“Billet! Billet!” said he, raping the sweat from his streaming face and making a way for me among the thronging recruits. There was a train coming in and he evidently intended I should catch it.
Such a crowd it was, and in the railway station confusion was worse confounded. It was packed with people—people of the poorer class—and with soldiers, and everyone was giving his opinion of things in general at the top of his voice. My stalwart guardian elbowed a way to the pigeon-hole, still crying, “Billet! Billet!” and I, seeing I wanted a ticket to Petrograd, produced a hundred-rouble note. The man inside pushed it away with contumely and declined it in various unknown tongues. I offered it again, and again it was thrust rudely aside, my guardian becoming vehement in his protests, though what he said I have not the faintest idea. I offered it a third time, then a man standing beside me whisked it away and whisked me away too.
“Madame, are you mad?” he asked, as Mr Barentzen had asked over a week before, but he spoke in French, very Russian French. And then he proceeded to explain volubly that all around were thieves, robbers and assassins—oh! the land of suffering exiles—the mobilisation had called them up, and any one of them would cut my throat for a good deal less than a ten-pound note. And he promptly shoved the offending cash in his pocket. It was the most high-handed proceeding I have ever taken part in, and I looked at him in astonishment. He was a man in a green uniform, wearing a military cap with pipings of white and magenta, and the white and magenta were repeated on the coat and trousers. On the whole, the effect was reassuring. A gentleman so attired was really too conspicuous to be engaged in any very nefarious occupation.
He proceeded to explain that by that train I could not go.
It was reserved for the troops. They were turning out the people already in it. This in a measure explained the bedlam in the station. The people who did not want to be landed here and the people who wanted to get away were comparing notes, and there were so many of them they had to do it at the top of their voices.
“When does the next train go?” I asked.
My new friend looked dubious. “Possibly to-morrow night,” said he. That was cheering.
“And where is there a hotel?”
He pointed across the river to Stretensk.
“Are there none this side?”