Arcadia by Tom Stoppard Read Free Book Online Page A

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.)
Scene Four
    Hannah and Valentine.