A Maggot - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  I fear I must leave you thus with a great enigma, sir. I assure you 'tis not for fault of my keenest perseverance at your command, nor for want of thinking upon it. Yet I can come to no sure conclusion. Not to be too long I will now answer your remaining matters.

  1. There is no known previous visiting to this place by any curious gentleman or virtuoso. Its waters have no reputation whatsoever, and knowledge of it reaches not beyond the parish Mr Beckford (who presents his most flattering compliments) had not known of its existence, before my asking him, e'en tho' it neighbours upon his own parish.

  2. I questioned Lock close upon the hanged man and all that has ensued; which he lays upon thieves, and would not be shaken. For lack of a better 'tis the general but unreasoning opinion hereabouts. When asked what further evidence may be that such desperate thieves are about in this district, they have none; and fall back upon a silly tale that is now afoot of a landing of French privateers; notwithstanding there is no further evidence of it and that they should come this far inland is without precedent these past eighty years, without common sense besides. 'Tis their practice to land and seize what lies close to hand, then be swift away, as is too well known by our navy and waterguards.

  3. Lock swore upon oath he had not seen nor remarked aught else unaccustomed in his summer sojourn; nor had more visitors, beyond his family, than I and my man. I have, alas, got no material new informations (beside speculations as the above of privateers) from the aforesaid Mr Beckford, or Puddicombe, or of any others of those you named to me.

  4. I saw no fresh-dug ground about the place, such as might hide a person murdered; and neither Lock nor his boy knew of any in their far greater familiarity with it and its vicinity.

  5. Such an overlooking vantage as your deponent describes may be seen. All else conforms well enough to his chorography. You may credit him in this at least.

  6. Of what was left below, and the two horses, I found no vestigia, though this country is such rough wilderness in its bottom or lower parts I cannot be sure we searched where was meant; yet searched all that seemed most apt, beside the stream; and came away with empty hands. At the most neighbouring places naught seems known of the two horses unaccounted for, or what else was left. "Tis thought most likely that the Egyptians might have come upon these horses; which did it so fall, they might well, if not most certain, steal them; and likewise what was left of baggage. Of your deponent's horse, I will anon.

  7. As to witches, Lock declared to know of one in his village, but that she was of the kind they here call white, or benign, more given to the curing of warts and rots than of any evil conversation, aged and crippled beside. He knew of no covens, and was firm none came here in winter save the aforesaid Egyptians; that he had never seen female flesh about the place, in all his many visitings, apart that of his ewes and his wife and a daughter, who would now and then trudge up with provision for him and to pick whortles (which grow abundant there in August). Yet it may be he is here (as to witchcraft) less natural than most of his kind, for Mr B. tells me 'tis still most generally credited, and such noise as has reached their ears of the new repealing of the Act counted great folly. He has had one accusation, no more, concerning it since his coming here, and that proved baseless, caused by one crone's malice to another in some dispute between them. Yet still will most believe, as their grandsires.

  8. One may proceed from the head of this valley across the Ex-moor in seven miles to the road that goes from Barnstaple to Minehead. The path is obscure and unknown to strangers; those resolute enough however might pass it well enough, provided qualibet they bear north, when they must in one place or another come upon the high road, which here lies east and west. 'Tis most easy in summer, when dry. Minehead and Watchet, the only considerable places before Bridgewater and Taunton, may be avoided by one travelling in secrecy. I will return this way and inquire, with the discretion you enjoin, as also here; and write immediately if new evidence of moment is found; otherwise, upon my return to Bristol.

  I am truly sorry, sir, that I cannot at present determine more to your advantage, and to that of your noble client. I have the honour to be your most humble, faithful and obedient quester and servant,

  Rich'd Pygge, attorney at law

  * * *

  Bristol, the 23rd of September

  Sir,

  I fear I have had a barren return to Bristol, and have found no trace at the towns mentioned in my last, nor at many smaller on my road, of the noble person's having passed that way. I cannot alas positively say he may not have done so, for in truth the scent is grown too cold. Even were it the case of one who travelled openly (and were I able to conduct my questionings in the same fashion), I must respectfully advise that there would at this lapse of time be great improbability of a better result. Had his mute man been still with his Lordship, better hopes of publick memory might be entertained; but we lack that advantage. Barnstaple and Bideford are busy towns and much frequented in the more clement season for the trade in Irish wool and linen, likewise Welsh coals, and no less the roads to them from Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter and even Bristol.

  At Bideford the Collector, Mr Leverstock, was able to confirm me from his register that on the and of May last the vessel Elizabeth Ann, master Thomas Templeford, sailed for Bristol and on the next day the coal-ship Henrietta, master James Parry, bound for Swansea, as your deponent told.

  Likewise the same told truth as to the Barbadoes inn, where I inquired, and found he and his companion was recollected, tho' little noticed, for their story was credited. He boasted to one after she was left that she was gone to ask leave of her parents in Bristol to marry him; naught else of import.

  Now, sir, I must inform you also that the horse that was left there is sold, and the landlord would claim it within his right, for he kept it the one month paid and a month besides, or so he says, and could keep it no more; nor would part with what he sold it for, tho' I threatened it should come to law and he be hanged for a horse-stealer; as I wish he were, he is an impudent, arrogant fellow, and Mr Leverstock tells me, a great friend to the smugglers. You may wish not, for so small a sum, and so 'tis left in abeyance.

  Sir, I await your further instructions in re and meanwhile respectfully attach an accompt of my fees and disbursements to date, in the trust that you will ever count me your most devoted and obedient servant,

  Rich'd Pygge, attorney at law

  * * *

  London, the 1st October

  Your Grace,

  I write in great haste. She we seek is found, though she knows it not yet. My man is sure; for he took Jones to view her secretly, which he hath done, and now affirms most positively, it is she. She is late married to one John Lee, blacksmith, of Toad Lane in the town of Manchester; and is several months gone with child, it cannot be by him. Lee is said, Quaker, like her. They live in poverty, in little better than a cellar, my man avers; for Lee has no regular work, but is called preacher by his neighbours. She now plays the housewife and very soul of piety. Her parents and sisters are likewise in the town as Mr Pygge wrote. I trust I need not assure Yr Grace that I proceed there at once - and humbly pray he will pardon this present brevity, in the knowledge of its cause, and that I am ever the most forward in his service,

  H.A.

  I inclose with this copy of a letter received this day from Dr Hales, that is best known (these few years past) for his worthy anathemata upon the evils of spirituous liquors; yet I am told also of excellent report as a natural philosopher, though more such as botanist than chymist. He is friend to Mr Pope, that is one of his parishioners.

  * * *

  The First of October,

  Corpus Christi College.

  Sir,

  I am pleased to assist any friend of the learned Mr Saunderson. I have examined the piece of baked earth, upon which you request an opinion, and regret I may come to no certain conclusion as to its nature. 'Tis clear that it hath been subject to great heat, and I doubt not great alteration of the original compos
ition, that alas doth make the chymical analysis thereof (in even the best-furnished elaboratory) most difficult; for we may say in such

  matters that fire is as an anacoluthia in grammar. All natural logick of expression in the elements is made thereby interrupted and most obscure, howe'er so skilled and moliminous the adeptist. I may believe that before the incalescence the earth was admixed or drenched with some element of character bituminous, yet none has outlived the fire in sufficient size (nor upon colation) to allow of a closer determination. The Royal Society (of which I have the honour to be socius) doth hold in the collection of minerals and stones bequeathed it by the great chymist and philosopher the Hon. Robert Boyle some fragments from the banks of the Asphaltick Lake of the Holy Land (that is, the Dead Sea) that do bear some resemblance, if memory serves; and likewise have I, seen pieces not dissimilar brought from the Asphaltum, or Lake of Pitch, that is found upon the Spanish isle of Trinidadoe in the Indies; indeed somewhat the same have I remarked where pitch is boiled and some portion has spilled upon the ground beneath the vats or coppers. But yet unless I mistake I detect a smell in these baked ashes that is neither of pitch mineral (as these examples that I have cited) nor of pitch of pine, or vegetable. Sir, if you can provide me of this soil a fresh portion that is not burnt (that may doubtless be found adjoining), I should be exceeding grateful, and may thereby the better enlighten you. Such soil is not hitherto reported to be found in these isles, and may be most apt to commerce, and of great enhancement to your client's (whose name Mr Saunderson did not vouchsafe) estates.

  I am, sir, your most obedient servant,

  Stephen Hales D.D. R.S.S.

  I am in Cambridge briefly, and may be the better addressed at my living, that is at Teddington in Middlesex.

  * * *

  THE TALL, gaunt man sits with an empty bowl of pottage, wiped by bread as clean as if it had been well washed, on the scrubbed wooden table before him, and stares at the woman opposite. She is a less hungry, or more fastidious, eater, and does it with cast-down eyes; so, it seems, to declare the very act of eating vaguely immodest. The table stands before a huge grate and large chimney, but no fire is lit and the pottage the woman still eats is evidently cold. The fingers that hold the wooden spoon she eats with look cold; and are cold. The fingers of her other hand lie against the broken morning loaf, to gain some last warmth from its baking. That, the two bowls, two battered pewter mugs and an earthenware pitcher of water - only one thing else lies on the table, a little to one side: a large octavo book. Its brown leather binding is dog-eared, and it has lost its spine; and been repaired by a glued patch of old canvas, so that one may only guess at its contents.

  The room is a half-cellar, paved with flags, many of which are cracked, with steps up to the street outside. The upper shutter of the door there is thrown open and lets in a weak and new-risen October sun; as do the two small windows beside it. The sun is needed, for the scene is one of great penury. The cellar-room has no carpet, not even a rush mat. The recently whitewashed walls are similarly without adornment, except that of patches discoloured by damp. There is no other furniture, beside the table and two chairs, bar a wooden chest against the inner wall, that rests at either end on rough-sawn baulks of timber, to keep its bottom off the flagstones. Two iron pans and an ancient chafing-dish hang on nails inside the chimney. There are the remains of a fire there, but it is very small, confined by old bricks, a paltry thing beside the large logs the seven-foot hearth must have been built to burn in its beginnings.

  Through an inner and doorless doorway beside the chest can just be made out another and smaller room, and the end of a bed.

  That room has no light at all from outside. A shelf fixed to the beam above the hearth has one or two other necessities; an iron candlestick and two or three candle-ends, a square of mirror-glass without a frame, a tinder-box and salt-box. And that is all. A monastic cell could not have been more sparse.

  Yet there are two strange things in this austere scene. One is physical, for the floor above the room, though not ceiled, is supported on two fine oak beams, almost black with age, and each delicately fluted and chamfered downward to a narrow hanging edge; as if a century or more before, in James I's or Elizabeth's reign, the house had been a finer place, where even those who lived or worked in the half-cellar were counted deserving of such elaborate joinery. In truth it had served as shop to the merchant clothier who then lived above. It was his customers who were granted such noble beams.

  The other strange thing is a virtue. Poverty is associated today with loss of morale; and that with dirt and disorder, both personal and domestic. This humble room is as clean as a modern operating theatre: no dust, no dirt, not a single cobweb, not a blemish on its strict tidiness. All is swept, washed, scrubbed, more thoroughly shipshape than the most demanding bosun's mate could want, as if its denizens have said to themselves: We have nothing, and so may be godly. There was an equivalent saying of the time: cruel to the flesh, kind to the soul. The virtue was not mere cleanliness in adversity, but a kind of wakeful resilience; a latent energy, a waiting will to change; a being set like a spring. We accept this now, we will not accept this for ever. The cleanliness was no more than a convenient and easily demonstrable symbol; a physical emblem of a psychological cleanliness, spare and hard, a dormant readiness for both martyrdom and militancy. That was why comfortable established Christianity so mistrusted - as some of us today mistrust conspicuous consumption, less for what it is than for what it may bring - the outward signs of a strict, practical Christianity in Dissent.

  The man, although only in his mid-thirties, is already going grey. He wears breeches and a loose white blouse, and an armless jerkin, scarred, like his forearms and hands, by countless smithy sparks. For this is john Lee, the blacksmith of Toad Lane; though he has no forge, and is far more given now to hammering something harder and more obdurate than iron, the souls of other men and women. A tall, gaunt man, with an abstracted face and seemingly far-seeing eyes. Something in them suggests he thinks too slowly ever to smile; must endlessly digest before he might laugh, or offer an opinion. He certainly does not look as if he has yet digested this other being and wife, Rebecca opposite, in her coarse grey dress and pure white cap; this latter an object as sober and sparse as the room itself, without lace or frill, close over her ears. Only her hair and her face have not changed; the grey dress and white cap cannot quite hide why she was what she was. Those gentle brown eyes, that opaque innocence in spite of all, that patience ... yet she has changed elsewhere. There is now something also steadfast, almost learnt, in her meekness; perhaps learnt from the man opposite; a new self, defiant, determined by new circumstance and new conviction.

  She pushes her bowl across the table to the man.

  'Eat, thee. I have no stomach for it. And must to the neasery.'

  'It ails thee?'

  'All shall be well, praise Jesus.'

  'Thy father and I shall stand witness outside, and pray for thee. If they'd stone thee for thy bygone sins, thee must bear it, and remember thee art the Lord's new-born.'

  'Yea, husband.'

  'They too shall be judged when He comes.'

  'Yea, yea. I know it.'

  He looks at the offered bowl, but clearly has more on his mind.

  'There is a thing I would tell. I was given in the night, but feared to wake thee while thee rested.'

  "Twas well?'

  'One came all in white upon a road, as I walked. And he held a staff in the one hand, the Book in the other, and greeted me. He said naught, beyond these words. Be patient, thee, for thy time is nigh. Yea, thus he stood and spake, most clear, as clear as I see thee now.'

  'And who should he be?'

  'Why, John the Prophet, praise the Lord. And more, he smiled upon me, as his friend and good servant.'

  She stares gravely at him a moment. 'The time is nigh?'

  "Tis as Brother Wardley says. Be resolute in faith, and thee shalt be given signs.'

  She looks do
wn, towards where her stomach swells a little, then up, and smiles faintly. Then she stands and goes to the inner room, to re-appear with an iron bucket, which she bears across the room and up the steps; unlatches the half-door, and disappears. Only then does he draw her half-finished bowl closer, and begins to eat what she has left. He tastes nothing, still thinking of his dream. It is thin gruel, watery oatmeal mixed with one or two specks of salt bacon and a few dark green leaves of fat-hen; the left-over of the previous evening.

  As soon as it is finished, he pulls the book close and opens it; and it opens, as if by nature, at an inner title page, that of the New Testament. It is an old Bible, of 16t9, and turned, by its most frequent usage, into a Tetrevangelium. The content words of the page are in a heart-shaped frame, heavily underlined in red ink for lack of proper rubrication. They are surrounded by tiny woodcuts of sacred emblems like the Paschal Lamb, the tented arms of the Prophets, portraits of the Apostles, and most closely by those of the four Witnesses. The man stares for a moment or two at the cut of St John, a distinctly Jacobean and moustached gentleman who sits writing at a table with a tame dodo - no, an eagle - sitting beside him. But John Lee does not smile. He turns on to the saint's gospel, and finds its fifteenth chapter: 'I am the true Vine, and my Father is the husbandman'.

  He stoops a little to read. It is clear, without any ease, for his finger slowly traces what he reads, and his lips can be seen silently moving, as if these words cannot be understood unless they are also spoken in mind, not merely absorbed by it.

  'Abide in mee, and I in you: As the branch cannot beare fruit of

  it selfe, except it abide in the Vine: no more can yee, except ye abide in me. I am the Vine, yee are the branches: Hee that abideth in mee, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without mee ye can doe nothing. If a man abide not in mee, hee is cast foorth as a branch, and is withered, and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.'