Chapter I: The Orchard

Andrei Vasilyich Kovrin, a master of arts, had overtaxed himself and upset his nerves. He did not try to cure himself; but over a bottle of wine, talking to a friend who was a doctor, he mentioned it, and the doctor advised him to spend the spring and summer in the country. Just then a long letter came from Tanya Pesotskaya, asking him to come and stay with them at Borisovka. And he decided he really must go.

To begin with — it was in April — he went to his own estate, Kovrinka, and spent three weeks there alone; then, as soon as the roads were fit, he drove to his former guardian and second father, Pesotsky, the horticulturist famous all over Russia. It was not more than fifty miles from Kovrinka to Borisovka, and it was pleasant to drive along the soft road in a comfortable carriage with springs.

The house at Borisovka was huge, with columns and lions, with the plaster peeling off, and a footman in a tail coat at the entrance. The old park, gloomy and severe, laid out in the English fashion, stretched for nearly three-quarters of a mile to the river, and ended in a steep, precipitous clay bank, where pines grew with bare roots that looked like shaggy paws; the water shone below with an unfriendly gleam. But near the house, in the courtyard and the orchard, which, together with the nurseries, took up thirty acres, it was all life and gaiety, even in bad weather. Such marvellous roses, lilies, camellias, such tulips of all possible shades, from glistening white to sooty black — such a wealth of flowers, in fact — Kovrin had never seen anywhere as at Pesotsky's. Pesotsky's orchard was famous; the whole province drew its fruit trees and its knowledge from him; he made thousands of roubles a year out of it.

When Kovrin arrived, it was ten o'clock in the evening, and Tanya and her father, Yegor Semyonovich, were in great anxiety. The clear starry sky and the thermometer foretold a frost towards morning, and the gardener, Ivan Karlych, had gone to town, and there was no one to rely on. At supper they talked of nothing but the frost; and it was settled that Tanya should not go to bed, and at one o'clock would go through the orchard to see that everything was all right, and Yegor Semyonovich would get up at three o'clock, or even earlier.

Kovrin sat with Tanya all the evening, and after midnight went out with her into the orchard. It was cold. There was a strong smell of burning already in the yard. In the big orchard, which was called the commercial orchard, and which brought Yegor Semyonovich several thousand roubles clear profit a year, a thick, black, acrid smoke was creeping over the ground, and, curling round the trees, was saving those thousands from the frost. Here the trees were arranged as on a chessboard, in straight, regular rows, like ranks of soldiers.

"I remember, when I was little," said Kovrin, "I used to hate this smoke . . . I've never understood why smoke saves the trees from frost."

"Smoke takes the place of clouds when there are none," said Tanya.

Tanya, who was about twenty-two, a slender girl, pale, with a thin neck, had grown up since Kovrin had last seen her; she had become charming, and was evidently fond of him. They talked, as they walked between the smoking heaps, of the old days when he had lived here as a boy; and Kovrin, looking at her eager face, thought that he might well fall in love with her.

Yegor Semyonovich came out at three, an anxious, tall, broad-shouldered old man with a big stomach, who suffered from asthma and yet walked so fast that it was hard to keep up with him. He was always worried, always in a hurry, always shouting at the workmen, and looked as though if he were one minute late, everything would be ruined.

Pesotsky lives entirely for his orchard; the question of who will care for it after his death haunts him, and becomes part of the story.