Anna Karenina

‘Katerina Alexandrovna?’ Levin asked Agafya Mikhailovna, who met them in the front hall with cloaks and wraps.

‘We thought she was with you.’

‘And Mitya?’

‘They must be in Kolok, and the nanny’s with them.’

Levin seized the wraps and ran to Kolok.

During that short period of time the centre of the cloud had covered the sun so that it became as dark as during a solar eclipse. The stubborn wind, as if insisting on its own, kept stopping Levin and, tearing off leaves and linden blossoms and baring the white birch boughs in an ugly and strange way, bent everything in one direction: acacias, flowers, burdock, grass and treetops. Farm girls who had been working in the garden ran squealing under the roof of the servants’ quarters. The white curtain of pouring rain had already invaded all the distant forest and half the nearby field and was moving quickly towards Kolok. The dampness of rain breaking up into fine drops filled the air.

Lowering his head and struggling against the wind, which tore the shawls from his arms, Levin was already running up to Kolok and could see something white showing beyond an oak, when suddenly everything blazed, the whole earth caught fire and the vault of the sky seemed to crack overhead. Opening his dazzled eyes and peering through the thick curtain of rain that now separated him from Kolok, Levin first saw with horror the strangely altered position of the familiar oak’s green crown in the middle of the wood. ‘Can it have snapped off?’ Levin barely managed to think, when, moving more and more quickly, the oak’s crown disappeared behind the other trees, and he heard the crash of a big tree falling.

The flash of the lightning, the sound of the thunder, and the feeling of his body being instantly doused with cold, merged in Levin into one impression of horror.

‘My God! My God, not on them!’ he said.

And though he immediately thought how senseless his request was that they should not be killed by an oak that had already fallen, he repeated it, knowing that he could do nothing better than this senseless prayer.

He ran to the spot where they usually went, but did not find them there.

They were at the other end of the wood, under an old linden, and calling to him. Two figures in dark dresses (they were actually light) stood bending over something. They were Kitty and the nanny. The rain was already letting up and it was growing lighter as Levin raced towards them. The lower part of the nanny’s dress was dry, but Kitty’s dress was soaked through and clung to her body all over. Though it was no longer raining, they went on standing in the same position they had assumed when the storm broke, bent over the carriage, holding a green umbrella.

‘Alive? Safe? Thank God!’ he said, splashing through the puddles in his flopping, water-filled shoes, and running up to them.

Kitty’s rosy and wet face was turned to him and smiled timidly from under her now shapeless hat.

‘Well, aren’t you ashamed? I don’t understand how you can be so imprudent!’ He fell upon his wife in vexation.

‘I swear it’s not my fault. I was just going to leave when he began acting up. We had to change him. We just...’ Kitty began excusing herself.

Mitya was safe, dry, and had slept through it all.

‘Well, thank God! I don’t know what I’m saying!’

They gathered up the wet napkins; the nanny took the baby out and carried him. Levin walked beside his wife and, guilty on account of his vexation, squeezed her hand in secret from the nanny.

XVIII

Throughout the day, during the most varied conversations, in which he took part as if only with the external part of his mind, Levin, despite his disappointment in the change that was supposed to take place in him, never ceased joyfully sensing the fullness of his heart.

After the rain it was too wet to go for a walk; besides, the storm clouds never left the horizon and, now here, now there, passed thundering and black across the edges of the sky. The whole company spent the rest of the day at home.

No more arguments started, and, on the contrary, after dinner everyone was in the best of spirits.

Katavasov first made the ladies laugh with his original jokes, which people always liked so much on first making his acquaintance, but then, prompted by Sergei Ivanovich, he told them his very interesting observations on the differences of character and even of physiognomy between female and male house flies and on their life. Sergei Ivanovich was also merry and over tea, prompted by his brother, expounded his view of the future of the Eastern question,¹⁴ so simply and well that everyone listened with delight.

Only Kitty could not listen to the end. She was called to bathe Mitya.

A few minutes after Kitty had left, Levin, too, was called to her in the nursery.

Leaving his tea, and also regretting the interruption of the interesting conversation, and at the same time worrying about why he had been called, since that happened only on important occasions, Levin went to the nursery.