CHAPTER XIX

THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD

THE band of exiles had several days' rest before the convict-barge which was to carry them up the Volga returned. This gave them all time to recover from their terrible railway journey. The women washed and mended the clothes. But there was no decent privacy. In the family kameras men and boys were confined with women and girls in an indiscriminate herding together. More than anything else, worse than the filth and the vermin about them, the modest Stundist women felt this indecent exposure. But there was no help for it. They did not even dare to hold themselves altogether aloof from the coarse, wretched women who were forced upon their companionship.

Alexis and Khariton urged them to do any little act of kindness in their power both to women and children. They themselves sought to gain an influence over the men; they talked to them, wrote letters for them, and made many efforts to interest them and wile away the tedious hours of idleness. The days dragged heavily along, and most of the men spent them in gambling and quarrelling.

Over the big boys and girls, Michael, Sergius, and Marfa soon exercised a good influence. Michael especially could interest them by long stories of his voyage out to Scotland and his twelve months' sojourn there. He could talk for hours of that foreign country; and the boys squatted round him in the prison-yard, listening with breathless attention to his tales of his brave forefathers, the Covenanters, their hairbreadth escapes and courageous deaths.

So the days passed by, spent altogether out of doors in an enclosed yard with high palisadings, which shut out all glimpses of the world outside, excepting the blue sky overhead. But every night they had to herd in the unventilated kamera, reeking with foul air, and swarming with vermin. It was better at night than in the morning, for the open door had admitted some fresh air. But after the kamera had been closed an hour or two, the atmosphere was poisonous. This misery would follow them all along the route to the very end.

At last the convict-barge arrived, and the men were separated from the women and children. More convicts joined the band from Kovylsk, and there was much overcrowding. But this was nothing like as bad as it would be later in the year, when the bands of exiles would be larger. There was no yard here to pass the days in. Instead were two big cages of strong bars, in which the exiles were able to stand upright, though it was almost impossible to move easily about. In the railway waggons they had been compelled to sit, and could not stand. Here they were compelled to stand, and could not sit. But unless they stayed in the foul atmosphere of the cabins below, which no fresh air could enter, they must stand all day long, closely packed in these cages, more like wild beasts than human beings.

It was early summer. Day after day—the sun shining joyously on the rejoicing earth; the happy, free peasants pausing at their labour on the banks of the river to watch the convict-barge go by; the merry sound of church bells ringing—the laughter of girls at the washing platforms—the singing of the larks and the calling of the cuckoo filling the air—day after day, through all this gladness, the terrible load of untold misery sailed up the Volga. Yet this was only one amongst many that would follow in their wake until the winter came. But the day was better far than the night, when they were fastened down below, and the atmosphere in the cabin grew so heavy and polluted they could hardly breathe it.

They left the barge, as they had left the train, with the sense of relief which any change in misery brings. There was a short journey by railway again; and then, because there had been a landslip on the line farther on, it was decided that the convoy should take the old route along the Great Siberian Road. The exiles left the train with the idea that the worst lay behind them. For now they would be able to move freely; they would live in the open air, and at present the early summer was full of sweetness and beauty.

The country through which they passed was carpeted with gay flowers, and the road led through meadows and forests, along valleys, and over the flanks of mountains. Here and there were village streets stretching for a mile or two along the sides of the road. Cattle were browsing on the common pastureland, and corn was shooting up rapidly under the sunshine, which was growing hotter every day. The cloudless sky above them, and the sweet fresh air breathing softly about them, revived the spirits of Michael and Sergius. This was something like what they had anticipated. Little Clava, too, regained her merry ways in some measure, as the children were free to run where they chose, and pick the flowers, provided they kept up with the convoy. Sometimes the convoy-guards were kindly and indulgent, but when the guards were changed they proved often to be impatient and even brutal men. But as the march was a steady one, and about twenty miles a day, there was not much time for rambling among the flowers, and it was forbidden to lag behind. There were rough, springless carts for carrying the children under twelve, as well as the men and women who were too ill to walk. But little Clava did not ride in the cart. Michael and Sergius said they would carry her on their backs whenever she was tired, along the Great Siberian Road. Tatiania was only too glad to keep her darling by her side.

But Marfa was suffering in silence more than any of them suspected. She had spent the winter indoors with her mother, who would not let her out of her sight, and this confinement had sapped her strength before she set out on this sorrowful journey. The scenes she had passed through, of which she had formed even less idea than Michael and Sergius, had given her a more severe mental shock than they had felt. Everything had revolted her. But above all, the infamous and abandoned men and women with whom she had been brought into close contact were insufferably loathsome to her. She felt herself in a hellish atmosphere, amid a band of monsters, from whom she could not escape. Her mind as well as her body was ailing. Though she was not separated from her family, an indescribable home-sickness took possession of her. She longed with a hopeless longing to see once more her old home at Knishi.

Marfa kept her grief, which was gnawing at her heart, to herself. But the home-sickness grew greater as every day took her farther away from her birthplace. They had not yet passed the boundary which separates Russia from Siberia. The exiles were still in their native land. But presently they reached the frontier. A midday halt was called around a square stone pillar, about twice the height of a man, on one side of which lay Russia, and on the other Siberia. It was half-way between the last Russian étape and the first Siberian one; and the cavalcade, with its convoy-guard, its chained prisoners, its carts laden with children and invalids, and its families of free exiles, rested for a short time at this place of farewell.

The midday halt was usually a time of relief and comparative enjoyment. But to-day there was a universal outburst of grief. Even the most brutal and most stupid of the criminals wept at the thought of quitting Russia—their fatherland. Scarcely one among them had ever trodden a foreign soil. Most of the women knelt down, with sobs and prayers. The Stundists stood bareheaded, looking away from the boundary posts to the western land, and taking a last submissive gaze at the dear country they were leaving for conscience' sake. Michael and Sergius, linked arm in arm, leaned sorrowfully against the pillar. Suddenly a wild shriek rang through the sobs and groans of the crowd, and looking round they saw Marfa falling forward against the foot of the pillar, close to the spot where they were standing.

She was quite insensible when they lifted her up. As soon as the order to march forward was given, they carried her to one of the rude carts, at the bottom of which she lay on a little straw, and Tatiania obtained permission to go with her. She was not quite conscious when they reached the étape in the evening. The family kamera was overcrowded as usual, and all they could do for Marfa was to lay her on the hard, bare planks of the sleeping-platform. All night did Khariton and Tatiania watch waking by their delirious child, able to do nothing for her, and only longing for the return of daylight. Fortunately the nights were short, and a dim dawn soon shone through the dirty casements of the étape.