Anna Karenina - Part 8 - Page 14/52

"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 are! There, tie the cap afterwards, do!"

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 anyone, 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 material care, but for

his mother he had long been a mortal being, with whom there had

been a whole series of spiritual relations already.