LIFE at Moscow was very full during the ensuing two months. What the students did I did. Each night there was some new diversion; a visit to the Narodny Dom with dancing and confetti fights until three in the morning, or a skating masquerade at Chisty Prudy. Sometimes we would go in sledges to Petrovsky Park; other times we would go to the Kremlin and climb up the steeple of St John’s. These days were full of variety and entertainment. One evening I presented myself at the stage-door of the Theatre of Art; I could not find the box-office. Stanislavsky’s company was performing The Life of Man. An actor met me and I asked him how I should get a ticket. But, when he discovered I was an Englishman, he took me to the manager, and got me a free pass to the third row of the stalls. That was glorious hospitality. It was a magnificent performance; the stage management was perfect if extremely ingenious. Another night a Russian girl asked me to take her to the Hermitage Theatre; she was going anyway, but she needed a “cavalier.” So we went and listened to four French farces, all performed the same night. Katia, for so she was called, was a Georgian and talked to me of the Caucasus all the time we promenaded. In Russian theatres one has a quarter of an hour’s promenade after each act. We were supposed to be immensely smitten with one another, and ignorant of the state of my heart she said sweetly, as we were in the sledge going home, “You were a quiet boy and I awakened you, eh?”

Among a number of expeditions, visiting factory owners, tobogganing at Sokolniky, or skiing, one adventure stands out more vividly than the others. Phrosia, a lame woman who cooked for us in our Kislovka room, had warned us she wouldn’t be at home for two days. She was going away to pray. Shura wanted to know why she couldn’t remain in Moscow to pray, but she only looked at him very solemnly and said her mother had always prayed at Troitsky Lavra that day and so would she. I resolved to accompany her. The account of my pilgrimage which I wrote at the time will show the sequel.

“This is written in the waiting-room here. Before me the lights twinkle on the little vodka bar. There is much noise in the room, but the heavy sound of snoring is gaining the victory over all. What a night this has been! How came I here? How is it that I still live? To-night—the first act was among crowds of pilgrims at church; the second act in a one-room cottage framed in old newspapers and inhabited by five men, two women and two babies (thoughts of plague and exit!); the third act was spent among the churches and the stars in the cool, fresh night; fourth act, discovery of the railway station full of people drunk or sleeping; the fifth act is to come. I am drinking my eleventh glass of tea from the inexhaustible pot, but ah! how restless I am! I am sure I carry on my person many of the unnumbered inhabitants of that cottage. How the insects creaked in its newspaper walls! About me now, picture fearful, monstrous peasants spluttering, roaring, singing. A gentleman comes along now and then and pretends to keep order. My vis-À-vis is uproarious. Figure him with thick red hair and wild red beard. He is a fat man and he stands facing the gendarme and answers each remonstrance with an inarticulate roar. Rrrr! His hair has been cut away with shears, and it overhangs his head equally all round like the straw of a thatched cottage.

“‘Make w-way, will you,’ said the peasant to me with a voice like thunder.

“I smiled gently. The peasant frowned and twisted his red lips under his tangled moustache. He leaned down and brought his wild phiz close up to mine and leered into my eyes. I could not have dreamed of a more terrifying face. It recalled to me the dreadful thoughts of my childhood as to what might be the face of the Black Douglas or the Bogey Man.

“‘Make way, will you, or I’ll cut your throat,’ he roared.

“Several of his companions warned him that the gendarme was listening.

“‘You’re not very polite,’ I said. ‘What is it you want?’

“‘There’s no room for me anywhere else.’

“I made a place for him and he took it without a word. He became immediately content and self-absorbed like a babe that, after crying and kicking, has found its mother’s breast.

“He is now sitting with both elbows on the table. In one hand he grasps a fish tightly; he held that fish in his hand all the time he was confronting me. Ah! Now he is yelling to the counter for vodka. He is a rough customer. A tall labourer in a red shirt bent over to me just now and asked me if I knew what his name was.

“‘His name is Dung.’

“Everyone in the room laughed. Even the gendarme grinned. The peasant repeated his joke. It was evidently his only stock and store. Perhaps his father taught him that joke, and he in his turn had it from his grandfather. He is at this moment addressing the peasant of the human thatch.

“‘Mr Dung, ha, ha, ha. Your Excellency Baron Dung, a word with you, ha, ha, ha,’ etc. etc. etc. But, strange to say, my antagonist pays no attention whatever, but regards his fish and his, as yet, untasted, vodka with the eye of an expert mathematician who is pondering some more-than-usually-interesting problem.

“There has not been much occasion for ennui since I came in here. A Lettish pedlar has come in, he has a face like an American music-hall hobo, a tramp artiste. So you would say to see his high-arched eyebrows and his long mouth. But he is a poor starved wretch, and there may be some truth in his reiterated assertion that he has been robbed of three farthings. If he doesn’t stop screeching out that fact the gendarme is likely to throw him out or take him to the ‘lock-up.’ My attention is divided between him and a girl at the bar. During the last ten minutes a peasant lass has taken five glasses of vodka, and a well-dressed man, himself drunk, is making clumsy attempts to kiss her. She grins and reels about—a country girl. She smiles idiotically and tries to steer her cheek and lips away from the man’s moustache. If he were a little less unsteady on his feet he would have no difficulty, I am sure. The man is making us all a speech now, and the peasants are jesting according to their knowledge of jests. The gendarme strolls fretfully up and down, his fingers twitching. Oh, my acquaintance with the one joke has risen and is addressing the man who has been ‘treating’ the girl. He caught hold of the man with the thatched head; the latter rose, thinking the policeman wanted him. But no!

“‘Allow me to introduce you to Mr—’

“‘Here, I’ve heard enough of that, you go out,’ says the gendarme, and grasps the joking man to put him out.

“Then up speaks the pedlar.

“‘Please, Mr Gendarme, he stole three farthings of mine.’

“‘Yes?’ replies the policeman. ‘Then you must both come to the police-station.’ He blows his whistle vigorously. There is a crowd of moujiks round him. The man with the thatched head has sunk back sleepily into his seat. I hear him murmuring gently, ‘Cut his throat, cut his throat.’ Two other gendarmes are here now, and the two prisoners are being kicked out with great turbulence.

“A furious noise, and yet many men and women are lying fast asleep among the bundles on the floor. The bar-tender moves hither and thither behind his orderly rows of glass bottles and is quite at his ease. He is bringing me an extra pennyworth of sugar now! In the darkest corner of the waiting-room an elaborate temple is set up and little lamps burn dimly before the gilded Ikons of Mary and the child Jesus. The drunkards look thither furtively and cross themselves. The scene is strange. I was rummaging through my pocket-book just now for some paper and came across the photograph of dear K——. I took it out and let the face look into the room. I felt convulsed with laughter at the wistful way she looked out upon the scene; the print is fading slightly, and there is a sort of ‘silken, sad, uncertain’ expression about it that was so astonishingly true that the real face could not look differently if my friend could be instantly brought here. But she sleeps peacefully in that London suburb that I know. Fourteen hours to wait for a train! And what shall I do this long day? I might walk back again to Moscow, thirty-five versts is not far, but it has come to my mind that I shall not walk this stretch. It has been a rough jaunt.

“This room with its vodka bar and its temple of God, and the drunkards flung all around the steps of the altar, is a picture of Russia—of an aspect of Russia. When I came into the village this afternoon the sacred Ikons were being borne in procession through the streets, and services were being conducted at street corners. Two priests were detailed off to officiate at this station. I saw them go in through the throng of the bare-headed crowd. Dressed in cloth of gold and mitred in purple, they moved about majestically in the performance of their office, and from their mouths came the unearthly sounds in which it is orthodox to clothe the words of their litany. Pilgrimages are made to this shrine on each great fast day. Many thousands flock hither from Moscow and from the country round about; some come on foot, some by train, and some in sledges. I came by train, third-class, with our cook; she is now somewhere sleeping in an unheavenly cottage there below. It has been interesting to see the far-distance pilgrims; the peasant women bent double by huge bundles on their backs, but resting on stout staffs and looking out very piously and anciently from their deep hoods. We had four of them in our carriage in the train; very gay they looked in their coloured cotton dresses; but they were reserved, and their monosyllabic groans and grunts scarcely sounded articulate outside the circle of their own company. The service last evening was grand; the festival commenced at six o’clock; I had been watching the crows whirling about the domes of the churches, settling on the high gilt crosses, flapping their wings, balancing themselves, calling to one another, and the dusk was deepening. I went into the great church and looked at the long queue of people waiting to consecrate their candles and be anointed with the holy oil. At last the priests came forward and lit one candle before each of the Ikons, and a long-haired pope stood before the people and pronounced the induction of the service. The choir voices swelled in unison as the incense reached one’s senses, and the solemn litany went forward with its eternal choric response: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy, oh, Lord, have mercy.’ ‘Gospody pomeely, Gospody pomeely.’ ... And now and then the priest would repeat the words so rapidly that it sounded like gospodipity, gospodipity.

“About ten o’clock I left the dim church and went out into the darkness, among shadows of unknown men and women and bundles. A hundred yards distant a bright window gave a full light on to the night. A tavern was there, ‘where stood a company with heated eyes,’ a wild, hairy people who stormed and screamed and fell about. A glass of tea for me, also a bottle of black-currant water; the like of the latter we shall not drink again. No room to sit there. The street without was full of solicitous boys and girls who wanted to find you a lodging. To one of these I had recourse, and after many unsuccessful ventures she took me to the fore-mentioned cottage. There was more adventure and novelty than sleep on the bill of fare, and I was tempted. When one carries a portable bed one is fairly independent, but why had I no misgivings here? The great winter stove on which the good woman of the place bakes her bread had been at full heat all day, and the men and women who lay there were like lumps of flesh in a thick stew of air. On the torn newspaper ceiling the flies walked about or buzzed down to settle on the faces of the sleepers. The place of honour was given me, the one bed with a rag of curtain. I was blessed and prayed for before the cottage Ikons, which were set up in a further corner—perhaps I had need for prayer....

“At midnight, having passed through many adventures, I evacuated the position. Much difficulty there was among the legs of the sleepers, but an exit was achieved, and presently there was a ceiling of stars above me and a cold breeze about. The cottage being in the middle of a field there was some further difficulty in extrication. Then came a series of rencontres. First a beggar, very drunk, and whirling a cudgel above his head, tells me he knows me, has seen me in Moscow. (I wondered if, perhaps, he had actually seen me at the night-house with Nicholas.) Then a gendarme presents a bold aspect but falls back judiciously since I do not hesitate in my stride. I am a suspicious-looking character. Watchmen-monks, with the night breeze blowing their long hair about (the clergy all wear long hair), I have encounters with these. But the night was very good and full of music; never so many stars, never such a Milky Way or such black unstarry patches, and the air was thrilling. The newspaper cottage was far away. Presently I discovered the railway station and the waiting-room full of people, and here I am. It will soon be dawn. I have poured myself out the twelfth and thirteenth glasses of tea, very like hot water and without sugar or milk. If I have caught any malady at the cottage I should be saved by this internal washing. I become the latest convert to the system of Dr Sangrado of Gil Blas memory.... Two priests have arrived in the waiting-room....

“Ah! I hear that, after all, there will be a train home soon.

“I left the station at a run and was back at the newspaper cottage, and a half-dressed, half-sleeping woman let me in, got me my things and asked mournfully why it was I could not sleep.

“‘Was it too hot, barin?’

“She blessed me and let me depart.

“Now the little village was in movement, the church bell was sounding and many little bells were tinkling; and many sleepy folks were making their way to church, for at dawn another great service commenced. At the waiting-room a service was begun. And now the night gave way to early dusk, and the dark churches became dimly visible; the sleepy peasants rubbed their eyes. Presently a glorious sunrise began to flush upon the gold and silver Ikons, and softly and lowly with the in-coming light the services in the churches proceeded, in sweet, melancholy music. The faces of the worshippers became less shadowy, and at last all was in full day. Then, too, my lazy train steamed away, and Sergievo and last night were both behind me.”