Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Eight/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
The prince and Sergyeï Ivanovitch seated themselves in the cart and drove on; the rest of the party, quickening their steps, started back on foot.
But the thunder-storm, white on top, black underneath, came up so rapidly that they had to hurry so as to reach the house before the rain was on them. The clouds coming on as the vanguard, hung low, were as black as soot, and drove across the sky with extraordinary rapidity. They had reached within two hundred feet of the house, and already the wind had begun to rise, and the downpour might be expected at any second.
The children ran on ahead laughing and screaming with delight and terror. Darya Aleksandrovna, struggling with her skirts, which the wind blew round her legs, no longer walked, but ran, not letting the children out of her sight. The gentlemen, holding on their hats with difficulty, walked with long strides. They had just reached the porch when the great drops began to strike and splash against the edge of the iron gutter. The children, and just behind them their elders, with gay exclamations ran under the shelter of the porch.
"Where is Katerina Aleksandrovna?" asked Levin of Agafya Mikhaïlovna, who was coming out of the door, loaded with shawls and plaids.
"We supposed she was with you."
"And Mitya?"
"He must be in the Kolok woods with his nurse."
Levin seized the plaids, and started for Kolok.
In the few minutes that had elapsed, the storm had reached beyond the sun, and it was as dark as if there was an eclipse. The wind blew obstinately as if insisting on its own way, tried to stop Levin, and, tearing off the leaves and flowers from the lindens, and rudely and strangely baring the white branches of the birches, bent everything to one side,—acacias, flowers, burdocks, the grass, and the tree-tops. The girls working in the garden ran squealing under the shelter of the servants' quarters. The white screen of the pouring rain had already cut off the distant forest and half of the adjacent field, and was rapidly advancing on Kolok. The dampness of the shower was felt in the atmosphere like fine drops.
Bending his head, and fighting vigorously against the gale, which tugged at his shawls, Levin was already on his way to Kolok. He thought he already saw white forms behind a well-known oak, when suddenly a glare of light seemed to burst from the ground before him, and the vault of the sky above him to fall with a crash. When he opened his dazzled eyes, he looked through the thick curtain formed by the rain, which cut him off from the Kolok woods, and saw, to his horror, that the green top of a well-known oak which stood in the forest had strangely changed its position. Even before he could ask, "Can the lightning have struck it?" he saw it bending over more and more rapidly, and then disappearing behind the other trees, and he heard the crash the great oak made as it fell, carrying with it the neighboring trees. The glare of the lightning, the crash of the thunder, and the sensation of chill running over his whole body blended for Levin in one impression of horror.
"My God! my God! keep them safe," he exclaimed.
And though he instantly felt the absurdity of the prayer, since the oak had already fallen, he nevertheless said it over and over, for he knew that, absurd as it was, he could not do anything else to help them.
He hastened toward the spot where they generally went, but he did not find them. They were in another part of the woods under an old linden, and they called to him. Two figures dressed in dark clothes—they usually wore white—were bending over something under the trees. It was Kitty and the nurse. The rain had stopped, and it was beginning to grow lighter when Levin reached them. The bottom of the nurse's dress was dry, but Kitty's gown was wet through and clung to her. Though it was no longer raining, they were standing just as they had been when the shower began. Both were leaning over the baby-carriage, with its green parasol.
"Alive? safe? God be praised!" he cried, as, splashing through the puddles, he ran to them with his shoes full of water.
Kitty's glowing face, all wet, was turned to him, and she smiled timidly from under her hat, which had lost its shape in the rain.
"There now, are n't you ashamed? I can't understand how you could do such a careless thing," he began, in his vexation scolding his wife.
"Goodness,[1] it was not my fault. We were just starting to go when he began to be restless. We had to change him. We were just ...." Kitty said, trying to defend herself.
Mitya was safe, dry, and still soundly sleeping.
"Well! God be thanked! I don't know what I'm saying."
They hastily picked up the wet diapers, the nurse took the baby, and Levin, ashamed of his vexation, gave his arm to his wife, and led her away, pressing her hand gently.
- ↑ Yeï Bogu.