She would not let her mother go; she struggled tenderly with her, asked for pillows and water, unbuttoned and tore open her mother’s dress. ‘Dearest . . . my darling . . . mamma . . . my precious,’ she whispered without pausing, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling the tears streaming in irrepressible floods over her nose and cheeks.
The countess squeezed her daughter’s hand, closed her eyes, and was quieter for a moment. All at once she sat up with unnatural swiftness, looked vacantly round, and seeing Natasha, began hugging her head to her with all her might. Natasha’s face involuntarily worked with the pain, as her mother turned it toward her, and gazed a long while into it. ‘Natasha, you love me,’ she said, in a soft, confiding whisper. ‘Natasha, you won’t deceive me? You will tell me the whole truth?’
Natasha looked at her with eyes swimming with tears, and in her face seemed only imploring her love and forgiveness.
‘Mamma . . . darling,’ she kept repeating, putting forth all the strength of her love to try somehow to take a little of the crushing load of sorrow off her mother on to herself.
And again in the helpless struggle with reality, the mother, refusing to believe that she could live while her adored boy, just blossoming into life, was dead, took refuge from reality in the world of delirium.
Natasha had no recollection of how she spent that day and that night, and the following day and the following night. She did not sleep, and did not leave her mother’s side. Natasha’s love, patient and persistent, seemed to enfold the countess on all sides every second, offering no explanation, no consolation, simply beckoning her back to life.
On the third night the countess was quiet for a few minutes, and Natasha closed her eyes, her head propped on the arm of the chair. The bedstead creaked;' Natasha opened her eyes. The countess was sitting up in bed, and talking softly.
‘How glad I am you have come home. You are tired, won’t you have tea?’ Natasha went up to her. ‘You have grown so handsome and manly,’ the countess went on, taking her daughter’s hand.
‘Mamma, what are you saying . . . ?’
‘Natasha, he is gone, he is no more.’ And embracing her daughter, the countess for the first time began to weep.
III
Princess Marya put off her departure. Sonya and the count tried to ake Natasha’s place, but they could not. They saw that she was the only ine who could keep the mother from the frenzy of despair. For three weeks Natasha never left her mother’s side, slept on a lounge in her room, nade her drink and eat, and without pause talked to her, talked because per tender, loving voice was the only thing that soothed the countess.
The wound in the mother’s heart could never be healed. Petya’s death had torn away half of her life. When the news of Petya’s death reached her, she was a fresh-looking, vigorous woman of fifty; a month later she :ame out of her room an old woman, half dead and with no more interest in life. But the wound that half killed the countess, that fresh wound, brought Natasha back to life.
A spiritual wound that comes from a rending of the spirit is like a physical wound, and after it has healed externally, and the torn edges are scarred over, yet, strange to say, like a deep physical injury, it only heals inwardly by the force of life pushing up from within.
So Natasha’s wound healed. She believed that her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of her life— love—was still alive within her. Love was awakened, and life waked with it.
The last days of Prince Andrey had been a close bond between Natasha and Princess Marya. This fresh trouble brought them even closer together. Princess Marya put off her departure, and for the last three weeks she had been looking after Natasha, as though she were a sick child. Those weeks spent by Natasha in her mother’s room had completely broken down her health.
One day Princess Marya noticed that Natasha was shivering with a feverish chill, and brought her away to her own room, and tucked her up in bed in the middle of the day. Natasha lay down, but when Princess Marya, having let down the blinds, was about to leave the room, Natasha called her to her.
‘I’m not sleepy, Marie; stay with me.’
‘You are tired; try and go to sleep.’
‘No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will ask for me.’
‘She is much better. She was talking much more like herself to-day,’ said Princess Marya.
Natasha lay on the bed, and in the half-dark room she tried to make out Princess Marya’s face.
‘Is she like him?’ Natasha wondered. ‘Yes; like and unlike. But she is original, different, a quite new, unknown person. And she likes me. What is there in her heart? Everything good. But what is it like? What are her thoughts like? How does she look on me? Yes; she is nice!’
‘Masha,’ she said, shyly drawing her hand towards her. ‘Masha, you mustn't think I'm horrid. No? Masha, darling! How I love you! Let us
