Read A Maggot - John Fowles for Free Online Page B

of the inn's
life, for the humbler traveller or the servants of grander ones, as
the equivalent room in the old farmhouse. If not finer, the food
eaten there - and no doubt the company - was certainly warmer than in
the more public parlours or private chambers. The inn servants
welcomed the gossip, news and entertainment brought by strangers of
their own approximate class and kind. The undisputed king of the
Black Hart's kitchen, that evening, and from the moment he had
stamped through the door from the stableyard, cutlass and cased
blunderbuss under one arm, and managed, in one comprehensive removal
of his hat and sweep of his eyes, to ogle kitchen maids, cook and
Dorcas the inn maid, had been he of the scarlet coat, soon
self-announced as Sergeant Farthing.
    He was, it equally soon seemed, of that ancient type-
as ancient as the human race, or certainly as human war - the Roman
comedians dubbed the miles gloriosus; the military boaster, or
eternal bag of bullshit. Even to be a modest soldier was no
recommendation in eighteenth-century England. The monarchs and their
ministers might argue the need for a standing army; to everyone else
soldiers seemed an accursed nuisance (and insult, when they were
foreign mercenaries), an intolerable expense both upon the nation and
whatever particular and unfortunate place they were quartered in.
Farthing appeared oblivious to this, and immoderately confident of
his own credentials: how he was (despite his present dress) an
ex-sergeant of marines, how as a drummer boy he had been on Byng's
flagship during the glorious engagement of Cape Passaro in 't8, where
the Spaniards were given such a drubbing; had been commended for his
courage by Admiral Byng himself (not the one to be filled with
Portsmouth lead in 1757 to encourage the others, but his father),
though 'no bigger than that lad' ... the potboy. He had a way of
fixing attention; and not letting it go, once it was fixed. There was
certainly no one in that kitchen to challenge such a self-proclaimed
man of war, and of the outer world. He had in addition a bold eye for
his female listeners, since like all his kind he knew very well that
half the trick of getting an audience into the palm of one's hand is
flattering them. He also ate and drank copiously, and praised each
drop and mouthful; perhaps the most truthful sentence he spoke was
when he said he knew good cider when he tasted it.
    Of course he was questioned in return, as to the
present journey. The younger gentleman and his uncle were riding, it
seemed, to pay court to a lady who was respectively their aunt and
their sister: a lady as rich as a supercargo, old and ailing besides,
who lived at Bideford or thereabout; who had never married, but
inherited lands and property fit for a duchess. Various winks and
nose-taps glossed this already sufficiently explicit information: the
young gentleman, it was hinted, had not always in the past been a
model of assiduity, and lay even now in debt. The wench upstairs was
a London lady's maid, destined for the aunt's service, while he,
Timothy Farthing, had come as a service to the uncle, with whom he
had been long acquainted and who was of nervous disposition as
regards highwaymen, footpads and almost any other human face met more
than a mile from St Paul's. Though he said it himself, they had
travelled thus far under his vigilant eye as safe as with a company
of foot.
    And this uncle? He was a man of means, a substantial
merchant in the City of London, however with children of his own to
provide for. His brother, the younger gentleman's father, had died
improvidently some years before, and the uncle stood as his nephew's
effective guardian and mentor.
    Only once had he broken off during all this discourse
or quasi-monologue; and that was when Dick had come from the stables
and stood, as if lost; uncomprehending, unsmiling, in the doorway.
Farthing had bunched fingers to his mouth and pointed to an empty
place on the far side of the table, then