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 Servians 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 ap.r.o.n 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 Servia 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 cigaret). 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 b.u.t.ton; 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.) Hollo, 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 p.r.o.nounces 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 a.s.sertive 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 shewing 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.