"He is sure to bring him," Tolkatchenko put in for some reason.
"If I am not mistaken, the printing press will be handed over, to begin with?" inquired Liputin, though again he seemed hardly to understand why he asked the question.
"Of course. Why should we lose it?" said Pyotr Stepanovitch, lifting the lantern to his face.
"But, you see, we all agreed yesterday that it was not really necessary to take it.
He need only show you the exact spot where it's buried; we can dig it up afterwards for ourselves.
I know that it's somewhere ten paces from a corner of this grotto. But, damn it all! how could you have forgotten, Liputin?
It was agreed that you should meet him alone and that we should come out afterwards.... It's strange that you should ask—or didn't you mean what you said?"
Liputin kept gloomily silent.
All were silent.
The wind shook the tops of the pine-trees.
"I trust, however, gentlemen, that every one will do his duty," Pyotr Stepanovitch rapped out impatiently.
"I know that Shatov's wife has come back and has given birth to a child," Virginsky said suddenly, excited and gesticulating and scarcely able to speak distinctly.
"Knowing what human nature is, we can be sure that now he won't give information... because he is happy.... So I went to every one this morning and found no one at home, so perhaps now nothing need be done...."
He stopped short with a catch in his breath.
"If you suddenly became happy, Mr. Virginsky," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, stepping up to him, "would you abandon—not giving information; there's no question of that—but any perilous public action which you had planned before you were happy and which you regarded as a duty and obligation in spite of the risk and loss of happiness?"
"No, I wouldn't abandon it!
I wouldn't on any account!" said Virginsky with absurd warmth, twitching all over.
"You would rather be unhappy again than be a scoundrel?"
"Yes, yes.... Quite the contrary.... I'd rather be a complete scoundrel... that is no... not a scoundrel at all, but on the contrary completely unhappy rather than a scoundrel."
"Well then, let me tell you that Shatov looks on this betrayal as a public duty. It's his most cherished conviction, and the proof of it is that he runs some risk himself; though, of course, they will pardon him a great deal for giving information.
A man like that will never give up the idea.
No sort of happiness would overcome him. In another day he'll go back on it, reproach himself, and will go straight to the police.
What's more, I don't see any happiness in the fact that his wife has come back after three years' absence to bear him a child of Stavrogin's."
"But no one has seen Shatov's letter," Shigalov brought out all at once, emphatically.
"I've seen it," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch. "It exists, and all this is awfully stupid, gentlemen."
"And I protest..." Virginsky cried, boiling over suddenly: "I protest with all my might.... I want... this is what I want. I suggest that when he arrives we all come out and question him, and if it's true, we induce him to repent of it; and if he gives us his word of honour, let him go.
In any case we must have a trial; it must be done after trial.
We mustn't lie in wait for him and then fall upon him."
"Risk the cause on his word of honour—that's the acme of stupidity!
Damnation, how stupid it all is now, gentlemen!
And a pretty part you are choosing to play at the moment of danger!"
"I protest, I protest!" Virginsky persisted.
"Don't bawl, anyway; we shan't hear the signal. Shatov, gentlemen.... (Damnation, how stupid this is now!) I've told you already that Shatov is a Slavophil, that is, one of the stupidest set of people.... But, damn it all, never mind, that's no matter!
You put me out!...
Shatov is an embittered man, gentlemen, and since he has belonged to the party, anyway, whether he wanted to or no, I had hoped till the last minute that he might have been of service to the cause and might have been made use of as an embittered man.
I spared him and was keeping him in reserve, in spite of most exact instructions.... I've spared him a hundred times more than he deserved!
But he's ended by betraying us.... But, hang it all, I don't care!
You'd better try running away now, any of you!
No one of you has the right to give up the job!
You can kiss him if you like, but you haven't the right to stake the cause on his word of honour!
That's acting like swine and spies in government pay!"
"Who's a spy in government pay here?" Liputin filtered out.
"You, perhaps.
You'd better hold your tongue, Liputin; you talk for the sake of talking, as you always do.
All men are spies, gentlemen, who funk their duty at the moment of danger.
There will always be some fools who'll run in a panic at the last moment and cry out,
'Aie, forgive me, and I'll give them all away!'
But let me tell you, gentlemen, no betrayal would win you a pardon now.
Even if your sentence were mitigated it would mean Siberia; and, what's more, there's no escaping the weapons of the other side—and their weapons are sharper than the government's."
Pyotr Stepanovitch was furious and said more than he meant to.