Knight Without Armour

No one saw him off at Charing Cross, and he felt positive relief when, a couple of hours later, the boat swung out of Dover Harbour and he saw England fading into the mist of a spring morning. Two days afterwards he was in Berlin; and two days after that in Moscow. There he caught the Trans-Siberian express and began the ten-days’ train journey to Irkutsk.

The train was comfortable but crowded, and most of the way he studied a Russian grammar and phrase-book. Every mile that increased his distance from London added to a certain bitter zest that he felt; whatever was to happen, success or failure, was sure to be preferable to book-reviewing in Bloomsbury. His trouble had always been to know what to write about, and surely a war must solve such a problem for him. It was an adventure, anyway, to be rolling eastward over the Siberian plains. He met no fellow-countryman till he reached Irkutsk, where several other newspaper-correspondents were waiting to cross Lake Baikal. They were all much older men than he was, and most of them spoke Russian fluently. They seemed surprised and somewhat amused that such a youngster had been sent out by the Comet, and A.J., scenting the attitude of superiority, preferred the companionship of a young Italian who represented a Milan news agency. The two conversed together in bad French almost throughout the crossing of the lake in the ice-breaker. It was an impressive journey; the mountains loomed up on all sides like steel-grey phantoms, and the clear atmosphere was full of a queer other-world melancholy. Barellini, the Italian, gave A.J. his full life-history, which included a passionate love-affair with a wealthy Russian woman in Rome. A.J. listened tranquilly, watching the ice spurt from the bow of the ship and shiver into glittering fragments; the sun was going down; already there was an Arctic chill in the air. Barellini then talked of Russian women in general, and of that touch of the East which mingled with their Western blood and made them, he said, beyond doubt’ the most fascinating women in the world. He quoted Shakespeare—’Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where she most satisfies’—Cleopatra, that was—Shakespeare could never have said such a thing about any Western woman. “But I suppose you prefer your English women?” he queried, with an inquisitiveness far too childlike to be resented. A.J. answered that his acquaintance with the sex was far too small for him to attempt comparisons. “Perhaps, then, you do not care for any women very much?” persisted Barellini, and quoted Anatole France—’De toutes les aberrations sexuelles, la plus singuličre, c’est la chasteté.’ “For thousands of years,” he added, “people have been trying to say the really brilliant and final thing about sex—and there it is!”

Barellini was very useful when they reached the train at the further side of the lake. There was a curious and rather likeable spontaneity about him that enabled him to do things without a thought of personal dignity (which, in fact, he neither needed nor possessed), and when he found the train already full of a shouting and screaming mob, he merely flung himself into the midst of it, shouted and screamed like the rest, and managed in the end to secure two seats in a third-class coach. He had no concealments and no embarrassments; his excitableness, his determination, his inquisitiveness, his everlasting talk about women, were all purified, some-how, by the essential naturalness that lay behind them all. The train was full of soldiers, with whom he soon became friendly, playing cards with them sometimes and telling stories, probably very gross, that convulsed them with laughter. The soldiers were very polite and gave up the best places to A.J. and the Italian; they also made tea for them and brought them food from the station buffets. When A.J. saw the English correspondents bawling from first-class compartments to station officials who took little notice of them, he realised how much more fortunate he had been himself The hours slipped by very pleasantly; as he sat silent in his corner- seat listening to continual chatter which he did not understand and watching the strange monotonous landscape through the window, he began to feel a patient and rather comfortable resignation such as a grown-up feels with a party of children. The soldiers laughed and were noisy in just the sharp, instant way that children have; they had also the child’s unwavering heartlessness. One of them in the next coach fell on to the line as he was larking about, and all his companions roared with laughter, even though they could see he was badly injured.