Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

"What a shame not to have let us know," she said, giving her hand to Sergei Ivanovich, and putting her forehead up for him to kiss.

"We drove here capitally, and have not put you out," answered Sergei Ivanovich. "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 Fiodor Vassilievich, successful in getting here at last."

"But I'm not a Negro; I shall look like a human being when I wash," said Katavassov in his jesting fashion, and he shook hands and smiled, his teeth flashing white in his black face.

"Kostia will be delighted. He has gone to his grange. It's time he should be home."

"Busy as ever with his farming. It really is a peaceful backwater," said Katavassov; "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, he's like everybody else," Kitty answered, a little embarrassed, looking round at Sergei Ivanovich. "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 on the balcony, enjoying the freedom and rapidity of movement, of which she had been deprived during the months of her pregnancy.

"It's Sergei Ivanovich and Katavassov, a professor," she said.

"Oh, it's hard in such a heat," said the Prince.

"No, papa, he's very nice, and Kostia'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 Mitia. 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 afterward, do!"

The baby's greedy scream was passing into sobs.

"But you can't manage so, ma'am," said Agathya Mikhailovna, 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. Agathya Mikhailovna followed him with a face melting with tenderness.

"He knows me, he knows me. In God's faith, Katerina Alexandrovna, ma'am, he recognized me!" Agathya Mikhailovna 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 Agathya Mikhailovna'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 Agathya Mikhailovna, 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 Agathya Mikhailovna, to the nurse, to his grandfather, to his father even, Mitia was a living being, requiring only material care, but for his mother he had long been a moral 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 day!" said Agathya Mikhailovna.

"Well, well; then we shall see," whispered Kitty. "But now go away, he's going to sleep."

Agathya Mikhailovna went out on tiptoe; the nurse let down the blind, chased flies out from under the muslin canopy of the crib, and a hornet struggling on the window frame, and sat down waving a faded branch of birch over the mother and the baby.

"How hot it is! If God would send a drop of rain," she said.

"Yes, yes, sh- sh- sh-" was all Kitty answered, rocking a little, and tenderly squeezing the plump little arm, with rolls of fat at the wrist, which Mitia still waved feebly as he opened and shut his eyes. That hand worried Kitty; she longed to kiss the little hand, but was afraid to for fear of waking the baby. At last the little hand ceased waving, and the eyes closed. Only from time to time, as he went on sucking, the baby raised his long, curly eyelashes and peeped at his mother with humid eyes, that looked black in the twilight. The nurse had left off fanning, and was dozing. From above came the peals of the old Prince's voice, and the chuckle of Katavassov.

"They have got into talk, without me," thought Kitty, "but still it's vexing that Kostia's out. He's sure to have gone to the beehouse again. Though, it's a pity he's there so often, still I'm glad. It distracts his mind. He's become altogether happier and better now than in the spring. He used to be so gloomy and worried that I felt frightened for him. And how absurd he is!" she whispered, smiling.

She knew what worried her husband. It was his unbelief. Although, if she had been asked whether she supposed that in the future life, if he did not believe, he would be damned, she would have had to admit that he would be damned, his unbelief did not cause her unhappiness. And she, confessing that for an unbeliever there can be no salvation, and loving her husband's soul more than anything in the world, thought with a smile of his unbelief, and told herself that he was absurd.

"What does he keep reading philosophy of some sort for all this year?" she wondered. "If it's all written in those books, he can understand them. If it's all wrong, why does he read them? He says himself that he would like to believe. Then why is it he doesn't believe? Surely from his thinking so much? And he thinks so much from being solitary. He's always alone, alone. He can't talk about it all to us. I fancy he'll be glad of these visitors, especially Katavassov. He likes discussions with them," she thought, and passed instantly to the consideration of where it would be more convenient to put Katavassov, to sleep alone or to share Sergei Ivanovich's room. And then an idea suddenly struck her, which made her shudder and even disturb Mitia, who glanced severely at her. "I do believe the laundress hasn't sent the washing yet, and all the guests' sheets are in use. If I don't see to it, Agathya Mikhailovna will give Sergei Ivanovich the used sheets," and at the very idea of this the blood rushed to Kitty's face.