finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_9_part_0.txt
Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 10
chapter 10
{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-10", "summary": "After a short wait, Bathsheba granted the men an audience. They had settled on benches at the foot of the hall. Bathsheba opened the time book and the canvas moneybag. Liddy sat beside her \"with the air of a privileged person.\" Bathsheba announced her dismissal of the bailiff and her intention to manage the farm herself. \"The men breathed an audible breath of amazement.\" Then she called the roster, asking each employee about himself. The men were awkward; some joked, and each seized the opportunity to draw the attention of the crowd for a moment. Young Cainy Ball was made undershepherd to Gabriel, who spoke to Bathsheba with confidence. Bathsheba asked for news of Fanny and learned that Boldwood had had the pond dragged, but to no avail. Then Smallbury arrived from Casterbridge, stamping snow from his boots. The soldiers had left the town, and Fanny with them; rumor had it that her friend \"was higher in rank than a private.\" Bathsheba suggested that someone inform Boldwood. Before dismissing the help, Bathsheba promised, \"if you serve me well, so shall I serve you.\" She would arise early and be watching. \"In short, I shall astonish you all.\"", "analysis": "Critics consider this chapter representative of Hardy's work in its character delineation and its humor: Bathsheba is mistress of the situation; Gabriel loses none of his stature, although he is properly humble; Liddy is comical with the sense of her own importance; and the idiosyncratic characteristics of the staff members are developed further. The story has received a push forward."}


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."

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.




Chapter 10
After a short wait, Bathsheba granted the men an audience. They had settled on benches at the foot of the hall. Bathsheba opened the time book and the canvas moneybag. Liddy sat beside her "with the air of a privileged person." Bathsheba announced her dismissal of the bailiff and her intention to manage the farm herself. "The men breathed an audible breath of amazement." Then she called the roster, asking each employee about himself. The men were awkward; some joked, and each seized the opportunity to draw the attention of the crowd for a moment. Young Cainy Ball was made undershepherd to Gabriel, who spoke to Bathsheba with confidence. Bathsheba asked for news of Fanny and learned that Boldwood had had the pond dragged, but to no avail. Then Smallbury arrived from Casterbridge, stamping snow from his boots. The soldiers had left the town, and Fanny with them; rumor had it that her friend "was higher in rank than a private." Bathsheba suggested that someone inform Boldwood. Before dismissing the help, Bathsheba promised, "if you serve me well, so shall I serve you." She would arise early and be watching. "In short, I shall astonish you all."
Critics consider this chapter representative of Hardy's work in its character delineation and its humor: Bathsheba is mistress of the situation; Gabriel loses none of his stature, although he is properly humble; Liddy is comical with the sense of her own importance; and the idiosyncratic characteristics of the staff members are developed further. The story has received a push forward.