Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (148 page)

“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.”

“Oh, 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, complainingly. “Why should he inquire about Fanny?”

“Oh, 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 afflictionless humanity — to which exhibition people were expected to say “Poor child!” with a dash of congratulation 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, discontentedly 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 was really 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 realisation. “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?”

“Oh, 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.

“Oh, 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, 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, meaning Abel all the time. The parson put it right, 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.”