‘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; 1 ‘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 toi 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, 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 accom-
WAR AND PEACE
piished. 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. Xo 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 even' minute, and men were despatched on horseback with lanterns to the turning at the cross-roads to guide him over the holes arid treacherous places in tire ice.
Princess Mary a 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 elfin.
The old nurse, with her stocking in her hand, talked away in a soft voice, not hearing it herself nor following tire 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 Mary a at Kisliinyov, and had only a (Moldavian peasant woman instead of a midwife.
‘God is merciful, doctors are never wanted,’ she said.
