“My God! my God!” said an old military man with unnecessary fervour. “What are the idiots getting out for. I go one no trump, partner. Where is my partner? The donkey 'll be slipping and hurting himself on those slippery steps next and then our four 'll be spoilt,” and he looked round for sympathy.
Someone murmured something about seeing the country, but he shrivelled him with his scorn.
“Seeing the country! This is the eleventh time I've been across and I never even look out if I can help myself. Know better. Oh, here you are, partner,” slightly mollified. “I've gone one no trump, and there are two hearts against you.”
It was a curious thing to me that most of the passengers in that luxuriously equipped train, with every comfort for the asking save fresh air, grumbled so continuously. It seems to be the accepted thing that the traveller who travels luxuriously should grumble. Our old soldier considered himself a much-injured individual when the attendants did not know by instinct when he required lemon and tea and when whisky-and-soda; and the breaking up of a game of auction bridge because the tables were wanted for dinner reduced him to blackest despair. The hordes which through the ages have swept, conquering, westwards probably never complained, their lives were too strenuous, either they fought and died and were at peace, or they fought and conquered, and small discomforts were swallowed up in the joy of victory. It is left to these modern travellers flying eastward at a rate that would have made the old-time nomads think of witchcraft and sorcery to make a fuss about trifles, to complain of the discomforts and hardships of the long journey across the old world.
I knew the country. In the days when I was a little girl studying my map with diligence I should have counted it a joy unspeakable if I had thought that ever I should be crossing Siberia; crossing the great rivers, the Obi, the Yenesei and the Angara that were then as far away and distant to me as the river that Christian crossed to gain high Heaven; that I should watch the sledges travelling in the sunlight along their hard, frozen surfaces, I to whom a small piece of ice on a saucer of water, which by luck we might get if there happened to be an exceptionally cold night in the winter, was a wonder and a delight. I suppose my joy would have' been tempered could I have known how many years must pass over my head before this wonderful thing would happen, for in those days five-and-twenty seemed extraordinarily old, and I was very sure that at thirty life would not be worth living. And I have passed that terrible age limit and have missed most things I have set my heart upon, but still there are moments when life is well worth living. Strange and bitter is the teaching of the years—bitter but kindly, too.
We passed Irkutsk where East and West meet, a great city with church spires and cupolas and buildings overlooking the broad and frozen Angara. We raced along by leafless woods, by barren stretches of spotless snow, and sometimes the swiftly running river was piling up the ice in great slabs and blocks and girding and fretting at its chains, and sometimes it was flowing free for a few miles, the only flowing river in all the long, long journey from the old Russian capital. The water was black, and dark, and cold, looking far colder than the ice. The duck rose, leaving long wakes on the water; then there was a little steam, and then a greater steam in the clear sunlight, but by the time we reached Lake Baikal, the Fortunate Sea, the Holy Sea, the frost had gripped the water again, the lake was a sheet of white, and the afternoon sun shone on hills snow-clad on the eastern side. The hills, hardly worth mentioning when one thinks of the great plain across which we had come, are down to the very ice edge. The great lake, the eighth in the world, is but a cleft in them, and the railway track runs on a ledge cut out of the steep hill-side overhanging its waters, waters that were now smooth and white and hard as marble. Here and there little jetties run out; here and there were boats, useless now, close against them; here and there were piles of wood that would be burned up before the thaw. It had been Siberia for days but Baikal struck the true Siberian note.
Here there were convicts too. Some alterations or repairs were being carried out on the line, and drab-coloured convicts were working at them, guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. Siberia! Siberia of the story-teller! On every little point of vantage stood a soldier with high fur cap, looking out over the men working below him, and they, splitting wood, digging holes in the iron-bound ground, paused in their labours and lifted their faces to the passing train. Did it speak to them of home and culture and love and happiness and freedom, or were they merely the brutal criminal justly punished, and the peasant, poor and simple, here because the Government want workers, and that he cannot pay his taxes is excuse enough.
The sun was brilliant but it was cold, bitter cold, such cold as I had never dreamed of. Men's breath came like solid steam, and the hair on their faces was fringed with white hoar-frost. The earth was so hard frozen that they were building great fires to thaw it before working; and as the darkness fell the flames leapt yellow and red and blue, glowing spots of colour against the whiteness and the night. And with the night came the full moon high in the clear sky, a disc of dazzling silver. The Providence that has guided my wandering footsteps surely gives sometimes with a lavish hand; that which I have sought earnestly with many tears is not for me, but this still moonlight winter's night in Siberia was mine, and all the world that we were rushing past was fairyland. There was in it nothing sordid, nothing unclean, nothing sorrowful.
And it was still fairyland when I awoke in the morning to a brilliant sun shining upon a forest of dainty, delicate, graceful birches with every branch, every little twig, clothed in sparkling white, for the sunbeams were caught and reflected a million times on the frost flowers, and the whole forest was a thing of beauty and wonder that to see once is to remember for a lifetime. It is worth living to have seen it. I have seen great rivers and mountains and been awed by mighty forests, I have watched the thundering surf and listened to the roar of the tornado; but this was something quite different. Awe was not the predominant feeling, but joy—joy that such beauty exists, that I was alive to look upon it. Behind us lay a long, long trail. We in the rushing train represented the onward march of a mighty civilisation, but all around us in the brilliant winter sunshine lay the limitless plains of Siberia, and the birch forest, and the snow, and the frost, and the beauty that is not made with hands, that defies civilisation, that was before civilisation, and we were moved to raise our eyes with the psalmist and cry aloud: “How wonderful are thy works, O Lord!”
But I did not appreciate the beauty of the winter or the moonlight when they roused me at three o'clock in the morning at Manchuria because my luggage had to be examined at the Chinese Customs. The scanty lights on the station, the silver moon in the heaven above lit up the platform as we passengers of the train de luxe made our way to the baggage-room along a path between heaped-up frozen snow and ice, and the difference in temperature between that station platform and the carriages from which the hot air gushed was perhaps one hundred degrees. The reek from those carriages went up to heaven, but the sudden change was cruel.
Our pessimistic old soldier wailed loudest. “My God! My God! this is unbearable!” and I wondered why, because on his way through the world he must have encountered worse things than bitter cold that has only to be borne for a few minutes. Probably that was the reason. If he had had something really hard to bear he would very likely have said nothing about it. The baggage-room was confusion, worse confounded, and nobody seemed to know what was being looked for, opium, or arms or both. This place is the Port Said of the East, and people from all corners of the earth were gathered round their belongings. There were groups of Chinese with women and children and weird bundles; there were the very latest dressing-cases and despatch-boxes from Bond Street and Piccadilly; there was a babel of tongues, Russian and French and German and English and the unknown tongues of Asia. China, China at last, and I was within two days of my destination.
And when the day dawned we had left beautiful Siberia behind, and instead there were flat lands, deserts of stones and dry earth, with but little snow to veil the apparent barrenness, and hills first with scanty trees, but growing more and more barren as we approached Kharbin. It looked desolate, cold, uninviting. The land may be rich, it is I am told, but when I passed there was no outward sign of that richness; the covering of beautiful white was gone, there was only a patch or two of snow here and there in the hollows, and the brilliant