Blank stare. They were not accustomed to foreigners yet at Raumo. The station had only just been opened. The musician took out his violin and its wailing tones went echoing and re-echoing through the hall. The audience looked as if they thought we had suddenly gone mad, and one man came forward and by signs told us we must leave the station. That was all very well, we were not enamoured of the station, but the port we judged to be at least four miles off, and no one was prepared to start down an unknown road in the dark and pouring rain. There was a long consultation, and we hoped it meant food, but it didn't. Out of a wilderness of words we at last arrived at the interesting fact that if we cared to subscribe five marks one of these gentlemen was prepared to conduct us to the police station. There appeared to be no wild desire on the part of any of us to go to the police station, the violin let out a screech of scornful derision, and one of the officials promptly turned off the electric lights and left us in darkness!
There were many of us, and vexations shared are amusing. We laughed, how we laughed, and the violin went wailing up and down the octaves. No wonder the Finns looked at us askance. Even the darkness did not turn us out, for we had nowhere else to go, and finally a man who spoke English turned up, the agent for the Swedish steamer. He had thought there would be no passengers and had gone to bed, to be roused up, I presume by the stationmaster, as the only person likely to be capable of dealing with these troublesome people who were disturbing the peace of this Finnish village.
We flew at him—there were about a dozen of us—and showed our tickets for the Finnish steamer, and he smiled in a superior manner and said we should be captured by Germans.
We didn't believe much in the Germans, for we had many of us come through a country which certainly believed itself invulnerable. Then a woman travelling with her two daughters, Americans of the Americans, though their mother spoke English with a most extraordinary accent, proclaimed aloud that if there was a Swedish steamer she was going by it as she was afraid of “dose Yarmans.” She and her daughters would give up their tickets and go by the Swedish steamer. Protest was useless. If we liked to break up the party we could. She was not going by the Uleaborg. Besides, where were we to sleep that night? The Finnish steamer was three or four miles away down at the wharf and we were here along with the Swedish agent.
The Swedish agent seized the opening thus given. There were no hotels; there were no boarding-houses; no, it was not possible to get anything to eat at that hour of the night. Something to drink? Well, in surprised tones, there was surely plenty of water in the station—there was—and he would arrange for a train for us to sleep in. The train at ten o'clock next morning would take us down to the steamer.
We retired to that train. Only one of the carriages was lighted, and that by general consent we gave up to the lady whose fear of the Germans had settled our affairs for us, and she in return asked us to share what provisions we had left. We pooled our stores—I don't think I had anything left, but the others shared with me—and we dined, not unsatisfactorily, off sardines, black bread, sausages and apples. The only person left out of the universal friendliness was the Yiddish lady. Out of her plenty she did not offer to share.
“She cannot,” said the musician. “She is saving for the voyage to America. You see, she can eat none of the shipboard food.” He too came of the same strict order of Jew, and his grandparents, with whom he had been staying in Little Russia, had provided him with any amount of sausage made of kosher meat, but when he was away from his own people he was evidently anything but strict and ate what pleased him. He shared with the rest of us. Possibly he was right about the Yiddish woman, and I suppose it did not really do us any harm to go short till next morning, but it looked very greedy, and I still wonder at the nerve of a woman who could sit down and eat sausage and bread and all manner of such-like things while within a stone's-throw of her people who had helped her in every way they could were cutting up apples and pears into quarters and audibly wishing they had a little more bread. The Oxford man and musician had always helped her, but she could not find it in her heart to spare them one crumb. I admire her nerve. In America I doubt not she will acquire wealth.
After supper Buchanan and I retired to a dark carriage, wrapped ourselves in my eiderdown and slept till with break of day two capable but plain Finnish damsels came in to clean the train. I think the sailors' ideas must have been wrong: every Finn cannot be a magician else they would not allow all their women to be so plain. I arose and dressed and prepared to go out and see if Raumo could produce coffee and rolls, but as I was starting the violinist in the next compartment protested.
“I wouldn't. Guess you haven't got the hang of these Finnish trains. It might take it into its head to go on. Can't you wait till we reach the steamer.”
I gave the matter my consideration, and while I was considering the train did take it into its head to go on four hours before its appointed time. On it went, and at last in the fresh northern dewy morning, with the sun just newly risen, sending his long low rays streaming across the dancing waters of the bay, we steamed up to the wharf, and there lay the white ships that were bound for Sweden, the other side of the Baltic.