I liked these Russian post trains far better than the train de luxe, with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. A Russian post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. It was also much cheaper. From Stretensk to Petrograd, including Buehanan, the cost was a little over nine pounds for the tickets, and I bought my food by the way. It was excellent and very cheap. All the things I had bought in Kharbin, especially the kettles, came into use once more. The moment the train stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them, and raced for the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of water that are a feature of every Russian station on the overland line. These boilers are always enclosed in a building just outside the railway station, and the spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes four in a row, come out through the walls. Beside every spout is an iron handle which, being pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out. Russia even in those days before the revolution struck me as strangely democratic, for the soldiers, the non-commissioned officers, the officers and everyone else on the train mingled in the struggle for hot water. I could never have got mine filled, but my Cossack friend always remembered me and if he did not come himself sent someone to get my kettles. Indeed everyone vied in being kind to the Englishwoman, to show, I think, their good will to the only representative of the Allied nation on the train.
It was at breakfast-time one warm morning I first made the acquaintance of “that very great officer,” as the others called him, the captain of the Askold. He was in full naval uniform, and at that time I was not accustomed to seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and he was racing along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent on filling it with hot water to make coffee. He was not ashamed to pause and come to the assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the peasants were shamefully overcharging. They actually wanted her to pay a farthing a piece for their largest cucumbers! He spoke French and so we were able to communicate, and he was kind enough to take an interest in me and declare that he himself would provide me with cucumbers. He got me four large ones and when I wanted to repay him he laughed and said it was hardly necessary as they only cost a halfpenny! He had the compartment next to mine and that morning he sent me in a glass of coffee—we didn't run to cups on that train. Excellent coffee it was too. Indeed I was overwhelmed with provisions. One woman does not want very much to eat, but unless I supplied myself liberally and made it patent to all that I had enough and more than enough I was sure to be supplied by my neighbours out of friendship for my nation. From the Cossack officer, from a Hussar officer and his wife who had come up from Ugra in Mongolia, and from the captain of the Askold I was always receiving presents. Chickens, smoked fish—very greasy, in a sheet of paper, eaten raw and very excellent—raspberries and blue berries, to say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.
At some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about where the first and second class passengers could sit down and have déjeuner, or dinner, but oftener, especially in the East, we all dashed out, first, second and third class, and at little stalls presided over by men with kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women that were a joy to me after the effete women of China, bought what we wanted, took it back with us into the carriages and there ate it. I had all my table things in a basket, including a little saucer for Buchanan. It was an exceedingly economical arrangement, and I have seldom enjoyed food more. The bread and butter was excellent. You could buy fine white bread, and bread of varying quality to the coarse black bread eaten by the peasant, and I am bound to say I very much like fine white bread. There was delicious cream; there were raspberries and blue berries to be bought for a trifle; there were lemons for the tea; there was German beet sugar; there were roast chickens at sixpence apiece, little pasties very excellent for twopence-halfpenny, and rapchicks, a delicious little bird a little larger than a partridge, could be bought for fivepence, and sometimes there was plenty of honey. Milk, if a bottle were provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a quart, and my neighbours soon saw that I did not commit the extravagance of paying three times as much for it, which was what it cost if you bought the bottle.
The English, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their belief when they found how I bought milk. Hard-boiled eggs were to be had in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. I am reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. These were first-class prices, the soldiers bought much more cheaply. Enough meat to last a man a day could be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too—such meat nowadays I should pay at least five shillings for.
Was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the steppes? How much hand had they had in the settling of the country? I asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. The stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as it had been along the Amur.
And the train went steadily on. Very slowly though—we only went at the rate of three hundred versts a day, why, I do not know. There we stuck at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look at the parallel rails coming out of the East on the horizon and running away into the West on the horizon again.
“We shall never arrive,” I said impatiently.
“Ah! Madame, we arrive, we arrive,” said the Hussar officer, and he spoke a little sadly. And then I remembered that for him arrival meant parting with his comely young wife and his little son. They had with them a fox-terrier whom I used to ask into my compartment to play with Buchanan, and they called him “Sport.”
“An English name,” they said smilingly. If ever I have a fox-terrier I shall call him “Sport,” in kindly remembrance of the owners of the little friend I made on that long, long journey across the Old World. And the Hussar officer's wife, I put it on record, liked fresh air as much as I did myself. As I walked up and down the train, even though it was warm summer weather, I always knew our two carriages because in spite of the dust we had our windows open. The rest of the passengers shut theirs most carefully. The second class were packed, and the third class were simply on top of one another—I should not think they could have inserted another baby—and the reek that came from the open doors and that hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.
I used to ask my Cossack friend to tea sometimes—I could always buy cakes by the wayside—and he was the only person I ever met who took salt with his tea. He assured me the Mongolians always did so, but I must say though I have tried tea in many ways I don't like that custom.