Bernard Shaw

“ SERGIUS.
Sh—sh! Let me be the worshipper, dear. You little know how unworthy even the best man is of a girl’s pure passion!
RAINA.
I trust you. I love you. You will never disappoint me, Sergius. (Louka is heard singing within the house. They quickly release each other.) Hush! I can’t pretend to talk indifferently before her: my heart is too full. (Louka comes from the house with her tray. She goes to the table, and begins to clear it, with her back turned to them.) I will go and get my hat; and then we can go out until lunch time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You hear this man calling me names, Captain Bluntschli?
BLUNTSCHLI.
What else can he do, dear lady? He must defend himself somehow. Come (very persuasively) , don’t quarrel. What good does it do? (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.)
SERGIUS.
Engaged to Nicola! (He rises.) Ha! ha! (Going to the stove and standing with his back to it.) Ah, well, Bluntschli, you are right to take this huge imposture of a world coolly. ”

“ PETKOFF.
My dear Catherine, I tell you I’ve looked there. Am I to believe my own eyes or not? (Catherine quietly rises and presses the button of the electric bell by the fireplace.) What are you shewing off that bell for? (She looks at him majestically, and silently resumes her chair and her needlework.) My dear: if you think the obstinacy of your sex can make a coat out of two old dressing gowns of Raina’s, your waterproof, and my mackintosh, you’re mistaken. That’s exactly what the blue closet contains at present. (Nicola presents himself.) ”

“ He did it like an operatic tenor—a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him; but when the sergeant ran up as white as a sheet, and told us they’d sent us the wrong cartridges, and that we couldn’t fire a shot for the next ten minutes, we laughed at the other side of our mouths. I never felt so sick in my life, though I’ve been in one or two very tight places. And I hadn’t even a revolver cartridge—nothing but chocolate. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
(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. ”

“ Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest. He and his regiment simply committed suicide—only the pistol missed fire, that’s all.
RAINA.
(deeply wounded, but steadfastly loyal to her ideals) . Indeed! Would you know him again if you saw him?
MAN.
Shall I ever forget him. (She again goes to the chest of drawers. He watches her with a vague hope that she may have something else for him to eat. She takes the portrait from its stand and brings it to him.)
RAINA.
That is a photograph of the gentleman—the patriot and hero—to whom I am betrothed. ”

“ PETKOFF.
Are you? Then I’m not. (Turning to the others.) Come: do you think I don’t see it all? (Goes to Sergius, and slaps him on the shoulder.) Sergius: you’re the chocolate cream soldier, aren’t you?
SERGIUS.
(starting up) . I! a chocolate cream soldier! Certainly not.
PETKOFF.
Not! (He looks at them. They are all very serious and very conscious.) Do you mean to tell me that Raina sends photographic souvenirs to other men?
SERGIUS.
(enigmatically) . The world is not such an innocent place as we used to think, Petkoff. ”

“ RAINA.
(forgetting herself) . Oh! (Collapsing on the ottoman.) Are you?
SERGIUS.
You see the young lady’s concern, Captain Bluntschli. Denial is useless. You have enjoyed the privilege of being received in her own room, late at night—
BLUNTSCHLI.
(interrupting him pepperily) . Yes; you blockhead! She received me with a pistol at her head. Your cavalry were at my heels. I’d have blown out her brains if she’d uttered a cry.
SERGIUS.
(taken aback) . Bluntschli! Raina: is this true? ”

“ RAINA.
(desperately) . But what am I to do with you.
MAN.
(staggering up) . Of course I must do something. (He shakes himself; pulls himself together; and speaks with rallied vigour and courage.) You see, sleep or no sleep, hunger or no hunger, tired or not tired, you can always do a thing when you know it must be done. Well, that pipe must be got down— (He hits himself on the chest, and adds) —Do you hear that, you chocolate cream soldier? ”

“ 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.) ”

“ PETKOFF.
Stuff and nonsense, Sergius. That’s quite enough fuss about nothing: a soldier’s daughter should be able to stand up without flinching to a little strong conversation. (He rises.) Come: it’s time for us to get to business. We have to make up our minds how those three regiments are to get back to Phillipopolis:—there’s no forage for them on the Sofia route. (He goes towards the house.) Come along. (Sergius is about to follow him when Catherine rises and intervenes.)
CATHERINE.
Oh, Paul, can’t you spare Sergius for a few moments? Raina has hardly seen him yet. ”

“ PETKOFF.
Not engaged to you, you scoundrel! 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. I intend, as you know, sir, to set up a shop later on in Sofia; and I look forward to her custom and recommendation should she marry into the nobility. (He goes out with impressive discretion, leaving them all staring after him.) ”

“ CATHERINE.
Oh, quite as a friend, Paul. I was just asking Captain Bluntschli to stay to lunch; but he declares he must go at once.
SERGIUS.
(sardonically) . Impossible, Bluntschli. We want you here badly. We have to send on three cavalry regiments to Phillipopolis; and we don’t in the least know how to do it.
BLUNTSCHLI.
(suddenly attentive and business-like) . Phillipopolis! The forage is the trouble, eh?
PETKOFF.
(eagerly) . Yes, that’s it. (To Sergius.) He sees the whole thing at once. ”

“ CATHERINE.
(flaming) . A Servian! How dare he— (Checking herself bitterly.) Oh, I forgot. We are at peace now. I suppose we shall have them calling every day to pay their compliments. Well, if he is an officer why don’t you tell your master? He is in the library with Major Saranoff. Why do you come to me?
LOUKA.
But he asks for you, madam. And I don’t think he knows who you are: he said the lady of the house. He gave me this little ticket for you. (She takes a card out of her bosom; puts it on the salver and offers it to Catherine.)
CATHERINE.
(reading) . “Captain Bluntschli!” ”

“ RAINA.
(furious—throwing the words right into his face) . You have a low, shopkeeping mind. You think of things that would never come into a gentleman’s head.
BLUNTSCHLI.
(phlegmatically) . That’s the Swiss national character, dear lady.
RAINA.
Oh, I wish I had never met you. (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.) ”

“ Why, a lot of your cavalry—the greatest blackguards in your army—will burst into this pretty room of yours and slaughter me here like a pig; for I’ll fight like a demon: they shan’t get me into the street to amuse themselves with: I know what they are. Are you prepared to receive that sort of company in your present undress? (Raina, suddenly conscious of her nightgown, instinctively shrinks and gathers it more closely about her. He watches her, and adds, pitilessly) It’s rather scanty, eh? (She turns to the ottoman. He raises his pistol instantly, and cries) Stop! ”

“ Give the alarm. (He drops his head in his hands in the deepest dejection.)
RAINA.
(disarmed by pity) . Come, don’t be disheartened. (She stoops over him almost maternally: he shakes his head.) Oh, you are a very poor soldier—a chocolate cream soldier. Come, cheer up: it takes less courage to climb down than to face capture—remember that.
MAN.
(dreamily, lulled by her voice) . No, capture only means death; and death is sleep—oh, sleep, sleep, sleep, undisturbed sleep! Climbing down the pipe means doing something—exerting myself—thinking! Death ten times over first. ”

“ Why, look at our ages! I’m thirty-four: I don’t suppose the young lady is much over seventeen. (This estimate produces a marked sensation, all the rest turning and staring at one another. He proceeds innocently.) All that adventure which was life or death to me, was only a schoolgirl’s game to her—chocolate creams and hide and seek. Here’s the proof! (He takes the photograph from the table.) Now, I ask you, would a woman who took the affair seriously have sent me this and written on it: “Raina, to her chocolate cream soldier—a souvenir”? ”

“ 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 impudent ”

“ BLUNTSCHLI.
Well, I can’t be quite sure. You see I couldn’t carry it about with me all the time: one can’t take much luggage on active service.
RAINA.
What did you do with it?
BLUNTSCHLI.
When I got through to Peerot I had to put it in safe keeping somehow. I thought of the railway cloak room; but that’s the surest place to get looted in modern warfare. So I pawned it.
RAINA.
Pawned it!!!
BLUNTSCHLI.
I know it doesn’t sound nice; but it was much the safest plan. I redeemed it the day before yesterday. Heaven only knows whether the pawnbroker cleared out the pockets or not. ”