Arms and the Man: Act III

The ottoman in the middle is a circular bank of decorated cushions, and the window seats are well upholstered divans.

PETKOFF.
(officiously). Quite right, Bluntschli, quite right. I’ll see to it.

RAINA.
(full of reproach for his levity). Can you realize what it is to me to deceive him? I want to be quite perfect with Sergius—no meanness, no smallness, no deceit.

Do you like gratitude? I don’t. If pity is akin to love, gratitude is akin to the other thing.

She points to herself incredulously, meaning “I, Raina Petkoff, tell lies!”

BLUNTSCHLI.
(phlegmatically). That’s the Swiss national character, dear lady.

She flounces away and sits at the window fuming.

Louka comes in with a heap of letters and telegrams on her salver, and crosses, with her bold, free gait, to the table.

Her left sleeve is looped up to the shoulder with a brooch, shewing her naked arm, with a broad gilt bracelet covering the bruise.

He looks at the telegram with his lips pursed, musing on the unexpected change in his arrangements.

Here’s a whacking letter from the family solicitor.

His countenance changes as he notices her arm.

NICOLA.
(turning, still on his knees, and squatting down rather forlornly, on his calves, daunted by her implacable disdain). You have a great ambition in you, Louka. Remember: if any luck comes to you, it was I that made a woman of you.

NICOLA.
(turning, still on his knees, and squatting down rather forlornly, on his calves, daunted by her implacable disdain). You have a great ambition in you, Louka. Remember: if any luck comes to you, it was I that made a woman of you.

NICOLA.
(with dogged self-assertion). Yes, me. Who was it made you give up wearing a couple of pounds of false black hair on your head and reddening your lips and cheeks like any other Bulgarian girl? I did. Who taught you to trim your nails, and keep your hands clean, and be dainty about yourself, like a fine Russian lady? Me!

If you want to be a lady, your present behaviour to me won’t do at all, unless when we’re alone. It’s too sharp and impudent; and impudence is a sort of familiarity: it shews affection for me.

And don’t you try being high and mighty with me either. You’re like all country girls: you think it’s genteel to treat a servant the way I treat a stable-boy.

LOUKA.
(wistfully). I wish I could believe a man could be so unlike a woman as that. I wonder are you really a brave man?

SERGIUS.
(with bitter levity.) Not a bit. They all slashed and cursed and yelled like heroes. Psha! the courage to rage and kill is cheap...Oh, (fervently) give me the man who will defy to the death any power on earth or in heaven that sets itself up against his own will and conscience: he alone is the brave man.

You are my rival. I brook no rivals. At six o’clock I shall be in the drilling-ground on the Klissoura road, alone, on horseback, with my sabre. Do you understand?

And how ridiculous! Oh, war! war! the dream of patriots and heroes! A fraud, Bluntschli, a hollow sham, like love.

But now that you’ve found that life isn’t a farce, but something quite sensible and serious, what further obstacle is there to your happiness?

You are very solicitous about my happiness and his.

BLUNTSCHLI.
(quietly, as Sergius, in an agony of mortification, sinks on the ottoman, clutching his averted head between his fists). I told you you were getting the worst of it, Saranoff.

Raina, with a gasp, sits down on the ottoman, and after a vain effort to look vexedly at Bluntschli, she falls a victim to her sense of humor, and is attacked with a disposition to laugh.

Ah, well, Bluntschli, you are right to take this huge imposture of a world coolly.

I will prove that that, at least, is a calumny.

PETKOFF.
(genially). That’s all right.

RAINA.
(with solemn reproach). Ah, how can you say that to me, father?

SERGIUS.
(enigmatically). The world is not such an innocent place as we used to think, Petkoff.

Why, you had twenty-five levas from me on the day of your betrothal; and she had that gilt bracelet from Miss Raina.

NICOLA.
(with cool unction). We gave it out so, sir. But it was only to give Louka protection. She had a soul above her station; and I have been no more than her confidential servant.

PETKOFF.
Well, my dear, it appears that Sergius is going to marry Louka instead of Raina. (She is about to break out indignantly at him: he stops her by exclaiming testily.) Don’t blame me: I’ve nothing to do with it.

And I, a common-place Swiss soldier who hardly knows what a decent life is after fifteen years of barracks and battles—a vagabond—a man who has spoiled all his chances in life through an incurably romantic disposition—a man—

He exhibits the photograph triumphantly, as if it settled the matter beyond all possibility of refutation.

Your sagacity is a fraud, like all the other things. You have less sense than even I have.

He goes impetuously to the table and seizes the papers in the blue envelope.

I have six palatial establishments, besides two livery stables, a tea garden and a private house.

The lady says that he can keep his tablecloths and his omnibuses. I am not here to be sold to the highest bidder.

RAINA.
(succumbing with a shy smile). To my chocolate cream soldier!