At a station a few hundred miles from the European frontier A.J. got into conversation with a well-dressed civilian whom he found himself next to in the refreshment-room. The man was obviously well educated, and discussed the war and other topics in a way that might have been that of any other cultured European. He made the usual enquiries as to what A.J. was doing and who he was; then he congratulated him on his Russian, which he said was surprisingly good for one who had had to learn so quickly. The two got on excellently until the departure of the train; then they had to separate, since the Russian was travelling first-class.
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.”
“A good job you didn’t. They may have been charming—quite likely—but they were rogues, I’ll wager, and would probably have killed you for a small bribe. Our people have no morals—only a sort of good humour that impresses foreigners.”
A.J. went to the Willenskis’ twice a week to teach English to the two girls, aged fifteen and seventeen respectively. Neither learned anything, except in the dullest and least intelligent way; neither considered that life held any possible future except a successful marriage. The older girl would have flirted with him if he had been inclined for the diversion. The younger girl was the prettier, but had a ferocious temper. She boasted that she had once maimed for life a man who had come to the house to polish the floors. It was his custom to take off one of his shoes and tie a polishing cloth round his stockinged foot so that he could polish without stooping. The girl, then aged eleven, had flown into a temper because he had accidentally disturbed some toy of hers; she had seized a heavy silver samovar and dropped it on to his foot, breaking several bones. “And it wasn’t at all a bad thing for him,” she told A.J., “because father pays him something every now and then and he doesn’t have to polish the floors for it.”
A.J. sometimes went to parties at the Willenskis’ house; monsieur and madame (as they liked to be called) were hospitable, and refrained from treating him as they would have done a native teacher. Once he met Willenski’s brother, who was a publisher in Petersburg. Anton Willenski, well known to all the Russian reading public, took considerable interest in the young Englishman and, after an hour’s conversation, offered him a post in his own Petersburg office. “You are far too good a scholar to be teaching in a little place like Rostov,” he said. The post offered was that of English translator and proof-reader, and the salary double that which Hamarin paid. A.J. mentioned his contract at the school, but Willenski said: “Oh, never mind that—I’ll deal with Hamarin,” and he did, though A.J. could only guess how.