When supper was over and the visitors had gone, he went to his own
room, and lay on the sofa. He wished to think of the monk. But in a few
minutes Tánya entered.
"There, Andrusha, you can read father's articles ..." she said. "They
are splendid articles. He writes very well."
"Magnificent!" said Yegor Semiónovitch, coming in after her, with a
forced smile. "Don't listen to her, please!... Or read them only if you
want to go to sleep--they are a splendid soporific."
"In my opinion they are magnificent," said Tánya, deeply convinced.
"Read them, Andrusha, and persuade father to write more often. He could
write a whole treatise on gardening."
Yegor Semiónovitch laughed, blushed, and stammered out the conventional
phrases used by abashed authors. At last he gave in.
"If you must read them, read first these papers of Gauche's, and the
Russian articles," he stammered, picking out the papers with trembling
hands. "Otherwise you won't understand them. Before you read my replies
you must know what I am replying to. But it won't interest you ...
stupid. And it's time for bed."
Tánya went out. Yegor Semiónovitch sat on the end of the sofa and
sighed loudly.
"Akh, brother mine ..." he began after a long silence. As you see, my
dear Magister, I write articles, and exhibit at shows, and get medals
sometimes. ... Pesótsky, they say, has apples as big as your head....
Pesótsky has made a fortune out of his gardens.... In one word:
"'Rich and glorious is Kotchubéi.'"
"But I should like to ask you what is going to be the end of all this?
The gardens--there is no question of that--are splendid, they are
models.... Not gardens at all, in short, but a whole institution of
high political importance, and a step towards a new era in Russian
agriculture and Russian industry.... But for what purpose? What
ultimate object?"
"That question is easily answered."
"I do not mean in that sense. What I want to know is what will happen
with the garden when I die? As things are, it would not last without
me a single month. The secret does not lie in the fact that the garden
is big and the workers many, but in the fact that I love the work--you
understand? I love it, perhaps, more than I love myself. Just look at
me! I work from morning to night. I do everything with my own hands.
All grafting, all pruning, all planting--everything is done by me.
When I am helped I feel jealous, and get irritated to the point of
rudeness. The whole secret is in love, in a sharp master's eye, in a
master's hands, and in the feeling when I drive over to a friend and
sit down for half an hour, that I have left my heart behind me and am
not myself--all the time I am in dread that something has happened to
the garden. Now suppose I die to-morrow, who will replace all this? Who
will do the work? The head gardeners? The workmen? Why the whole burden
of my present worries is that my greatest enemy is not the hare or the
beetle or the frost, but the hands of the stranger."
"But Tánya?" said Kovrin, laughing. "Surely she is not more dangerous
than a hare?... She loves and understands the work."
"Yes, Tánya loves it and understands it. If after my death the garden
should fall to her as mistress, then I could wish for nothing better.
But suppose--which God forbid--she should marry!" Yegor Semiónovitch
whispered and look at Kovrin with frightened eyes. "That's the whole
crux. She might marry, there would be children, and there would be no
time to attend to the garden. That is bad enough. But what I fear most
of all is that she may marry some spendthrift who is always in want of
money, who will lease the garden to tradesmen, and the whole thing will
go to the devil in the first year. In a business like this a woman, is
the scourge of God."
Yegor Semiónovitch sighed and was silent for a few minutes.
"Perhaps you may call it egoism. But I do not want Tánya to marry. I am
afraid! You've seen that fop who comes along with a fiddle and makes a
noise. I know Tánya would never marry him, yet I cannot bear the sight
of him.... In short, brother, I am a character ... and I know it."
Yegor Semiónovitch rose and walked excitedly up and down the room. It
was plain that he had something very serious to say, but could not
bring himself to the point.
"I love you too sincerely not to talk to you frankly," he said,
thrusting his hands into his pockets. "In all delicate questions I
say what I think, and dislike mystification. I tell you plainly,
therefore, that you are the only man whom I should not be afraid of
Tánya marrying. You are a clever man, you have a heart, and you would
not see my life's work ruined. And what is more, I love you as my own
son ... and am proud of you. So if you and Tánya were to end ... in a
sort of romance ... I should be very glad and very happy. I tell you
this straight to your face, without shame, as becomes an honest man."
Kovrin smiled. Yegor Semiónovitch opened the door, and was leaving the
room, but stopped suddenly on the threshold.
"And if you and Tánya had a son, I could make a horti-culturist out of
him," he added. "But that is an idle fancy. Good night!"
Left alone, Kovrin settled himself comfortably, and took up his host's
articles. The first was entitled "Intermediate Culture," the second "A
Few Words in Reply to the Remarks of Mr. Z. about the Treatment of the
Soil of a New Garden," the third "More about Grafting." The others were
similar in scope. But all breathed restlessness and sickly irritation.
Even a paper with the peaceful title of "Russian Apple Trees" exhaled
irritability. Yegor Semiónovitch began with the words "Audi alteram
partem," and ended it with "Sapienti sat"; and between these learned
quotations flowed a whole torrent of acid words directed against "the
learned ignorance of our patent horticulturists who observe nature from
their academic chairs," and against M. Gauche, "whose fame is founded
on the admiration of the profane and dilletanti" And finally Kovrin
came across an uncalled-for and quite insincere expression of regret
that it is no longer legal to flog peasants who are caught stealing
fruit and injuring trees.
"His is good work, wholesome and fascinating," thought Kovrin, "yet in
these pamphlets we have nothing but bad temper and war to the knife.
I suppose it is the same everywhere; in all careers men of ideas are
nervous, and victims of this kind of exalted sensitiveness. I suppose
it must be so."
He thought of Tánya, so delighted with her father's articles, and
then of Yegor Semiónovitch. Tánya, small, pale, and slight, with her
collar-bone showing, with her widely-opened, her dark and clever
eyes, which it seemed were always searching for something. And Yegor
Semiónovitch with his little, hurried steps. He thought again of Tánya,
fond of talking, fond of argument, and always accompanying even the
most insignificant phrases with mimicry and gesticulation. Nervous--she
must be nervous in the highest degree. Again Kovrin began to read,
but he understood nothing, and threw down his books. The agreeable
emotion with which he had danced the mazurka and listened to the music
still held possession of him, and aroused a multitude of thoughts.
It flashed upon him that if this strange, unnatural monk had been
seen by him alone, he must be ill, ill to the point of suffering from
hallucinations. The thought frightened him, but not for long.
He sat on the sofa, and held his head in his hands, curbing the
inexplicable joy which filled his whole being; and then walked up and
down the room for a minute, and returned to his work. But the thoughts
which he read in books no longer satisfied him. He longed for something
vast, infinite, astonishing. Towards morning he undressed and went
unwillingly to bed; he felt that he had better rest. When at last he
heard Yegor Semiónovitch going to his work in the garden, he rang, and
ordered the servant to bring him some wine. He drank several glasses;
his consciousness became dim, and he slept.