A Maggot - John Fowles (40 page)

Q. He had not spoken to you during that day?

A. No, not one word, though before then all was under
the guise of my doing him a favour. He was courteous enough, and
grateful I assisted in his designs. Now he spake so a lord to a
slattern servant, as in my sins I truly was. Then he said I might lie
upon his bed, and sleep till he woke me. Which I did, though I slept
little at first, I was too frightened; yet slept in the end till I
was woken.

Q. What did his Lordship the while?

A. He had his box of papers beside him, and read
before the fire.

Q. And Dick?

A. He went away, I know not where; and was returned,
'twas he who woke me.

Q. When was that?

A. In the midst of the night. The inn was silent, all
slept.

Q. Next?

* * *

Rebecca Lee is silent, and does something she has not
hitherto done, looks down. The lawyer repeats his question.

'Next, mistress?'

'I would prithee drink a little water. My voice
fails.'

Ayscough watches her a long moment, then without
looking away speaks to the clerk at the end of the table. 'Fetch
water.'

'The clerk puts down his pencil - for unusually he
writes with that, and not a quill - and silently goes, leaving the
diminutive lawyer still staring in his speculative, robin-like way at
Rebecca. He sits with his back to the room's imposing battery of
Jacobean windows; and she faces the light. She looks up at him, into
his eyes.

'I thank thee.'

Ayscough says nothing, he does not even nod. All of
him seems concentrated in his stare; clearly he would embarrass her,
express his doubt of this suspiciously untimely request. He surveys
her with all his education and knowledge, his judgement of human
affairs, his position in the world. It is true he does it partly from
policy, as one of his tricks or practices before difficult witnesses,
and long acquired, like his bursts of bullying contempt, to
compensate for his puny stature; yet strangely she holds his look, as
she has since the interrogatory started. In all else of her
appearance she seems modesty itself; her primly sober dress, her cap,
her hands folded on her lap. But not once as she answers has she
bowed her head or looked aside from his eyes. A modern lawyer might
have found a sneaking admiration for such directness; Ayscough does
not. She merely strengthens a long-held opinion in him: that the
world grows worse, and especially in the insolence of its lower
orders. Again we meet that unspoken idee recue of his age. Change
means not progress, but (as a child born the following year was one
day to put it) decline and fall.

Without warning he stands and walks to the inn
windows behind. There he looks out. Rebecca gazes at that back, but
then drops her eyes to her lap again, and waits for the water. At
last the clerk brings it and sets it before her. Ayscough does not
turn to watch her sip it, and indeed now seems lost in what he
watches outside: a square with many shops and central stalls, and
busy with people, whose noise and cries have been constant background
to what has gone on inside the room. Already he has noted a group of
three men, that stand at the corner of a street entering the square,
directly below where he stands, and stare up towards him, oblivious
to the jostlings of the throng that passes by. He knows what they are
by their plain clothes and their hats, and ignores them, once seen.

What he watches are a lady and her daughter. They are
evidently of some rank and distinction, for they are fashionably
dressed in town clothes, and preceded by a tall liveried footman, who
carries a basket with their purchases and officiously gestures with
his free hand at any who are slow to get out of the way of the ladies
behind him; most, as if by instinct, stand aside. Some even touch
their hats or bow their heads, though the ladies do not acknowledge
them. Yet Ayscough, despite his watching, thinks less of them than of
a recent literary memory they evoke, and especially the affected and
self-assured younger of the two ladies. It had appeared in the
Gentleman's Magazine for August, under the initials R.N., a satirist
and evidently a misogynist, a seeming abbe mondain of the English
church. Here it is, set in exactly the same form that Rebecca has
just broken; it may serve also to remind of the reality of her world
for the more fortunate of her sex; and how different from them she
has chosen, or has been chosen, to be. The piece might have been
entitled Eternal Women of a Certain Kind, but Mr R.N. was not so
prescient.

PRETTY MISS'S CATECHISM

Q. WHO are you?

A. A Lady fair of nineteen.

Q. 'Tis pretty difficult to understand what that is;
therefore explain yourself a little.

A. No very keeping Ware, I promise you; Stale Maids
and stinking Fish is, you know, a Saying never a whit the less true,
because of its Antiquity.

Q. Is this the View you proceed upon?

A. Yes, truely; at 16 we commence thinking, at 17
love, at 18 whine and at I9, if we can get the Man in the Mood
(which, by the by, is a difficult Task) we e'en cry, Adieu, Daddy,
and go off with our Spark. For were we once to pass our Prime, we
should run a very great Risque of taking up with some paltry,
antique, undeserving Wretch of a most forbidding Physiognomy.

Q. Let me hear the Articles of thy Creed.

A. First then, I do believe, I came into the World by
Mamma's Means, but not that I am one Jot obliged to her for that. In
the next Place, I do hereby acknowledge myself bound (not in Duty,
tho') to mind whatsoever she bids me, as also to obey that old Hunks,
Jack-pay for-all, my suppos'd Father; but for this very Reason only,
that should I say nay, they'd force me to wear these scurvey
two-months-out-of-fashion Silks for half a Year longer, to my very
great Mortification. And lastly, as for my Husband, that I shall
hereafter condescend to bubble, I do verily believe he ought not to
have the least Superiority over me; therefore am determined, that
tho' Quadrille be my Religion, and Cuckoldom ev'ry Sabbath's
Meditation; tho' I ruin him in Plays, Masquerades, Fashions,
Housekeeping, &c, tho' I should even accept of my very Butler as
a Coadjutor to him, he shall be mum. These are the chief Articles of
my Creed, which I love and will adhere to, to my dying Day.

Q. Have you any other Principles to steer by?

A. I act just as I've a Fancy, right or wrong, upon
the Strength of my Beauty; follow all the new Fashions, be they never
so ridiculous; devote myself entirely to Pride, Pleasure, and
Extravagance; pray as often as a Lord pays his Debts; frequent the
Theatre, &c, more than the Church; and laugh at every Body that
go thither for their Devotions, believing it to be all Hypocrisy.
'Tis as natural for me to do all this, as for a Peacock to spread its
Tail.

Q. Very right, but however, you know there is a World
to come, should you not often consider of it?

A. No, not at all; because such Reflections are apt
to give the Vapours; and Ladies ought never to molest themselves with
any Thing serious, but only build their Faith on what an humourous
Fancy suggests.

Q. But are Ladies then of no particular Religion?

A. No, indeed; for, at that Rate, we should be the
most unfashionable Creatures breathing. Variety makes every Thing
agreeable; and so for one half Hour, it may be, we assume the
Christian, at other times are Pagans, Jews, Mahometans, or whatever
best suits with our Conveniency.

Q. But what are those Principles, which, if adher'd
to, will make a Lady's Life agreeable?

A. To pamper herself, her Monkey, or Lap-dog; to rail
at and ridicule her Neighbours; to regard no Body; but to cozen and
defraud the Poor, and to quit Scores with the Rich at the Expence of
a neglected Husband's Reputation. To lie in Bed till Noon, and to
chase away the Night at dear Quadrille.

Q. Hold, Hold - if you read the Form of Matrimony
you'll see 'tis the Duty of Ladies to Honour and Obey, at least to
respect and oblige their Husbands.

A. Marriage Form and Duty! A pretty Story! That
Form's all of the Parson's contriving, and therefore not minded.
Ladies regard only the Articles drawn up by the Lawyers, Covenants
for Pin Money, or Allowance for separate Maintenance, and how to get
an Addition to them with a good Grace. 'Tis quite out of Fashion to
stand obliging an easy Fool of an Husband; but perfectly right and
according to the Mode, instead of mending on their Kindness, to
insult them the more.

Q. But is there any Reason for this Mode?

A. Yes sure, and a very good One. We claim our Wills
while we live, because we make none when we die.

This piece had shocked Mr Ayscough when he read it.
.He knew it fairly described a spirit alive in many women of titled
family and from the richer gentry, indeed was becoming only too
prevalent lower down the social scale, in his own class. What had
shocked him was not this; but that it should be said nakedly in
public. His initial disgust for Lacy's calling sprang from precisely
the same cause (although there, had he known, relief was at hand - in
the form, only a few months ahead, of that abominable censor the Lord
Chamberlain, about to begin his 23o-year tyranny over the theatre).
Both religion and matrimony were revealed in the catechism as mocked,
as was respect for man's superior status vis-a-vis womankind. What he
saw in Rebecca's eyes, as indeed in some of her answers, was a
reflection of this; that is, the effect of published laxity on high
among the lower orders. It could lead one day only to the most
abhorrent of human governments: democracy, that is synonymous with
anarchy. The lawyer was possessed of one of the most unwelcome human
sentiments: he was old, and glad he was old.

He glanced round and saw
the tall clerk was back at his seat; that Rebecca had drunk, and now
waited. She seemed a monument to patience, and humble submission. Yet
he did not return to his chair. He continued the interrogatory from
where he stood. It was only after he had asked several questions that
he returned to his chair opposite her, and once more had to bear that
undeviating directness of look; so direct indeed he knew he could
not, and would never, believe it.

* * *

Q. Very well, mistress. Next?

A. We crept down and Dick led out the two horses, and
we mounted outside, and were away. We rode a mile or more at a trot,
and not a word was said, until we came to the standing pillars, or to
a post some hundred paces short of them, where they tied the horses.
'Twas overcast, no stars nor moon, yet I saw them there in the
darkness, like great gravestones. And I was near out of my wits with
fear, not knowing why we should be in such a place at such a time. I
knew hardly how to walk, yet must, for they made me. I saw some way
off a light, a fire, as of shepherds, and thought to cry out, yet
doubted they would hear, it was too far distant. Then, so, we came to
the stones and entered within their circle, to the middle part.

Q. You would say, all three of you?

A. Yes.

Q. You told Jones, not Dick.

A. I tell now what truly passed. There his Lordship
stopped, where there was a stone flat upon the ground, and he said,
Fanny, kneel now upon that stone. And then I could no more, for I
believed they must mean some great evil, sorcery, calling upon dark
powers, I knew not what, and felt far more than natural cold, like I
was bound in ice, and about to meet my death. So I did not kneel, nor
could I speak, I was so chill and afeared. And his Lordship said
again, Kneel, Fanny. And then I found my tongue, and said, We do
evil, my lord, I was not hired for this. And he said, Kneel, it is
not for thee to speak of doing evil. And still I would not, so they
took me each an arm, and forced me to my knees upon the stone, that
was hard, and most hurtful to kneel upon.

Q. You told Jones they made you lie upon it.

A. No, but to kneel. And next they also knelt, beside
me upon the sward on each side.

Q. How is this?

A. 'Twas so.

Q. With their hands set, as in prayer?

A. No, their hands not so, but with their heads
bowed.

Q. Wore they their hats still?

A. His Lordship wore his. Dick wore none.

Q. What direction did you face?

A. North, I must believe. For we rode the way west,
and entered upon our right hand.

Q. Proceed.

A. For myself I prayed, and swore I should never more
whore, should God forgive me and let me come safe away. I thought I
was fallen into the Devil's hands, a far worse than the worst I had
met at Claiborne's, and one who would not scruple to abuse my soul as
much as my body and -

Q. Yes, yes, I'll imagine thee that. Now, how long
knelt you all so?

A. Five, it may be more minutes, I do not know. But
then there came a great rush in the sky above, as of wings, or a
great roaring wind, and I looked up in terror, but saw nothing, no,
nor was there wind that night, it was still.

Q. His Lordship and Dick - looked they up as well?

A. I was not fit to notice.