By similar means, except that national vanity made me walk instead of running, I reached the Petrovka (the Lombard-street of Moscow, parallel to the Tverskaya, and below it down a hill), and made my way along it till I came to the Boulevard near the Trouba where the Ermitage restaurant stands. Looking up to the left I could there see the Pushkin statue, and watch the flash of the guns in position on the high open space that commands the cross roads of the Tverskaya and the Boulevard in both directions. Up the hill the Boulevard was quite empty, but in the hollow at the foot a few people were hurrying to and fro. Some were model citizens, who would rather die than break through the habits of every day; some were women who had to provide the Sunday dinner anyhow. But most were possessed by the curious instinct which drives even the gentlest men and women to witness fighting and death against their will.
Hoping to discover the true position of the revolutionists, I started to cross the Boulevard myself, keeping under cover of the snowy trees whenever I could. In the middle I saw a girl coming towards me—an ordinary workgirl with a shawl over her head. Apparently she also had come for curiosity, for all her rosy face was smiling with excitement. But as I looked at it, a little red splash fell upon her cheek, and instantly the side of her neck and the knot of the shawl turned red. She stood still, drew in her breath with a gasp, and then sat down in the snow crying. I jammed my handkerchief against the wound, but the bullet had only just touched her as it fell, and seeing there was no hole in the face I signalled to her to run, and away she went into the Petrovka, screaming for a sledge.
Going on, I had to leave the trees and cross the open road. At the entrance to a yard there, I found a small group of people leaning over another woman, who had just been hit and was lying helpless on the pavement, her eyes white and her breath coming and going heavily. She was a well-dressed girl in a long fur coat, possibly a revolutionist, but more likely a sympathetic spectator. The bullet had struck through her skirts, and a man was trying to stop the terrible bleeding by twisting two handkerchiefs round the leg. We carried her unconscious to a large house about a hundred yards up the hill, where a red-cross flag was flying. It may have been a permanent hospital, for the ambulance stations, afterwards organized by the Zemstvo or Town Council, were not ready then. The soldiers did not fire at us, though we had come into close range. All through those early days of the fighting, the red cross was respected, and people who were carrying the wounded, even without the ambulance badges, were not often fired at. A change came later on, and even to red-cross girls no mercy was shown. This change was due to a special order from Admiral Dubasoff.
When I turned from the hospital door, I found my position excellent but uncomfortable. The protection of the wounded had brought me safely up close to the very centre of the situation; but now that protection was withdrawn. I could not stand still, and to go back meant a long retirement down the open road fully exposed to fire from end to end. The only chance was to go on, and as the entrance to the next street was only about fifty yards away, I gathered up my fur coat and ran for it. Turning sharply round the corner, I found myself in the Mala Dmitrovka, a wide street down which the electric trams run in quiet times. It looked painfully open and empty. Lamp-posts had been knocked down and laid across the road, telegraph wires had been cut and strewn on the pavement or tied into entanglements, and the overhead strands for electricity hung in festoons, threatening the heads of horsemen. I saw at once that I had reached the zone between the contending forces, an admirable position for the military student, but otherwise unpleasing. Still, if I could only go on, I should discover the main revolutionary body, and that was my object. So keeping close to the houses on the left side, I started along the road at a trot. Only one other creature was in sight—a man of the bank-clerk type, who was walking rapidly in front of me, crouching down to protect his head. Once he looked behind to see if I were dangerous, and I was rapidly gaining on him when, all of a sudden, he sank together and lay down on the pavement.
Before I could reach him, he was up again and was leaning against a house, trying to take cover behind a down-spout. He could only speak Russian, but he pointed to his thigh, and I saw the blood running out over his boot and beginning to soak through the trouser-leg. I looked round for help, but the blinds in all the houses were down, and the gates barred and padlocked. Pointing in the direction by which we had come, I made him understand there was an ambulance near, and putting one arm round my neck, he began to hop back along the street down which we had advanced so fast. Neither of us was now in the least anxious about danger, and we listened to the guns and rifles with entire indifference. But the pain of the movement and the loss of blood were overcoming him; he was turning green, and at last I was obliged to rest him on a doorstep. I tried binding his leg over the trouser, but that did not stop the flow, and the cold was so intense that I did not like to take his trousers off. He was falling into unconsciousness, and I tried in vain to make him crawl a few steps further. Again I looked round at the houses, and this time I saw some faces watching me from a window. I waved to them, and presently the front door opened, and three men and a girl came out, bringing a chair. On that we soon carried him down the road to the Red Cross room, and I was left standing outside the entrance again. I then discovered that from first to last we had been exposed to sharpshooters posted on the tower of the Strastnoi Convent, close by, and all running and cover had been useless.
“GOD WITH US!”
From Sprut.
But it was now getting dark. Under the protection of the wounded, I had approached nearer the revolutionary position than I thought possible at starting, and for once virtue had been something better than her own reward. To have put her to the test again would have been wanton, for one cannot count on always finding an object of protective philanthropy. So I made for the trees, and walking down the Boulevard through the deepening twilight, I ran straight into a half-battery of four guns that was coming up to the relief of the guns beside the statue. The scouts, who were thrown out over the space, seized me and searched me down, but raised no further objection to my existence.
That night I had an engagement in the west of the city, but the streets between were so carefully guarded that I had to creep in the dark through the Old Town and round by the Kremlin along the deserted river bank to get there, and then it was impossible to come back, for a minor state of siege had been declared, and the soldiers were shooting at anything that moved. A “minor state of siege” only implies that if you lose your life, or anything else during the time, you have no claim on the Government for compensation. It is a convenient arrangement for a bankrupt Government engaged in re-establishing its credit by the slaughter of its own people.