“Stop your scrubbing a moment,” said Bathsheba through the door to her. “I hear something.”
Maryann suspended the brush.
The tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the building. The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what was most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door. The door was tapped with the end of a crop or stick.
“What impertinence!” said Liddy, in a low voice. “To ride up the footpath like that! Why didn’t he stop at the gate? Lord! ’tis a gentleman! I see the top of his hat.”
“Be quiet!” said Bathsheba.
The further expression of Liddy’s concern was continued by aspect instead of narrative.
“Why doesn’t Mrs. Coggan go to the door?” Bathsheba continued.
Rat-tat-tat-tat resounded more decisively from Bathsheba’s oak.
“Maryann, you go!” said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of romantic possibilities.
“O ma’am—see, here’s a mess!”
The argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann.
“Liddy—you must,” said Bathsheba.
Liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish they were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress.
“There—Mrs. Coggan is going!” said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief in the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or more.
The door opened, and a deep voice said—
“Is Miss Everdene at home?”
“I’ll see, sir,” said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the room.
“Dear, what a thirtover place this world is!” continued Mrs. Coggan (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with flour). “I am never up to my elbows, miss in making a pudding but one of two things do happen—either my nose must needs begin tickling, and I can’t live without scratching it, or somebody knocks at the door. Here’s Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene.”
A woman’s dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the other, Bathsheba said at once—
“I can’t see him in this state. Whatever shall I do?” Not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farmhouses, so Liddy suggested—“Say you’re a fright with dust, and can’t come down.”
“Yes—that sounds very well,” said Mrs. Coggan critically.
“Say I can’t see him—that will do.”
Mrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested, adding, however, on her own responsibility, “Miss is dusting bottles, sir, and is quite a object—that’s why ’tis.”
“O, very well,” said the deep voice indifferently. “All I wanted to ask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?”
“Nothing, sir—but we may know to-night. William Smallbury is gone to Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the other men be inquiring about everywhere.”
The horse’s tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door closed.
“Who is Mr. Boldwood?” said Bathsheba.
“A gentleman-farmer at Little Weatherbury.”
“Married?”
“No, miss.”
“How old is he?”
“Forty, I should say—very handsome—rather stern-looking—and rich.”
“What a bother this dusting is! I am always in some unfortunate plight or other,” Bathsheba said complain ingly. “Why should he inquire about Fanny?”
“O, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle. He’s a very kind man that way, but Lord—there!”
“What?”
“Never was such a hopeless man for a woman! He’s been courted by sixes and sevens—all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round, have tried him. Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost Farmer Ives’s daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds’ worth of new clothes; but Lord—the money might as well have been thrown out of the window.”
A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them. This child was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as common among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents among our rivers. He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby elevated above the common herd of af flictionless humanity—to which exhibition people were expected to say “Poor child!” with a dash of congratula tion as well as pity.
“I’ve got a pen-nee!” said Master Coggan in a scanning measure.
“Well—who gave it you, Teddy?” said Liddy.
“Mis-terr Bold-wood! He gave it to me for opening the gate.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Where are you going, my little man?’ and I said, ‘To Miss Everdene’s, please’; and he said, ‘She is a staid woman, isn’t she, my little man?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ ”
“You naughty child! What did you say that for?”
“ ’Cause he gave me the penny!”
“What a pucker everything is in!” said Bathsheba dis contentedly, when the child had gone. “Get away, Maryann, or go on with your scrubbing, or do something! You ought to be married by this time, and not here troubling me!”
“Ay, mistress—so I did. But what between the poor men I won’t have, and the rich men who won’t have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!”
“Did anybody ever want to marry you, miss?” Liddy ventured to ask when they were again alone. “Lots of ’em, I daresay?”
Bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation to say yes, since it really was in her power, was irresistible by aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published as old.
“A man wanted to once,” she said, in a highly experienced tone, and the image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her.
“How nice it must seem!” said Liddy, with the fixed features of mental realization. “And, you wouldn’t have him?”
“He wasn’t quite good enough for me.”
“How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say, ‘Thank you!’ I seem I hear it. ‘No, sir—I’m your better,’ or ‘Kiss my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence.’ And did you love him, miss?”
“O, no. But I rather liked him.”
“Do you now?”
“Of course not—what footsteps are those I hear?”
Liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night. A crooked file of men was approaching the back door. The whole string of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpæ, which, distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a whole family. Some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of Russia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet—marked on the wrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work. Two or three women in pattens brought up the rear.
“The Philistines be upon us,” said Liddy, making her nose white against the glass.
“O, very well. Maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till I am dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall.”
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, correct ingly, 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 came 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 hay bonds, 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.
“O 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.
“O, 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.”
“O 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.
“O—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.