Arcadia (10 page)

Valentine:
{Amused, surprised)
Huh!

Hannah: ‘He died aged two score years and seven, hoary as
Job and meagre as a cabbage-stalk, the proof of his prediction even yet
unyielding to his labours for the restitution of hope through good English
algebra.’

Valentine: That’s it?

Hannah:
{Nods)
Is there anything in it?

Valentine: In what? We are all doomed?
{Casually.)
Oh
yes, sure—it’s called the second law of thermodynamics.

Hannah: Was it known about?

Valentine: By poets and lunatics from time immemorial.

Hannah: Seriously.

Valentine: No.

Hannah: Is it anything to do with ... you know, Thomasina’s
discovery?

Valentine: She didn’t discover anything.

Hannah: Her lesson book.

Valentine: No.

Hannah: A coincidence, then?

Valentine: What is?

Hannah:
(Reading)
‘He died aged two score years and
seven.’ That was in 1834. So he was born in 1787. So was the tutor. He says so
in his letter to Lord Croom when he recommended himself for the job: ‘Date of
birth—1787.’ The hermit was born in the same year as Septimus Hodge.

Valentine:
(Pause)
Did Bernard bite you in the leg?

Hannah: Don’t you see? I thought my hermit was a perfect
symbol. An idiot in the landscape. But this is better. The Age of Enlightenment
banished into the Romantic wilderness! The genius of Sidley Park living on in a
hermit’s hut!

Valentine: You don’t
know
that.

Hannah: Oh, but I do. I do. Somewhere there will be
something
... if only I can find it.

The room is empty.

A reprise: early morning—a distant pistol shot—the sound
of the crows.

JELLABY
enters the dawn-dark room with a lamp. He goes to
the windows and looks out. He sees something. He returns to put the lamp on the
table, and then opens one ofthefrench windows and steps outside.
Jellaby:
(Outside)
Mr Hodge!

(Septimus
comes in, followed by
Jellaby,
who
closes the garden door.
Septimus
is wearing a greatcoat.)
Septimus:
Thank you, Jellaby. I was expecting to be locked out.

What time is it? Jellaby: Half past five. Septimus: That is
what I have. Well!—what a bracing experience!

(He produces two pistols from inside his coat and places
them on the table.)

The dawn, you know. Unexpectedly lively. Fishes, birds, frogs
... rabbits ...
(he produces a dead rabbit from inside his coat)
and
very beautiful. If only it did not occur so early in the day. I have brought
Lady Thomasina a rabbit. Will you take it? Jellaby: It’s dead. Septimus: Yes.
Lady Thomasina loves a rabbit pie.

(JELLABY
takes the rabbit without enthusiasm. There is a
little blood on it.)
Jellaby: You were missed, Mr Hodge. Septimus: I
decided to sleep last night in the boat-house. Did I

see a carriage leaving the Park? Jellaby: Captain Brice’s carriage,
with Mr and Mrs Chater also. Septimus: Gone?! Jellaby: Yes, sir. And Lord Byron’s
horse was brought round at four o’clock. Septimus: Lord Byron too!

Jellaby: Yes, sir. The house has been up and hopping. Septimus:
But I have his rabbit pistols! What am I to do with his rabbit pistols? Jellaby:
You were looked for in your room. Septimus: By whom? Jellaby: By her ladyship.
Septimus: In my room? Jellaby: I will tell her ladyship you are returned.

(He starts to leave.)
Septimus: Jellaby! Did Lord
Byron leave a book for me? Jellaby: A book?

Septimus: He had the loan of a book from me. Jellaby: His
lordship left nothing in his room, sir, not a coin. Septimus: Oh. Well, I’m
sure he would have left a coin if he’d had one. Jellaby—here is a half-guinea
for you. Jellaby: Thank you very much, sir. Septimus: What has occurred? Jellaby:
The servants are told nothing, sir. Septimus: Come, come, does a half-guinea
buy nothing any more? Jellaby:
(Sighs)
Her ladyship encountered Mrs
Chater during the night. Septimus: Where?

Jellaby: On the threshold of Lord Byron’s room. Septimus:
Ah. Which one was leaving and which entering? Jellaby: Mrs Chater was leaving
Lord Byron’s room. Septimus: And where was Mr Chater? Jellaby: Mr Chater and
Captain Brice were drinking cherry brandy. They had the footman to keep the
fire up until three o’clock. There was a loud altercation upstairs, and—

(lady croom
enters the room.)
lady croom: Well, Mr
Hodge. Septimus: My lady. lady croom: All this to shoot a hare? Septimus: A
rabbit.
(She gives him one of her looks.)
No, indeed, a hare, though
very rabbit-like—

(Jellaby
is about to leave.)
LADY croom: My infusion.

Jellaby: Yes, my lady.

{He leaves,
lady croom
is carrying two letters. We
have not seen them before. Each has an envelope which has been opened. She
flings them on the table.)

lady croom: How dare you!

Septimus: I cannot be called to account for what was written
in private and read without regard to propriety.

lady croom: Addressed to me!

Septimus: Left in my room, in the event of my death—

lady croom: Pah!—what earthly use is a love letter from
beyond the grave?

Septimus: As much, surely, as from this side of it. The
second letter, however, was not addressed to your ladyship.

lady croom: I have a mother’s right to open a letter
addressed by you to my daughter, whether in the event of your life, your death,
or your imbecility. What do you mean by writing to her of rice pudding when she
has just suffered the shock of violent death in our midst?

Septimus: Whose death?

lady croom: Yours, you wretch!

Septimus: Yes, I see.

lady croom: I do not know which is the madder of your ravings.
One envelope full of rice pudding, the other of the most insolent familiarities
regarding several parts of my body, but have no doubt which is the more
intolerable to me.

Septimus: Which?

lady croom: Oh, aren’t we saucy when our bags are packed!
Your friend has gone before you, and I have despatched the harlot Chater and
her husband—and also my brother for bringing them here. Such is the sentence,
you see, for choosing unwisely in your acquaintance. Banishment. Lord Byron is*
a rake and a hypocrite, and the sooner he sails for the Levant the sooner he
will find society congenial to his character.

Septimus: It has been a night of reckoning.

lady croom: Indeed I wish it had passed uneventfully with
you and Mr Chater shooting each other with the decorum due to a civilized
house. You have no secrets left, Mr Hodge. They spilled out between shrieks and
oaths and tears. It is fortunate that a lifetime’s devotion to the sporting gun
has halved my husband’s hearing to the ear he sleeps on.

Septimus: I’m afraid I have no knowledge of what has occurred.

lady croom: Your trollop was discovered in Lord Byron’s
room.

Septimus: Ah. Discovered by Mr Chater?

lady croom: Who else?

Septimus: I am very sorry, madam, for having used your kindness
to bring my unworthy friend to your notice. He will have to give an account of
himself to me, you may be sure,
{Before
LADY CROOM
can respond to
this threat,
Jellaby
enters the room with her ‘infusion’. This is quite
an elaborate affair: a pewter tray on small feet on which there is a kettle
suspended over a spirit lamp. There is a cup and saucer and the silver ‘basket
containing the dry leaves for the tea.
JELLABY
places the tray on the
table and is about to offer further assistance with it.)

lady croom: I will do it.

Jellaby: Yes, my lady.
(To
Septimus) Lord Byron left
a letter for you with the valet, sir.

Septimus: Thank you.

(Septimus
takes the letter off the tray,
Jellaby
prepares
to leave,
lady croom
eyes the letter.)

lady croom: When did he do so?

Jellaby: As he was leaving, your ladyship.

(Jellaby
leaves.
Septimus/>«#
the letter into
his pocket.)

Septimus: Allow me.

(Since she does not object, he pours a cup of tea for
her. She accepts it.)

lady croom: I do not know if it is proper for you to receive
a letter written in my house from someone not welcome in it.

Septimus: Very improper, I agree. Lord Byron’s want of delicacy
is a grief to his friends, among whom I no longer count myself. I will not read
his letter until I have followed him through the gates.
(She considers that
for a moment.)

LADY croom: That may excuse the reading but not the writing.

Septimus: Your ladyship should have lived in the Athens of

Pericles! The philosophers would have fought the sculptors for
your idle hour! lady croom:
(Protesting)
Oh, really! ...
(Protesting
less.)
Oh really ...

(Septimus
has taken Byron’s letter from his pocket and is
now setting fire to a corner of it using the little flame from the spirit lamp.)

Oh ... really ...

(The paper blazes in
Septimus’s
hand and he drops
it and lets it burn out on the metal tray.)
Septimus: Now there’s a thing—a
letter from Lord Byron never to be read by a living soul. I will take my leave,
madam, at the time of your desiring it. lady croom: To the Indies? Septimus:
The Indies! Why? lady croom: To follow the Chater, of course. She did not tell
you? Septimus: She did not exchange half-a-dozen words with me. lady croom: I
expect she did not like to waste the time. The

Chater sails with Captain Brice. Septimus: Ah. As a member
of the crew? lady croom: No, as wife to Mr Chater, plant-gatherer to my brother’s
expedition. Septimus: I knew he was no poet. I did not know it was botany under
the false colours. LADY croom: He is no more a botanist. My brother paid fifty
pounds to have him published, and he will pay a hundred and fifty to have Mr
Chater picking flowers in the Indies for a year while the wife plays mistress
of the Captain’s quarters.

Captain Brice has fixed his passion on Mrs Chater, and to take
her on voyage he has not scrupled to deceive the

Admiralty, the Linnean Society and Sir Joseph Banks, botanist
to His Majesty at Kew. Septimus: Her passion is not as fixed as his. lady
croom: It is a defect of God’s humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but
to those who have a right to them. Septimus: Indeed, madam.
(Pause.)
But
is Mr Chater deceived?

7i lady croom: He insists on it, and finds the proof of his
wife’s virtue in his eagerness to defend it. Captain Brice is
not
deceived
but cannot help himself. He would die for her.

Septimus: I think, my lady, he would have Mr Chater die for
her.

lady croom: Indeed, I never knew a woman worth the duel, or
the other way about. Your letter to me goes very ill with your conduct to Mrs
Chater, Mr Hodge. I have had experience of being betrayed before the ink is
dry, but to be betrayed before the pen is even dipped, and with the village
noticeboard, what am I to think of such a performance?

Septimus: My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo,
when Mrs Chater ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of
unrelieved desire—

lady croom: Oh ...!

Septimus:—1 thought in my madness that the Chater with her
skirts over her head would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to
which I dared not put a face.
{Pause.)

lady croom: I do not know when I have received a more unusual
compliment, Mr Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her
head in a bucket. Does she wear drawers?

Septimus: She does.

lady croom: Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn
now. It is unnatural for women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve.

(She turns with a whirl of skirts and moves to leave.)
I
know nothing of Pericles or the Athenian philosophers. I can spare them an hour,
in my sitting room when I have bathed. Seven o’clock. Bring a book.
(She
goes out.
Septimus
picks up the two letters, the ones he wrote, and
starts to burn them in the flame of the spirit lamp.)

r

Valentine
and
CHLOE
are at the table.
GUS is
in
the room.

CHLOfi
is reading from two Saturday newspapers. She is
wearing workaday period clothes, a Regency dress, no hat.

Valentine
is pecking at a portable computer. He is
wearing unkempt Regency clothes, too.

The clothes have evidently come from a large wicker
laundry hamper, from which
GUS
is producing more clothes to try on himself.
He finds a Regency coat and starts putting it on.

The objects on the table now include two geometrical
solids, pyramid and cone, about twenty inches high, of the type used in a
drawing lesson; and a pot of dwarf dahlias (which do not look like modern
dahlias).
chloE: ‘Even in Arcadia—Sex, Literature and Death at Sidley

Park’. Picture of Byron. Valentine: Not of Bernard? chloE: ‘Byron
Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don’... Valentine, do you think I’m the first person to
think of this? Valentine: No. chloE: I haven’t said yet. The future is all programmed
like a computer—that’s a proper theory, isn’t it? Valentine: The deterministic
universe, yes. Chloe: Right. Because everything including us is just a lot of atoms
bouncing off each other like billiard balls. Valentine: Yes. There was someone,
forget his name, 1820s, who pointed out that from Newton’s laws you could
predict everything to come—1 mean, you’d need a computer as big as the universe
but the formula would exist. CHLOE: But it doesn’t work, does it? Valentine:
No. It turns out the maths is different. chloE: No, it’s all because of sex. Valentine:
Really? chloE: That’s what I think. The universe is deterministic all right,
just like Newton said, I mean it’s trying to be, but the only thing going wrong
is people fancying people who aren’t supposed to be in that part of the plan.