Part 22 (2/2)

Hills and s.h.i.+ps always seem to me to be alive, and I think they have a personality of their own. Ararat stands for the una.s.sailable. It is like some great fact, such as that what is beautiful must be true. It is grand and pure and lovely, and when the sun sets it is more than this, for then its top is one sheet of rose, and it melts into a mystic hill, and one knows that whatever else may ”go to Heaven” Ararat goes there every night.

We visited the old Persian palace built on the river's cliff, and looked out over the gardens to the hills beyond, and saw the mosque, with its blue roof against the blue sky, and its wonderful covering of old tiles, which drop like leaves and are left to crumble.

_Tiflis. 24 January._--I left Erivan on Sunday, January 23rd. It was cold and sharp, and the train was crowded. People were standing all down the corridors, as usual. Nothing goes quicker than eight miles an hour, nothing is punctual, nothing arrives. The stations are filthy, and the food is quite uneatable. I often despair of this country, and if the Russians were not our Allies I should feel inclined to say that nothing would do them so much good as a year or two of German conquest. No one, after the first six months, has been enthusiastic over the war, and the soldiers want to get home. One young officer, 26 years old, has been loafing in Tiflis for six months, and has at last been arrested. Another took his ticket on eight successive nights to leave the place and never moved. At last he was locked in his room, and a motor-car ordered to take him to the station. He got into it, and was not heard of for three days, when his wife appeared, and found her husband somewhere in the town.

Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Bevan have gone on ahead to Baku, but I must wait for my damaged car. A young officer in this hotel shot himself dead this morning. No one seems to mind much.

[Page Heading: RUSSIAN SOCIETY]

_25 January._--Last night I was invited to play bridge by one of the richest women in Russia. Her room was just a converted bedroom, with a dirty wall-paper. The packs of cards were such as one might see railway-men playing with in a lamp-room. Our stakes were a few kopeks, and the refreshments consisted of one tepid cup of tea, without either milk or lemon, and not a biscuit to eat. We all sat with shawls on, as our hostess said it wasn't worth while to light a fire so late at night.

A nice little Princess Musaloff and Prince Napoleon Murat played with me. We were rich in t.i.tles, but our shoulders were cold.

I have not seen a single nice or even comfortable room since I left England, and although some women dress well, and have pretty cigarette-boxes from the renowned Faberje, other things about them are all wrong. The furniture in their rooms is covered with plush, and the ornaments (to me) suggest a head-gardener's house at home with ”an enlargement of mother” over the mantelpiece; or a Clapham drawing-room, furnished during some happy year when cotton rose, or copper was cornered. In this hotel the carpets are in holes in the pa.s.sages, and there are few servants; but I don't fancy that the people here notice things very much.

I went to see Mme. ---- one day in her new house. The rooms were large and handsome. There was a picture of a cow at one end of the drawing-room, and a mirror framed in plush at the other!

I must draw a ”character” one day of the very charming woman who is absolutely indifferent to people's feelings. The fact that some humble soul has prepared something for her, or that a sacrifice has been made, or that one kind speech would satisfy, does not occur to her. These are the people who chuck engagements when they get better invitations, and always I seem to see them with expensive little bags and chains and Faberje enamels. Men will slave for such women--will carry things for them, and serve them. They have ”success” until they are quite old, and after they have taken to rouge and paint. A tired woman hardly ever gets anything carried for her.

_26 January._--A day's march nearer home! This is the Feast of St. Nina.

There is always a feast or a fete here. People walk about the streets, they give each other rich cakes, and work a little less than usual.

This hotel still keeps its cripples. Prince Murat sits on his little chair on the landing. Prince Tschelikoff has his heart all wrong; there is the man with one leg.

Now Mlle. Lepnakoff, the singer, Musaloff, in his red coat, and some heavy Generals are here. We have the same food every day.

[Page Heading: ENFORCED IDLENESS]

Perhaps I was pretty near having a breakdown when I came abroad, and the enforced idleness of this life may have been Providential (all my hair was falling out, and my eyes were very bad, and the war was wearing me down rather); but to sit in an hotel bedroom or to potter over trifles in sitting-rooms seems a poor sort of way of pa.s.sing one's time. To rest has always seemed to me very hard work. I can't even go to bed without a pile of papers beside me to work at during the night or in the early morning!

When the power of writing leaves me, as it does fitfully and without warning, I have a feeling of loneliness, which helps to convince me of what I have always felt, that this power comes from outside, and can only be explained psychically. I asked a great writer once if he ever experienced the feeling I had of being ”left,” and he told me that sometimes during the time of desolation he had seriously contemplated suicide.

_30 January._--I got a telephone message from Mr. Bevan last night. He says Baku is too horrible, and there is no news of the cars. People are telling me now that if instead of cars we had given money, we should have been feted and decorated and extolled to the skies; but then, where would the money have gone? Last week the two richest Armenian merchants in this town were arrested for cheating the soldiers out of thousands of yards of stuff for their coats. A Government official could easily be found to say that the cloth had been received, and meanwhile what has the soldier to cover him in the trenches?

Armenians are certainly an odious set of people, and their ingrat.i.tude is equalled by their meanness and greed. Mr. Hills, who is doing the Armenian relief work here, pays all his own expenses, and he can't get a truck to take his things to the refugees without paying for it, while he is often asked the question, ”Why can't you leave these things alone?”

Now that Mrs. Wynne has left I am asked the same question about her.

Russia can ”break” one very successfully.

The weather has turned cold, and there is tearing wind and snow.

_1 February._--”No,” says I to myself, in a supremely virtuous manner, ”I shall not be beaten by this enervating existence here. I'll do _something_--if it's only sewing a seam.”

So out came needles and cotton and mending and hemming, but, would it be believed, I am afflicted with two ”doigts blancs” (festered fingers), and have to wear bandages, which prevent my doing even the mildest seam.

Oddly enough, this ”maladie” is a sort of epidemic here. The fact is, the dust is full of microbes, and no one is too well nourished.

[Page Heading: SOME ”MALADES IMAGINAIRES”]

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