Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/160

128 "Don't say that, Natálya Sávishna!" I said, holding her back by her hand. "I did not come for that — I just came so — and you are tired: you had better lie down yourself."

"No, my dear one, I have slept enough," she said to me (I knew she had not slept for three days), "And this is no time for sleeping," she added, with a deep sigh.

I wanted to have a talk with Natálya Sávishna about our misfortune. I knew her loyalty and love, and so it would have been a consolation for me to weep with her.

"Natálya Sávishna," I said, after a moment's silence, and seating myself on the bed, "did you expect this?"

The old woman looked at me in perplexity and with curiosity, as if she did not quite understand why I asked her that.

"Who could have expected this?" I repeated,

"Oh, my dear one," she said, casting a look of the tenderest compassion upon me, "I not only did not expect it, but I can't even think of it. It has long been time for me, an old woman, to put my old bones to rest; for see what I have lived to go through: I have buried the old master, your grandfather, — may his memory be eternal, — Prince Nikoláy Mikháylovich, two brothers, sister Annushka, and they were all younger than I, my dear one, and now I have to outlive her, no doubt for my sins. His holy will be done! He has taken her because she was worthy, and He needs good people even there."

This simple thought gave me consolation, and I moved up to Natálya Sávishna. She crossed her arms over her breast, and looked up to the ceiling; her moist, sunken eyes expressed a great, but calm, sorrow. She was firmly convinced that God would not separate her long from her upon whom all the power of her love had been centred for so many years,

"Yes, my dear one, it does not seem long since I was swathing and watching her, and she called me Násha.