‘And the Galìtzins?’
‘Mercy! who hasn’t heard of them!’ And added, to consolidate the impression, ‘They were worth knowing! Curious people, you don’t say!’
Aunt Teresa was a beauty in her day: not merely pretty, handsome, or good-looking, but a beauty recognized and unmistakable. Even now, as the General looked at her, he was, I knew it with a certainty that defies all doubt, swayed by the majesty of that elusive quality which had commanded worship when she was young. He must have felt the throbbing chain of years that linked her back to her disturbing youth, now past, for looking at her he seemed perturbed and animated as if he were in love: gallant, anxious to please. Her lovely nose, though amply powdered, had survived the ruin of the years, remained intact with its delicately-chiselled nostrils; as well as the superbly-moulded forehead and the chin. Her marked moustache and little beard could not kill one’s adoration!
Life is full of chip love, strewn with abortive romances, of glances exchanged in a railway carriage that must die premature deaths because at this junction or that our trains take us asunder; because we had met a little too early or else a little too late, or not perhaps in just the right place. In a future age of wireless sight it may be that we shall arrange our love affairs more efficiently. We shall send out and receive SOS calls from love-stricken, love-craving hearts, and we shall never languish alone.
‘Then you agree with me, General, about Captain Negodyaev’s wife and daughter?’
‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Quite.’ He pressed an electric button.
His aide-de-camp son stood in the doorway, as if he were in some mysterious way a part of this electrical contrivance.
‘Communicate immediately by telephone with Captain Negodyaev at the Censorship Department. Tell him to appear here at once.’
‘Quite so, your Excellency!’ The aide-de-camp dashed out of the room.
A serious situation had arisen, so it appeared meanwhile, and the General, as we waited for Captain Negodyaev’s advent, confided to us his earnest apprehension. The peasants in the Province round about Vladivostok who lived on game had shot-guns; but the General, conceiving guns to be a sign of overt Bolshevism, dispatched a squad to confiscate these guns, whereon the peasants seized the squad and took the officers prisoner. The General had since arranged for a further squad from Russian Island Training School to go forth to the rescue of the prisoners, but last night there had been a storm, and the squad was reported to have well-nigh drowned in crossing. At this point the wires had been cut and the General was still in ignorance of their fate. Yes, an uphill task, he sighed, to attempt to save your country from red ruin!
‘I always say,’ said Aunt Teresa, ‘the only hope for Russia lies in a powerful White Army. I feel that when the Whites get the upper hand again, peace and brotherhood will be restored to this long-suffering land. And if you win the Civil War I am sure that you will justify your victory by the wise policy you will pursue after that. Have you a policy?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski, a look of eager determination creeping into his eyes. ‘I will decorate the lampposts with the corpses of the bandits. That’s my policy — I give you my word of honour, you can count on me to keep my word.’ He held out his hand. ‘And,’ he added tenderly, ‘you may deny your friendship to me if I fail to keep my promise.’
Aunt Teresa proffered a reluctant hand. It was not quite what she had meant by ‘saving Russia’. However, she had not the heart to disappoint the sincerity of his emotion.
‘Things have gone far,’ he sighed. ‘They have been allowed to drift. You won’t retrieve them now! What I regret,’ he said, ‘is not so much the revolution (too late to lock the stable door after the horse has run away), but the liberation of the serfs in 1861 that caused all the mischief. Yes — but what’s happened about Captain Negodyaev?’ He pressed the button.
His aide-de-camp stood in the doorway.
‘Well? Have you telephoned to Captain Negodyaev?’
‘The telephone, your Excellency, is out of order.’
‘Repair the telephone!’ the General snapped savagely.
‘Very well, your Excellency!’
‘Yes,’ said the General, turning round to us again as the aide-de-camp retired with the air of one who had his work cut out. ‘Yes. The Bolsheviks are scoundrels and murderers, and have acquired power by force; they are, in fact, anti-democratic, having thrown over, as you know, the All-Russia Constituent Assembly.’
But I noticed that just as in his opposition to the liberation of the serfs he had forgotten that in ordinary circumstances he himself would not be a master but a serf, so now he did not detect the contradiction when, a moment later, he remarked:
‘Over sixty per cent of the population is illiterate. Russia is not ripe for a Constituent Assembly. The only salvation is a Tsar.’
Dr. Murgatroyd looked as though he were going to dissent. But Aunt Teresa at once remarked that she had every reason to believe that the peasants would welcome the return of a Tsar. ‘ “Give us back the Tsar,” they say,’ said Aunt Teresa, as it were on behalf of the peasants, although not having come in contact with any peasants ever since she left Russia proper twenty years ago, she could not speak from personal experience.
But Dr. Murgatroyd intimated that he did not favour emperors, though he did not mind imperialism, so long as it was ‘democratic’. And the General, with startling logic, said that, in his view, the Bolsheviks (which name he prefaced by a string of lurid adjectives) should be opposed by all true democrats, because they were essentially anti-democratic, and that he, General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski and his kind, would oppose them because they were what he described them to be in his string of lurid adjectives; and so in their opposition to the Bolsheviks he and his kind would have a common platform with the democrats, whose democracy they hated only second to the Bolshevik autocracy.
Yet the incorrigible General who had learnt nothing from the Revolution sought, as men of his type will, to apply to the future of his country principles that had ruined it in the past. The Imperial Russian Government had denied the people self-government on the plea that they were not educated; and it had denied them education on the plea that they possessed no self-government. And it had denied them both on the ground that ‘they were happy as they were’.
‘You do not understand Russia,’ argued General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski. ‘The people are incapable of governing themselves. They are not ripe for it. Can you imagine the terrible oppression, the unspeakable chaos and misery of a country governed by uneducated workmen, by illiterate peasants? You know the result. It’s Bolshevism.’
Having uttered that terrible word, he stopped to examine the effect on the faces of his listeners. All were non-plussed. But I ventured:
‘If such be the terrible effect of ignorance and illiteracy, why, may I ask, had the Government denied them the necessary education and enlightenment?’
The General looked at me with infinite pity. ‘My dear Captain,’ he cried, ‘our Government had enough sense to recognize the danger of superfluous education for a people who profess an autocratic form of government. They realized that to educate the masses was to make them discontented. They were right. Results have proved it.’