Arms and the Man, George Bernard Shaw [best classic novels TXT] 📗

>lips pursed, musing on the unexpected change in his

arrangements.)

RAINA. Oh, how very sad!

BLUNTSCHLI. Yes: I shall have to start for home in an hour. He

has left a lot of big hotels behind him to be looked after.

(Takes up a heavy letter in a long blue envelope.) Here’s a

whacking letter from the family solicitor. (He pulls out the

enclosures and glances over them.) Great Heavens! Seventy! Two

hundred! (In a crescendo of dismay.) Four hundred! Four

thousand!! Nine thousand six hundred!!! What on earth shall I do

with them all?

RAINA (timidly). Nine thousand hotels?

BLUNTSCHLI. Hotels! Nonsense. If you only knew!—oh, it’s too

ridiculous! Excuse me: I must give my fellow orders about

starting. (He leaves the room hastily, with the documents in his

hand.)

LOUKA (tauntingly). He has not much heart, that Swiss, though

he is so fond of the Servians. He has not a word of grief for

his poor father.

RAINA (bitterly). Grief!—a man who has been doing nothing but

killing people for years! What does he care? What does any

soldier care? (She goes to the door, evidently restraining her

tears with difficulty.)

LOUKA. Major Saranoff has been fighting, too; and he has plenty

of heart left. (Raina, at the door, looks haughtily at her and

goes out.) Aha! I thought you wouldn’t get much feeling out of

your soldier. (She is following Raina when Nicola enters with an

armful of logs for the fire.)

NICOLA (grinning amorously at her). I’ve been trying all the

afternoon to get a minute alone with you, my girl. (His

countenance changes as he notices her arm.) Why, what fashion is

that of wearing your sleeve, child?

LOUKA (proudly). My own fashion.

NICOLA. Indeed! If the mistress catches you, she’ll talk to you.

(He throws the logs down on the ottoman, and sits comfortably

beside them.)

LOUKA. Is that any reason why you should take it on yourself to

talk to me?

NICOLA. Come: don’t be so contrary with me. I’ve some good news

for you. (He takes out some paper money. Louka, with an eager

gleam in her eyes, comes close to look at it.) See, a twenty

leva bill! Sergius gave me that out of pure swagger. A fool and

his money are soon parted. There’s ten levas more. The Swiss

gave me that for backing up the mistress’s and Raina’s lies

about him. He’s no fool, he isn’t. You should have heard old

Catherine downstairs as polite as you please to me, telling me

not to mind the Major being a little impatient; for they knew

what a good servant I was—after making a fool and a liar of me

before them all! The twenty will go to our savings; and you

shall have the ten to spend if you’ll only talk to me so as to

remind me I’m a human being. I get tired of being a servant

occasionally.

LOUKA (scornfully). Yes: sell your manhood for thirty levas,

and buy me for ten! Keep your money. You were born to be a

servant. I was not. When you set up your shop you will only be

everybody’s servant instead of somebody’s servant.

NICOLA (picking up his logs, and going to the stove). Ah, wait

till you see. We shall have our evenings to ourselves; and I

shall be master in my own house, I promise you. (He throws the

logs down and kneels at the stove.)

LOUKA. You shall never be master in mine. (She sits down on

Sergius’s chair.)

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.

LOUKA. 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! do you hear that? me! (She tosses her head

defiantly; and he rises, ill-humoredly, adding more coolly) I’ve

often thought that if Raina were out of the way, and you just a

little less of a fool and Sergius just a little more of one, you

might come to be one of my grandest customers, instead of only

being my wife and costing me money.

LOUKA. I believe you would rather be my servant than my husband.

You would make more out of me. Oh, I know that soul of yours.

NICOLA (going up close to her for greater emphasis). Never you

mind my soul; but just listen to my advice. 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 imprudent; 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. That’s only your ignorance; and don’t you

forget it. And don’t be so ready to defy everybody. Act as if

you expected to have your own way, not as if you expected to be

ordered about. The way to get on as a lady is the same as the

way to get on as a servant: you’ve got to know your place;

that’s the secret of it. And you may depend on me to know my

place if you get promoted. Think over it, my girl. I’ll stand by

you: one servant should always stand by another.

LOUKA (rising impatiently). Oh, I must behave in my own way.

You take all the courage out of me with your cold-blooded

wisdom. Go and put those logs on the fire: that’s the sort of

thing you understand. (Before Nicola can retort, Sergius comes

in. He checks himself a moment on seeing Louka; then goes to the

stove.)

SERGIUS (to Nicola). I am not in the way of your work, I hope.

NICOLA (in a smooth, elderly manner). Oh, no, sir, thank you

kindly. I was only speaking to this foolish girl about her habit

of running up here to the library whenever she gets a chance, to

look at the books. That’s the worst of her education, sir: it

gives her habits above her station. (To Louka.) Make that table

tidy, Louka, for the Major. (He goes out sedately.)

(Louka, without looking at Sergius, begins to arrange the papers on the table. He crosses slowly to her, and studies the arrangement of her sleeve reflectively.)

SERGIUS. Let me see: is there a mark there? (He turns up the

bracelet and sees the bruise made by his grasp. She stands

motionless, not looking at him: fascinated, but on her guard.)

Ffff! Does it hurt?

LOUKA. Yes.

SERGIUS. Shall I cure it?

LOUKA (instantly withdrawing herself proudly, but still not

looking at him). No. You cannot cure it now.

SERGIUS (masterfully). Quite sure? (He makes a movement as if

to take her in his arms.)

LOUKA. Don’t trifle with me, please. An officer should not

trifle with a servant.

SERGIUS (touching the arm with a merciless stroke of his

forefinger). That was no trifle, Louka.

LOUKA. No. (Looking at him for the first time.) Are you sorry?

SERGIUS (with measured emphasis, folding his arms). I am never

sorry.

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 (unaffectedly, relaxing his attitude). Yes: I am a

brave man. My heart jumped like a woman’s at the first shot; but

in the charge I found that I was brave. Yes: that at least is

real about me.

LOUKA. Did you find in the charge that the men whose fathers are

poor like mine were any less brave than the men who are rich

like you?

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. I have an English bull terrier who has as much of

that sort of courage as the whole Bulgarian nation, and the

whole Russian nation at its back. But he lets my groom thrash

him, all the same. That’s your soldier all over! No, Louka, your

poor men can cut throats; but they are afraid of their officers;

they put up with insults and blows; they stand by and see one

another punished like children---aye, and help to do it when

they are ordered. And the officers!---well (with a short, bitter

laugh) I am an officer. 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.

LOUKA. How easy it is to talk! Men never seem to me to grow up:

they all have schoolboy’s ideas. You don’t know what true

courage is.

SERGIUS (ironically). Indeed! I am willing to be instructed.

LOUKA. Look at me! how much am I allowed to have my own will? I

have to get your room ready for you—to sweep and dust, to fetch

and carry. How could that degrade me if it did not degrade you

to have it done for you? But (with subdued passion) if I were

Empress of Russia, above everyone in the world, then—ah, then,

though according to you I could shew no courage at all; you

should see, you should see.

SERGIUS. What would you do, most noble Empress?

LOUKA. I would marry the man I loved, which no other queen in

Europe has the courage to do. If I loved you, though you would

be as far beneath me as I am beneath you, I would dare to be the

equal of my inferior. Would you dare as much if you loved me?

No: if you felt the beginnings of love for me you would not let

it grow. You dare not: you would marry a rich man’s daughter

because you would be afraid of what other people would say of

you.

SERGIUS (carried away). You lie: it is not so, by all the

stars! If I loved you, and I were the Czar himself, I would set

you on the throne by my side. You know that I love another

woman, a woman as high above you as heaven is above earth. And

you are jealous of her.

LOUKA. I have no reason to be. She will never marry you now. The

man I told you of has come back. She will marry the Swiss.

SERGIUS (recoiling). The Swiss!

LOUKA. A man worth ten of you. Then you can come to me; and I

will refuse you. You are not good enough for me. (She turns to

the door.)

SERGIUS (springing after her and catching her fiercely in his

arms). I will kill the Swiss; and afterwards I will do as I

please with you.

LOUKA (in his arms, passive and steadfast). The Swiss will kill

you, perhaps. He has beaten you in love. He may beat you in war.

SERGIUS (tormentedly). Do you think I believe that she—she!

whose worst thoughts are higher than your best ones, is capable

of trifling with another man behind my back?

LOUKA. Do you think she would believe the Swiss if he told her

now that I am in your arms?

SERGIUS (releasing her in despair). Damnation! Oh, damnation!

Mockery, mockery everywhere: everything I think is mocked by

everything I do. (He strikes himself frantically on the breast.)

Coward, liar, fool! Shall I