Part 84

“Did you say the merchant Falyaeva?” the governor asked, turning to Sipiagin and merely shaking his fingers in Paklin’s direction, as much as to say, “Gently, my good man, gently.” “What is coming over our respectable, bearded merchants? Only yesterday one was arrested in connection with this affair. You may have heard of him—Golushkin, a very rich man. But he’s harmless enough. He won’t make revolutions; he’s grovelling on his knees already.”

“The merchant Falyaeva has nothing whatever to do with it,” Sipiagin began; “I know nothing of his ideas; I was only talking of his factory where Mr. Nejdanov is to be found at this very moment, as Mr. Paklin says—”

“I said nothing of the kind!” Paklin cried; “you said it yourself!”

“Excuse me, Mr. Paklin,” Sipiagin pronounced with the same relentless precision, “I admire that feeling of friendship which prompts you to deny it.” (“A regular Guizot, upon my word!” the governor thought to himself.) “But take example by me. Do you suppose that the feeling of kinship is less strong in me than your feeling of friendship? But there is another feeling, my dear sir, yet stronger still, which guides all our deeds and actions, and that is duty!”

“Le sentiment du devoir,” Kollomietzev explained.

Markelov took both the speakers in at a glance.

“Your excellency!” he exclaimed, “I ask you a second time; please have me removed out of sight of these babblers.”

But there the governor lost patience a little.

“Mr. Markelov!” he pronounced severely, “I would advise you, in your present position, to be a little more careful of your tongue, and to show a little more respect to your elders, especially when they give expression to such patriotic sentiments as those you have just heard from the lips of your beau-frère! I shall be delighted, my dear Boris,” he added, turning to Sipiagin, “to tell the minister of your noble action. But with whom is this Nejdanov staying at the factory?”

Sipiagin frowned.

“With a certain Mr. Solomin, the chief engineer there, Mr. Paklin says.”

It seemed to afford Sipiagin some peculiar pleasure in tormenting poor Sila. He made him pay dearly for the cigar he had given him and the playful familiarity of his behaviour.

“This Solomin,” Kollomietzev put in, “is an out-and-out radical and republican. It would be a good thing if your excellency were to turn your attention to him too.”

“Do you know these gentlemen... Solomin, and what’s his name. .. Nejdanov?” the governor asked Markelov, somewhat authoritatively.

Markelov distended his nostrils malignantly.

“Do you know Confucius and Titus Livius, your excellency?”

The governor turned away.

“Il n’y a pas moyen de causer avec cette homme,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Baron, come here, please.”

The adjutant went up to him quickly and Paklin seized the opportunity of limping over to Sipiagin.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a whisper. “Why do you want to ruin your niece? Why, she’s with him, with Nejdanov!”

“I am not ruining any one, my dear sir,” Sipiagin said loudly, “I am only doing what my conscience bids me do, and—”

“And what your wife, my sister, bids you do; you dare not stand up against her!” Markelov exclaimed just as loudly.

Sipiagin took no notice of the remark; it was too much beneath him!

“Listen,” Paklin continued, trembling all over with agitation, or may be from timidity; there was a malignant light in his eyes and the tears were nearly choking him—tears of pity for them and rage at himself; “listen, I told you she was married—it wasn’t true, I lied! but they must get married—and if you prevent it, if the police get there—there will be a stain on your conscience which you’ll never be able to wipe out—and you—”

“If what you have just told me be true,” Sipiagin interrupted him still more loudly, “then it can only hasten the measures which I think necessary to take in this matter; and as for the purity of my conscience, I beg you not to trouble about that, my dear sir.”

“It’s been polished,” Markelov put in again; “there is a coat of St. Petersburg varnish upon it; no amount of washing will make it come clean. You may whisper as much as you like, Mr. Paklin, but you won’t get anything out of it!”

At this point the governor considered it necessary to interfere.

“I think that you have said enough, gentlemen,” he began, “and I’ll ask you, my dear baron, to take Mr. Markelov away. N’est ce pas, Boris, you don’t want him any further—”