"Ah, stay!" cried Liza, in a flutter. "Where are you going?
We have so much still to talk over...."
"What is there to talk over?
I'll let you know to-morrow."
"Why, the most important thing of all—the printing-press!
Do believe me that I am not in jest, that I really want to work in good earnest!" Liza assured him in growing agitation.
"If we decide to publish it, where is it to be printed?
You know it's a most important question, for we shan't go to Moscow for it, and the printing-press here is out of the question for such a publication.
I made up my mind long ago to set up a printing-press of my own, in your name perhaps—and I know maman will allow it so long as it is in your name...."
"How do you know that I could be a printer?" Shatov asked sullenly.
"Why, Pyotr Stepanovitch told me of you in Switzerland, and referred me to you as one who knows the business and able to set up a printing-press.
He even meant to give me a note to you from himself, but I forgot it."
Shatov's face changed, as I recollect now.
He stood for a few seconds longer, then went out of the room.
Liza was angry.
"Does he always go out like that?" she asked, turning to me.
I was just shrugging my shoulders when Shatov suddenly came back, went straight up to the table and put down the roll of papers he had taken.
"I'm not going to be your helper, I haven't the time...."
"Why? Why?
I think you are angry!" Liza asked him in a grieved and imploring voice.
The sound of her voice seemed to strike him; for some moments he looked at her intently, as though trying to penetrate to her very soul.
"No matter," he muttered, softly, "I don't want to...."
And he went away altogether.
Liza was completely overwhelmed, quite disproportionately in fact, so it seemed to me.
"Wonderfully queer man," Mavriky Nikolaevitch observed aloud.
III
He certainly was queer, but in all this there was a very great deal not clear to me.
There was something underlying it all.
I simply did not believe in this publication; then that stupid letter, in which there was an offer, only too barefaced, to give information and produce "documents," though they were all silent about that, and talked of something quite different; finally that printing-press and Shatov's sudden exit, just because they spoke of a printing-press.
All this led me to imagine that something had happened before I came in of which I knew nothing; and, consequently, that it was no business of mine and that I was in the way.
And, indeed, it was time to take leave, I had stayed long enough for the first call.
I went up to say good-bye to Lizaveta Nikolaevna.
She seemed to have forgotten that I was in the room, and was still standing in the same place by the table with her head bowed, plunged in thought, gazing fixedly at one spot on the carpet.
"Ah, you, too, are going, good-bye," she murmured in an ordinary friendly tone.
"Give my greetings to Stepan Trofimovitch, and persuade him to come and see me as soon as he can.
Mavriky Nikolaevitch, Anton Lavrentyevitch is going.
Excuse maman's not being able to come out and say good-bye to you...."
I went out and had reached the bottom of the stairs when a footman suddenly overtook me at the street door.
"My lady begs you to come back...."
"The mistress, or Lizaveta Nikolaevna?"
"The young lady."
I found Liza not in the big room where we had been sitting, but in the reception-room next to it.
The door between it and the drawing-room, where Mavriky Nikolaevitch was left alone, was closed.
Liza smiled to me but was pale.
She was standing in the middle of the room in evident indecision, visibly struggling with herself; but she suddenly took me by the hand, and led me quickly to the window.
"I want to see her at once," she whispered, bending upon me a burning, passionate, impatient glance, which would not admit a hint of opposition. "I must see her with my own eyes, and I beg you to help me."
She was in a perfect frenzy, and—in despair.
"Who is it you want to see, Lizaveta Nikolaevna?" I inquired in dismay.
"That Lebyadkin's sister, that lame girl.... Is it true that she's lame?"
I was astounded.