{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
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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.
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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
