"Well... bother!
I don't care, only to make an end of it."
They walked very fast.
"Erkel, you little boy," cried Shatov, "have you ever been happy?"
"You seem to be very happy just now," observed Erkel with curiosity.
CHAPTER VI.
A BUSY NIGHT
During that day Virginsky had spent two hours in running round to see the members of the quintet and to inform them that Shatov would certainly not give information, because his wife had come back and given birth to a child, and no one "who knew anything of human nature" could suppose that Shatov could be a danger at this moment.
But to his discomfiture he found none of them at home except Erkel and Lyamshin.
Erkel listened in silence, looking candidly into his eyes, and in answer to the direct question
"Would he go at six o'clock or not?" he replied with the brightest of smiles that "of course he would go."
Lyamshin was in bed, seriously ill, as it seemed, with his head covered with a quilt.
He was alarmed at Virginsky's coming in, and as soon as the latter began speaking he waved him off from under the bedclothes, entreating him to let him alone.
He listened to all he said about Shatov, however, and seemed for some reason extremely struck by the news that Virginsky had found no one at home.
It seemed that Lyamshin knew already (through Liputin) of Fedka's death, and hurriedly and incoherently told Virginsky about it, at which the latter seemed struck in his turn.
To Virginsky's direct question,
"Should they go or not?" he began suddenly waving his hands again, entreating him to let him alone, and saying that it was not his business, and that he knew nothing about it.
Virginsky returned home dejected and greatly alarmed. It weighed upon him that he had to hide it from his family; he was accustomed to tell his wife everything; and if his feverish brain had not hatched a new idea at that moment, a new plan of conciliation for further action, he might have taken to his bed like Lyamshin.
But this new idea sustained him; what's more, he began impatiently awaiting the hour fixed, and set off for the appointed spot earlier than was necessary.
It was a very gloomy place at the end of the huge park.
I went there afterwards on purpose to look at it. How sinister it must have looked on that chill autumn evening!
It was at the edge of an old wood belonging to the Crown. Huge ancient pines stood out as vague sombre blurs in the darkness.
It was so dark that they could hardly see each other two paces off, but Pyotr Stepanovitch, Liputin, and afterwards Erkel, brought lanterns with them.
At some unrecorded date in the past a rather absurd-looking grotto had for some reason been built here of rough unhewn stones.
The table and benches in the grotto had long ago decayed and fallen.
Two hundred paces to the right was the bank of the third pond of the park.
These three ponds stretched one after another for a mile from the house to the very end of the park.
One could scarcely imagine that any noise, a scream, or even a shot, could reach the inhabitants of the Stavrogins' deserted house.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's departure the previous day and Alexey Yegorytch's absence left only five or six people in the house, all more or less invalided, so to speak.
In any case it might be assumed with perfect confidence that if cries or shouts for help were heard by any of the inhabitants of the isolated house they would only have excited terror; no one would have moved from his warm stove or snug shelf to give assistance.
By twenty past six almost all of them except Erkel, who had been told off to fetch Shatov, had turned up at the trysting-place.
This time Pyotr Stepanovitch was not late; he came with Tolkatchenko.
Tolkatchenko looked frowning and anxious; all his assumed determination and insolent bravado had vanished.
He scarcely left Pyotr Stepanovitch's side, and seemed to have become all at once immensely devoted to him. He was continually thrusting himself forward to whisper fussily to him, but the latter scarcely answered him, or muttered something irritably to get rid of him.
Shigalov and Virginsky had arrived rather before Pyotr Stepanovitch, and as soon as he came they drew a little apart in profound and obviously intentional silence.
Pyotr Stepanovitch raised his lantern and examined them with unceremonious and insulting minuteness.
"They mean to speak," flashed through his mind.
"Isn't Lyamshin here?" he asked Virginsky.
"Who said he was ill?"
"I am here," responded Lyamshin, suddenly coming from behind a tree.
He was in a warm greatcoat and thickly muffled in a rug, so that it was difficult to make out his face even with a lantern.
"So Liputin is the only one not here?"
Liputin too came out of the grotto without speaking.
Pyotr Stepanovitch raised the lantern again.
"Why were you hiding in there? Why didn't you come out?"
"I imagine we still keep the right of freedom... of our actions," Liputin muttered, though probably he hardly knew what he wanted to express.
"Gentlemen," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, raising his voice for the first time above a whisper, which produced an effect, "I think you fully understand that it's useless to go over things again.
Everything was said and fully thrashed out yesterday, openly and directly.
But perhaps—as I see from your faces—someone wants to make some statement; in that case I beg you to make haste.
Damn it all! there's not much time, and Erkel may bring him in a minute...."