“Marie, I won’t. … Perhaps you’ll lie down, Marie?” She made no answer and closed her eyes helplessly. Her pale face looked deathlike. She fell asleep almost instantly. Shatov looked round, snuffed the candle, looked uneasily at her face once more, pressed his hands tight in front of him and walked on tiptoe out of the room into the passage. At the top of the stairs he stood in the corner with his face to the wall and remained so for ten minutes without sound or movement. He would have stood there longer, but he suddenly caught the sound of soft cautious steps below. Someone was coming up the stairs. Shatov remembered he had forgotten to fasten the gate.
“Who’s there?” he asked in a whisper. The unknown visitor went on slowly mounting the stairs without answering. When he reached the top he stood still; it was impossible to see his face in the dark; suddenly Shatov heard the cautious question:
“Ivan Shatov?”
Shatov said who he was, but at once held out his hand to check his advance. The latter took his hand, and Shatov shuddered as though he had touched some terrible reptile.
“Stand here,” he whispered quickly. “Don’t go in, I can’t receive you just now. My wife has come back. I’ll fetch the candle.”
When he returned with the candle he found a young officer standing there; he did not know his name but he had seen him before.
“Erkel,” said the lad, introducing himself. “You’ve seen me at Virginsky’s.”
“I remember; you sat writing. Listen,” said Shatov in sudden excitement, going up to him frantically, but still talking in a whisper. “You gave me a sign just now when you took my hand. But you know I can treat all these signals with contempt! I don’t acknowledge them. … I don’t want them. … I can throw you downstairs this minute, do you know that?”
“No, I know nothing about that and I don’t know what you are in such a rage about,” the visitor answered without malice and almost ingenuously. “I have only to give you a message, and that’s what I’ve come for, being particularly anxious not to lose time. You have a printing press which does not belong to you, and of which you are bound to give an account, as you know yourself. I have received instructions to request you to give it up tomorrow at seven o’clock in the evening to Liputin. I have been instructed to tell you also that nothing more will be asked of you.”
“Nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing. Your request is granted, and you are struck off our list. I was instructed to tell you that positively.”
“Who instructed you to tell me?”
“Those who told me the sign.”
“Have you come from abroad?”
“I … I think that’s no matter to you.”
“Oh, hang it! Why didn’t you come before if you were told to?”
“I followed certain instructions and was not alone.”
“I understand, I understand that you were not alone. Eh … hang it! But why didn’t Liputin come himself?”
“So I shall come for you tomorrow at exactly six o’clock in the evening, and we’ll go there on foot. There will be no one there but us three.”
“Will Verhovensky be there?”
“No, he won’t. Verhovensky is leaving the town at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Just what I thought!” Shatov whispered furiously, and he struck his fist on his hip. “He’s run off, the sneak!”
He sank into agitated reflection. Erkel looked intently at him and waited in silence.
“But how will you take it? You can’t simply pick it up in your hands and carry it.”
“There will be no need to. You’ll simply point out the place and we’ll just make sure that it really is buried there. We only know whereabouts the place is, we don’t know the place itself. And have you pointed the place out to anyone else yet?”
Shatov looked at him.
“You, you, a chit of a boy like you, a silly boy like you, you too have got caught in that net like a sheep? Yes, that’s just the young blood they want! Well, go along. E-ech! that scoundrel’s taken you all in and run away.”
Erkel looked at him serenely and calmly but did not seem to understand.
“Verhovensky, Verhovensky has run away!” Shatov growled fiercely.
“But he is still here, he is not gone away. He is not going till tomorrow,” Erkel observed softly and persuasively. “I particularly begged him to be present as a witness; my instructions all referred to him (he explained frankly like a young and inexperienced boy). But I regret to say he did not agree on the ground of his departure, and he really is in a hurry.”
Shatov glanced compassionately at the simple youth again, but suddenly gave a gesture of despair as though he thought “they are not worth pitying.”
“All right, I’ll come,” he cut him short. “And now get away, be off.”
“So I’ll come for you at six o’clock punctually.” Erkel made a courteous bow and walked deliberately downstairs.
“Little fool!” Shatov could not help shouting after him from the top.
“What is it?” responded the lad from the bottom.
“Nothing, you can go.”
“I thought you said something.”
II
Erkel was a “little fool” who was only lacking in the higher form of reason, the ruling power of the intellect; but of the lesser, the subordinate reasoning faculties, he had plenty—even to the point of cunning. Fanatically, childishly devoted to “the cause” or rather in reality to Pyotr Verhovensky, he acted on the instructions given to him when at the meeting of the quintet they had agreed and had distributed the various duties for the next day. When Pyotr Stepanovitch gave him the job of messenger, he succeeded in talking to him aside for ten minutes.
A craving for active service was characteristic of this shallow, unreflecting nature, which was forever yearning to follow the lead of another man’s will, of course for the good of “the common” or “the great” cause. Not that that made any difference, for little fanatics like Erkel can
