And then it grew dark. A sense of sadness filled me, and I was glad when the conductor lighted the lamp and made up my berth. We lay down as we were, all dressed, and the train rushing and swinging along deadened my mind and feelings.
I was wakened by the conductor's twitching the covering back from the light. Our carriage had broken down and was going to be side-tracked.
Then began the most restless night I ever spent. We bumped along in a third-class carriage, and descended to wait for an hour or more on the platform of some little crossroad station. We sat on our bags till our spines cracked with fatigue. The men smoked one cigarette after another. As far as I could see stretched dark fields lighted dimly by thick stars, with a wind blowing out of the darkness into our faces. No one spoke. Down the tracks a round white headlight grew bigger and bigger. The noise of the approaching train filled the night. We scrambled into another third-class carriage and sat on some more hard, narrow seats for an hour or so.
At last the dawn came—a square of gray light through the train window. Almost every one had fallen asleep. How pallid and ugly they looked with their mouths open and their heads lolling forward!
At ten we changed for the last time before Kiev. The carriage was not divided up into compartments, but was open, with rows of seats and an aisle down the center, like our trains in America,—only there was an upper story of seats, too. I stretched out and went to sleep. When I woke the carriage was filled. Marie and I occupied one seat together.
Opposite us sat a fat, red-nosed man, with a fur cap, though it was summer. Between his legs was a huge, bulky bag. When the train stopped, he put a pinch of tea in his little blue enameled teapot, which he filled at the hot-water tank that is at every Russian station just for that purpose. He pulled out of his bag numberless newspaper packages and spread them out on the newspaper across his knees—big fat sausages and thin fried ones, a chunk of ham, a boiled chicken, dried pressed meat, a lump of melting butter, some huge cucumber pickles, and cheese. With a murderous-looking knife he cut thick slices from a big round loaf of bread that he held against his breast. He sweetened his tea with some sugar from another package, and sliced a lemon into it. When he had finished eating, he carefully rolled up the food again and put it away, and settled back in his chair. With great deliberation he took out of his vest pocket a little black box with bright flowers painted on the lid. He fingered it lovingly for a moment, then he took a pinch of snuff, closing his eyes in ecstasy and inhaling deeply. He did this three times and blew his nose vigorously. Then he put the box away, brushing off the gray grains of powder that had fallen down his vest front. All day long, every time the train stopped, he refilled his little blue enameled teapot and repeated the ceremony, even to the last grain of snuff.
Across the aisle sat two priests, unshaven and unshorn, in wide black hats, their long, greasy black hair falling over the shoulders of their dirty gray gowns. They spent the day in prayer and eating and drinking. They were evidently bound for Kiev on a holy pilgrimage to the Lavra.
In the seat above the old man who took snuff lay a young woman, propped on her elbow. Every time I looked at her she was laughing, pressing a pomegranate seed between her lips. Her hands were very thin and white. Her face was long and thin and framed by short, clipped hair. Every now and then a young officer came up to her and took her hand, and asked if she wanted anything. She answered him indifferently, but when he went back to his seat, her eyes followed him and rested on him with the long, narrow look of a watchful cat.
At noon and night we stopped at railway stations for our meals. After Bulgaria and Roumania it was bewildering to see the counters laden with hot and cold meats and vegetables and appetizing zakouskas, and thick ztchee soup, and steaming samovars for tea. Through the open windows came refreshing puffs of wind. At the restaurant tables sat officers, rich Jews, and traveling business men—nothing much in it all to suggest war. Always, on the station walls were bright-colored portraits, in heavy gilt frames, of the Czar and Czarina and the royal family. And always in the corners of the room were ikons with candles lighted before them at night. The train always started before people had finished eating. At supper, one of the priests almost got left and had to run for it, a piece of meat-pie in one hand, the other holding up his flapping gray gown.
After sunset, more and more officers and soldiers about. At stations, orderlies elbowing their way through the crowd to secure seats for their officers; officers shouting to their orderlies; officers alone or with their families, arriving with valises and bundles and pillows—enough equipment to meet any eventuality.