Arcadia (6 page)

(Septimus
picks up his pen and continues with his own writing.)
Thomasina: I know who it is, it is your friend Byron. Septimus: Lord Byron,
if you please. Thomasina: Mama is in love with Lord Byron. Septimus:
(Absorbed)
Yes. Nonsense. Thomasina: It is not nonsense. I saw them together in the gazebo.

(Septimus’s
pen stops moving, he raises his eyes to her
at last.)

Lord Byron was reading to her from his satire, and mama was
laughing, with her head in her best position. Septimus: She did not understand
the satire, and was showing politeness to a guest. Thomasina: She is vexed with
papa for his determination to alter the park, but that alone cannot account for
her politeness to a guest. She came downstairs hours before her custom. Lord

Byron was amusing at breakfast. He paid you a tribute,

Septimus. Septimus: Did he? Thomasina: He said you were a
witty fellow, and he had almost by heart an article you wrote about—well, I forget
what, but it concerned a book called The Maid of Turkey’ and how you would not
give it to your dog for dinner. Septimus: Ah. Mr Chater was at breakfast, of
course. Thomasina: He was, not like certain lazybones.

Septimus: He does not have Latin to set and mathematics to
correct.

(He takes Thomasina*s lesson book from underneath Plautus
and tosses it down the table to her.)

Thomasina: Correct? What was incorrect in it?
(She looks
into the book.)
Alpha minus? Pooh! What is the minus for?

Septimus: For doing more than was asked.

Thomasina: You did not like my discovery?

Septimus: A fancy is not a discovery.

Thomasina: A gibe is not a rebuttal.

(SEVTIMUS finishes what he is writing. He folds the pages
into a letter. He has sealing wax and the means to melt it. He seals the letter
and writes on the cover. Meanwhile—
) You are churlish with me because mama
is paying attention to your friend. Well, let them elope, they cannot turn back
the advancement of knowledge. I think it is an excellent discovery. Each week I
plot your equations dot for dot, xs against.ys in all manner of algebraical
relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if
the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God’s truth, Septimus, if
there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one
like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is
written in numbers?

Septimus: We do.

Thomasina: Then why do your equations only describe the
shapes of manufacture?

Septimus: I do not know.

Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.

Septimus: He has mastery of equations which lead into infinities
where we cannot follow.

Thomasina: What a faint-heart! We must work outward from the
middle of the maze. We will start with something simple.
(She picks up the
apple leaf.)
I will plot this leaf and deduce its equation. You will be
famous for being my tutor when Lord Byron is dead and forgotten.

(Septimus
completes the business with his letter. He puts
the letter in his pocket.)

Septimus:
(Firmly)
Back to Cleopatra.

Thomasina: Is it Cleopatra?—1 hate Cleopatra!

Septimus: You hate her? Why?

Thomasina: Everything is turned to love with her. New love,
absent love, lost love—1 never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our
sex. It only needs a Roman general to drop anchor outside the window and away
goes the empire like a christening mug into a pawn shop. If Queen Elizabeth had
been a Ptolemy history would have been quite different—we would be admiring the
pyramids of Rome and the great Sphinx of Verona.

Septimus: God save us.

Thomasina: But instead, the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace
with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a
fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus!—can you bear it? All the lost plays
of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides—thousands
of poems—Aristotle’s own library brought to Egypt by the noodle’s ancestors!
How can we sleep for grief?

Septimus: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus,
seven from Sopocles,
nineteen
from Euripides, my lady! You should no
more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for
your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up,
Uke travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall
will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very
short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing
can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece,
or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal
themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will
have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes
had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a
corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which
puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide,
was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow. Now,
where are we? Let me see if I can attempt a free translation for you. At Harrow
I was better at this than

Lord Byron.

(He takes the piece of paper from her and scrutinizes it,
testing one or two Latin phrases speculatively before committing himself.)

Yes—‘The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne ...

burned on the water ... the—something—the poop was beaten
gold, purple the sails, and—what’s this?—oh yes,—so perfumed that—Thomasina:
(Catching
on and furious)
Cheat! Septimus:
(Imperturbably)
’—the winds were
lovesick with them ...’ Thomasina: Cheat! Septimus: ‘... the oars were silver
which to the tune of flutes kept stroke ...’ Thomasina:
(Jumping to her
/eel)Cheat!
Cheat! Cheat! Septimus:
(As though it were too easy to make the effort
worthwhile)

‘... and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as
amorous
of their strokes. For her own person, it beggared all description—she
did lie in her pavilion—’

(Thomasina,
in tears of rage, is hurrying out through the
garden.)
Thomasina: I hope you die!

(She nearly bumps into
brice
who is entering. She
runs out of sight,
brice
enters.)
brice: Good God, man, what have
you told her? Septimus: Told her? Told her what? brice: Hodge!

(Septimus
looks outside the door, slightly contrite about
Thomasina,
and sees that
Chater
is skulking out of view.)
Septimus:
Chater! My dearfellow! Don’t hang back-come in, sir!

(Chater
allows himself to be drawn sheepishly into the
room, where
BRICE
stands on his dignity.)
Chater: Captain Brice does
me the honour-1 mean to say, sir, whatever you have to say to me, sir, address
yourself to

Captain Brice.

Septimus: How unusual.
(To
brice) Your wife did not
appear yesterday, sir. I trust she is not sick? brice: My wife? I have no wife.
What the devil do you mean, sir?

(Septimus
makes to reply, but hesitates, puzzled. He
turns back to
CHATER.)

Septimus: I do not understand the scheme, Chater. Whom do I
address when I want to speak to Captain Brice?

brice: Oh, slippery, Hodge—slippery!

Septimus:
(To
Chater) By the way, Chater—
(he
interrupts himself and turns back to
BRICE,
and continues as before)
by
the way, Chater, I have amazing news to tell you. Someone has taken to writing
wild and whirling letters in your name. I received one not half an hour ago.

brice:
(Angrily)
Mr Hodge! Look to your honour, sir!
If you cannot attend to me without this foolery, nominate your second who might
settle the business as between gentlemen. No doubt your friend Byron would do you
the service. (Septimus
gives up the game.)

Septimus: Oh yes, he would do me the service.
(His mood changes,
he turns to
Chater.) Sir—1 repent your injury. You are an honest fellow
with no more malice in you than poetry.

Chater:
(Happily)
Ah well!—that is more like the
thing!
(Overtaken by doubt.)
Is he apologizing?

brice: There is still the injury to his conjugal property,
Mrs Chater’s—

Chater: Tush, sir!

brice: As you will—her tush. Nevertheless—

(But they are interrupted by
lady croom,
also
entering from the garden.)

lady croom: Oh—excellently found! Mr Chater, this will
please you very much. Lord Byron begs a copy of your new book. He dies to read
it and intends to include your name in the second edition of his
English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

CHATER:
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,
your ladyship,
is a doggerel aimed at Lord Byron’s seniors and betters. If he intends to
include me, he intends to insult me.

lady croom: Well, of course he does, Mr Chater. Would you rather
be thought not worth insulting? You should be proud to be in the company of
Rogers and Moore and Wordsworth—ah! The Couch of Eros!’
(For she has spotted
Septimus’s copy of the book on the table.)

Septimus: That is my copy, madam.

lady croom: So much the better—what are a friend’s books for
if not to be borrowed?

(Note: ‘The Couch of Eros’ now contains the three
letters, and it must do so without advertising the fact. This is why the volume
has been described as a substantial quarto.)
Mr Hodge, you must speak to
your friend and put him out of his affectation of pretending to quit us. I will
not have it. He says he is determined on the Malta packet sailing out of
Falmouth! His head is full of Lisbon and Lesbos, and his portmanteau of pistols,
and I have told him it is not to be thought of. The whole of Europe is in a
Napoleonic fit, all the best ruins will be closed, the roads entirely occupied
with the movement of armies, the lodgings turned to billets and the fashion for
godless republicanism not yet arrived at its natural reversion. He says his aim
is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps. I charge
you to take command of his pistols, Mr Hodge! He is not safe with them. His
lameness, he confessed to me, is entirely the result of his habit from boyhood
of shooting himself in the foot. What is that
noise}

(The noise is a badly played piano in the next room. It
has been going on for some time since
Thomasina
left.)

Septimus: The new Broadwood pianoforte, madam. Our music
lessons are at an early stage.

lady croom: Well, restrict your lessons to the
piano
side
of the instrument and let her loose on the
forte
when she has learned
something. (lady CROOM,
holding the book, sails out back into the garden.)

brice: Now! If that was not God speaking through Lady Croom,
he never spoke through anyone!

Chater:
(Awed)
Take command of Lord Byron’s pistols!

brice: You hear Mr Chater, sir—how will you answer him?

(Septimus
has been watching
lady c room’s
progress
up the garden. He turns back.)

Septimus: By killing him. I am tired of him.

Chater:
(Startled)
Eh?

brice:
(Pleased)
Ah!

Septimus: Oh, damn your soul, Chater! Ovid would have stayed
a lawyer and Virgil a farmer if they had known the bathos to which love would
descend in your sportive satyrs and noodle nymphs! I am at your service with a
half-ounce ball in your brain. May it satisfy you—behind the boat-house at daybreak—shall
we say five o’clock? My compliments to Mrs Chater—have no fear for her, she
will not want for protection while Captain Brice has a guinea in his pocket, he
told her so himself.

brice: You lie, sir!

Septimus: No, sir. Mrs Chater, perhaps.

brice: You lie, or you will answer to me!

Septimus:
(Wearily)
Oh, very well—1 can fit you in at
five minutes after five. And then it’s off to the Malta packet out of Falmouth.
You two will be dead, my penurious schoolfriend will remain to tutor Lady
Thomasina, and I trust everybody including Lady Croom will be satisfied! (Septimus
slams the door behind him.)

brice: He is all bluster and bladder. Rest assured, Chater,
I will let the air out of him.

(brice
leaves by the other door,
Chater’s
assurance
lasts only a moment. When he spots the flaw
...

Chater: Oh! But ...

(He hurries out after
brice.)

Hannah
and
Valentine.
She is reading aloud. He is
listening. Lightning, the tortoise, is on the table and is not readily distinguishable
fromPlautus. In front of
Valentine
is Septimus’s portfolio, recognizably
so but naturally somewhat faded. It is open. Principally associated with the
portfolio (although it may contain sheets of blank paper also) are three items:
a slim maths primer; a sheet of drawing paper on which there is a scrawled
diagram and some mathematical notations, arrow marks, etc.; and Thomasina
⁹
s mathematics lesson book, i.e. the one she writes in, which
Valentine
is
leafing through as he listens to
Hannah
reading from the primer.
Hannah:
‘I, Thomasina Coverly, have found a truly wonderful method whereby all the
forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and draw themselves
through number alone. This margin being too mean for my purpose, the reader
must look elsewhere for the New Geometry of Irregular Forms discovered by
Thomasina Coverly.’
(Pause. She hands
Valentine
the text book,
Valentine
looks at what she has been reading.