A Maggot - John Fowles (6 page)

'Doth 'er know where to take 'un, then?'

'Aye. Let him be.' He closed an eye, and tapped it
with a finger. 'Eyes like a falcon, has Dick. Why, he sees through
walls.'

'Never.'

'He must, my love. Leastways I never met a man so
fond of staring at 'em.' And he winked again, to make clear he was
joking.

Mr Puddicombe advanced the opinion that this was a
strange case for a gentleman's servant - how could a master use one
who understood so little? How command, and make him fetch?

Farthing glanced towards the door and leant forward
confidentially.

'I'll tell you this, Master Thomas. The master's a
match for his man. I never met a gentleman spoke less. 'Tis his
humour, his uncle warned me thus. So be it, I take no offence.' He
pointed a finger at the landlord's face. 'But mark my words, he'll
speak with Dick.'

'How so?'

'By ciphers, sir.'

'And what might they be?'

Farthing leant back, then tapped his chest with a
finger and raised a clenched fist. His audience stared, as blankly as
the deaf-mute. The gestures were repeated, then glossed.

'Bring me ... punch.'

Dorcas put her hand over her mouth. Farthing tapped
his own shoulder, then raised one open hand and the forefinger of the
other. Again he waited, then deciphered.

'Wake me, six of the clock prompt.'

Now he extended a palm and put his other hand,
clenched, upon it; touched himself; cupped his hands against his
breasts; raised four fingers. The same fascinated faces waited for an
explanation..

'Wait - a play upon words, do you not take it, a
weight in a balance - wait on me at the lady's house at four
o'clock.'

Mr Puddicombe nodded a shade uncertainly. 'I grasp
it.'

'I could give you ten times more. A hundred times.
Our Dick is not the fool he looks. I'll tell you something more, sir.
Between ourselves.' Once again he looked to the door, and dropped his
voice. 'This yesternight I must share a bed with him at Taunton, we
could find no better place. I wake, I know not why, in the middle of
the night. I find my bed-partner gone, slipped away as I slept. I
think not too much on that, he must to the vaults, the more room for
me, and would sleep again. Whereupon I hear a sound, Master Thomas,
as of one talking in his sleep. No words, but a hum in the throat.
So.' And he hummed as he had described, paused, then hummed again. 'I
look. And there I see the fellow in his shirt, and on his knees, as
it might be praying, by the window. But not as a Christian, to our
Lord. Nay. To the moon, sir, that shone bright on where he was. And
he stood, sir, and pressed to the glass, still making his sounds, as
if he would fly up to where he gazed. And I thought, Tim, thou'st
faced the Spanish cannon, thou'st given the ruff of the drum, thou'st
seen death and desperate men more times than thou canst tell, but,
rat or rot me, none like this. 'Twas clear as day he was in a
lunatick fit, and might at any moment turn and spring and tear me
limb from limb.' He paused, for effect, and surveyed the table. 'I
tell you, my good people, no jest, I would not pass another hour like
that for a hundred pound. Ecod, no, nor for a thousand.'

'Could you not seize him?'

Farthing allowed a knowing smile to cross his
features.

'I take it you were never at Bedlam, sir. Why, I've
seen one there, a fellow you'd spit upon for a starving beggar in his
quiet hours, throw off ten stout lads in his passions. Your
lunatick's a tiger when the moon is on him, Master Thomas. 'Sdeath,
he'll out-hector Hector himself, as the saying is. Finds the rage and
strength of twenty. And mark, Dick's no weakling, even in his settled
mind.'

'What did you then?'

I lay as dead, sir, with this hand on the hilt of my
blade beside my bed. A weaker spirit might have cried for help. But I
give myself the credit of keeping my head, Master Thomas. I braved it
out.'

'And what happened?'

'Why, the fit passed, sir. He comes once more to the
bed, gets in. He starts snoring. But not I, oh no, 'fore George not
I. Tim Farthing knows his duty. Ne'er a wink all night, my blade at
the ready, sat in a chair where I could swash him down if the fit
came on again or worse. I tell you no lie, my friends, had he but
woke a second, he should have been carbonadoed in a trice, by Heaven
he should. I reported all to Mr Brown next morning. And he said he
would speak to his nephew. Who seemed not troubled, and said Dick was
strange, but would do no harm, I was to take no account.' He leant
back, and touched his moustache. 'I keep my own counsel on that,
Master Thomas.'

'I should think so, verily.'

'And my blunderbush to hand.' His eyes sought
Dorcas's face. 'No need to fright yourself, my dear. Farthing's on
watch. He'll do no harm here.' The girl's eyes lifted involuntarily
towards the ceiling. 'Nor up there, neither.'

"Tis only three stairs.'

Farthing leant back and folded his arms, then put his
tongue in his cheek. 'By hap she finds him work to do?'

The girl was puzzled. 'What work would that be then?'

'Work no man finds work, my innocent.' He leered, and
the girl, at last understanding what he would say, raised a hand to
her mouth. Farthing transferred his eyes to the master. 'I tell you,
London's an evil place, Master Thomas. The maid but apes the mistress
there. Ne'er rests content, the hussy, till she's decked out in her
shameless sacks and trollopees. If my lady has her lusty lackey, why
shouldn't I, says she. Spurn the poor brute by day, and have him to
my bed each night.'

Prithee no more, Mr Farthing. If my good wife were
here... '

'Amen, sir. I should not speak of it, were the fellow
not lecherous as a Barbary ape. Let your maids be warned. He came on
one in the stable on our road here ... happily I passed and prevented
the rogue. Enough's enough. He knows no better, he thinks all women
as lascivious as Eve, God forgive him. As eager to raise their
petticoats as he to unbreech.'

'I wonder his master don't give him a good flogging.'

'And well you may, sir. Well you may. No more of it.
A word to the wise, as the saying goes.'

They passed then to other
matters; but when, some ten minutes later, the deaf-mute re-appeared,
it was as if a draught of cold air had entered the room. He seemed as
expressionless as ever, looked at no one, regained his place. One by
one all there covertly glanced at him, as if searching for some
flush, some outward sign of his sin. However, he stared down with his
blue eyes at the old table just beyond his plate, blankly awaiting
some further humiliation.

* * *

'Well powdered, I trust?'

'His flock, his lodgings, his vestry, his
churchwardens, I have had damnation on them all, anathema singular
and plural. You are invited to dine tomorrow to hear the recitation
over again. I ventured to decline on your behalf.'

'And no inquiry?'

'Beyond civility, and barely that. The gentleman has
only one profound object of interest in life. It does not comprehend
the affairs of others.'

'You have had a poor last audience for your talents.
My apologies.' The actor, who stood planted on the opposite side of
the fire from where Mr Bartholomew sat with his papers, stared
heavily at him, as if not to be fobbed off by this lighter mood.

'Come, my dear Lacy. My word to you stands. I mean no
evil, I do no evil. No one shall, or could blame you for your part.'

'But your purpose is not what you led me to believe,
Mr Bartholomew. Is it not so? No, I must speak now. I have no doubt
you mean well to me in all your concealings. But I must doubt whether
you mean well to yourself.'

'Do we say a poet lies when he speaks of meeting the
Muses?'

'We know what he intends to convey by that figure.'

'But do we say he lies?'

'No.'

Then in that sense I have not lied to you. I go to
meet one I desire to know, and respect, as much as I would a bride -
or my Muse indeed, were I a poet; before whom I am as Dick before
myself, nay, more lacking still. And whom I have been hitherto
prevented from seeing as much as by a jealous guardian. I may have
deceived you in the letter. But not in the spirit.'

The actor's eyes glanced at the papers.

'I am bound to ask why a meeting with a learned
stranger has to be conducted in such very great secrecy, and in this
remote place, if the purpose be wholly innocent.'

Mr Bartholomew leant back in his chair, this time
with a distinctly sardonic smile.

'Perhaps I am one of those seditious northern jacks?
Another Bolingbroke? These papers here are all in cipher. If not in
plain French or Spanish. I go to plot with some emissary of James
Stuart.'

For a moment the actor seemed confused, as if his
secret thought had been read. 'My blood chills, sir.'

'Look. They are indeed in a cipher of a kind.'

He held out the sheet of paper he had been reading,
which Lacy took. After a few moments the actor looked up.

'I can make nothing of it.'

'Necromantical, think you not? I am here to creep
into the woods and meet some disciple of the Witch of Endor. To
exchange my eternal soul against the secrets of the other world. How
does that cap fit?'

The actor passed the paper back to him.

You choose to be playful. I think this not the
moment.'

'Then let us talk no more nonsense. I bring no harm
to king or country, nor to any person thereof. I place neither body
nor soul in danger. My mind perhaps, but a man's mind is his own
business. What I am upon may be a wild goose chase, a foolish dream.
Whom I wish to meet may . . . ' but he broke off, then put the paper
with the others on the table beside his chair. 'No matter.'

'This person is in hiding?'

Mr Bartholomew stared at him for a moment.

'No more, Lacy. I beg you.'

'I must still ask why I should be deceived, sir.'

'My friend, that question sits strangely in your
mouth. Have you not spent your own life deceiving?' Lacy seemed set
back a moment by such a charge. The man in the chair stood and went
to the fire, his back to the actor. 'But I will tell you. I am born
with a fixed destiny. All I told you of my supposed father I might
have said of my true one - and much worse, for he is an old fool; and
hath given birth to another, that is my elder brother. I am, as you
might be, offered a part in a history, and I am not forgiven for
refusing to play it. Mark, the case between us is not exact. If you
will not play, you lose but your money. I lose ... more than you may
imagine.' He turned. 'I have no liberty, Lacy, unless I steal it
first. If I go where I will, as now, I must go as a thief from those
who would have me do as they want. That is all. And now truly, I
would say no more.'

The actor looked down, with a little shrug and nod,
as if confessing himself baffled; and the speaker went on in a more
even tone, and watching him.

'Tomorrow we leave together. In a very few miles we
shall come to where we must part. The road you and your man shall
take joins that to Crediton and Exeter, which city I would have you
gain with all speed. Once there you may return to London as you
please and when you please. The only thing I desire of you to conceal
is all that concerns me and the manner of our coming to this place.
As we agreed at the beginning.'

'Does the maid not come with us?' 'No.'

'I must tell you something.' He left a little pause.
'Jones, that is Farthing, believes he has seen her before.'

Mr Bartholomew turned away to the fire again. There
was a small silence.

'Where?'

The actor eyed his back. 'Entering a bagnio, sir.
Where he was told she was employed.'

'And what said you to that?'

'I would not believe him.'

'You were right. He is mistaken.'

'But nor is she now a lady's maid, sir, by your own
admittance. I think you must know your man is smitten. Farthing tells
me, for good reason. He is not spurned.' He hesitated. 'He has gone
to where she lies, at night.'

Mr Bartholomew gave him a long look, as if the actor
now grew impertinent; but then he showed a distinctly sarcastic
smile.

'May a man not lie with his own wife?'

The actor was once again caught unawares. He stared
moment at Mr Bartholomew, then down.

'So be it. I have said what I must.'

'And I do not impugn the regard that inspired it. We
will settle our business and bid our formal adieux tomorrow, but
permit me now to thank you for your assistance and patience. I have
had little commerce with your profession. If they are all like you, I
perceive I have lost by my ignorance. Though you cannot credit me in
so much else, you will, I hope, credit me in that. I most sincerely
wish we might have met in more open circumstances.'