THE Professor received a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he
was asked to come as quickly as possible. The daughter of some
Madame Lyalikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was ill, and
that was all that one could make out of the long, incoherent telegram. And the Professor did not go himself, but sent instead his assistant, Korolyov.
It was two stations from Moscow, and there was a drive of three
miles from the station. A carriage with three horses had been sent
to the station to meet Korolyov; the coachman wore a hat with a
peacock's feather on it, and answered every question in a loud voice
like a soldier: "No, sir!" "Certainly, sir!"
It was Saturday evening; the sun was setting, the workpeople were
coming in crowds from the factory to the station, and they bowed
to the carriage in which Korolyov was driving. And he was charmed
with the evening, the farmhouses and villas on the road, and the
birch-trees, and the quiet atmosphere all around, when the fields
and woods and the sun seemed preparing, like the workpeople now on
the eve of the holiday, to rest, and perhaps to pray. . . .
He was born and had grown up in Moscow; he did not know the country, and he had never taken any interest in factories, or been inside one, but he had happened to read about factories, and had been in the houses of manufacturers and had talked to them; and whenever he saw a factory far or near, he always thought how quiet and peaceable it was outside, but within there was always sure to be impenetrable ignorance and dull egoism on the side of the owners, wearisome, unhealthy toil on the side of the workpeople, squabbling, vermin, vodka. And now when the workpeople timidly and respectfully made way for the carriage, in their faces, their caps, their walk, he read physical impurity, drunkenness, nervous exhaustion, bewilderment.
They drove in at the factory gates. On each side he caught glimpses
of the little houses of workpeople, of the faces of women, of quilts
and linen on the railings. "Look out!" shouted the coachman, not
pulling up the horses. It was a wide courtyard without grass, with
five immense blocks of buildings with tall chimneys a little distance
one from another, warehouses and barracks, and over everything a
sort of grey powder as though from dust. Here and there, like oases
in the desert, there were pitiful gardens, and the green and red
roofs of the houses in which the managers and clerks lived. The
coachman suddenly pulled up the horses, and the carriage stopped
at the house, which had been newly painted grey; here was a flower
garden, with a lilac bush covered with dust, and on the yellow steps
at the front door there was a strong smell of paint.
"Please come in, doctor," said women's voices in the passage and
the entry, and at the same time he heard sighs and whisperings. "Pray walk in. . . . We've been expecting you so long . . . we're in real trouble. Here, this way."
Madame Lyalikov--a stout elderly lady wearing a black silk dress
with fashionable sleeves, but, judging from her face, a simple
uneducated woman--looked at the doctor in a flutter, and could
not bring herself to hold out her hand to him; she did not dare. Beside her stood a personage with short hair and a pince-nez; she was wearing a blouse of many colours, and was very thin and no longer young. The servants called her Christina Dmitryevna, and Korolyov guessed that this was the governess. Probably, as the person of most education in the house, she had been charged to meet and receive the doctor, for she began immediately, in great haste, stating the causes of the illness, giving trivial and tiresome details, but without saying who was ill or what was the matter.
The doctor and the governess were sitting talking while the lady
of the house stood motionless at the door, waiting. From the
conversation Korolyov learned that the patient was Madame Lyalikov's
only daughter and heiress, a girl of twenty, called Liza; she had
been ill for a long time, and had consulted various doctors, and
the previous night she had suffered till morning from such violent
palpitations of the heart, that no one in the house had slept, and
they had been afraid she might die.