“How open, how free, how still it is here!” thought Kovrin, walking along the path. “And it feels as though all the world were watching me, hiding and waiting for me to understand it. . . .”
But then waves began running across the rye, and a light evening breeze softly touched his uncovered head. A minute later there was another gust of wind, but stronger — the rye began rustling, and he heard behind him the hollow murmur of the pines. Kovrin stood still in amazement. From the horizon there rose up to the sky, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, a tall black column. Its outline was indistinct, but from the first instant it could be seen that it was not standing still, but moving with fearful rapidity, moving straight towards Kovrin, and the nearer it came the smaller and the more distinct it was. Kovrin moved aside into the rye to make way for it, and only just had time to do so.
A monk, dressed in black, with a grey head and black eyebrows, his arms crossed over his breast, floated by him. . . . His bare feet did not touch the earth. After he had floated twenty feet beyond him, he looked round at Kovrin, and nodded to him with a friendly but sly smile. But what a pale, fearfully pale, thin face! Beginning to grow larger again, he flew across the river, collided noiselessly with the clay bank and pines, and passing through them, vanished like smoke.
“Why, you see,” muttered Kovrin, “there must be truth in the legend.”
Without trying to explain to himself the strange apparition, glad that he had succeeded in seeing so near and so distinctly, not only the monk’s black garments, but even his face and eyes, agreeably excited, he went back to the house.
In the park and in the garden people were moving about quietly, in the house they were playing — so he alone had seen the monk. He had an intense desire to tell Tanya and Yegor Semyonitch, but he reflected that they would certainly think his words the ravings of delirium, and that would frighten them; he had better say nothing.
He laughed aloud, sang, and danced the mazurka; he was in high spirits, and all of them, the visitors and Tanya, thought he had a peculiar look, radiant and inspired, and that he was very interesting.
III
After supper, when the visitors had gone, he went to his room and lay down on the sofa: he wanted to think about the monk. But a minute later Tanya came in.
“Here, Andryusha; read father’s articles,” she said, giving him a bundle of pamphlets and proofs. “They are splendid articles. He writes capitally.”
“Capitally, indeed!” said Yegor Semyonitch, following her and smiling constrainedly; he was ashamed. “Don’t listen to her, please; don’t read them! Though, if you want to go to sleep, read them by all means; they are a fine soporific.”
“I think they are splendid articles,” said Tanya, with deep conviction. “You read them, Andryusha, and persuade father to write oftener. He could write a complete manual of horticulture.”
Yegor Semyonitch gave a forced laugh, blushed, and began uttering the phrases usually made us of by an embarrassed author. At last he began to give way.
“In that case, begin with Gaucher’s article and these Russian articles,” he muttered, turning over the pamphlets with a trembling hand, “or else you won’t understand. Before you read my objections, you must know what I am objecting to. But it’s all nonsense . . . tiresome stuff. Besides, I believe it’s bedtime.”
Tanya went away. Yegor Semyonitch sat down on the sofa by Kovrin and heaved a deep sigh.
“Yes, my boy . . .” he began after a pause. “That’s how it is, my dear lecturer. Here I write articles, and take part in exhibitions, and receive medals. . . . Pesotsky, they say, has apples the size of a head, and Pesotsky, they say, has made his fortune with his garden. In short, ‘Kotcheby is rich and glorious.’ But one asks oneself: what is it all for? The garden is certainly fine, a model. It’s not really a garden, but a regular institution, which is of the greatest public importance because it marks, so to say, a new era in Russian agriculture and Russian industry. But, what’s it for? What’s the object of it?”
“The fact speaks for itself.”
“I do not mean in that sense. I meant to ask: what will happen to the garden when I die? In the condition in which you see it now, it would not be maintained for one month without me. The whole secret of success lies not in its being a big garden or a great number of labourers being employed in it, but in the fact that I love the work. Do you understand? I love it perhaps more than myself. Look at me; I do everything myself. I work from morning to night: I do all the grafting myself, the pruning myself, the planting myself. I do it all myself: when any one helps me I am jealous and irritable till I am rude. The whole secret lies in loving it — that is, in the sharp eye of the master; yes, and in the master’s hands, and in the feeling that makes one, when one goes anywhere for an hour’s visit, sit, ill at ease, with one’s heart far away, afraid that something may have happened in the garden. But when I die, who will look after it? Who will work? The gardener? The labourers? Yes? But I will tell you, my dear fellow, the worst enemy in the garden is not a hare, not a cockchafer, and not the frost, but any outside person.”
“And Tanya?” asked Kovrin, laughing. “She can’t be more harmful than a hare? She loves the work and understands it.”
“Yes, she loves it and understands it. If after my death the garden goes to her and she is the mistress, of course nothing better could be wished. But if, which God forbid, she should marry,” Yegor Semyonitch whispered, and looked with a frightened look at Kovrin, “that’s just it. If she marries and children come, she will have no time to think about the garden. What I fear most is: she will marry some fine gentleman, and he will be greedy, and he will let the garden to people who will run it for profit, and everything will go to the devil the very first year! In our work females are the scourge of God!”
Yegor Semyonitch sighed and paused for a while.
“Perhaps it is egoism, but I tell you frankly: I don’t want Tanya to get married. I am afraid of it! There is one young dandy comes to see us, bringing his violin and scraping on it; I know Tanya will not marry him, I know it quite well; but I can’t bear to see him! Altogether, my boy, I am very queer. I know that.”
Yegor Semyonitch got up and walked about the room in excitement, and it was evident that he wanted to say something very important, but could not bring himself to it.
“I am very fond of you, and so I am going to speak to you openly,” he decided at last, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “I deal plainly with certain delicate questions, and say exactly what I think, and I cannot endure so-called hidden thoughts. I will speak plainly: you are the only man to whom I should not be afraid to marry my daughter. You are a clever man with a good heart, and would not let my beloved work go to ruin; and the chief reason is that I love you as a son, and I am proud of you. If Tanya and you could get up a romance somehow, then — well! I should be very glad and even happy. I tell you this plainly, without mincing matters, like an honest man.”
Kovrin laughed. Yegor Semyonitch opened the door to go out, and stood in the doorway.
“If Tanya and you had a son, I would make a horticulturist of him,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “However, this is idle dreaming. Goodnight.”
Left alone, Kovrin settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and took up the articles. The title of one was “On Intercropping”; of another, “A few Words on the Remarks of Monsieur Z. concerning the Trenching of the Soil for a New Garden”; a third, “Additional Matter concerning Grafting with a Dormant Bud”; and they were all of the same sort. But what a restless, jerky tone! What nervous, almost hysterical passion! Here was an article, one would have thought, with most peaceable and impersonal contents: the subject of it was the Russian Antonovsky Apple. But Yegor Semyonitch began it with “Audiatur altera pars,” and finished it with “Sapienti sat”; and between these two quotations a perfect torrent of venomous phrases directed “at the learned ignorance of our recognised horticultural authorities, who observe Nature from the height of their university chairs,” or at Monsieur Gaucher, “whose success has been the work of the vulgar and the dilettanti.” “And then followed an inappropriate, affected, and insincere regret that peasants who stole fruit and broke the branches could not nowadays be flogged.