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CHAPTER X - MISTRESS AND MEN
HALF-AN-HOUR later Bathsheba, in finished dress, and
followed by Liddy, entered the upper end of the old hall to
find that her men had all deposited themselves on a long
form and a settle at the lower extremity. She sat down at a
table and opened the time-book, pen in her hand, with a
canvas money-bag beside her. From this she poured a small
heap of coin. Liddy chose a position at her elbow and began
to sew, sometimes pausing and looking round, or with the air
of a privileged person, taking up one of the half-sovereigns
lying before her and surveying it merely as a work of art,
while strictly preventing her countenance from expressing
any wish to possess it as money.
"Now before I begin, men," said Bathsheba, "I have two
matters to speak of. The first is that the bailiff is
dismissed for thieving, and that I have formed a resolution
to have no bailiff at all, but to manage everything with my
own head and hands."
The men breathed an audible breath of amazement.
"The next matter is, have you heard anything of Fanny?"
"Nothing, ma'am."
"Have you done anything?"
"I met Farmer Boldwood," said Jacob Smallbury, "and I went
with him and two of his men, and dragged Newmill Pond, but
we found nothing."
"And the new shepherd have been to Buck's Head, by Yalbury,
thinking she had gone there, but nobody had seed her," said
Laban Tall.
"Hasn't William Smallbury been to Casterbridge?"
"Yes, ma'am, but he's not yet come home. He promised to be
back by six."
"It wants a quarter to six at present," said Bathsheba,
looking at her watch. "I daresay he'll be in directly.
Well, now then" -- she looked into the book -- "Joseph
Poorgrass, are you there?"
"Yes, sir -- ma'am I mane," said the person addressed. "I
be the personal name of Poorgrass."
"And what are you?"
"Nothing in my own eye. In the eye of other people -- well,
I don't say it; though public thought will out."
"What do you do on the farm?"
"I do do carting things all the year, and in seed time I
shoots the rooks and sparrows, and helps at pig-killing,
sir."
"How much to you?"
"Please nine and ninepence and a good halfpenny where 'twas
a bad one, sir -- ma'am I mane."
"Quite correct. Now here are ten shillings in addition as a
small present, as I am a new comer."
Bathsheba blushed slightly at the sense of being generous in
public, and Henery Fray, who had drawn up towards her chair,
lifted his eyebrows and fingers to express amazement on a
small scale.
"How much do I owe you -- that man in the corner -- what's
your name?" continued Bathsheba.
"Matthew Moon, ma'am," said a singular framework of clothes
with nothing of any consequence inside them, which advanced
with the toes in no definite direction forwards, but turned
in or out as they chanced to swing.
"Matthew Mark, did you say? -- speak out -- I shall not hurt
you," inquired the young farmer, kindly.
"Matthew Moon, mem," said Henery Fray, correctingly, from
behind her chair, to which point he had edged himself.
"Matthew Moon," murmured Bathsheba, turning her bright eyes
to the book. "Ten and twopence halfpenny is the sum put
down to you, I see?"
"Yes, mis'ess," said Matthew, as the rustle of wind among
dead leaves.
"Here it is, and ten shillings. Now the next -- Andrew
Randle, you are a new man, I hear. How come you to leave
your last farm?"
"P-p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-l-l-l-l-ease, ma'am, p-p-p-p-pl-pl-
pl-pl-please, ma'am-please'm-please'm ----"
"'A's a stammering man, mem," said Henery Fray in an
undertone, "and they turned him away because the only time
he ever did speak plain he said his soul was his own, and
other iniquities, to the squire. 'A can cuss, mem, as well
as you or I, but 'a can't speak a common speech to save his
life."
"Andrew Randle, here's yours -- finish thanking me in a day
or two. Temperance Miller -- oh, here's another, Soberness
-- both women I suppose?"
"Yes'm. Here we be, 'a b'lieve," was echoed in shrill
unison.
"What have you been doing?"
"Tending thrashing-machine and wimbling haybonds, and saying
'Hoosh!' to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds
and planting Early Flourballs and Thompson's Wonderfuls with
a dibble."
"Yes -- I see. Are they satisfactory women?" she inquired
softly of Henery Fray.
"Oh mem -- don't ask me! Yielding women -- as scarlet a pair
as ever was!" groaned Henery under his breath.
"Sit down."
"Who, mem?"
"Sit down."
Joseph Poorgrass, in the background twitched, and his lips
became dry with fear of some terrible consequences, as he
saw Bathsheba summarily speaking, and Henery slinking off to
a corner.
"Now the next. Laban Tall, you'll stay on working for me?"
"For you or anybody that pays me well, ma'am," replied the
young married man.
"True -- the man must live!" said a woman in the back
quarter, who had just entered with clicking pattens.
"What woman is that?" Bathsheba asked.
"I be his lawful wife!" continued the voice with greater
prominence of manner and tone. This lady called herself
five-and-twenty, looked thirty, passed as thirty-five, and
was forty. She was a woman who never, like some newly
married, showed conjugal tenderness in public, perhaps
because she had none to show.
"Oh, you are," said Bathsheba. "Well, Laban, will you stay
on?"
"Yes, he'll stay, ma'am!" said again the shrill tongue of
Laban's lawful wife.
"Well, he can speak for himself, I suppose."
"Oh Lord, not he, ma'am! A simple tool. Well enough, but a
poor gawkhammer mortal," the wife replied
"Heh-heh-heh!" laughed the married man with a hideous effort
of appreciation, for he was as irrepressibly good-humoured
under ghastly snubs as a parliamentary candidate on the
hustings.
The names remaining were called in the same manner.
"Now I think I have done with you," said Bathsheba, closing
the book and shaking back a stray twine of hair. "Has
William Smallbury returned?"
"No, ma'am."
"The new shepherd will want a man under him," suggested
Henery Fray, trying to make himself official again by a
sideway approach towards her chair.
"Oh -- he will. Who can he have?"
"Young Cain Ball is a very good lad," Henery said, "and
Shepherd Oak don't mind his youth?" he added, turning with
an apologetic smile to the shepherd, who had just appeared
on the scene, and was now leaning against the doorpost with
his arms folded.
"No, I don't mind that," said Gabriel.
"How did Cain come by such a name?" asked Bathsheba.
"Oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a Scripture-
read woman, made a mistake at his christening, thinking
'twas Abel killed Cain, and called en Cain, but 'twas too
late, for the name could never be got rid of in the parish.
'Tis very unfortunate for the boy."
"It is rather unfortunate."
"Yes. However, we soften it down as much as we can, and
call him Cainy. Ah, pore widow-woman! she cried her heart
out about it almost. She was brought up by a very heathen
father and mother, who never sent her to church or school,
and it shows how the sins of the parents are visited upon
the children, mem."
Mr. Fray here drew up his features to the mild degree of
melancholy required when the persons involved in the given
misfortune do not belong to your own family.
"Very well then, Cainey Ball to be under-shepherd. And you
quite understand your duties? -- you I mean, Gabriel Oak?"
"Quite well, I thank you, Miss Everdene," said Shepherd Oak
from the doorpost. "If I don't, I'll inquire." Gabriel was
rather staggered by the remarkable coolness of her manner.
Certainly nobody without previous information would have
dreamt that Oak and the handsome woman before whom he stood
had ever been other than strangers. But perhaps her air was
the inevitable result of the social rise which had advanced
her from a cottage to a large house and fields. The case is
not unexampled in high places. When, in the writings of the
later poets, Jove and his family are found to have moved
from their cramped quarters on the peak of Olympus into the
wide sky above it, their words show a proportionate increase
of arrogance and reserve.
Footsteps were heard in the passage, combining in their
character the qualities both of weight and measure, rather
at the expense of velocity.
(All.) "Here's Billy Smallbury come from Casterbridge."
"And what's the news?" said Bathsheba, as William, after
marching to the middle of the hall, took a handkerchief from
his hat and wiped his forehead from its centre to its
remoter boundaries.
"I should have been sooner, miss," he said, "if it hadn't
been for the weather." He then stamped with each foot
severely, and on looking down his boots were perceived to be
clogged with snow.
"Come at last, is it?" said Henery.
"Well, what about Fanny?" said Bathsheba.
"Well, ma'am, in round numbers, she's run away with the
soldiers," said William.
"No; not a steady girl like Fanny!"
"I'll tell ye all particulars. When I got to Casterbridge
Barracks, they said, 'The Eleventh Dragoon-Guards be gone
away, and new troops have come.' The Eleventh left last week
for Melchester and onwards. The Route came from Government
like a thief in the night, as is his nature to, and afore
the Eleventh knew it almost, they were on the march. They
passed near here."
Gabriel had listened with interest. "I saw them go," he
said.
"Yes," continued William, "they pranced down the street
playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' so 'tis said, in
glorious notes of triumph. Every looker-on's inside shook
with the blows of the great drum to his deepest vitals, and
there was not a dry eye throughout the town among the
public-house people and the nameless women!"
"But they're not gone to any war?"
"No, ma'am; but they be gone to take the places of them who
may, which is very close connected. And so I said to
myself, Fanny's young man was one of the regiment, and she's
gone after him. There, ma'am, that's it in black and
white."
"Did you find out his name?"
"No; nobody knew it. I believe he was higher in rank than a
private."
Gabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in
doubt.
"Well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any
rate," said Bathsheba. "But one of you had better run
across to Farmer Boldwood's and tell him that much."
She then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to
them with a pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress
added a soberness that was hardly to be found in the words
themselves.
"Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don't
yet know my powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do
my best, and if you serve me well, so shall I serve you.
Don't any unfair ones among you (if there are any such, but
I hope not) suppose that because I'm a woman I don't
understand the difference between bad goings-on and good."
(All.) "No'm!"
(Liddy.) "Excellent well said."
"I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield
before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you
are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all."
(All.) "Yes'm!"
"And so good-night."
(All.) "Good-night, ma'am."
Then this small thesmothete stepped from the table, and
surged out of the hall, her black silk dress licking up a
few straws and dragging them along with a scratching noise
upon the floor. Liddy, elevating her feelings to the
occasion from a sense of grandeur, floated off behind
Bathsheba with a milder dignity not entirely free from
travesty, and the door was closed.
Content of CHAPTER X - MISTRESS AND MEN [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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Read next: CHAPTER XI - OUTSIDE THE BARRACKS -- SNOW -- A MEETING
Read previous: CHAPTER IX - THE HOMESTEAD -- A VISITOR -- HALF-CONFIDENCES
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