A Maggot - John Fowles (57 page)

Musulman to gain a place or particular favour. Yet
these are not what Sir Rich'd spoke of, they are no more than slaves
of a pernicious fashion of the times. Nos haec novimus esse nihil,
for there are worse beside, far worse. These above do declare
themselves openly what they are. These I speak of do most largely
conceal behind a mask what they truly believe and would work upon in
matters civil and political; or more subtly they but show enough to
make themselves believed fashions slaves, as is his Lordship's case
above. They make their outward impudence their mask, as foxes, the
better we may not see where they truly tend, nor their true black
tergiversation beneath.

This twelve-month gone I did chance to ask his
Lordship upon what he was engaged in his inquiries, and he did
answer, I thought then in his manner half in sour jest, Why, how I
may make a man of a toad, and a fool, into a philosopher. Upon which
I remarked it seemed he would usurp upon divine prerogative. To which
he replied I was mistaken, since the world showed us it was easy
enough to make men into toads, and philosophers into fools, and so
must it be the Devil's prerogative he would usurp. I must now
believe, Your Grace, that in that exchange lay some part of a
confession he might have declared, had the occasion not been trivial
and in passing. In truth he would doubt all: birth, society,
government, justice, so to say in some more adept world their present
provisions and dispositions should be found evil and corrupt. Yet he
was ever not bold enough, or too cunning, to speak these things
outright.

By such weakness or fear, Your Grace, must I believe
he did come finally to what passed in April. He would persuade one
who was in this comparatively innocent, nay, gullible beside, to
prove the point he dared not make himself, in her guise of seditious
religion. In plain words, this world that is must be upset. Now that
this one was a she, and whore besides, may seem a madness in him, to
launch such a venture on so small and miserable a bark; yet-it may be
she was freighted but for a first proof and essay, to see if a simple
woman of pleasure might not be turned into the fanatick she is
become, to serve his secret ends. Those are such no thinking man
could countenance, for they place the judgement of a person's worth
not upon his condition but upon himself; not on birth, but upon the
mere fact of being. This is clear behind the drift of our French
Prophetess: all are to be counted equal. Such as she may place such
dangerous belief upon religious grounds. It is plain their general
spirit is rabid political, of the mob, to destroy the sacred laws of
inheritance, among much else. They would break this nation to pieces.
I doubt his Lordship cares one whit for their religion; these their
other desires, they are his also.

Yr Grace, by such sad presage must I come to this: in
that he would break the world which bore him, and to which he owed
all, why, even unto those means that allowed him to pursue such ends,
was his Lordship broken himself. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili;
and in that doing he did become vile to himself, he was hoist on his
own petard. In what is said of him and his behaviour upon his
journey, we may see he was oft in secret doubt of it, his enterprise
misgave him long before it was concluded. How can he not not have
perceived he forsook the pursuit of scholarship for common trickery,
such as at Stonehenge? Whereby he raised the light into the sky and
made appear those two figures blasphemously passed off as the
Almighty and His Son, we know not. He stayed behind when all was
done, I doubt not that those he had hired should be paid, and all
evidence of trickery cleared away in the night; and likewise at the
cavern, though there it is to be noted we know not what passed except
by Lee's testimony, which is more of gross fantasy than credible
fact; and I believe there put upon her not by any outward melfeasance
and deceit, but far more likely by means of drug or potion, or by
black art of some kind.

Here I must believe conscience did mercifully put a
stop upon his Lordship's venture; that at the last he did acknowledge
to himself he was upon madness, in unholy union with all decency
abhors; and driven to it by a malevolent and unreasoning hatred and
resentment not only of his noble father, but of the sacred principles
of all respectable society and belief. His Lordship's youngest sister
did once remark to me that her brother was as a pendulum, never to be
still nor found in the same humour from one minute to the next. In
that black Devonshire cavern 'tis most probable he did find himself
to swing away from all he had done, and to regret it with a violence
unaccustomed even in him; and in such violence did end his wretched
days. Your Grace, I cannot say positively it was so. Yet must I guess
it most likely so, and with this only to commend it: that coming to
recognize he had sinned most heinously, he must condemn himself to no
less than he did, as only proper expiation of his awful crimes.

Your Grace will not, I trust, take offence I put my
conclusion so baldly, since it is at his behest. He himself, as he
will no doubt recall, did once vouchsafe to this his most humble
servant that were it not all evidence denied, and not least the
unimpeachable testimony of physiognomical likeness, he should believe
his Lordship a changeling. I fear Your Grace was not mistaken: he may
justly conclude that in all matters but of blood, his Lordship was
indeed as a changeling, and not his true son.

Your Grace did also ask me in what manner he should
best broach this matter to his most esteemed spouse; and here I shall
respectfully propose to him there is one consolation to be drawn,
viz., in this our unknowing we are not obliged to declare the worst
of his Lordship, as I have here with great reluctance but upon best
probability stated. We may not easily believe what the woman Lee
declares him to have been and to have become, against all past belief
and family knowledge; yet Yr Grace may judge it should be allowed
some colour of extenuation, to allay maternal concern. And
furthermore, that he is now disappeared, it may be said it is because
he knows himself not worthy to be Yr Grace's son, and would but
relieve Yr Grace of his presence. May it not be said that perchance
he lives still in some foreign land, where none may break the secret
of an incognito; where he may now acknowledge to himself that he has
given Yr Grace great hurt, and would trouble Yr Grace no more? And
advanced in hope that he reflects upon the injustice he has done, and
shall in due time return to ask Your Grace's forgiveness?

These lines are written in some haste, not to delay
dispatch, as Yr Grace will understand; and will know in what sadness
also and fear of having failed Your Grace, in not bringing matters
(despite most diligent effort) to more happy conclusion. Man would of
his nature know all; but it is God who decrees what shall or shall
not be known; and here must we resign ourselves to accept His great
wisdom and mercy in such matters, which is that He deems it often
best and kindest to us mortals that we shall not know all. In the
bosom of that great mystery, I most humbly suggest, should Your Grace
seek comfort; as in the more earthly solace of his noble wife and
noble son the Marquis (who doth, unlike his poor brother, so
preeminently enshrine his father's virtues), of those most charming
ladies his daughters likewise. Alas, the one flower may wilt and
fade; the others still may console the more.

I shall be before Your Grace very soon upon his
reading of this dispatch, and his to command. In closing now, I beg
Yr Grace to accept my most respectful sympathy for this unhappy
conclusion upon inquiry; and ever the most sincere assurance of
untiring diligence in all his affairs, from his humble servant,

Henry Ayscough

* * *

FROM THE ROOM outside there comes a murmur of voices,
mostly female, a group waiting quietly for some event; though the
event of this twenty-ninth of February, as it happens, has taken
place, and the three men present, Wardley, Hocknell, John Lee, are
but new admitted from where they were recently sent, which was to
stand in Toad Lane outside. Rebecca lies alone on the rough bed in
the inner cellar; on her back, her face spent, impassive, seemingly
almost sullen now it is over. It is noon, a strange time to be abed,
and already she would rise; yet knows she cannot and must not. Of a
sudden the voices outside cease; they listen. Now there is a shadow
in the door, and she cranes her head up. John Lee stands there, with
the new-swaddled baby clasped tight in his right arm, posing for a
picture of a man at a loss; a picture he does not lessen : by
removing his hat, slowly and as if by reluctant afterthought, before
this echo of afar greater birth, though in similar humble
circumstances. She looks only at what he holds cradled in his right
arm. His grave and awkward-peering face would seem to be about to
announce the end of the world; but then again, by afterthought, it
shows the ghost of a wintry smile.

'All is well, thee?'

'Most well, husband.'

'I prayed for thee, and her new soul.'

'I thank thee.'

And now he steps forward and taking the new-born
infant, as absurdly tight-bound as a parcel, in both hands passes it
down to the hands raised to take it. The appalling custom of
swaddling was, among the more emancipated (and thanks to the
philosopher Locke), already near its end; but not yet, alas, among
the poor. The blacksmith-seer watches while the parcel is set beside
her. She stares at it with that strangely paradoxical intensity,
halflove, half doubt, both objective and subjective, both certain and
wondering, of the young mother first faced with what has come from
inside her ... this long-drowned creature risen from the ocean
depths, yet miraculously still alive. It is very plainly not divine;
its face crinkled, obstinate, still more in the sea than the air. It
opens its eyes for a long moment, it seems almost stunned by the
revelation of this wretched and shadowy world it is born into; yet
already there is a hint of azure, of vacant sky, in them. A time will
come when people shall remember those eyes, their blue candour and
their brisk truth, that was far from vacant.

John Lee replaces his broad-brimmed hat.

'I have bought thee both a handsel.'

She takes her eyes up from the child, and smiles
faintly, secretly incredulous at such secular grace.

'What be it, then?'

'But a bird. Would thee see?'

'I would see.'

He turns and goes back into the other room; then
returns at once holding a small square object, swaddled with cloth as
the child, and which he holds by an osier handle. Now he holds it
above the bed where she may see, and pulls the cloth away. It is a
goldfinch, in a tiny wicker cage, barely seven inches square. The
brilliantly coloured little bird takes alarm and flutters against the
brown bars.

"Twill grow more tame, and sing.'

She reaches up her free arm, timidly, to touch the
minute cage.

'Thee must hang it by the door, in the light.'

'Aye.'

And he stares still for a time at the bird, which now
cowers in a corner, as if it means more to him than the face beside
Rebecca's on the bed. But then he swathes the cage in the cloth again
and holds it down by his side.

'The Lord has given me this last night a name for
her.'

'How a name?'

'Mary.'

'I promised the Lord she shall be Ann.'

'Wife, thee must obey. We are not to deny the gift.
It spake clear.'

'I deny no gift.'

'Yes, thee would. It is not fit, at such a time. What
the Lord has given, we must receive.'

'What else was given?'

'That she shall see the Lord Jesus come again.'

'We may call her both.'

'Two names is vanity. One sufficeth.'

For a moment she says nothing, staring up at him. She
looks down at the rough blanket that covers her. 'I tell thee, John
Lee, when the Lord Jesus come again, He shall be She, and the mother
must know Her name.'

He stares down at her without answering, uncertain
whether such levity deserves reprimand or is so far-fetched it may in
these circumstances be ignored. At last he stoops and lays a clumsy
hand upon her shoulder, a quarter in blessing, a quarter in
forgiveness; and a full half in sheer incomprehension. Like so many
seers, he is blind to the present. He straightens.

'Sleep. And when thee wake, thee'll know to obey.'

He leaves, carrying the cage; and for a moment or two
more the young woman on the dark bed still stares down at the
blanket. He speaks in a low voice outside, perhaps something about
the goldfinch. There is a silence, then the voice of the bird, from
by the cellar door: a silvery little tintinnabulation, its
flight-call, piercing the sombre rooms like sunlight; and
conscience-piercing also. But William Blake is yet to come.

Now Rebecca looks down at the tiny creature in her
arms. There is something of a wonderment in her eyes, at this other,
this intruder into her world; she bends and very gently kisses its
pink and wrinkled forehead.

'More love, Ann. More love, my love.'

The infant's features begin to contort, a preparatory
paroxysm to crying. It begins to bawl. A few seconds later, its mouth
brought for a first time to the mother's breast, the bawling has
stopped. Outside, the low voices start again. Rebecca nurses, with
her eyes closed, sunk within feeling, this affirmation of her
selfness no words she knows can describe, or that she would have had
describe even if she knew them. For a moment she opens those meek
brown eyes and stares into a dark corner of the room, as if someone
stood there watching; then closes them again. After a while she
begins slightly to rock, and there comes the barely perceptible sound
of a hum. She has begun a slow lullaby, the baby lies stilled. It is
very simple, and seems to be of two repeated phrases only.