War And Peace: Book 4 - CHAPTER VIII

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“Ma bonne amie,” said the little princess, after breakfast, on the

morning of the 19th of March, and her little downy lip was lifted as of old; but

as in that house since the terrible news had come, smiles, tones of voice,

movements even bore the stamp of mourning, so now the smile of the little

princess, who was influenced by the general temper without knowing its cause,

was such that more than all else it was eloquent of the common burden of

sorrow.

“My dear, I am afraid that this morning's fruschtique (as Foka calls

it) has disagreed with me.”

“What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are very

pale,” said Princess Marya in alarm, running with her soft, ponderous tread up

to her sister-in-law.

“Shouldn't we send for Marya Bogdanovna, your excellency?” said one of the

maids who was present. Marya Bogdanovna was a midwife from a district town, who

had been for the last fortnight at Bleak Hills.

“Yes, truly,” assented Princess Marya, “perhaps it is really that. I'll go

and get her. Courage, my angel.” She kissed Liza and was going out of the

room.

“Oh, no, no!” And besides her pallor, the face of the little princess

expressed a childish terror at the inevitable physical suffering before

her.

“No, it is indigestion, say it is indigestion, say so, Marie, say so!” And

the little princess began to cry, wringing her little hands with childish misery

and capriciousness and affected exaggeration too. Princess Marya ran out of the

room to fetch Marya Bogdanovna.

“Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Oh!” she heard behind her. The midwife was

already on her way to meet her, rubbing her plump, small white hands, with a

face of significant composure.

“Marya Bogdanovna! I think it has begun,” said Princess Marya, looking with

wide-open, frightened eyes at the midwife.

“Well, I thank God for it,” said Marya Bogdanovna, not hastening her step.

“You young ladies have no need to know anything about it.”

“But how is it the doctor has not come from Moscow yet?” said the princess.

(In accordance with the wishes of Liza and Prince Andrey, they had sent to

Moscow for a doctor, and were expecting him every minute.)

“It's no matter, princess, don't be uneasy,” said Marya Bogdanovna; “we shall

do very well without the doctor.”

Five minutes later the princess from her room heard something heavy being

carried by. She peeped out; the footmen were for some reason moving into the

bedroom the leather sofa which stood in Prince Andrey's study. There was a

solemn and subdued look on the men's faces.

Princess Marya sat alone in her room, listening to the sounds of the house,

now and then opening the door when any one passed by and looking at what was

taking place in the corridor. Several women passed to and fro treading softly;

they glanced at the princess and turned away from her. She did not venture to

ask questions, and going back to her room closed the door and sat still in an

armchair, or took up her prayer-book, or knelt down before the shrine. To her

distress and astonishment she felt that prayer did not soothe her emotion. All

at once the door of her room was softly opened, and she saw on the threshold her

old nurse, Praskovya Savvishna, with a kerchief over her head. The old woman

hardly ever, owing to the old prince's prohibition, came into her room.

“I've come to sit a bit with thee, Mashenka,” said the nurse; “and here I've

brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his saint, my angel,” she

said, sighing.

“Ah, how glad I am, nurse!”

“God is merciful, my darling.” The nurse lighted the gilt candles before the

shrine, and sat down with her stocking near the door. Princess Marya took a book

and began reading. Only when they heard steps or voices, the princess and the

nurse looked at one another, one with alarmed inquiry, the other with soothing

reassurance in her face. The feeling that Princess Marya was experiencing as she

sat in her room had overpowered the whole house and taken possession of every

one. Owing to the belief that the fewer people know of the sufferings of a woman

in labour, the less she suffers, every one tried to affect to know nothing of

it; no one talked about it, but over and above the habitual staidness and

respectfulness of good manners that always reigned in the prince's household,

there was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a

consciousness of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished at that

moment. There was no sound of laughter in the big room where the maids sat. In

the waiting-room the men all sat in silence, as it were on the alert. Torches

and candles were burning in the serfs' quarters, and no one slept. The old

prince walked about his study, treading on his heels, and sent Tihon to Marya

Bogdanovna to ask what news.

“Only say: the prince has sent to ask, what news and come and tell me what

she says.”

“Inform the prince that the labour has commenced,” said Marya Bogdanovna,

looking significantly at the messenger. Tihon went and gave the prince that

information.

“Very good,” said the prince, closing the door behind him, and Tihon heard

not the slightest sound in the study after that. After a short interval Tihon

went into the study, as though to attend to the candles. Seeing the prince lying

on the couch, Tihon looked at him, looked at his perturbed face, shook his head,

and went up to him dumbly and kissed him on the shoulder, then went out without

touching the candles or saying why he had come. The most solemn mystery in the

world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And the feeling of

suspense and softening of the heart before the unfathomable did not wane, but

grew more intense. No one slept.

It was one of those March nights when winter seems to regain its sway, and

flings its last snows and storms with malignant desperation. A relay of horses

had been sent to the high-road for the German doctor who was expected every

minute, and men were despatched on horseback with lanterns to the turning at the

cross-roads to guide him over the holes and treacherous places in the ice.

Princess Marya had long abandoned her book; she sat in silence, her luminous

eyes fixed on the wrinkled face of her old nurse (so familiar to her in the

minutest detail), on the lock of grey hair that had escaped from the kerchief,

on the baggy looseness of the skin under her chin.

The old nurse, with her stocking in her hand, talked away in a soft voice,

not hearing it herself nor following the meaning of her own words; telling, as

she had told hundreds of times before, how the late princess had been brought to

bed of Princess Marya at Kishinyov, and had only a Moldavian peasant woman

instead of a midwife.

“God is merciful, doctors are never wanted,” she said.

Suddenly a gust of wind blew on one of the window-frames (by the prince's

decree the double frames were always taken out of every window when the larks

returned), and flinging open a badly fastened window bolt, set the stiff curtain

fluttering; and the chill, snowy draught blew out the candle. Princess Marya

shuddered; the nurse, putting down her stocking, went to the window, and putting

her head out tried to catch the open frame. The cold wind flapped the ends of

her kerchief and the grey locks of her hair.

“Princess, my dearie, there's some one driving up the avenue!” she said,

holding the window-frame and not closing it. “With lanterns; it must be the

doctor.…”

“Ah, my God! Thank God!” said the Princess Marya. “I must go and meet him; he

does not know Russian.”

Princess Marya flung on a shawl and ran to meet the stranger. As she passed

through the ante-room, she saw through the window a carriage and lanterns

standing at the entrance. She went out on to the stairs. At the post of the

balustrade stood a tallow-candle guttering in the draught. The footman Filipp,

looking scared, stood below on the first landing of the staircase, with another

candle in his hand. Still lower down, at the turn of the winding stairs, steps

in thick overshoes could be heard coming up. And a voice—familiar it seemed to

Princess Marya—was saying something.

“Thank God!” said the voice. “And father?”

“He has gone to bed,” answered the voice of the butler, Demyan, who was

below.

Then the voice said something more, Demyan answered something, and the steps

in thick overshoes began approaching more rapidly up the unseen part of the

staircase.

“It is Andrey!” thought Princess Marya. “No, it cannot be, it would be too

extraordinary,” she thought; and at the very instant she was thinking so, on the

landing where the footman stood with a candle, there came into sight the face

and figure of Prince Andrey, in a fur coat, with a deep collar covered with

snow. Yes, it was he, but pale and thin, and with a transformed, strangely

softened, agitated expression on his face. He went up the stairs and embraced

his sister.

“You did not get my letter, then?” he asked; and not waiting for an answer,

which he would not have received, for the princess could not speak, he turned

back, and with the doctor who was behind him (they had met at the last station),

he ran again rapidly upstairs and again embraced his sister.

“What a strange fate!” he said, “Masha, darling!” And flinging off his fur

coat and overboots, he went towards the little princess's room.

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