Free A Maggot - John Fowles by John Fowles

free will (if not
indeed Midas-rich, less to be envied than to be pitied our lack of
absolutes and of social certainty); and above all anarchically, if
not insanely, driven by self-esteem and self-interest. Fanny does not
weep with frustrated rage, from a modem sense of self, because life
obliges it to suffer this kind of humiliation, but much more with a
dumb animal's sadness. Such humiliation is as inseparable from life
as mud from winter roads; or as child-death from child-birth (of the
2,710 deaths registered in England in the by no means unusual month
previous to this day, very nearly half were of infants below the age
of five). The conditions of such past worlds were more inexorably
fixed than we can imagine; and as little worth expecting sympathy
from as seems proven by Mr Bartholomew's impassive face.
    He says quietly, 'Do as I say.'
    She still hesitates, but then abruptly stands and
goes to it.
    'Now open the shutter and look out.' He waits till he
hears, for he does not turn in his chair to look, the shutter open.
'Do you see the Redeemer on His throne in the heavens, beside His
Father?'
    She looks back to where he sits. 'You know not, sir.'
    Then what instead?'
    'Nothing. The night.'
    'And in that night?'
    She glances quickly out of the window. 'Nothing but
the stars. The sky is come clear.'
    'Do the beams of the brightest shake?'
    Again she looks. 'Yes, sir.'
    'Do you know why?'
    'No, sir.'
    'I will tell you. They shake with laughter, Fanny,
for they mock you. They have mocked you since your day of birth. They
will mock you to your day of death. You are but a painted shadow to
them, and all your world. It matters not to them whether you have
faith in Christ or not. Are sinner or saint, drab or duchess. Man or
woman, young or old, it is all one. Whether Hell or Heaven awaits
you, good fortune or bad, pain or bliss, to them it is equal. You are
born for their amusement, as you are bought for mine. Beneath their
light you are but brute, as deaf and dumb as Dick, as blind as Fate
itself. They care not one whit what may become of you, no more for
the courses of your miserable existence than those on a high hill who
watch a battle in the plain below, indifferent to all but its
spectacle. You are nothing to them, Fanny. Shall I tell thee why they
scorn?' She is silent. 'Because thou dost not scorn them back.'
    The girl stares across the room at the oblivious back
of his head.
    'How should I scorn stars, sir?'
    'How do you scorn a man?'
    She is slow to answer.
    'I turn away, or flout his desire.'
    'But say that man's a justice, who would have you
whipped and clapped in the stocks without fair cause?'
    'I should protest I was innocent.'
    'And if he doth not hear?' She is silent. 'Then you
must needs sit
    in the stocks.'
    'Yes, sir.'
    'Is such, true justice?'
    'No.'
    'Now say the justice who gives you such justice is no
man, but you yourself, and the stocks you sit in made not of iron and
wood, but of your blindness for the one part and your folly for the
other? What then?'
    'I am bemused, sir. I know not what you would have of
me.'
    He stands and walks to the hearth.
    'What I should have of far more than thee, Fanny.'
'Sir?'
    'No more. Get thee to where thou must lie, until thou
wak'st.'
    She does not move for a moment or two, then starts to
cross the room towards the door; but stops behind the stool, and
looks obliquely at him.
    'My lord, I beg you, what would you have?'
    But the only answer she receives is his raised left
arm and hand, that point towards the door. He turns his back upon
her, in final dismissal. She gives Mr Bartholomew one last look, and
an unseen curtsey, and leaves.
    For some time in the silence he remains standing and
staring at the now dying fire. At last he turns and looks at the
stool; and a little later goes to the window. There he looks out and
up as she had done, almost as if he wishes to assure himself that
there are indeed stars alone in the sky. It is impossible to read by
his face what he is