‘I grew up with Anna Arkadyevna, she’s dearest of all to me. So it’s not for us to judge. And, you’d think, to love like that...’
‘So, please send this to be washed, if possible,’ Darya Alexandrovna interrupted her.
‘Very well, ma’am. We have two women especially for small laundry, but the linen’s all done by machine. The count sees to everything himself. What husband would ...’
Dolly was glad when Anna came in and by her arrival interrupted Annushka’s chatter.
Anna had changed into a very simple cambric dress. Dolly looked attentively at this simple dress. She knew what such simplicity meant and what money was paid for it.
‘An old acquaintance,’ Anna said of Annushka.
Anna was no longer embarrassed. She was perfectly free and calm. Dolly saw that she had now fully recovered from the impression her arrival had made on her, and had assumed that tone of superficial indifference which indicated that the door to the compartment in which she kept her feelings and innermost thoughts was locked.
‘Well, and how is your little girl, Anna?’ asked Dolly.
‘Annie?’ (So she called her daughter Anna.) ‘Quite well. She’s gained a lot of weight. Would you like to see her? Come, I’ll show her to you. There’s been terrible trouble with the nannies,’ she began to tell the story. ‘We have an Italian wet nurse. Good, but so stupid! We wanted to send her away, but the child is so used to her that we still keep her.’
‘But how did you arrange ... ?’ Dolly began to ask about what name the girl would have; but, noticing Anna’s sudden frown, she changed the sense of the question. ‘How did you arrange about weaning her?’
But Anna understood.
‘That’s not what you wanted to ask. You wanted to ask about her name, didn’t you? That torments Alexei. She has no name. That is, she’s Karenina,’ said Anna, narrowing her eyes so that only her joined eyelashes could be seen. ‘However,’ her face suddenly brightened, ‘we’ll talk about all that later. Come, I’ll show her to you.
In the nursery the luxury that had struck Darya Alexandrovna everywhere in the house struck her still more. Here were carriages ordered from England, and contraptions for learning to walk, and a specially designed couch, like a billiard table, for crawling, and rocking chairs and special new baths. It was all of English make, sturdy, of good quality, and obviously very expensive. The room was big, very high-ceilinged and bright.
When they came in the little girl was sitting on a chair at the table in just her shift, drinking bouillon, which she spilled all down her front. The child was being fed by a Russian maid who served in the nursery and who apparently ate with her. Neither the wet nurse nor the nanny was there; they were in the next room, where they could be heard talking in a strange French, the only language in which they could communicate with each other.
On hearing Anna’s voice, a tall, well-dressed English governess with an unpleasant face and an impure expression came through the door, hastily shaking her blond curls, and at once began justifying herself, though Anna had not accused her of anything. To Anna’s every word the governess hastily chimed ‘Yes, my lady’ several times.
Darya Alexandrovna liked the dark-browed, dark-haired, ruddy-cheeked little girl very much, with her sturdy red body and taut, goose fleshed skin, despite the stern expression with which she looked at the new person. She even envied her healthy look. She also liked very much the way the girl crawled. None of her children had crawled like that. This girl, when she was sitting on the rug with her dress tucked behind her, was very sweet. She looked at the grown-ups with shining, dark eyes, like a little animal, obviously glad to be admired; smiling and turning her legs sideways, she leaned energetically on her hands and quickly lifted her whole bottom up, then again moved her little hands forward.
But Darya Alexandrovna very much disliked the general spirit of the nursery, and the governess in particular. How Anna, with her knowledge of people, could have engaged such an unsympathetic, unrespectable governess for her child, she could explain to herself only by the fact that a good one would not have come to such an irregular family as Anna’s. Moreover, she could tell at once, from a few words, that Anna, the wet nurse, the nanny and the baby did not get on together, and that the mother’s visit was an unusual thing. Anna wanted to give her little girl a toy, but could not find it.
Most surprising of all was that, when asked how many teeth the girl had, Anna was mistaken and knew nothing about the two latest teeth.
‘It pains me sometimes that I seem so superfluous here,’ said Anna, leaving the nursery and picking up her train so as to avoid the toys lying by the door. ‘It wasn’t like that with my first.’
‘I thought the opposite,’ Darya Alexandrovna said timidly.
