War and Peace Leo Tolstoy (best e books to read .TXT) 📖

wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair.

“Princess, my dear, there’s someone driving up the avenue!” she said, holding the casement and not closing it. “With lanterns. Most likely the doctor.”

“Oh, my God! thank God!” said Princess Márya. “I must go and meet him, he does not know Russian.”

Princess Márya threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to Princess Márya was saying something.

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

“Gone to bed,” replied the voice of Demyán the house steward, who was downstairs.

Then the voice said something more, Demyán replied, and the steps in the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more rapidly.

“It’s Andréy!” thought Princess Márya. “No it can’t be, that would be too extraordinary,” and at the very moment she thought this, the face and figure of Prince Andréy, in a fur cloak the deep collar of which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up the stairs and embraced his sister.

“You did not get my letter?” he asked, and not waiting for a reply⁠—which he would not have received, for the princess was unable to speak⁠—he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last post station), and again embraced his sister.

“What a strange fate, Másha darling!” And having taken off his cloak and felt boots, he went to the little princess’ apartment.

IX

The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andréy entered and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. “I love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!” her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince Andréy went round the sofa and kissed her forehead.

“My darling!” he said⁠—a word he had never used to her before. “God is merciful.⁠ ⁠…”

She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.

“I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!” said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Márya Bogdánovna advised Prince Andréy to leave the room.

The doctor entered. Prince Andréy went out and, meeting Princess Márya, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke off at every moment. They waited and listened.

“Go, dear,” said Princess Márya.

Prince Andréy went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and became confused when she saw Prince Andréy. He covered his face with his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans came through the door. Prince Andréy got up, went to the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.

“You can’t come in! You can’t!” said a terrified voice from within.

He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek⁠—it could not be hers, she could not scream like that⁠—came from the bedroom. Prince Andréy ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.

“What have they taken a baby in there for?” thought Prince Andréy in the first second. “A baby? What baby⁠ ⁠… ? Why is there a baby there? Or is the baby born?”

Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill he began to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andréy turned to him, but the doctor gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman rushed out and seeing Prince Andréy stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into his wife’s room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face with its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.

“I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?”⁠—said her charming, pathetic, dead face.

In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed in Márya Bogdánovna’s trembling white hands.

Two hours later Prince Andréy, stepping softly, went into his father’s room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise round his son’s neck, and without a word he began to sob like a child.

Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andréy went up the