“How did you manage to get here at night, Vassily Fedotitch? We didn’t expect you until tomorrow.”
“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.”