Part 7

In the antechamber a gray-bloused attendant helps you off with wraps and goloshes, then silently disappears through a rear door, leaving you standing there unannounced. The vestibule is cumbered with coats and hats on the wall-hooks, overshoes helter-skelter on the floor, and canes and umbrellas in the corner. It is like a clothing establishment. Beyond the curtained doorway on the right are lights, and the sound of the piano is louder. This seems the most promising direction for exploration, so--forward!

Beyond the portières is a splendidly lofty room, like that of an Italian palace, brilliantly lighted with electricity. Many-paned windows run high up, starting from the level of one’s breast, and long heavy hangings half-conceal them. To the right of the door is a mahogany grand piano, at which, oblivious of the world, the host is diligently thumping away at _Partant pour la Syrie!_ with inadvertent variations, singing carelessly as he plays. Beyond him, in an imposing armchair of German oak, like King Edward’s throne in the Abbey, is a lady, propped with many cushions. She is slender and darkly clad, and is conversing with a young man in uniform, who sits very straight on a dainty gilt chair of the Louis XVI epoch. A low lacquered table before them is gayly painted with geisha girls and eaved pagodas. It holds a massive brass samovar encircled by a row of beautifully colored tea-tumblers of the sort that one sees on exhibition in the glass-factories which front the Grand Canal at Venice. The chorus comes from the banker at the piano:--

Amour à la plus belle; Honneur au plus vaillant.

[Illustration: THE ICE-BREAKER, YERMAK--LAKE BAIKAL]

There is no use of paltering and waiting to be announced, so we enter the room. The performer hears the steps on the polished floor and swings round on the stool. “Ah, voilà!” he says, and rises to introduce you to his wife.

“A moi le plaisir,” she says, smiling. “Mon frère, Ivan Semyonevich,” presenting you next to the young officer, who rises abruptly and clicks his heels as he takes your hand.

You are motioned to a replica of the little chair, and your host returns to his piano, this time to play with immense satisfaction in your honor a hazy memory of some bygone variety show: “There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night.”

“A friend is very welcome,” says Madame Karetnikov, when he finishes. “We do not see many from the world here in Siberia.”

“The life, however, is interesting, is it not?”

“O monsieur, I, too, was interested at first, but there are so few people of the world here, and we see them all the time. C’est affreux! I give you a month to change that opinion.”

“You give a month, Irina; I give a week,” growls her brother.

“If it were not that we get away during the spring one would perish of ennui,” the hostess adds. “But Japan is not far. We go there or to Europe every year. Perhaps soon we shall get a transfer to another branch.”

“You bankers have hopes,” observes the brother, “but what of us poor officials of the Justice Department! We are chained to the bench like old galley-slaves, and all we get is three hundred roubles a month and a red button when we are seventy.”

As the macerated song floats anew from the piano, the hall-door opens and there is dimly visible in the anteroom a curious much-encumbered figure, with a gigantic sheepskin hat and short blue reefer coat. He divests himself of these, and of a long woolen inside muffler, and, brushing back his long hair, comes into the room. His blue tunic is resplendent with brass buttons and he wears jack-boots. A light down is growing upon his upper lip. He is nineteen or twenty.

“Good-day!” says our host, hailing him in English.

“Good-day, uncle!” he replies.

He presents himself before Madame Karetnikov, who holds out her hand, which he formally kisses.

“_Zdravstvouitie_, Valerian!” says the official, shaking the young man’s hand.

Then you are introduced with explanations.

“Valerian here is in his last year at the Irkutsk Realistic School, studying preparatory to engineering.”

The status of science in Siberia becomes the theme, and the newcomer infuses considerable local color into his pictures.

“Does the professor in drawing suit you now, Valerian?” the banker inquires presently. Then he adds to you: “They all went on strike because the old professor of drawing had a method they did not like. The authorities had to replace him before any of the students would go back.”

“The new professor respects our rights,” says Valerian soberly, not liking the levity of his elder.

Soon, from an adjoining room, come in the children of the host,--a very pretty girl of the age at which misses wear short dresses and braids; and a little boy of about eight. The boy very respectfully kisses his mother’s hand and is introduced to the stranger, but finds a superior attraction in his father at the piano.

The girl, Marie Pavlovna, sits down beside her cousin Valerian. Lacking the stock football amenities of a happier land, and half-embarrassed, half-superior in the status of a budding young man, Valerian is not much of a conversation-maker. Marie Pavlovna, too, is seen but not heard. She is evidently the typical product of the French system of sex-segregation and cloistered study, which keeps girls abnormally uninteresting until marriage, perhaps to make amends subsequently.

“I think we had better go in and eat. It is half-past eight,” says the host.

“Si tu veux,” replies his wife; and we stroll out into a big dining-room, at one end of which is a heavily-freighted oak sideboard.

As we approach this, the host opens a far door, and shouts down into the darkness:--

“Obeid, Dimitri.”

We turn to the _zakuska_ sideboard. The official reaches for the 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.