vodka-bottle, and the little silver egg-like glasses.
“Vodka will it be, or do you prefer cognac?”
The various guests choose their tipple. With the gulp of a mountaineer
taking his moonshine, the banker swallows the twenty-year-old French
brandy, of the sort that gourmets protractingly sip with their coffee.
The little boy slips out to his particular region of the house. The
hostess takes her seat at the foot of the table, and the gentlemen pass
and repass, bringing her assorted _zakuska_ dishes as at a ball. Caviar
from the Volga, Thon mariné from Calais, sprats from Hamburg, Columbia
River salmon, are spread out and attacked by the rest of us, standing,
free-lunch fashion. One by one the men finish and straggle to their
places at the table.
Three menservants, with gray blouses and baggy silk trousers falling
over their topboots, appear now, one with a huge tureen of bouillon,
another with the little silver bowls, and a third with a plate of the
_piroushkies_ that accompany the soup. Madame Karetnikov deals out
the consommé for the whole table, and also for little Paul and his
governess in some outside quarters. Every one begins to eat, without
waiting for the hostess or for anybody else.
“It is hard work managing a big family like ours,” she allows, in reply
to your question about the domestic problem. “We always have seven or
eight, and one can never tell how many friends will come in to dine
with us.”
She casts a solicitous eye over the table, to see that no one has been
neglected, and then serves herself.
“One must keep the men well fed,” she observes. “Remember that, Marie,
when you get married.”
Marie at the far end of the table nods assent.
“But you must not think of marrying until you are told,” adds the
banker.
She nods assent to this, too.
“Don’t mind him, Marie,” says the official. “He thinks he is living in
the time of the Seven Boyars. Take my advice. Pick out the man you want
and go for him. You can’t fail.”
“Such ideas to put in a girl’s head!” says his sister, smiling.
The soup-course is nearly over, when suddenly the banker ejaculates,
and jumps up to welcome some new arrivals.
“Ah, father!”
He runs to a sturdy benignant-looking old man, and kisses him on both
his white-bearded cheeks, then does the same to the little old mother.
“Come in, come in; we are just beginning.”
At once the table is in a state of unstable equilibrium. The old lady
is steered to a chair at the head, and the rest are pushed along to
make room. The father makes his way, under similar escort, in the
direction of the vodka-bottle.
“No French brandy for me!” he says, and puts the fiery Russian liquid
where it will do the most good. He, too, goes to the far end of the
table.
The student tells in a low voice that the newcomer is a veteran of
Sevastopol, was once the personal friend of Czar Alexander, the
Liberator, and was decorated by him for gallantry at Plevna.
“What a splendid old Russian he is!” one thinks, noting all the
kindliness and courtesy of his honored age, and the grip of a bear-trap
in his hand. Yet there is an indescribable air of melancholy about him,
as if a great sadness were being bravely and uncomplainingly faced. A
remark from the hostess turns you to her.
“Father is one of the Colonization Commission. We are all very much
interested in hearing about his discussions with the settlers!”
“Colonization for the settlers or for the exiles here?” you ask.
“It is the government assistance for the voluntary emigrants, not for
the unfortunate ones.”
“But the latter must be a problem in themselves?”
Madame seems embarrassed.
The student leans over and in a low tone whispers: “His youngest son,
the brother of Vladimir, is in hiding, is under sentence of death. They
don’t speak of him here.”
“He has just come from the Governor,” adds Madame Karetnikov, “who is a
great friend of his. The Governor has heard from Petersburg that they
may bestow the cross of St. Stanislaus.”
“That is the autocracy here, which you do not know in your country,”
adds the student, in a low voice. “He is an intimate friend of the
Governor and two of his sons are officials, yet his last son is beyond
pardon. The old man himself knows not where he is. Yet they decorate
the father. He still believes in the Emperor.”
“Do not let my nephew talk politics to you,” says the hostess, rather
anxiously.
Valerian is silent.
A supplementary tureen of soup makes its appearance, and the two
newcomers are served with it. The rest of the party have advanced to
boiled sturgeon, with a thin sauce, compensated by Russian Château
Yquem from the Imperial domain in the Crimea. Roast beef follows the
fish, with the old general and his wife at length even with the rest.
Then come duck and claret, and finally dessert and champagne. The toast
of the evening is drunk to the old general, who brightens as the meal
advances. In the big reception-room, Turkish coffee is brought, which
is poured from the brazen ladle and served in exquisite little cups
without handles.
“We got them in Damascus on one of our trips,” says the host.
Conversation goes round the table. The official is in eager talk
with Madame Karetnikov about a common friend in a smart Petersburg
regiment, who has got badly in debt.
“He ought to apply for a transfer to the Siberian service. The officers
get more pay, and it costs less to live,” she is urging.
“But for Serge we must consider how much greater is the cost of
champagne here,” retorts the official.
“We can marry him to Katinka, and make her father get him a promotion,”
the sister suggests. “I think he ought to have left the army and gone
into the contracting,--every contractor I know is as rich as sin and
goes to Monte Carlo.”
So the conversation rambles on. Cigarettes are passed. The hostess will
not have one.
“I used to smoke, but it is so common now,” she explains. “Every
peasant’s wife hangs over her oven with a cigarette in her mouth. Even
a vice cannot survive after it has become unfashionable.”
The host comes up to show you his curios.
“This Alpine scene is one of Segantini’s. We got it in Dresden before
he had earned his repute. I am very proud of my wife’s discrimination.
The statuettes are from a little sculptor in the Via Sistina in Rome.
Rien d’extraordinaire. The vase came from the Imperial Palace in
Peking. I bought it from a Cossack for fifty kopecks. I have been told
it belongs to the Tsin Dynasty, and is better than those they have in
Petersburg Hermitage.”
So you are shown the spoil of two continents in connoisseur purchases.
“Hardly to be suspected in Irkutsk,” he allows, complacently.
Every year host and hostess visit the Riviera, taking a turn at Monte
Carlo and Nice and Cannes. The banker speaks English, French, German,
and Italian fluently, and half a dozen other languages passably. His
wife acknowledges only French and Italian.
The conversation turns to the idealism of Pierre Loti’s description of
the road to Ispahan. The banker has followed this road himself, and he
has a much less poetic memory of it. The veteran--his father--is not up
in French or English, but he has a good knowledge of German left from
academy times. In this language he tells of the old days of the serfs
and of the Crimea. He talks with the kind frankness of age that does
not need self-suppression to prompt respect. When the guests rise to
leave, and the buoyancy of the entertainment is passed, his cloud comes
back. His voice has just a touch of bitterness as he says good-bye.
“I am glad we can welcome to our country a man traveling for pleasure.
So many who come are here under less pleasant auspices.”
“_De svidania_,” you say at last to everybody, and out you go into the
midnight frost. The droshky-driver is still there waiting. He has slept
since you entered, unmoving through the hours. “_Gastinitza_,” you
direct; and he drives to the hotel through the bleak starlit night.
Valerian comes a few days later to visit us, and volunteers to be our
guide for Irkutsk.
“If I miss a few days at the Academy, what matter? I shall improve my
English,” he explains.
Valerian is typical of the student class, all ideal and aspiration.
He has gathered the heat of the epoch, and has concentrated it upon
his philosophy. He is saturated with the French Revolution. Does he
mention Danton, for example, it is with intentness of loyalty for the
great Mountain speaker, which makes one almost think that the year
is 1792, and that the place is sans-culottic France; “debout contre
les tyrans!” He sings fiercely with his comrades, to the tune of the
_Marseillaise_, the Russian revolutionary anthem, ending it with a
swirl. “For the palace is foe to our homes!” America he considers one
of the free nations, but he has reserves. Though he is not at one with
our political system, yet he thinks that all learned about it is a
great gain.
“Your land is free politically,” he specifies, “but it is not yet
emancipated from capital,--it is not free socially. You have an
industrial feudalism and a proletariat. So will it not be when we have
won our revolution.”
Many are his anecdotes of the uprising of 1905, whose tragic drama will
never be fully pictured and whose history is to be gleaned only from
the mouths of cautious witnesses.
[Illustration: THE ORGANIZERS OF THE CHITA REPUBLIC]
“We rose at Irkutsk, many of us, students and workmen, but General
Müller had a strong garrison of troops here. We tried them, but they
would not come over. They shot down our men and dispersed all the
meetings, and now he is Governor in the Baltic Provinces. They say
that when he was drunk, he would shoot accused men in his own railway
carriage; “the butcher!” we of the Cause call him. At Tomsk and
Krasnoyarsk the city was held for weeks by our party. The railway men
would not run troop-trains and the Government was paralyzed. Chita was
held by a Revolutionary Committee of Safety. We manned the entrances
with artillery. We took turns watching, and ran the whole city, not
touching the money in the Treasury. But we were few, and word came
that the insurrection was everywhere broken. Müller was marching from
Irkutsk, and Rennenkamp came back with the troops from Manchuria. He
promised moderate terms to all but the leaders. The townspeople were
afraid, and rose against our men. Many were taken. Many fled away and
got to Japan and America. Some were shot and some were sent to the
Yakutsk. So it was crushed, and our great chance was gone.”
“Will it come again?”
“_Ni snaia!_ The workmen are ready. The intellectuals are ready. The
peasants back in Russia cry for land. Perhaps they too will be ripe
next time, and the soldiers will be with us. In any case Siberia has
seen the red flag float over the Chita Republic.”
Many-faceted is the life in a Siberian city. In numerous ways it
seems feverish and abnormal, for it represents the young blood of a
capable race struggling upward, and knowing that in much its battle
is desperate. The towns have hardly yet got settled methods; they are
outgrown villages where men of all stamps, who have become enriched
in the new land, come for the pleasures or the benefit of a less
monotonous existence. The traditions of peasant origins survive in the
conditions and general civic neglect.
Irkutsk, once its novelties have become familiar, has lost its charm.
That it is provincial is no discredit, but its amusements are of the
grosser order, unredeemed by wit. Every evening the tawdry dining-room
at the hotel echoes the songs and noise of the revelers. The same
circle attends the theatres. The students discuss hotly the rights
of man and the Valhalla prepared for all martyrs, and calm simple
wholesome life seems to be reserved for the workaday world which moves
on its slow toilsome upward way in silence.
There is, however, to-night an unwonted stir at the Hôtel Métropole.
The corridors are thronged. A Russian friend points out the notables.
The blue-uniformed official yonder with the gray mustache and the row
of glittering orders on his breast is the Governor-General. Half a
dozen members of the local bar, in frock-coats, pass through. In the
dining-room a young lieutenant, dashingly clad in long maroon coat
with the row of silver-topped cartouches and the clattering sabre of
the Emperor’s Cossack Guard, is being deferentially entertained by
officers of the garrison. Three officials are taking champagne with
two beautifully gowned women, Parisiennes even to their long pendant
earrings. The hotel-pages in fresh red blouses and high boots pass here
and there with messages. The waiters, with intensified deference, glide
among the crowd in its many-colored uniforms and glittering war-medals.
“Who has arrived?” we ask, surveying the scene.
“A member of the Imperial Cabinet.”
The announcement of his name has a personal interest and memories of
earlier stays in Russia.
The Minister’s life has been a romance indeed. Disagreeing with his
family through liberal ideas, he went in 1862 to Birkenhead as a
locomotive engineer, to the United States, to Argentine, and returning
to Russia worked up from a very small government position to be chief
of all the Russian roads, railways, and telegraphs, and Minister of
Ways and Communications in the Czar’s Cabinet. His brain threw the line
of rails over half a continent. On the outbreak of the Japanese War he
was called from his retirement to the colossal task of bringing to the
front across the width of Asia half a million men, their artillery and
arms, their food, their transport, all on the one line of rails. He has
served under three Emperors and is life-member of the Senate.
You send a card in through one of the attachés. In a few minutes there
is delivered to you the Prince’s card, across which is written: “At
noon.”
At the hour appointed you mount to the apartment overlooking the
Bolshoiskaia. Guards at salute, staff in brilliant uniforms,
secretaries and callers in full dress,--the antechambers are full. You
pass through to the furthermost room.
In a nest of books and maps, with blue-prints outspread on floor and
chairs and sofas, is an elderly man in a plain frock-coat, without a
ribbon or a button to hint his honors. He is vigorous, hearty, simple,
almost unchanged from your earlier acquaintance, his keen flashing eyes
hinting ever a reverse side to the great repose of his manner.
Personal questions occupy the first minutes, but presently we are into
larger themes, and you begin to feel subtly the man’s power. He has
come on a special tour, to inspect, with his own practiced eyes, the
projected double-tracking of the Siberian Railroad. Every brakeman
and locomotive engineer, every traffic superintendent and division
manager along the route knows he could step down from his private car
and handle the levers and give them directions. His mind is a very
vortex of ideas, and his range of conversation reflects world-wide
interests. The talk gets to the American political situation and the
race-problem. Later it shifts to the Japanese War, and he tells of some
of his experiences getting the troops into Manchuria. A mention of the
overland road to China awakens reminiscences.
“It was long before the railroad that I went over that route first,” he
says. He tells of his months-long horseback ride beyond Baikal before
the railroad went through, inspecting the trade-route and the prospects
of the country. By and by the conversation has got to the special
problems of the Slav. With the straightforward frankness of a great
nature which wishes the best for his country, he tells of the Russian
aspirations from the standpoint of those who are facing the problems of
the nation in their fact and practice.
“I too,” he says, “was once for changing much in a little time, and
worked to free the serfs and to start the elective Semstvos throughout
the Empire. Alas! so much that they want is possible to no government!
One cannot by enactment abolish want or bring all men to a _niveau_.
We are trying to give every man the chance to rise, unchecked by any
administrative barrier. But one sees as he lives longer that all which
one wishes cannot come at a _coup_. Great changes, great improvements,
I have witnessed, but they have not come by violence. We must keep
order, and hand on to our sons an undivided Empire of the Russias.”
You leave this patient builder of the new order alone amid his maps
and studies in the idle Sunday city. As you descend the steps, a
black-capped student passes the door. He is humming the forbidden
_Marseillaise_.
IV
SLEDGING THROUGH TRANSBAIKALIA
The sledge-route that leads to the Chinese frontier goes southward
from Verhneudinsk across the territory of Transbaikalia. In old days
one reached its starting-point by traversing the frozen Lake Baikal in
sleighs, muffled in furs against the sweep of the terrible winds, with
plunging ponies at full gallop.
Now, after mighty effort and at monumental cost, the line of the great
railroad has been driven through the last obstacles that blocked an
open way, and trains carry the traveler through the deep cuts and
tunnels that pierce the barrier crags around the Holy Sea.
It is not the express that one takes at the Irkutsk station to reach
the ancient fort, but the daily post-train, the servant of local
traffic. Luggage-cumbered passengers crowd into the cars wherever
there is a place. A few, and these mostly officials, establish
themselves in the blue-painted first class. Many press into the yellow
second class--merchants, lesser chinovniks, tradesmen, popes, and
children on their way to the city schools. Swarms pour into the green
wooden-benched third, where the thronging tousle-headed emigrants
patiently huddle closer to give room to newcomers. Next to the engine,
with its big smokestack, is the mail-wagon, on whose sides are painted
crossed post-horns and the picture of a sealed letter. Behind this,
with a sentry on guard, is the baggage-car. The sinister compartment
of drawn shutters and barred windows is for the prisoners. In this
princes or artel-workers, their identity unsuspected, can be run across
a continent to their unknown places of exile.
The post-train starts from Irkutsk occasionally on time. In general,
along the local line the time-table is about as reliable a guide as the
calendars sold to the mujiks, with weather prophecies for each day of
the year. Fifteen miles an hour is mean speed. Stops may be for minutes
or for hours. One settles down therefore in the attitude sacred to a
yachting cruise,--foie gras and bridge, if it is calm; double reefs and
pilot-bread if it blows up. The high heavens alone know when we are to
get in, and nobody cares. It is not unpleasant withal to sprawl over
a great broad couch, and as the train crawls forward watch the white
highlands slowly unroll, the towering cliffs and peaks with spear-like
pines driving up through the snow, and the icy lake below.
For meals, one dashes out during the station-stops, and before
the third bell gives warning of the start, devours meat-filled
_piroushkies_ and swallows lemon-tinctured tea at the long
buffet-tables decked with hollow squares of wine-bottles, and beer
from the seven breweries of Irkutsk. If one has a teapot he can get
boiling water from the government-furnished samovar, and milk from the
peasant-women who stand in booths hard-by. He can add salt fish and hot
fowl, together with rye-bread and butter, and then consume his rations
at leisure in the compartment. At night the seats are let down, and one
sleeps in fitful naps among the hills of baggage. When morning comes,
an hour-long procession forms to take turns at the wash-bowl with its
trickle valve, in a towelless, soapless, and cindered lavatory.
We leave Irkutsk at ten in the morning, and reach Verhneudinsk at seven
next day, covering in twenty-one hours the 446 versts. Here is the last
of the railroad. With troika, sledge, and tarantass, by highway and
byway, over frozen rivers and camel-tracked trails, we must now follow
the old road into the heart of Asia.
The post-station that serves as point of departure for the sledge
journey lies some distance away, at the edge of the town. An
_isvoschik_, after due bargaining, proceeds to transfer thither us and
our dunnage-bags.
As we ride through the town, just waking for the day, the streets, the
lamps, the telegraph-wires, the comfortable houses,--each and every
symbol of civilization takes on a new significance now that it is to
be left behind. On the parade-grounds the recruits are at the morning
drill, shouting lustily in unison, “_Ras, dva, tre!_” to keep the
step. We pass the barracks, the shops with their brightly illustrated
signs, and ride under the wooden yellow-painted Alexander Arch.
[Illustration: BAIKAL STATION]
[Illustration: THE HIGHLANDS OF TRANSBAIKALIA]
Soon we reach a street of low log houses, and a lofty boarded enclosure
is ahead. At its gateway is swinging a black signboard, painted with
post-horn and the Czar’s double-headed eagle. “_Postava Stancie_,”
is inscribed over the lintel. Between the black and white-striped
gate-posts we swing into the courtyard. To the left stretches a low
log house. To the right, along the wall, are ranked sledges. In front
are the stalls. Grooms, whip in hand, stand around in the courtyard,
muffled against the cold.
“Is the _gaspadine_ going on?” one of them asks.
On the reply, “Yes, at once,” he scurries off to start harnessing, and
you shoulder open the low felted door of the post-house and enter the
big waiting-room.
“Three horses?” asks the young black-mustached agent within.
“Yes, a troika sledge.”
He turns to the book of registry attached to the rough table by a long
cord fastened with a big red seal, and begins to write.
“The name?” he asks. It goes down.
“The destination?”
“The Chinese frontier at Kiahta.”
“Your first relay-station is Nijniouboukounskaia, twenty-seven versts.”
The fare is set out in a printed placard posted up on the wall; as is
the price of a samovar, fifteen kopecks, and all the other items that
the traveler may require.
The agent hands you the slip: “One rouble, eighty-two kopecks, for two
persons, the _gaspadine_ and his courier”; something under three cents
a passenger-mile.
As you wait for the harnessing of the post-sledge, the courier
overlooks anew the bags and counts out again the parcels. As light as
possible must be the impedimenta. Now is the last chance for change.
The big station-clock ticks on. The agent moves about in the warm dusky
silence of the house. The courier straps tighter the dunnage-bag.
“Look that your furs are snugly fastened,” he says.
There is trample of footsteps by the door. A fur-clad, ruddy-faced
driver stumbles in, makes the sign of the cross before the ikon on the
further wall, and beckons to you.
“Ready!” he says.
Three shaggy ponies stand hitched to a wooden sledge, not high like
those of city _isvoschiks_, but low and shaped like a wide bath-tub.
The bottom is cushioned with hay and you are to sit some six inches
above the runners. The bells hanging from the big arched _duga_ over
the centre horse jingle as he frets. The side horses, that will run
loose between rope-traces, look around at the _yamshik_ who stands
by. He holds in his mittened hands four reins of leather, twisted into
ropes--two for the centre trotter, one each, on the outside, for the
gallopers.
You climb into the nest of rugs and furs superimposed upon your
baggage! The _yamshik_ leaps to the precarious perch that serves as
his seat. The whip falls, and with a bound the horses are off. Always
one starts at top speed, however bad the way. Always one finishes at a
gallop, however jaded the horses. It is the rule of the Russian road.
With bells jingling, the driver shouting to clear the way, and a white
cloud rising behind, the sledge skims out between the log houses
which flank the straggling street. Dogs bark and the idle passers-by
stare. Fur-covered pigs scramble up with a squeal, and scurry from
their resting-places in the road. Girls, with shako-capped heads, peer
through the windows. Little chubby boys, in big brown felt boots, cheer.