第230章

When the nurse went into the nursery, Seriozha was telling his mother how he and Nadinka had had a fall in tobogganing downhill, and had turned over three times. She was listening to the sound of his voice, watching his face and the play of expression on it, touching his hand, but she did not follow what he was saying. She must go, she must leave him - this was the only thing she was thinking and feeling. She heard the steps of Vassilii Lukich coming up to the door and coughing; she heard, too, the steps of the nurse as she came near; but she sat like one turned to stone, incapable of speaking or rising.

`Mistress, darling!' began the nurse, going up to Anna and kissing her hands and shoulders. `God has brought joy indeed to our boy on his birthday. You haven't changed one bit.'

`Oh, nurse dear, I didn't know you were in the house,' said Anna, rousing herself for a moment.

`I'm not living here - I'm living with my daughter. I came for the birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, darling!'

The nurse suddenly burst into tears, and fell to kissing her hand again.

Seriozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one hand and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his chubby little bare feet. The tenderness shown by his beloved nurse to his mother threw him into an ecstasy.

`Mother! She often comes to see me, and when she comes...' he was beginning, but he stopped, noticing that the nurse was saying something in a whisper to his mother, and that in his mother's face there was a look of dread and something like shame, which was so strangely unbecoming to her.

She went up to him.

`My sweet!' she said.

She could not say good-by, but the expression on her face said it, and he understood. `Darling, darling Kootik!' she used the name by which she had called him when he was little `you won't forget me? You...'

but she could not say more.

How often afterward she thought of words she might have said.

But now she did not know what to say, and could say nothing. But Seriozha knew all she wanted to say to him. He understood that she was unhappy and loved him. He understood even what the nurse had whispered. He had caught the words `Always at nine o'clock,' and he knew that this was said of his father, and that his father and mother could not meet. That he understood, but one thing he could not understand - why there should be a look of dread and shame in her face?... She was not at fault, but she was afraid of his father and ashamed of something. He would have liked to put a question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he did not dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he pitied her. Silently he pressed close to her and whispered:

`Don't go yet. He won't come just yet.'

The mother held him away from her to see whether he was thinking, what he said to her, and in his frightened face she read not only that he was speaking of his father, but, as it were, asking her what he ought to think about his father.

`Seriozha, my darling,' she said, `love him; he's better and kinder than I am, and I have done him wrong. When you grow up you will judge.'

`There's no one better than you!...' he cried in despair through his tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he began squeezing her with all his force to him, his arms trembling with the strain.

`My sweet, my little one!' said Anna, and she cried as weakly and childishly as he.

At that moment the door opened; Vassilii Lukich came in. At the other door there was the sound of steps, and the nurse in a scared whisper said, `He's coming,' and gave Anna her hat.

Seriozha sank on the bed and sobbed, hiding his face in his hands.

Anna removed his hands, once more kissed his wet face, and with rapid steps went to the door. Alexei Alexandrovich walked in, meeting her. Seeing her, he stopped short and bowed his head.

Although she had just said he was better and kinder than she, in the rapid glance she flung at him, taking in his whole figure in all its details, feelings of repulsion and hatred for him, and jealousy for her son, took possession of her. With a swift gesture she put down her veil, and, quickening her pace, almost ran out of the room.

She had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel of toys she had chosen the day before in a toyshop with such love and sorrow.

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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 5, Chapter 31[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 31 Intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she had been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On getting back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while understand why she was there.

`Yes, it's all over, and I am again alone,' she said to herself, and, without taking off her hat she sat down in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table between the windows, she tried to think.

The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, `Later on.' A footman offered her coffee. `Later on,' she said.