Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Eight/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
As Sergyeï Ivanovitch had not known just when it would be possible for him to leave Moscow, he did not telegraph his brother to send for him. Levin was not at home when he and Katavasof, black as negroes with smoke and dust, reached Pokrovskoye about noon, in a tarantas which they hired at the station.
Kitty was sitting on the balcony with her father and sister when she saw her brother-in-law approaching, and she ran to meet him.
"Your conscience ought to prick you for not letting us know," said she, shaking hands with Sergyeï Ivanovitch, and offering her brow to be kissed.
"We got along splendidly, and we did not have to bother you. I am so dusty that I fear to touch you. I was so busy that I did not know when I could leave. And you look the same as ever," said he, smiling, "enjoying the gentle current of your softly flowing happiness. And here is our friend, Feodor Vasilyevitch who has come at last."
"But I am not a negro. When I have washed, I shall look like a human being," said Katavasof, with his usual pleasantry, offering his hand, and laughing, so that his white teeth gleamed out from his dusty face.
"Kostia will be very glad. He is out on the farm, but he ought to be back by this time."
"Always occupied with his estate," said Katavasof. "The rest of us can think of nothing but the Serbian war. How does my friend regard this subject? He is sure not to think as other people do."
"Yes, he does, .... but .... perhaps not like everybody," said Kitty, a little confused, looking at Sergyeï Ivanovitch. "I will send some one to find him. We have papa with us just now; he has recently come back from abroad."
And Kitty, while making her arrangements to send for Levin, and to furnish her guests a chance to wash off the dust—the one in the library, the other in the room assigned to Dolly—and then to have luncheon ready for them, enjoyed the full power of quick motion which before her baby was born she had been so long deprived of. Then she went to the balcony where her father was:—
"It's Sergyeï Ivanovitch and Professor Katavasof."
"Okh! in this heat! It will be a bore!"
"Not at all, papa; he is very nice, and Kostia loves him dearly," said Kitty, laughing at the expression of consternation on her father's face.
"Go entertain them, dushenka," she said to her sister. "They saw Stiva at the station; he was well. And I am going to the baby for a little while. I actually have not nursed him since morning; he will be crying if I don't go," and she, feeling the pressure of milk, hastened to the nursery. In reality it had not been guesswork with her,—the tie that bound her to the child was still unbroken,—she actually knew by the flow of milk that he needed something to eat. Even before she reached the nursery she knew that he would be crying. And, indeed, he was.
She heard his voice, and quickened her steps. But the more she hurried, the louder he cried. It was a fine, healthy scream, a scream of hunger and impatience.
"Am I late, nurse, late?" asked Kitty, sitting down, and getting ready to suckle the child. "There, give him to me, give him to me, quick, Akh, nurse! how stupid! Take off his cap afterward," said she, quite as impatient as her baby.
The baby screamed as if it were famished. "Now, now, it can't be helped, little mother!" said Agafya Mikhaïlovna, who could not keep out of the nursery. "You must do things in order. Agu, agu," she chuckled to the infant, not heeding Kitty's impatience.
The nurse gave the child to his mother. Agafya Mikhaïlovna followed the child, her face all aglow with tenderness.
"He knows me! He knows me! God is my witness, he knew me, Matushka Katerina Aleksandrovna," she cried.
But Kitty did not hear what she said. Her impatience was as great as the baby's. It hindered the very thing that they both desired. The baby, in his haste to suckle, could not manage to take hold, and was vexed. At last, after one final shriek of despair, the arrangements were perfected; and mother and child, simultaneously breathing a sigh of content, became calm.
"The poor little thing is all in a perspiration," whispered Kitty. "Do you really think he knew you?" she added, looking down into the child's eyes, which seemed to her to peep out roguishly from under his cap, as his little cheeks sucked in and out, while his little hand, with rosy palm, flourished around his head. "It cannot be. For, if he knew you, he would surely know me," continued Kitty, with a smile, when Agafya Mikhaïlovna persisted in her belief that he knew her.
She smiled, because though she said that he could not recognize her, yet she knew in her heart that he not only recognized Agafya Mikhaïlovna, but that he knew and understood all things, and knew and understood what no one else understood, and things which she, his mother, was now beginning to understand only through his teaching. For Agafya Mikhaïlovna, for the nurse, for his grandfather, even for his father, Mitya was just a little human being, who needed nothing but physical care; for his mother, he was a being endowed with moral faculties, who already had a whole history of spiritual relationships.
"You will see if he does n't when he wakes up. When I do this way, his face will light up, the little dove! It will light up like a bright day," said Agafya Mikhaïlovna.
"There! very well, very well, we shall see," whispered Kitty; "now go away; he is going to sleep."