But to the man without roubles in his pocket,Russian officialdom is not so gracious.By the expenditure of a few more coins I got my dog through the Customs without trouble,and had leisure to look about me.A miserable object was being badgered by half a dozen men in uniform,and he--his lean face puckered up into a snarl--was returning them snappish answers;the whole scene suggested some half-starved mongrel being worried by school-boys.A slight informality had been discovered in his passport,so a fellow traveller with whom I had made friends informed me.He had no roubles in his pocket,and in consequence they were sending him back to St.Petersburg--some eighteen hours'journey--in a wagon that in England would not be employed for the transport of oxen.
It seemed a good joke to Russian officialdom;they would drop in every now and then,look at him as he sat crouched in a corner of the waiting-room,and pass out again,laughing.The snarl had died from his face;a dull,listless indifference had taken its place--the look one sees on the face of a beaten dog,after the beating is over,when it is lying very still,its great eyes staring into nothingness,and one wonders whether it is thinking.
The Russian worker reads no newspaper,has no club,yet all things seem to be known to him.There is a prison on the banks of the Neva,in St.Petersburg.They say such things are done with now,but up till very recently there existed a small cell therein,below the level of the ice,and prisoners placed there would be found missing a day or two afterwards,nothing ever again known of them,except,perhaps,to the fishes of the Baltic.They talk of such like things among themselves:the sleigh-drivers round their charcoal fire,the field-workers going and coming in the grey dawn,the factory workers,their whispers deadened by the rattle of the looms.
I was searching for a house in Brussels some winters ago,and there was one I was sent to in a small street leading out of the Avenue Louise.It was poorly furnished,but rich in pictures,large and small.They covered the walls of every room.
"These pictures,"explained to me the landlady,an old,haggard-looking woman,"will not be left,I am taking them with me to London.
They are all the work of my husband.He is arranging an exhibition."The friend who had sent me had told me the woman was a widow,who had been living in Brussels eking out a precarious existence as a lodging-house keeper for the last ten years.
"You have married again?"I questioned her.
The woman smiled.
"Not again.I was married eighteen years ago in Russia.My husband was transported to Siberia a few days after we were married,and Ihave never seen him since."
"I should have followed him,"she added,"only every year we thought he was going to be set free.""He is really free now?"I asked.
"Yes,"she answered."They set him free last week.He will join me in London.We shall be able to finish our honeymoon."She smiled,revealing to me that once she had been a girl.
I read in the English papers of the exhibition in London.It was said the artist showed much promise.So possibly a career may at last be opening out for him.
Nature has made life hard to Russian rich and poor alike.To the banks of the Neva,with its ague and influenza-bestowing fogs and mists,one imagines that the Devil himself must have guided Peter the Great.
"Show me in all my dominions the most hopelessly unattractive site on which to build a city,"Peter must have prayed;and the Devil having discovered the site on which St.Petersburg now stands,must have returned to his master in high good feather.
"I think,my dear Peter,I have found you something really unique.
It is a pestilent swamp to which a mighty river brings bitter blasts and marrow-chilling fogs,while during the brief summer time the wind will bring you sand.In this way you will combine the disadvantages of the North Pole with those of the desert of Sahara."In the winter time the Russians light their great stoves,and doubly barricade their doors and windows;and in this atmosphere,like to that of a greenhouse,many of their women will pass six months,never venturing out of doors.Even the men only go out at intervals.
Every office,every shop is an oven.Men of forty have white hair and parchment faces;and the women are old at thirty.The farm labourers,during the few summer months,work almost entirely without sleep.They leave that for the winter,when they shut themselves up like dormice in their hovels,their store of food and vodka buried underneath the floor.For days together they sleep,then wake and dig,then sleep again.
The Russian party lasts all night.In an adjoining room are beds and couches;half a dozen guests are always sleeping.An hour contents them,then they rejoin the company,and other guests take their places.The Russian eats when he feels so disposed;the table is always spread,the guests come and go.Once a year there is a great feast in Moscow.The Russian merchant and his friends sit down early in the day,and a sort of thick,sweet pancake is served up hot.The feast continues for many hours,and the ambition of the Russian merchant is to eat more than his neighbour.Fifty or sixty of these hot cakes a man will consume at a sitting,and a dozen funerals in Moscow is often the result.
An uncivilised people,we call them in our lordly way,but they are young.Russian history is not yet three hundred years old.They will see us out,I am inclined to think.Their energy,their intelligence--when these show above the groundwork--are monstrous.Ihave known a Russian learn Chinese within six months.English!they learn it while you are talking to them.The children play at chess and study the violin for their own amusement.
The world will be glad of Russia--when she has put her house in order.