Part 43

“Oh, that’s all right, Gavrilla. It’s much nicer walking at night.”

The most unusually friendly relations existed between Solomin and his workpeople. They respected him as a superior, treated him as one of themselves, and considered him to be very learned. “Whatever Vassily Fedotitch says,” they declared, “is sacred! Because he has learned everything there is to be learned, and there isn’t an Englishman who can get around him!” And in fact, a certain well-known English manufacturer had once visited the factory, but whether it was that Solomin could speak to him in his own tongue or that he was really impressed by his knowledge is uncertain; he had laughed, slapped him on the shoulder, and invited him to come to Liverpool with him, saying to the workmen, in his broken Russian, “Oh, he’s all right, your man here!” At which the men laughed a great deal, not without a touch of pride. “So that’s what he is! Our man!”

And he really was theirs and one of them. Early the next morning his favourite Pavel woke him, prepared his things for washing, told him various news, and asked him various questions. They partook of some tea together hastily, after which Solomin put on his grey, greasy working-jacket and set out for the factory; and his life began to go round again like some huge flywheel.

But the thread had to be broken again. Five days after Solomin’s return home there drove into the courtyard a smart little phaeton, harnessed to four splendid horses and a footman in pale green livery, whom Pavel conducted to the little wing, where he solemnly handed Solomin a letter sealed with an armorial crest, from “His Excellency Boris Andraevitch Sipiagin.” In this letter, which exhaled an odour, not of perfume, but of some extraordinarily respectable English smell and was written in the third person, not by a secretary, but by the gentleman himself, the cultured owner of the village Arjanov, he begged to be excused for addressing himself to a man with whom he had not the honour of being personally acquainted, but of whom he, Sipiagin, had heard so many flattering accounts, and ventured to invite Mr. Solomin to come and see him at his house, as he very much wanted to ask his valuable advice about a manufacturing enterprise of some importance he had embarked upon. In the hope that Mr. Solomin would be kind enough to come, he, Sipiagin, had sent him his carriage, but in the event of his being unable to do so on that day, would he be kind enough to choose any other day that might be convenient for him and the same carriage would be gladly put at his disposal. Then followed the usual polite signature and a postscript written in the first person:

“I hope that you will not refuse to take dinner with us quite simply. No dress clothes.” (The words “quite simply” were underlined.) Together with this letter the footman (not without a certain amount of embarrassment) gave Solomin another letter from Nejdanov. It was just a simple note, not sealed with wax but merely stuck down, containing the following lines: “Do please come. You’re wanted badly and may be extremely useful. I need hardly say not to Mr. Sipiagin.”

On finishing Sipiagin’s letter Solomin thought, “How else can I go if not simply? I haven’t any dress clothes at the factory.... And what the devil should I drag myself over there for? It’s just a waste of time!” But after reading Nejdanov’s note, he scratched the back of his neck and walked over to the window, irresolute.

“What answer am I to take back, sir?” the footman in green livery asked slowly.

Solomin stood for some seconds longer at the window.

“I am coming with you,” he announced, shaking back his hair and passing his hand over his forehead—“just let me get dressed.”

The footman left the room respectfully and Solomin sent for Pavel, had a talk with him, ran across to the factory once more, then putting on a black coat with a very long waist, which had been made by a provincial tailor, and a shabby top-hat which instantly gave his face a wooden expression, took his seat in the phaeton. He suddenly remembered that he had forgotten his gloves, and called out to the “never-failing” Pavel, who brought him a pair of newly-washed white kid ones, the fingers of which were so stretched at the tips that they looked like long biscuits. Solomin thrust the gloves into his pocket and gave the order to start. Then the footman jumped onto the box with an unnecessary amount of alacrity, the well-bred coachman sang out in a falsetto voice, and the horses started off at a gallop.

While the horses were bearing Solomin along to Sipiagin’s, that gentleman was sitting in his drawing-room with a halfcut political pamphlet on his knee, discussing him with his wife. He confided to her that he had written to him with the express purpose of trying to get him away from the merchant’s factory to his own, which was in a very bad way and needed reorganising. Sipiagin would not for a moment entertain the idea that Solomin would refuse to come, or even so much as appoint another day, though he had himself suggested it.

“But ours is a paper-mill, not a spinning-mill,” Valentina Mihailovna remarked.

“It’s all the same, my dear, machines are used in both, and he’s a mechanic.”

“But supposing he turns out to be a specialist!”

“My dear! In the first place there are no such things as specialists in Russia; in the second, I’ve told you that he’s a mechanic!”

Valentina Mihailovna smiled.

“Do be careful, my dear. You’ve been unfortunate once already with young men; mind you don’t make a second mistake.”

“Are you referring to Nejdanov? I don’t think I’ve been altogether mistaken with regard to him. He has been a good tutor to Kolia. And then you know non bis in idem! Excuse my being pedantic.... It means, things don’t repeat themselves!”

“Don’t you think so? Well, I think that everything in the world repeats itself ... especially what’s in the nature of things ... and particularly among young people.”

“Que voulez-vous dire?” asked Sipiagin, flinging the pamphlet on the table with a graceful gesture of the hand.

“Ouvrez les yeux, et vous verrez!” Madame Sipiagina replied. They always spoke to one another in French.

“H’m!” Sipiagin grunted. “Are you referring to that student?”

“Yes, I’m referring to him.”

“H’m! Has he got anything on here, eh?” (He passed his hand over his forehead.)

“Open your eyes!”

“Is it Mariana, eh?” (The second “eh” was pronounced more through the nose than the first one.)

“Open your eyes, I tell you!”

Sipiagin frowned.