Arcadia Fic: Be Careful With the Flame [Septimus/Thomasina, R]
Septimus often chides Thomasina for being young, but in truth he is still in his salad days as well. While Thomasina struggles to understand the role of time in both mathematics and philosophy - she just hasn’t lived enough of it yet, her adolescence prevents her from seeing some of the sadder answers, phooey to Death and all that - Septimus is engaged in another type of youthful fancy: he is reinventing himself.
He first thought he would wear the costume of poet, but when his school friend George Gordon turned out to wear that habit much better than Septimus ever could, he tries again. He is an academic. Scientist. Critic. Huntsman. He is enjoying his stint as a lothario - a métier he feels not at all guilty about appropriating from dear old George, who is, after all, master of much more than just his debts now - when he looks into Lady’s Croom’s eyes mid-thrust and sees a familiar glint that belongs across the schoolroom table from him in the glance of Lady Thomasina.
(He is able to satisfy Lady Croom by God’s grace, or perhaps by Newton’s first law, but the pictures he sees behind his tightly-closed eyelids are outside of the realm of grace altogether.)
i.
So Septimus decides to stay in the role he currently occupies, at least for a bit. He will be the tutor. He will be the observer. And there is much to observe in Thomasina of late. “My lady, what is this you have given me?” He asks, holding yesterday’s Latin translation aloft.
“It is my assignment,” she responds, looking up from her drawing lesson. “Have you not read it?”
“Not this particular version, no.”
“It is Aeneas and Dido in the deterministic universe,” Thomasina responds. Her voice is high and sure. “It is a little different when the gods are characters, of course, but Italiam non sponte sequor is just another way of saying that he chooses to follow another path, instead of the one with Dido. He is using fate as a crutch; that is my translation.”
“Italiam non sponte sequor. I sail for Italy not of my free will. You are editorializing, my lady.”
“And you are being silly, Septimus. I must say, I like Queen Dido better than that Egyptian noodle Cleopatra, but she still dies, and all because Aeneas chose someone else - something else - over her. He should at least have been honest.”
“Rome is quite a something to choose.”
“Yes, but isn’t love?”
He is about to call Thomasina young again, to pin her creative translation on never being in love, let alone never being obliged to found a civilization, when he stops himself. He is only nine years her senior, and has done neither of those things. He ponders his recent lothario phase when -
“Septimus, are you honest?” Thomasina interrupts.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Did you tell the Chater honestly, then? Is that why Mr. Chater and she left so quickly?”
“No, my lady. They left for quite different reasons than my honesty or dishonesty.”
“Was it Lord Byron’s honesty, then? I heard the scuffle outside his room, the night you spent in the boathouse. I hid in the shadows so Jellaby and Mama would not see me.”
“You ought not to have seen that, my lady. That was not your mother on her best behavior.”
“No, that was not her best position.”
Septimus stifles a laugh, and Thomasina also giggles. He is heartened by the fact that she understands the crude joke, although, he reminds himself, as her tutor he ought not to celebrate her efforts at ribaldry.
“Septimus,” Thomasina begins, “If you had been honest with the Chater…”
“Yes, my lady?”
“If you had, what would you have said to her?”
Septimus takes a deep breath. “I would have told her that I sail quite under my own free will, and that I would choose myriad things, our lessons among them, over our time in the gazebo.” He fixes Thomasina with a strong gaze across the schoolroom table. She does not look away.
ii.
Septimus wonders if he is just in love with her brain. That would be somewhat self-congratulatory, almost a bit masturbatory - her brain is hers and hers alone, but he does not deny the role he played in shaping it. He too is in the folds and fabric of her mind, shaping, conjugating, postulating. But no, while Septimus is entranced with the way Thomasina thinks of things that he cannot see, he must admit he is in love with much more than that aspect of her.
They are in the hermitage, admiring Mr. Noakes’ picturesque creation, when she brings up the subject of the waltz.
“Did you dance at the Royal Academy?” She asks.
“Yes, my lady.”
“The German step? Mama says all of London is tripping over their feet in eagerness to dance the German step.”
“The waltz, my lady, yes. We learned it at Trinity; it was the standard practice after BA dinner, aside from the wine, of course.”
“Did Mama dance with Lord Byron?”
“No, my lady. He was… otherwise occupied.”
Thomasina nods, understanding his code. She tips her body up on her tip-toes, leaning towards Septimus. He reaches out his hands to her shoulders, and settles her on the ground. She is quickly rooted once again, but he does not think to remove his hands until she speaks several moments later. “Will you teach me, Septimus?” She asks.
“Teach you what, my lady? You know I am bound to teach you.”
“To waltz.” Thomasina goes up on her tip-toes again and spins around. The ends of her hair just brush against his chin.
He pretends not to be dazed. “It is a far cry from our good English algebra. It is outside of my duty to teach you dancing.”
“Oh do not give me Aeneas’ response about duty. You said you were honest. For my birthday, Septimus? Please?”
This might be what he is in love with. Her scorn, coupled with her politeness. Her command of Latin and her naiveté in dancing. The ends of her hair and her tip-toes and every part of her that connects them. “Yes, my lady, I will teach you.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes.”
“How do I know you promise, Septimus?”
Because she is no longer on her tip-toes Septimus has to bend further than he would have if he had done this several minutes ago, which he was definitely thinking of doing several minutes ago and which is probably why he is doing it now, because the traditional way to make a promise is not with a kiss, especially when not when it is a first kiss with one’s nearly-but-not-quite-seventeen-year-old pupil.
And yet. Septimus leans down and finds his lips brushing Thomasina’s. His stomach clenches and his eyes don’t close but because of his bowed head he only sees her freckles; he does not know if she is watching him too. It is not even a sixpence kiss. He does not move his lips or his hands and neither does she but he feels - like Dido, maybe? - the hermitage is their cave and the outside world will only disappoint. He pulls back, ashamed by his inelegant metaphors and inappropriate actions but more eager to share both again with her.
Thomasina purses her lips together, as if cataloguing the feeling they just experienced. Then her eyes shift from pensive to happy. “I will owe you another when I can dance like Mama!” she chirps.
“Another what?” He asks.
Thomasina has already leapt off the hermitage platform and is running back to the house, but she cries over her shoulder her own promise, “Another kiss, Septimus!”
iii.
He thinks of her each intervening night before he gets his second kiss. While no longer an outward lothario, he imagines scandalous scene after scandalous scene while alone in his bed. He teaches her much more than Newton’s laws, paying much greater attention to the attraction that Newton forgot with her spread out on the schoolroom table, on top of her essays and equations. The table becomes a veritable Couch of Eros, with Mr. Chater’s questionable poem serving as a mere cushion for Lady Thomasina’s head. Plautus is banished under the table, and Thomasina makes sounds that drown out the pianoforte.
He cannot do these things. He may not do these things. He will not do these things. At least for a few years, or months, or however long it takes for him to cram her head full of so much calculus that Lady Croom will deem her unmarriageable, and he can have her all to his own. They can live in a house full of books and she can explicate her formulas and he can explicate his love for her.
He cannot, may not, will not yet but oh how he wants to start that explicating when she tip-toes downstairs two nights later in her nightgown. She is all in white and candlelight and he thinks Byron would envy that turn of phrase but will never have it, because he will never feel like this. Thomasina kisses him on the mouth without ceremony, and he blinks. “Dear Christ!”
But she is joyful, both in her kiss and in her description of the inevitable end of the universe and all things. This is what he loves, then. Her fearlessness in front of all things, love and death. Phooey to Death indeed, he understands her now. And when she asks again if the music is suitable for waltzing, he would answer yes even if the Count had struck up a military march.
With his hands anchored at her back it is easier for him to kiss her than it was the first time. Envisioning all of the times to come in the future he knows it must get easier and easier; the jam stirs into the rice pudding, the heat cools in the universe, he will never kiss Lady Thomasina Coverley for the first time again.
And yet. He knows in his gut it will always have his miraculous feeling - from decision to assent, from questioning to wonder, from cold to heat. He may have found the only action that disproves Thomasina’s Improved Newtonian Universe. If he keeps kissing her the world will never end, because they have the sole power to make heat work backwards. Her lower lip is between his two and he can feel her vertebrae and her fingers working at his neck and oh he loves this about her too.
He fails at saying goodnight to her, or rather, she fails to listen to his halfhearted attempts at goodnight, and they dance until the clock strikes midnight and his candle has nearly melted to the table.
“It’s my birthday, Septimus,” she whispers into his neck.
He nods, resting his chin on top of her head. “Happy birthday, my lady.”
“Thank you for my present.”
“You are very welcome.”
He lets go of her with one arm to light her a fresh candle. “Be careful with the flame,” he says. “I will see you in the morning.”
She does not protest. Thomasina kisses him one last time, simply, and closes her eyes against his chest. “I think I am in Arcadia,” she says. “I think this is paradise.”
He chuckles. Being young is wonderful; being young is paradise; he wishes her this way forever. “Be careful,” he says. “Would you not rather be with Mr. Shakespeare in the Forest of Arden?”
“No,” she says. “I would rather be here with you.”
He nods against her hair. “Then I too am in Arcadia,” he says, “and we can find our way together.”
He lets go of her and walks with her to the stairs. She climbs up to her bedroom alone. And he forgets, until he is brutally reminded, who else is in paradise with them.
He first thought he would wear the costume of poet, but when his school friend George Gordon turned out to wear that habit much better than Septimus ever could, he tries again. He is an academic. Scientist. Critic. Huntsman. He is enjoying his stint as a lothario - a métier he feels not at all guilty about appropriating from dear old George, who is, after all, master of much more than just his debts now - when he looks into Lady’s Croom’s eyes mid-thrust and sees a familiar glint that belongs across the schoolroom table from him in the glance of Lady Thomasina.
(He is able to satisfy Lady Croom by God’s grace, or perhaps by Newton’s first law, but the pictures he sees behind his tightly-closed eyelids are outside of the realm of grace altogether.)
i.
So Septimus decides to stay in the role he currently occupies, at least for a bit. He will be the tutor. He will be the observer. And there is much to observe in Thomasina of late. “My lady, what is this you have given me?” He asks, holding yesterday’s Latin translation aloft.
“It is my assignment,” she responds, looking up from her drawing lesson. “Have you not read it?”
“Not this particular version, no.”
“It is Aeneas and Dido in the deterministic universe,” Thomasina responds. Her voice is high and sure. “It is a little different when the gods are characters, of course, but Italiam non sponte sequor is just another way of saying that he chooses to follow another path, instead of the one with Dido. He is using fate as a crutch; that is my translation.”
“Italiam non sponte sequor. I sail for Italy not of my free will. You are editorializing, my lady.”
“And you are being silly, Septimus. I must say, I like Queen Dido better than that Egyptian noodle Cleopatra, but she still dies, and all because Aeneas chose someone else - something else - over her. He should at least have been honest.”
“Rome is quite a something to choose.”
“Yes, but isn’t love?”
He is about to call Thomasina young again, to pin her creative translation on never being in love, let alone never being obliged to found a civilization, when he stops himself. He is only nine years her senior, and has done neither of those things. He ponders his recent lothario phase when -
“Septimus, are you honest?” Thomasina interrupts.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Did you tell the Chater honestly, then? Is that why Mr. Chater and she left so quickly?”
“No, my lady. They left for quite different reasons than my honesty or dishonesty.”
“Was it Lord Byron’s honesty, then? I heard the scuffle outside his room, the night you spent in the boathouse. I hid in the shadows so Jellaby and Mama would not see me.”
“You ought not to have seen that, my lady. That was not your mother on her best behavior.”
“No, that was not her best position.”
Septimus stifles a laugh, and Thomasina also giggles. He is heartened by the fact that she understands the crude joke, although, he reminds himself, as her tutor he ought not to celebrate her efforts at ribaldry.
“Septimus,” Thomasina begins, “If you had been honest with the Chater…”
“Yes, my lady?”
“If you had, what would you have said to her?”
Septimus takes a deep breath. “I would have told her that I sail quite under my own free will, and that I would choose myriad things, our lessons among them, over our time in the gazebo.” He fixes Thomasina with a strong gaze across the schoolroom table. She does not look away.
ii.
Septimus wonders if he is just in love with her brain. That would be somewhat self-congratulatory, almost a bit masturbatory - her brain is hers and hers alone, but he does not deny the role he played in shaping it. He too is in the folds and fabric of her mind, shaping, conjugating, postulating. But no, while Septimus is entranced with the way Thomasina thinks of things that he cannot see, he must admit he is in love with much more than that aspect of her.
They are in the hermitage, admiring Mr. Noakes’ picturesque creation, when she brings up the subject of the waltz.
“Did you dance at the Royal Academy?” She asks.
“Yes, my lady.”
“The German step? Mama says all of London is tripping over their feet in eagerness to dance the German step.”
“The waltz, my lady, yes. We learned it at Trinity; it was the standard practice after BA dinner, aside from the wine, of course.”
“Did Mama dance with Lord Byron?”
“No, my lady. He was… otherwise occupied.”
Thomasina nods, understanding his code. She tips her body up on her tip-toes, leaning towards Septimus. He reaches out his hands to her shoulders, and settles her on the ground. She is quickly rooted once again, but he does not think to remove his hands until she speaks several moments later. “Will you teach me, Septimus?” She asks.
“Teach you what, my lady? You know I am bound to teach you.”
“To waltz.” Thomasina goes up on her tip-toes again and spins around. The ends of her hair just brush against his chin.
He pretends not to be dazed. “It is a far cry from our good English algebra. It is outside of my duty to teach you dancing.”
“Oh do not give me Aeneas’ response about duty. You said you were honest. For my birthday, Septimus? Please?”
This might be what he is in love with. Her scorn, coupled with her politeness. Her command of Latin and her naiveté in dancing. The ends of her hair and her tip-toes and every part of her that connects them. “Yes, my lady, I will teach you.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes.”
“How do I know you promise, Septimus?”
Because she is no longer on her tip-toes Septimus has to bend further than he would have if he had done this several minutes ago, which he was definitely thinking of doing several minutes ago and which is probably why he is doing it now, because the traditional way to make a promise is not with a kiss, especially when not when it is a first kiss with one’s nearly-but-not-quite-seventeen-year-old pupil.
And yet. Septimus leans down and finds his lips brushing Thomasina’s. His stomach clenches and his eyes don’t close but because of his bowed head he only sees her freckles; he does not know if she is watching him too. It is not even a sixpence kiss. He does not move his lips or his hands and neither does she but he feels - like Dido, maybe? - the hermitage is their cave and the outside world will only disappoint. He pulls back, ashamed by his inelegant metaphors and inappropriate actions but more eager to share both again with her.
Thomasina purses her lips together, as if cataloguing the feeling they just experienced. Then her eyes shift from pensive to happy. “I will owe you another when I can dance like Mama!” she chirps.
“Another what?” He asks.
Thomasina has already leapt off the hermitage platform and is running back to the house, but she cries over her shoulder her own promise, “Another kiss, Septimus!”
iii.
He thinks of her each intervening night before he gets his second kiss. While no longer an outward lothario, he imagines scandalous scene after scandalous scene while alone in his bed. He teaches her much more than Newton’s laws, paying much greater attention to the attraction that Newton forgot with her spread out on the schoolroom table, on top of her essays and equations. The table becomes a veritable Couch of Eros, with Mr. Chater’s questionable poem serving as a mere cushion for Lady Thomasina’s head. Plautus is banished under the table, and Thomasina makes sounds that drown out the pianoforte.
He cannot do these things. He may not do these things. He will not do these things. At least for a few years, or months, or however long it takes for him to cram her head full of so much calculus that Lady Croom will deem her unmarriageable, and he can have her all to his own. They can live in a house full of books and she can explicate her formulas and he can explicate his love for her.
He cannot, may not, will not yet but oh how he wants to start that explicating when she tip-toes downstairs two nights later in her nightgown. She is all in white and candlelight and he thinks Byron would envy that turn of phrase but will never have it, because he will never feel like this. Thomasina kisses him on the mouth without ceremony, and he blinks. “Dear Christ!”
But she is joyful, both in her kiss and in her description of the inevitable end of the universe and all things. This is what he loves, then. Her fearlessness in front of all things, love and death. Phooey to Death indeed, he understands her now. And when she asks again if the music is suitable for waltzing, he would answer yes even if the Count had struck up a military march.
With his hands anchored at her back it is easier for him to kiss her than it was the first time. Envisioning all of the times to come in the future he knows it must get easier and easier; the jam stirs into the rice pudding, the heat cools in the universe, he will never kiss Lady Thomasina Coverley for the first time again.
And yet. He knows in his gut it will always have his miraculous feeling - from decision to assent, from questioning to wonder, from cold to heat. He may have found the only action that disproves Thomasina’s Improved Newtonian Universe. If he keeps kissing her the world will never end, because they have the sole power to make heat work backwards. Her lower lip is between his two and he can feel her vertebrae and her fingers working at his neck and oh he loves this about her too.
He fails at saying goodnight to her, or rather, she fails to listen to his halfhearted attempts at goodnight, and they dance until the clock strikes midnight and his candle has nearly melted to the table.
“It’s my birthday, Septimus,” she whispers into his neck.
He nods, resting his chin on top of her head. “Happy birthday, my lady.”
“Thank you for my present.”
“You are very welcome.”
He lets go of her with one arm to light her a fresh candle. “Be careful with the flame,” he says. “I will see you in the morning.”
She does not protest. Thomasina kisses him one last time, simply, and closes her eyes against his chest. “I think I am in Arcadia,” she says. “I think this is paradise.”
He chuckles. Being young is wonderful; being young is paradise; he wishes her this way forever. “Be careful,” he says. “Would you not rather be with Mr. Shakespeare in the Forest of Arden?”
“No,” she says. “I would rather be here with you.”
He nods against her hair. “Then I too am in Arcadia,” he says, “and we can find our way together.”
He lets go of her and walks with her to the stairs. She climbs up to her bedroom alone. And he forgets, until he is brutally reminded, who else is in paradise with them.