Arms and the Man: Act II

Louka is standing between the table and the house, turning her back with angry disdain on a man-servant 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 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.

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 Servian attack roused in all the Bulgarians has pulled him through the war; but he is obviously glad to be home again.

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.

But I should have had to subdue the whole Austrian Empire first; and that would have kept me too long away from you.

Oh, that’s absurd, Paul: I don’t believe really refined people notice such things.

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.

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.

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...

As he enters from the stable gate, she rises effusively to greet him.

SERGIUS.
(kissing them with scrupulous gallantry). My dear mother, if I may call you so.

His father was a hotel and livery stable keeper; and he owed his first step to his knowledge of horse-dealing.

We were two children in the hands of that consummate soldier, Major: simply two innocent little children.

He was like a commercial traveller in uniform. Bourgeois to his boots.

SERGIUS.
(ashamed). No, Petkoff: I was wrong. (To Raina, with earnest humility.) I beg your pardon. I have behaved abominably. Forgive me, Raina.

He proceeds solemnly, again addressing Raina.

The glimpses I have had of the seamy side of life during the last few months have made me cynical; but I should not have brought my cynicism here—least of all into your presence, Raina.

When I think of you, I feel that I could never do a base deed, or think an ignoble thought.

He looks after her with emotion for a moment, then turns slowly away, his face radiant with the exultation of the scene which has just passed.

He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip.

SERGIUS.
What would the half dozen Sergiuses who keep popping in and out of this handsome figure of mine say if they caught us here? (Letting go her hand and slipping his arm dexterously round her waist.)

She struggles: he holds her inexorably.

LOUKA.
(demurely). Not for the world, sir, I’m sure. May I go on with my work please, now?

Which of the six is the real man?—that’s the question that torments me. One of them is a hero, another a buffoon, another a humbug, another perhaps a bit of a blackguard.

SERGIUS.
(He pauses and looks furtively at Louka, as he adds with deep bitterness) And one, at least, is a coward—jealous, like all cowards.

SERGIUS.
(holding out his right hand in affirmation). No; on the honor of a—(He checks himself, and his hand drops nerveless as he concludes, sardonically)—of a man capable of behaving as I have been behaving for the last five minutes.

SERGIUS.
Louka! (She stops and looks defiantly at him with the tray in her hands.) A gentleman has no right to hurt a woman under any circumstances. (With profound humility, uncovering his head.) I beg your pardon.

RAINA.
(with cool impertinence). Oh, I know Sergius is your pet. I sometimes wish you could marry him instead of me.

RAINA.
(capriciously—half to herself). I always feel a longing to do or say something dreadful to him—to shock his propriety—to scandalize the five senses out of him!

RAINA.
(capriciously—half to herself). I always feel a longing to do or say something dreadful to him—to shock his propriety—to scandalize the five senses out of him!

RAINA.
(To Catherine perversely.) I don’t care whether he finds out about the chocolate cream soldier or not. I half hope he may.

She again turns flippantly away and strolls up the path to the corner of the house.

Louka comes from the house with a salver, which she carries hanging down by her side.

You are a foreigner: you do not feel our national animosities as we do. We still hate the Servians: the only effect of the peace on my husband is to make him feel like a lion baulked of his prey.

BLUNTSCHLI.
(laughing). I assure you I did. (Stealing a whimsical glance at her.) Your explanation was a relief.

NICOLA.
(after a moment’s bewilderment, picking up the bag as he addresses Bluntschli with the very perfection of servile discretion). I beg your pardon, sir, I am sure.