________________________________________________
_ Sergey Ivanovitch had not telegraphed to his brother to send to
meet him, as he did not know when he should be able to leave
Moscow. Levin was not at home when Katavasov and Sergey
Ivanovitch in a fly hired at the station drove up to the steps of
the Pokrovskoe house, as black as riggers from the dust of the
road. Kitty, sitting on the balcony with her father and sister,
recognized her brother-in-law, and ran down to meet him.
"What a shame not to have let us know," she said, giving her hand
to Sergey Ivanovitch, and putting her forehead up for him to
kiss.
"We drove here capitally, and have not put you out," answered
Sergey Ivanovitch. "I'm so dirty. I'm afraid to touch you. I've
been so busy, I didn't know when I should be able to tear myself
away. And so you're still as ever enjoying your peaceful, quiet
happiness," he said, smiling, "out of the reach of the current in
your peaceful backwater. Here's our friend Fyodor Vassilievitch
who has succeeded in getting here at last."
"But I'm not a negro, I shall look like a human being when I
wash," said Katavasov in his jesting fashion, and he shook hands
and smiled, his teeth flashing white in his black face.
"Kostya will be delighted. He has gone to his settlement. It's
time he should be home."
"Busy as ever with his farming. It really is a peaceful
backwater," said Katavasov; "while we in town think of nothing
but the Servian war. Well, how does our friend look at it? He's
sure not to think like other people."
"Oh, I don't know, like everybody else," Kitty answered, a little
embarrassed, looking round at Sergey Ivanovitch. "I'll send to
fetch him. Papa's staying with us. He's only just come home from
abroad."
And making arrangements to send for Levin and for the guests to
wash, one in his room and the other in what had been Dolly's, and
giving orders for their luncheon, Kitty ran out onto the balcony,
enjoying the freedom, and rapidity of movement, of which she had
been deprived during the months of her pregnancy.
"It's Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov, a professor," she said.
"Oh, that's a bore in this heat," said the prince.
"No, papa, he's very nice, and Kostya's very fond of him," Kitty
said, with a deprecating smile, noticing the irony on her
father's face.
"Oh, I didn't say anything."
"You go to them, darling," said Kitty to her sister, "and
entertain them. They saw Stiva at the station; he was quite well.
And I must run to Mitya. As ill-luck would have it, I haven't fed
him since tea. He's awake now, and sure to be screaming." And
feeling a rush of milk, she hurried to the nursery.
This was not a mere guess; her connection with the child was
still so close, that she could gauge by the flow of her milk his
need of food, and knew for certain he was hungry.
She knew he was crying before she reached the nursery. And he was
indeed crying. She heard him and hastened. But the faster she
went, the louder he screamed. It was a fine healthy scream,
hungry and impatient.
"Has he been screaming long, nurse, very long?" said Kitty
hurriedly,
seating herself on a chair, and preparing to give the baby the
breast. "But give me him quickly. Oh, nurse, how tiresome you
arel There, tie the cap afterwards, dol"
The baby's greedy scream was passing into sobs.
"But you can't manage so, ma'am," said Agafea Mihalovna, who was
almost always to be found in the nursery. "He must be put
straight. A-oo! a-oo!" she chanted over him, paying no attention
to the mother.
The nurse brought the baby to his mother. Agafea Mihalovna
followed him with a face dissolving with tenderness.
"He knows me, he knows me. In God's faith, Katerina Alexandrovna,
ma'am, he knew me!" Agafea Mihalovna cried above the baby's
screams.
But Kitty did not hear her words. Her impatience kept growing,
like the baby's.
Their impatience hindered things for a while. The baby could not
get hold of the breast right, and was furious.
At last, after despairing, breathless screaming, and vain
sucking, things went right, and mother and child felt
simultaneously soothed, and both subsided into calm. "But poor
darling, he's all in perspiration!" said Kitty in a whisper,
touching the baby.
"What makes you think he knows you?" she added, with a sidelong
glance at the baby's eyes, that peered roguishly, as she fancied,
from under his cap, at his rhythmically puffing cheeks, and the
little red-palmed hand he was waving.
"Impossible! If he knew any one, he would have known me," said
Kitty, in response to Agafea Mihalovna's statement, and she
smiled.
She smiled because, though she said he could not know her, in her
heart she was sure that he knew not merely Agafea Mihalovna, but
that he knew and understood everything, and knew and understood a
great deal too that no one else knew, and that she, his mother,
had learned and come to understand only through him. To Agafea
Mihalovna, to the nurse, to his grandfather, to his father even,
Mitya was a living being, requiring only materiel care, but for
his mother he had long been a mortal being, with whom there had
been a whole series of spiritual relations already.
"When he wakes up, please God, you shall see for yourself. Then
when I do like this, he simply beams on me, the darling! Simply
beams like a sunny dayl" said Agafea Mihalovna.
"Well, well then we shall see," whispered Kitty. "But now go
away, he's going to sleep." _
Read next: Part Eight: Chapter 7
Read previous: Part Eight: Chapter 5
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