Knight Without Armour

At the next halt, three hours later, they met again in a similar way, and the Russian expressed surprise that A.J. should be travelling so humbly. A.J. answered, with a frankness he saw no reason to check, that he was doing things as cheaply as possible because he had so little money. This led to further questions and explanations, after which the Russian formally presented his card, which showed him to be a certain Doctor Hamarin, of Rostov-on-Don. He was, he said, the headmaster of a school there; his pupils came from the best families in the district. If A.J. wished to earn a little money and was not in any great hurry to return to England (for so much he had gathered), why not consider taking a temporary post in Russia? And there and then he offered him the job of English master in his school. A.J. thanked him and said he would think it over; he thought it over, and at the next station jumped eagerly to the platform, met Hamarin as before, and said he would accept.

So he settled down at Rostov. It was a pleasantly prosperous city, with a climate cold and invigorating in winter and mild as the French Riviera in summer; it was also very much more cosmopolitan than most places of its size, for, as the business capital of the Don Cossack country, it contained many Jews, Armenians, Greeks and even small colonies of English, French, and Germans. Picturesquely built, with many fine churches, it was interesting to live in, though A.J. had no initial intention of staying in it for long. He did, in fact, stay there for two years, which was about four times his estimate. His work was simple—merely to teach English to the sons and daughters of Rostov’s plutocratic rather than aristocratic families. He made a successful teacher, which is to say that he did not need to work very hard; he had plenty of leisure, and during holidays was able to take trips into the Caucasus, the Crimea, and several times to Moscow and Petersburg.. With a natural aptitude for languages, he came to talk Russian without a trace of foreign accent, besides picking up a working knowledge of Tartar, Armenian, and various local dialects. He was moderately happy and only bored now and again. A physical change became noticeable in him; he lost, rather suddenly, the boyish undergraduate air that had surprised the other war-correspondents when they had first seen him. He was liked by his pupils and respected by their parents; he moved a little on the fringe of the better-class town society, which was as high as a schoolmaster could well expect. He soon found that his profession carried with it little dignity of its own. During his first week at school the daughter of one of Rostov’s wealthiest families, in sending up a very bad English translation exercise, enclosed a ten-rouble note between the pages, clearly assuming that it would ensure high marks.

At the close of his first year he saw in a literary paper that Sir Henry Jergwin, the celebrated English critic, editor, and man of letters, had died suddenly in London whilst replying to a toast at the annual dinner of a literary society.

Hamarin pressed him to stay another year at Rostov, and he did so chiefly because he could not think of anything else to do or anywhere else to go. It was during this second year that he began to gain insight into the close network of revolutionary activity that was spread throughout the entire country. Even bourgeois Rostov had its secret clubs and government spies, and there seemed to be an ever-widening gulf between the wealthier classes and the workpeople. When occasionally he went into better-class houses to give private English lessons he was often amazed at the way servants were bullied by everyone, from the master of the house even down to the five-year-old baby who had already learned whom he might kick and scratch with impunity. One youth, the son of a wealthy mill-owner, went out of his way to explain. “You see, they’re all thieves and rogues. We know it, and they know we know it. They steal everything they can—they have no loyalty—they lie to us a dozen times a day as a matter of course. Why should we treat them any better than the scum that they are? It’s their fault as much as ours.”

A.J. became quite friendly with this youth, who had travelled in Germany and France, and looked at affairs from a somewhat wider standpoint than the usual Rostov citizen. His name was Sergius Willenski, and he was destined for the army. He had no illusions about the country or its people. “You simply have to treat them like that,” he often said. “It’s the only basis on which life becomes at all possible.”

“And yet,” A.J. answered, “I have met some of the most charming folk among the common people—ignorant soldiers whom I would certainly have trusted with my life.”