A Maggot - John Fowles (20 page)

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 show 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?