‘Go away, go away – killed in battle, the best men of Russia and the glory of Russia led to defeat and destruction. Go away, Princess Marya. Go and tell Liza. I’ll come along soon.’
When Princess Marya came back from seeing her father the little princess was sitting at her work, and she glanced up with that pregnant woman’s special look of inner peace and contentment. Her eyes were obviously not seeing Princess Marya; she was looking in at herself, at some sweet mystery building up within her.
‘Marie,’ she said, easing away from the embroidery frame and leaning back heavily, ‘feel here.’ She took the princess’s hand and placed it on her belly. Her eyes smiled invitingly as her little downy lip rose and stayed up in childlike rapture. Princess Marya knelt down in front of her and buried her face in the folds of the young girl’s dress.
‘There it is. There. Can you feel it? It’s a funny feeling. Oh, Marie, I’m going to love him so much!’ said Liza, looking at her sister-in-law with a radiant happiness in her eyes. Princess Marya could not bring herself to look up; she was crying.
‘What’s wrong, Marie?’
‘Nothing’s wrong . . . I just felt sad . . . about Andrey,’ she said, brushing away the tears on the folds of her sister-in-law’s dress. Several times in the course of that morning Princess Marya made a move towards preparing her sister-in-law for the bad news, but every time she did so she broke down in tears. The little princess, although generally unobservant, was upset by all this weeping, which she couldn’t understand. She didn’t say anything, but she kept glancing round the room uneasily as if she was looking for something. Before dinner the old prince came into her room. She was always scared of him and this time he seemed unusually edgy and angry, though he walked out without saying a word. She glanced at Princess Marya with the same inwardly directed look of a pregnant woman, and suddenly burst into tears.
‘You haven’t heard from Andrey, have you?’ she asked.
‘No. You know we couldn’t have heard anything yet, but father is a bit restless and it makes me feel frightened.’
‘You really haven’t?’
‘No,’ said Princess Marya, with a resolute look in her luminous eyes. She had decided not to tell her, and had persuaded her father to hide the terrible news from her until after the birth, which could be expected any day now. Princess Marya and the old prince managed in different ways to bear their grief and hide it. The old prince abandoned all hope, convinced in his own mind that Prince Andrey was dead, and although he dispatched an official to Austria to look for any signs of his son, he sent an order to Moscow for a monument in his memory which he could put up in the garden, and he went around telling everyone his son was dead. He tried to go on exactly as before, but his strength was failing. He took fewer walks, ate less, slept less and grew weaker with each passing day. But Princess Marya went on hoping. She prayed for her brother as if he was still alive and fully expected him to return at any moment.
CHAPTER 8
‘Marie, my dear,’ said the little princess shortly after breakfast on the morning of the 19th of March. Her little downy upper lip rose as always, but because of the sorrow that had pervaded everything in that house since the terrible news had come – every smile, every word spoken or step taken – and because the little princess was a prey to the general mood without knowing the reason behind it, her smile did little more than serve as a reminder of the general sorrow.
‘Marie, my dear, I’m afraid this morning’s breakfast, what the cook calls
‘What is it, my darling? You do look pale. Very pale,’ said Princess Marya in alarm, hurrying softly across the room to her sister-in-law with her heavy tread.
‘Do you think we should fetch Marya Bogdanovna, your Excellency?’ asked one of the maids who happened to be there. (Marya Bogdanovna was a midwife from a nearby town who had been living at Bald Hills for the last two weeks.)
‘I think we should,’ Princess Marya agreed. ‘You could be right. I’ll go and get her. Be brave, my angel.’ She kissed Liza and turned to walk out of the room.
‘Oh no, don’t!’ The little princess’s face, already pallid, shone with a child’s dread of inevitable physical pain.
‘No, it’s just indigestion, tell me it’s indigestion, tell me, Marie, please!’ And the little princess began to cry, wringing her little hands in girlish misery like a rather spoilt child and not without a touch of theatricality. Princess Marya ran out to fetch Marya Bogdanovna.
‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ she heard behind her. But there was the midwife, already on her way, rubbing her small, plump white hands and wearing a knowing look of calm self-control.
‘Marya Bogdanovna! I think she’s started,’ said Princess Marya, wide-eyed and frightened.
‘God be praised,’ said Marya Bogdanovna, refusing to be hurried. ‘Now, you young ladies don’t need to be involved in this.’
