“And so this time I am disappointed in my expectations in learning about Madame Kirsánova; but I am not going to give you up; in a few days I shall ask you again about her.”
“But why don’t you yourself make her acquaintance, if she interests you so?”
“I should like to do so; maybe I will do so some time. But before, I must learn more about her.”—Beaumont was silent for a moment.—“I was wondering whether to ask you or not; but it seems better to ask you, if you should happen to mention my name in your conversation with her, please don’t tell her that I have made any inquiries about her, or that I want to make her acquaintance some time.”
“That’s very mysterious, Mr. Beaumont,” said Katerina Vasílyevna in a serious tone. “You want to find out about them, and yet you yourself want to be concealed.”
“Yes, Katerina Vasílyevna; how can I explain that to you? I am afraid to make their acquaintance.”
“This is very strange, Mr. Beaumont.”
“It is true. I will speak plainer; I am afraid that it would be disagreeable to her. They have never heard my name. But I might have had some intercourse with some of the people that are friends of theirs, or even with themselves; it is all the same. In a word, I must know first whether it would be agreeable to them to make my acquaintance.”
“All this is strange, Mr. Beaumont.”
“I am an honest man, Katerina Vasílyevna; let me assure you that I would never think of putting you into a false position; this is only the second time that I have ever seen you, but I have a great respect for you.”
“I also see, Mr. Beaumont, that you are a man worthy of respect, but—”
“If you think that I am a man worthy of respect, you will allow me to call upon you, so that when you know me well enough, I can ask you again about the Kirsánofs. Or, rather, you will speak about them yourself when it will seem to you that you can fulfil my request which I shall make now, and which I shall not repeat. Do you agree?”
“All right, Mr. Beaumont,” said Katerina Vasílyevna, slightly shrugging her shoulders. “But you must confess that—”
Again she did not want to finish her sentence.
“That my action seems rather suspicious? True; but I will wait till you get over your suspicions.”
XIII
Beaumont got into the way of making frequent calls at the Pólozofs’. “Why not?” thought the old man. “He is an excellent match. Of course in other days Kátya could have had a better husband. But even then she did not care for money or for flattery. And now nothing better could be desired.”
Indeed, Beaumont was an excellent match. He said that he intended to live the rest of his life in Russia because he looked upon it as his native land. He was a man of character; he was thirty years old, a self-made man; and he had a good situation. If he had been a Russian, Pólozof would have liked him to belong to the nobility.110 But as he was a foreigner, this was of no consequence, especially as he was of French origin, and, above all, an American citizen. Among the Americans, a man who may be today a journeyman shoemaker, or a plowman, tomorrow will be a general, and the next day president; and after that he may be a lawyer, or in a countinghouse. It is a peculiar people altogether; they care only for a man’s money or his brains. “This is the right way of looking at it,” continued Pólozof. “I myself am that kind of man. I entered mercantile life; I married a merchant’s widow. The main thing is money, and brains, because without brains you can’t get any money. And this man is on the road to it. He will buy the factory, will become manager; then the firm will take him as a partner. And their firms are not like ours. He too will roll in his millions.”
It is very possible that Pólozof’s imagination about his son-in-law becoming a millionaire in the commercial line will not be realized any more than Marya Alekséyevna’s imaginations in regard to her chosen son-in-law becoming a great monopolist were realized. But for all that, Beaumont was an excellent match for Katerina Vasílyevna.
But, after all, was not Pólozof mistaken in thinking that Beaumont was going to be his son-in-law? If the old man had a shadow of a doubt about this, it vanished when Beaumont, in the course of a fortnight, said to him, that the purchase of the factory might be delayed for several days, the delay was unavoidable; even if Mr. Lotter were not coming, it would take at least a week to bring it to a conclusion, and Mr. Lotter would not be in Petersburg for a week. “Before I was personally acquainted with you,” said Beaumont, “I wanted to finish the business myself. Now it would not look well, because we are so well acquainted. In order that there should be no misunderstanding by and by, I have written about it to the firm to this effect: that during the business transaction I have made the acquaintance of the manager whose whole property is invested in the factory, and I asked the firm to send someone to conclude the bargain in my place, and
