"Mrs. Pierce--Mrs. Pierce, you must not lose your temper that way."
"I don't care!" I cried. "I had no way to express what I felt."
"I know," Douglas agreed thoughtfully.
We hailed a droshky and got in.
"I have a friend--a Pole," said Douglas. "For no reason except that he
was a Pole, they made a _revision_ at his house, and among other things
took away every calling card they found. They made a _revision_ then on
each one of those people whose names they found. Though they found
nothing incriminating in his possession, they make him report every day
at the police headquarters. A year ago he was a giant in strength. Now
he is a sick man. The uselessness of it. Nothing was found against him,
and yet he is followed and watched. What are they driving at? They are
wearing him to the bone with their persecution." He shrugged his
shoulders and laughed suddenly. "Come, Mrs. Pierce, you can do nothing
against them. But let me tell you what I will give you. It is a German
helmet that a friend of mine brought from the Riga front. You can put it
in your room and blow beans at it!"
_October._
"Passports--passports, who's got the passports?" It's like a game--or
_la recherche de l'absolu_. And it isn't as though you could hop into a
cab and make the round of visits on the General Staff, Civil Governor,
and the rest, all in one day, or even all in a week. Nothing so
efficient and simple as that. What is an official without an anteroom?
As well imagine a soldier without a uniform. And the importance of the
official is instantly seen by the crowd waiting on him. Soldiers and
Jews and patient, unobtrusive women in black wait at police
headquarters; generals and ladies of quality crowd the anteroom of the
General Staff. For days the faces vary only slightly when you enter and
take your accustomed place. Patient, dull faces that light with
momentary expectation on the opening of a door, and relapse into
depression and tragic immobility when the aide walks through the
anteroom without admitting any one to the inner office.
I gained admittance to the Military Governor the other day. He is the
successor of that over-cautious governor who moved all his household
goods during the German advance, and was then relieved of office. His
palace, set back from the street behind a tall iron fence, is guarded by
soldiers with bayonets, and secret-service men. I laughed, recognizing
my old friends the spies.
Upstairs, the Governor was just saying good-bye to Bobrinsky, former
Governor of Galicia, and we stood to one side as they came out of an
inner office, bowing and making compliments to each other. Gold braid
and decorations! These days the military have their innings, to be sure!
I wonder how many stupid years of barrack-life go to make up one of
these men? Or perhaps so much gold braid is paid for in other ways.
The Governor was an old man, carefully preserved. His uniform was
padded, but his legs, thin and insecure, gave him away, and his standing
collar, though it came up to his ears, failed to hide his scrawny neck
where the flesh was caving in. He wore his gray beard trimmed to a
point, and inside his beaklike nose was a quantity of grayish-yellow
hair which made a very disagreeable impression on me. All the time I was
speaking he examined his nails. When he raised his eyes finally, to
reply, I noticed how lifeless and indifferent they were, and glazed by
age. I could see the bones of his face move under the skin as he talked,
especially two little round bones, like balls, close to his ears.
"I have nothing to do with the case. It has been referred to the General
Staff, I believe. You will have to wait for the course of events."
He turned his back, went over to the window, and began to play with a
curtain-tassel. An aide bowed me to the door.
Outside, the anteroom was crowded with supplicants. It was his reception
hour. The murmur of whispered conversations stopped when we appeared.
Every one rose, pressing forward to reach the aide. Some held out soiled
bits of paper; others talked in loud, explanatory voices, as though
hoping by sheer noise to pierce the crust of official attention. But the
aide took no more notice than if they had been crowding sheep. He
pushed through them and escorted me to the head of the staircase. Down I
went, boiling with rage.
_Dearest Mother and Dad:--_
I am just back from the General Staff, where the mysterious rotation of
the official wheel landed me unexpectedly into the very sanctum
sanctorum of the Chief of the Staff, and to see him I had to wait only
five hours with Mr. Douglas in the anteroom! Mr. Douglas has just left
me to go to his club, exhausted, ready to devour pounds of Moscow
sausages, so he said.
The anteroom of the General Staff was as Russian as Russian can be. I
suppose I shall never forget the dingy room, with its brown painted
walls and the benches and chairs ranged along the four sides of the
room, and the orderlies bringing in glasses of tea, and the waiting
people who were not ashamed to be unhappy. In the beginning Mr. Douglas
and I tried to talk, but after an hour or so we relapsed into silence. I
looked up at the large oil paintings of deceased generals which hung
about the room. At first, they all looked fat and stupid and alike in
the huge, ornate gilt frames. But after much study they began to take
on differences--slight differences which it seemed that the painters had
caught in spite of themselves, but which made human beings of even
generals.
There was one portrait that I remember, in the corner, a general in the
uniform of the Crimean War. He looked out at you with green eyes, like a
cat's. The more I looked at him, the more he resembled a cat, with his
flat, broad head and slightly almond eyes and long mustache. His cheek
bones were high and his jaw square and cruel. He settled into his
coat-collar the way a cat shortens its neck when it purrs. He, too, was
purring, from gratification, perhaps, at having his portrait painted;
but, wholly untrustworthy himself, he distrusted the world and held
himself ready to strike.
Another portrait was of a man who might have been of peasant origin. An
inky black beard hid the lower part of his face, but his nose was blunt
and pugnacious, and his eyes were like black shoe-buttons sewn close
together. He stuck out his stomach importantly, and the care with which
his uniform and decorations were painted strengthened the impression
that he had made his career himself and set the highest value on the
insignia that stood for his accomplishment.
Well, I made up characters to fit the portraits, and the time went on.
There were three entrances to the room, through which aides and
orderlies were constantly appearing and disappearing. The room filled up
with people and smelt of oiled leather and smoke. The women did not move
from their chairs, but the men got up and stood about, talking in
groups. I began to feel that I had known these captains and majors and
lieutenants all my life. They looked at me curiously, and if they knew
Mr. Douglas they asked to be presented to me.
"How do you like Russia?"
They spoke French. I looked at Mr. Douglas and smiled.
"Very much."
They were pleased.
"Ah, you do? That is good. Russia is a wonderful country and its
resources are endless. But it is war-time. You should see Russia in
peace-time. There is no country in the world where one amuses one's self
so well as in Russia. But first we must beat the Germans."
They all begin that way, and then branch out into their particular line
of conversation.
There was a woman near me, her mourning veil thrown back, disclosing a
death-like face. Her features were pinched, and her pale lips were
pressed tightly together in suffering. She had been waiting surely three
hours since sending in her card, and all that time she had scarcely
moved. Sometimes I forgot her, and then my eyes would fall on her and I
wondered how I could see anybody else in the room. In comparison to her
all the others seemed fussy or melodramatic or false in some way.
Suffering was condensed in her. It flowed through her body. It settled
in the shadows of her face and clothed her in black. Her gloved hands
pressed each other. Her eyes stared in front of her, full of pain like a
hurt beast's. She sat as though carved in stone, dark against the
window, the lines of her body rigid and clear-cut like a statue's.
At last an aide came toward her, spruce and alert, holding a paper in
his hand. She rose at his approach, leaning on the back of her chair,
her body bent forward tensely. He spoke to her in a low voice,
consulting the slip of paper in his hand. All at once she straightened
herself, and a burning expression came into her face. One hand went to
her heart, exactly as though a bullet had pierced her breast. Then she
gave a sharp cry, and hurling her pocketbook across the room with all
her strength, she rushed outside.
Every one dodged as though the pocketbook had been aimed at him. A young
second lieutenant picked it from the floor and stood twisting it in his
hands, not knowing what to do with it. People looked uneasy and ashamed
as though a door had been suddenly opened on a terrible secret thing
that was customarily locked up in a closet. But the uncomfortable
feeling soon passed, and they began to talk about the strange woman and
to gossip and play and amuse themselves with her sorrow. A crowd
collected about the aide, who grew more and more voluble and important
each time he repeated his explanation of the incident.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Douglas and I were admitted to the Chief of
Staff. The walls of his office were covered with large maps, with tiny
flags marking the battlefronts, and he sat at a large table occupying
the center of the room.
When we entered, he rose and bowed, and after waving me to a chair,
reseated himself. He was rather like a university professor, courteous,
with a slightly ironical twist to his very red lips. His pale face was
narrow and long, with a pointed black beard, and a forehead broad and
high and white. While he listened or talked, he nervously drew
arabesques on a pad of paper on the table.
"I have your petition, but since I have just been appointed here, I am
not very familiar with routine matters." Here he smiled slightly. "Yours
is a routine matter, I should say. How long have you waited for an
answer--four months? We'll see what can be done. I have sent to the
files and I should have a report in a few minutes."
An aide brought in a collection of telegrams and papers, and the chief
glanced through them. Then he looked at me searchingly and suddenly
smiled again.
"From your appearance I should never imagine you were as dangerous as
these papers state. Are you an American?"
"Yes," I replied; "and I assure you that I am dangerous only in the
official mind. I have no importance except what they give me."
"Mrs. Pierce is an American and unused to Russian ways," Mr. Douglas
said apologetically.
"Well, your case has been referred to General Ivanoff, and I will wire
him again at once. If you come back next Thursday I will give you a
definite answer."
We went out. It was a gray winter day, with a cold wind from the river,
but I felt glowing and stimulated and alive, seeing the future
crystallize and grow definite again. You can't imagine the wearing
depression of months of uncertainty.
"That Chief of Staff is the first human official I've met," I said to
Mr. Douglas.
"Give him time, give him time," Douglas replied. "Didn't you hear him
say he was new to the job?"
I write such long letters and all about _things_. But I want you to see
with me so we may share our lives in spite of distance. Armfuls of love
to you, my dearest ones, from