A Maggot - John Fowles

by John Fowles

A. An upstart keeper of the new Covent Garden house.

  Q. You were persuaded?

  A. I was his fool. The more fool me.

  Q. Did you speak with the girl?

  A. She said she was passing indifferent, she would do as I pleased. But the cunning slut lied.

  Q. How lied?

  A. She was privy to all. She was practised in the meek face, I was deceived by it. She was already bought to it.

  Q. You have proof?

  A. She has never come back, that's proof enough for me. I have suffered great loss by her.

  Q. Small loss to decency. I desire to know what the flesh-rent was.

  A. I put it upon three weeks' loss of her employment in my house.

  Q. How much?

  A. Three hundred guineas.

  Q. Did he baulk?

  A. Why should he? He pays me that, and steals ten thousand.

  Q. Watch thy impudent tongue, woman!

  A. It is true. For all her faults she was a delicate good whore, barren, only three years' use.

  Q. I say enough. What part of this was hers?

  A. I dress, feed, find linen, all. And pay the 'pothecary, when they have the Barnwell ague.

  Q. A fig for thy economy. I will know her share.

  A. One fifth, beside what presents she might gain for her self.

  Q. Sixty guineas?

  A. More than she deserved.

  Q. Which you gave her?

  A. I gave her nothing, till she returned.

  Q. To oblige her to return?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And you hold it still for her?

  A. I hold more than that for her.

  Q. You have had no word from her since she left?

  A. No, not one, and I wish her in hell fire.

  Q. Where you shall both meet. And when she did not return as she should?

  A. I spoke to my lord B....... and complained. And he said he would inquire, so came to me a two days later and said there was some mystery afoot, it was rumoured the person was now gone to France, not to the party of pleasure at all, for he had spoken with one that was there, who had sworn neither the person nor Fanny was present. That I must be patient, there was to be no scandal let abroad about it, or I should know the cost and lose far more than what I did by her going-off.

  Q. Did you believe him?

  A. I did not, and I forgive him not, for I found in the meantime that none had left Wishbourne's, and likewise none knew of this folly. 'Twas all lies, to blind me.

  Q. Did you charge him with this?

  A. I know which side my bread is buttered. He brings many to my house. What I must bear, I bear. Tho' I wish him -

  Q. We'll hear no more of that.

  A. And pay him in kind for it, as all London knows.

  Q. Enough. Now I would know what the girl said of he I enquire upon to you or your other strumpets.

  A. That he was green, but promised well, was quick set to the task, then spent fast; which is the easier work for 'em.

  Q. Seemed he especially taken with her?

  A. Yes, for he would not try any other, though they offered and would woo him away.

  Q. Or she with him?

  A. She would not say, even if she was. She knew well enough what rules I make, on that score. I allow no secret attachments, nor unpaid favours.

  Q. She had been obedient to your rules, till this occasion?

  A. Yes. 'Twas her plan.

  Q. What plan?

  A. Why, to cozen me. She was no fool, for all her country-maid airs. She knew it served her best with me, as it did with most her men.

  Q. How with men?

  A. Why, when she played the innocent at heart, that has never known a man before, and must be treated gently and won not taken at the gallop. Which many who went with her liked, for they found her prudish guiles more lickorish than the usual kind, and thought they had made a conquest when she let them cockadillo between her legs. She would not have culls except by the night, which I allowed her, seeing we gained as much so as by shorter hire. I could have sold the slut six times over a same night, more than once. Most often she was full taken a week ahead.

  Q. How many such women do you keep?

  A. Some ten, that is regular.

  Q. She was your choicest flesh on offer, your most costly?

  A. Choicest is freshest. That was no virgin, for all her airs. More fools men, if they pay more for well-trodden goods.

  Q. Your other jades were surprised, when she came not back?

  A. Yes:

  Q. And what have you told them?

  A. She is gone, and good riddance.

  Q. And that you and your ruffians have seen to it that she'll whore no more, is it not so?

  A. I will not answer that. It is a lie. I have a right to recover what is mine.

  Q. And what have you done to that purpose?

  A. What should I do, now she's gone abroad?

  Q. Have your rogues and spies watch for her coming back, which I doubt not is done. Now I warn thee solemnly, Claiborne. That wench is mine, now. If one of your vile instruments should find out where she is, and you come not upon the instant to tell me, you'll never again drive geese and goslings. By Heaven you shan't, I'll end your traffick once and for all. Do I make myself plain?

  A. As one of my ruffians, sir.

  Q. I won't be provoked by such as thee. I repeat, dost understand me plain?

  A. Yes.

  Q, So be it. Now take thy putrid painted cheeks out of my sight, madam.

  Jurat die quarto et vicesimo Aug. anno domini 1736

  coram me

  Henry Ayscough

  The further examination and deposition

  of Mr Francis Lacy, upon oath renewed,

  the four and twentieth day of August,

  anno praedicto.

  * * *

  Q. Now, sir, I would go back in one or two particulars upon yesterday. When Mr Bartholomew spoke of his interests; or in what he said at your viewing of the Amesbury temple, as you report, or on any other occasion, seemed it to you that here was a man who mentioned these things out of no more than politeness to you, to pass the time? Or seemed it out of some closer interest - I would say preponderant interest, rather? Did you not begin to think, here is a strange lover - more eager and eloquent before a heap of stones than before the prospect of the lady he purports to adore? Content to delay and pursue his studies when most young men would resent each wasted hour upon the road? Are they not strange companions - a headstrong passion and a box of learned tomes?

  A. Certainly I thought that. As to whether it were a crotchet of Mr Bartholomew's character so to occupy himself, or a greater interest, I could not then have said.

  Q. You could say now?

  A. I could say Mr Bartholomew told me at the last that there was no young lady in Cornwall. It was all pretext. The true purpose of our journey, I still do not know, sir. As you will discover.

  Q. What took you him to mean by finding his life's meridian?

  A. Why, sir, no more than is conveyed by any such obscure and fanciful metaphor. It may be, some certainty of belief or faith. I fear he found little consolation in religion as we see it practised in this land.

  Q. You have said nothing further of his servant- what made you of him upon the road?

  A. At first, little, beyond what I stated yesterday. Later, I saw more in him I liked not. How shall I say, Mr Ayscough - why, suspicion he was as much hired as Jones and I, no servant in reality. I mean not in what he did, for in that he did, if not with grace, with due attention. Yet something in his manner, I cannot say an insolence - I am hard put to describe it, sir. I saw looks he gave his master, behind his back, as if he were himself the master, knew as much as he. I detected a secret resentment, I might even put it at a jealousy, such as I have known in my profession between a famed actor and another inferior, despite their smiling faces and compliments in public. Why, says the lesser to himself, I'm as good as you, you applauded rogue, and one day I'll sh
ow the world I'm a great deal better.

  Q. Spoke you of this to Mr Bartholomew?

  A. Not directly, sir. Though one day as we supped, 'twas at Wincanton, I asked of Dick in a sidelong manner, that I found it strange he should choose to employ such a lacking man. Whereon he told me they had far longer acquaintance than I might suppose. How Dick was born on his father's estates, his mother was his own - I would say Mr Bartholomew's - nurse, they were suckled at the same breast, therefore foster-brothers. He said, Indeed by some strange humour of the stars we first breathed on the very same hour of the very same autumn day. Then how Dick was the constant companion of his childhood, his servant from the time he was given one. He said to me, All he knows I have taught him - his speech by signs, his duties, his scantling manners, his everything. Without me he would be a wild creature, no better than a beast, the butt of the village clowns - if they had not long before now stoned him to death. Well, sir, I did then venture to say that I liked not looks I had seen him give, as I said before.

  Q. And how answered Mr Bartholomew?

  A. He laughed, sir - or as near as he ever came to laughing, as if to say I mistook. Then went on to say, I know those looks of his, I've seen them all my life. They come from anger against the fate that has made him what he is. Where they light is the chance of the moment. It might as well be you as I, or the nearest passer-by. A tree, a house, a chair. It makes no odds. He is not like us, Lacy. He cannot dissemble what he feels, he is like a musket. Wherever he points, when he curses fate, he must seem to discharge. Then he said that he and Dick were one mind, one will, one appetite. What suits my taste suits his, what I covet he covets, what I do he would do also. If I should see Venus in a lady's face, why so will he. If I dressed like a Hottentot, so would he. If I declared the most nauseous offal fit for the gods, he would greedily devour it. He told me I judged Dick as I judged other men, with all their faculties. He said he had several times tried to instil some sense of the Divine Being in the man, had shown him Christ's effigy, God enthroned in heaven. In vain, he said, for I know whose effigy he persists in seeing as the only true divinity in his life. I could stab him to death and he would not raise an arm to defend himself. Flay him alive, what you will, and he would submit. I am his animating principle, Lacy, without me he's no more than a root, a stone. If I die, he dies the next instant. He knows this as well as I. I do not say by reason. It is in his every vein and every bone, as a horse knows its true master from other riders.

  Q. What thought you to all this?

  A. I must take him at his word, sir. For he said finally, albeit Dick was ignorant in so many things, he had in recompense a kind of wisdom, and for which Mr Bartholomew had respect, and even a kind of envy in return. That he had the senses of an animal, and could see things we cannot, thus he could brush aside the specious veils of speech, of manners and dress and the like, to the reality of a man; and had found him more than once right in his judgement of a person, where he himself was wrong. And he remarked, when I showed some surprise at that, that Dick was his lodestone, such was his very word, in more matters than I might suppose, that he put great value on this his unthinking power of judgement.

  Q. Now, Lacy, I must venture on delicate ground. I would ask this. Saw you in any occurrence or at any point upon your journey, in it may be no more than a covert look, a gesture, an exchange of signs, evidence that this attachment between Mr Bartholomew and his man had roots in an affection that was not natural?

  A. I ignore what you would be at, sir.

  Q. That there was evidence, however small, of a most abhorrent and unspeakable vice, anciently practised in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Why answer you not?

  A. I am shocked, sir. No thought of such a thing had crossed my mind.

  Q. And now that it has?

  A. I cannot believe it. I received not the slightest suspicion of such. Besides that it was clear the servant's interest was bound fast to the maid.

  Q. Might that not have been but a trick, to throw off suspicion?

  A. It was no trick, sir. I have not told all there yet.

  Q. Very well. Let us return to the journey. Where passed you that following night?

  A. At Wincanton. Nothing of particular import happened there, that I marked myself. But as we rode on the next morning, Jones told me that Dick had left the bed they shared and gone to a room adjoining, where by chance that night the maid Louise lay, and he saw him not till that next morning.

  Q. What thought you to this?

  A. That she must indeed be what she maintained, and our previous suspicions false.

  Q. She could be neither notorious whore nor a lady in disguise?

  A. That is so.

  Q. You said nothing to Mr Bartholomew?

  A. No. I confess I thought it best to keep my own advice, since I knew our journey must be near done.

  Q. You said the more westward, the more silent he became?

  A. Yes. Not only we spoke less as we rode, as if he had indeed only one object in mind, but when we supped together I found myself obliged to do most of the talking, and finally as little as he. I fancied there was some fresh doubt or melancholy in his mind. He made some effort to conceal it from me, yet I took that impression.

  Q. Doubt of his enterprise?

  A. I so supposed.

  Q you did not try to rally him?

  A. I had learnt my lesson by then, Mr Ayscough. I must presume you know Mr Bartholomew far better than I. There is that in his manner that is not easily turned from what preoccupies him. That can make the most innocent intentions of sympathy and interest seem to risk impertinence.

  Q. And neither you nor Jones learnt more? Nothing else passed at Taunton?

  A. No, sir, beyond our being obliged to share the one chamber, as I said. When Mr B. craved my pardon, he would read his papers, once we had supped. I He read still, when I retired to rest. I was not used to such travelling.

  Q. This road from Taunton was your last together?

  A. It was, sir.

  Q. And nothing pertinent, that day?

  A. Unless it be that towards the end on two separate occasions Mr Bartholomew rode aside with Dick and the maid, as if to view the prospect ahead.

  Q. This had not been done before?

  A. No, sir. On both occasions they rode apart with him to an eminence, where it chanced our road passed. I saw the man Dick point, as if to some distant hill or place.

  Q. Did Mr Bartholomew make no remark upon it to you?

  A. Yes, he said they searched the most favourable road. And I asked if we were near our destination. To which he replied, we are on the threshold I spoke of, Lacy; and then, Your kind service is near done. Which was as Jones and I had already surmised, by this stopping to look ahead.

  Q. Were you not near where Mr Bartholomew and his man had been but six weeks earlier? And where the maid had lived? Why should they need to search their road?

  A. We admired ourselves, sir. But not being privy to their plans and intentions, supposed they sought the most secret way, since they neared where they must be most in danger.

  Q. And this was your first advice of this parting on the morrow?

  A. Yes, sir. Tho' 'twas plain we must be close, with Bideford scarce a day's ride forward. I cannot call myself surprised.

  Q. Now I would know all that passed at the Black Hart.

  A. Much as before, sir, until we had supped. Were it not that he requested me for once to yield him the best chamber, where before, when we had choice, I had always taken it. He doubted he would sleep that night, and would have a room he might pace about, as he said. The second-best was small.

  Q. Saw you no other purpose?

  A. Except that it looked out upon the square, and where I slept but upon the garden and back parts. Beside its greater largeness I saw no advantage.

  Q. Proceed. What was said when you had supped?

  A. He began by thanking me for bearing with him, and what he called his vacua, his silences, and said he feared he ha
d been tedious company, to one such as I. That never the less I had played my part well, and he was grateful. To which I returned that I might have played it better, had I known better how all was to end. Once more he made some obscure allusions, which I took to signify that he was by no means confident of success in his venture. I did rally him a little then. I said that even if he failed once more on this occasion, he might surely try again. He answered, One cannot cross the Rubicon twice, it is this time or never, or some such words. I told him he took too despondent a view. And now he struck out upon one of his fancies, Mr Ayscough, and in a manner that alarmed me. For I had said he was not in some fixed story, as it were in a tragedy, where all is antecedently doomed. To which he replied that perhaps his story had neither Romeo and Juliet, and asked what I should do before one that had pierced the secrets of the future.

  Q. How is this - how pierced them?

  A. He did not say, sir. He put it as a parable, so as to say this hypothetick person truly knew what was to happen in time to come, and not by superstitious or magical means, but by learning and study. And how, if I granted him that, it were better such knowledge were not told. Which I took to be his way of saying, it is better I do not tell you of my real purpose. I confess I did not take it kindly, sir. For now I thought he had as good as admitted he deceived me, and broken his word. I said as much. Whereupon he most earnestly begged me to believe that what he hid from me was for my own good. That I had his word that it was not criminal. He then added what he had told me was true inasmuch as he wished to meet someone, and as much as any man might his mistress - or his Muse, I recall he put it so - and yet had been hitherto prevented.

  Q. In what manner prevented?

  A. He did not say.

  Q. Who was this person?

  A. Mr Ayscough, I cannot tell you. He would not be pressed. I asked if it were not some affair of honour. He smiled sadly at that, and said he would hardly ride so far to do what might be as well done in Hyde Park, or without a friend to second him. Things had gone thus far when I was unfortunately called away. A Mr Beckford, who is curate there -

  Q. I know of him, I have spoken with him. You knew him not before that day?

  A. I did not. .

  Q. Then no more of him. You spoke with Mr Bartholomew again, when he had gone?