A Maggot - John Fowles (28 page)

Q. Never mind your nonage and its tales. Nor your
long hours, for the nonce. Came his Lordship out again?

A. I do not know, sir.

Q. You must!

A. No, sir. I waited all that day, and in the end
first Dick, then she did come, but he not. You must believe me, sir.
The last time Jones's eyes saw his Lordship was when he went in.

Q. Then the man and the wench, speak of them - when
came they out?

A. Not till that evening, sir, an hour before the
setting of the sun. All of which time I waited, not knowing what to
do, for the sun burnt me and I had no water to quench my thirst, nor
nothing to victual my camp, neither, my breakfast no more than a
stale piece of loaf, and I had not thought to bring what was left of
that and the piece of cheese I kept in my saddlebag. And my poor
Welsh soul needed food the more, dear God, I should have given my
right arm for a piece of wormwood or the sweet angelick to protect me
there.

Q. Omit thy pains, 'tis thy lying neck needs
protection now. To their coming out.

A. I will, sir, I promise, but first must I say
another strangeness I did not mark at once. Which was that a small
smoke rose from a place above where this cavern lay, out of the green
ground, as from a lime-kiln, tho' I could see no chimbly. Like to a
fire inside, which found its way out by some hole or crack within and
so to the pentice above the cliff, where the ravens had sat.

Q. You saw no flames?

A. No, sir, nor little smoke, and sometimes seeming
none, but then issuing again. And I must tell from time to time I
smelt it too, and liked not its stench, even though I lay far off and
'twas faint in my nostrils.

Q. It was not fire of wood?

A. I doubt not for part, sir, tho' with some foul
substance mixed to it. I have smelt such in a tanner's yard, like of
strange salts or oils. And I will add you more, sir. From time to
time there came also a sound that crept to my ears from the cavern's
mouth, which was much like to a swarm of bees, now seeming close, now
so faint it might be gone. Yet I saw not a honey-bee where I lay,
none but bumbards, and they but few, nor were there flowers to suck
save small poor things.

Q. It came from the cavern, you say?

A. Yes. At loudest no more than murmur, yet I heard
it well.

Q. What made you of these things?

A. I made nothing then, sir. I was bewitched, see
you. I would go, I could not.

Q. Why say you, then?

A. As it happened, sir. I had not spoken with Louise,
as you shall hear.

Q. Very well. First I have your word, you did not
once leave your hiding-place that day?

A. Two times, sir, and not five minutes apiece, to
see if I could not find some water behind and to ease my legs, for I
lay so still and the ground hard. I swear no more, and all as before
when I came back to my post.

Q. Is it not true you had slept little that night
previous? Did you not then sleep there?

A. No, sir. 'Twas no down bed, I assure you.

Q. Jones, I want the truth. You shall not be blamed
for this, if you gave way to nature and circumstance, and slept. I
will know.

A. I may once or twice have fallen to a waking doze,
sir, as one does riding. No full sleep, upon the Book.

Q. You know what I drive at, man. Can you deny a
person might have left the cavern without your seeing him?

A. I cannot believe so, sir.

Q. You must. You admit you went twice away. And did
you not doze?

A. Yes, sir, tho' very little. And you have not heard
what Louise was to tell me.

Q. Come to that.

A. Sir, as I told, the shadows grew long, and began
to creep across the sward, and I lay with even greater shadows on my
mind, my heart misgave me some most awful thing had happened, or they
within should have come out by now; and knowing I must soon go, I
would not for my fife have stayed in darkness in that place. I first
thought to ride back to where we had slept and tell all to the
justices. Yet then, sir, I thought of the disgrace to his Lordship's
noble parent should this become public noise, and how I ought to find
some way to tell him privily, that he might then do as he thought
fit.

Q. To the point.

A. Why, sir, as I lay there hollow as a kex, not
knowing what to do, out comes Dick of a sudden, running, his face
wild, such as truly a man in a fit, with the greatest fear upon him;
and after a step or two he fell to his face as upon ice, then was up
at once with a look of terror backward, so he saw what d could not,
and close upon him, and his mouth opened as he would cry, tho' there
came no sound; and then he ran on, as if all his thought was to
escape from what was within. And run he did, your worship must
believe me, so fast I must almost think I dreamed, why, he was gone
before he was there, and back the way they had come. And I lying
above, not knowing whether I should follow, or what was to be done.
He went so fast I should ne'er have caught up with him. So I thought,
Davy, thou'st let the first whiting leap, no matter, there's more
yet, thou must wait; and then I thought mayhap Dick has gone only to
fetch the horses, and will be back, and I would not for my life leave
my place, sir, and risk the meeting of him, a desperate dangerous
fellow and stronger than I. So I did nothing, see you, but lay as I
was.

Q. He came not back?

A. No, sir, and I saw him not again. I doubt not he
ran to hang himself. I must tell your worship he had such an air upon
him, I see it now again, of one in Bedlam, who knew not what he did,
unless to run away until he fell; like to the hounds of Hell were
close upon his heels, or worse.

Q. Come to the wench.

A. Why, sir, I do. She came not so soon, for a half
hour or more passed, and once again I knew not what to do, and the
sun crept close to the cavern's entrance, which when it should reach
there I had made my hour-hand and time to withdraw. Then of a sudden,
she came, yet as unlike Dick as could be, for she walked slow, like
one who wandered in -her sleep, or was turnsick, like those once I
saw come from an explosion in a powder-mill, who could at first not
speak nor tell nothing from the suddenness and great horror of it.
Out upon the sward, your worship, so, in a daze, why, not able to
leap a straw, as if she saw nothing, were blinded. And this, sir, she
wore her white dress no more. She was naked as the day she was born.

Q. Not a stitch?

A. No, sir, not even shift, nor shoes and stockings,
all as Eve before the Fall; bare breasts, bare arms and legs, bare
all save where no woman is bare, her black feathers, your worship's
pardon. Then stopped she and raised her arm to her eyes, I doubt not
she was dazzled by the light, tho' the sun stood low. Next turned she
toward the cavern's mouth and fell upon her knees, so to give thanks
to God for her deliverance.

Q. Her hands held in prayer?

A. No, sir, with her head bowed and her arms fallen
by her side. As a punished child, who asks forgiveness.

Q. Her person showed no wounds nor unnatural marks?

A. None that I could see, sir, that could see her
white back and buttocks as she prayed. None grave, you may be sure.

Q. Seemed she in pain?

A. More like one planet-struck, sir, as I say. All
her movings were most slow, I might believe she had drunk some
potion.

Q. Seemed she not in fear of pursuit?

A. No, sir, which after Dick, I thought strange. For
she rose, and seemed more returned to her wits, and walked then less
dazed to the stone by the pool; and picked up her cloak that had lain
next it all the day; and covered her nakedness, I thought gratefully,
like one who was sore cold and needed its warmth, tho' 'twas warm
enough yet, for all the hour. And there she did kneel by the pool
again, sir, and scooped up a little water in her hands and drank
some, threw some on her face likewise. That was all, sir. For then
she went her barefoot way, as Dick, by that they had come in the
morning.

Q. With what haste?

A. More quickly, sir, and she threw one look aside at
the cavern's mouth, so to say being more woken herself, so was her
fear. Yet not running, as in true alarm.

Q. And you?

A. I waited a minute, sir, where I was, to see if his
Lordship should follow. But he came not, and you may blame me, your
worship, a bold hero might have gone to that cavern, and entered
within. I am no such, sir, nor pretend to be. I durst not.

Q. Nor pretend to be, thou bag of boasting wind, nor
pretend to be? In short, the Welsh coward thou art ran off after the
wench, is it so? Truly thou art worthy thy nation. Didst catch her?

A. I did, sir, and heard all. Which will not please
your worship's ears, but you'd not have me say else than she said
herself, I know. So I ask your pardon in advance.

Q. But will get none, if I
catch thee out. There, Jones, thou may'st dine on that, and chew it
well. If all this be false, thou art dead. Now begone, my man shall
take thee below, and bring thee back.

* * *

Ayscough sips his medicinal purl (ale laced with the
recently mentioned prophylactic against witches and the Devil,
wormwood) and Jones eats where he belongs, below, in a silence that
for once in his life he welcomes - and without benefit of alcohol,
which he does not. The lawyer's crudely chauvinistic contempt for his
witness is offensive, but it is stock, and really has little to do
with poor Jones's Welshness. Above a certain line, and despite its
ridiculous respect of, and obsequiousness before, title and rank,
society was comparatively fluid at this time; with a touch of luck,
and some talent, quite humbly born men could rise in the world and
become distinguished churchmen, learned fellows at Oxford or
Cambridge like Mr Saunderson, the son of an exciseman, successful
merchants, lawyers such as Ayscough (youngest son of an obscure and
very far from rich North-country vicar), poets (Pope was son of a
linen-draper), philosophers, many other things. However, below this
line society was seen as static. It had no hope; in the eyes of those
above, its fate was fixed from day of birth.

The thing then dearest to the heart of English
society did not help relax the inexorable line in the least. It
manifested itself as worship, if not idolatry, of property. A
conventional Englishman of the time might have said the national
palladium was the Anglican church; but the country's true religion
lay only outwardly within the walls of that sluggish institution. It
was far more vested in a profound respect for right of property; this
united all society but the lowest, and dictated much of its
behaviour, its opinions, its thinking. Dissenters might be barred
from all elected and official position (which they turned to
advantage by frequently becoming masters of trade and commerce);
their property was as sacrosanct as any other man's. Despite
doctrine, many were increasingly prepared to tolerate the Church of
England, given that it protected the right - and kept the infamous
enemy of the other wing, the accursed papists and Jacobites, at bay
also. What the nation agreed must be preserved at all costs was
really far less the theology of the established church than the right
to, and security of, ownership. This obtained from the single
householder to the great estates of the Whig magnates who, in odd
alliance with the City, the prosperous Dissenters and the bench of
bishops, largely controlled the country - or far more than its king
and his ministers did. Walpole might seem to hold power; he was
rather more a generally shrewd gauger of what the national mood
required of him.

Property also remained, despite the growing
commercial prosperity of the century, a much more favoured investment
than the early stocks and companies. The South Sea Bubble Of 1721 had
severely damaged confidence in that latter method of multiplying
money. One might suppose that this general obsession with property
would have swept away, through Parliament, the abominably antiquated
laws concerning ownership and acquisition of it, as in the
nightmarishly complex and dilatory Chancery system (whose law
defeated even the greatest contemporary experts). But not a bit of
it: here love of property clashed head on with the other great credo
of eighteenth century England.

This was the belief that change leads not to
progress, but to anarchy and disaster. Non progredi est regredi runs
the adage; early Georgian man omitted the non. That is why most
called themselves Whigs at this time, but were Tories in the modern
sense, that is, reactionaries. It was why the mob was feared almost
universally, by Whig and Tory, conformist and dissenter, above the
line. It threatened political upset and change; worst of all, it
threatened property. The measure brought in to deal with it through
magistrates and militia, the Riot Act of 1715, became almost holy in
its status; while English criminal law remained barbaric in its
brutality, its characteristically excessive punishments for anyone
who infringed the sanctity of property in another way, by minor
theft. 'We hang men for trifles and banish them' (to the forerunner
of convict Australia, convict America) 'for things not worth naming,'
said Defoe in 1703. The criminal law had, however, one fortuitous
saving grace. Lacking even a shadow of a police force to back it, its
powers of detection of crime, even of arrest, were feeble in the
extreme.