NICOLA (at the gate, announcing). Major Sergius Saranoff! (He goes into the house and returns presently with a third chair, which be 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 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, 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.
PETKOFF (drily). Mother-in-law, Sergius; mother-in-law! Sit down, and have some coffee.
SERGIUS. Thank you, none for me. (He gets away from the table with a certain distaste for Petkoff's enjoyment of it, and posts himself with conscious grace against the rail of the steps leading to the house.)CATHERINE. You look superb--splendid. The campaign has improved you. Everybody here is mad about you. We were all wild with enthusiasm about that magnificent cavalry charge.
SERGIUS (with grave irony). Madam: it was the cradle and the grave of my military reputation.
CATHERINE. How so?
SERGIUS. I won the battle the wrong way when our worthy Russian generals were losing it the right way. That upset their plans, and wounded their self-esteem. Two of their colonels got their regiments driven back on the correct principles of scientific warfare. Two major-generals got killed strictly according to military etiquette. Those two colonels are now major-generals;and I am still a simple major.
CATHERINE. You shall not remain so, Sergius. The women are on your side; and they will see that justice is done you.
SERGIUS. It is too late. I have only waited for the peace to send in my resignation.
PETKOFF (dropping his cup in his amazement). Your resignation!
CATHERINE. Oh, you must withdraw it!
SERGIUS (with resolute, measured emphasis, folding his arms). I never withdraw!
PETKOFF (vexed). Now who could have supposed you were going to do such a thing?
SERGIUS (with fire). Everyone that knew me. But enough of myself and my affairs. How is Raina; and where is Raina?
RAINA (suddenly coming round the corner of the house and standing at the top of the steps in the path). Raina is here.
(She makes a charming picture as they all turn to look at her.
She wears an underdress of pale green silk, draped with an overdress of thin ecru canvas embroidered with gold. On her head she wears a pretty Phrygian cap of gold tinsel. Sergius, with an exclamation of pleasure, goes impulsively to meet her. She stretches out her hand: he drops chivalrously on one knee and kisses it.)PETKOFF (aside to Catherine, beaming with parental pride).
Pretty, isn't it? She always appears at the right moment.
CATHERINE (impatiently). Yes: she listens for it. It is an abominable habit.
(Sergius leads Raina forward with splendid gallantry, as if she were a queen. When they come to the table, she turns to him with a bend of the head;he bows; and thus they separate, he coming to his place, and she going behind her father's chair.)RAINA (stooping and kissing her father). Dear father! Welcome home!
PETKOFF (patting her cheek). My little pet girl. (He kisses her; she goes to the chair left by Nicola for Sergius, and sits down.)CATHERINE. And so you're no longer a soldier, Sergius.
SERGIUS. I am no longer a soldier. Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms. Eh, Major!
PETKOFF. They wouldn't let us make a fair stand-up fight of it.
However, I suppose soldiering has to be a trade like any other trade.
SERGIUS. Precisely. But I have no ambition to succeed as a tradesman; so I have taken the advice of that bagman of a captain that settled the exchange of prisoners with us at Peerot, and given it up.
PETKOFF. What, that Swiss fellow? Sergius: I've often thought of that exchange since. He over-reached us about those horses.
