The Doctor, of course, had denounced Zorinsky as a provocateur, but there was as yet little evidence for that charge. Zorinsky might be an extortionist without being a provocateur. Wild charges are brought against anybody and everybody connected with Sovdepia on the slightest suspicion, and I myself have been charged, on the one hand, by the Bolsheviks with being a rabid monarchist, and, on the other, by reactionaries with being a “subtle” Bolshevik. However, my aversion to Zorinsky had become so intense that I resolved that under no pretext or condition would I have anything more to do with him.

My time in Helsingfors was occupied mostly with endeavours to obtain official assurances that any couriers I despatched from Russia would not be seized or shot by the Finns, and that reasonable assistance should be given them in crossing the frontier in either direction. The Finnish Foreign and War Offices were willing enough to co-operate, but appeared to have but little sway over their own frontier authorities. The last word belonged to the new Commandant at Terijoki, a man of German origin, who defied the Government whenever instructions ran counter to his open German sympathies. Being in league with German Intelligence organizations in Russia, he was naturally disinclined to do anything that would assist the Allies, and it was only when his insubordination passed all limits and he was at last dismissed by the Finnish Government that facilities could be granted which made the operation of a secret courier service across the frontier in any degree feasible.

The story of intrigue and counter-intrigue amongst Finns, Germans, Russians, Bolsheviks, and the Allies at this time, both in the Finnish capital and along the Russian frontier, would be a fascinating one in itself, but that is not my province. On the occasion of my brief visits to Finland my prime object was not to become involved, and this was the main reason why, depressing though the prospect of returning to Petrograd was under existing circumstances, I nevertheless cut short my stay in Finland and prepared to return the moment I learned positively that the German frontier commandant was to be removed.

Earnestly as I had striven to remain incognito, my unavoidable participation in the negotiations for arranging a courier-service had drawn me into unfortunate prominence. The German Commandant, still at his post, appeared to regard me as his very particular foe, and learning of my intention to return to Russia by sea he issued orders that the strictest watch should be kept on the coast and any sledge or persons issuing on to the ice be fired upon. Thus, although I had a Government permit to cross the frontier, the smuggler who was to carry me positively refused to venture on the journey, while all patrols had orders to afford me no facilities whatsoever.

But I evaded the Commandant very simply. At the other extremity of the Russo-Finnish frontier, close to Lake Ladoga, there is a small village named Rautta, lying four or five miles from the frontier line. This place had formerly also been a rallying point for smugglers and refugees, but in view of its remoteness and the difficulties of forest travel it was very inaccessible in mid-winter from the Russian side. At the Commandant’s headquarters it was never suspected that I would attempt to start from this remote spot. But protesting, much to the Commandant’s delight, that I would return and compel him to submit to Government orders, I travelled by a very circuitous route to the village of Rautta, where I was completely unknown, and where I relied on finding some peasant or other who would conduct me to the border. Once arrived at the frontier I was content to be left to my own resources.

Luck was with me. It was in the later stages of the tedious journey that I was accosted in the train by a young Finnish lieutenant bound for the same place. Russians being in ill-favour in Finland, I always travelled as an Englishman in that country, whatever I may have looked like. At this time I did not look so bad, attired in an old green overcoat I had bought at Helsingfors. Noticing that I was reading an English paper, the lieutenant addressed me in English with some trifling request, and we fell into conversation. I was able to do him a slight service through a note I gave him to an acquaintance in Helsingfors, and when I further presented him with all my newspapers and a couple of English books for which I had no further use, he was more than delighted. Finding him so well-disposed I asked him what he was going to do at Rautta, to which he replied that he was about to take up his duties as chief of the garrison of the village, numbering some fifteen or twenty men. At this I whipped out my Finnish Government permit without further ado and appealed to the lieutenant to afford me, as the document said, “every assistance in crossing the Russian frontier.”

He was not a little nonplussed at this unexpected request. But realizing that a pass such as mine could only have been issued by the Finnish Ministry of War on business of first-class importance he agreed to do what he could. I soon saw that he was much concerned to do his utmost. Within a couple of hours after our arrival at Rautta I was assured not only of a safe conduct by night to the frontier, but also of a guide, who was instructed to take me to a certain Russian village about twenty miles beyond.

Nothing could be more truly proletarian than Finnish administration in regions where neither German nor ancien-régime Russian influence has penetrated. It is the fundamentally democratic character of the Finnish people that has enabled them since the time of which I speak to master in a large measure their foreign would-be counsellors and controllers and build up a model constitution. The elder of the village of Rautta, who was directed by my friend the lieutenant to show me hospitality and procure me a guide, was a rough peasant, literate and intelligent, living with his wife in a single large room in which I was entertained. His assistants were men of the same type, while the guide was a young fellow of about twenty, a native of the village, who had had a good elementary education at Viborg. In the hands of people of this sort I always felt myself secure. Their shrewd common sense—the strongest defence against nonsensical Red propaganda—made them as a class trustier friends than a spoilt intelligentsia or the scheming intrigants of the militarist caste.

My guide produced half-a-dozen pairs of skis, all of which were too short, as I require a nine- or ten-foot ski, but I took the longest pair. About eleven o’clock our skis were strapped to a drovny sledge, and with a kindly send-off by the elder and his wife, we drove rapidly to a lonely hut, the last habitation on the Finnish side of the frontier. The proprietor was roused and regaled us with tea, while a scout, who chanced to come in a few moments after our arrival, advised my guide as to the latest known movements of Red patrols. Our peasant host possessed no candles or oil in this solitary abode, and we sat in the flickering light of long burning twigs, specially cut to preserve their shaky flare as long as possible.

About midnight we mounted the skis and set out on our journey, striking off the track straight into the forest. My companion was lightly clad, but I retained my overcoat, which I should need badly later, while round my waist I tied a little parcel containing a pair of shoes I had bought in Helsingfors for Maria.

By the roundabout way we were going it would be some twenty-five miles to the village that was our destination. For four years I had not run on skis, and though ski-running is like swimming in that once you learn you never forget, yet you can get out of practice. Moreover, the skis I had were too short, and any ski-runner will tell you it is no joke to run on short skis a zigzag route across uneven forest ground—and in the dark!

We started in an easterly direction, moving parallel to the border-line. I soon more or less adapted my stride to the narrow seven-foot ski and managed to keep the guide’s moderate pace. We stopped frequently to listen for suspicious sounds, but all that greeted our ears was the mystic and beautiful winter silence of a snow-laden northern forest. The temperature was twenty degrees below zero, with not a breath of wind, and the pines and firs bearing their luxuriant white burden looked as if a magic fairy wand had lulled them into perpetual sleep. Some people might have “seen things” in this dark forest domain, but peering into the dim recesses of the woods I felt all sound and motion discordant, and loved our halts just to listen, listen, listen. My guide was taciturn, if we spoke it was in whispers, we moved noiselessly but for the gentle swish of our skis, which scarcely broke the stillness, and the stars that danced above the tree-tops smiled down upon us approvingly.

After travelling a little over an hour the Finn suddenly halted, raising his hand. For some minutes we stood motionless. Then, leaving his skis, he walked cautiously back to me and pointing at a group of low bushes a hundred yards away, visible through a narrow aisle in the forest, he whispered: “You see those farthest shrubs? They are in Russia. We are about to cross the line, so follow me closely.”

Moving into the thickets, we advanced slowly under their cover until we were within a few yards of the spot indicated. I then saw that before us there lay, cutting through the forest, a narrow clearance some ten yards wide, resembling a long avenue. This was the Russian border-line, and we stood at the extreme edge of the Finnish forest. My guide motioned to me to sidle up alongside him.

“It is to those bushes we must cross,” he whispered so low as to be scarcely audible. “The undergrowth everywhere else is impassable. We will watch the shrubbery a moment. The question is: Is there any one behind it? Look hard.”

Weird phenomenon!—but a moment ago it seemed that motion in the forest was inconceivable. Yet now, with nerves tense from anticipation, all the trees and all the bushes seemed to stir and glide. But oh! so slyly, so noiselessly, so imperceptibly! Every shrub knew just when you were looking at it, and as long as you stared straight, it kept still; but the instant you shifted your gaze, a bough swung—ever so little!—a trunk swayed, a bush shrank, a thicket shivered, it was as if behind everything there were something, agitating it, playing with it, in order to taunt you with deceits!

But it was not really so. The forest was still with a death-like stillness. The dark trees like sentinels stood marshalled in sombre array on either side of the avenue. Around us, above, and below, all was silence—the mystic, beautiful winter silence of the sleeping northern forest.

Like a fish, my companion darted suddenly from our hiding-place, bending low, and in two strides had crossed the open space and vanished in the shrubbery. I followed, stealing one rapid glance up and down as I crossed the line, to see nothing but two dark walls of trees on either hand, separated by the grey carpet of snow. Another stride, and I, too, was in Russia, buried in the thick shrubbery.

I found my guide sitting in the snow, adjusting his ski-straps.

“If we come upon nobody in the next quarter-mile,” he whispered, “we are all right till daybreak.”

“But our ski-tracks?” I queried; “may they not be followed?”

“Nobody will follow the way we are going.”

The next quarter-mile lay along a rough track skirting the Russian side of the frontier. Progress was difficult because the undergrowth was thick and we had to stoop beneath overhanging branches. Every twenty paces or so we stopped to listen—but only to the silence.

At last we came out on the borders of what seemed like a great lake. My companion explained that it was a morass and that we should ski straight across it, due south, making the best speed we might. Travelling now was like finding a level path after hard rocky climbing. My guide sailed away at so round a pace that although I used his tracks I could not keep up. By the time I had crossed the open morass he had already long disappeared in the woods. I noticed that although he had said no one would follow us, he did not like the open places.

Again we plunged into the forest. The ground here began to undulate and progress in and out amongst the short firs was wearisome. I began to get so tired that I longed to stretch myself out at full length on the snow. But we had to make our village by daybreak and my guide would not rest.

It was after we had crossed another great morass and had been picking our way through pathless forest for about four hours, that I saw by the frequency with which my companion halted to consider the direction, and the hesitation with which he chose our path, that he had lost his way. When I asked him he frankly admitted it, making no effort to conceal his anxiety. There was nothing to do, however, but to keep straight ahead, due south by the pole star.

The first streaks of dawn stole gently over the sky. Coming out on to an open track, my guide thought he recognized it, and we followed it in spite of the danger of running into an early patrol. In a few moments we struck off along a side track in an easterly direction. We should soon reach our destination now, said the Finn—about a mile more.

I moved so slowly that my companion repeatedly got long distances ahead. We travelled a mile, but still no sign of village or open country. At length the Finn disappeared completely, and I struggled forward along his tracks.

The grey dawn spread and brightened, and it was quite light, though the sun had not yet risen, when at last I drew near the outskirts of the forest. Sitting on the bank of a small running stream sat my guide, reproaching me for my tardiness when I joined him. Across a large meadow outside the forest he pointed to a group of cottages on the side of a hill to the right.

“The Reds live there,” he said. “They will be out about eight o’clock. We have come over a mile too far inland from Lake Ladoga: but follow my tracks and we shall soon be there.”

He rose and mounted his skis. I wondered how he proposed to cross the stream. Taking a short run, he prodded his sticks deftly into the near bank as he quitted it, and lifting himself with all his force over the brook, glided easily on to the snow on the far side. Moving rapidly across the meadow, he disappeared in the distant bushes.

But in springing he dislodged a considerable portion of the bank of snow, thus widening the intervening space. I was bigger and weightier than he, and more heavily clad, and my endeavour to imitate his performance on short skis met with a disastrous result. Failing to clear the brook, my skis, instead of sliding on to the opposite snow, plunged into the bank, and I found myself sprawling in the water! It was a marvel that neither ski broke. I picked them up and throwing them on to the level, prepared to scramble out of the stream.

The ten minutes that ensued were amongst the silliest in sensation and most helpless I ever experienced. Nothing would seem easier than to clamber up a bank not so high as one’s shoulder. But every grab did nothing but bring down an avalanche of snow on top of me! There was no foothold, and it was only when I had torn the deep snow right away that I was able to drag myself out with the aid of neighbouring bushes.

Safely on shore I looked myself over despondently. From the waist downward I was one solid mass of ice. The flags of ice on my old green overcoat flapped heavily against the ice-pillars encasing my top-boots. With considerable labour and difficulty I scraped soles and skis sufficiently to make it possible to stand on them, and once again crawled slowly forward.

I do not know how I managed to traverse the remaining three miles to the village whither my guide had preceded me. It should have been the hardest bit of all, for I was in the last stages of fatigue. Yet it does not seem to have been so now. I think, to tell the truth, I completely gave up the game, convinced my black figure creeping up the white hillside must inevitably attract attention, and I mechanically trudged forward till I should hear a shot or a cry to halt. Or, perhaps, even in this plight, and careless of what befell me, I was fascinated by the glory of a wondrous winter sunrise! I remember how the sun peeped venturously over the horizon, throwing a magic rose-coloured mantle upon the hills. First the summits were touched, the pink flush crept gently down the slopes, turning the shadows palest blue, and when at last the sun climbed triumphant into the heaven, the whole world laughed. And with it, I!

The cottages of the Reds were left far behind. I had crossed more than one hill and valley, and passed more than one peasant who eyed me oddly, before I found myself at the bottom of the hill on whose crest was perched the village I was seeking. I knew my journey was over at last, because my guide’s tracks ceased at the top. He had dismounted to walk along the rough roadway. But which cottage had he entered?

I resolved to beg admission to one of the huts on the outskirts of the village. They were all alike, low wooden and mud buildings with protruding porch, two tiny square windows in the half where the family lived, but none in the other half, which formed the barn or cattle-shed. The peasants are kindly folk, I mused, or used to be, and there are few Bolsheviks amongst them. So I approached the nearest cottage, propped up my skis against the wall, timidly knocked at the door, and entered.

CHAPTER VIII
A VILLAGE “BOURGEOIS-CAPITALIST”

The room in which I found myself was a spacious one. On the right stood a big white stove, always the most prominent object in a Russian peasant dwelling, occupying nearly a quarter of the room. Beyond the stove in the far corner was a bedstead on which an old woman lay. The floor was strewn with several rough straw mattresses. Two strapping boys, a little lass of ten, and two girls of eighteen or nineteen had just dressed, and one of the latter was doing her hair in front of a piece of broken mirror.

In the other far corner stood a rectangular wooden table, with an oil lamp hanging over it. The little glass closet of ikons behind the table, in what is called “beautiful corner” because it shelters the holy pictures, showed the inmates to be Russians, though the district is inhabited largely by men of Finnish race. To the left of the door stood an empty wooden bedstead, with heaped-up bed-covers and sheepskin coats, as if someone had lately risen from it. All these things, picturesque, though customary, I took in at a glance. But I was interested to notice an old harmonium, an unusual decoration in a village hut, the musical accomplishments of the peasant generally being limited to the concertina, the guitar, the balalaika, and the voice, in all of which, however, he is adept.

“Good-morning,” I said, apologetically. I turned to the ikons and, bowing, made the sign of the Cross.

“May I sit down just for a little moment? I am very tired.”

Everyone was silent, doubtless very suspicious. The little girl stared at me with wide-open eyes. I seated myself opposite the big white stove, wondering what I should do next.

In a few minutes there entered a rough peasant of about fifty-five, with long hair streaked with grey, and haggard, glistening eyes. There was a look of austerity in his wrinkled face, though at the same time it was not unkind, but he rarely smiled. He nodded a curt good-morning and set about his ablutions, paying no further heed to me. The old woman mentioned that I had come in to rest.

I explained. “I set out from the nearest station early this morning with a companion,” I said, “to ski here. We are looking for milk. But we lost our way in the woods. I tumbled into a stream. My companion is somewhere in the village and I will go and look for him later. But I would like to rest a little first, for I am very tired.”

The old peasant listened, but did not seem interested. He filled his mouth with water from a jug, bent over an empty bucket, and letting the water trickle out of his mouth into the cup of his hands, scrubbed his face and neck. I suppose it was warmer this way. When he had finished I asked if I might have some milk to drink, and at a sign from the old man one of the boys fetched me some in a big tin mug.

“It is hard to get milk nowadays,” grunted the old peasant, surlily, and went on with his work.

The boys slipped on their sheepskin coats and left the cottage, while the girls removed the mattresses and set the samovar. I rejoiced when I saw the old woman preparing to light the stove. My legs gradually thawed, forming pools of water on the floor, and one of the boys, when he came in, helped me pull my boots off. But this was a painful process, for both my feet were partially frozen.

At last the samovar was boiling and I was invited to table to have a mug of tea. It was not real tea and tasted nothing like it, though the packet was labelled “Tea.” Black bread and salt herrings made up the meal. I did not touch the herrings.

“We have not much bread,” said the old man, significantly, as he put a small piece in front of me.

While we were at table my companion of the night adventure came in, after having searched for me all through the village. I wished to warn him to be prudent in speech and repeat the same tale as I had told, but he merely motioned reassuringly with his hand. “You need fear nothing here,” he said, smiling.

It appeared that he knew my old muzhik well. Taking him aside, he whispered something in his ear. What was he saying? The old man turned and looked at me intensely with an interest he had not shown before. His eyes glistened brightly, as if with unexpected satisfaction. He returned to where I sat.

“Would you like some more milk?” he asked, kindly, and fetched it for me himself.

I asked who played the harmonium. With amusing modesty the old man let his eyes fall and said nothing. But the little girl, pointing her finger at the peasant, put in quickly that “Diedushka [grandpa] did.”

“I like music,” I said. “Will you please play something afterwards?”

Ah! Why was everything different all at once—suspicions evaporated, fears dissipated? I felt the change intuitively. The Finn had somehow aroused the crude old man’s interest in me (had he told him who I was?), but by my passing question I had touched his tenderest spot—music!

So Uncle Egor (as I called him), producing an old and much be-fingered volume of German hymn tunes which he had picked up in a market at Petrograd, seated himself nervously and with touching modesty at the old harmonium. His thick, horny fingers, with black finger-nails, stumbled clumsily over the keys, playing only the top notes coupled in octaves with one finger of his left hand. He blew the pedals as if he were beating time, and while he played his face twitched and his breath caught. You could see that in music he forgot everything else. The rotten old harmonium was the possession he prized above all else in the world—in fact, for him it was not of this world. Crude old peasant as he was, he was a true Russian.

“Would you like me to play you something?” I asked when he had finished.

Uncle Egor rose awkwardly from the harmonium, smiling confusedly when I complimented him on his achievement. I sat down and played him some of his hymns and a few other simple tunes. When I variegated the harmonies, he followed, fascinated. He leant over the instrument, his eyes rooted on mine. All the rough harshness had gone from his face, and the shadow of a faint smile flickered round his lips. I saw in his eyes a great depth of blue.

“Sit down again, my little son,” he said to me several times later, “and play me more.”

At mid-day I lay down on Uncle Egor’s bed and fell fast asleep. At three o’clock they roused me for dinner, consisting of a large bowl of sour cabbage soup, which we all ate with brown polished wooden spoons, dipping in turn into the bowl. Uncle Egor went to a corner of the room, produced from a sack a huge loaf, and cutting off a big square chunk, placed it before me.

“Eat as much bread as you like, my son,” he said.

He told me all his woes—how he was branded as a village “grabber, bourgeois, and capitalist,” because he had possessed three horses and five cows; how four cows and two horses had been “requisitioned”; and how half his land had been taken by the Committee of the Village Poor to start a Commune on.

Committees of the Village Poor were bodies from which were excluded all such as, by enterprise, industry, and thrift, had raised themselves to positions of independence. Composed of the lowest elements of stupid, illiterate, and idle peasants, beggars and tramps, these committees, endowed with supreme power, were authorized to seize the property of the prosperous and divide it amongst themselves, a portion going to the Government.

The class of “middle” peasants, that is, those who were half-way to prosperity, incited by agitators, sided at first with the poor in despoiling the rich, until it was their turn to be despoiled, when they not unnaturally became enemies of the Bolshevist system. The imposition of a war tax, however, finally alienated the sympathies of the entire peasantry, for the enriched “poor” would not pay because they were technically poor, while the impoverished “rich” could not pay because they had nothing left. This was the end of Communism throughout nine-tenths of the Russian provinces, and it occurred when the Bolsheviks had ruled for only a year.

“Uncle Egor,” I said, “you say your district still has a Committee of the Poor. I thought the committees were abolished. There was a decree about it last December.”

“What matters it what they write?” he exclaimed, bitterly. “Our ‘comrades’—whatever they want to do, they do. They held a Soviet election not long ago and the voters were ordered to put in the Soviet all the men from the Poor Committee. Now they say the village must start what they call a ‘Commune,’ where the lazy will profit by the labour of the industrious. They say they will take my last cow for the Commune. But they will not let me join, even if I wanted to, because I am a ‘grabber.’ Ugh!”

“When they held the election,” I asked, “did you vote?”

Uncle Egor laughed. “I? How should they let me vote? I have worked all my life to make myself independent. I once had nothing, but I worked till I had this little farm, which I thought would be my own. Vasia here is my helper. But the Soviet says I am a ‘grabber’ and so I have no vote!”

“Who works in the Commune?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he replied. “They are not from these parts. They thought the poor peasants would join them, because the poor peasants were promised our grain. But the Committee kept the grain for themselves, so the poor peasants got nothing and are very angry. Ah, my little son,” he cried, bitterly, “do you know what Russia wants? Russia, my son, wants a Master—a Master who will restore order, and not that things should be as they are now, with every scoundrel pretending to be master. That is what Russia wants!”

A “master”—now one of the most dangerous words to use in Russia, because it is the most natural!

“Do you mean—a ‘Tsar’?” I queried, hesitatingly. But Uncle Egor merely shrugged his shoulders. He had said his say.

That night I slept on the rickety wooden bedstead side by side with Uncle Egor and covered with the same coverlets and quilts. There were long whisperings between him and my Finnish guide before we retired, for early in the morning we were going on to Petrograd, and arrangements had to be made to drive to the nearest station by devious routes so as not to be stopped on the way. I was nearly asleep when Uncle Egor clambered in by my side.

It was long before dawn when we rose and prepared to set out. Uncle Egor, one of his daughters, the Finn, and I made up the party. To evade patrols we drove by bye-ways and across fields. Uncle Egor was taking his daughter to try to smuggle a can of milk into the city. What he himself was going to do I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.

We arrived at the station at four in the morning, and here I parted from my Finnish guide, who was returning with the sledge. He positively refused to take any reward for the service he had rendered me.

Our train, the only train of the day, was due to start at six, and the station and platform were as busy as a hive. While the young woman got tickets we tried to find places. Every coach appeared to be packed, and the platform was teeming with peasants with sacks on their backs and milk-cans concealed in bundles in their hands. Failing to get into a box-car or third-class coach, where with the crush it would have been warmer, we tried the only second-class car on the train, which we found was not yet full up. Eventually there were fourteen people in the compartment intended for six.

At length the train rumbled off. Wedged in tight between Uncle Egor and his daughter, I sat and shivered. The train was searched by Red guards on the journey, and it was found that quite half the supposed cans of “milk” carried by the peasants were packed to the brim with matches! There was no end of a tumult as the guards came round. Some people jumped out of the windows and fled. Others hid under the train till the compartment had been searched and were then hauled in again through the windows by willing hands from inside.

The Bolshevist Government, you see, had laid a special embargo on matches, as on many things of public use, with the result that they were almost unobtainable. So that when you did get them from “sackmen,” as the people were called who smuggled provisions into the city in bags and sacks, instead of paying one copeck per box, which was what they used to cost, you paid just one thousand times as much—ten roubles, and felt glad at that. The design, of course, was to share such necessities equally amongst the populace, but the Soviet departments were so incompetent and corrupt, and so strangled by bureaucratic administration, that nothing, or very little, ever got distributed, and the persecuted “sackmen” were hailed as benefactors.

At one moment during the journey one of the other peasants bent over to Uncle Egor, and, glancing at me, asked him in an undertone “if his companion had come from ‘over there’”—which meant over the frontier; in reply to which Uncle Egor gave him a tremendous kick, which explained everything, and no more was said.

I had one nasty moment when the train was searched. Despite mishaps I still clung to the little parcel of shoes for Maria. As they were tied round my waist I did not lose them even when I tumbled into the stream. Some people got up when the searchers came, but having no milk-can or sack I moved into the corner and sat on the parcel. When the soldier told me to shift along to let him see what was in the corner I sat the shoes along with me, so that both places looked empty. It was lucky he did not make me get up, for new shoes could only have come from “over there.”

At nine we reached the straggling buildings of the Okhta Station, the scene of my flight with Mrs. Marsh in December, and there I saw a most extraordinary spectacle—the attempted prevention of sackmen from entering the city.

As we stood pushing in the corridor waiting for the crowd in front of us to get out, I heard Uncle Egor and his daughter conversing rapidly in low tones.

“I’ll make a dash for it,” whispered his daughter.

“Good,” he replied in the same tone. “We’ll meet at Nadya’s.”

The moment we stepped on to the platform Uncle Egor’s daughter vanished under the railroad coach, and that was the last I ever saw of her. At each end of the platform stood a string of armed guards, waiting for the onslaught of passengers, who flew in all directions as they surged from the train. How shall I describe the scene of unutterable pandemonium that ensued! The soldiers dashed at the fleeing crowds, brutally seized single individuals, generally women, who were least able to defend themselves, and tore the sacks off their backs and out of their arms. Shrill cries, shrieks, and howls rent the air. Between the coaches and on the outskirts of the station you could see lucky ones who had escaped gesticulating frantically to unlucky ones who were still dodging guards. “This way! This way!” they yelled, wildly; “Sophia! Marusia! Akulina! Varvara! Quick! Haste!”

In futile efforts to subdue the mob the soldiers discharged their rifles into the air, only increasing the panic and intensifying the tumult. Curses and execrations were hurled at them by the seething mass of fugitives. One woman I saw, frothing at the mouth, with blood streaming down her cheek, her frenzied eyes protruding from their sockets, clutching ferociously with her nails at the face of a huge sailor who held her pinned down on the platform, while his comrades detached her sack.

How I got out of the fray I do not know, but I found myself carried along with the running stream of sackmen over the Okhta Bridge and toward the Suvorov Prospect. Only there, a mile from the station, did they settle into a hurried walk, gradually dispersing down side streets to dispose of their precious goods to eager clients.

Completely bewildered, I limped along, my frost-bitten feet giving me considerable pain. I wondered in my mind if people at home had any idea at what a cost the population of Petrograd secured the first necessities of life in the teeth of the “Communist” rulers. Still musing, I came out on the Znamenskaya Square in front of the Nicholas Station, the scene of many wild occurrences in the days of the Great Revolution.

You could still see the hole in the station roof whence in those days a machine-gun manned by Protopopoff’s police had fired down on the crowds below. I had watched the scene from that little alcove just over there near the corner of the Nevsky. While I was watching, the people had discovered another policeman on the roof of the house just opposite. They threw him over the parapet. He fell on the pavement with a heavy thud, and lay there motionless. Everything, I remembered, had suddenly seemed very quiet as I looked across the road at his dead body, though the monotonous song of the machine-gun still sounded from the station roof.

But next day a new song was sung in the hearts of the people, a song of Hope and a song of Freedom. Justice shall now reign, said the people! For it was said, “The Tsarist ways and the Tsarist police are no more!”

To-day, two years later, it was just such a glorious winter morning as in those days of March, 1917. The sun laughed to scorn the silly ways of men. But the song of Hope was dead, and the people’s faces bore the imprint of starvation, distress, and terror—terror of those very same Tsarist police! For these others, who did not make the Revolution, but who were encouraged by Russia’s enemies to return to Russia to poison it—these others copied the Tsarist ways, and, restoring the Tsarist police, made them their own. The men and women who made the Revolution, they said, were the enemies of the Revolution! So they put them back in prison, and hung up other flags. Here, stretched across the Nevsky Prospect, on this winter morning there still fluttered in the breeze the tattered shreds of their washed-out red flags, besmirched with the catch-words with which the Russian workers and the Russian peasants had been duped. There still stood unremoved in the middle of the square the shabby, dilapidated, four-months-old remains of the tribunes and stages which had been erected to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevist revolution. The inscriptions everywhere spoke not of the “bourgeois prejudices” of Liberty and Justice, but of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (sometimes hypocritically called the “brotherhood of workers”), of class war, of the sword, of blood, hatred, and world-wide revolution.

Looking up from my bitter reverie I saw Uncle Egor, from whom I had got separated in the scramble at the railway station. I wanted to thank and recompense him for the food and shelter he had given me.

“Uncle Egor,” I asked him, “how much do I owe you?”

But Uncle Egor shook his head. He would take no recompense.

“Nothing, my little son,” he replied, “nothing. And come back again when you like.” He looked round, and lowering his voice, added cautiously, “And if ever you need ... to run away ... or hide ... or anything like that ... you know, little son, who will help you.”

CHAPTER IX
METAMORPHOSIS

I never saw Uncle Egor again. I sometimes wonder what has become of him. I suppose he is still there, and he is the winner! The Russian peasant is the ultimate master of the Russian Revolution, as the Bolsheviks are learning to their pain. Once I did set out, several months later, to invoke his help in escaping pursuit, but had to turn back. Uncle Egor lived in a very inaccessible spot, the railway line that had to be traversed was later included in the war zone, travelling became difficult, and sometimes the trains were stopped altogether.

There was a cogent reason, however, why I hesitated to return to Uncle Egor except in an emergency. He might not have recognized me—and that brings me back to my story.

Traversing the city on this cold February morning, I sensed an atmosphere of peculiar unrest and subdued alarm. Small groups of guards—Lettish and Chinese, for the most part—hurrying hither and thither, were evidence of special activity on the part of the Extraordinary Commission. I procured the Soviet newspapers, but they, of course, gave no indication that anything was amiss. It was only later that I learned that during the last few days numerous arrests of supposed counter-revolutionists had been made, and that simultaneously measures were being taken to prevent an anticipated outbreak of workers’ strikes.

By the usual devious routes I arrived in the locality of my empty flat “No. 5.” This, I was confident, was the safest place for me to return to first. From there I would telephone to the Journalist, the Doctor, and one or two other people, and find out if all was fair and square in their houses. If no one had “been taken ill,” or “gone to hospital,” or been inflicted with “unexpected visits from country relatives,” I would look them up and find out how the land lay and if anything particular had happened during my absence.

The prevailing atmosphere of disquietude made me approach the flat with especial caution. The street was all but deserted, the yard was as foul and noisome as ever, and the only individual I encountered as I crossed it, holding my breath, was a hideous wretch, shaking with disease, digging presumably for food in the stinking heaps of rubbish piled in the corner. His jaws munched mechanically, and he looked up with a guilty look, like a dog discovered in some overt misdeed. From the window as I mounted the stairs I threw him some money without waiting to see how he took it.

Arriving at No. 5, I listened intently at the back door. There was no sound within. I was about to knock, when I recalled the poor devil I had seen in the yard. An idea occurred—I would give him another forty roubles and tell him to come up and knock. Meanwhile, I would listen at the bottom of the stairs, and if I heard unfamiliar voices at the door I would have time to make off. They would never arrest that miserable outcast, anyway. But the fellow was no longer in the yard, and I repented of having thrown him money and interrupted his repast. Misplaced generosity! I remounted the stairs and applied my ear to the door.

Thump—thump—thump! Nothing being audible, I knocked boldly, hastily re-applying my ear to the keyhole to await the result.

For a moment there was silence. Impatient, I thumped the door a second time, louder. Then I heard shuffling footsteps moving along the passage. Without waiting, I darted down the steps to the landing below. Whoever came to the door, I hurriedly considered, would be certain, when they found no one outside, to look out over the iron banisters. If it were a stranger, I would say I had mistaken the door, and bolt.

The key squeaked in the rusty lock and the door was stiffly pushed open. Shoeless feet approached the banisters, and a face peered over. Through the bars from the bottom I saw it was the dull and unintelligent face of the boy, Grisha, who had replaced Maria.

“Grisha,” I called, as I mounted the stairs, to prepare him for my return, “is that you?”

Grisha’s expressionless features barely broke into a smile. “Are you alone at home?” I asked when I reached him.

“Alone.”

Grisha followed me into the flat, locking the back door behind him. The air was musty with three weeks’ unimpeded accumulation of dust.

“Where is Maria? See! I have brought her a lovely pair of brand-new shoes. And for you a slab of chocolate. There!”

Grisha took the chocolate, muttering thanks, and breaking off a morsel slowly conveyed it to his mouth.

“Well? Nothing new, Grisha? Is the world still going round?”

Grisha stared, and, preparatory to speech, laboriously transferred the contents of his mouth into his cheek. At last he got it there, and, gulping, gave vent somewhat inarticulately to the following unexpected query:

“Are you Kr-Kr-Kry-len-ko?”

Krylenko! How the deuce should this youngster know my name of Krylenko—or Afirenko, or Markovitch, or any other? He knew me only as “Ivan Ilitch,” a former friend of his master.

But Grisha appeared to take it for granted. Without waiting he proceeded:

“They came again for you this morning.”

“Who?”

“A man with two soldiers.”

“Asking for ‘Krylenko’?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you say?”

“What you told me, Ivan Ilitch. That you will be away a long time and perhaps not come back at all.”

“By what wonderful means, I should like to know, have you discovered a connection between me and any one called Krylenko?”

“They described you.”

“What did they say? Tell me precisely.”

Grisha shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. His sluggish brain exerted itself to remember.

“Tall—sort of, they said, black beard ... long hair ... one front tooth missing ... speaks not quite our way ... walks quickly.”

Was Grisha making this up? Surely he had not sufficient ingenuity! I questioned him minutely as to when the unwelcome visitors had first come, and made him repeat every word they had said and his replies. I saw, then, that it was true. I was known, and they were awaiting my return.

“To-day was the second time,” said Grisha. “First they came a few days ago. They looked round and opened the cupboards, but when they found them all empty they went away. ‘Uyehal—departed,’ said one to the others. ‘There’s nothing here, so it’s useless to leave any one. When will he return?’ he asks me. ‘There’s no knowing,’ I tell him. ‘Maybe you’ll never come back,’ I said. Early this morning when they came I told them the same.”

A moment’s consideration convinced me that there was only one line of action. I must quit the flat like lightning. The next step must be decided in the street.

“Grisha,” I said, “you have acquitted yourself well. If ever any one asks for me again, tell them I have left the city for good, and shall never return. Does Maria know?”

“Maria is still at the farm. I have not seen her for two weeks.”

“Well, tell her the same—because it’s true. Good-bye.”

Arriving in the street, I began to think. Had I not better have told Grisha simply to say nobody had come back at all? But Grisha was sure to bungle the moment he was cross-questioned and then they would think him an accomplice. It was too late, anyway. I must now think of how to change my appearance completely and with the minimum of delay. The nearest place to go to was the Journalist’s. If he could not help me I would lie low there till nightfall, and then go to the Doctor’s.

Limping along painfully, half covering my face with my scarf as if I had a toothache, I approached the Journalist’s home. He lived on the first floor, thank heaven, so there would be only one flight of stairs to ascend.

From the opposite side of the street I scrutinized the exterior of the house. Through the glass door I could see nobody in the hall and there was nothing to indicate that anything was amiss. So I crossed the road and entered.

The floor-tiling in the hall was loose and had long needed repair, but I tiptoed over it gently and without noise. Then, with one foot on the bottom stair, I stopped dead. What was that disturbance on the first landing just over my head? I listened intently.

Whispering.

There must be two or three people on the first landing, conferring in low tones, and from the direction of the voices it was clear they were just outside the Journalist’s door. I caught the word “pick-lock,” and somebody passed some keys, one of which seemed to be inserted in the lock.

Thieves, possibly. But robbery was becoming rare in these days when the bourgeoisie had scarcely anything more to be relieved of, and anyway why should the Journalist’s flat particularly be selected and the theft perpetrated in broad daylight? It was far more likely that the dwelling was to be subjected to a sudden search, and that the raiders wished to surprise the occupant or occupants without giving them time to secrete anything. In any case, thieves or searchers, this was no place for me. I turned and tiptoed hurriedly out of the hall.

And very foolish it was of me to hurry, too! for I should have remembered the flooring was out of repair. The loose tiles rattled beneath my feet like pebbles, the noise was heard above, and down the stairs there charged a heavy pair of boots. Outside was better than in, anyway, so I did not stop, but just as I was slipping into the street I was held up from behind by a big burly workman, dressed in a leathern jacket covered with belts of cartridges, who held a revolver at my head.

It is a debatable point, which tactics is more effective in a tight corner—to laugh defiantly with brazen audacity, or to assume a crazy look of utter imbecility. Practised to an extreme, either will pull you through almost any scrape, provided your adversary displays a particle of doubt or hesitancy. From my present bedraggled and exhausted appearance to one of vacant stupidity was but a step, so when the cartridge-bedecked individual challenged me with his revolver and demanded to know my business, I met his gaze with terrified, blinking eyes, shaking limbs, slobbering lips, and halting speech.

“Stand!” he bawled; “what do you want here?” His voice was raucous and threatening.

I looked up innocently over his head at the lintel of the door.

“Is—is this No. 29?” I stammered, with my features contorted into an insane grin. “It is—I—I mistook it for No. 39, wh-which I want. Thank you.”

Mumbling and leering idiotically, I limped off like a cripple. Every second I expected to hear him shout an order to halt. But he merely glared, and I remembered I had seen just such a glare before, on the face of that other man whom I encountered in Marsh’s house on the day of my first arrival in Petrograd. As I stumbled along, looking up with blinking eyes at all the shop- and door-lintels as I passed them, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the cartridge-covered individual had lowered his revolver to his side. Then he turned and re-entered the house.

“The blades are pretty blunt, I am afraid,” observed the Doctor, as he produced his Gillette razor and placed it on the table before me. “They still mow me all right, but I’ve got a soft chin. The man who smuggles a box-full of razor-blades into this country will make his fortune. Here’s the brush, and soap—my last piece.”

It was late in the afternoon of the same day. I sat in the Doctor’s study before a mirror, getting ready to perform an excruciating surgical operation, namely, the removal with a blunt safety-razor of the shaggy hirsute appendage that for nearly six months had decorated my cheeks, chin, and nether lip.

The Doctor, as you see, was still at liberty. It was with some trepidation that I had approached his house on this day when everything seemed to be going wrong. But we had agreed upon a sign by which I might know, every time I called, whether it were safe to enter. A large box was placed in the window in such a position as to be visible from the street. Its absence would be a danger-signal. The Doctor had suggested this device as much for his own sake as mine: he had no desire that I should come stumbling in if he were engaged in an altercation with a delegation from No. 2 Goróhovaya, and there was no house in the city that was immune from these unwelcome visitors. But the box was in the window, so I was in the flat.

Before operating with the razor I reduced my beard as far as possible with the scissors. Even this altered my appearance to a remarkable degree. Then I brought soap-brush and blade into play—but the less said of the ensuing painful hour the better! The Doctor then assumed the rôle of hair-dresser. He cut off my flowing locks, and, though it was hardly necessary, dyed my hair coal-black with some German dyestuff he had got.

Except for one detail, my transformation was now complete. Cutting open the lapel of the jacket I was discarding, I extracted a tiny paper packet, and, unwrapping it, took out the contents—my missing tooth, carefully preserved for this very emergency. A little wadding served effectually as a plug. I inserted it in the gaping aperture in my top row of teeth, and what had so recently been a diabolic leer became a smile as seemly (I hope) as that of any other normal individual.

The clean-shaven, short-haired, tidy but indigent-looking person in eye-glasses, who made his way down the Doctor’s staircase next morning attired in the Doctor’s old clothes, resembled the shaggy-haired, limping maniac of the previous day about as nearly as he did the cook who preceded him down the stairs. The cook was going to engage the house-porter’s attention if the latter presented himself, in order that he might not notice the exit of a person who had never entered. So when the cook disappeared into the porter’s cave-like abode just inside the front door, covering with her back the little glass window through which he or his wife always peered, and began greeting the pair with enthusiastic heartiness, I slipped unnoticed into the street.

In the dilapidated but capacious boots the Doctor found for me I was able to walk slowly without limping. But I used a walking-stick, and this added curiously to my new appearance, which I think may be described as that of an ailing, underfed “intellectual” of the student type. It is a fact that during these days, when in view of my lameness I could not move rapidly, I passed unmolested and untouched out of more than one scuffle when raiders rounded up “speculators,” and crossed the bridges without so much as being asked for my papers.

It took me several days to get thoroughly accustomed to my new exterior. I found myself constantly glancing into mirrors and shop-windows in the street, smiling with amusement at my own reflection. In the course of ensuing weeks and months, I encountered several people with whom I had formerly had connections, and though some of them looked me in the face I was never recognized.

It was about a week later, when walking along the river-quay, that I espied to my surprise on the other side of the road Melnikoff’s friend of Viborg days whom I had hoped to find in Finland—Ivan Sergeievitch. He was well disguised as a soldier, with worn-out boots and shabby cap. I followed him in uncertainty, passing and repassing him two or three times to make sure. But a scar on his cheek left no further doubt. So, waiting until he was close to the gate of the garden on the west side of the Winter Palace, the wall of which with the imperial monograms was being removed, I stepped up behind him.

“Ivan Sergeievitch,” I said in a low voice.

He stopped dead, not looking round.

“It is all right,” I continued; “step into the garden; you will recognize me in a minute.”

He followed me cautiously at some paces distance and we sat down on a bench amongst the bushes. In this little garden former emperors and empresses had promenaded when occupying the Winter Palace. In the olden days before the revolution I often used to wonder what was hidden behind the massive walls and railings with imperial monograms that surrounded it. But it was only a plain little enclosure with winding paths, bushes, and a small fountain.

“My God!” exclaimed Ivan Sergeievitch, in astonishment, when I had convinced him of my identity. “Is it possible? No one would recognize you! It is you I have been looking for.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Do you not know that Zorinsky is in Finland?”

Zorinsky again! Though it was only a week, it seemed ages since I had last crossed the frontier, and the Zorinsky episode already belonged to the distant past—when I was somebody and something else. I was surprised how little interest the mention of his name excited in me. I was already entirely engrossed in a new political situation that had arisen.

“Is he?” I replied. “I went to Finland myself recently, partly to see you about that very fellow. I saw your wife. But nobody seems to know anything about him, and I have ceased to care.”

“You have no notion what a close shave you have had, Pavel Pavlovitch. I will tell you what I know. When I heard from my wife that Varia was arrested and that you were in touch with Zorinsky, I returned to Finland and, although I am condemned by the Bolsheviks to be shot, set out at once for Petrograd. You see, Zorinsky——”

And Ivan Sergeievitch unfolded to me a tale that was strange indeed. I have forgotten some details of it, but it was roughly as follows:

Zorinsky, under another name, had been an officer in the old army. He distinguished himself for reckless bravery at the front and drunkenness in the rear. During the war he had had some financial losses, became implicated in attempted embezzlement, and later was caught cheating at cards. He was invited to resign from his regiment, but was reinstated after an interval in view of his military services. He again distinguished himself in battle, but was finally excluded from the regiment shortly before the revolution, this time on the ground of misconduct. During 1917 he was known to have failed in some grandiose deals of a speculative and doubtful character. He then disappeared for a time, but in the summer of 1918 was found living in Petrograd under various names, ostensibly hiding from the Bolsheviks. Although his business deals were usually unsuccessful, he appeared always to be in affluent circumstances. It was this fact, and a certain strangeness of manner, that led Ivan Sergeievitch to regard him with strong suspicion. He had him watched, and established beyond all doubt that he was endeavouring to gain admission to various counter-revolutionary organizations on behalf of the Bolsheviks.

Shortly afterward, Ivan Sergeievitch was arrested under circumstances that showed that only Zorinsky could have betrayed him. But he escaped on the very night that he was to be shot by breaking from his guards and throwing himself over the parapet of the Neva into the river. In Finland, whither he fled, he met and formed a close friendship with Melnikoff, who, after the Yaroslavl affair and his own escape, had assisted in the establishment of a system of communication with Petrograd, occasionally revisiting the city himself.

“Of course I told Melnikoff of Zorinsky,” said Ivan Sergeievitch, “though I could not know that Zorinsky would track him. But he got the better of us both.”

“Then why,” I asked, “did Melnikoff associate with him?”

“He never saw him, so far as I know.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “But Zorinsky said he knew him well and always called him ‘an old friend’!”

“Zorinsky may have seen Melnikoff, but he never spoke to him, that I know of. Melnikoff was a friend of a certain Vera Alexandrovna X., who kept a secret café—you knew it? Ah, if I had known Melnikoff had told you of it I should have warned you. From other people who escaped from Petrograd I learned that Zorinsky frequented the café too. He was merely lying in wait for Melnikoff.”

“You mean he deliberately betrayed him?”

“It is evident. Put two and two together. Melnikoff was a known and much-feared counter-revolutionary. Zorinsky was in the service of the Extraordinary Commission and was well paid, no doubt. He also betrayed Vera Alexandrovna and her café, probably receiving so much per head. I heard of that from other people.”

“Then why did he not betray me too?” I asked, incredulously.

“You gave him money, I suppose?”

I told Ivan Sergeievitch the whole story; how I had met Zorinsky, his offer to release Melnikoff, the sixty thousand roubles and other payments “for odd expenses” amounting to about a hundred thousand in all. I also told him of the valuable and accurate information Zorinsky had provided me with.

“That is just what he would do,” said Ivan Sergeievitch. “He worked for both sides. A hundred thousand, I suppose, is all he thought he could get out of you, so now he has gone to Finland. Something must have happened to you here, for he wanted to prevent your returning to Russia and pose as your saviour. Is it not true that something has happened?”

I told him of the discovery of the Journalist’s flat and “No. 5,” but, unless I had been tracked unnoticed, there was no especial reason to believe Zorinsky could have discovered either of these. The betrayal of the name “Krylenko” was of course easily traceable to him, but whence had he known the addresses?

And then I remembered that I had never telephoned to Zorinsky from anywhere except from “No. 5” and the Journalist’s, for those were the only places where I could speak without being overheard. I suggested the coincidence to Ivan Sergeievitch.

“Aha!” he cried, obviously regarding the evidence as conclusive. “Of course he inquired for your telephone numbers directly you had spoken! But he would not betray you as long as you continued to pay him. Besides, he doubtless hoped eventually to unearth a big organization. As for your betrayal, any time would do, and the reward was always certain. It might be another hundred thousand for your haunts. And then, you see, in Finland he would warn you against returning and get some more out of you for this further great service. He was furious to find you had just left.”

From the Windows of the Winter Palace prying eyes were looking down into the garden. Two figures sitting so long on a cold day in the bushes would begin to rouse suspicion. We rose and walked out on to the quay.

Seating ourselves on one of the stone benches set in the parapet of the river, Ivan Sergeievitch told me many things that were of the greatest value. An entirely new set of associations grew out of this conversation. He also said that Varia had just been released from prison and that he was going to take her with him across the frontier that night. He had been unable to find Stepanovna, but supposed she was staying with friends. I agreed if ever I heard of her to let him know.

“Will Zorinsky come back to Russia, do you think?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” was the reply; and he added, again staring at my transformed physiognomy and laughing, “But you certainly have no cause to fear his recognizing you now!”

Such was the strange story of Zorinsky as I learnt it from Ivan Sergeievitch. I never heard it corroborated except by the Doctor, who didn’t know Zorinsky, but I had no reason to doubt it. It certainly tallied with my own experiences. And he was only one of several. As Ivan Sergeievitch observed: “There are not a few Zorinskys, I fear, and they are the ruin and shame of our class.”

Twice, later, I was reminded acutely of this singular personage, who, as it transpired, did return to Russia. The first time was when I learned through acquaintances of Ivan Sergeievitch that Zorinsky believed me to be back in Petrograd, and had related to somebody in tones of admiration that he himself had seen me driving down the Nevsky Prospect in a carriage and pair in the company of one of the chief Bolshevist Commissars!

The second time was months later, when I espied him standing in a doorway, smartly dressed in a blue “French” and knee-breeches, about to mount a motor-cycle. I was on the point of descending from a street-car when our eyes met. I stopped and pushed my way back into the crowd of passengers. Being in the uniform of a Red soldier I feared his recognition of me not by my exterior, but by another peculiar circumstance. Under the influence of sudden emotion a sort of telepathic communication sometimes takes place without the medium of words and even regardless of distance. It has several times happened to me. Rightly or wrongly I suspected it now. I pushed my way through the car to the front platform and, looking back over the heads of the passengers, imagined (maybe it was mere imagination) I saw Zorinsky’s eyes also peering over the passengers’ heads toward me.

I did not wait to make sure. The incident occurred in the Zagorodny Prospect. Passing the Tsarskoeselsky station I jumped off the car while it was still in motion, stooped beneath its side till it passed, and boarded another going in the opposite direction. At the station I jumped off, entered the building and sat amongst the massed herds of peasants and “speculators” till dusk.

Eventually I heard that Zorinsky had been shot by the Bolsheviks. If so, it was an ironic and fitting close to his career. Perhaps they discovered him again serving two or more masters. But the news impressed me but little, for I had ceased to care whether Zorinsky was shot or not.