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The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white
cap on her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her
black hair lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming
rosy mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully.
Prince Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of the
sofa on which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with
childlike fear and excitement, rested on him without changing
their expression. "I love you all and have done no harm to
anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!" her look seemed to
say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance
of his appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the
sofa and kissed her forehead.
"My darling!" he said- a word he had never used
to her before. "God is merciful...."
She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you
either!" said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having
come; she did not realize that he had come. His coming had nothing
to do with her sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began
again and Mary Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.
The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess
Mary, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their
talk broke off at every moment. They waited and listened.
"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.
Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the
room next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened
face and became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered
his face with his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous,
helpless, animal moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got
up, went to the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding
it shut.
"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified
voice from within.
He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few
more seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek- it could
not be hers, she could not scream like that- came from the bedroom.
Prince Andrew ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard
the wail of an infant.
"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought
Prince Andrew in the first second. "A baby? What baby...?
Why is there a baby there? Or is the baby born?"
Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that
wail; tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill
be began to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor
with his shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with
a trembling jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to
him, but the doctor gave him a bewildered look and passed by without
a word. A woman rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating
on the threshold. He went into his wife's room. She was lying
dead, in the same position he had seen her in five minutes before
and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the
same expression was on her charming childlike face with its upper
lip covered with tiny black hair.
"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and
what have you done to me?"- said her charming, pathetic,
dead face.
In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt
and squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.
Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into
his father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was
standing close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough
old arms closed like a vise round his son's neck, and without
a word he began to sob like a child.
Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince
Andrew went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her
the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face,
though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?"
it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew felt that something
gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could
neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The old man too
came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly crossed
one on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed
to say: "Ah, what have you done to me, and why?" And
at the sight the old man turned angrily away.
Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas
Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet
with her while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's
little red and wrinkled soles and palms.
His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid
of dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font
and handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew
sat in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned
in the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked
up joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded
approval when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had
not sunk in the font but had floated.
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