The captain is awfully nice to me, and performs an endless series of little attentions, looking to my comfort. He has, as it appears, the intention to fatten me up like the cattle destined for the slaughter-house, but sea-sickness takes away all my appetite.
August 15th.—The distant coasts of the Caucasus appear like a grey outline. Towards ten o’clock in the morning the Tropic landed us at Petrovsk five hours behind time. The captain insisted upon my passage being free, which cost me a great deal more in tips for the crew. He accompanied me with his officers to the railway-station.
CHAPTER CXXI
ST. PETERSBURG
August 18th.—It was pouring with rain this morning when we arrived at St. Petersburg. My mother was at the station to meet me, and took me to the new house my husband had bought in one of the most fashionable quarters of the city.
I had a letter four pages long from Sergy, full of interesting detail about his interview with the Emir at Kermineh, and of his journey to Andidjan, where the recent mutiny had taken place. A crowd of prostrated figures, their faces against the ground, were awaiting his arrival. After a Te Deum sung on the square before the cathedral, my husband distributed to the wounded soldiers a whole lot of crosses of the order of St. George, whilst cannons were fired. From Andidjan Sergy travelled on to Asch, a town situated near the frontier of the Pamir, in a mountainous region named The Roof of the World. An old Kirghise woman, called The Queen of the Alai, aged 87, came up to my husband supported by her two sons, white-bearded old men. This Asiatic Princess reminded one of the antique “Mother of the Gracchi.” A few days after his return to Tashkend Sergy received the visit of the heir to the throne of Khiva.
I saw no visitors and went nowhere, working hard at my book till late in the night, keeping awake with black coffee. At the end of the week I found solitude intolerable and began to feel awfully dull. Every day was the same, the hours seemed years. It was so hard to be alone here! I had seldom experienced much of my own society and was sick of my own company. Sergy being absent, the world seemed one great blank. I never had him out of my thoughts for one minute. Sometimes I had the impulse to take the first train and fly back to Tashkend.
October had passed and Sergy did not come. I bombarded him with desperate letters full of exclamation points, always putting the stereotyped question when he would arrive.
I read in the papers that the plague had broken out near Samarkand, carrying away every day a great many victims, and that the Prince of Oldenbourg was going there with a medical expedition. I was getting awfully anxious about Sergy and felt tempted to throw up everything and rush back to him. I had the most awful dreams and imagined all sorts of calamities and spoiled my eyes with tears, having only one thought, to rejoin my husband. I could endure my suspense no longer and telegraphed to Sergy, imploring him to let me come to Tashkend. I waited with feverish impatience for his permission to start instantly, but my husband, who never refused me in trifles, did not give in when it concerned serious matters. He would not hear of this; he firmly opposed my arrival, and wired to me to be reasonable and have patience; but patience, alas, was contrary to my temperament. My hundred and one wishes were always fulfilled until now, and when it has come to the hundred and second wish—stop? Oh on! Sergy’s opposition made me only the more obstinately determined to have my own way. I despatched him a long letter, an ultimatum in fact. I wrote that if he did not arrive at St Petersburg in the course of a fortnight, I should start to Tashkend without awaiting his permission. I worried Sergy till I finally got him to consent to my going over to rejoin him. My maid brought me a telegram from my husband with my tea one morning. I opened it, and read one word. “Come!” I wanted to leave at once in spite of mother and some friends who tried to make me understand the danger I was running in going to meet the plague; but I am a fatalist and fear nothing. All their persuasions fell on stony ground. If they think that they will stop me, they are very much mistaken; no consideration of wisdom will ever induce me not to do what I want to do. I would not hear reason and was in a hurry to go back to Tashkend. With me to think has always been to act. The sooner I start the better.
October 17th.—I am off to Tashkend to-day, with Maria Michaelovna and my maid Mina. All the cars of our train are occupied by the members of the medical expedition sent to Tashkend to fight against the plague. It consists of forty doctors and ten sisters of mercy. The rain is coming down in torrents, but when I felt happy I was not in the least aware that the sun was not shining, and I am so happy now to rejoin Sergy! Our train is an express and rushes past nearly all the stations. We hadn’t time for dinner and snatched a sandwich at a railway buffet, that had probably been waiting more than a week for travellers to arrive.