“Nor thicker shoes than that?”
“But do you not know there is nothing to be had in Russia?”
“You have goloshes? That is good.”
“And soap? Yes, they will do your washing if you give them soap to do it with——”
Kameneff left us to attend a meeting elsewhere. It was now pretty late, and I was tired; the room was small, and full of smoke and food. When I had finished my tea, Alexandre Kameneff and the soldier who had not left us since our arrival, took me back to the headquarters. I did not know what was to become of me, and no one understood me. The dimly-lit corridors were crowded with strange loungers. I was shown into a grim room where portraits of Lenin and Trotsky adorned the walls, and there I sat silently among people I could not talk with. After awhile, to my intense relief, Kameneff appeared. In this strange milieu in which I was so utterly lost, Kameneff seemed to me the oldest and the only friend I had in the world, and I metaphorically clung to him as a drowning man to a straw. Somebody in the crowd, taking pity on my helplessness, or else wondering what I was asking for in three unknown languages, had sent him to me. He asked what on earth I was doing there. As if I knew! I followed him to another room, bigger and fuller of people, who all looked very serious and sat in a circle. The meeting went on, and I sat obscurely in a corner wondering whether, if I understood Russian, I should be allowed to be there. At last, bored by watching them and learning nothing from it, I got out a pencil and paper from the hand-case I had with me and wrote a letter to Dick. It was the last place from which I could post a letter and the last time I could write letters uncensored. I wrote to Dick from my heart, thinking of him at that moment in bed, so very far away, looking so round and pink, and with one arm outside the bedclothes. In spirit I was kneeling by his bedside and kissing the little bare arm. Dick and Margaret both know that when I am away from them I come in spirit in the night, and they often find a rose petal or a bud, or maybe a tiny feather, something very light, that I leave on the pillow to prove that I have been. Never had I been more with them in spirit than this night, when I felt so lonely and bewildered. Later on I wrote an apology to F. E., explaining why I had not turned up at Charlton to do his bust. It was one of the things that I felt rather badly about, for I had left England the very day that I was due at the Birkenheads’. I could not at that time explain, and they must have thought me so very rude. It is funny that none of these people, not even Kameneff have heard of F. E., either as Smith, Lord Birkenhead, or Lord Chancellor. Chancellor of the Exchequer they understand, but no other Chancellor.
When at last the meeting was over, I was introduced to Gukovski, and gathered that we were in his room. He is a little bent man, who broke his back some time past in a motor accident. He has red hair and beard, and small narrow eyes that look at one with close scrutiny, and give one a shivery feeling. He asked me what my mission was, and when I had told him he said: “Do you think that you are going to get Lenin to sit to you?” I did think so, and his eyes twinkled with merriment. “Well you won’t!” he said and chuckled.
Kameneff went off to converse on the telephone with Tchicherin at Moscow, and did not come back. I waited and waited, and Gukovski began packing a trunk; he was evidently coming with us. I watched him, a man’s packing is always a rather interesting and pathetic sight, but even that ceased to interest me after awhile, and I became conscious of a feeling bordering on tears and sleep. Where on earth was Kameneff, and why didn’t he come back, or else explain to me how long this waiting was to go on. After awhile I discovered that Gukovski’s secretary, a young man called Gai, could speak perfectly good English. From him I learnt that our train was leaving “about midnight” for Moscow, and that I could go to it any time I liked and find my sleeper. I ought to have known this long before as it was already nearly midnight. I made Alexandre Kameneff and the soldier take me to the station immediately. Of course when I got there the train was nowhere to be found—it was in a siding—and I sat down on a stone step and waited, thankful at least for the fresh air and the absence of glaring lights. When our “wagon-de-luxe” finally
BRIDGE BLOWN UP BY YUDENITCH.