The monarch, in common with the humblest of his subjects, uncovers himself as he passes under one of the entrances to the Kremlin, above which stands a particularly holy icon. Indeed in every room of every Russian house, even in the hotels, hangs some pictured saint with a little lamp in front of him, while the railway stations and waiting-rooms are all provided with sacred guardians.
To these people the War was then a holy one. The chambermaid of our hotel, who spoke German—a language it is forbidden to use in public—told me with tears that her only son had been killed at the front, that his father had died of grief when the news reached them, and that her daughter, working at a hospital, had had no news of her soldier-husband for three months and naturally feared the worst. “But we must not grumble,” she ended bravely; “it is terrible for all of us, but with God’s help our Tsar will conquer his enemies and we shall have peace once more.”
Russians struck us as being somewhat silent in the streets, and we never heard any one whistle. It was explained that they have the same superstition about whistling as have the Persians, and look upon it as “devilish speech.” In connection with this we were told that on one occasion an American bishop and his chaplain were visiting a monastery in Moscow, and to the horror of the monks the chaplain kept on bursting into snatches of whistling. But one of the holy men was equal to the occasion and, walking close behind the unconscious offender, made the sign of the cross repeatedly in order to avert any evil consequences!
The lack of efficiency in Russia was very noticeable. For example, to cash our letters of credit in a bank was a tedious business, the money being slowly counted with the aid of an abacus. The shopkeepers also depend greatly on these aids to arithmetic. It was moreover a land of tips. In every private house the servant who helped you on and off with your fur coat and galoshes expected a pourboire, and on leaving a hotel we were surrounded by a throng of waiters, porters of different grades, and a bevy of small boys, all intent on fees.
During the next section of our journey to Tashkent the trains were by no means as comfortable as before. Our only light was a guttering candle in a lantern placed high above the carriage door, and, what was worse, the double windows were screwed up for the winter, all the air we breathed passing through most inadequate ventilators in the roof. After some thirty hours of semi-suffocation it was a relief when the train stopped at Samara, and its great bridge over the Volga. Before we crossed, soldiers with fixed bayonets filed into the corridors and lined the train, and henceforward sentries stood with fixed bayonets on all the platforms. Instead of going through to Tashkent, our train stopped for eighteen hours, so we drove perforce to the best hotel in the place. There I was ushered into a bedroom which had only a mattress on the bedstead; but a cheery maid soon produced sheets, pillows and towels, these articles from now onward being charged separately in the bill: she also filled up the water-tank which discharged itself into the basin by a kind of squirt, liable to drench the unwary. A hot bath is an expensive luxury in Russia, costing from three to five shillings; but I never appreciated it at its proper value. The bath, filled with water too hot for me to plunge my hand into, was invariably taken in a tiny room without ventilation in which a stove was fiercely burning, and the attendant, armed with a thermometer, was always greatly astonished when I demanded a copious admixture of cold water. Half the room would be occupied by a divan covered with a sheet on which to repose after the bath, and once or twice I had some difficulty in getting rid of the maid, so anxious was she to wrap me in a second sheet, with which Russians drape themselves before they step into the water.
Samara is an important provincial town, but the whole place looked poor and shabby, partly because the coloured plaster coating of the houses was dropping off in unsightly patches. The wide streets radiated from a small public garden in which stood a statue of Alexander II., the Liberator, and, as it was Sunday, all the world was promenading in its best clothes along the slush-covered pavements, the thaw having set in. The peasants looked picturesque in short sheepskin coats, worn with the wool inside, fur caps with lappets to protect the ears, long leather riding-boots, putties tied up with string and thick leather gloves. The shaggy hats of black or white sheepskin made their wearers look like brigands in opera, and beside them the women, in long black coats much kilted at the waist, with their heads tied up in woollen shawls, appeared decidedly tame.
We made our way down to the Volga and walked on the frozen river, which was a mile wide, watching the drinking-water of the town being drawn from various holes in the ice.
At the railway station that evening we found a large crowd on the platform assembled to give a hearty send-off to a trainload of soldiers evidently hailing from the neighbourhood. The men were travelling to the front in horse-boxes, and leant over the wooden barriers wildly cheering and waving their caps, full of health and spirits, and one could hardly bear to think that many would never return, or, sadder still, would come home incapacitated for the rest of their days.
Owing to the War there were no restaurant-cars attached to the trains, and as the time-tables were unaltered we had halts of only ten or twelve minutes three or four times a day, when the passengers made a frenzied rush to get what they could at the inferior station buffets. We usually bought something in the way of meat, cheese and bread, and carried it back with us to our carriage, after we had gulped down plates of the excellent cabbage soups called stchee or borsch. The only long halt we made—one of forty minutes—was at a station with no buffet whatever. The farther east we went the less food could we procure: sometimes packets of inferior Russian biscuits were the only stock-in-trade of the buffet, and if it had not been for our soup-packets we should have been half-starved. As it was, we were often unpleasantly hungry, hot water being the only thing that we could be sure of obtaining.
In spite of this the journey was full of interest. We were travelling across limitless steppes, and the melting of the snow in patches showed that spring was at hand, when the sun would break forth from the grey, lowering skies. Near Orenburg we noticed many tons of hay ready to be despatched to the front, and as we halted at Alexis I suddenly saw the ungainly forms of camels. Nearer and nearer they came, padding across the snow, drawing sleighs laden with hay, and with a leap of the heart I realized that we were once again in the East, that Europe was left behind, and that we had entered that vast mysterious continent of Asia, cradle of the human race and birthplace of its great religions.