So the procession moved under the Gate of the Saviour, and gathered on the round stone platform where Ivan the Cruel used to enjoy the executions. It stands in front of Ivan’s many-coloured church, built by the Italian whose eyes (as the old myth says) were put out that he might never design another so gay. The service of special prayer was there performed, and as the clocks struck twelve and the guns began to fire a salute, the religious part of the day came to an end. The banners went back into the Kremlin; the Iberian Virgin was carried in a four-wheeler to her shrine; the bishops and archimandrites drove away to lunch in huge coaches drawn by four black horses abreast.
Then the moment came which all had awaited—the moment for which the prayers to God had only been the excuse. Now or never was the time for slaughter and enrichment. A fervid orator sprang on the balustrade of the stone platform, and with athletic gesticulations and rousing appeals to heaven and the Tsar, strove to lash the crowd to the proposed heat of fury. Other patriots were busy extolling the beauty of domestic virtue, and distributing photographs of the Tsar with his baby-boy upon his knee. The people cheered and shouted, and began to rush up and down, like caged wolves just before feeding-time. Then raising the Russian hymn, the orator, still threatening the bright infinity of space with his fists, set off to march up the whole length of the square. The crowd swarmed after him, thousands strong. They trickled through the two little arches of the Iberian gate, and gathering together again, swept in one great tide up the main street called the Tverskaya.
They were going to slaughter the Jews, and exterminate the students, and purify the city. No end to the horrors they were going to perform. But they reached the square in front of the Government House, and there they stopped to make speeches, calling again upon heaven and the Tsar, and urging the Governor-General to take vengeance upon all revolutionaries and other enemies of the country.
The Governor-General appeared in uniform upon the balcony—tall and pale, white haired, with long white moustache, and a narrow, pointed beard. It was Admiral Dubásoff, hitherto only known as Russia’s representative in the inquiry about the Baltic Fleet’s victory off Hull; afterwards to be better known as the Butcher or the Admiral of the Street. In a loud voice he addressed the crowd, telling them how delighted he was to see so many Russian citizens still on the Tsar’s side, and promising to telegraph to the Tsar with what confidence his Majesty could rely upon the unshaken loyalty and unflinching courage of ancient Moscow.
It was a little unfortunate that just at that moment, before the cheers could even begin, some one at the corner of the square near me raised the cry, “The students are coming! The students! The students!” Like a wind, terror swept over the crowd, the sledges dashed away in flight, and, plunging, falling, and crashing into each other, the people rushed down any street and hid round any corner for their lives. I have seen many fine panics, from the Greek war downwards, but never anything quite so ludicrous as that stampede of bloody-minded patriots. For nothing whatever had happened, and when at last the terrified loyalists took heart to look behind them, they saw the square peaceful, silent, and almost empty. One by one they crept back into courage. They even tried to rekindle their patriotic zeal and resume their murderous aspect. But it was no good. The Governor-General had gone indoors to dispatch his telegram in praise of their courage. That unhappy run had spoilt the whole massacre, and gradually the orators ceased to rage, and every one went home for dinner.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DAYS OF MOSCOW—I
Next day (December 20th), I had determined to start for the Caucasus, because very severe fighting was reported there, and it was said, I believe truly, that in some places the Georgians had set up an independent government of their own. Accordingly I sledged to the station, took my ticket, and registered my luggage to Baku by Rostoff-on-Don, occupied my place in the heated train, hung up my fur coat and snow boots, and prepared to endure the full blast of a Russian carriage for the four days and nights of the journey. As is the way in Russia, the train filled up nearly an hour before it was time to start, and we all sat contemplating each other and wondering what our manners would be like on the way. There were a large number of peasants and country people in the train, packed together into family sections with their children, and baskets, and bedding. Next to me sat a cleanly old man and his wife, who held their goods upon their knees with a sturdy resignation, as much as to say, “Now let Heaven do its worst.”
So we waited, and taking out a book I was far away in the city of the “Lys Rouge” upon the Arno, when I became dimly conscious of a feeling of uneasiness in the carriages, as when a motor breaks down and the City men fret. Doors were opened and heads put out, and footsteps passed up and down the corridor. Distant shouting and questions were heard. The man opposite me packed up his lunch and went out. I followed, and saw a party of railway men just uncoupling the engine, which puffed away for twenty yards and then stood still. With a long diminishing hiss, the steam of the heating apparatus rushed out from the pipes and left the train to grow cold, like the dead.
“Strike?” I said, going up to the workmen. “Yes, general strike at twelve o’clock,” they answered, and I gathered up my book and coat. The rest of my luggage could not be recovered then, and next night it went wandering down the line upon the train, and was no more seen. For Christmas was coming, and many trains that were wandering upon the road supplied seasonable gifts for the peasants’ needs. Hundreds of nice geese and ducks they gave them, loads of vegetables, barrels of sugar. For miles beyond the city, the railway was like an enormous Christmas hamper, full of good cheer, and many a starving peasant recognized for the first time the true significance of the holy festival.
As to the cleanly old man and woman, they sat there still, clutching their goods. It seemed that nothing short of the Last Trumpet could induce them to stir. They had taken their tickets, and their confidence in railways was unshaken. They looked at me with the sympathetic tolerance we show to a crank who questions gravitation or maintains the earth is flat. The peasants in like manner sat still and cherished their young. It seemed incredible they should not go after they had taken all that trouble to get started for home, and had settled down into their lairs in the nice warm train. I left them still seated there, amid expostulations growing shrill. But in the next fortnight I had to return many times to the station, and day after day I found them encamped in the waiting-rooms, one family living on a table by day and under it at night, another resolutely holding a leather bench, and two or three nested behind the bar. To keep them alive, the railway issued a dole of about a shilling a day for the grown-ups, and they cooked their tea and bits of food at the stoves or inside the locomotives. But it was not a happy way of spending life. Children sprawled and fought and wailed; mothers tried in vain to wash and clean; men tripped over girls asleep upon the boards. And it was worse when, a few days later, scores of soldiers dribbled in somehow from the war, unwashed, bewildered, and wretched, and were thrown into the station among the peasants, to live there as best they could. The smell of men’s tents in the morning in war time is not pleasant, but it is Arabia compared to those waiting-rooms.