“Pardon, Madame,” said he remonstrantly, and he gave me the address of his wife and daughters. He told me to go and see them; he assured me that everybody in Russia now wanted to learn English, that I would have no difficulty in getting pupils and so do myself very comfortably “till we make a passage to England again.”
Just before we reached Cheliabynsk he came and told me that he had heard there was a west-bound express with one place vacant, a ship awaited him and speed was very necessary, therefore he was leaving this train. Then at one of the greater stopping-places he bowed low over my hand, bade me farewell, made a dash and caught the express. I have never either seen or heard of him since, but he remains in my mind as one of the very kindly men I have met on my way through the world.
At Cheliabynsk we spent the livelong day, for there the main part of the train went on to Moscow with the soldiers, while we who wanted to go to Petrograd caught a train in the evening. I was glad to find that the Hussar officer and the Cossack were both bound for Petrograd. And here we came in touch once more with the West. There was a bookstall, and though I could not buy an English paper I could and did buy an English book, one of John Galsworthy's in the Tauchnitz edition. It was a great delight to come in contact once more with something I could read. There was a big refreshment-room here with all manner of delectable things to eat, only we had passed beyond the sturgeon, and caviare was no longer to be had save at a price that was prohibitive to a woman who had had as much as she could eat and who anyhow was saving her pennies in case of contingencies.
But one thing I did have, and that was a bath. In fact the whole train bathed. Near the station was a long row of bath-houses, but each one I visited—and they all seemed unpleasant places—was crowded with soldiers. After a third attempt to get taken in my Cossack friend met me and was shocked at the idea of my going to such a place; if I would trust him he would take me to a proper place after déjeuner.
Naturally I trusted him gladly, and we got into one of the usual broken-down landaus and drove away to the other side of the town to a row of quite superior bath-houses. My friend declared he knew the place well, he had been stationed here in “the last revolution,” as if revolutions came as regularly as the seasons.
It was a gorgeous bath-house. That young man bought me soap; he bought me some sort of loofah for scrubbing; he escorted me to three large rooms which I engaged for a couple of hours and, much to the surprise of the people, having had the windows opened, he left me, assuring me that the carriage should return for me in two hours. There was plenty of hot water, plenty of cold, and any amount of towels, and both Buchanan and I washed the grime of the journey from us and then rested on the sofa in the retiring-room. I read John Galsworthy and punctually to the moment I descended to the street, clean and refreshed, and there our carriage awaited us.
We bought water-melons on our way back to the train, for the streets were heaped up with the great dark green melons with the pink flesh that I had not seen since I left Australia. Autumn was on the land and here were watermelons proof thereof.
Ever as we went west the cornfields increased. Most of the wheat was cut and standing in golden-brown stooks waiting to be garnered by old men and boys and sturdy country women and those who were left of her young men, for Russia had by no means called out her last lines in 1914. There were still great patches of forest, primeval forest, of dense fir, and I remembered that here must be the haunts of the wolves and the bear with which I had always associated Russia. More, though why I know not, my mind flew back to the times of the nomad hordes who, coming out of Central Asia, imposed their rule upon the fair-haired Aryan race that had settled upon the northern plain of Europe. Those forests for me spelled Romance; they took away from the feeling of commonplaceness that the breaking down of my preconceived ideas of Siberia had engendered. Almost anything might happen in a land that held such forests, and such rivers. Not that I was allowed to see much of the rivers now. Someone always came in and drew down the blinds in my compartment—I had one to myself since leaving Cheliabynsk—and told me I must not go out on the platform whenever we crossed a bridge. They were evidently taking precautions against spying though they were too polite to say so. There were big towns with stations packed to overflowing. At Perm we met some German prisoners of war, and there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere, and at last one day in the first week in September we steamed into Petrograd.