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For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window
of her room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached
her from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking.
She felt that she could not understand them however much she might
think about them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which,
after the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already
to belong to the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.
After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and
fresh. Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed,
the full moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh
white dewy mist began to rise, and stillness reigned over the
village and the house.
Pictures of the near past- her father's illness and last moments-
rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she
now lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the
last one, the picture of his death, which she felt she could not
contemplate even in imagination at this still and mystic hour
of night. And these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly
and in such detail that they seemed now present, now past, and
now future.
She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke
and was being dragged along by his armpits through the garden
at Bald Hills, muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching
his gray eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.
"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day
he died," she thought. "He had always thought what he
said then." And she recalled in all its detail the night
at Bald Hills before he had the last stroke, when with a foreboding
of disaster she had remained at home against his will. She had
not slept and had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, and going to the
door of the conservatory where he slept that night had listened
at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he was saying something
to Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm nights and of the
Empress. Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why didn't
he call me? Why didn't he let me be there instead of Tikhon?"
Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. "Now he
will never tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never will that
moment return for him or for me when he might have said all he
longed to say, and not Tikhon but I might have heard and understood
him. Why didn't I enter the room?" she thought. "Perhaps
he would then have said to me what he said the day he died. While
talking to Tikhon he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me,
and I was standing close by, outside the door. It was sad and
painful for him to talk to Tikhon who did not understand him.
I remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if she were
alive- he had forgotten she was dead- and Tikhon reminded him
that she was no more, and he shouted, 'Fool!' He was greatly depressed.
From behind the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning
and loudly exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't I go in then? What
could he have done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps
he would then have been comforted and would have said that word
to me." And Princess Mary uttered aloud the caressing word
he had said to her on the day of his death. "Dear-est!"
she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears that relieved her
soul. She now saw his face before her. And not the face she had
known ever since she could remember and had always seen at a distance,
but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the first time quite
closely, with all its wrinkles and details, when she stooped near
to his mouth to catch what he said.
"Dear-est!" she repeated again.
"What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What
is he thinking now?" This question suddenly presented itself
to her, and in answer she saw him before her with the expression
that was on his face as he lay in his coffin with his chin bound
up with a white handkerchief. And the horror that had seized her
when she touched him and convinced herself that that was not he,
but something mysterious and horrible, seized her again. She tried
to think of something else and to pray, but could do neither.
With wide-open eyes she gazed at the moonlight and the shadows,
expecting every moment to see his dead face, and she felt that
the silence brooding over the house and within it held her fast.
"Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!"
she screamed wildly, and tearing herself out of this silence she
ran to the servants' quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants
who came running toward her.
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