“No, Madame, not one.”
I debated. Cross that river again after all it had cost me to get here I could not.
“But where can I stay?”
He looked round as if he were offering palatial quarters.
“Here, Madame, here.”
In the railway station; there was nothing else for it; and in that railway station I waited till the train came in the following evening.
That little matter settled, I turned to reward my first friend for his efforts on my behalf, and I felt five roubles was little enough. My new friend was very scornful, a rouble was ample, he considered. He had my ten-pound note in his pocket, and I am afraid I was very conscious that he had not yet proved himself, whereas the other man had done me yeoman's service, and never have I parted with ten shillings with more satisfaction. They were certainly earned.
After, I set myself to make the best of the situation. The station was crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, and a forlorn crowd they looked, and curious was the flotsam and jetsam that were their belongings. Of course there was the usual travellers' baggage, but there were other things too I did not expect to come across in a railway station in Siberia. There was a sewing-machine; there was the trumpet part of a gramophone; there was the back of a piano with all the wires showing; there was a dressmaker's stand, the stuffed form of a woman, looking forlorn and out of place among the bundles of the soldiers.
But the people accepted it as all in the day's work, watched the soldiers getting into the carriages from which they were debarred, and waved their hands and cheered them, though the first train that started for anywhere did not leave till one-fifteen a.m. next morning. They were content that the soldiers should be served first. They settled themselves in little companies on the open platform, in the refreshment-room, in the waiting-rooms, fathers, mothers, children and dogs, and they solaced themselves with kettles of tea, black bread and sausages.
It was all so different from what I had expected, so very different, but the first effect was to bring home to me forcibly the fact that there was a great struggle going on in the West, and Eastern Siberia was being drawn into the whirlpool, sending her best, whether they were the exiles of my dreams or the thieves and robbers my newest friend had called them, to help in the struggle! To wait a night and day in a railway station was surely a little sacrifice to what some must make. How cheerfully and patiently that Siberian crowd waited! There were no complaints, no moans, only here and there a woman buried her head in her shawl and wept for her nearest and dearest, gone to the war, gone out into the unknown, and she might never see him again, might never even know what became of him. Truly “They also serve who only stand and wait.”