Suddenly a gust of wind buffeted one of the window-frames (the prince had decreed that one outer panel should be taken down in every room as soon as the larks returned), tore open a loose window catch, swirling the brocade curtain and whistling through with a cold, snowy draught that blew out the candle. Princess Marya shuddered. The nurse put down her knitting and went over to the window, where she put her head out and tried to get hold of the open frame. The cold wind flapped at the corners of her headscarf, and locks of grey hair slipped out and tumbled down.
‘Princess, my love, someone be drivin’ down the avenoo!’ she said, holding on to the window-frame without closing it. ‘Be lanterns there.’Tis the doctor . . .’
‘Oh, thank God! Thanks be to God!’ said Princess Marya. ‘I must go and meet him. He doesn’t speak Russian.’
Princess Marya flung a shawl over her shoulders and rushed off to meet the men who were riding up to the house. Hurrying across the top landing, she looked down through a window and saw a carriage with lanterns standing at the entrance. She went to the head of the stairs. On a banister-post stood a tallow candle guttering in the draught. Half-way down, the footman Filipp, a picture of alarm, was standing on the first landing holding another candle. Right at the bottom, around the turn of the stairs, someone could be heard coming up in thick boots. And then a voice spoke, and Princess Marya thought she knew whose it was.
‘Thank God for that!’ said the voice. ‘And what about father?’
‘He has retired for the night,’ came the voice of the butler, Demyan, already downstairs.
Then the first voice spoke again, and Demyan’s reply was followed by the sound of those thick boots coming up the unseen part of the staircase faster and faster.
‘It’s Andrey!’ thought Princess Marya. ‘No, it can’t be, that would be too much.’ And as she stood there thinking about it, down on the landing where the footman stood with his candle, the face and figure of Prince Andrey suddenly appeared. He was still wearing his fur coat, its collar covered in snow. Yes, it was him, but he had changed; he looked pale and thin, in a strange way gentler, and very worried. He came up the stairs to embrace his sister.
‘Didn’t you get my letter?’ he asked, and without waiting for an answer which was never going to come from the speechless princess, he turned back to fetch the doctor who had arrived with him (they had met at the last posting station), and then flew back up the stairs and again embraced his sister.
‘How strange fate is!’ he said. ‘Dear Masha!’ Slipping out of his coat and boots, he set off for the little princess’s apartment.
CHAPTER 9
The little princess in her white night-cap was lying propped up with pillows. A wave of pain had just passed. Her black hair curled in thick strands around her feverish, perspiring cheeks; her pretty pink mouth, with its downy lip, was open, and she was smiling with joy. Prince Andrey came in and stood facing her at the foot of the couch where she lay. Her eyes shone like a child’s, full of fear and anxiety, and when they rested on him they didn’t change. ‘I love all of you. I’ve never done anybody any harm. Why should I suffer like this? Help me,’ was the message in them. She saw her husband but couldn’t take in the meaning of his sudden appearance. Prince Andrey walked around the couch and kissed her on the forehead.
‘My little darling,’ he said, never having called her that before, ‘God is merciful . . .’
Her little girl’s eyes looked at him wondering, full of reproach, as if trying to say to him, ‘I turned to you for help and you did nothing. Even you did nothing!’ It wasn’t that she was surprised to see him; she just didn’t realize he had come. His arrival had nothing to do with her labour pains or any relief from them. Another wave was coming, and Marya Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrey to leave the room.
The doctor came in as he went out. There was Princess Marya, and they went back to her room together. When they spoke it was in whispers, and the conversation kept breaking down. They waited and they listened.
‘Go and see her, my dear,’ said Princess Marya. Prince Andrey went back to see his wife and sat down in the next room waiting to be summoned. A woman ran out of the bedroom looking very frightened, and she was most disconcerted to see Prince Andrey. He buried his face in his hands and sat like that for several minutes. The most pitiful, helpless, animal cries could be heard from inside the room. Prince Andrey stood up, went across to the door and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.
‘Go away! You can’t come in!’ said a frightened voice on the other side. He paced up and down the room. The screams died down, and a few seconds passed. Then suddenly the most fearful scream – it couldn’t be hers, she couldn’t have screamed like that – came from inside the room. Prince Andrey ran to the door. The screaming stopped and he heard a different sound, the wail of a baby.
