Part Eight: Chapter 17

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The old prince and Sergey Ivanovitch got into the trap and droveoff; the rest of the party hastened homewards on foot.

　　But the storm-clouds, turning white and then black, moved down soquickly that they had to quicken their pace to get home beforethe rain. The foremost clouds, lowering and black as soot-ladensmoke, rushed with extraordinary swiftness over the sky. Theywere still two hundred paces from home and a gust of wind hadalready blown up, and every second the downpour might be lookedfor.

　　The children ran ahead with frightened and gleeful shrieks.Darya Alexandrovna, struggling painfully with her skirts thatclung round her legs, was not walking, but running, her eyesfixed on the children. The men of the party, holding their hatson, strode with long steps beside her. They were just at thesteps when a big drop fell splashing on the edge of the ironguttering. The children and their elders after them ran into theshelter of the house, talking merrily.

　　"Katerina Alexandrovna?" Levin asked of Agafea Mihalovna, who metthem with kerchiefs and rugs in the hall.

　　"We thought she was with you," she said.

　　"And Mitya?"

　　"In the copse, he must be, and the nurse with him."

　　Levin snatched up the rugs and ran towards the copse.

　　In that brief interval of time the storm clouds had moved on,covering the sun so completely that it was dark as an eclipse.Stubbornly, as though insisting on its rights, the wind stoppedLevin, and tearing the leaves and flowers off the lime trees andstripping the white birch branches into strange unseemlynakedness, it twisted everything on one side--acacias, flowers,burdocks, long grass, and tall tree-tops. The peasant girlsworking in the garden ran shrieking into shelter in the servants'quarters. The streaming rain had already flung its white veilover all the distant forest and half the fields close by, and wasrapidly swooping down upon the copse. The wet of the rainspurting up in tiny drops could be smelt in the air.

　　Holding his head bent down before him, and struggling with thewind that strove to tear the wraps away from him, Levin wasmoving up to the copse and had just caught sight of somethingwhite behind the oak tree, when there was a sudden flash, thewhole earth seemed on fire, and the vault of heaven seemedcrashing overhead. Opening his blinded eyes, Levin gazed throughthe thick veil of rain that separated him now from the copse, andto his horror the first thing he saw was the green crest of thefamiliar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily changingits position. "Can it have been struck?" Levin hardly had timeto think when, moving more and more rapidly, the oak treevanished behind the other trees, and he heard the crash of thegreat tree falling upon the others.

　　The flash of lightning, the crash of thunder, and theinstantaneous chill that ran through him were all merged forLevin in one sense of terror.

　　"My God! my God! not on them!" he said.

　　And though he thought at once how senseless was his prayer thatthey should not have been killed by the oak which had fallen now,he repeated it, knowing that he could do nothing better thanutter this senseless prayer.

　　Running up to the place where they usually went, he did not findthem there.

　　They were at the other end of the copse under an old lime-tree;they were calling him. Two figures in dark dresses (they hadbeen light summer dresses when they started out) were standingbending over something. It was Kitty with the nurse. The rainwas already ceasing, and it was beginning to get light when Levinreached them. The nurse was not wet on the lower part of herdress, but Kitty was drenched through, and her soaked clothesclung to her. Though the rain was over, they still stood in thesame position in which they had been standing when the stormbroke. Both stood bending over a perambulator with a greenumbrella.

　　"Alive? Unhurt? Thank God!" he said, splashing with his soakedboots through the standing water and running up to them.

　　Kitty's rosy wet face was turned towards him, and she smiledtimidly under her shapeless sopped hat.

　　"Aren't you ashamed of yourself? I can't think how you can be soreckless!" he said angrily to his wife.

　　"It wasn't my fault, really. We were just meaning to go, when hemade such a to-do that we had to change him. We were just..."Kitty began defending herself.

　　Mitya was unharmed, dry, and still fast asleep.

　　"Well, thank God! I don't know what I'm saying!"

　　They gathered up the baby's wet belongings; the nurse picked upthe baby and carried it. Levin walked beside his wife, and,penitent for having been angry, he squeezed her hand when thenurse was not looking.