“Why did they write, why did Liza tell me about it all? It just can’t be!” she kept saying to herself, looking in the mirror. “How will I come out to the drawing room? Even if I liked him, I couldn’t be myself with him now.” The mere thought of her father’s gaze terrified her.
The little princess and Mlle Bourienne had already received all the necessary information from the maid Masha about what a ruddy, dark-browed, handsome fellow the minister’s son was, and how his papa could barely drag his feet up the stairs, while he, like an eagle, ran up after him taking three steps at a time. On receiving this information, the little princess and Mlle Bourienne, their animatedly chattering voices heard already from the corridor, came into Princess Marya’s room.
“Ils sont arrivés, Marie,*239 do you know?” said the little princess, waddling in with her belly and lowering herself heavily into an armchair.
She was no longer in the smock she had on that morning, but was wearing one of her best gowns; her hair was carefully done, and in her face there was animation, which, however, did not conceal the sagging and deadened contours of her face. In a costume she used to wear in Petersburg society, it was still more noticeable how far she had lost her good looks. Mlle Bourienne’s costume had also undergone some sort of inconspicuous improvement, which made her fresh, pretty face still more attractive.
“Et bien, et vous restez comme vous êtes, chère princesse?” she said. “On va venir annoncer que ces messieurs sont au salon; il faudra descendre, et vous ne faites pas un petit brin de toilette!”†240
The little princess got up from the armchair, rang for the maid, and began hurriedly and cheerfully devising a costume for Princess Marya and carrying it out. Princess Marya felt insulted in her sense of her own dignity, because the arrival of the promised suitor excited her, and she was still more insulted that her two friends did not suppose it could be otherwise. To tell them how ashamed she was of herself and of them would mean to betray her excitement; besides, to refuse the dressing-up they suggested would lead to prolonged bantering and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes faded, her face became covered with blotches, and, with that unattractive expression of a victim which most often lingered on her face, she gave herself into the power of Mlle Bourienne and Liza. The two women concerned themselves in all sincerity with making her beautiful. She was so plain that the thought of rivalry with her did not occur to either of them; they therefore undertook to dress her up in all sincerity, with that naïve and firm conviction of women that clothes can make a face beautiful.
“No, really, ma bonne amie, this dress won’t do,” Liza said, looking sideways at the princess from a distance, “have them bring the maroon one you’ve got there! Really! Why, this may just be the deciding of your fate in life. And this is too light, it won’t do, no, it won’t do!”
What would not do was not the dress, but the face and the whole figure of the princess, but neither Mlle Bourienne nor the little princess sensed that; it seemed to them that if a blue ribbon was put in the hair, done up high, and a blue scarf hung down on the brown dress, and so on, all would be well. They forgot that the frightened face and figure could not be changed, and therefore, no matter how they changed the frame and decoration of that face, the face itself remained pitiful and unattractive. After two or three changes, to which Princess Marya submitted obediently, when her hair had been done up high (a style that totally changed and spoiled her face), and she was wearing the blue scarf and fancy maroon gown, the little princess walked around her twice, straightened a fold here, pulled at the scarf there with her little hand, and, inclining her head, looked now from this side, now from that.
“No, it’s impossible,” she said resolutely, clasping her hands. “Non, Marie, décidément, ça ne vous va pas. Je vous aime mieux dans votre petite robe grise de tout les jours. Non, de grâce, faites cela pour moi.*241 Katya,” she said to the maid, “bring the princess her little gray dress, and watch, Mlle Bourienne, how I’m going to arrange it,” she said, with a smiling foretaste of artistic delight.
But when Katya brought the dress requested, Princess Marya was still sitting motionless before the mirror, looking at her face, and saw in the mirror that tears had welled up in her eyes and her mouth was trembling, getting ready to weep.
“Voyons, chère princesse,” said Mlle Bourienne, “encore un petit effort.”†242
The little princess, taking the dress from the maid’s hands, was approaching Princess Marya.
“No, now we’ll make it simple and sweet,” she said.
Her voice, Mlle Bourienne’s, and Katya’s, who was laughing about something, blended into a merry warbling which resembled the song of birds.
“Non, laissez-moi,”‡243 said the princess.
And there was so much seriousness and suffering in her voice that the birds’ warbling immediately ceased. They looked at her big, beautiful eyes, filled with tears and thought, looking at them clearly and pleadingly, and understood that to insist would be useless and even cruel.
“Au moins changez la coiffure,” said the little princess. “Je vous disais,” she said with reproach, turning to Mlle Bourienne, “Marie a une de ces figures, auxquelles ce genre de coiffure ne vas pas du tout. Mais du tout, du tout. Changez de grâce.”§244
“Laissez-moi, laissez-moi, tout ça m’est parfaitement égal,”#245 answered a voice barely holding back its tears.
Mlle Bourienne and the little princess had to confess to themselves that as she was Princess Marya looked very bad, worse than ever; but it was already late. She looked at them with that expression they knew, an expression of thought and sadness. This expression did not inspire any fear of Princess Marya in them. (She never inspired that feeling in anyone.) But they knew that when that expression appeared on her face, she became silent and unshakeable in her decisions.
“Vous changerez, n’est-ce pas?”*246 said Liza, and when Princess Marya made no reply, Liza left the room.
Princess Marya remained alone. She did not carry out Liza’s wish, and not only did not change her hairstyle, but did not even look at herself in the mirror. Strengthlessly lowering her eyes and arms, she sat silently and thought. She imagined a husband, a man, a strong, dominating, and incomprehensibly attractive being, suddenly carrying her off into his own completely different, happy world. Her own baby, like the one she had seen yesterday at her nurse’s daughter’s—she imagined at her own breast. The husband stands and looks tenderly at her and the baby. “But no, it’s impossible, I’m too plain,” she thought.
“Please come to tea. The prince will come out shortly,” said the maid’s voice outside the door.
She roused herself and was horrified at what she had been thinking. And before going downstairs, she stood up, went to her icon room, and, fixing her eyes on the dark lamp-lit face of a large icon of the Savior, stood before it with clasped hands for several minutes. There was tormenting doubt in Princess Marya’s soul. Was the joy of love, of earthly love for a man, possible for her? Thinking of marriage, Princess Marya dreamed of family happiness and children, but her chiefest, strongest, and most secret dream was of earthly love. This feeling was all the stronger, the more she tried to conceal it from others and even from herself. “My God,” she said, “how can I suppress these devil’s thoughts in my heart? How can I renounce evil imaginings forever, so as peacefully to do Thy will?” And she had barely asked this question, when God answered her in her own heart: “Desire nothing for yourself; do not seek, do not worry, do not envy. The future of people and your own fate must be unknown to you; but live so as to be ready for anything. If God should see fit to test you in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill His will.” With this reassuring thought (but still with a hope that her forbidden earthly dream would be fulfilled), Princess Marya sighed, crossed herself, and went downstairs without thinking about her dress, or her hairstyle, or how she would walk in, or what she would say. What could all that mean in comparison with the predestination of God, without whose will not one hair falls from man’s head.