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.’
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‘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
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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
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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.
‘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 Agafea Mihalovna.
‘Well, well; then we shall see,’ whispered Kitty. ‘But now
go away, he’s going to sleep.’
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Chapter 7
Agafea Mihalovna went out on tiptoe; the nurse let down
the blind, chased a fly out from under the muslin canopy of
the crib, and a bumblebee 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 Mitya 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 wet 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 Katavasov.
‘They have got into talk without me,’ thought Kitty, ‘but
still it’s vexing that Kostya’s out. He’s sure to have gone to the
bee house 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.
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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 Katavasov. He likes
discussions with them,’ she thought, and passed instantly to
the consideration of where it would be more convenient to
put Katavasov, to sleep alone or to share Sergey Ivanovitch’s
room. And then an idea suddenly struck her, which made her
shudder and even disturb Mitya, who glanced severely at her.
‘I do believe the laundress hasn’t sent the washing yet, and all
the best sheets are in use. If I don’t see to it, Agafea Mihalovna will give Sergey Ivanovitch the wrong sheets,’ and at the
very idea of this the blood rushed to Kitty’s face.
‘Yes, I will arrange it,’ she decided, and going back to her
former thoughts, she remembered that some spiritual question of importance had been interrupted, and she began to
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recall what. ‘Yes, Kostya, an unbeliever,’ she thought again
with a smile.
‘Well, an unbeliever then! Better let him always be one
than like Madame Stahl, or what I tried to be in those days
abroad. No, he won’t ever sham anything.’
And a recent instance of his goodness rose vividly to her
mind. A fortnight ago a penitent letter had come from Stepan
Arkadyevitch to Dolly. He besought her to save his honor, to
sell her estate to pay his debts. Dolly was in despair, she detested her husband, despised him, pitied him, resolved on a
separation, resolved to refuse, but ended by agreeing to sell
part of her property. After that, with an irrepressible smile
of tenderness, Kitty recalled her husband’s shamefaced embarrassment, his repeated awkward efforts to approach the
subject, and how at last, having thought of the one means of
helping Dolly without wounding her pride, he had suggested to Kitty—what had not occurred to her before—that she
should give up her share of the property.
‘He an unbeliever indeed! With his heart, his dread of offending anyone, even a child! Everything for others, nothing
for himself. Sergey Ivanovitch simply considers it as Kostya’s
duty to be his steward. And it’s the same with his sister. Now
Dolly and her children are under his guardianship; all these
peasants who come to him every day, as though he were
bound to be at their service.’
‘Yes, only be like your father, only like him,’ she said,
handing Mitya over to the nurse, and putting her lips to his
cheek.
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Chapter 8
Ever since, by his beloved brother’s deathbed, Levin had
first glanced into the questions of life and death in the light
of these new convictions, as he called them, which had during the period from his twentieth to his thirty-fourth year
imperceptibly replaced his childish and youthful beliefs—
he had been stricken with horror, not so much of death,
as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and
how, and what it was. The physical organization, its decay,
the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation
of energy, evolution, were the words which usurped the
place of his old belief. These words and the ideas associated with them were very well for intellectual purposes. But
for life they yielded nothing, and Levin felt suddenly like
a man who has changed his warm fur cloak for a muslin
garment, and going for the first time into the frost
