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PRINCESS MARYA put off her departure. Sonya and the count tried to take
Natasha's place, but they could not. They saw that she was the only one 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, made her drink and eat,
and without pause talked to her, talked because her 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 came 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 be quite, quite
friends.” And embracing her, Natasha fell to kissing her hands and face.
Princess Marya was abashed and overjoyed at this demonstration of
feeling.
From that day there sprang up between Princess Marya and Natasha one of those
tender and passionate friendships which can only exist between women. They were
continually kissing each other and saying tender things to one another, and they
spent the greater part of their time together. If one went away, the other was
uneasy and hastened to join her. They felt more harmony together with each other
than apart, each with herself. There sprang up between them a feeling stronger
than friendship; that was the feeling of life being only possible in each
other's company.
Sometimes they did not speak for hours together. Sometimes, as they lay in
their beds, they would begin to talk, and talked till morning. They talked, for
the most part, of their own remote past. Princess Marya told her of her
childhood, of her mother, of her father, of her dreams. And Natasha, who had in
the past turned away with calm acceptance of her non-comprehension of that life
of devotion and resignation, of the idealism of Christian self-sacrifice, grew
to love Princess Marya's past, and to understand that side of life of which she
had had no conception before. She had no thought of imitating that resignation
and self-sacrifice in her own life, because she was accustomed to look for other
joys in life; but she understood and loved in another that virtue that had been
till now beyond her ken. Princess Marya, too, as she listened to Natasha's
stories of her childhood and early girlhood, had a glimpse of a side of life she
had known nothing of, of faith in life and in the enjoyment of life.
They still refrained from talking of him, that they might not, as
seemed to them, desecrate the exalted feeling in their hearts; but this
reticence led them, though they would not have believed it, into gradually
forgetting him.
Natasha had grown thin and pale, and was physically so weak that every one
was continually talking about her health, and she was glad it was so. Yet
sometimes she was suddenly seized, not simply by a dread of death, but by a
dread of sickness, of ill-health, of losing her good looks; and sometimes she
unconsciously examined her bare arm, marvelling at its thinness, or peeped in
the looking-glass in the morning at her pinched face, and was touched by its
piteous look. It seemed to her that this was as it should be, and yet she felt
afraid and mournful at it.
One day she ran upstairs quickly, and was painfully short of breath.
Immediately she made some pretext for going down again, and ran upstairs again,
to try her strength and put herself to the test.
Another day she called Dunyasha, and her voice broke. She called her once
more, though she heard her coming—called her in the deep chest voice with which
she used to sing, and listened to the sound.
She knew it not, and would not have believed it yet though the layer of mould
under which she fancied that her soul was buried seemed unbroken, the delicate,
tender, young blades of grass were already pushing through it, and were destined
to take root, and so to hide the grief that had crushed her under their living
shoots that it would soon be unseen and forgotten. The wound was healing from
within.
Towards the end of January Princess Marya set off for Moscow, and the count
insisted on Natasha going with her to consult the doctors.
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