"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.