第 三百二十 章 · 第320章

Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sónya and the count tried to

replace Natásha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to

restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natásha

remained constantly at her mother’s side, sleeping on a lounge chair

in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her incessantly

because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones soothed her

mother.

The mother’s wounded spirit could not heal. Pétya’s death had torn from

her half her life. When the news of Pétya’s death had come she had been

a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a month later she left her room

a listless old woman taking no interest in life. But the same blow that

almost killed the countess, this second blow, restored Natásha to life.

A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is like

a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep wound may

heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike can yet

heal completely only as the result of a vital force from within.

Natásha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended,

but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the essence of

life—love—was still active within her. Love awoke and so did life.

Prince Andrew’s last days had bound Princess Mary and Natásha together;

this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. Princess Mary

put off her departure, and for three weeks looked after Natásha as if

she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s bedroom

had strained Natásha’s physical strength.

One afternoon noticing Natásha shivering with fever, Princess Mary took

her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natásha lay down,

but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she

called her back.

“I don’t want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little.”

“You are tired—try to sleep.”

“No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me.”

“She is much better. She spoke so well today,” said Princess Mary.

Natásha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned

Princess Mary’s face.

“Is she like him?” thought Natásha. “Yes, like and yet not like. But she

is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me. What

is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind like? What

does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!”

“Mary,” she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary’s hand to herself,

“Mary, you mustn’t think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love you!

Let us be quite, quite friends.”

And Natásha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making

Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her feelings.

From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only

between women was established between Princess Mary and Natásha. They

were continually kissing and saying tender things to one another and

spent most of their time together. When one went out the other became

restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony

with one another than either of them felt with herself when alone. A

feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them; an exclusive

feeling of life being possible only in each other’s presence.

Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were already

in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They spoke most

of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her

mother, her father, and her daydreams; and Natásha, who with a passive

lack of understanding had formerly turned away from that life of

devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now

feeling herself bound to Princess Mary by affection, learned to love her

past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to

her. She did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation to her

own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood

and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For

Princess Mary, listening to Natásha’s tales of childhood and early

youth, there also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of

life: belief in life and its enjoyment.

Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they

thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him had

the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without being

conscious of it.

Natásha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all

talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was

suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,

and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm

carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her

drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed to

her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.

One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.

Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and

then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.

Another time when she called Dunyásha her voice trembled, so she called

again—though she could hear Dunyásha coming—called her in the deep chest

tones in which she had been wont to sing, and listened attentively to

herself.

She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer

of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate

young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so

cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that

it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had begun to heal

from within.

At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count

insisted on Natásha’s going with her to consult the doctors.