War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [213]
“You didn’t get my letter?” he asked, and, not waiting for an answer, which he would not have received, because the princess was unable to speak, he went back and, together with the accoucheur, who came in behind him (they had met at the last posting station), came upstairs again with quick steps, and again embraced his sister.
“What fate!” he said. “Masha, dear!” And, throwing off his fur coat and boots, he went to his wife’s rooms.
IX
The little princess lay propped on pillows, in a white cap (her suffering had just eased), locks of her black hair curled around her inflamed, sweaty cheeks; her rosy, lovely little mouth with its little lip covered with fine black hair was open, and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrei came into the room and stopped before her, at the foot of the sofa on which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, looking childishly frightened and anxious, rested on him without changing expression. “I love you all, I did no harm to anyone, why am I suffering? Help me,” her expression said. She saw her husband, but did not understand the meaning of his appearance before her. Prince Andrei went around the sofa and kissed her on the forehead.
“My darling!” he spoke words he had never said to her before. “God is merciful…” She looked at him questioningly with childlike reproach.
“I expected help from you, and there’s nothing, nothing—you, too!” said her eyes. She was not surprised that he had come; she did not understand that he had come. His coming had no relation to her suffering and its relief. The pain started again, and Marya Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrei to leave the room.
The accoucheur came in. Prince Andrei left, and, meeting Princess Marya, went up to her again. They spoke in whispers, but the conversation stopped every other minute. They waited and listened.
“Allez, mon ami,”*285 said Princess Marya. Prince Andrei went to his wife again and sat in the next room waiting. Some woman came out of the room with a frightened face and became embarrassed on seeing Prince Andrei. He covered his face with his hands and sat that way for several minutes. Pitiful, helplessly animal moans came from behind the door. Prince Andrei got up, went to the door, and wanted to open it. Someone was holding the door.
“You mustn’t, you mustn’t!” a frightened voice said from inside. He started pacing the room. The cries ceased, another few seconds went by. Suddenly a terrible cry—not her cry, she could not cry like that—came from the next room. Prince Andrei rushed to the door; the cry ceased, but another cry was heard, a baby’s cry.
“Why did they bring a baby there?” was Prince Andrei’s first thought. “A baby? What baby?…Why is he there? Or has a baby been born?”
When he suddenly realized all the joyful meaning of that cry, tears choked him and, leaning both elbows on the windowsill, he wept, sobbing, as children weep. The door opened. The doctor, his shirtsleeves rolled up, without his frock coat, pale, his jaw trembling, came out of the room. Prince Andrei turned to him, but the doctor gave him a bewildered look and passed by without saying a word. A woman ran out, and, seeing Prince Andrei, hesitated in the doorway. He went into his wife’s room. She lay dead in the same position in which he had seen her five minutes before, and, despite her still eyes and pale cheeks, there was the same expression on that lovely, timid, childish face, with its lip covered with fine black hair.
“I loved you all and did nothing bad to anybody, and what have you done to me? Ah, what have you done to me?” said her lovely, pitiful, dead face. In the corner, something small and red snorted and