the dinner was over, we filed into the concert-hall to see the Life of Man performed. My student companion was evidently one of the actors, since I looked to resume our conversation, but he was nowhere to be found. The drama was one of Leonid Andrief’s, a new Russian author, whose works have been making him a great name in Russia during the last five years. The Life of Man was produced in the Theatre of Art, Moscow, said to be the greatest theatre in the world. It has made a great impression in Russia; I have come across it everywhere in my wanderings, even in the most unlikely places. Its words and its characters have become so familiar to the public that one scarcely opens a paper without finding references to it. It has been the inspiration of thousands of cartoonists.

It was true, as the student had said, God, as it were, gave the play. The words of the prologue were among the most impressive I have ever heard, and spoken as they were in dreadful sepulchral tones by a figure who, at least, stood for God, they are fixed indelibly in my memory. My programme said, “Prologue: Someone in the greyness speaks of the life of a Man.” As the Prologue is a summary of the play, I shall give it. Picture a perfectly dark stage, and in the darkness a figure darker than the darkness itself, enigmatical, immense.

“Behold and listen,” it said, “ye people, come hither for amusement and laughter. There passes before you the life of a Man—darkness in the beginning, darkness at the end of it. Hitherto not existent, buried in the boundless time, unthought of, unfelt, known by none; he secretly oversteps the bounds of nonentity, and with a cry announces the beginning of his little life. In the night of nothingness, a lamp casts a gleam, lit by an unseen hand—it is the life of Man. Look upon the flame of it—the life of a Man.

“When he is born he takes the form and name of man and in all things becomes like other people already living upon the earth. And the cruel destiny of these becomes his destiny, and his cruel destiny the destiny of all people. Irresistibly yoked to time he unfailingly approaches all the steps of Man’s life, from the lower to the higher, from the higher to the lower. By sight limited, he will never foresee the next steps for which he raises his tender feet; by knowledge limited, he will never know what the coming day will bring him, the coming hour—minute. And in his blind ignorance, languishing through foreboding, agitated by hopes, he submissively completes the circle of an iron decree.

“Behold him—a happy young man. Look how brightly the candle burns! The icy wind of the limitless sky cannot disturb, or in the slightest deflect the movement of the flame. Radiantly and brightly burns the candle. But the wax diminishes with the burning. The wax diminishes.

“Behold him—a happy husband and father. But, look how dully and strangely the candle-light glimmers, as if its yellowed flame were withering, trembling from the cold and hiding itself. And the wax is wasting, following the burning. The wax is wasting.

“Behold him—an old man, sickly and weak. Already the steps of life are ending, and a black chasm is in the place of them—but, spite of that, his trembling feet are drawn forwards. Bending towards the earth, the flame, now blue, droops powerlessly, trembles and falls, trembles and falls—and slowly expires.

“So Man will die. Coming out of the night he will return to the night and vanish without traces into the boundless time, unthought of, unfelt, known by none. And I, then, named by all He, remain the true fellow-traveller of Man in all the days of his life, in all his ways. Unseen by Man and near him, I shall be unfailingly beside him when he wakes and when he sleeps, when he prays or when he curses. In the hours of pleasure when he breathes freely and bravely, in the hours of despondency and grief, when the languor of death darkens his soul and the blood grows cold about his heart, in the hours of victory and of defeat, in the hours of the great struggle with the inevitable, I shall be with him. I shall be with him.

“And you come hither for amusement, you, the devoted of death, behold and listen. With this far-off and phantasmal figure there unfolds itself to your gaze, with its sorrows and its joys, the quickly passing life of Man.”

The voice from the grey figure ceased, and in the dark a curtain came down over the scene.

The play was as foreshadowed. In the first act a Man is born, in the second he is a struggling young man, in the third he is a successful man, in the fourth he is in decline, and in the fifth he dies. The figure in grey appears at the birth of Man, and is visible to the audience throughout the five acts. He holds a burning candle, which is radiantly bright in Act iii., but which gutters out at the end of Act v. Fates, old women, nornas, are in attendance at the birth, and they are again in attendance at death.

The story is delicately told and affecting. Man is young and happy and the obstacles in his life are only means of happiness; he succeeds and all the world does homage to him; he passes the prime of life and new obstacles appear, and these serve only to bring him unhappiness; he is brought low and he dies.

The actor who played Man’s part was a robust, handsome man with flashing eyes and long hair. Whilst he played the young Man he was careless, brave, free, and when he became old he was dignified, proud and obstinate. His destiny, it seemed to me, was comprised between a challenge and a curse. In his despair in Act ii., when life seemed a feast to which he was not bidden, he was stung to anger and defiance against Fate. He turned to where the ikon stood and flung a challenge at the Unknown.

“—Hi you! you there! what d’you call yourself? Fate, devil or life, there’s my glove; I’ll fight you! Wretched, poor-spirited folk curse themselves before your enigmatical power: thy stone face moves them to terror, in thy silence they hear the beginning of calamities and their own terrible ruin. But I am brave and strong and I challenge you to battle. With bright swords, with sounding shields, we will fall at one another’s heads with blows at which the earth will tremble. Hi! Come out and fight.

“To thy ominous slow movement I shall oppose my living, vigilant strength; to thy gloom my gay sounding laugh! Hi! Take that blow, ward it off if you can! Your brow is stone, your reason lost. I throw into it the red-hot shot of my bright sense; you have a heart of stone that has lost all pity, give way! I shall pour into it the burning poison of my rebellious cries! By the black cloud of thy fierce anger the sun is obscured; we shall light up the gloom with dreams! Hi! Take that!

“Conquering, I will sing songs which all the world will cheer; silently falling under thy blow, my only thought shall be of rising again to battle! There is a weak place in my armour, I know it. But, covered with wounds, the ruby blood flowing, I shall yet gather strength to cry—and even then, thou evil enemy of Man, I shall overcome Thee. And, dying on the field of battle, as the brave die, with one loud amen I shall annul thy blind pleasure! I have conquered, I have conquered my wicked enemy; not even in my last breath do I acknowledge his power. Hi, there! Hi! Come out and fight! With bright swords, with sounding shields, we shall fall at one another with blows at which the earth will tremble! Hi! Come out and fight!”

The deacon, the count, his daughters, the tenants and guests all looked on with breathless interest. We of the audience knew that which Man on the stage knew not. We knew that even whilst he was raging against Fate his fortune was being achieved and his success assured by two men in a motor-car who were driving about the town, unable to find Man’s wretched dwelling.

Success came and it vanished. “Vanity of vanities,” saith the preacher; so I thought, but Man cursed. He pointed with outstretched arm as if in delirium at the stone face of the ikon and shrieked:

“I curse Thee and all Thou gavest me. I curse the day on which I was born and the day when I shall die. I curse all my life, its pleasures and pains, I curse myself! I curse my eyes, my hearing, my tongue, I curse my heart, my head—and everything I throw again into Thy stern face, senseless Fate. Cursed, cursed for ever! And with the curse I overcome Thee. What remains that Thou canst do with me? Hurl me to the ground, hurl, I shall laugh and shout ‘I curse Thee!’ With the pincers of Death stop my mouth; with my last sense I shall cry into Thy ass’s ears, ‘I curse Thee, I curse Thee.’ Take my dead body, nibble it, like a dog, carry it away into the darkness—I am not in it, I am vanished away, but vanished, repeating, ‘I curse Thee, I curse Thee.’ Through the head of the woman thou hast insulted, through the body of the child thou hast killed—I send to Thee the Curse of Man.”

The dreadful grey figure stood unmoved, silent as the Sphinx. Only the flame of the candle in its hand wavered as if the wind blew it. All of us in the audience shuddered, and the uncle who had become very solemn suddenly began to sob.

Act v. was a dance of drunkards and fates in a cellar tavern, dark, dirty, fearful. The dreadful, implacable figure in grey stood far in the darkest corner, and near him, on a bench, sat Man breathing out his last. The uncle astonished me, and for the moment almost terrified me by crying out in English:

“Out, out, brief candle.”

Truly, it is strange what quantities of English literature one finds in even remote places in Russia.

But to return, Man died, and none too soon, and the candle went out. There was no cheering of the actors, though they were warmly congratulated by the count later on. We all left the little theatre and went back to supper.

At midnight the sledges came. The uncle insisted on our going home with him. So we went to his railway station. Thus ended our night with the mummers at Count Yamschin’s country house.

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CHAPTER IV
AT UNCLE’S

UNCLE was station-master of a little place called Rubezhniya, a village of ten families. Rubezhniya is on the edge of a great forest, though, I think, that in Russia they call it a little wood. It extends a few hundred miles, but then there is a forest in Russia where a squirrel might travel straight on eastward four thousand miles, going from branch to branch and never touching earth once. Rubezhniya is also on the black land, and its peasants have money in the autumn, though, it may be remarked, there is never any left by the time winter approaches. Surplus money, unfortunately, finds its way quickly to the exchequer of an unthrifty Government and to the pockets of the farmer of the vodka monopoly.

There are no savings banks in Russia and no wives’ stockings. Ivan Ivanovitch lives hand to mouth; what he earns he spends, and when he earns nothing he gets food from the man next door, or rather next field—for, except in towns, there is no next door, and in the villages there is seldom anything so regular as a road. Rubezhniya was supposed to be suffering from famine and the whole district to be in want of relief; I was therefore interested to see whether Christmas fare was less plentiful there than in Lisitchansk.

Uncle locked us in the first-class waiting-room and bade us undress and be comfortable as if at home. The mother and Zhenia he took to his own small lodging. Once in later days, when I begged hospitality of a “pope,” he put me in the church, and on another occasion, when I went to see a police-officer, he asked me if I would mind sleeping in a cell as he was full up at home. In some respects Russians are Spartans.

We did undress a little and turned out the lamp. The room was dark save for the little light that burned before the Ikon, and there was silence. We composed ourselves to sleep, but after about half an hour came the heavy rumble of a train. We heard steps on the platform, the soft crunching sound of someone walking through crisp snow. Two bells sounded. “The train waits five minutes here,” whispered the deacon, gruffly.

Suddenly a key turned in our door and a hoarse voice exclaimed:

“Devil take it, where’s the light? I’ve brought a little friend.”

It was Uncle again. I am sure we all cursed a little inwardly. But he found his way to the lamp and lit it. The first thing I noticed was a red parcel on the table. The parcel turned out to be a baby.

“A little friend I’ve brought,” said Uncle, apologetically.

“Where’d ye find it?” asked Nicholas.

It was a baby in a sack of red quilted flannel. Uncle picked it up by the flap of the sack and let it dangle from his thumb and forefinger in a way to cause a mother’s heart to tremble.

“Mine,” he said.

“A girl or a boy?” I asked.

“His name is Tarass, Tarass Bulba, eh?” He brought the baby to me and sat down on my legs, for I had not got up from the park seat on which I was resting.

“Where is his mother?” I asked. He put his finger to his lips.

“Asleep; say nothing. My little cossack, there’s an arm for you,” said he, taking a chubby little limb from its cosy resting-place, whereupon he proceeded to undress the child for our edification. But just as he was concluding that delicate operation a man in a goat-skin hat and jacket burst into the waiting-room, and a couple of porters and three third-class passengers.

“Outside, cut-throats,” said Uncle, pulling out a pistol from his belt. The porters and the passengers fled. But the man in the goat-skin jacket held up his arms as if Uncle had cried “Hands up!” and from the moment he burst in he had kept saying “Water!” as if he was demented or the train was on fire.

“Water, water, water!” Uncle put up his pistol in his belt again.

“More softly,” he whispered. “You want water? You’ll get no water here; vodka plenty, but water none.”

I came to the conclusion it must be another comic engine-driver. He protested by Mary in heaven that they could not go on without water.

“Won’t vodka do?”

The engine-driver smiled evasively as much as to say, “You are pleased to be funny, but this is a serious matter.” Then the baby began to scream.

“Devil take it,” said Uncle. “Clear out. There is no water I tell you. Wait for a luggage train to push you to the next station or go to the devil.” At this point a passenger came in, an aged moujik with long white hair.

“God bless all here,” said the moujik.

“What is the matter?”

“The devil is in our midst!” He crossed himself and bowed to the Ikon. “Lord have mercy upon us, for an unclean spirit has come out of the forest!”

“Colour of his eyes?” asked Nicholas, maliciously.

“Red, like fire, your Excellency. An unclean spirit has come out of the forest and entered into the body of Pavel Fedoritch.”

“He means a man in the train has gone mad,” said Nicholas. “That comes of running your trains so fearfully fast and using up all your water.”

The engine-driver protested mildly and then stared at the baby, who was yelling as if Satan had entered into it as well as into Pavel Fedoritch.

“Lord God, preserve us,” said the engine-driver, and crossed himself feverishly.

“A man has gone mad,” said Uncle. “Very well, take him to the police station and ask them to cut his head off; and now outside all those who haven’t got first-class tickets!”

He rose to push them all out but suddenly gave way to one mightier than he. A burly woman in a red petticoat pushed through the little crowd assembled at the doorway, and levelled abuse to right and to left till she got right in and snatched up the baby. It was Auntie. It was Uncle’s wife, and Uncle subsided and Auntie scolded them all for disturbing our rest and cleared the room. Then she sat on the table and quieted the child and told us what a good-for-nothing her husband was. Poor Uncle! He sat meekly by and listened. He evidently felt very sorrowful.

Then she left us and the train went out, without water and without discharging the unclean spirit, I believe, and we were left with Uncle, who insisted on our coming to the bar and making a meal. After that, at about 5.30 a.m., we retired to the waiting-room, there to glean what sleep we might in the three hours that were left to us.

From utter weariness I could have slept all day, but Uncle had no mercy. We were obliged to wake up at seven. The door opened again, and a very ragged and dirty young man lit the gas. He sprinkled some water on the floor and swished a mop over it. He had no boots or stockings on, but there were pieces of hard sheepskin on the soles of his feet, and with these he polished the floor, dancing and stamping, rubbing and smoothing. Russian floors are generally of tessellated wood and are polished in this manner. At eight we had to wash and dress and go up to Uncle’s for breakfast.

The deacon proposed to go to Lisitchansk directly after breakfast. Uncle said we must have dinner first, and then he would come also. I wanted to stay and look around, so I proposed that Nicholas and I remain with Uncle, and that the old folks and Zhenia might go back if they wanted to and we would come on in the afternoon. They agreed. Father, mother and daughter went off in one sledge, Zhenia sitting on her father’s knee, and we strolled away to the forest—“to shoot wolves,” Uncle said.

We passed through the village, a collection of mud huts and pine izbas, all much poorer than Lisitchansk.

“Come and spend the summer here,” said Uncle.

“No, he’s coming to Lisitchansk,” said Nicholas.

“It doesn’t look very tempting,” I replied.

“Oh, don’t judge by the present,” said Uncle, “we are all sleeping like bears in their holes. We don’t really wake up till the spring.”

“Yes, like bears,” said Nicholas. “Every nation tends to take the characteristics of the animals amongst which it lives; the Russians are like bears, the Indians are like snakes, the Irish like pigs, the Australians like kangaroos, the English like cows.”

“Nonsense,” said Uncle; “the Russians are like eagles, the English like lions—eh?”

I agreed—the Russians were as much like eagles as the English like lions.

“There aren’t any eagles in Russia except in the Caucasus,” said Nicholas.

“Yes, that’s the place to go to, the Caucasus, full of bears,” said Uncle.

I laughed and pointed out that I was going to Moscow first, there to finish the winter. The summer was a long way off and I could foresee nothing. But it was probably during this talk that it first occurred to me to go to the Caucasus and tramp the mountains there. Moscow, however, was the idea that forced itself upon my consideration, for as soon as this Little-Russian visit was completed I intended to go thither.

In the forest we met the village moujiks, all engaged in cutting timber and loading sledges, and Uncle amused himself and us by feats of log-lifting. He was very proud of his strength.

A RUSSIAN STREET SCENE

A CAUCASIAN CHIEF

At dinner-time his wife forbade him to go to Lisitchansk, and he, after some protest about his promises, obeyed her. The Christmas festival was evidently ending. The feasting and revelry of the past three days was like a gay dream from which we were awaking, awaking into a grey, ordinary world.

“If you go to the Caucasus come via Rubezhniya,” said Uncle, as he kissed us in the sledge and bade us good-bye.

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CHAPTER V
AMONG MOSCOW STUDENTS

AT Kharkov, on my return journey, I recovered half of my lost luggage; the other half, a box full of books and papers, had not turned up: neither by bribes nor by words could it be found. We spent a whole day searching the Customs House, but failed to find any trace of it. I learned afterwards that it had been left behind at Ostend, through the negligence of a porter there. The loss of this box was a matter of sorrow. All through the winter I felt the loss of it. It was only in April, after immense correspondence, that I recovered it, and then it was no use since I had made up my mind to spend the summer on the mountains.

The loss of my overcoat and of my box had evidently made a deep impression on Nicholas. He was determined he should lose none of his things. We were travelling together all the way to Moscow. He was going to be a student at the University, and he hoped to share lodgings with me. Our journey took three days. Nicholas’s luggage consisted of nine heavy portmanteaux and boxes. This luggage was a matter of amazement to myself, my fellow-travellers and the porters. Surely no one ever before started from a pine cottage with such an accumulation. How Nicholas came by it all will always be an interesting page in his life history.

A year ago, Nicholas had been studying in Moscow and supporting himself by giving lessons in English, music and mathematics. Of all his studies the favourite was English; and in English he excelled. His professor regarded him as a lad of promise, and advised him to go for a season to England and learn to speak the language. Nicholas was of an adventurous spirit and the advice pleased him. He saved a few pounds and set off for England. First he went home and told the deacon and his mother. They were astonished beyond words. They did not, however, forbid the journey; they blessed him and bade him farewell, commending him to the saints. His mother kissed the little Ikon which hung round his neck, and looked her son in the eyes with that peculiar expression of faith which is part of the In-itself of life. Zhenia kissed him good-bye, and the young adventurer went out into the wide world into the new lands. His route was interesting, being the route which so many poor emigrants were taking at that time, lured by the stories of fabulous wages in England, America and Canada. He took steamer at Ekaterinoslav and came leisurely up the Dneiper to Kiev, the busy city generally spoken of as ancient, though new as Paris and swirling with electric cars. From Kiev he went by train; third-class to the Konigsberg frontier and thence across Germany, fourth-class to Hamburg. Does the reader know a fourth-class emigrant train? It is a series of cattle-trucks for human beings, and indeed the occupants behave more like animals than human beings. Anything more filthy, indecent and odious than the condition of a Jews’ train can scarcely be imagined. I think Nicholas felt very sick and weary before he got to Hamburg. But it was cheap travelling. I think his whole fare, from Lisitchansk to London, cost less than two pounds ten.

He was a brave boy. I imagine his arrival in London at the dreary docks, his first view of our appallingly large, dreary city. He did not see the fairy-tale which it is the fashion to see in London. It was a friendless desert, a place where everyone was so poor that it took all one’s time to look after oneself. He wandered about and lost himself, if, indeed, it were possible to lose himself, since he was already lost when he arrived that early May morning. There was one thing to do: he had a Russian’s address in his pocket, the address of a Russian in London. By dint of asking a new policeman at each turning he found his way to Russell Square.

Lucky boy! He fell on his feet in Bloomsbury in the Russian colony there. Russians are very kind to one another, and it would be difficult not to be kind to Nicholas; he is handsome, witty, musical. One introduced him to another all the way round, and he found occupation easily, giving lessons once more in English, music and mathematics. It was in this first period that he met me. I had written to the Russian Consul asking if he would recommend me a Russian who would be willing to give me lessons in the Russian language. He indicated a certain M. Voronofsky, who referred me to Nicholas. So I came to know him. He was surely the most affectionate teacher I ever had, and most prodigal he was in Russian conversation. He gave me hours beyond the stipulated time of my lesson, and would walk arm-in-arm with me up and down the Strand, protesting his affection and heaping endearments upon me in a way that made me fancy what it is like to be a girl. I was, however, in some respects unlucky in my teachers; as fast as I got one he disappeared and was next heard of in Barrow-in-Furness. The reason for this lay in the fact that Messrs Vickers Maxim had obtained a contract to build a portion of the new Russian fleet. Besides an immense amount of correspondence with the Russian Admiralty, all plans, specifications and directions were in Russian, and in technical Russian at that. Consequently a large Russian staff was required at Barrow, and almost anyone who applied was accepted at once. I told Nicholas of this, he applied and was accepted. So for the time I lost him. He worked three months, literally grinding, doing twelve hours’ work a day. He found out what it was to be utilised in the English machine. I think he did not like it, and it was only the joy of earning a pile of money that kept him at it. He made eighty pounds in three months, which wasn’t bad for a youngster. But at the end of that time a wave of home-sickness overtook him. A letter from home said his father was unwell; he interpreted it to mean his father was dying, packed up his things and left the country. He had arrived in London with one black box, he went away with—nine heavy portmanteaux and trunks. He said to me, when he came back from Barrow, “I want to buy all sorts of things; if I don’t buy them now I shall never buy them again; I shall never have the money.” Now, to a Russian, England is a paradise of cheap clothes. Living is dear but clothes are dirt cheap. In Russia only my lord wears a collar or uses a handkerchief; an English suit costs five pounds at least, English shirts cost six or seven shillings each. Nicholas bought a wardrobe of suits and fancy waistcoats, hats, boots, umbrellas, ties. Such ties he bought that at several Lisitchansk parties he had to undress partially so as to satisfy the curiosity of his friends. He bought patent Mikado braces, the like had never been seen in Little Russia. He bought Zhenia a hat, and his father a smoking jacket, and his mother a shawl. He bought reams of delicately-tinted notepaper and envelopes, at which, since those days, numberless fair Russian girls have gazed; though “fairer than the paper writ on was the fair hand that writ.” I took him into Straker’s one day to help him to make some purchases; we spent half an hour selecting shades of sealing-wax. Well, you can be sure that by the time he finished his packing there was not much space left in those nine boxes and bags. I saw him off at Liverpool Street Station. He went home via the Hook of Holland and in grand style. It was a strange contrast to his arrival five months before.

Of course he found his father very well when he came to Lisitchansk, and he spent a very gay autumn there. He was the prodigal come home, but with the fatted calf under his arm. It was very glorious for him. Yet from the point of view of material prosperity his return was a mistake. The tide which leads to fortune had been at the full for him in London. He had wilfully neglected it.

Success turned his head a little. He lived on glory for a month or two, and then he heard that I was coming to Russia and he invited me to his home. His mind became full of plans: he would go to Canada, he would go to England again, or to Chicago. The first step, however, towards the realisation of these or any other schemes was to obtain money. He had spent all his English earnings.

I came and stated my intention of going to Moscow. Nicholas discovered that Moscow was the best place for him. He would come with me and learn more English, and he would study for his degree and pay for his living and his fees by giving lessons.

He ought to have gone straight to Moscow in the autumn, for the University year commences in September, and the person who starts in January finds himself hardly circumstanced in many ways. For one thing, it is very difficult to earn money by teaching. It is a custom in Russian families of the middle and upper classes to employ what are known as repetitors. A repetitor is a University student who comes each night to hear the lessons in the family. The boys and girls go to school in the morning, they prepare their home-lessons in the afternoon, and in the evening and at night they say them over to repetitors. A student of ability has a fair chance of earning eight or ten pounds a month by this, and there is scarcely a student in Moscow who does not glean two or three pounds at least by it. But practically the whole of this teaching is arranged in September or October, at the commencement of the session, for all schools work in harmony with the University and have the same terms and vacations. So Nicholas was coming out of time. In truth, neither his prospect nor mine would have tempted an investor. But neither of us understood the position, and each relied a little on the other. Nicholas thought my journalism would bring me in untold wealth, and I thought I might be able to get some teaching through him. So the blind led the blind.

At Moscow we were met by Shura, a Little-Russian friend of Nicholas; Alexander Sergayef was his name in full, though he was called Shura or Sasha for short. He was a philological student and shared rooms with a Greek in the Kislovka. The three of us drove to a lodging-house at Candlemas Gate (Sretinka Vorota), and the portmanteaux and boxes followed behind on a dray.

The lodging-house goes by the name of “Samarkand,” which is printed on a disreputable blue board which hangs outside. It is a dirty establishment like five hundred of its kind in the city. The lodgers are chiefly clerks and students, and, before the Governor stepped in with new regulations, card-sharpers and gamblers. One commonly collided with queer characters on the stairs—beggars, spies, touts; girls in gay hats hung on the banisters, smoked cigarettes, flirted with the doorkeeper and the students. In front the building looked down upon a beer-tavern; behind it stood the Candlemas Monastery, a church of cheese-yellow and bottle-green, surrounded by seven purple domes. On each dome was a gilt cross, and on the cross fat crows often perched. We took a room on the third floor; it cost two pounds a month—a very cheap price for Moscow. It was an advantage to us to be nearer the sky than the street; we had light and air and view. We had more cold, perhaps, but that was a minor matter. No town houses have fire-places except rich mansions built in the English style, but there is excellent steam-heating, and even on the coldest days we never felt a chill, though we were high up and exposed to the wind. For me, indeed, it was a most pleasant experience to be able to turn out of bed in the morning and feel the room as warm as it was when I went to bed. Russian houses, even the poorest, are more comfortable in winter than the English.

Our room was a large one, having five chairs and three rickety little tables, besides a couple of couches and two beds. In a grey corner an Ikon of the Virgin hung. I, for my part, had my own Ikon, a print of Millet’s “Angelus,” which I placed in front of my table. It made even this poor room a living, breathing home. It was my reminder of England. Since those days when I lived at Samarkand it has become very sacred to me.

We were very poor. I think when I had bought an overcoat and Nicholas had paid his fees we had just three pounds between us. We lived on black bread, milk and fried pork. I wrote my articles, he went and hawked about the town for lessons.

Among the precious things in the capacious pockets of that overcoat which was stolen was a book on the Russian Peasant. This had been given me by a London editor who let me have “a shot at reviewing it.” I grieved not a little that this had been lost before I had read it thoroughly. I had only glanced through it in the train. My loss did not deter me from writing the article, however. What was my surprise when in the second week of my stay at Moscow, almost by return of post, the editor wrote, “Review excellent, fire away, try something else.” I felt very cheerful and reflected that by mid-February at the latest I should receive my first cheque.

But meanwhile it became apparent that we stood a chance to starve. We were living on an average of less than fourpence a day each. In a note-book, which I kept at that time, I see that on January 14th I spent 5d. on food, on the 15th, 4d. The figures are interesting:—

January 16th	6d.
January 17th	3d.
January 18th	4d.
January 19th	3d.
January 20th	1d.
January 21st	5d.
January 22nd	2d.

and so on.

On the 28th Shura came round to see us, told us his Greek companion had left him, and invited us to come and live with him. Forthwith the three of us, the nine boxes and bags and my luggage, proceeded in sledges to the Kislovka, and we took up our abode in the students’ quarter.

The district known as the Kislovka lies at the back of the University. It is an ugly aggregation of lodging-houses. Each lodging-house is composed of students’ dens. Some students have rooms to themselves, but for the most part a single one is let to two or three students. Three young men, like ourselves, will sleep, eat, study and receive company in the same room. We had to pay about fourteen shillings a month each, so the arrangement seemed more economical. Then Shura earned about four pounds a month giving lessons, so the financial position was much improved. Then, on the second night after we had been there, Nicholas won fifteen shillings off a Frenchman at cards. Then on February 5th there came a letter to me from a London newspaper enclosing a cheque in respect of a Christmas article I had sent in. It was too late for this Christmas, they would use it next. It was evident we should not starve.

On Saturday Shura had an “At Home” day. We always stayed up all night on Saturdays. In the afternoons we bought rolls and sausage and caviare and tinned herring and cheese to make a spread. About five or six o’clock the guests would arrive—five or six girl students and the same number of men. There were not chairs to go round, so many of them sat on the beds. Then we talked in the way that only Russians can. On the floor lay cigarette-ends, volumes on law and philosophy, dust of past ages, vodka droppings from the last gathering, old clothes, newspapers, picture postcards. The walls were plastered with prints, portraits of members of the Duma, a large newspaper picture of Tolstoy, cartoons from European papers, etc. My “Angelus” Ikon looked almost sorrowfully upon the scene. There was no real Russian Ikon there. Shura told me he had pitched it out of the window when he came. He didn’t believe in God. In the course of the evening one of the students present would read a tale from Tchekhof or Andrief, another would read a few verses from Nadson, their favourite poet. Nicholas would play on the guitar and sing little Russian songs. I would get through a game at chess with someone. Then we would all play some games at forfeit with the girls. The time passed very quickly. One samovar would succeed another until after midnight, and glasses of weak tea circulated till dawn. At last we would take the girls home, and then come back and sleep an hour or two before breakfast. It was a godless way of beginning the Sunday.

Shortly after the first “At Home” I discovered a way in which an Englishman can make a small fortune in Moscow. I put an advertisement in the Russian Word to this effect:—

“Young Englishman from London, well-educated, seeks lessons, speaks French and Russian.”

The answers to this soon made me the richest of the three in the little room. My lowest price was four shillings a lesson of one hour. An Englishman can get that easily in Moscow. I became a repetitor. First I had a French girl to teach, the daughter of a cotton manufacturer. She didn’t like me and I lost that lesson after a fortnight, but I got lessons with an engineer, with two German boys and a Russian boy; and a woman engaged me to give a series of lectures on English literature at a girls’ college. For the last named I received six shillings a lecture.

Then Nicholas got three pounds a month to coach a boy for his matriculation; we were all thriving.

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CHAPTER VI
“LOVE US WHEN WE ARE DIRTY FOR EVERYONE WILL LOVE US WHEN WE ARE CLEAN!”

IN February Moscow was overrun by an epidemic of typhus. It did not spring from the frozen drains so much as from the indigestible black bread which is sold in the poorer parts of the city. On 10th February I gave up black bread for ever; I have not eaten it since—at least not Moscow black bread; Caucasian black bread is another matter. The bread diet had become too much for me. I lay in bed all one day feeling more dead than alive, and the prospect of typhus seemed very real. I recovered, and then substituted porridge and milk for the old diet. I showed Shura and Nicholas how to make this in the Scotch way, and they got very keen on it and showed other students. So I might almost claim to have introduced Scotch porridge to Moscow University. The Russian peasants and poor people in general make a porridge of buck-wheat, Kasha they call it, but I am quite sure it is less cheap, less wholesome, and less tasty than oatmeal porridge.

Moscow in winter is remarkable for its poor people, its labourers, its beggars, its students. Cab-drivers in Moscow take twopence-halfpenny a mile, and I have frequently taken a sledge from Sukareva Tower to the Vindavsky Station for fifteen copecks—4d., a distance of two miles. At the Khitry market one may often see men and women with only one cotton garment between their bodies and the cruel cold. How they live is incomprehensible; they are certainly a different order of being from anything in England. And the beggars! They say there are 50,000 of them. The city belongs to them; if the city rats own the drains, they own the streets. They are, moreover, an essential part of the city; they are in perfect harmony with it; take away the beggars and you would destroy something vital. Some are so old and weather-battered that they make the Kremlin itself look older, and those who lie at the monastery doors are so fearfully pitiable in their decrepitude that they lend power to the churches. Moscow would be a different place without the gaunt giants who hang down upon one and moan for bread; without the little cripples who squirm upon the pavement and scream their wants at the passer-by. To me, though I found them a plague at first, they were a perpetual interest. There were among them some of the strangest people one could expect to meet anywhere: worn-out, yellow-whiskered men with icicles in their beards, limbless trunks of men, abortions of men and women. I saw many nationalities; Letts, Poles, Jews, Tartars, Tatars, Bohemians, Caucasians, Chinese, Bokharese, specimens of all the peoples who exist under the Russian Eagle. Rich Russians allege that they collect five shillings a day, which is on a par with the tales of wealth amassed by organ-grinders in London. The daily task of each is to obtain twopence—a penny for a pound of black bread, a penny for a bed in a night house. They just about manage this, sometimes getting a little more, sometimes a little less. The surplus goes in vodka.

The question has to be faced by the traveller—What are you going to do with the beggars? I felt the need of a definite policy. At first, when we ourselves were near starving, I said “No” consistently, for I hadn’t any money. Then when money came I hardened my heart and said, “It is better to be a thief than a beggar: it is more manly. If I give to beggars I make it more profitable to be a beggar; I attract other people to beggary. If I withhold my money I drive some beggars to robbery, and then the police have to deal with them.” If the people were properly looked after there would be no need to rob or beg. This was a clear decision, and I held by it rigorously for a long time, till at last I came to the conclusion that it was more unpleasant to refuse some beggars than to give alms. Truly, whether an Englishman gives or gives not he feels he does wrong. Eventually I abandoned my principle and gave when I felt inclined. The Russian has no mental scruples. He is generally, providentially, ignorant of the science of economics. One fact is evident to him: the beggar is cold and hungry and it is Christian to help him. And the Socialists are too busy over bigger things to define their attitude to the poor wretch whom they deem to be a victim of tyranny. It is a common happening to see a crowd of unfortunate creatures being driven to the police-station by a couple of soldiers. To the democrat that is sufficient evidence of tyranny. Still, I have been told the beggars have nothing to fear from the authorities. The beggar is a holy institution; he keeps down the rate of wages in the factories; he is the pillar of the church, for he continually suggests charity; he is necessary to the Secret Police; where else could they hide their spies?

The beggars have the most extraordinary licence and think nothing of walking in at a back-door and staring at you for a quarter of an hour. It is this licensed insolence that makes him a terror to the nervous Russian, who always considers himself watched by spies. Nicholas appeared to be continually suspecting and dreading spies. On the second day after we arrived at the Samarkand lodging-house he discovered a spy on the same floor, so he said. Often when I was walking with him in the town he would say to me in a whisper, “Slow down and let the man behind us get past.” Once we slowed down in vain, and then put on speed in vain; we could not rid ourselves of a beggar who persisted in following us. Nicholas suddenly turned round in terror at a dark corner and clutched hold of the beggar with both hands and shook him. Then it was the beggar’s turn to have a fright, but he only asked meekly:

“Why did you do that to me, barin?”

The word “barin,” “bar,” means a master; it is interesting that the word spelt backwards, rab, means a slave. Russians say this is not merely a coincidence.

The different way in which beggars address one would make an interesting study. I remember one night a dreadful amorphous remnant of a man, lying in a currant box outside the Cathedral of St Saviour, addressed me in this fashion:

“Imagine that I am God!”

One seldom, however, hears such a dramatic utterance. Much commoner is lighter banter. I remember a cheeky boy came up to me smiling and certain.

“A copeck, dear count!”

“Haven’t got one, your Majesty,” I replied.

Many of the beggars have a selection of tales of woe carefully worked up to suit the susceptibilities of different passers-by. Of this kind was an old stalwart whom we, of the Kislovka room, used to patronise. His usual style was:

“I was a soldier at the Turkish War and astonished three generals by my bravery, but now devil a penny will my country give me to keep my old bones together.”

But the two girl students who occupied the room next to ours always averred that he told them a yarn about his daughter dying from want of food and his wife in consumption, but never said a word about his exploits.

Nicholas and I dressed ourselves in our worst and went to a night-house one night. At five o’clock in the evening there was a queue like a first night pit-crowd at His Majesty’s Theatre in London, a street full of beggars pushing, jostling, shouting and singing. Next door to the doss-house was a tavern, to which every now and then someone unable to oppose temptation would dash to get a glass of vodka. Admission to this house cost one penny. It was rather a fearsome den to go into, and I wonder at ourselves now. I thought we should be too far down the line to get in, but I was mistaken. Everyone was admitted. We passed through a turnstile, and, strange to say, showed no passports. I fancy most of the beggars are passport-less. A policeman stood at the door and scrutinised the face of each who passed in. He had had too much vodka to do this to any great effect, and he let us through without demur, probably taking us for famished students, if he thought about us at all. Directly we got in we were confronted by a huge bar stocked with basins. A boy was serving out cabbage soup at a farthing a basinful. Another boy was serving out kasha, also at a farthing a basin. On a green noticeboard, among an array of vodka bottles, I read the following queer price-list:

	farthing(s)
Lodging	3
black bread	3
soup	1
kasha	1
fish	2
tea	1
beer	3
shirt (dirty)	3
A pair of old trousers	30
coat	30
A pair of old boots	10

The doss-house was owned by a merchant who made a handsome profit out of it, I am told. So well he might! The accommodation was nil. Straw to sleep upon. No chairs beyond three park seats. Two rooms lit by two jets of gas each. A small lavatory that might even make a beggar faint. Men and women slept in the same room, though they were, for the most part, so degraded that it scarcely occurred to one that they were of different sex.

We went upstairs; the air seemed a trifle less odorous there. Even there we agreed it was impossible to stay. About a hundred beggars were already asleep, and most of the rest were making themselves comfortable.

It was a large dark room, unventilated, and having all the windows sealed with putty, so that not the slightest draught of air came through. There were, of course, no fires in the room; it was heated by hot-water pipes. One would say the floor had not been cleaned since the day it was first used. It was rotten and broken and covered with black slime. The snow from the beggars’ boots melted in the warm room, as it had done every night this winter. Huge gnawn holes in the cornice showed where the rats had been. Yet in this den, on such a floor, human beings lay and slept! Pigs would have been housed better.

Yet in a gloomy corner opposite the entrance a little lamp burned before the sacred picture of Jesus. The Ikon stood there and looked upon the scene. It seemed to say, “God is here also, He does not disclaim even this; and in His sight even these are men and have souls.”

A Socialist government would make a difference in a place like this. The walls would be of white tiles and would shine like a station on the electric railway. There would be couches and mattresses, parqueted floors, electric light, baths, a reading-room next door, a free restaurant below. And there would be no Ikon. They would feel they didn’t need the sanction of God for what the reason approved.

I said this to Nicholas. He had bought a bottle of vodka, and was treating a man who said he was an ex-student and literary man.

“Shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves!” said the man.

“Nice mess they’d make of it,” said Nicholas. “They’d have to clean the beggars and dress them, and then shut up the pawnshops and the vodka shops, and then give them some work.”

“None of the beggars will do any work in the winter,” said the man; “there are workhouses already, but they won’t go there. There’s more fun on the streets, and then our work is more acceptable to God; we keep the people charitable. We stand outside taverns and theatres and tobacconists, and by our poverty remind the customers of God’s blessings. We restrain their self-indulgence.”

This was evidently an impossible line of argument. I asked him how the people came to be beggars. In his case it was vodka, and he had met scores of students reduced to the same plight. Most of the beggars were just tramp labourers, in the summer they would go to the country again; the women were the off-scourings of the streets. There were many more women beggars than men, but they died off more quickly. “The intelligentia of Moscow lead such a life,” said he. “The very Socialists, who want to make the place clean, lead dirty lives themselves. Look at the hundreds of girls shouting themselves deaf on the Tverskoe Boulevard, look at the students arm-in-arm with them, think of the average middle-class Russian’s life. He gorges himself with food, rots his mind with French novels, and openly confesses what women are to him.”

“We shall have to get rid of the reformers before we shall reform Russia,” said Nicholas, solemnly.

“Oh, I don’t blame them,” said the beggar; “it’s all part of life; we beggars are all manure, that’s what we are; they plaster us about the roots of Society and make the little red blossoms grow—and the white blossoms.”

“It’s all very dirty,” I remarked.

“One learns to understand dirt, to love it even. God made the dirt; see how the picture looks down, the eyes don’t blink.” He pointed to the Ikon.

“Dirt is part of the Russian harmony,” I suggested with a smile.

“Yes,” said the beggar, “perhaps one day it will all be different, and we shall have a vote and pay taxes and have jobs as well as wives and families. But, you know, ‘you must love us whilst we are dirty, for everyone will love us when we are clean.’”

A STREET SHRINE, MOSCOW

PASSION MONASTERY, MOSCOW

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CHAPTER VII
A NIGHT AT A SHRINE

LIFE at Moscow was very full during the ensuing two months. What the students did I did. Each night there was some new diversion; a visit to the Narodny Dom with dancing and confetti fights until three in the morning, or a skating masquerade at Chisty Prudy. Sometimes we would go in sledges to Petrovsky Park; other times we would go to the Kremlin and climb up the steeple of St John’s. These days were full of variety and entertainment. One evening I presented myself at the stage-door of the Theatre of Art; I could not find the box-office. Stanislavsky’s company was performing The Life of Man. An actor met me and I asked him how I should get a ticket. But, when he discovered I was an Englishman, he took me to the manager, and got me a free pass to the third row of the stalls. That was glorious hospitality. It was a magnificent performance; the stage management was perfect if extremely ingenious. Another night a Russian girl asked me to take her to the Hermitage Theatre; she was going anyway, but she needed a “cavalier.” So we went and listened to four French farces, all performed the same night. Katia, for so she was called, was a Georgian and talked to me of the Caucasus all the time we promenaded. In Russian theatres one has a quarter of an hour’s promenade after each act. We were supposed to be immensely smitten with one another, and ignorant of the state of my heart she said sweetly, as we were in the sledge going home, “You were a quiet boy and I awakened you, eh?”

Among a number of expeditions, visiting factory owners, tobogganing at Sokolniky, or skiing, one adventure stands out more vividly than the others. Phrosia, a lame woman who cooked for us in our Kislovka room, had warned us she wouldn’t be at home for two days. She was going away to pray. Shura wanted to know why she couldn’t remain in Moscow to pray, but she only looked at him very solemnly and said her mother had always prayed at Troitsky Lavra that day and so would she. I resolved to accompany her. The account of my pilgrimage which I wrote at the time will show the sequel.

“Sergievo, 2.30 a.m.

“This is written in the waiting-room here. Before me the lights twinkle on the little vodka bar. There is much noise in the room, but the heavy sound of snoring is gaining the victory over all. What a night this has been! How came I here? How is it that I still live? To-night—the first act was among crowds of pilgrims at church; the second act in a one-room cottage framed in old newspapers and inhabited by five men, two women and two babies (thoughts of plague and exit!); the third act was spent among the churches and the stars in the cool, fresh night; fourth act, discovery of the railway station full of people drunk or sleeping; the fifth act is to come. I am drinking my eleventh glass of tea from the inexhaustible pot, but ah! how restless I am! I am sure I carry on my person many of the unnumbered inhabitants of that cottage. How the insects creaked in its newspaper walls! About me now, picture fearful, monstrous peasants spluttering, roaring, singing. A gentleman comes along now and then and pretends to keep order. My vis-à-vis is uproarious. Figure him with thick red hair and wild red beard. He is a fat man and he stands facing the gendarme and answers each remonstrance with an inarticulate roar. Rrrr! His hair has been cut away with shears, and it overhangs his head equally all round like the straw of a thatched cottage.

“‘Make w-way, will you,’ said the peasant to me with a voice like thunder.

“I smiled gently. The peasant frowned and twisted his red lips under his tangled moustache. He leaned down and brought his wild phiz close up to mine and leered into my eyes. I could not have dreamed of a more terrifying face. It recalled to me the dreadful thoughts of my childhood as to what might be the face of the Black Douglas or the Bogey Man.

“‘Make way, will you, or I’ll cut your throat,’ he roared.

“Several of his companions warned him that the gendarme was listening.

“‘You’re not very polite,’ I said. ‘What is it you want?’

“‘There’s no room for me anywhere else.’

“I made a place for him and he took it without a word. He became immediately content and self-absorbed like a babe that, after crying and kicking, has found its mother’s breast.

“He is now sitting with both elbows on the table. In one hand he grasps a fish tightly; he held that fish in his hand all the time he was confronting me. Ah! Now he is yelling to the counter for vodka. He is a rough customer. A tall labourer in a red shirt bent over to me just now and asked me if I knew what his name was.

“‘His name is Dung.’

“Everyone in the room laughed. Even the gendarme grinned. The peasant repeated his joke. It was evidently his only stock and store. Perhaps his father taught him that joke, and he in his turn had it from his grandfather. He is at this moment addressing the peasant of the human thatch.

“‘Mr Dung, ha, ha, ha. Your Excellency Baron Dung, a word with you, ha, ha, ha,’ etc. etc. etc. But, strange to say, my antagonist pays no attention whatever, but regards his fish and his, as yet, untasted, vodka with the eye of an expert mathematician who is pondering some more-than-usually-interesting problem.

“There has not been much occasion for ennui since I came in here. A Lettish pedlar has come in, he has a face like an American music-hall hobo, a tramp artiste. So you would say to see his high-arched eyebrows and his long mouth. But he is a poor starved wretch, and there may be some truth in his reiterated assertion that he has been robbed of three farthings. If he doesn’t stop screeching out that fact the gendarme is likely to throw him out or take him to the ‘lock-up.’ My attention is divided between him and a girl at the bar. During the last ten minutes a peasant lass has taken five glasses of vodka, and a well-dressed man, himself drunk, is making clumsy attempts to kiss her. She grins and reels about—a country girl. She smiles idiotically and tries to steer her cheek and lips away from the man’s moustache. If he were a little less unsteady on his feet he would have no difficulty, I am sure. The man is making us all a speech now, and the peasants are jesting according to their knowledge of jests. The gendarme strolls fretfully up and down, his fingers twitching. Oh, my acquaintance with the one joke has risen and is addressing the man who has been ‘treating’ the girl. He caught hold of the man with the thatched head; the latter rose, thinking the policeman wanted him. But no!

“‘Allow me to introduce you to Mr—’

“‘Here, I’ve heard enough of that, you go out,’ says the gendarme, and grasps the joking man to put him out.

“Then up speaks the pedlar.

“‘Please, Mr Gendarme, he stole three farthings of mine.’

“‘Yes?’ replies the policeman. ‘Then you must both come to the police-station.’ He blows his whistle vigorously. There is a crowd of moujiks round him. The man with the thatched head has sunk back sleepily into his seat. I hear him murmuring gently, ‘Cut his throat, cut his throat.’ Two other gendarmes are here now, and the two prisoners are being kicked out with great turbulence.

“A furious noise, and yet many men and women are lying fast asleep among the bundles on the floor. The bar-tender moves hither and thither behind his orderly rows of glass bottles and is quite at his ease. He is bringing me an extra pennyworth of sugar now! In the darkest corner of the waiting-room an elaborate temple is set up and little lamps burn dimly before the gilded Ikons of Mary and the child Jesus. The drunkards look thither furtively and cross themselves. The scene is strange. I was rummaging through my pocket-book just now for some paper and came across the photograph of dear K——. I took it out and let the face look into the room. I felt convulsed with laughter at the wistful way she looked out upon the scene; the print is fading slightly, and there is a sort of ‘silken, sad, uncertain’ expression about it that was so astonishingly true that the real face could not look differently if my friend could be instantly brought here. But she sleeps peacefully in that London suburb that I know. Fourteen hours to wait for a train! And what shall I do this long day? I might walk back again to Moscow, thirty-five versts is not far, but it has come to my mind that I shall not walk this stretch. It has been a rough jaunt.

“This room with its vodka bar and its temple of God, and the drunkards flung all around the steps of the altar, is a picture of Russia—of an aspect of Russia. When I came into the village this afternoon the sacred Ikons were being borne in procession through the streets, and services were being conducted at street corners. Two priests were detailed off to officiate at this station. I saw them go in through the throng of the bare-headed crowd. Dressed in cloth of gold and mitred in purple, they moved about majestically in the performance of their office, and from their mouths came the unearthly sounds in which it is orthodox to clothe the words of their litany. Pilgrimages are made to this shrine on each great fast day. Many thousands flock hither from Moscow and from the country round about; some come on foot, some by train, and some in sledges. I came by train, third-class, with our cook; she is now somewhere sleeping in an unheavenly cottage there below. It has been interesting to see the far-distance pilgrims; the peasant women bent double by huge bundles on their backs, but resting on stout staffs and looking out very piously and anciently from their deep hoods. We had four of them in our carriage in the train; very gay they looked in their coloured cotton dresses; but they were reserved, and their monosyllabic groans and grunts scarcely sounded articulate outside the circle of their own company. The service last evening was grand; the festival commenced at six o’clock; I had been watching the crows whirling about the domes of the churches, settling on the high gilt crosses, flapping their wings, balancing themselves, calling to one another, and the dusk was deepening. I went into the great church and looked at the long queue of people waiting to consecrate their candles and be anointed with the holy oil. At last the priests came forward and lit one candle before each of the Ikons, and a long-haired pope stood before the people and pronounced the induction of the service. The choir voices swelled in unison as the incense reached one’s senses, and the solemn litany went forward with its eternal choric response: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy, oh, Lord, have mercy.’ ‘Gospody pomeely, Gospody pomeely.’ ... And now and then the priest would repeat the words so rapidly that it sounded like gospodipity, gospodipity.

“About ten o’clock I left the dim church and went out into the darkness, among shadows of unknown men and women and bundles. A hundred yards distant a bright window gave a full light on to the night. A tavern was there, ‘where stood a company with heated eyes,’ a wild, hairy people who stormed and screamed and fell about. A glass of tea for me, also a bottle of black-currant water; the like of the latter we shall not drink again. No room to sit there. The street without was full of solicitous boys and girls who wanted to find you a lodging. To one of these I had recourse, and after many unsuccessful ventures she took me to the fore-mentioned cottage. There was more adventure and novelty than sleep on the bill of fare, and I was tempted. When one carries a portable bed one is fairly independent, but why had I no misgivings here? The great winter stove on which the good woman of the place bakes her bread had been at full heat all day, and the men and women who lay there were like lumps of flesh in a thick stew of air. On the torn newspaper ceiling the flies walked about or buzzed down to settle on the faces of the sleepers. The place of honour was given me, the one bed with a rag of curtain. I was blessed and prayed for before the cottage Ikons, which were set up in a further corner—perhaps I had need for prayer....

“At midnight, having passed through many adventures, I evacuated the position. Much difficulty there was among the legs of the sleepers, but an exit was achieved, and presently there was a ceiling of stars above me and a cold breeze about. The cottage being in the middle of a field there was some further difficulty in extrication. Then came a series of rencontres. First a beggar, very drunk, and whirling a cudgel above his head, tells me he knows me, has seen me in Moscow. (I wondered if, perhaps, he had actually seen me at the night-house with Nicholas.) Then a gendarme presents a bold aspect but falls back judiciously since I do not hesitate in my stride. I am a suspicious-looking character. Watchmen-monks, with the night breeze blowing their long hair about (the clergy all wear long hair), I have encounters with these. But the night was very good and full of music; never so many stars, never such a Milky Way or such black unstarry patches, and the air was thrilling. The newspaper cottage was far away. Presently I discovered the railway station and the waiting-room full of people, and here I am. It will soon be dawn. I have poured myself out the twelfth and thirteenth glasses of tea, very like hot water and without sugar or milk. If I have caught any malady at the cottage I should be saved by this internal washing. I become the latest convert to the system of Dr Sangrado of Gil Blas memory.... Two priests have arrived in the waiting-room....

“Ah! I hear that, after all, there will be a train home soon.

“I left the station at a run and was back at the newspaper cottage, and a half-dressed, half-sleeping woman let me in, got me my things and asked mournfully why it was I could not sleep.

“‘Was it too hot, barin?’

“She blessed me and let me depart.

“Now the little village was in movement, the church bell was sounding and many little bells were tinkling; and many sleepy folks were making their way to church, for at dawn another great service commenced. At the waiting-room a service was begun. And now the night gave way to early dusk, and the dark churches became dimly visible; the sleepy peasants rubbed their eyes. Presently a glorious sunrise began to flush upon the gold and silver Ikons, and softly and lowly with the in-coming light the services in the churches proceeded, in sweet, melancholy music. The faces of the worshippers became less shadowy, and at last all was in full day. Then, too, my lazy train steamed away, and Sergievo and last night were both behind me.”

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CHAPTER VIII
THE DAY AFTER THE FEAST

THE day after a church festival is always the Feast of St Lombard. Outside all the pawnbrokers’ establishments one sees crowds of poor people drawn up in line—men, women, children, but mostly women. It is a pitiable sight. Each person is carrying the article to be pledged, and whether it be a samovar or a chair, or a petticoat or a pair of trousers, it is never wrapped up. Russians are not ashamed. The queue which I saw near the Tverskaya a street long, the day after my return from Sergievo, would have been thought a disgrace to any English city, but the Russians looked on with equanimity. And to walk from end to end, from the pawnbroker’s door to the last person who has just hurried up with a pledge, was like reading a chapter from the darkest pages of Gorky. One sees children of sad aspect, with bewildered eyes; young girls as yet honest and clean, but selling the last things of a home; raging women, weeping women and laughing women, drunkards and drudges; or besotted men of the sort who drink away their wives’ and daughters’ honour, hopeless home thieves who would steal away even the clothes from a bed and turn them into vodka. It is notable that in Russia, as yet, it is chiefly the men who drink; a drunken woman is very rare. The woman in Russia is the wisest and strongest person in the home. One poor woman, stout and rubicund, but of countenance preternaturally solemn, seemed to me weighed down with responsibility. She had a copper samovar under her arm, and I asked her what misfortune had overtaken her. It was the old story; her husband was a cabman, he ought to have taken no holiday yesterday, the streets were full of people and he might have had many fares, but he went to a tavern in the morning, and spent all his money and fought with a man and was arrested by a gendarme. I asked her how much she would get “on” the samovar. “Seventy-five copecks, barin,” she replied. “Have you got another samovar?” I asked. “No, barin, we shall have to borrow water; I don’t know what the table will look like without the samovar, it won’t be home without it, it has always been on the table; it was my mother’s, and she gave it me when I was married. I am sure we shall never have good fortune after the samovar has gone.”

I lent her seventy-five copecks—one shilling and sixpence—and told her to take her beloved samovar home again. She accepted without hesitation. She put the samovar down on the pavement and embraced me with both arms. “Bless you, barin, the Lord bless you; come along and have some tea.”

I went to her poor little home—two rooms—in which there was no furniture beyond the bed, a table, some boxes and the Ikons. Two pallid, starved daughters, girls of thirteen and sixteen, smiled sweetly and made themselves happy over our party. I had bought some barankas, dry Russian biscuits, en route.

The woman told me the story of how her husband had nearly been cured of drunkenness by God. A year or two ago a most holy priest at Sergievo had been empowered by God to cure drunkenness. Thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of drunkards had made pilgrimages from Moscow and Kiev and Odessa and the country, and had been cured by the priest by miracle, and Vania had gone from Moscow and had been a whole month sober, because of the prayer of the holy man. Then suddenly the holy man was removed and Vania got drunk again.

It was like this. Vania went on foot to Sergievo and saw the monk. First he was anointed, and then received communion, and then he went to the priest’s house, where he had to tell his story to the holy man. Then they prayed before the Ikon that God would have mercy upon Vania. After the prayer the priest rose and said, “God knows now that you want to become sober and lead a new life. You must remember that He is looking at you particularly, just as He would at a new plant that was beginning to bud. To-day He sees you all White and beautiful, and He says to the angels, ‘Look at my servant Vania, how well he is living.’ Each morning and evening God will say how much brighter and more beautiful he is becoming.”

“Slav Bogou, Glory be to God,” replied Vania.

“Now,” said the priest, “for how many days can you keep sober, for how many days can you live without touching a drop of beer or vodka?”

“For ever, a thousand days,” replied Vania.

“A thousand days is only three years; it’s not for ever,” said the priest.

Vania blinked his eyes.

“You must kneel on your knees and swear to God that you will not drink,” said the priest. “But if you break the vow it will be very dreadful.”

“Yes,” said Vania, “I shall swear it.”

“You are very weak,” said the priest; “you must pray God each morning when you get up and each night before you go to bed that He may give you strength. Perhaps you will fail, perhaps you are lost, but God is going to give you a chance. He’s going to watch you for one week first, for one little week. You must swear to God that you will not drink vodka or beer for one week.”

Vania, on his knees, repeated the oath after the priest.

“Rise now, Vania,” said the priest; “I think you will keep this little oath, but if you feel you can’t you must come straight to me and I will release you. You mustn’t break it. I can let you off quite easily if you come to me. But if you break it, God may strike you dead, or He may give you to the Devil. The Devil would be very glad to have you, Vania, but it would be very bad for you. To-day is Sunday; I shan’t be angry if you come to me to-morrow or on Tuesday and say, ‘Release me, father.’ I will then release you and pray God to have mercy on you and to send angels to help you.”

Vania went away and kept his vow on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but on Friday, a very cold day, he wanted a drink very badly. Comrades laughed at him, too. He drove up and down the city and got only one little fare the whole morning. There were fifteen copecks in his pocket. He might get two glasses for that. Every tavern tempted, and the Devil seemed waiting at every tavern-door. At two o’clock he drove home quickly and gave the fifteen copecks to his wife; at half-past two he rushed home again and begged the fifteen copecks back. He entered the shop and placed his bottle on the counter and asked for vodka. The woman behind the railing of the “monopoly” counter stepped back to pick out what he wanted, and at that moment Vania, all of a tremble, looked up and saw the holy Ikon in the shop, a figure of Christ staring at him. The woman, when she brought the bottle, thought the customer had a fit, for he suddenly shrieked and bolted from the shop.

“Oh, Lord, have mercy!”

On Friday night Vania saw the priest again and asked to be released. The priest praised him and prayed with him and offered him release, and then Vania would not take it. He asked to swear again. So he was sworn in again and this time for ten days.

Vania went home and prayed, and successfully resisted temptation for ten days, and very proud he was at the end of that time when he returned to the holy man and the latter praised him and hung a sign of God by a little chain round his neck.

The priest prayed with him again and sent him away for a fortnight on the same conditions.

Vania was sober in this way for a whole month, and all his family with him, and he prospered with his cab and bought their furniture out of pawn. God was evidently very pleased with Vania.

But at the end of that time a catastrophe happened. Vania went to the shrine to be re-confirmed in his new life, and behold the priest was not there any more. He had been removed by the Bishop, and no one knew where he had gone to. There was unutterable sadness and despair in the crowds of drunkards that Vania found there, weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The Government, hearing of the success of the priest, and noting the diminution in the sale of vodka, had suppressed the holy man in order that there might be no shortage in the treasury. There was the interest on foreign loans to pay!

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CHAPTER IX
A MUSHROOM FAIR IN LENT

I HAD been out one morning looking at St Saviour’s and tasting the March sunshine, and I returned to the Kislovka unexpectedly. Nicholas, taken by surprise, was grinding at mathematics very gloomily. I had never seen him so despondent, so melancholy. He looked at me very sadly when I sat down beside him and began to chat.

“Why are you going to leave me?” he asked. I had told him that I should not remain in Moscow beyond Easter, and we were then in Lent. “Why will you not wait till June and then we can go to Lisitchansk together; and we will walk to the Caucasus, or we will walk across Europe to Calais and get back to England?”

Poor boy! There was no answer that would please him. Moscow had no attraction for me once the snow was off the ground and the country lay open, tempting me. Moscow was too comfortable a place; but that I had not English friends it was as comfortable as London, and I was—“full of malice against the seductions of dependency.”

Whilst I was sitting talking to Nicholas I noticed that the mirror in the room had been covered over with newspapers, and I wondered why.

“Why is the mirror covered up?” I asked.

Nicholas looked at it absent-mindedly, and then blushed.

“Oh, I was walking up and down and didn’t want to see myself,” he replied. “Every time I got up to that wall I saw my silly face till I got quite angry and covered it up.”

I comforted him.

He cheered up, but when I said I was going out again he put on his things to come with me, and implored me not to leave him all day or he might commit suicide. “What shall we do then?” I asked. “Let’s go down to the Mushroom Fair on the quayside; but first we’ll have some lunch.”

The pious Russian eats no meat in Lent. Once the Carnival, with its burst of drinking and feasting, is over, the Day of Forgiveness past (a sort of Old Year’s Night festival), and Ash Wednesday has signalised itself by a day-long tolling of bells for prayers, the true Slav enters upon a time of rigorous self-denial. Nominally he lives wholly upon Lenten oil; in actual practice he generally manages to find something more sustaining—different sorts of porridge, fruit jellies, mushroom soups and the like. Nicholas and I went into a students’ eating-house, and neither of us were in the least orthodox in the matter of food. I judged that my companion would be benefited by a large plate of roast beef and gherkins and baked potatoes, and this we accordingly sat down to.

Vegetables are expensive in Moscow at this season of the year—an ordinary vegetarian restaurant dinner costs three or four shillings—and there is, therefore, a first-rate market for any of the past summer or autumn’s produce that the peasant can bring in. About mid-March the Moscow peasants’ Mushroom Fair takes place, and there is a grand turnover of greasy roubles and copecks at that busy market. The country peasant has awakened from his winter sleep to go on his first adventure and work of the year, for as yet his fields are deep in snow and Jack Frost will not be vanquished for another month. The mushrooms that, with the help of his wife and children, he gathered in the autumn are all frozen together in the casks at the back of his izba; the planks and boards of his sledge, van and market stall lie frozen together among the drifts and icicles. A rough jaunt this year! March came in with great winds and snowstorms. The track of the road is an even wilderness of snow. Yet for the fifty or even one hundred miles that the peasant comes to this honey fair he finds his road, and battles gaily forward. Through drift, over stream, skirting the great forest, he goes on with many a slip and tumble, the dry snow blowing up and down in a Russian snow mist. Wrapped up in sacking and sheepskin, he sits among his casks and trestles, sings or sleeps or talks to his horse, every now and then standing up and pulling the horse round by his rope reins with a “Gently, Vaska,” or “Curse you, Herod.”

During the first week in Lent he arrives at Moscow, and every year at that time one may see the long line of stalls and booths newly rigged up on the quayside of the river, below the Kremlin walls. This year it has snowed heavily every day, and the wind had blown the stalls about and drifted the snow over the merchandise. It was snowing when Nicholas and I arrived, and the large flakes were settling on the honey and the oil and the mushrooms, and dissolving as we watched them. We kicked our way through the deep snow on the uneven ground, with a merry crowd laughing and chaffering. The Moscow old-wife was very busy. She is a fat, rank, jolly woman, more like the old-wives of Berwick than those of any other place in Europe, perhaps. Figure the old gossips buying, gingerly sampling and tasting, dipping in a huge vat of soaking mushrooms and taking a Rabelaisian mouthful from a great wooden spoon, or holding a dripping yellow-green mushroom between a fat thumb and fore-finger. There were also women in charge of some of the stalls—peasant wives, fat, laughing, healthy women. The wind blew fresh against the rosy cheeks of a gay crowd, for the market was truly half a revel and a game. It was a fair, but quite a strange one. What an array of clumsy casks, all these full of very mushy-looking mushrooms soaking in oil or vinegar. Then there were ropes of dried mushrooms, tied as we tie daisy-chains in England. But it is not only a Mushroom Fair. At the corner by the bridge there was a huge pile of bright red berries; the peasant in charge insisted on calling me Prince. The scene remains quite vivid in my memory. These were cranberries; they can be stewed into a fine-looking pudding. Kisel: sour jelly, they call it; it is bright crimson and looks too good to eat. Boys were running about with stuffed birds—crows, magpies, jays—that the country youths stuffed in the autumn. One could buy all sorts of things, even inlaid chess-tables and hand-made chess-men. At one side a youth was selling calico that had been in a fire; there was a crowd about him and a Petticoat-Lane-like-bidding going on. Next to him was a place for buying plaster saints and holy pictures. The next stall was occupied by a man with hot pies—piping hot yellow puffs full of mushroom and cauliflower—and, vis-à-vis, a huge steaming samovar from which a thirsty throng were getting tea at 1d. a glass. Perhaps the most Russian sight was the huge piles of clumsy wooden implements hacked out of pine with the all-useful adze. A sea of Russian basins, of chests, trays, and all kinds of boxes. Then there was the pottery department, a fine place for buying queer pots. If you wished to buy mushrooms in oil you had first to go and buy a pot; you obtained a strange brown vase, looking like a Roman urn. You wanted to buy jam—you must first buy a pot. A stall over the way is heaped up with honey—hard, frozen honey. We were invited to buy. “Only fivepence a pound,” said the man. We bought half a pound and received it in a piece of newspaper, a sheet of the Novoe Vremya. Most of the customers of the fair bought green rush baskets for a few pence, and in these put dried mushrooms, dried fruits for compôte, cranberries and the like. The vendor of the honey had driven in from Toula, a town in the vicinity of Tolstoy’s estate. I thought I might get some first-hand information about the great novelist, so I asked:

“How is Tolstoy?”

“I don’t know. Who is he? Is he a wrestler?” he replied.

Evidently the prophet was not unknown but in his own country.

This fair is a great chance to see the Russian peasant with his own produce. Visitors to Moscow in Lent are seldom shown this really interesting sight, much more humanly interesting than the Kremlin, the churches and museums. For Russia can boast of very little antiquity in her civilisation or her buildings. Much more interesting than her little past is her present.

At the fair all is Russian—even the oranges and lemons come from the groves of South Russia and the Caucasus. One gets another glimpse of the Russian harmony, the harmony of which the winter, the forests, the church, the peasants, the beggars are integral parts. This Russian life is actually organic, and all that is of it is necessarily akin to all. This picture is undiscordant. Happy, rude, contented Russia! All these old-world folk are like grown-up children playing shop with mudpies. What careless laughter rings about this snowy fair; what absurd wit and earthly humour! Crowds of jokes are about—mostly of the low Chaucerian kind. Indeed, one cannot help asking how much this fair has changed since the fourteenth century. Nature has turned out mushrooms, cranberries, crab-apples, oranges, honey, Russian men and women in just about the same cast as she does to-day—and probably even the hand-made chess-men differed little from these on sale now. The world does not change very much.

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CHAPTER X
DEPARTURE FROM MOSCOW

ALL the winter I had been in correspondence with Kharkov in connection with my lost luggage. Early in April I received a notification that the box had been found. The Customs House then sent me in a bill of charges, so much for every day the box had remained in their possession. The railway and Customs made two pounds profit out of the loss of my box; they actually charged me for the loss! So slowly, moreover, did the business go forward that it seemed to me I should not recover my property before I left Moscow. Even after they received the money they seemed in no hurry to proceed. But one day I did actually go out to a goods station and get my box into a sledge and take it home. The end was sudden, so sudden that I could not help laughing at the contrast. A carter took me down into a dark cellar to identify the box, and the said box, high up among large packing-cases, was identified. In its transit from that high position to terra firma it managed to displace a quarter of a ton case, which came down with a crash like thunder. We were both knocked down, and both very badly bruised, though I think the carter came off second best; a stream of blood was pouring down his face. “Oh, Lord God!” I heard him exclaim. He was looking at the Ikon in the room; it sounded as if he was swearing at it.

“Any limbs broken?” said he.

“No.”

“Then, praise the Lord! There’s your box.”

Two days after this there was an immense thaw and the sledges gave way to wheeled carriages. On the Wednesday it had been a white city; on Thursday it was black and there was not a sledge to be seen. The sun had been getting hotter and winning its way each day, just a little, against the snow, and then suddenly one night a west wind swept in from Europe and the Atlantic, and with it a flood of rain. Winter was drowned. No one was sorry; for winter by all accounts had stayed too long. The Sunday was Palm Sunday, the day of branches. The Russians call it Verba, and it is a great festival in Moscow. Shura and Nicholas and I went to the Kremlin to enjoy the sights.

It was a day of ecstasy. The sun shone as it had not done since I came to Moscow. It was suddenly full of promise, and one felt the promise in one’s blood. One’s fingers tingled with the desire to live, the eyes rested with envy upon the green branches that the people carried. In the Kremlin there was a din as of a carnival. Ten thousand silly squeakers and hooters sounded in the air. Inflated pigs were expiring, ridiculous sausages were deflating and collapsing, toy geese were quacking, boys and girls were blowing whistles and trumpets, and students also were blowing, and even staid old gentlemen. This day commemorated the triumphal entry into Jerusalem; it was also the triumphal entry of spring into Moscow, of life into death. The crowd huzzaing was delirious with the news that the winter was over. Even the rich people in their carriages, passing in solemn state into the Kremlin, seemed part of the new life. They were all in spring dresses—the women in purples and soft greens, and the men in light tweeds.

It seemed to me, however, that those on foot were having the gayer time. We were crushed as tightly as I have ever been in a London crowd. Everyone was laughing and chaffing, especially the girl students from the University, and the confetti was flying thick and fast.

Verba week was my last in Moscow. On Easter Sunday I left for the South.

Easter Eve came at last, the greatest night in the Russian holy year. At midnight we were all in the Kremlin, that is, I was there, and Nicholas and Shura, and everyone else in Moscow surely. Phrosia, the servant whom I had accompanied to the shrine at Sergievo, had taken a large sweet Easter loaf and a cake of sugar-cream, paskha, to be consecrated at church. I saw her in a yard outside the little monastery in the Petrovka. There were two or three hundred cakes waiting with hers, all set out on informal tables on trestles. In the centre of each cake a wax candle was burning. Each table was a little forest of candles, some long, some short, some just lit, and some burning out. Every now and then a priest came and took a cake into the church just as the candle was expiring. Phrosia had evidently just come, for the candle on her pashka was newly lit. The church was a casket, a precious case of gems. The priests moving to and fro, the pale faces of the Ikons lit up by many candles seemed the glamour of a fairy tale. The cakes being brought in, the priest sprinkling holy water, seemed rites which I, a mortal, only saw by accident. Indeed, any Englishman would have found Easter Night strange and wonderful. It is one of the two occasions in the year when one can see again what is below the surface of Moscow life of to-day. One can see what Moscow was before it became so commercialised. At six o’clock on Easter Eve the electric trams cease to run; from that moment Moscow becomes the holy city of old time. The strange mystery and sacredness which must have enwrapped it in ancient days is again felt in the streets. The shops are all shut and dark, the churches are all open and bright. The thousand-and-one street temples are decorated with coloured lamps, the doors stand wide open, the sacred faces of the Ikons look out into the roads. Even the air is infected with church odours, and the multitudinous domes of purple and gold rest above the houses in enigmatical solemnity—they might be tents and pavilions of spirits from another world.

In the streets men and women are carrying lighted candles hither and thither, and every now and then one sees a person carrying his paskha cake to church. Outside the Cathedral of the Annunciation a regiment of guards is drawn up and an officer is giving them instructions as to the duties for the night. Presently the rich and aristocratic families of Moscow will drive up one by one to do homage to the Ikons in the cathedral. At midnight the Kremlin is so thronged that it is difficult to move. All are waiting for the Resurrection, all are waiting for the booming forth of the great bell of St John’s Church, the largest bell of Moscow and of Russia, rung only once a year. That will signify that “Christ has risen.” The priests are praying before the Ikons and searching their hearts. Shortly after midnight they will rise from their knees and announce to the people, “We have found him. He is risen. Christos Voskrece.”

I wandered among the merry crowds to the tower of St John’s, and as I was passing the great cannon, the Tsar of cannons, I overheard someone speaking English. I directed my steps in that direction and found the people, two clean-shaven young men, in English clothes, high English collars and bowler hats—immaculately English. They were talking loudly, evidently taking it for granted that no one could understand them. I took up my stand quite close and listened. This is what I overheard. It was very small talk, but it sounded very strange to hear it in this Russian crowd.

“The Moscow people are very rough, they’ve no manners at all. They don’t care who they jostle or push as long as they get along.”

“Yes, I was going through one of the Kremlin gates yesterday and a fellow knocked my hat off. Of course it was very nice of him, but he didn’t stop to tell me why he did it. I thought he was mad, but they told me afterwards it was a sacred gate. I saw several people take off their hats as they went through. They say the sentry has orders to fire on anyone who does not lift his hat. I felt I wanted to apologise to someone. It’s a beautiful custom, and I hadn’t any intention of infringing the law. I believe in doing as Rome does in Rome. I wonder if the sentry would shoot. Nice row there’d be if they shot a British subject.”

“You’re right, but what’d they care. They’re a rotten lot. I’d like to pole-axe the Governor. By-the-bye, have you heard anything of White recently? He said he thought his firm was sending him out.”

“No.”

“Did you know him at all? He was a thorough gentleman.”

“No, not much; he didn’t live my way, you know. I met him several times down the county ground.”

“Yes, he was fairly mad over Surrey, wasn’t he? We played many games together, he and I; he bowled an awfully tricky ball, a gentle lob-dob, nearly full pitch. You thought you were going to put it out of the ground for six, and then suddenly you found your wicket down.”

At this point a disreputable beggar interrupted them.

“What d’you make of him—a drunken monk, eh?” said the cricketer. Both the Englishmen put on a look suggesting the principles of Political Economy, and signified by a frown that they did not encourage beggars. The “drunken monk,” however, did not budge for five minutes, he looked up at them and grinned. The people all round grinned also and turned to watch the scene. Then, suddenly, the beggar, after churning his mouth for some time, spat on the Harris overcoat of the cricketer’s companion and exclaimed:

“German pigs.”

“Beast,” said the Englishman, looking at his coat.

“They ought to be coming out soon. It’s only a short procession, they say—out of the church round the wall and back again; then the bells will begin. It’s after midnight now.”

I moved away at this point and left the cricketer putting his watch to his ear to see if it was going. I had promised to meet Shura and Nicholas and go up into the steeple with them. I found them on one of the stone galleries where the little bells of the church nestle together. They had a collection of squibs and crackers and coloured lights which they were letting off so as to allow girl students below to pretend to be terrified.

“The priests have come out,” said Nicholas, all at once pointing to a little procession just proceeding from the Uspensky. “Christos Voskrece, Christos Voskrece,” we heard all around us, and everyone was kissing one another. Then all the little bells of the churches began to tinkle, first a few and then more and more in confused ecstatic jangling. Moscow bells do not sound in the least like English bells, the chime is not musical or solemn. Our bells chant, their bells cheer. On Easter Night it is ten thousand bells, the voice of a thousand churches praising God. A wild, astonishing clamour, and then suddenly came one sound greater in itself than all the little sounds put together, the appalling boom of the great bell of St John Veleeky:

“Ting a ling, ling, ling, ling,

Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong,

Ding, ding, dong a dong, ding,

Dang, dang, dang,

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,

DOOM . . m . m m!”

Suddenly Katia passed me—the girl I took to the theatre.

“Christos Voskrece,” said I, “Christ is risen.”

“Yes,” said she, “He is risen,” and threw a handful of confetti in my eyes.

We all ate paskha cake together in the Kislovka room at three in the morning, and drank students’ champagne, purchased by Shura at two shillings a bottle. so Easter Day dawned, my last at Moscow, the day of my parting with Nicholas, the day of my departure to the Caucasus.

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CHAPTER XI
THE COMING OF SUMMER IN THE CAUCASUS

ANYTHING more wonderful than the change from winter to summer on the Caucasian mountain slopes could not easily be imagined. In April the plains were deep in snow, and in May, when English woods were leafing, every tree and bush looked stark and bare. Only by an occasional sallow in bloom one knew that the winter was over. The snowdrops and blue-bells sprang up in winter’s traces, and then verdure danced out and clothed valley and slope up even to the summit of some low hills. The English spring, as I imagined it, was months ahead, but dawdled on among the cold winds; this hot summer overtook it at a bound and rushed on to its later glories, to the blossoming and fruiting of vine and pomegranate.

Of the wonderful things that happened in May it is difficult to write calmly. The fairies did not linger; they came trippingly, they waved their wands, they ran. The spells of green and gold were wrought, and charm moved over the land. The cowslip appeared, budded, blossomed, faded—in one short week. At quick step the dainty lilies of the valley came and took their place, and for three days glistened among grasses and ferns upon the rocks; and slender, graceful Solomon Seals stooped lovingly toward their sister lilies. Then hillsides suddenly blazed with yellow rhododendrons. Honeysuckle bloom came nestling in sunny corners among the rocks, then tall, sweet-scented bog-bean; ten varieties of orchis I found, and wild rose, wild strawberry and raspberry, wild vine, wild walnut, peach and pear and plum. In the grassy places, just dry after the last melted snow, out came the lizards, so that the plain literally squirmed with them, cunning, vicious little lizards basking in the sun, small and brown in May, but fat and green and speckled later, kissing at one another like snakes, and fond of biting off one another’s tails. In the May sun the adder shot off from his damp sun-bath as one crushed through the scrub. The trees burst into leaf, first in the valleys and then on the hills. Each day one watched the climbing green and saw the fearful dark brow of a mountain soften away and pass from deep impenetrable black to soft laughing green. Snowy peaks lost their glory of white, and one knew them to be but little grey Grampians beside the huge mountains of Elbruz. The road-mud hardened and Persian stone-breakers were busy smashing their little heaps of boulders; in a week they had gone and the piles of rocks had become neat little heaps of flints. Then came terrific storms, a thunder-burst each week, and the rivers rose in their shingle beds and flooded off towards the Caspian and the Black Sea, carrying all manner of débris of uprooted shrub and tumbled rock. One soon saw the uses of the flints: they solidified the road. But, indeed, one day’s sun sufficed to dry up a night’s flood. The wild winds soon blew up the Sirocco—such dust storms that the whole landscape was for hours lost to the eyes. What of that—that was a day’s unpleasantness to be covered by ample compensations. The sun was strengthening and its magic was awakening newer, richer colours than the English eye can care for, was working in strange new ways upon the soul mysteries and body mysteries of men and women. One knew oneself in the South, in the land of knives and songs. Every man seemed on horseback. The Georgian chiefs and the Ossetines and Cherkesses came careering along the military roads, their cartridge vests flashing, daggers gleaming. The abreks and sheikhs sprang down from the hills, appalling the lesser traffickers of the road, pilgrim, merchant, tramp, by their show of arms and bizarre effrontery. The strange hill shepherds, looking like antique Old-Testament characters, came marching before and behind their multitudinous flocks, with their four wolfish sheep-dogs in attendance and their camping waggons behind; from the mountain fastnesses they came, their faces one great flush of shining red, their eyes bathed in perspiration, blazing with light, their lank hair glistening. Often I lay beside the stream in the Dariel Gorge and watched flocks of a thousand or fifteen hundred sheep and goats pass by me. The lively mountain lambs, brown and black and white, very daring or short-sighted, would plunge three or four at a time into the stream beside me, would come up and stare in my face and bleat and then run away. Then the under-shepherds, who hold long poles and keep the marching order, would rush up and hurry them away from the water to the road, the procession of dust and woolly backs would slowly pass away to the music of the incessant calling of ewe and lamb.

A GROUP OF CAUCASIAN SHEPHERDS

The flocks are marched to the market towns, and big deals in hundreds and thousands of head of sheep are made. Or the shepherds encamp outside the town and send batches of sheep to be hawked through the streets. The Persian butchers come out and bid for their mutton. Boys run about the herd feeling the flesh of the sheep, masters weigh them in their arms or compare weights by holding a sheep in each hand. Each butcher takes one or two, or three or four, as he feels he is making a bargain or otherwise. One must not forget the twenty minutes’ parley over prices. At last the business gets accomplished, and the flock goes on down the street to other butchers and leaves its little doomed contingent at each stall. On one occasion when I was watching, a lamb refused to be separated from a purchased brother, and, despite all efforts of the butcher and shepherd, came bleating back to the three who were bought. The hillman hawker and the townsman exchanged some witticism, and then the former struck a bargain and gave the affectionate lamb in cheap. I know the man’s stall and once or twice have bought mutton there. The butcher does not slaughter all his sheep at once. First one goes and then another. One dead sheep or a part of one always hangs in his shop. All parts of the animal are sold at the same price, fourpence a pound, and customers do not, as a rule, specify leg or breast or neck, but simply the quantity they require. When the butcher buys four sheep he kills one and hangs it in his shop, and the other three live ones are under the counter eating fodder or playing about among the customers’ legs. The sheep-hawker makes his tour of the town and is all day at it, tramp, tramp, tramp, through mud or dust. In the evening one may see the muddied remnant of the flock, the rejected, the unsold, being driven wearily back to the main flock on the plains. Very melancholy the little party looks, and it is difficult to think them the fortunate ones, so woebegone and wretched do they appear. All movement forward is a labour to them; not a few are lame, others have succumbed, and sometimes one sees the hawker with a dead lamb on his shoulder. No dogs are in attendance; none are needed.

There is plenty of money going in the town, plenty of wine and all good things for the up-country man when he cares to come in. With relief the house-heating is given up in April. Life becomes lighter, winter things are put away, windows are taken out, the summer wind begins to blow through all dwellings. The white-clad townsman takes his ice at his ease in the fresh air on the boulevards. The full, fat peasant eats as much as he can of pink and white and yellow for two copecks, and standing beside the ice-cream barrel, smacking his lips, testifies his appreciation by voluble remarks to passers-by. The Persian gunsmith sits in his open booth and inlays precious daggers, setting the handles with little constellations of stars. In glass cases, beside his shop, Caucasian belts and scimitars sparkle in the sun. There are streets of these workers where one might feel the sun was being robbed of his rays. One is in the land of the “Arabian Nights,” from which nightmare and opium have been taken away. There is a gentleness, an ease and brightness not to be found in Little Russia or Moscow. Somewhat typical of this and wonderful in its way is the march of Russian regiments, the easy, swinging march, not quick, no, rather slow even, but pleasant and easy as for long distances. It was pleasant to regard a detachment of these marching so, their leaders singing a solo of a national hymn, the rest taking up the chorus. Pleasant also to listen to the singing of the workmen operating with the hand-crane at the riverside. There seemed to be general happiness and content among men as among animals. The sun bade love and life come from turf and rock and tree and man, and from man none the less than from the rest there came the answer unspoilt by self-sight and introspection. In scarlet and purple and blue came the answer. One saw all the truth as one looked at dark Georgian maidens trooping along a vineyard in May. To these this sun gave promise of a wine harvest.

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CHAPTER XII
THE EPISTLE TO THE CAUCASIANS

MY kit for the Caucasus was composed of the following:—

A waterproof sleeping-sack,

A camel-hair blanket,

A pair of Georgian boots,

A flannel bashleek—a sort of hood to protect the head from cold,

Two suits of clothes—one of flannel, one of cloth,

A wadded overcoat,

A revolver,

and a trunk full of miscellaneous clothes. The books and papers of my recovered box I lent out to Moscow acquaintances or posted to England. My plan for the summer was to find an izba in the depths of the mountains and make a home there. On reaching Vladikavkaz Station I would put my luggage in the cloak-room and set out right away to tramp the mountains until I found what I wanted. Then I would return to Vladikavkaz and fetch my luggage in a cart.

Nicholas professed to be very much alarmed for my safety. He thought the place good, but he foresaw misadventures. He himself had been in Tiflis and Chiatouri in 1906 and had seen robbery and murder committed in broad daylight. He talked cut-throats for several days, and brought a number of students to back him up; he even urged that I take a trip down the Volga instead. But when he saw finally that I was not to be dissuaded, he promised to give me a letter of protection. He would write a letter to the Priests of the Caucasus. At each village I came to I should inquire where the pope lived and go to him at once and present my letter. I agreed: no doubt the priest in a village would know where there was an empty izba to be found, and he would help me to get it at a fair rate. So Nicholas wrote the following epistle:—

“Dear Little Father,—Knowing that all our southern clergy are holily bound to give hospitality and help to fellowmen, I have taken upon myself the liberty—under unusual circumstances—to recommend to your care my friend, the Englishman Graham, who brings you this letter. I have taken, I repeat, the liberty upon myself to recommend him to your tenderness and care. He is an important man. I trust you will help him in his life in any way that stands within your power, that you will advise him in difficulty or introduce him to priests who can advise him. He may be often in danger among mountain people, and may have you only for a refuge. Money will not be necessary to him—only advice. As you are kind to him, may the Lord God be good to you and the holy work will be advanced, for Mr Graham is a writer who much loves Russia, is a great Christian, and writes many things about Russia and Russian things.—In confidence, I thank you,

N—— L——.”

Vladikavkaz is a town of forty thousand inhabitants, and is situated about two hundred miles from the Black Sea on the west, and from the Caspian on the east. It has been called the key of the Caucasus; it is certainly the most convenient town from which to enter. The English tourist, when he gets there, will be surprised to find it a European city with handsome buildings and shops, with a “Grand Hotel” and “Hotel Imperial” furnished as any other establishment of such name. There is a good service of electric trams and an abundance of two-horse cabs; very occasionally one may see a motor-car there. The people are, for the most part, Russians and Georgians, though there are great numbers of Ossetines, Tatars, Persians and Ingooshi. It is very interesting to watch the crowds of promenaders on the Alexandrovsky Boulevard on a festival; one sees men and women of almost every nationality under the Russian flag.

The Georgians, famous for their beauty, are the greatest dandies in the world. The young men, dressed in handsome and high-coloured tunics, well armed, show such extraordinarily slender and constricted waists that one is tempted to think they wear corsets. The leather belt round the middle of a young Georgian is strapped so tightly that he cannot use his legs freely. He walks in a jerky little swagger, swaying his shoulders ever so slightly from one side to another, and holding his head high. Then the Georgian and Ossetine girls are dark and arch; they are of large proportions and might not be thought attractive by English people. Their hair generally hangs down their backs in plaits, but is screened from view by coloured veils. They laugh and talk with ordinary freedom on the streets, and it never struck me that they lived very retired lives, as is reputed. In Vladikavkaz and in the Caucasus, however, the outsider sees little sign of love-making in the street. It is very exceptional to see a young couple, and as for kissing in public, I should say it must be the height of indelicacy—judging from the rarity of such a sight. I read in a modern English book that if a Georgian husband or wife were unfaithful, the offender and the corespondent were exposed naked to the public gaze. If it is true it must afford an exciting spectacle. Apparently no divorce cases came on this summer.

The traveller can obtain very good lodging at Vladikavkaz, and French and German is spoken at the hotels. I stayed some days in a hotel which I found most comfortable. The nights as yet were probably cold for sleeping out, and I doubted the possibility of getting safely housed in mountain villages. For some time I made daily expeditions over the Steppes, tasting the new air and bringing back bouquets of spring flowers.

Yet at length one morning at the end of April I slung my travelling-bed across my back and set out to explore.

There are only two regular roads over the Caucasus, and although both start near Vladikavkaz I took neither of them. One goes to Tiflis and the other to Kutais. The former is the well-known Georgian Military Road, the other is a very ill-made, broken track, ascending to an elevation of 9000 feet, and impassable many months of the year.

VLADIKAVKAZ AND DISTRICT

A brawling river flows past the town from the mountains, the Terek. It is an impetuous, shallow stream that one could almost jump across at some seasons of the year, but having a bed a hundred yards wide. Looking into the valley from the mountains one sees a vast field of grey stones and boulders; and the river, meandering along it, gleams like a silver chain. Sometimes, however, after a few very hot days in July, it rises in flood and covers the whole bed, and washes away bridges and cottages and cattle. The hotter the weather the deeper the water; in June or July it is impossible to ford it, even on a strong horse. It follows that in midwinter it is shallowest and clearest. The Georgian road has been constructed on one side, and there have been several occasions when it has been flooded. There is a number of villages in the valley; it is convenient to be near water. They are inhabited by mountain people, Georgians, Ossetines, Ingooshi. It is strange that villages on opposite banks are near neighbours in the winter, but are cut off from mutual intercourse in the summer. Fortoug, for instance, is half a mile distant from Maximkina in January, but is thirty miles away in June, and both villages are inhabited by the same tribe—Ingooshi. I took the cart track that leads to Fortoug, and thought to be able to cross over to the opposite village. I found out my mistake later on. Mistakes, however, were not going to disturb me. I had no destination. It didn’t matter what happened or how far I strayed. The Caucasus was my host; I left him the arrangements. The mountains provided the entertainment, and I would not doubt their hospitality and generosity.

I passed through meadows; they were purple with a little flower which grew in clusters, a labiate, common in England, but incomparably brighter there than here. Early purple orchis was just blossoming, and crimson iris and fig-wort and crane’s-bill. In one deep tangled ditch where thistles, barberry, teasle, hollyhock and mallow struggled with nettles and convolvulus, one read the promises for July and August. Nature stood there like a host with drawn bows; in a moment ten thousand arrows would have sped into the air. The orchis and the crane’s-bill were heralds. Even the butterflies on the wing were forerunners—tattered old brimstones and tortoiseshells that had lived through the winter, only to wake up in the spring and lay their eggs and prepare the way for their children. And among the birds it was nesting-time; as I climbed a grassy slope I suddenly disturbed a lark, and just at my feet found the little nest with the familiar little cluster of dark eggs.

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CHAPTER XIII
A MOUNTAIN DAWN

I HAD turned aside from the track to climb the side of a wooded hill near the Stolovy Mountain; I had an idea that I might find a sheltered spot among the trees. I had not slept out before, and I feared to be found sleeping by any of the natives. I was not a rich prey for the robber, but in Russia they steal even one’s clothes. There are many stories current in Vladikavkaz which must have a certain amount of foundation in truth. According to a loquacious cabman I listened to in Vladikavkaz, a coach was stopped one day on the Georgian road, twelve miles outside the town. It contained a pleasure party, a number of ladies and gentlemen out to spend the day, and they were all despoiled of their clothing. The robbers covered them with guns and called on them to undress and throw all their possessions in a heap on the road or be shot. And they accordingly returned to the town in Adam’s raiment.

I had one moment of thrills this day. I had just emerged from a wood on to a grassy ridge of the mountain, when I saw a shepherd’s camping-ground guarded by dogs. The dogs saw me at the same moment, and all four came tearing along towards me. They were something between bull-dogs and mastiffs, and I had a good mind to climb a tree at once. But something restrained me; the dogs were perhaps too close; I had a cudgel in my hand, I grasped it firmly and awaited the onslaught. Every dog’s eye was riveted on my stick, and they all slackened speed suddenly and skirmished to bite at my heels or dart under my arm. They failed and slunk off; they were only uncivilised collies after all. I was relieved. Many a man in my position might have fired a revolver and then the owners of the dogs would have declared war. I recalled the words of Freshfield, the mountaineer, concerning such positions: “It is judicious to avoid petty wrangles with Ossetes and to tranquillise their sheep-dogs with ice-axes rather than to dismiss them with firearms.” A shepherd came up to me in a few minutes and began the common series of interrogations—Where do you come from? Where are you going to? Why? What are you—a Russian? I answered him very vaguely that I was going to Dalin-Dalin, a little village near by, on business, and that I was not a Russian. “You ought to be afraid to go in these parts,” said he, “many men get killed; a mate of mine was murdered near here last month.”

I heard him with a little thrill, but did not alter my plans. I found a bush, and just after sunset, when the gnats sang in their mournful choirs, I made my bed. I was soon deep snuggled in my waterproof sleeping-sack—my dear old friend—night sharer of so many vicissitudes and slumbers. A wisp of crêpe de chine about my head, I feared not the meanest of all foes, the mosquitoes that range two to each hair on the hand. I know what happened as the darkness deepened: the birds slunk to sleep in the bushes, all save the night-jars and the owls that gurgled and hooted among the pines and maples. The dark moths flitted to and fro in the first breathless darkness of the summer night, the large red ants carried off on their backs the dead gnats that had perished at my hands at supper-time. Then the pale full moon arose out of a depth of soft white cloud—passionless, perfect. Still the owls hooted as I fell asleep. The night passed. Morning came and I arose gaily. Nought of what the hillman suggested had come to pass; only once I had started, and that at the touch of the wet snout of an inquisitive hedgehog. I remember now how piggy scuttled off. But two minutes after that I was sleeping again. There had been one other event of the night. About two hours before dawn the rain came softly down. A broad cloud had gently breasted this little mountain upon which I was encamped. It rained steadily and much. I curled myself more completely within my sack and let it rain. In the little moments when I did not sleep I heard the drops falling on the cover above me. Had any wild robber come upon this strange bundle under the bush his woodlore must have told him it was no beast or bird ever seen upon the hills or under the sky. I think he would have crossed himself and passed by.

So passed my first night of my tramp in the mountains, quite a unique night, soft, strange, wonderful. I felt I had begun a new life. I had entered into a new world and come into communion with Nature in a way as yet unknown.

The rain had stopped as the first light came up into the sky. I arose gaily, pleasantly cool and fit after the sleep and the rain. By the faint light I saw the valley below me, and the grand grey rocks on the other side. I looked up to the summit of my own mountain, and as I munched a remainder of dry bread felt all the unspeakable delight of an awakening with the birds after having spent the night with the mountains. But, indeed, I had awakened before the birds, and as yet the mountains slept, the long grey line of bearded warriors, calm, majestic, unmoved, invincible. Nature in reverence lay hushed beneath them, waiting for a signal. I passed carefully over the wet grasses—softly, secretly, as if everywhere children slept.

Clamber, clamber, clamber, up then to the highest point. At last I stood there with the dew on my heels. All the east lay before me, and such a horizon as one can only see when looking from the northern spurs of the Caucasus. The sun had not risen, and from north to south lay an illimitable length of deep blood red, blood without life, red without light—dead, fearful, unfathomable red. I stood as one convicted, as a too-daring one, awe-stricken. From the place where I had slept I had not dreamed of this; no tinge on the morning twilight had suggested what the obstacle of the peak withheld. I felt pale and grey as a morning mist, insubstantial as a shadow. The grasses trembled wet at my feet. Behind me the austere mountains sat unmoved, deep in undisturbed sleep or contemplation. No bird sang, no beast moved, not even the wet trees dripped. All waited for a signal, and I waited. Death was passed—life not come. I was at the gates of the day, but had come early....

I was looking westward when the world awoke, looking at the grey mountains. Suddenly it was as if they blushed. Crimson appeared in a valley and ran and spread along the cliffs and rocks and over chasms, suffusing the whole westward scene. It was the world blushing as the first kiss of the sun awakened it to a new day. And as I turned, there in the west was the hero, raising himself unaided victoriously upward. It was the sun, the hot, glorious one, uprising, glistening, burning out of a sea of scarlet, changing the blood into ruby and firing every raindrop to a diamond. Most glorious it was, seen, as it were, by one alone, and that one myself, upon a peak adding my few feet to its five thousand and taking also that crimson reflection, that rosette or favour accorded those presented at the opening of the day. At how many town pageants had one been a mocker, but here was ritual that stood majestic, imperious in its meaning—only to be revered.

The ceremony was at length over. The day was opened, the freedom of the world had been given, one had but to step down into the gardens laid open to man.

Down the hill and over a moor the way led to the little red-roofed village called Dalin-Dalin. Ten steep downhill miles they were, and every mile waved invitingly. Onward then downward, and with steady steps, for the rain has left everything slippery. Wet it is, wet, and the grasses and fern and scrub are up to the waist, but the sun will dry both these and me, and by noon we shall all be hot and thirsty. Through a long wood the path goes. Last week, when I was in the woods, the ground was golden with cowslips, but the fairies’ pensioners are now all gone. Only the tall tiger lilies look down like modest maidens, and brown-green-fingered ferns hold out little monkey hands. Wet, wet—in the boots the water squirts and squeezes. A hare pauses in front and then bounces off—the long-legged, easy runner. So steep and wet is the path that it is difficult to keep one’s footing, and one has to hold on to the branches to keep balance. Mile after mile the distance gets accomplished, and the wood is passed. Beyond the wood is a valley of nettles, immense docks, waste comfrey, canterbury bells and entwined convolvulus, such a bed of rank vegetable as only the black virgin earth, the mountain mist and hot noonday sun can bring forth. Through that! There is even country ahead and less chance of snakes. Yonder the wild rose blooms and the eglantine and snowy guelder rose. The sun is getting hotter, and half-dazed flies wake to a morrow they had not expected; they buzz stupidly at one’s nose and ears—they have some stale news to impart. It is morning again, they say.

Here is Dalin-Dalin. Just outside the village a dead horse lies on the moor, and the flies fluster about it. Was it killed in some night affray with robbers, I wonder?

The mountains lie peacefully in the sunshine. The birds sing; myriadfold humming and stirring and chirping is in the grass. The rose bushes are daintily apparelled, and tall spurge lifts its yellow face to look at the beauties around. Sleeping in the copse, even in more abundance than yesterday, are next month’s flowers: time and the sun are softly wooing them. A few mallow and lily and rose will have faded away and given place to new revellers, new festivities. The morning sun, warmer every moment, promises for to-morrow, to-morrow week, to-morrow month, the blooming of the poppy and the ripening of the vine.

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CHAPTER XIV
AMONG THE INGOOSHI