The medical student appeared in the doorway. He looked from side to side, and seeing Vasilyev, said in an agitated voice:
"You here! I tell you it's really impossible to go any- where with Yegor! What a fellow he is! I don't under- stand him! He has got up a scenel Do you hear? Yegor!" he shouted at the door. 'Tegor!"
"I won't allow you to hit women!" the artist's piercing voice sounded from above. Something heavy and lum- bering rolled down the stairs. It was the artist falling headlong. Evidently he had been pushed downstairs.
He picked himself up from the ground, shook his hat, and, with an angry and indignant face, brandished his fist towards the top of the stairs and shouted:
"Scoundrels! Torturers! Bloodsuckersl I won't allow you to hit them! To hit a weak, drunken woman! Oh,
n
you . . .
"Yegor! . . . Come, Yegor! . . ." the medical stu- dent began imploring him. "I give you my word of honor I'll never come with you again. On my word of honor I won't!"
Little by little the artist was pacified and the friends went homewards.
"Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student, "has led me to these mournful shores."
" 'Behold the mill,' " the artist chimed in a little later, " 'in ruins now.' What a lot of snow, Holy Mother! Grisha, why did you go? You are a coward, a regular old woman."
Vasilyev walked behind his companions, looked at their backs, and thought:
"One of two things: either we only fancy prostitution is an evil, and we exaggerate it; or, if prostitution really is as great an evil as is generally assumed, these dear friends of mine are as much slave-owners, ravishers, and murderers, as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo, that are described in Niva. Now they are singing, laughing, talking sense, but haven't they just been exploiting hunger, ignorance, and stupidity? They have—1 have been a witness of it. What is the use of their humanity, their medicine, their painting? The science, art, and lofty sentiments of these assassins remind me of the piece of bacon in the story. Two brigands murdered a beggar in a forest; they began sharing his clothes be- tween them, and found in his wallet a piece of bacon. 'Well found,' said one of them; 'let us have a bit.' 'What do you mean? How can you?' cried the other in horror. 'Have you forgotten that today is Wednesday?' And they would not eat it. After murdering a man, they came out of the forest in the firm conviction that they were good Christians. In the same way these men, after buying women, go their way imagining that they are artists and men of science. . . ."
"Listen!" he said sharply and angrily. "Why do you come here? Is it possible—is it possible you don't under- stand how horrible it is? Your medical books tell you that every one of these women dies prematurely of consumption or something; art tells you that morally they are dead even earlier. Every one of them dies be- cause she has in her time to entertain five hundred men on an average, let us say. Each one of them is killed by five hundred men. You are among those five hun- dred! If each of you -in the course of your life visits this place or others like it two hundred and fifty times, it follows that one woman is killed by every two of you! Can't you understand that? Isn't it horrible for two of you, three of you, five of you, to murder a foolish, hungry woman! Ah! isn't it awful, my God!"
"I knew it would end like that," the artist said frown- ing. 'We ought not to have gone with this fool and ass! You imagine you have grand notions in your head now, ideas, don't you? No, it's the devil knows what, but not ideas. You are looking at me now with hatred and re- pulsion, but I tell you it's better you should set up twenty more houses like those than look like that. There's more vice in your look than in the whole street! Come along, Volodya, let him go to the devill He's a fool and an ass, and that's all. . . ."
"We human beings do murder each other," said the medical student. "It's immoral, of course, but philoso- phizing won't help it. Good-by!"
At Trubnoy Square the friends said good-by and parted. When he was left alone, Vasilyev strode rapidly along the boulevard. He felt frightened of the darkness, of the snow which was falling in heavy flakes on the ground and seemed as though it would cover up the whole world; he felt frightened of the street lamps glimmering feebly through the clouds of snow. His soul was possessed by an unaccountable, faint-hearted ter- ror. Passers-by came towards him from time to time, but he timidly edged away; it seemed to him that women, none but women, were coming from all sides and rtar- ing at him. . . .
"It's beginning," he thought, "I am going to have an attack of nerves."
VI
At home he lay on his bed and said, shuddering all over: "They are alive! Alive! My God, those women are alive!"
He stimulated his imagination in all sorts ofways; he pictured himself the brother of a fallen woman, or her
father, then a fallen woman herself, with her painted
cheeks; and it all moved him to horror.
It seemed to him that he must settle the question at once at all costs, and that this question was not one that did not concern him, but was his own personal problem. He made an immense effort, repressed his despair, and, sitting on the bed, holding his head in his hands, began thinking how one could save all the women he had seen that day. The method for attacking problems of all kinds was, as he was an educated man, well known to him. And however excited he was, he strictly adhered to that method. He recalled the history of the problem and its literature, and for a quarter of an hour paced from one end of the room to the other trying to remember all the methods for saving women employed at the present time. He had very many good friends and acquaintances who lived in rooming-houses. Among them were a good many honest and self-sacri- ficing men. Some of them had attempted to save women. . . .
"All these not very numerous attempts," thought Va- silyev, "can be divided into three groups. Some, after buying the woman out of the brothel, took a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine, and she became a seamstress. And whether he wanted to or not, after having bought her out he made her his mistress; then when he had taken his degree, he went away and handed her into the keeping of some other decent man as though she were a thing. And the fallen woman re- mained a fallen woman. Others, after buying her out, took a lodging apart for her, bought the inevitable sewing-machine, and tried teaching her to read, preach- ing at her, and giving her books. The woman stayed and sewed as long as it was interesting and a novelty to her, then getting bored, began receiving men on the sly, or ran away Ј»nd went back where she could sleep till three o'clock, drink coffee, and have good dinners. Finally, those who were most ardent and self-sacrificing took a bold, resolute step: they married the woman. And when the insolent and spoiled, or stupid and crushed animal became a wife, the head of a household, and afterwards a mother, it turned her whole existence and attitude to life upside do^, so that it was hard to recognize the fallen woman afterwards in the wife and the mother. Yes, marriage was the best and perhaps the only means."
"But it is impossible!" Vasilyev said aloud, and he sank upon his bed. "1, to begin with, could not marry one! To do that one must be a saint and be unable to feel hatred or repulsion. But let us suppose that I, the medical student, and the artist mastered ourselves and did marry them—suppose they were all married. What would be the result? The result would be that while here in Moscow they were being married, some Smo- lensk accountant would be debauching another lot, and that lot would be streaming here to fill the vacant places, together with others from Saratov, Nizhni-Nov- gorod, Warsaw. . . . And what is one to do with the hundred thousand in London? What's one to do with those in Hamburg?"
The lamp in which the oil had burnt do^ began to smoke. Vasilyev did not notice it. He began pacing to and fro again, still thinking. Now he put the question differently: what must be done that fallen women should not be needed? For that, it was essential that the men who buy and kill them should feel all the immorality of their share in enslaving them and should be horrified. One must save the men.