Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,120

it’s time for bed.”

Tanya left. Yegor Semyonych sat next to Kovrin on the sofa and sighed deeply.

“Yes, my dear boy …” he began, after some silence. “Yes, my gentle master of arts. So I, too, write articles and take part in exhibitions and win medals … They say Pesotsky’s apples are as big as your head, and Pesotsky, they say, has made a fortune on his orchard. In short, Kochubey is rich and famous.3 But, you may ask, why all this? The orchard is indeed beautiful, exemplary … It’s not an orchard, it’s a whole institution of great national significance, because it is, so to speak, a step into a new era of the Russian economy and Russian industry. But why? With what aim?”

“The work speaks for itself.”

“That’s not what I mean. I want to ask: what will happen to the orchard when I die? Without me it won’t hold out the way it is now for even a month. The whole secret of success is not that it’s a big orchard and there are lots of workers, but that I love doing it—you understand?—love it maybe more than my own self. Look at me: I do everything myself. I work from morning till night. I do all the budding myself, all the pruning, all the planting, I do everything myself. When somebody helps me, I get jealous and irritated to the point of rudeness. The whole secret is in love, that is, in the master’s keen eye, and the master’s hands, and in that feeling when you go for an hour’s visit somewhere, and you sit there, but your heart is uneasy, you’re not yourself: you’re afraid something may happen in the orchard. And when I die, who will look after it? Who’ll do the work? The gardener? The hired hands? Yes? I’ll tell you this, my gentle friend: the first enemy in our work isn’t the hare, or the cockchafer, or the frost, but the outsider.”

“And Tanya?” asked Kovrin, laughing. “It can’t be that she’s worse than a hare. She loves and understands the work.”

“Yes, she loves and understands it. If she gets the orchard after my death and becomes its manager, then one certainly could wish for nothing better. Well, but if, God forbid, she should marry?” Yegor Semyonych whispered and looked fearfully at Kovrin. “There’s the thing! She’ll marry, start having children, there’ll be no time to think about the orchard. What I fear most is that she’ll marry some fine fellow, and he’ll turn greedy and lease the orchard to some market women, and everything will go to hell in the very first year! In our work, women are the scourge of God!”

Yegor Semyonych sighed and was silent for a time.

“Maybe it’s egoism, but I’ll tell you frankly: I don’t want Tanya to get married. I’m afraid! There’s a fop with a fiddle who comes here and scrapes away; I know Tanya won’t marry him, I know it very well, but I hate the sight of him! Generally, my boy, I’m a great eccentric. I admit it.”

Yegor Semyonych got up and paced the room in agitation, and it was evident that he wanted to say something very important, but could not decide to do it.

“I love you dearly and I’ll speak frankly with you,” he finally decided, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “My attitude to certain ticklish questions is simple, I say straight out what I think, and I can’t stand so-called hidden thoughts. I’ll say straight out: you are the only man to whom I would not be afraid to marry my daughter. You’re intelligent, and a man of heart, and you wouldn’t let my beloved work perish. And the main reason is—I love you like a son … and I’m proud of you. If you and Tanya should somehow have a romance, then—why, I’d be very glad and even happy. I say it straight out, without mincing, as an honest man.”

Kovrin laughed. Yegor Semyonych opened the door to go out, but stopped on the threshold.

“If you and Tanya had a son, I’d make a horticulturist of him,” he said, pondering. “However, that is but vain dreaming … Good night.”

Left alone, Kovrin lay down more comfortably and began on the articles. One was entitled “On Intermediate Crops,” another “A Few Words Concerning the Note by Mr. Z. on Turning Over the Soil for a New Garden,” a third “More on Budding with Dormant Eyes,” and the rest were in the same vein. But