HANNAH closes the lesson book and turns her attention to her stack of 'garden books'.]
VALENTINE Listen?you know your tea's getting cold. HANNAH I like it cold. VALENTINE [Ignoring that.] I'm telling you something. Your tea gets cold by
itself, it doesn't get hot by itself. Do you think that's odd?
HANNAH No.
VALENTINE Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It's a one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What's happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It'll take a while but we're all going to end up at room temperature. When your hermit set up shop nobody understood this. But let's say you're right, in 18-whatever nobody knew more about heat than this scribbling nutter6 living in a hovel in Derbyshire.
5. See p. 2783. VALENTINE: 'She's feeding the 6. Madman, solution hack into the equation.'
.
ARCADIA II.7 / 2807
HANNAH He was at Cambridge?a scientist. VALENTINE Say he was. I'm not arguing. And the girl was his pupil, she had
a genius for her tutor. HANNAH Or the other way round. VALENTINE Anything you like. But not thisl Whatever he thought he was doing
to save the world with good English algebra it wasn't this! HANNAH Why? Because they didn't have calculators? VALENTINE No. Yes. Because there's an order things can't happen in. You
can't open a door till there's a house. HANNAH 1 thought that's what genius was. VALENTINE Only for lunatics and poets.
[Pause.] HANNAH 'I had a dream which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air . . . '7 VALENTINE Your own? HANNAH Byron.
[Pause. Tivo researchers again. ] THOMASINA Septimus, do you think that I will marry Lord Byron? AUGUSTUS Wh o is he? THOMASINA He is the author of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', the most poet
ical and pathetic and bravest hero of any book I ever read before, and the
most modern and the handsomest, for Harold is Lord Byron himself to those
who know him, like myself and Septimus. Well, Septimus?
SEPTIMUS [Absorbed.] No. [Then he puts her lesson book away into the portfolio and picks up his own book to read.]
THOMASINA Why not? SEPTIMUS For one thing, he is not aware of your existence. THOMASINA We exchanged many significant glances when he was at Sidley
Park. I do wonder that he has been home almost a year from his adventures
and has not written to me once. SEPTIMUS It is indeed improbable, my lady. 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 Peace! Peace until a quarter to twelve. It is intolerable for a tutor
to have his thoughts interrupted by his pupils. AUGUSTUS You are not my tutor, sir. I am visiting your lesson by my free will. SEPTIMUS If you are so determined, my lord.
[THOMASINA laughs at that, the joke is for her. AUGUSTUS, not included, becomes angry.]
AUGUSTUS Your peace is nothing to me, sir. You do not rule over me. THOMASINA [Admonishing.] Augustus! SEPTIMUS I do not rule here, my lord. I inspire by reverence for learning and
7. Byron, 'Darkness,' lines 1?5.
.
280 8 / TOM STOPPARD
the exaltation of knowledge whereby man may approach God. There will be
a shilling8 for the best cone and pyramid drawn in silence by a quarter to
twelve at the earliest. AUGUSTUS You will not buy my silence for a shilling, sir. What I know to tell
is worth much more than that.
[And throwing down his drawing book and pencil, he leaves the room on his dignity, closing the door sharply. Pause, SEPTIMUS looks enquiringly at THOMASINA.]
THOMASINA I told him you kissed me. But he will not tell. SEPTIMUS When did I kiss you? THOMASINA What! Yesterday! SEPTIMUS Where? THOMASINA On the lips! SEPTIMUS In which country? THOMASINA In the hermitage, Septimus! SEPTIMUS On the lips in the hermitage! That? That was not a shilling kiss! I
