His Own People (Kinross)

by Albert Kinross

For works with similar titles, see His Own People.

 

HIS OWN PEOPLE

By Albert Kinross

THE Admiral had told his story; he was slightly deaf and made us shout a little, which gave him most of the conversation, for, rather than shout, we would listen, and I don't think it did us very much harm. Quite the contrary, judged by this evening. Mrs. Armitage, our hostess, so obviously enjoyed giving him his chance that she was radiant, and Susan Bligh had all a girl's appreciation of “a delightful old boy.” She called him that in her accustomed summary and review, going over the dear man's points, his modesty, his seaman's deference to youth and beauty (though that was hardly how she phrased the thing), and the graceful way he had steered clear of irksome repetitions. He had taken the lion's share, but he had not been dull. “A regular old sealion,” she had capped it, appraising the evening's doings at their proper worth. I saw her home, I remember; I always used to see Susan home.

The Admiral had just told us how he had saved the life of a Persian minister by taking the fellow on board his ship, and how the broken statesman, being the right kind of villain, was ultimately recalled from exile and put back in his old position. The Admiral met him some years afterward, and, instead of recognizing an obligation, the Persian scowled and there were shots that spoiled a brand new hat. Our friend had found himself abhorred and in some danger. A second Persian cleared up the mystery. “A great minister,” he explained, “does not wish to owe his life to any man.” It was all very well for common people, so it seemed, but the great ones must be enthroned without a cloud. The Admiral was an offense and best removed.

We had laughed about it, and Mrs. Armitage, turning to Kinglake, had asked him whether he had ever saved the life of a fellow creature. And this time she desired a grateful patient, one who would not send an assassin after you to wipe out the humiliation of the debt.

Kinglake had smiled, or, rather, the scar on his upper lip had gone sideways—a Chinaman gave him the wound in Newchwang when he was on the way to join Kuroki's army. He had seen some killing, but very little saving, he declared.

“But you,” said Susan Bligh, “haven't you ever saved anybody? Isn't there anybody who'll speak up for you when—”

“Yes, on the Judgment Day,” cried Mrs. Armitage.

The Admiral gave up trying to listen. He was quite content; he had had his share and a bit over. He sat there gallantly, encouraging his young friends. Perhaps his smile was the pleasantest feature of him. Kinglake's scar rather spoiled his mouth, though the eyes were not unkindly.

“You want me to tell you about my man?” he asked. “I don't know whether he'll speak up for me or whether he'll remember or anything. An animal in pain remembers the vet, I suppose. It began when I was in Russia, in 1905 or thereabouts, during that muddle of a revolution.”

Kinglake's eyes strayed round the cosy drawing room, recalling another scene, another time, another place—a place totally and utterly different from this one by all seeming. The operation required some moments.

“Mayfair—Siedlce,” he said at last. “The contrast!”

“What's the matter with Siedlce?” asked Susan Bligh. She pronounced it Syedletz, which seemed about right.

“Everything,” said Kinglake, “if you're used to this. There isn't a house like this in all Siedlce, nor near it, nor about it. There's the Castle and a good Town Hall—the Governor rules from the one and the other's municipal offices; but the houses—fleas and dirt and wretchedness, and Allejnaia the one street where you might live. My friends the Marlinskis live in Allejnaia, and I had run over from Warsaw to spend a few days with them. They hate the place, but he's a powerful bureaucrat, like one of our chaps in India, and has to go where he's told. We sat indoors most of the time and I listened to his complaints. There was nothing else to do. In Warsaw, or, say, Monte Carlo, Marlinski is quite a pleasant companion, but here he was a fish out of water, and actually had to help govern these people. There are about twenty-five thousand people in Siedlce and more than a third of them are Jews; not the prosperous, cocknified Hebrews you see over here, but real Jewish Jews. Imagine the Marlinskis and about ten thousand Jews! They hated them. Everybody hates them in Russia and they hate back. There is no serious explanation, except that dogs hate cats—a different nervous system. Unfortunately for the Jews, they are in a minority and get massacred. If they were the majority and the Christians the minority, I should say that the massacres would be the other way about. Oh, yes, there'd be massacres. They've always been the favorite religious argument, up to 1700 A.D. or so, anyhow—and Russia's 1600 at the most.

“It was winter, so we took sledge drives, and there were Marlinski's endless complaints and lots of cigarettes and rather too much to eat and drink. Once or twice I put on goloshes and went out by myself. Marlinski wouldn't walk in those streets, and as for Madame, she said the smell of them was enough. Russian women speak their minds on such matters.

“On the Monday, so it happened, there was a massacre. From a professional or special correspondent's point of view, I was in luck. Marlinski apologized; I went out and watched 'em. War's all right, but this was a dirty business—killing and stealing; first killing, then stealing. The old Jews went down like sheep; the young ones fought and fought well; of the women and children it is best to say as little as possible. Once or twice I laughed. Stealing's a comic business in the main, little different from the clown and pantaloon part of a harlequinade. The word 'pillage' sounds dreadful, but usually it's a timid amateur staggering under a load too big for him. Such thieves are greedy beggars, and the old instincts make them afraid. They break into a run or throw their loot away at the least rumor. Once or twice at Siedlce I had to laugh.... I was a special correspondent and the revolution was over, but here was something for you people who read newspapers instead of writing for them. I did a rather livid column about that massacre and there were meetings of protest throughout Jewry; yes, even here in London, down the Mile End Road, though I don't suppose you troubled much about it.”

Mrs. Armitage did remember vaguely something of the kind.

“And wasn't there a subscription for them?” asked Susan Bligh. “I think I saw a piece about it in the Post.”

“When the massacre was about done,” continued Kinglake, “my friend Marlinski and his friends must have bestirred themselves; for out came the soldiers, and, instead of turning their rifles on the dogs, they began with the cats. Many of the Jews had weapons in their hands, and, using this as an excuse, the soldiers opened fire. They are bad shots, but at close quarters—it's difficult to miss. In my street there were about twenty, and at the word of command they raised their rifles. I backed into a doorway and watched them. One big chap commenced to blubber, threw his gun away and ran. He was so clumsy, so like a frightened and rather tender-hearted bullock, that I remembered him. He passed me, tumbled into a house—a Jewish house—and disappeared. 'His own people,' I thought. 'The poor beggar couldn't very well fire on them.'

“I heard about him later from Marlinski. My friend was indignant and quite roused himself. The fellow's name was Rabinovitch—David Rabinovitch; yes, a Jew wearing the Tsar's uniform, and, instead of shooting down his own people, he had deserted. Rather pitiably, it seemed tome. The man simply couldn't do it; he hadn't argued—he had just thrown his rifle away and run. Marlinski said that they had failed to catch him, but that they were sure of having him by the morning, and then—well, it would be all over with David. A deserter and a Jew—a firing party would make short work of him! Marlinski grew quite hot over it.

“1 left Siedlce, thinking little further of the incident; life was cheap enough in Russia, and one more or less—but in Warsaw I came across the Zagoskins, and they told me that in the basement of their house lived a Jewish family, the same family that had the shop on the ground floor, and that these people possessed a hidden man, some fugitive, so it was rumored. They couldn't prove it. It was only servants' gossip. Nobody had seen him.

“I said good night to the Zagoskins at three one morning—in Russia one sits and smokes and talks endlessly—as here in London,” said Kinglake, smiling through his scar. “Halfway down the street, under a lamp, I passed two men, both Jews. One was Rabinovitch in civilian clothes; the other must have been his friend of the shop and basement. It was easy enough to recognize the chap, with his big, pathetic face, full of dumb, unquestioning obedience; the perfect Continental soldier—unless, as it had happened, his heart was touched. He would have been excellent material to put up against somebody else; but his own people—his courage had oozed away at that. The other Jew was keener and sharper, and it was no doubt his doing that Rabinovitch was in hiding and would ultimately get away.

“Next time I called on the Zagoskins I first went to the Jewish shop on the ground floor. A woman was in charge and she had no other customer.

“I bought some sweets for the Zagoskin children, using execrable Russian—they often speak to you about other things if they see that you are a foreigner. This woman wouldn't speak.

“'You have a guest here—from Siedlce,' said I.

“She looked me over, quite calmly, quite unembarrassed, and then very politely told me that I was mistaken.

“I put a ten-rouble piece on the counter. 'This may help him a very little,' I said.

“The Jewess played the part admirably. Not at all could she understand me. There was no guest from Siedlce; perhaps, at another house....

“I moved away, leaving the money on the counter. She did not return it.

“'Are you a Jew?' she asked, as I stood in the doorway.

“'Angleechanin—an Englishman,' I answered.

“She let me go without another word.

“By some curious decree of Providence—certainly providential for him—this fellow Rabinovitch seems to have pursued me. Ten days later I was looking over the papers in the reading room of the Four Seasons, at Hamburg, when the name 'David Rabinowitz' stood out in one of them. A new immigration law—Aliens' Act was its official title—had come into force during my absence, and among the first aliens to be rejected was this same Rabinovitch who had flung away his rifle at Siedlce and fled, choking, to the nearest hiding place. His Warsaw friends must have smuggled him over the frontier and given him a ticket to London. He had, said the paper, been two pounds short of the landing money. He had told his story, which I, for one, could vouch for. The immigration board had decided against him. He had neither cash nor friends to take charge of him, and back he had been shipped to Bremen, the port of embarkation, and, beyond a doubt, the German authorities would receive him likewise, passing him on to the Russian frontier, where he would be taken into custody and shot for the deserter that, indeed, he was.

“Bremen is only a couple of hours' railway journey from Hamburg. A few pounds would save a fellow's life. It occurred to me that I had better save it—the price of a luncheon party at a decent restaurant or a trifle you buy at a jeweler's. Another paper gave further details. Efforts were being made—rather late in the day, I thought—to have Rabinovitch brought back to London. A 'political refugee' was what they called him, and the law admitted political refugees, landing money or none at all. There was quite a discussion about it, though where the 'politics' came in was not quite clear. Meanwhile, the hero of this episode was on board a steamer and probably too seasick and too heartsick to trouble either way. I resolved to go to Bremen.

“Rabinovitch must have had a rough crossing—luckily for him. Three days and three nights on the North Sea—and the North Sea can do a thing when put to it! I've lain in an upper bunk with my feet on the ceiling like a fly to keep me from pitching out. Lord knows what happened to Rabinovitch! But he got the three days' respite, which gave me a chance. My paper could use the story if they wanted to. It would be rather a good one, especially if, as seemed likely, the Home Secretary took up the case.

“Next day in Bremen I saw more English papers, and one or two were growing quite excited over Rabinovitch. The story of how he had refused to fire on his own people had got abroad, with trimmings. One reporter, probably of the same romantic persuasion, had actually interviewed the heroic youth. He was described orientally as a great strapping fellow, capable of slaying his tens of Japanese, but nobly reluctant when ordered to fire upon his own. In reality, of course, Rabinovitch was a clumsy, tender-hearted lout, and not at all heroic.

“His boat was abominably overdue, and Bremen, fairly amusing if you happen to be a tourist with a thirst for Gothic architecture, uncommon dull. It's a very Protestant city, like Basel or Boston or Edinburgh, and, like all very Protestant cities, rather frigid if you have no friends. People won't look at you without three acres of introductions and a family council to decide whether you're a fit and proper person to be asked indoors. Then they'll give you all they've got.

“I sent my card in to the British consul, a good German burgher who enjoyed having the title. He took me to a cellar and ordered a bottle of wine, but wasn't at all interested in Rabinovitch. He was far too plump and comfortable an old gentleman to trouble about such trifles. Being a widower and somewhat homeless and forsaken, I think he was glad of the hour's distraction. I also alarmed a Mr. Bornholm, who represents an English paper mill, the proprietor being a particular friend of mine; and Mr. Bornholm held a family council, so that next day 1 was asked to dinner.

“The boat came in next day. The shipping people had promised to telephone to my hotel, and after lunch I was down at the harbor waiting for Rabinovitch. I may forget his gratitude, but I shall never forget the waiting. To begin with, it rained all the time, not a moment's break in that gray downpour. Ships are uncertain things, so 1 waited several hours; and harbors are exposed and open to the sky—bleak as a moor, open as the desert or the sea. I was wet through. One or two men who had business there were kind to me, and I had drinks with them at a waterside tavern, a roughish place used by sailor chaps who spoke a Frisian dialect. But mostly I waited in the rain. When the boat showed dismally out of the mist I was standing on the quay with a clerk from the shipping company and a partially sober individual who sported an official cap. We chatted till the vessel came alongside.

“There was no mistaking Rabinovitch. Solitary, foredoomed, weakened by seasickness, packed into a rough civilian overcoat, he was on deck, the only passenger, and no one seemed to love him. Rather was David looked at in the light of a confounded nuisance who had given a lot of trouble to persons in authority. The captain hated the sight of him; the officers, and even the lowest seamen, had no use for him.

“Imagine the chap,” continued Kinglake with a gesture, “hidden away at Siedlce, put into civilian clothes and smuggled out by night, dumped down in Warsaw, hidden again there, then secretly over the frontier, smothering under a load of hay and just the chance of a watchman skewering him with a bayonet; from the frontier by train to Bremen, through a strange, civilized country, traveling with other emigrants like cattle; a day or two's loafing at Bremen, the medical examination—all a complete mystery to Rabinovitch; then thirty-six hours at sea, an element never previously encountered, met or known, in a crazy little tub of a steamboat, six hundred tons at most, battened down and sick with twenty like himself; then a smooth morning, the strange coasts and stranger creeping up the Thames; and now, abruptly, for no reason that he can conceive or fathom, refused a landing!... What did it all mean, he must have asked in his dim oxlike way, then given it up—a riddle too deep for him.... Winter and fog, three days on board in dock, the Tower Bridge and the Tower and those dismal wharves, the lights of London dull upon the sky, and he, disliked, superfluous, his keep grudged him—so much for England! And then the Thames again and the North Sea; into the teeth of the storm, filled with a great sickness, under hatches, living like an animal in a cage, the seas beating over this strange vessel, mysteriously propelled, mysteriously manned, commanded. I know those nights, the screw racing, the wind gone mad—he, holding on to something that will keep him firm; and so to Bremerhaven.... Lord, if the fellow could only have written it down—I would have bought a copy!”

“You're rather rubbing it in,” said Susan Bligh.

“Well, I want to,” replied Kinglake; “we comfortable people never quite realize things unless they are rubbed in.”

“Please go on,” said Mrs. Armitage; “Rabinovitch has arrived.”

Kinglake resumed: “Like myself, he was wet through, though this didn't seem to worry him. He was quite inert, quite apathetic, and, I believe, perfectly ready to go on to the frontier and stand before the rifles of his executioners. 'I can't be worse off than I am,' was written all over him: a heavy, much enduring lout of a fellow, now resigned and empty of consolation, was poor David.

“'Eto choroscho—it's all right, David; you won't get sent back to Russia,' said I from the landing stage.

“At this he looked up, for the first time since his arrival, uncovered his head, and—believed me!

“Why he believed me I don't know, but he obviously did, and when the partially sober individual who sported an official cap came to take charge of him, he turned to me as if to say, 'Shall I?' The spry young clerk had meanwhile exchanged a few words with the captain and disappeared.

“The official personage in a cap now stirred up Rabinovitch and marched him off as a bullock is marched to market. He was, as I have already hinted, a trifle fuddled, and, very probably, at the best of times a highly imbecile old gentleman. Hitherto he and I, as we stood there chatting in the rain, had been excellent friends, but now, suddenly, he had become quite hostile. When I explained for the third and last time that I was there to befriend Rabinovitch, 'Go away,' he said; 'what do you want with the man? You're after his money—I know you'; and he tried his hardest to be rid of me.

“I retired from the contest, saw the futility of reasoning with the chap, but declined to be shaken off. Rabinovitch had some luggage, a cheap cardboard and canvas portmanteau, so he was led to the Custom House. The official and I waited for him. The official turned his back upon me, declined to acknowledge my existence, but couldn't keep it up. 'He hasn't got any money!' he cried at last. I did not answer.

“Rabinovitch came out, and after that we made our way uninterruptedly to the shelter where the German had to deliver him pending tomorrow's inquiry. David looked at me; I smiled at him. 'Go on,' I said, 'it's all right'; and he was reassured.

“It was still raining; I was wet to the skin; so was David; so was the German. We were an assorted and curious gathering; but the greatest joke of all was the way this strange official insulted me all the way from the Custom House to the shelter. I had over a mile of it.

“Here was I, the accredited representative of a great London newspaper, sacrificing my time, health, comfort and private fortune in a mission of singular mercy; here was I, the son of a most excellent and respected father, a graduate of two good universities, a writer of some repute in both hemispheres, a member of first-chop clubs, the owner of a banker's reference and a good address: here was I, I repeat, a person hitherto treated with all the ensigns of civility, even of deference, the recipient of a dinner invitation from a good citizen of Bremen—and this German official of the twentieth or lowest grade called me a crimp to my face, heaped obloquy on my alleged mission and threatened me with personal violence, till, realizing the hopeless nature of his predicament, he suddenly collapsed, and explained that it was his sacred duty to deliver David to the shelter, and, if he failed, there would be awful trouble.

“He implored me to desist from my fell purpose; he almost wept, and, seeing me obdurate, took comfort in one oft-repeated sentiment. 'You wait,' he said; 'the shelter master will give you such a jolly good hiding!'

“Refreshed by this afterthought, he continued in silence, broken only by subdued references to the shelter master, evidently a large and brutal man. 'He'll get hold of you,' he muttered; 'he don't stand any nonsense; he can hit; he can hit a man dead!'... Put a fool into a uniform and time will make him a triple, three-starred, extra special fool. Just ask the Admiral....

“Rabinovitch had hardly said a word. Me he clearly regarded as his friend and the imbecile German as an official and unimportant microbe that we perforce tolerated. He didn't quite know why, but, as long as I was there, it was all right. Every now and then I encouraged him with a few sentences in Russian, which made the microbe still more desperate, while Rabinovitch nodded gratefully; and when we reached the shelter I told him that I would be with him in the morning and that he needn't be afraid. I took a note of the address, which for some official reason had been refused me, and, to the German's great disgust, went off before the herculean shelter master could give me the 'jolly good hiding' that had been so vividly anticipated.

“David, being safely bestowed until the next morning, I changed my clothes at the hotel, wrote and telephoned to the shipowners and dined with the Bremen gentleman and his wife at an ancient tavern that had once been ware- house and mansion of a Hanseatic merchant. It was pretty cheerful, and both of them were rather interested in the day's doings and in the Russian experiences from which I was freshly come.

“By noon next morning I had Rabinovitch safe and all to myself. I stood bail for him, so to speak, and the shipping company, quite humanly pleased and cheerfully assisting, was perfectly ready to let me have him. Business is business, and, in the ordinary course of events, he would have gone back to Russia by an early train. The shipowners were honestly glad to be relieved of this part of the affair.

“I found David at their office. What should I do with him? If I bought him a first class ticket he could get back to London unquestioned; so ran that idiotic law—and the difference between first and steerage was, perhaps, a sovereign! But what would he do there? Add another to the hungry mouths that already fill these overcrowded streets; be sweated till he, in his turn, could sweat? Endure even grosser torments than those he had overcome? The company was that day sending a batch of emigrants to the Argentine. I put it to Rabinovitch. 'What about Buenos Ayres?' I asked. He had heard of the place, a favorite field of emigration for the Russian Jew. He had no clear idea where it was, knew nothing else about it, but he had no great hankering after England. He settled on Buenos Ayres. He had three pounds in his pocket, and a ticket to the Argentine cost six. I made him contribute one of his pounds and gave him his ticket. The shipping company would do the rest. Today he would leave—a free man.

“He grasped the idea. He had obeyed and followed me like a child. He had told me his story, simply, nakedly, as I had seen it happen. He did not pose as a hero. 'I could not fire on those people,' he said; 'I threw my rifle away and ran.' I did not tell him that I had seen him run, that I knew anything at all about his earlier experiences. Where was the good? I only told him that I was English, perhaps to balance his other experience of us.... I gave him my card. 'You might send me a letter and tell me how you are getting on,' I said. I don't think he could read, but he put the card carefully away in his pocket.... 1 held out my hand; he took it, fell to his knees, and would have kissed it many, many times. I suppose I was moved. One is moved when the great things of this world come home to one, death and life and motherhood and all of them.

“As I was packing my things at the hotel that evening the British consul turned up with a telegram from the consul-general in Hamburg. The Home Secretary had at last taken up the case and the consul had orders to bestir himself. I read the telegram. 'Too late,' I said. 'Rabinovitch is on his way to Buenos Ayres. The Home Office will see all about it in tomorrow morning's paper'; and we shook hands.... So, by an accident, I had saved a life and, unlike the Persian rescued by our friend the Admiral, my chap was grateful.”

We looked round for the Admiral at this. Quietly, discreetly, without disturbing anybody, he had gone from the room and was probably snug in bed at his quarters in Ebury Street. We knew the trick and had often chaffed him on it.

“And so,” continued Kinglake, “'if I ever knock at the gates of heaven and am asked 'What have you done?'—perhaps—perhaps Rabinovitch will speak up for me.”

“Oh, I'm sure he will!” said Mrs. Armitage.

“Are you?” said Kinglake. “Then you believe in gratitude?'”

“Of course—don't you?”

“In the gratitude of the giver; the other fellow's usually too busy to remember very long.”

“And what's become of Rabinovitch—have you ever heard?”

“Not a line—not a syllable—not a whisper—nothing, nothing at all.”

“And you called him grateful!” cried Susan Bligh.

“So he was, when gratitude was of any use.”

“You're too deep for us!” laughed Mrs. Armitage.

“And what should you say he thinks of you? Does he know why you did it; does he account for you in any way?” asked Susan Bligh.

“I don't think so. He's probably given it up. When one is poor and miserable and frightened, the world is full of mysteries—I'm merely another. Probably he says prayers about them; I've done the same occasionally myself.”

And Susan Bligh, in her accustomed summary and review, dismissing the Admiral, went on to Kinglake.

“I wonder why he shaves his upper lip, with that great scar? A mustache—” she began.

“Wouldn't hide it,” I comforted her.

“Doesn't hair grow on a scar?” she asked.