Arms and the Man · Act II (2/2) (1/3)
Louka*, smoking a cigarette, is standing between the table and the house, turning her back with angry disdain on a manservant who is lecturing her. He is a middle-aged man of cool temperament and low but clear and keen intelligence, with the complacency of the servant who values himself on his rank in servility, and the imperturbability of the accurate calculator who has no illusions. He wears a white Bulgarian costume jacket with decorated border, sash, wide knickerbockers, and decorated gaiters. His head is shaved up to the crown, giving him a high Japanese forehead. His name is Nicola*.
Nicola Be warned in time, Louka: mend your manners. I know the mistress. She is so grand that she never dreams that any servant could dare to be disrespectful to her; but if she once suspects that you are defying her, out you go.
Louka I do defy her. I will defy her. What do I care for her?
Nicola If you quarrel with the family, I never can marry you. It’s the same as if you quarrelled with me!
Louka You take her part against me, do you?
Nicola Sedately. I shall always be dependent on the good will of the family. When I leave their service and start a shop in Sofia, their custom will be half my capital: their bad word would ruin me.
Louka You have no spirit. I should like to see them dare say a word against me!
Nicola Pityingly. I should have expected more sense from you, Louka. But you’re young, you’re young!
Louka Yes; and you like me the better for it, don’t you? But I know some family secrets they wouldn’t care to have told, young as I am. Let them quarrel with me if they dare!
Nicola With compassionate superiority. Do you know what they would do if they heard you talk like that?
Louka What could they do?
Nicola Discharge you for untruthfulness. Who would believe any stories you told after that? Who would give you another situation? Who in this house would dare be seen speaking to you ever again? How long would your father be left on his little farm? She impatiently throws away the end of her cigarette, and stamps on it. Child, you don’t know the power such high people have over the like of you and me when we try to rise out of our poverty against them. He goes close to her and lowers his voice. Look at me, ten years in their service. Do you think I know no secrets? I know things about the mistress that she wouldn’t have the master know for a thousand levas. I know things about him that she wouldn’t let him hear the last of for six months if I blabbed them to her. I know things about Raina that would break off her match with Sergius if⁠—
Louka Turning on him quickly. How do you know? I never told you!
Nicola Opening his eyes cunningly. So that’s your little secret, is it? I thought it might be something like that. Well, you take my advice, and be respectful; and make the mistress feel that no matter what you know or don’t know, they can depend on you to hold your tongue and serve the family faithfully. That’s what they like; and that’s how you’ll make most out of them.
Louka With searching scorn. You have the soul of a servant, Nicola.
Nicola Complacently. Yes: that’s the secret of success in service.
A loud knocking with a whip handle on a wooden door, outside on the left, is heard.
Male voice outside Hallo! Hallo there! Nicola!
Louka Master! back from the war!
Nicola Quickly. My word for it, Louka, the war’s over. Off with you and get some fresh coffee. He runs out into the stable yard.
Louka As she puts the coffee pot and the cups upon the tray, and carries it into the house. You’ll never put the soul of a servant into me.
Major Petkoff* comes from the stable yard, followed by Nicola*. He is a cheerful, excitable, insignificant, unpolished man of about 50, naturally unambitious except as to his income and his importance in local society, but just now greatly pleased with the military rank which the war has thrust on him as a man of consequence in his town. The fever of plucky patriotism which the Serbian attack roused in all the Bulgarians has pulled him through the war; but he is obviously glad to be home again.
Petkoff Pointing to the table with his whip. Breakfast out here, eh?
Nicola Yes, sir. The mistress and Miss Raina have just gone in.
Petkoff Fitting down and taking a roll. Go in and say I’ve come; and get me some fresh coffee.
Nicola It’s coming, sir. He goes to the house door. Louka, with fresh coffee, a clean cup, and a brandy bottle on her tray meets him. Have you told the mistress?
Louka Yes: she’s coming.
Nicola* goes into the house. Louka* brings the coffee to the table.
Petkoff Well, the Serbians haven’t run away with you, have they?
Louka No, sir.
Petkoff That’s right. Have you brought me some cognac?
Louka Putting the bottle on the table. Here, sir.
Petkoff That’s right. He pours some into his coffee.
Catherine* who has at this early hour made only a very perfunctory toilet, and wears a Bulgarian apron over a once brilliant, but now half worn out red dressing gown, and a colored handkerchief tied over her thick black hair, with Turkish slippers on her bare feet, comes from the house, looking astonishingly handsome and stately under all the circumstances. Louka* goes into the house.
Catherine My dear Paul, what a surprise for us. She stoops over the back of his chair to kiss him. Have they brought you fresh coffee?
Petkoff Yes, Louka’s been looking after me. The war’s over. The treaty was signed three days ago at Bucharest; and the decree for our army to demobilize was issued yesterday.
Catherine Springing erect, with flashing eyes. The war over! Paul: have you let the Austrians force you to make peace?
Petkoff Submissively. My dear: they didn’t consult me. What could I do? She sits down and turns away from him. But of course we saw to it that the treaty was an honorable one. It declares peace⁠—
Catherine Outraged. Peace!
Petkoff Appeasing her.⁠—but not friendly relations: remember that. They wanted to put that in; but I insisted on its being struck out. What more could I do?
Catherine You could have annexed Serbia and made Prince Alexander Emperor of the Balkans. That’s what I would have done.
Petkoff I don’t doubt it in the least, my dear. But I should have had to subdue the whole Austrian Empire first; and that would have kept me too long away from you. I missed you greatly.
Catherine Relenting. Ah! Stretches her hand affectionately across the table to squeeze his.
Petkoff And how have you been, my dear?
Catherine Oh, my usual sore throats, that’s all.
Petkoff With conviction. That comes from washing your neck every day. I’ve often told you so.
Catherine Nonsense, Paul!
Petkoff Over his coffee and cigarette. I don’t believe in going too far with these modern customs. All this washing can’t be good for the health: it’s not natural. There was an Englishman at Phillipopolis who used to wet himself all over with cold water every morning when he got up. Disgusting! It all comes from the English: their climate makes them so dirty that they have to be perpetually washing themselves. Look at my father: he never had a bath in his life; and he lived to be ninety-eight, the healthiest man in Bulgaria. I don’t mind a good wash once a week to keep up my position; but once a day is carrying the thing to a ridiculous extreme.
Catherine You are a barbarian at heart still, Paul. I hope you behaved yourself before all those Russian officers.
Petkoff I did my best. I took care to let them know that we had a library.
Catherine Ah; but you didn’t tell them that we have an electric bell in it? I have had one put up.
Petkoff What’s an electric bell?
Catherine You touch a button; something tinkles in the kitchen; and then Nicola comes up.
Petkoff Why not shout for him?
Catherine Civilized people never shout for their servants. I’ve learnt that while you were away.
Petkoff Well, I’ll tell you something I’ve learnt, too. Civilized people don’t hang out their washing to dry where visitors can see it; so you’d better have all that indicating the clothes on the bushes put somewhere else.
Catherine Oh, that’s absurd, Paul: I don’t believe really refined people notice such things.
Someone is heard knocking at the stable gates.
Petkoff There’s Sergius. Shouting. Hallo, Nicola!
Catherine Oh, don’t shout, Paul: it really isn’t nice.
Petkoff Bosh! He shouts louder than before. Nicola!
Nicola Appearing at the house door. Yes, sir.
Petkoff If that is Major Saranoff, bring him round this way. He pronounces the name with the stress on the second syllable⁠—Sarah-noff.
Nicola Yes, sir. He goes into the stable yard.
Petkoff You must talk to him, my dear, until Raina takes him off our hands. He bores my life out about our not promoting him⁠—over my head, mind you.
Catherine He certainly ought to be promoted when he marries Raina. Besides, the country should insist on having at least one native general.
Petkoff Yes, so that he could throw away whole brigades instead of regiments. It’s no use, my dear: he has not the slightest chance of promotion until we are quite sure that the peace will be a lasting one.
Nicola At the gate, announcing. Major Sergius Saranoff! He goes into the house and returns presently with a third chair, which he places at the table. He then withdraws.
Major Sergius Saranoff*, the original of the portrait in Raina’s room, is a tall, romantically handsome man, with the physical hardihood, the high spirit, and the susceptible imagination of an untamed mountaineer chieftain. But his remarkable personal distinction is of a characteristically civilized type. The ridges of his eyebrows, curving with a ram’s-horn twist round the marked projections at the outer corners, his jealously observant eye, his nose, thin, keen, and apprehensive in spite of the pugnacious high bridge and large nostril, his assertive chin, would not be out of place in a Paris salon. In short, the clever, imaginative barbarian has an acute critical faculty which has been thrown into intense activity by the arrival of western civilization in the Balkans; and the result is precisely what the advent of nineteenth-century thought first produced in England: to-wit, Byronism. By his brooding on the perpetual failure, not only of others, but of himself, to live up to his imaginative ideals, his consequent cynical scorn for humanity, the jejune credulity as to the absolute validity of his ideals and the unworthiness of the world in disregarding them, his wincings and mockeries under the sting of the petty disillusions which every hour spent among men brings to his infallibly quick observation, he has acquired the half tragic, half ironic air, the mysterious moodiness, the suggestion of a strange and terrible history that has left him nothing but undying remorse, by which Childe Harold fascinated the grandmothers of his English contemporaries. Altogether it is clear that here or nowhere is Raina’s ideal hero. Catherine is hardly less enthusiastic, and much less reserved in showing her enthusiasm. As he enters from the stable gate, she rises effusively to greet him. Petkoff* is distinctly less disposed to make a fuss about him.
Petkoff Here already, Sergius. Glad to see you!
Catherine My dear Sergius!She holds out both her hands.
Sergius Kissing them with scrupulous gallantry. My dear mother, if I may call you so.
Petkoff Drily. Mother-in-law, Sergius; mother-in-law! Sit down, and have some coffee.
Sergius Thank you, none for me. He gets away from the table with a certain distaste for Petkoff’s enjoyment of it, and posts himself with conscious grace against the rail of the steps leading to the house.
Catherine You look superb⁠—splendid. The campaign has improved you. Everybody here is mad about you. We were all wild with enthusiasm about that magnificent cavalry charge.
Sergius With grave irony. Madam: it was the cradle and the grave of my military reputation.
Catherine How so?
Sergius I won the battle the wrong way when our worthy Russian generals were losing it the right way. That upset their plans, and wounded their self-esteem. Two of their colonels got their regiments driven back on the correct principles of scientific warfare. Two major-generals got killed strictly according to military etiquette. Those two colonels are now major-generals; and I am still a simple major.
Catherine You shall not remain so, Sergius. The women are on your side; and they will see that justice is done you.
Sergius It is too late. I have only waited for the peace to send in my resignation.
Petkoff Dropping his cup in his amazement. Your resignation!
Catherine Oh, you must withdraw it!
Sergius With resolute, measured emphasis, folding his arms. I never withdraw!
Petkoff Vexed. Now who could have supposed you were going to do such a thing?
Sergius With fire. Everyone that knew me. But enough of myself and my affairs. How is Raina; and where is Raina?
Raina Suddenly coming round the corner of the house and standing at the top of the steps in the path. Raina is here. She makes a charming picture as they all turn to look at her. She wears an underdress of pale green silk, draped with an overdress of thin ecru canvas embroidered with gold. On her head she wears a pretty Phrygian cap of gold tinsel. Sergius, with an exclamation of pleasure, goes impulsively to meet her. She stretches out her hand: he drops chivalrously on one knee and kisses it.
Petkoff Aside to Catherine, beaming with parental pride. Pretty, isn’t it? She always appears at the right moment.
Catherine Impatiently. Yes: she listens for it. It is an abominable habit.
Sergius* leads Raina* forward with splendid gallantry, as if she were a queen. When they come to the table, she turns to him with a bend of the head; he bows; and thus they separate, he coming to his place, and she going behind her father’s chair.
Raina Stooping and kissing her father. Dear Father! Welcome home!
Petkoff Patting her cheek. My little pet girl. He kisses her; she goes to the chair left by Nicola for Sergius, and sits down.
Catherine And so you’re no longer a soldier, Sergius.
Sergius I am no longer a soldier. Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward’s art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm’s way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms. Eh, Major!
Petkoff They wouldn’t let us make a fair stand-up fight of it. However, I suppose soldiering has to be a trade like any other trade.
Sergius Precisely. But I have no ambition to succeed as a tradesman; so I have taken the advice of that bagman of a captain that settled the exchange of prisoners with us at Peerot, and given it up.
Petkoff What, that Swiss fellow? Sergius: I’ve often thought of that exchange since. He overreached us about those horses.
Sergius Of course he overreached us. His father was a hotel and livery stable keeper; and he owed his first step to his knowledge of horse-dealing. With mock enthusiasm. Ah, he was a soldier⁠—every inch a soldier! If only I had bought the horses for my regiment instead of foolishly leading it into danger, I should have been a field-marshal now!