OUR JOURNEY ABROAD
An event occurred which overwhelmed me with joy. My husband was quite
unexpectedly sent to Italy to be present at the Grandes Manœuvres at
Milan. What a splendid surprise it was! We packed up and started on our
journey in the first days of June. As the manœuvres begin only in July,
we shall have plenty of time to wander about sight-seeing. First we are
going to the sea-side, and have decided upon proceeding straight on to
Boulogne-sur-mer. That will be a treat indeed!
The country between St. Petersburg and the Prussian frontier is very
uninteresting, nothing but flat corn-fields, woods and wide expanses of
pasture-land stretching on both sides of the railway.
When we arrived at the frontier some Prussian officials rushed into our
compartment, and having taken possession of our passports, they declared,
to our profound stupefaction, that we had to go out and began to fling
our hand-bags out of the window. We had scarcely time to jump out when
the train began to move, carrying away our heavy baggage which had been
more lucky than we were, and we were left to our own devices. It appeared
that our passports had not been signed by the German Consul in Moscow,
and although it was stated in my husband’s passport that he was going to
Italy on a special mission, these horrid Germans tumbled us out of the
train, finding sufficient ground for detaining us until permission be
received by wire from their Consul in Moscow to let us proceed further.
We stood for some time on the platform a picture of forlorn discomfort,
looking at each other helplessly, and trying to collect our scattered
wits. How perfectly dreadful it was! Our position can be better imagined
than described. We had positively no notion where to go and what to do
with ourselves. The day was closing rapidly, it would soon be night. What
were we to do? Sleep in the open air perhaps, for except the station,
there was not a house within sight, and to return to our frontier was
impossible, there being no other train that night. Clutching our bags we
mournfully entered a vast “Warte-Saal” where a party of bearded Teutons
were loading themselves with beer out of huge pint-mugs, and were all
talking at once amid clouds of tobacco smoke. The atmosphere making me
feel faint and dizzy, we hastened back to the platform in search of
the station-master to beg him to give us somewhere to lay our heads.
He came up to us, a fiercely moustached man, awfully stiff and puffed
up, and asked us what we wanted. We begged him, expressing ourselves
somewhat lamely in German, to give us shelter for the night. He led us
to his quarters and ushered us into a little slip of a room, low-roofed
and white-washed, furnished with two huge feather-beds with eider-down
quilts, where we felt ourselves as prisoners put under arrest. A bad
night is soon passed after all! The first thing I did was to remove, with
all haste, the obnoxious coverlet and lie down, but I could not sleep for
the stifling air in the room; I tossed and turned in bed till morning.
We started back to Alexandrovo with the first train without taking any
breakfast, not wishing to have anything to do with these detestable
Prussians. On arriving at the station, whilst taking coffee, we received
the longed-for telegram, and as we had to wait till evening for the North
Express, we decided to drive to Tzekhotzinsk, a small Polish watering
place, which is only a few miles distant from Alexandrovo. The journey
was extremely trying on account of the excessive heat, and the flies
which were pertinacious. We proceeded along a sandy road under a broiling
sun. At last we arrived. The Casino, a red-brick house hidden among the
trees, suggested repose and comfort. After having appeased our hunger
and quenched our thirst in the restaurant, we took a room and locked
ourselves up to have a good rest. After a refreshing nap, Sergy went to
explore the place. He returned after his stroll rather dissatisfied with
Tzekhotzinsk, and we decided to return to Alexandrovo at once. We were
surely taken here for a pair of unlawful conjugators of the verb “to
love,” for we merely came to perch like a bird for a couple of hours,
then to fly away.
When the North Express drew up at Alexandrovo we went to have a try for
a carriage to ourselves and had to give a good tip to the conductor who
ushered us into an empty compartment, assuring us that we should have
it to ourselves as far as Berlin; but at the first stopping another
guard came to announce that we had been placed here by mistake, this car
being bound for another direction. He proposed for us a compartment in
the neighbouring carriage; but if he imagined that he was going to be
as liberally recompensed as his cheat of a companion, he was very much
mistaken, for he did not receive even one kreutzer. We got thoroughly
punished for it, however, for when the train was going to start and we
had just composed ourselves for deep slumber, a lady and gentleman were
ushered into our compartment, an elderly Englishman on the wrong side
of fifty, particularly nasty-looking, and his spouse, a young person of
about nineteen, very nice to look at. Her husband called her “Baby,” and
bestowed caresses upon her all the way; but she didn’t seem to care a
cent about him and responded very phlegmatically to his advances. Well,
to have married such an individual she must have had great courage, with
not so much as a pair of tongs would I have touched him, and couldn’t
have married him if he was the only man in the whole world.