He was fool enough to believe her, and at once cast about in his mind some means of doing her an ill turn. He came over and made love to her in excited whispers, and was so rude and urgent that at last the girl refused to have anything more to do with him, and turned sullen and angry. He for his part sneaked off to another compartment, and we saw no more of him. After a while the girl relaxed and smiled, took out a large but cracked hand-mirror, looked at her pretty face, and patted the curls to her temples. I got a kettleful of boiling water and made tea for the grizzly peasant and her and myself. Then the peasant climbed on to the shelf above and spread out his big overcoat and slept on it, and the little girl, after explaining that she was going to live with Poles in Kharkof, and that her father played the violin and she the mandoline, and that she was going to take a part in a “troop” and earn her living, undid her black locks, put down a quilt and a pillow, and curled herself up and slept. The conductor came round and searched under the seats for “hares,” the flickering candle burned low, and I was about to turn in and sleep when the Russian student, who had been trying to read a newspaper by the aid of a dip of his own, finally gave up the task and set himself to talk to me.
“How far are you going? Where from? What for? How long have you been away from Russia? What interest can Russia have for you? I should have thought the West more interesting....” and so on, the usual flood of questions.
Then my questions. “Has much happened in Russia during the year? What are people talking about? What are they doing? What is in the air?”
“Oh,” said he, “the Futurists are walking about with gilded noses and dyed faces. The Jew-haters of the Black Hundred want to raise a temple in memory of the Christian boy Yushinsky. Everyone has been discussing a play of Artsibashef called Jealousy. Literary Russia has been giving a welcome to the Belgian poet Verhaeren, such as you in England have been giving Anatole France. Every one is either hearing or giving lectures about Verhaeren. But I suppose most clamour of all has been raised about Gorky and Dostoieffsky and the Theatre of Art at Moscow. They propose to perform Dostoieffsky’s Demons at the Theatre of Art, and Gorky has raised a great protest. He holds that Dostoieffsky is so reactionary in tendency that he ought not to be played at the great democratic theatre. Not only that, but he holds that Tolstoy, and indeed all Russian literature, is on the wrong side in the struggle for the liberation of the people. He is almost ready to say, ‘Burn the works of Tolstoy and Dostoieffsky; burn them, and let us be free!’”
“How does Russia take it?” I asked. “It is indeed true that Dostoieffsky’s work is not on the side of progress and freedom. He believed in suffering; he believed in the Russian Church, and was a Christian.”
“Russia is mostly against Gorky,” said the student. “Merezhkovsky, for instance, has written a brilliant article against him in the Russian Word, and he says, ‘Yes, Gorky is keenly sensitive, but in Italy or Greece, where he lives,[[1]] he is too far away to feel what Russia is now. Russia has changed much in the last eight years. Her wounds have healed up, many of them; she has the great hope of the convalescent. If Gorky breathed Russian air he would understand that there was now in Russia a strong religious movement.’”
“And what do you think?” I asked. “Do you possibly agree with Gorky?”
“No. I don’t think it is right to steal an instrument from the other side’s box of tricks. The Censorship is one of their weapons, not one of ours. The people have loved Dostoieffsky more than they have loved any other Russian author; he is still beloved. We Russians are a religious and loving people. We will never sacrifice humanity for ideas....”
We talked a long time. When I lay down on my shelf to sleep I felt only gladness that I was coming back to Russia, coming to live with her and for her once more, after a year in England and America. It seemed to me a pity that Gorky had not come back the year before when so many exiles took advantage of the Tsar’s manifesto, and returned to the open arms of a loving, astonishingly patriotic people!
Next morning at dawn I arrived at Kief, said “Good-bye” to the little girl who was sleepily stretching herself, and to the student who was chatting with a new acquaintance in the gangway and smoking a cigarette. The grizzly peasant I let snore on....