Arcadia: Act 2, Scenes 6–7

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

SEPTIMUS: That is what I have. Well! – what a bracing experience!

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.)

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

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.

LADY CROOM: Oh, aren’t we saucy when our bags are packed!

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.

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.

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.

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.

SEPTIMUS: Your ladyship should have lived in the Athens of Pericles! The philosophers would have fought the sculptors for your idle hour!

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.

HANNAH enters, carrying a tabloid paper, and a mug of tea.

VALENTINE: Well, why not? Your classical reserve is only a mannerism; and neurotic.

HANNAH: The night before her seventeenth birthday. You can see where the dormer doesn’t match. That was her bedroom under the roof. There’s a memorial in the Park.

She catches AUGUSTUS as SEPTIMUS enters from the other door, carrying a book, a decanter and a glass, and his portfolio.

THOMASINA: It eats its own progeny.

AUGUSTUS indolently starts to draw the models.

AUGUSTUS: Lord Byron?! – he claimed my hare, although my shot was the earlier! He said I missed by a hare’s breadth. His conversation was very facetious. But I think Lord Byron will not marry you, Thom, for he was only lame and not blind.

SEPTIMUS: I do not rule here, my lord. I inspire by reverence for learning and the exaltation of knowledge whereby man may approach God. There will be a shilling for the best cone and pyramid drawn in silence by a quarter to twelve at the earliest.

SEPTIMUS: A prize essay of the Scientific Academy in Paris. The author deserves your indulgence, my lady, for you are his prophet.

SEPTIMUS: Yes. He demonstrates the equation of the propagation of heat in a solid body. But in doing so he has discovered heresy – a natural contradiction of Sir Isaac Newton.

SEPTIMUS: Yes. He demonstrates the equation of the propagation of heat in a solid body. But in doing so he has discovered heresy – a natural contradiction of Sir Isaac Newton.

Her interest has switched in the mercurial way characteristic of her – she has crossed to take the book.

LADY CROOM: The ceaseless dull overbearing monotony of it!

LADY CROOM: For the widow’s dowry of dahlias I can almost forgive my brother’s marriage.

SEPTIMUS: (Pause. He looks at his watch.) A quarter to twelve.
For your essay this week, explicate your diagram.

AUGUSTUS appears at the garden door. His manner cautious and diffident.

SEPTIMUS inclines his head in assent.

BERNARD: Oh, bugger persuasive! I’ve proved Byron was here and as far as I’m concerned he wrote those lines as sure as he shot that hare. If only I hadn’t somehow...made it all about killing Chater. Why didn’t you stop me?! It’s bound to get out, you know – I mean this – this gloss on my discovery – I mean how long do you think it’ll be before some botanical pedant blows the whistle on me?

THOMASINA: While she swoons, we can dance.

HANNAH goes to sit at the table, playing truant from the party.

GUS looks resplendent.

After a moment’s hesitation, she gets up and they hold each other, keeping a decorous distance between them, and start to dance, rather awkwardly.

SEPTIMUS and THOMASINA continue to dance, fluently, to the piano.