Arcadia (2 page)

(He picks up the tortoise and moves it a few inches as
though it had strayed, on top of some loose papers, and admonishes it.)
Sit!

Thomasina: Septimus, do you think God is a Newtonian?

Septimus: An Etonian? Almost certainly, I’m afraid. We must
ask your brother to make it his first enquiry.

Thomasina: No, Septimus, a Newtonian. Septimus! Am I the
first person to have thought of this?

Septimus: No.

Thomasina: I have not said yet.

Septimus: ‘If everything from the furthest planet to the
smallest atom of our brain acts according to Newton’s law of motion, what
becomes of free will?’

Thomasina: No.

Septimus: God’s will.

Thomasina: No.

Septimus: Sin.

Thomasina:
(Derisively)
No!

Septimus: Very well.

Thomasina: If you could stop every atom in its position and
direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended,
then if you were really,
really
good at algebra you could write the
formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it,
the formula must exist just as if one could.

Septimus:
(Pause)
Yes.
(Pause.)
Yes, as far as
I know, you are the first person to have thought of this.
(Pause. With an effort.)
In the margin of his copy of
Arithmetical
Fermat wrote that he had
discovered a wonderful proof of his theorem but, the margin being too narrow
for his purpose, did not have room to write it down. The note was found after
his death, and from that day to this—

Thomasina: Oh! I see now! The answer is perfectly obvious.

Septimus: This time you may have overreached yourself.
(The
door is opened, somewhat violently.
CHATER
enters.)
Mr Chater!
Perhaps my message miscarried. I will be at liberty at a quarter to twelve, if
that is convenient.

Chater: It is not convenient, sir. My business will not
wait.

Septimus: Then I suppose you have Lord Croom’s opinion that
your business is more important than his daughter’s lesson.

Chater: I do not, but, if you like, I will ask his lordship
to settle the point.

Septimus:
(Pause)
My lady, take Fermat into the music
room. There will be an extra spoonful of jam if you find his proof.

Thomasina: There is no proof, Septimus. The thing that is perfectly
obvious is that the note in the margin was a joke to make you all mad. (Thomasina
leaves.)

Septimus: Now, sir, what is this business that cannot wait?

Chater: I think you know it, sir. You have insulted my wife.

Septimus: Insulted her? That would deny my nature, my conduct,
and the admiration in which I hold Mrs Chater.

Chater: I have heard of your admiration, sir! You insulted
my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening!

Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the
gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I
could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn
up, by God, sir, it is a slander.

Chater: You damned lecher! You would drag down a lady’s
reputation to make a refuge for your cowardice. It will not do! I am calling
you out!

Septimus: Chater! Chater, Chater, Chater! My dear friend!

Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!

Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are
demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the
demands of the Chater family. As for your wife’s reputation, it stands where it
ever stood.

Chater: You blackguard!

Septimus: I assure you. Mrs Chater is charming and spirited,
with a pleasing voice and a dainty step, she is the epitome of all the
qualities society applauds in her sex—and yet her chief renown is for a
readiness that keeps her in a state of tropical humidity as would grow orchids
in her drawers in January.

Chater: Damn you, Hodge, I will not listen to this! Will you
fight or not?

Septimus:
(Definitively)
Not! There are no more than
two or three poets of the first rank now living, and I will not shoot one of
them dead over a perpendicular poke in a gazebo with a woman whose reputation
could not be adequately defended with a platoon of musketry deployed by rota.

Chater: Ha! You say so! Who are the others? In your opinion?—no-no—!—this
goes very ill, Hodge. I will not be flattered out of my course. You say so, do
you?

Septimus: I do. And I would say the same to Milton were he
not already dead. Not the part about his wife, of course—

Chater: But among the living? Mr Southey?

Septimus: Southey I would have shot on sight.

Chater:
(Shaking his head sadly)
Yes, he has fallen
off. I admired Thalaba’
quite
, but ‘Madoc’,
(he chuckles)
oh dear
me!—but we are straying from the business here—you took advantage of Mrs
Chater, and if that were not bad enough, it appears every stableboy and
scullery maid on the strength—

Septimus: Damn me! Have you not listened to a word I said?

Chater: I have heard you, sir, and I will not deny I welcome
your regard, God knows one is little appreciated if one stands outside the
coterie of hacks and placemen who surround Jeffrey and the
Edinburgh—

Septimus: My dear Chater, they judge a poet by the seating
plan of Lord Holland’s table!

Chater: By heaven, you are right! And I would very much like
to know the name of the scoundrel who slandered my verse drama ‘The Maid of
Turkey’ in the
Piccadilly Recreation,
too!

Septimus: The Maid of Turkey’! I have it by my bedside! When
I cannot sleep I take up The Maid of Turkey’ like an old friend!

CHATER:
(Gratified)
There you are! And the scoundrel
wrote he would not give it to his dog for dinner were it covered in bread sauce
and stuffed with chestnuts. When Mrs Chater read that, she wept, sir, and would
not give herself to me for a fortnight—which recalls me to my purpose—

Septimus: The new poem, however, will make your name perpetual—

Chater: Whether it do or not—

Septimus: It is not a question, sir. No coterie can oppose
the acclamation of the reading public. The Couch of Eros’ will take the town.

Chater: Is that your estimation?

Septimus: It is my intent.

Chater: Is it, is it? Well, well! I do not understand you.

Septimus: You see I have an early copy—sent to me for review.
I say review, but I speak of an extensive appreciation of your gifts and your
rightful place in English literature.

Chater: Well, I must say. That is certainly ... You have
written it?

Septimus:
(Crisply)
Not yet.

Chater: Ah. And how long does ... ?

Septimus: To be done right, it first requires a careful
re-reading of your book, of both your books, several readings, together with
outlying works for an exhibition of deference or disdain as the case merits. I
make notes, of course, I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready and
I am
calm in my mind ..
.

Chater:
(Shrewdly)
Did Mrs Chater know of this before
she—before you—

Septimus: I think she very likely did.

Chater:
(Triumphantly)
There is nothing that woman
would not do for me! Now you have an insight to her character. Yes, by God, she
is a wife to me, sir!

Septimus: For that alone, I would not make her a widow.

Chater: Captain Brice once made the same observation!

Septimus: Captain Brice did?

Chater: Mr Hodge, allow me to inscribe your copy in happy anticipation.
Lady Thomasina’s pen will serve us.

Septimus: Your connection with Lord and Lady Croom you owe
to your fighting her ladyship’s brother?

Chater: No! It was all nonsense, sir—a canard! But a fortunate
mistake, sir. It brought me the patronage of a captain of His Majesty’s Navy
and the brother of a countess. I do not think Mr Walter Scott can say as much,
and here I am, a respected guest at Sidley Park.

Septimus: Well, sir, you can say you have received satisfaction.
(CHATER
is already inscribing the book, using the pen and ink-pot on the
table.
NOAKES
enters through the door used by
Chater.
He carries
rolled-up plans,
Chater,
inscribing, ignores
noakes. noakes
on
seeing the occupants, panics.)

noakes: Oh!

Septimus: Ah, Mr Noakes!—my muddy-mettled rascal! Where’s
your spyglass?

noakes: I beg your leave—1 thought her ladyship—excuse me—
(He
is beating an embarrassed retreat when he becomes rooted by
CHATER’s
voice.
CHATER
reads his inscription in ringing tones.)

Chater: To my friend Septimus Hodge, who stood up and gave
his best on behalf of the Author—Ezra Chater, at Sidley Park, Derbyshire, April
ioth, 1809.’
(Giving the book to
Septimus.) There, sir—something to show
your grandchildren!

Septimus: This is more than I deserve, this is handsome,
what do you say, Noakes?

(They are interrupted by the appearance, outside the windows,
of
lady croom
and
captain edward brice, rn.
Her first words
arrive through the open door.)

lady croom: Oh, no! Not the gazebo!

(She enters, followed by
BRICE
who carries a leatherbound
sketch book.)

Mr Noakes! What is this I hear?

brice: Not only the gazebo, but the boat-house, the Chinese
bridge, the shrubbery—

Chater: By God, sir! Not possible!

brice: Mr Noakes will have it so.

Septimus: Mr Noakes, this is monstrous!

lady croom: I am glad to hear it from .you, Mr Hodge.

Thomasina:
(Opening the door from the music room)
May
I return now?

Septimus:
(Attempting to close the door)
Not just yet—

lady croom: Yes, let her stay. A lesson in folly is worth
two in wisdom.

(brice
takes the sketch book to the reading stand, where
he lays it open. The sketch book is the work
a/MR noakes,
who is obviously
an admirer of Humphry Reptoris ‘Red Books’. The pages, drawn in watercolours,
show ‘before’ and ‘after* views of the landscape, and the pages are cunningly
cut to allow the latter to be superimposed over portions of the former, though
Repton did it the other way round.)

brice: Is Sidley Park to be an Englishman’s garden or the
haunt of Corsican brigands?

Septimus: Let us not hyperbolize, sir.

brice: It is rape, sir!

noakes:
(Defending himself)
It is the modern style.

Chater:
(Under the same misapprehension as
Septimus)
Regrettable, of course, but so it is. (Thomasina
has gone to examine the
sketch book.)

lady croom: Mr Chater, you show too much submission. Mr
Hodge, I appeal to you.

Septimus: Madam, I regret the gazebo, I sincerely regret the
gazebo—and the boat-house up to a point—but the Chinese bridge, fantasy!—and
the shrubbery I reject with contempt! Mr Chater!—would you take the word of a
jumped-up jobbing gardener who sees carnal embrace in every nook and cranny of
the landskip!

Thomasina: Septimus, they are not speaking of carnal embrace,
are you, Mama?

lady croom: Certainly not. What do you know of carnal embrace?

Thomasina: Everything, thanks to Septimus. In my opinion, Mr
Noakes’s scheme for the garden is perfect. It is a Salvator!

lady croom: What does she mean?

noakes:
(Answering the wrong question)
Salvator Rosa,
your ladyship, the painter. He is indeed the very exemplar of the picturesque
style.

brice: Hodge, what is this?

Septimus: She speaks from innocence not from experience.

brice: You call it innocence? Has he ruined you, child?
(Pause.)

Septimus: Answer your uncle!

Thomasina:
(To
Septimus.) How is a ruined child
different from a ruined castle?

Septimus: On such questions I defer to Mr Noakes.

noakes:
(Out of his depth)
A ruined castle is
picturesque, certainly.

Septimus: That is the main difference.
(To
brice) I
teach the classical authors. If I do not elucidate their meaning, who will?

brice: As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance.

lady croom: Do not dabble in paradox, Edward, it puts you in
danger of fortuitous wit. Thomasina, wait in your bedroom.

Thomasina:
(Retiring)
Yes, mama. I did not intend to
get you into trouble, Septimus. I am very sorry for it. It is plain that there
are some things a girl is allowed to understand, and these include the whole of
algebra, but there are others, such as embracing a side of beef, that must be
kept from her until she is old enough to have a carcass of her own.

lady croom: One moment.

brice: What is she talking about?

lady croom: Meat.

brice: Meat?

lady croom: Thomasina, you had better remain. Your knowledge
of the picturesque obviously exceeds anything the rest of us can offer. Mr
Hodge, ignorance should be like an empty vessel waiting to be filled at the
well of truth—not a cabinet of vulgar curios. Mr Noakes—now at last it is your
turn—

noakes: Thank you, your ladyship—

lady croom: Your drawing is a very wonderful transformation.
I would not have recognized my own garden but for your ii ingenious book—is it
not?—look! Here is the Park as it appears to us now, and here as it might be
when Mr Noakes has done with it. Where there is the familiar pastoral
refinement of an Englishman’s garden, here is an eruption of gloomy forest and
towering crag, of ruins where there was never a house, of water dashing against
rocks where there was neither spring nor a stone I could not throw the length
of a cricket pitch. My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my
Chinese bridge, which I am assured is superior to the one at Kew, and for all I
know at Peking, is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars—