A Maggot Read online

  'I should first doubt my own mind.'

  'But if that doubt were removed by some irrefutable proof?

  'Then I should warn my fellow-men. So that they might consider to avoid what might harm them.'

  'Very well. But now further suppose that this prophet reveals that the predestinate future of this world is full of fire and plague, of civil commotion, of endless calamity. What then? Is the case the same?'

  'I cannot conceive your case, sir. How it should be proven.'

  'Bear with me. It is but conjecture. Let us grant he shall find proof to convince you.'

  'You are too deep for me, Mr Bartholomew. If it be in the stars that my house shall be struck by a thunderbolt tomorrow, I grant you I may not avert that. Yet if it be also in the stars that I may be told as much, I can surely remove from my house in the expectation.'

  'But suppose the bolt will strike you, wheresoe'er you flee or shelter? You are none the better off. You should as well have stayed at home. Besides, he might not know how you in person should die, or when such and such an evil fall on any one of mankind, no more than that one day it must fall on most. I would ask this, Lacy. Would you not, if such a man, before coming to you, advised you of his purpose in coming, so that you had time to reflect and conquer natural curiosity - would you not most wisely refuse to hear a single word from him??

  'Perhaps. I can allow that.'

  'And would not he, if he were Christian and kind - and mark you, even if his prophetick science foretold the very opposite, that this corrupt and cruel world should one day live in eternal peace and plenty - would not he still most wisely keep his secret to himself? If all were one day assured of paradise, who would any longer trouble to stir himself to virtue or merit?'

  'I take your general argument, sir. But not why you should speak so in present circumstance.'

  'This, Lacy. Suppose you were he that can read this most awful decree upon what shall come. Is it not best that you should accept to be its only victim? Might not a most condign divine anger at such blasphemous breaking of the seals of time be assuaged at the price of your silence - nay, your own life?'

  'I cannot answer that. You touch upon matters ... it is not for us to trespass upon the privilege of our Creator alone.'

  The younger man, his eyes still lost in the fire, bows his head a little in acquiescence.

  'I but put a case. I mean no blasphemy.'

  Then he falls silent, as if he regrets having opened the subject at all. It is clear that this does not satisfy the actor, for now he rises, and in his turn slowly goes to the window, his hands behind his back. He stands there a moment before the shutters, then suddenly clasps his hands more firmly, and turns and addresses the back of the bald head that sits silhouetted between him and the fire.

  'I must speak frankly, Mr Bartholomew, since we part tomorrow. One learns in my profession to read men by their physiognomies. By their looks, their gait, their cast of countenance. I have ventured to form an opinion of you. It is highly favourable, sir. Behind the subterfuges we are presently reduced to, I believe you an honest and honourable gentleman. I trust you know me well enough by now to permit me to say that I should never have entered upon this enterprise were I not persuaded that you had justice upon your side.'

  The younger man does not turn, and there is a tinge of dryness in his voice.

  'But?'

  'I can forgive you, sir, for hiding some circumstances in this our present business. I apprehend there is necessity and good sense in that. To use such necessity to deceive me as to the very business itself, that I could not forgive. I won't conceal it, sir. You may speak of fancies, but what am I to make -'

  Suddenly the younger man stands, it seems almost in a rage, so abrupt is the movement. Yet he merely turns towards the actor with another of his direct looks.

  'I give you my word, Lacy. You know I am a disobedient son, you know I have not told you all. If such be sins, I confess to 'em. You have my word that what I do breaks no law of this land.' He comes forward and reaches out a hand. 'I would have you believe that.'

  The actor hesitates, then takes the hand. The younger man fixes him with his eyes.

  'Upon my honour, Lacy. You have not misjudged me there. And I pray you to remember this, whatever lies ahead.' He drops the hand and turns away to the fire again, but looks back at the actor standing by the chair. 'I have deceived you in much. I beg you to believe that it is to spare you much, also. No one shall ever find in you any but an innocent instrument. Should it come to that.'

  The older man's eyes are stern.

  'None the less, something other than what you have led me to believe is afoot?'

  The younger man looks back down to the fire.

  'I seek a meeting with someone. That much is true.'

  'But not of the kind you have given me to suppose?' Mr

  Bartholomew is silent. 'An affair of honour?'

  Mr Bartholomew smiles faintly. 'I should not be here without a friend, if that were the case. Nor ride so many miles to do what may be done far closer London.'

  The actor opens his mouth to speak, in vain. There is the sound of a footstep outside the door, then a knock. The younger man calls. The landlord Puddicombe appears, and addresses the supposed uncle.

  'Mr Brown, there be a gentleman below. His compliments, sir. With your pardon.'

  The actor throws a sharp look at the man by the fire, but he shows no sign of expectation fulfilled. Yet it is he who speaks impatiently to the landlord.

  'Who?'

  'Mr Beckford, sir.'

  'And who may Mr Beckford be?'

  'Our parson, sir.'

  The man by the fire looks down, it seems almost with relief, then up again at the actor.

  'Forgive me, uncle. I am tired. Let me not prevent you.'

  The actor smoothly, if belatedly, takes his cue. 'Tell the reverend gentleman I shall be pleased to wait on him downstairs. My nephew craves his indulgence.'

  'Very good, sir. At once. Your honours.'

  He withdraws. The younger man makes a small grimace.

  'Gird yourself, my friend. One last throwing of dust.'

  'I cannot leave our conversation here, sir.'

  'Be rid of him as soon as you civilly can.'

  The actor feels for his neck-stock, touches his hat and straightens his coat.

  'Very well.'

  With a slight bow, he goes to the door. His hand is already on it when the younger man speaks one last time.

  'And kindly ask our worthy landlord to send up more of his wretched tallow. I would read.'

  The actor silently bows again, and leaves the room. For a few moments the man by the fire stares at the floor. Then he goes and carries the small table near the window to beside the chair he was sitting in; he fetches the candle-branch from the supper table and

  sets it there in preparation. Next, feeling in the pocket of his knee-length waistcoat for a key, he goes and crouches and unlocks the brassbound chest by the door. It seems to contain nothing but books and loose manuscript papers. He rummages a little and finds a particular sheaf, takes it to his chair and begins to read.

  In a few moments there is a knock on the door. An inn maid comes in, carrying another lit branch on a tray. She is gestured to put it on the table beside him; which she does, then turns to clear the supper things. Mr Bartholomew does not look at her; as if he lived not two hundred and fifty years ago, but five centuries ahead, when all that is menial and irksome will be done by automata. Leaving with the dishes on the tray, she turns at the door, and curtseys awkwardly towards the oblivious figure in the armchair, absorbed in his reading. He does not look up; and awed, perhaps because reading belongs to the Devil, or perhaps secretly piqued by such indifference, since even in those days inn maids were not hired for their plain looks, she silently goes.

  * * *

  In a much humbler room above, a garret beneath the roof, the young woman lies seemingly asleep beneath her brown ridingcloak, spread over her as blanke
t on a narrow truckle-bed. At the end of the unceiled room, by the one small gable-window, sits a single candle on a table, whose faint light barely reaches the far and inner end of the room where the girl lies; half on her stomach, her legs bent up beneath the cloak, and a crooked arm on the coarse pillow, on which she has spread the linen band that she used as a muffler. There is something childlike in her pose and in her face, with its slightly snub nose and closed eyelashes. Her left hand still holds the limp last of her violets. A mouse rustles as it runs here and there below the table, investigating and sniffing.

  On the back of a chair beside the bed sits perched above the discarded chip hat something apparently precious and taken from the opened bundle on the floor: a flat white cambric hat, its fronts and sides goffered into little flutes, with hanging from the sides, to fall behind the wearer's ears, two foot-long white lappetbands. It seems strangely ethereal, even faintly absurd and impertinent in that rough room. Such caps, without the lappets, were in history to become a mark of the house-maid and waitress, but they were then worn by all female fashionable society, mistresses and maids alike, as indeed were aprons on occasion. Male servants, the slaves of livery, were easily known; but female ones, as at least one contemporary male disapprovingly noted, and tried to prevent, were allowed considerable licence at this date. Many a gentleman entering a strange drawing-room had the mortification of bowing politely to what he supposed a lady intimate of his hostess, only to find he was wasting fine manners on a mere female domestic.

  But the owner of this delicate and ambiguous little cap is not truly asleep. At the sound of steps on stairs outside, her eyes open. The feet stop at her door, there is a momentary pause, then two thumps, as its bottom-board is kicked. She throws aside the cloak and stands from the bed. She wears a dark green gown, fastened between her breasts, but with its edges folded back, as also just below her elbows, to reveal a yellow lining. Below she wears a full white apron, to the ground. The dress is stayed, to a narrow waist, and gives her upper body the unnatural and breastless shape of an inverted cone. She slips her stockinged feet into a pair of worn mules and goes and opens the door.

  The manservant she has ridden with stands there, a large brass jug of warm water in one hand, an ochre-glazed earthenware bowl in the other. He is hardly visible in the darkness, his face in shadow. The sight of her seems to freeze him, but she stands back and points to the end of the narrow room, to the table. He goes past her and puts down the jug by the candle, then the bowl; but that done, he stands once more frozen, his back to her, his head hanging.

  The young woman has turned to pick up her large bundle, then lay it on the bed. It reveals an assembly of clothes,ribbons, an embroidered cotton scarf; and wrapped in them another bundle, that holds an array of minute earthenware gallipots, whose lids are formed, rather like those on modern jamjars, of scraps of parchment bound with string. There are some small and corked blue glass bottles also; a comb, a brush, a handmirror. Suddenly she becomes aware of the man's stillness, and turns to look at him.

  For a moment she does nothing. Then she goes towards him, takes his arm and urges him round. His face remains impassive; yet there is something both haggard and resentful in his stance, mute and tormented, a beast at bay, unbestially questioning why it should be so. Her look is steady. She shakes her head; at which his vacant blue eyes look away from her brown ones, past her head, at the far wall, though nothing else of his body moves. Now she looks down and lifts one of his hands, seems to examine it; touches and pats it with her other hand. They stand so for half a minute or more, in a strange immobility and silence, as two people waiting for something to happen. Finally she lets his hand fall and walking back to the door, relatches it; turns and looks back at the man, whose eyes have followed her. Now she points to the floor beside where she stands, as one might to a pet dog - gently, yet not without a hint of firmness. The man moves back down the room, still searching her eyes. Once more she touches his hand, but this time only to press it briefly. She goes back herself to the table, begins untying the apron. Then, as if she has forgotten, she returns to the bed and delving for a moment in the opened bundle, picks out one of the little pots, a small bottle and a square of worn linen, evidently a makeshift towel. With these she turns back to the table and stands there silent a moment, unfastening the cover of the pot in the candle-light.

  She begins to undress. First the apron is removed, and hung on one of a row of primitive wooden pegs beside the window. Next the yellow-lined green gown, which reveals a quilted calamanco petticoat (a skirt in modern terms, the lower part of the dress opens upon it). It is of a plum colour, and strangely glazed, for satin is woven in its worsted cloth. She unties that at the waist, and hangs it on another hook; then her stomacher. Beneath there remains only a smicket, or small white under-bodice, that one might have expected left on for modesty's sake. Yet that too is pulled over her close-drawn hair and hung beside the rest. She is naked now, above her swanskin and linen under-petticoats.

  She does all this quickly and naturally, as if she is alone. The effect on the watching man is peculiar, since from the moment she has begun undressing, his feet have been cautiously shifting; but not towards her. He edges thus back against the inner wall of the room; only its beams and plaster can prevent him from retreating further still.

  Now she pours water and washes, having extracted a small wash-ball of gilliflower soap from the glass pot: her face and neck, the front of her body and her arms. Her movements make the candle-light in front of her tremble a little; occasionally some small twist of her body or arms causes a gleaming reflection on the wet skin, or shows a soft rim of its whiteness on the edge of the black-brown silhouette of her bare back. Among the rafters moves a sinister parody, in elongated and spiderlike shadows, of the simple domesticity of the ritual. It is sinister in both senses, for it is clear now she is left-handed by nature. Not once does she turn while this is going on, or while she is patting herself dry; and not once do the silent man's eyes move from her half-naked body.

  Now she takes the blue bottle and moistens a corner of her linen towel in the liquid it contains, which she dabs here and there about her bared body; at the sides of her neck, beside her armpits, and somewhere in front. A perfume of Hungary water creeps down the room.

  She reaches sideways for her smicket and puts it on again. And now she does turn, and brings the candle to the bed, beside the man. She sits. Another little china pot is taken - the ball of soap has been carefully dried and replaced in its own container - and set beside the candle. It contains ceruse, a white cream or unguent made of lead carbonate, a universal cosmetic of her age, more properly seen as a lethal poison. She takes some on a forefinger and rubs it on her cheeks, then all over her face with little circular movements. The neck receives similar treatment; the tops of the shoulders. She reaches next back to the bundle an takes the mirror and one of the minuscule blue bottles, stoppered with a cork. She examines her face for a moment. The light o this improvised dressing-table is too far away; picking up th candlestick, she turns towards the man, indicating where she wants it held, closer.

  He comes forward and takes it, and holds it slightly to one side, within a foot of the girl's face. She spreads the linen towel on he lap, carefully unlids the last small gallipot; it holds a carmine ointment. A minute amount of this she touches across her lips spreading the colouring first with her tongue, next, mirror in hand, with a fingertip; every so often she touches the fingertip against each cheekbone and rubs the colouring there as well, using it as a rouge as well as a lip-salve. At last, satisfied with the effect, she puts the mirror down and relids the gallipot. Having done that, she pushes the human candle-holder's wrist gently away and reaches for another blue bottle. That has a goose quill in its cork when it is opened. To apply its colourless liquid she tilts her head back and allows one drop to fall into each opened eye. Perhaps it stings, for she blinks rapidly on each occasion. That bottle is recorked; and only then does she look up at the man.

&
nbsp; The brilliance of her eyes, already dilating under the influence of the belladonna, the heightened colour of her mouth and cheeks - the carmine is not a natural red at all - make it clear that this is no maid, though the effect is far more doll-like than aphrodisiac. Only those tawny irises, in their enlarging pupils, remain of the simple young woman who dozed on the bed fifteen minutes before. The corner of her red lips curve just enough to hint at a smile; yet innocently, almost as if she is the staring man's sister, indulging some harmless foible in him. After a few moments she closes her eyes, without altering the upward angle of her face.

  Another might have assumed it was an invitation to kiss, but this man's only reaction is to move the candle a little closer; to one side, to the other. He seems to search every inch of that faintly waxlike facial skin, every curve, every feature, as if somewhere among them lies a minute lost object, a hidden symptom, an answer; and his face grows mysterious in its intensity of concentration, its absence of emotion. The impression is of a profound innonence, such as congenital idiots sometimes display; of in some way seeing her more sustainedly, more wholly than normal intelligence could. Yet there is nothing of the idiot about his own face. Beneath its regularity, even handsomeness - the mouth is

  particularly strong and well shaped - there lurks a kind of imperturbable gravity, an otherness.

  She bears this silent scrutiny for nearly a minute. His free hand rises, hesitates, gently touches her right temple. He traces the line of her face, down her cheek to the jawbone and chin, as if she is indeed not flesh, but wax, painted marble, a death-mask. The tracing continues, and she closes her eyes again: the forehead, the eyebrows, the eyelids, the nose, the mouth itself. Her lips do not move against the fingers that brush across them.

  Suddenly the man falls to his knees, putting the candle upon the floor at her feet; and sinks his face into her lap, almost as if he cannot stand further sight of what he has caressed, and yet is at its mercy. She does not flinch or seem surprised at this; but stares down for a long moment at the back of the head buried against her; then reaches her left hand and strokes the bound hair. She whispers, so softly it seems to be to herself, not to him.