Shatov was at home and rather unwell.
He was lying on his bed, though dressed.
"What bad luck!" Pyotr Stepanovitch cried out in the doorway.
"Are you really ill?"
The amiable expression of his face suddenly vanished; there was a gleam of spite in his eyes.
"Not at all." Shatov jumped up nervously. "I am not ill at all... a little headache..."
He was disconcerted; the sudden appearance of such a visitor positively alarmed him.
"You mustn't be ill for the job I've come about," Pyotr Stepanovitch began quickly and, as it were, peremptorily. "Allow me to sit down." (He sat down.) "And you sit down again on your bedstead; that's right.
There will be a party of our fellows at Virginsky's to-night on the pretext of his birthday; it will have no political character, however—we've seen to that.
I am coming with Nikolay Stavrogin.
I would not, of course, have dragged you there, knowing your way of thinking at present... simply to save your being worried, not because we think you would betray us.
But as things have turned out, you will have to go.
You'll meet there the very people with whom we shall finally settle how you are to leave the society and to whom you are to hand over what is in your keeping.
We'll do it without being noticed; I'll take you aside into a corner; there'll be a lot of people and there's no need forevery one to know.
I must confess I've had to keep my tongue wagging on your behalf; but now I believe they've agreed, on condition you hand over the printing press and all the papers, of course.
Then you can go where you please."
Shatov listened, frowning and resentful.
The nervous alarm of a moment before had entirely left him.
"I don't acknowledge any sort of obligation to give an account to the devil knows whom," he declared definitely. "No one has the authority to set me free."
"Not quite so.
A great deal has been entrusted to you.
You hadn't the right to break off simply.
Besides, you made no clear statement about it, so that you put them in an ambiguous position."
"I stated my position clearly by letter as soon as I arrived here."
"No, it wasn't clear," Pyotr Stepanovitch retorted calmly. "I sent you
'A Noble Personality' to be printed here, and meaning the copies to be kept here till they were wanted; and the two manifestoes as well.
You returned them with an ambiguous letter which explained nothing."
"I refused definitely to print them."
"Well, not definitely.
You wrote that you couldn't, but you didn't explain for what reason.
'I can't' doesn't mean 'I don't want to.'
It might be supposed that you were simply unable through circumstances.
That was how they took it, and considered that you still meant to keep up your connection with the society, so that they might have entrusted something to you again and so have compromised themselves.
They say here that you simply meant to deceive them, so that you might betray them when you got hold of something important.
I have defended you to the best of my powers, and have shown your brief note as evidence in your favour.
But I had to admit on rereading those two lines that they were misleading and not conclusive."
"You kept that note so carefully then?"
"My keeping it means nothing; I've got it still."
"Well, I don't care, damn it!" Shatov cried furiously.
"Your fools may consider that I've betrayed them if they like—what is it to me?
I should like to see what you can do to me?"
"Your name would be noted, and at the first success of the revolution you would be hanged."
"That's when you get the upper hand and dominate Russia?"
"You needn't laugh.
I tell you again, I stood up for you.
Anyway, I advise you to turn up to-day.
Why waste words through false pride?
Isn't it better to part friends?
In any case you'll have to give up the printing press and the old type and papers—that's what we must talk about."
"I'll come," Shatov muttered, looking down thoughtfully.