THE MALTHOUSE--THE CHAT--NEWS

Warren's Malthouse was enclosed by an old wall inwrapped with ivy,
and though not much of the exterior was visible at this hour, the
character and purposes of the building were clearly enough shown by
its outline upon the sky.  From the walls an overhanging thatched
roof sloped up to a point in the centre, upon which rose a small
wooden lantern, fitted with louvre-boards on all the four sides,
and from these openings a mist was dimly perceived to be escaping
into the night air.  There was no window in front; but a square
hole in the door was glazed with a single pane, through which red,
comfortable rays now stretched out upon the ivied wall in front.
Voices were to be heard inside.

Oak's hand skimmed the surface of the door with fingers extended to
an Elymas-the-Sorcerer pattern, till he found a leathern strap, which
he pulled.  This lifted a wooden latch, and the door swung open.

The room inside was lighted only by the ruddy glow from the kiln
mouth, which shone over the floor with the streaming horizontality
of the setting sun, and threw upwards the shadows of all facial
irregularities in those assembled around.  The stone-flag floor was
worn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undulations
everywhere.  A curved settle of unplaned oak stretched along one
side, and in a remote corner was a small bed and bedstead, the owner
and frequent occupier of which was the maltster.

This aged man was now sitting opposite the fire, his frosty white
hair and beard overgrowing his gnarled figure like the grey moss and
lichen upon a leafless apple-tree.  He wore breeches and the laced-up
shoes called ankle-jacks; he kept his eyes fixed upon the fire.

Gabriel's nose was greeted by an atmosphere laden with the sweet
smell of new malt.  The conversation (which seemed to have been
concerning the origin of the fire) immediately ceased, and every one
ocularly criticised him to the degree expressed by contracting the
flesh of their foreheads and looking at him with narrowed eyelids, as
if he had been a light too strong for their sight.  Several exclaimed
meditatively, after this operation had been completed:--

"Oh, 'tis the new shepherd, 'a b'lieve."

"We thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but
weren't sure 'twere not a dead leaf blowed across," said another.
"Come in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we don't know yer
name."

"Gabriel Oak, that's my name, neighbours."

The ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned at this--his turning
being as the turning of a rusty crane.

"That's never Gable Oak's grandson over at Norcombe--never!" he said,
as a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed for a
moment to take literally.

"My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel,"
said the shepherd, placidly.

"Thought I knowed the man's face as I seed him on the rick!--thought
I did!  And where be ye trading o't to now, shepherd?"

"I'm thinking of biding here," said Mr. Oak.

"Knowed yer grandfather for years and years!" continued the maltster,
the words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum
previously imparted had been sufficient.

"Ah--and did you!"

"Knowed yer grandmother."

"And her too!"

"Likewise knowed yer father when he was a child.  Why, my boy
Jacob there and your father were sworn brothers--that they were
sure--weren't ye, Jacob?"

"Ay, sure," said his son, a young man about sixty-five, with a
semi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw,
which made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in
a bank.  "But 'twas Joe had most to do with him.  However, my son
William must have knowed the very man afore us--didn't ye, Billy,
afore ye left Norcombe?"

"No, 'twas Andrew," said Jacob's son Billy, a child of forty, or
thereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful
soul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla
shade here and there.

"I can mind Andrew," said Oak, "as being a man in the place when I
was quite a child."

"Ay--the other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at
my grandson's christening," continued Billy.  "We were talking about
this very family, and 'twas only last Purification Day in this very
world, when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk,
you know, shepherd, and I can mind the day because they all had to
traypse up to the vestry--yes, this very man's family."

"Come, shepherd, and drink.  'Tis gape and swaller with us--a drap of
sommit, but not of much account," said the maltster, removing from
the fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing
into it for so many years.  "Take up the God-forgive-me, Jacob.  See
if 'tis warm, Jacob."

Jacob stooped to the God-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug
standing in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather
furred with extraneous matter about the outside, especially in the
crevices of the handles, the innermost curves of which may not have
seen daylight for several years by reason of this encrustation
thereon--formed of ashes accidentally wetted with cider and baked
hard; but to the mind of any sensible drinker the cup was no
worse for that, being incontestably clean on the inside and about
the rim.  It may be observed that such a class of mug is called a
God-forgive-me in Weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons;
probably because its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of
himself when he sees its bottom in drinking it empty.

Jacob, on receiving the order to see if the liquor was warm enough,
placidly dipped his forefinger into it by way of thermometer, and
having pronounced it nearly of the proper degree, raised the cup and
very civilly attempted to dust some of the ashes from the bottom with
the skirt of his smock-frock, because Shepherd Oak was a stranger.

"A clane cup for the shepherd," said the maltster commandingly.

"No--not at all," said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of
considerateness.  "I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and
when I know what sort it is."  Taking the mug he drank an inch or
more from the depth of its contents, and duly passed it to the
next man.  "I wouldn't think of giving such trouble to neighbours
in washing up when there's so much work to be done in the world
already." continued Oak in a moister tone, after recovering from the
stoppage of breath which is occasioned by pulls at large mugs.

"A right sensible man," said Jacob.

"True, true; it can't be gainsaid!" observed a brisk young man--Mark
Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere
in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink
with was, unfortunately, to pay for.

"And here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent,
shepherd.  The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals.
Don't ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in
the road outside as I was bringing it along, and may be 'tis rather
gritty.  There, 'tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you
say, and you bain't a particular man we see, shepherd."

"True, true--not at all," said the friendly Oak.

"Don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at
all.  Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!"

"My own mind exactly, neighbour."

"Ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson!--his grandfer were just such a
nice unparticular man!" said the maltster.

"Drink, Henry Fray--drink," magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a person
who held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor
was concerned, as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its
gradual revolution among them.

Having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air,
Henry did not refuse.  He was a man of more than middle age, with
eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of
the world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners
at the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination.
He always signed his name "Henery"--strenuously insisting upon that
spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the
second "e" was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply
that "H-e-n-e-r-y" was the name he was christened and the name he
would stick to--in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences
were matters which had a great deal to do with personal character.

Mr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man
with a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose
name had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and
neighbouring parishes as best man and chief witness in countless
unions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled
the post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.

"Come, Mark Clark--come.  Ther's plenty more in the barrel," said
Jan.

"Ay--that I will, 'tis my only doctor," replied Mr. Clark, who,
twenty years younger than Jan Coggan, revolved in the same orbit.  He
secreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular
parties.

"Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye han't had a drop!" said Mr. Coggan to a
self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.

"Such a modest man as he is!" said Jacob Smallbury.  "Why, ye've
hardly had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis'ess's
face, so I hear, Joseph?"

All looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach.

"No--I've hardly looked at her at all," simpered Joseph, reducing his
body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue
prominence.  "And when I seed her, 'twas nothing but blushes with
me!"

"Poor feller," said Mr. Clark.

"'Tis a curious nature for a man," said Jan Coggan.

"Yes," continued Joseph Poorgrass--his shyness, which was so painful
as a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was
regarded as an interesting study.  "'Twere blush, blush, blush with
me every minute of the time, when she was speaking to me."

"I believe ye, Joseph Poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very
bashful man."

"'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul," said the maltster.  "And
how long have ye have suffered from it, Joseph?" [a]

   [Transcriber's note a: Alternate text, appears in all three
   editions on hand: "'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul,"
   said the maltster.  "And ye have suffered from it a long time, we
   know."

   "Ay, ever since..."]

"Oh, ever since I was a boy.  Yes--mother was concerned to her heart
about it--yes.  But 'twas all nought."

"Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?"

"Oh ay, tried all sorts o' company.  They took me to Greenhill
Fair, and into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were
women-folk riding round--standing upon horses, with hardly anything
on but their smocks; but it didn't cure me a morsel.  And then I
was put errand-man at the Women's Skittle Alley at the back of the
Tailor's Arms in Casterbridge.  'Twas a horrible sinful situation,
and a very curious place for a good man.  I had to stand and look
ba'dy people in the face from morning till night; but 'twas no use--I
was just as bad as ever after all.  Blushes hev been in the family
for generations.  There, 'tis a happy providence that I be no worse."

"True," said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder
view of the subject.  "'Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have
been worse; but even as you be, 'tis a very bad affliction for 'ee,
Joseph.  For ye see, shepherd, though 'tis very well for a woman,
dang it all, 'tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?"

"'Tis--'tis," said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation.  "Yes, very
awkward for the man."

"Ay, and he's very timid, too," observed Jan Coggan.  "Once he had
been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and
lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn't
ye, Master Poorgrass?"

"No, no, no; not that story!" expostulated the modest man, forcing a
laugh to bury his concern.

"--And so 'a lost himself quite," continued Mr. Coggan, with an
impassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide,
must run its course and would respect no man.  "And as he was coming
along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to
find his way out of the trees nohow, 'a cried out, 'Man-a-lost!
man-a-lost!'  A owl in a tree happened to be crying 'Whoo-whoo-whoo!'
as owls do, you know, shepherd" (Gabriel nodded), "and Joseph, all in
a tremble, said, 'Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!'"

"No, no, now--that's too much!" said the timid man, becoming a man
of brazen courage all of a sudden.  "I didn't say SIR.  I'll take my
oath I didn't say 'Joseph Poorgrass o' Weatherbury, sir.'  No, no;
what's right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very
well that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollering there at
that time o' night.  'Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,'--that's every
word I said, and I shouldn't ha' said that if 't hadn't been for
Keeper Day's metheglin....  There, 'twas a merciful thing it ended
where it did."

The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company,
Jan went on meditatively:--

"And he's the fearfullest man, bain't ye, Joseph?  Ay, another time
ye were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, weren't ye, Joseph?"

"I was," replied Poorgrass, as if there were some conditions too
serious even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one.

"Yes; that were the middle of the night, too.  The gate would not
open, try how he would, and knowing there was the Devil's hand in it,
he kneeled down."

"Ay," said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire,
the cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the
experience alluded to.  "My heart died within me, that time; but I
kneeled down and said the Lord's Prayer, and then the Belief right
through, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer.  But
no, the gate wouldn't open; and then I went on with Dearly Beloved
Brethren, and, thinks I, this makes four, and 'tis all I know out
of book, and if this don't do it nothing will, and I'm a lost man.
Well, when I got to Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found
the gate would open--yes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as
ever."

A meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and
during its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit,
which glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun,
shaping their eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly
from the depth of the subject discussed.

Gabriel broke the silence.  "What sort of a place is this to live at,
and what sort of a mis'ess is she to work under?" Gabriel's bosom
thrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly
the inner-most subject of his heart.

"We d' know little of her--nothing.  She only showed herself a few
days ago.  Her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his
world-wide skill; but he couldn't save the man.  As I take it, she's
going to keep on the farm.

"That's about the shape o't, 'a b'lieve," said Jan Coggan.  "Ay, 'tis
a very good family.  I'd as soon be under 'em as under one here and
there.  Her uncle was a very fair sort of man.  Did ye know en,
shepherd--a bachelor-man?"

"Not at all."

"I used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, Charlotte,
who was his dairymaid.  Well, a very good-hearted man were Farmer
Everdene, and I being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call
and see her and drink as much ale as I liked, but not to carry away
any--outside my skin I mane of course."

"Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning."

"And so you see 'twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his
kindness as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to
drink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man's
generosity--"

"True, Master Coggan, 'twould so," corroborated Mark Clark.

"--And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by
the time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basket--so thorough dry
that that ale would slip down--ah, 'twould slip down sweet!  Happy
times!  Heavenly times!  Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that
house!  You can mind, Jacob?  You used to go wi' me sometimes."

"I can--I can," said Jacob.  "That one, too, that we had at Buck's
Head on a White Monday was a pretty tipple."

"'Twas.  But for a wet of the better class, that brought you no
nearer to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was
none like those in Farmer Everdene's kitchen.  Not a single damn
allowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment
when all were blindest, though the good old word of sin thrown in
here and there at such times is a great relief to a merry soul."

"True," said the maltster.  "Nater requires her swearing at the
regular times, or she's not herself; and unholy exclamations is a
necessity of life."

"But Charlotte," continued Coggan--"not a word of the sort would
Charlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain....  Ay,
poor Charlotte, I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into
Heaven when 'a died!  But 'a was never much in luck's way, and
perhaps 'a went downwards after all, poor soul."

"And did any of you know Miss Everdene's father and mother?" inquired
the shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation
in the desired channel.

"I knew them a little," said Jacob Smallbury; "but they were
townsfolk, and didn't live here.  They've been dead for years.
Father, what sort of people were mis'ess' father and mother?"

"Well," said the maltster, "he wasn't much to look at; but she was a
lovely woman.  He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart."

"Used to kiss her scores and long-hundreds o' times, so 'twas said,"
observed Coggan.

"He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as I've been
told," said the maltster.

"Ay," said Coggan.  "He admired her so much that he used to light the
candle three times a night to look at her."

"Boundless love; I shouldn't have supposed it in the universe!"
murmured Joseph Poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in
his moral reflections.

"Well, to be sure," said Gabriel.

"Oh, 'tis true enough.  I knowed the man and woman both well.  Levi
Everdene--that was the man's name, sure.  'Man,' saith I in my
hurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than that--'a was a
gentleman-tailor really, worth scores of pounds.  And he became a
very celebrated bankrupt two or three times."

"Oh, I thought he was quite a common man!" said Joseph.

"Oh no, no!  That man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and
silver."

The maltster being rather short of breath, Mr. Coggan, after absently
scrutinising a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the
narrative, with a private twirl of his eye:--

"Well, now, you'd hardly believe it, but that man--our Miss
Everdene's father--was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a
while.  Understand? 'a didn't want to be fickle, but he couldn't help
it.  The pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his
wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would.  He spoke to me in
real tribulation about it once.  'Coggan,' he said, 'I could never
wish for a handsomer woman than I've got, but feeling she's ticketed
as my lawful wife, I can't help my wicked heart wandering, do what I
will.'  But at last I believe he cured it by making her take off her
wedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name as they sat together
after the shop was shut, and so 'a would get to fancy she was only
his sweetheart, and not married to him at all.  And as soon as he
could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh,
'a got to like her as well as ever, and they lived on a perfect
picture of mutel love."

"Well, 'twas a most ungodly remedy," murmured Joseph Poorgrass; "but
we ought to feel deep cheerfulness that a happy Providence kept it
from being any worse.  You see, he might have gone the bad road and
given his eyes to unlawfulness entirely--yes, gross unlawfulness, so
to say it."

"You see," said Billy Smallbury, "The man's will was to do right,
sure enough, but his heart didn't chime in."

"He got so much better, that he was quite godly in his later years,
wasn't he, Jan?" said Joseph Poorgrass.  "He got himself confirmed
over again in a more serious way, and took to saying 'Amen' almost as
loud as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the
tombstones.  He used, too, to hold the money-plate at Let Your Light
so Shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children;
and he kept a missionary box upon his table to nab folks unawares
when they called; yes, and he would box the charity-boys' ears, if
they laughed in church, till they could hardly stand upright, and do
other deeds of piety natural to the saintly inclined."

"Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but high things," added Billy
Smallbury.  "One day Parson Thirdly met him and said, 'Good-Morning,
Mister Everdene; 'tis a fine day!'  'Amen' said Everdene, quite
absent-like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson.  Yes,
he was a very Christian man."

"Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time," said
Henery Fray.  "Never should have thought she'd have growed up such a
handsome body as she is."

"'Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face."

"Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and
ourselves.  Ah!" Henery gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of
ironical knowledge.

"A queer Christian, like the Devil's head in a cowl, [1] as the
saying is," volunteered Mark Clark.

   [Footnote 1: This phrase is a conjectural emendation of the
   unintelligible expression, "as the Devil said to the Owl,"
   used by the natives.]

"He is," said Henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain
point.  "Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as
soon tell a lie Sundays as working-days--that I do so."

"Good faith, you do talk!" said Gabriel.

"True enough," said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon
the company with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener
appreciation of the miseries of life than ordinary men are capable
of.  "Ah, there's people of one sort, and people of another, but
that man--bless your souls!"

Gabriel thought fit to change the subject.  "You must be a very aged
man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient," he remarked.

"Father's so old that 'a can't mind his age, can ye, father?"
interposed Jacob.  "And he's growed terrible crooked too, lately,"
Jacob continued, surveying his father's figure, which was rather
more bowed than his own.  "Really one may say that father there is
three-double."

"Crooked folk will last a long while," said the maltster, grimly, and
not in the best humour.

"Shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, father--
wouldn't ye, shepherd?"

"Ay that I should," said Gabriel with the heartiness of a man who had
longed to hear it for several months.  "What may your age be,
malter?"

The maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis,
and elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit, said, in
the slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so
generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it,
"Well, I don't mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon
up the places I've lived at, and so get it that way.  I bode at
Upper Longpuddle across there" (nodding to the north) "till I were
eleven. I bode seven at Kingsbere" (nodding to the east) "where
I took to malting.  I went therefrom to Norcombe, and malted
there two-and-twenty years, and-two-and-twenty years I was there
turnip-hoeing and harvesting.  Ah, I knowed that old place, Norcombe,
years afore you were thought of, Master Oak" (Oak smiled sincere
belief in the fact).  "Then I malted at Durnover four year, and
four year turnip-hoeing; and I was fourteen times eleven months at
Millpond St. Jude's" (nodding north-west-by-north).  "Old Twills
wouldn't hire me for more than eleven months at a time, to keep me
from being chargeable to the parish if so be I was disabled.  Then I
was three year at Mellstock, and I've been here one-and-thirty year
come Candlemas.  How much is that?"

"Hundred and seventeen," chuckled another old gentleman, given to
mental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat
unobserved in a corner.

"Well, then, that's my age," said the maltster, emphatically.

"O no, father!" said Jacob.  "Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer
and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought
to count-both halves, father."

"Chok' it all!  I lived through the summers, didn't I?  That's my
question.  I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak of?"

"Sure we shan't," said Gabriel, soothingly.

"Ye be a very old aged person, malter," attested Jan Coggan, also
soothingly. "We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented
constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?"

"True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful," said the meeting
unanimously.

The maltster, being now pacified, was even generous enough to
voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a
great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out
of was three years older than he.

While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak's flute
became visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray
exclaimed, "Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a great flute
by now at Casterbridge?"

"You did," said Gabriel, blushing faintly.  "I've been in great
trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it.  I used not to be so poor
as I be now."

"Never mind, heart!" said Mark Clark.  "You should take it
careless-like, shepherd, and your time will come.  But we could thank
ye for a tune, if ye bain't too tired?"

"Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard since Christmas," said Jan
Coggan.  "Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!"

"Ay, that I will," said Gabriel, pulling out his flute and putting it
together.  "A poor tool, neighbours; but such as I can do ye shall
have and welcome."

Oak then struck up "Jockey to the Fair," and played that sparkling
melody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in
a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks
and tapping with his foot to beat time.

"He can blow the flute very well--that 'a can," said a young married
man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as "Susan
Tall's husband."  He continued, "I'd as lief as not be able to blow
into a flute as well as that."

"He's a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a
shepherd," murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft cadence.  "We ought
to feel full o' thanksgiving that he's not a player of ba'dy songs
instead of these merry tunes; for 'twould have been just as easy for
God to have made the shepherd a loose low man--a man of iniquity, so
to speak it--as what he is.  Yes, for our wives' and daughters' sakes
we should feel real thanksgiving."

"True, true,--real thanksgiving!" dashed in Mark Clark conclusively,
not feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had
only heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said.

"Yes," added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; "for
evil do thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in
the cleanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp
upon the turnpike, if I may term it so."

"Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd," said Henery Fray,
criticising Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second
tune.  "Yes--now I see 'ee blowing into the flute I know 'ee to be
the same man I see play at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped
up and yer eyes a-staring out like a strangled man's--just as they be
now."

"'Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a
scarecrow," observed Mr. Mark Clark, with additional criticism of
Gabriel's countenance, the latter person jerking out, with the
ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of "Dame
Durden:"--

   'Twas Moll' and Bet', and Doll' and Kate',
   And Dor'-othy Drag'-gle Tail'.

"I hope you don't mind that young man's bad manners in naming your
features?" whispered Joseph to Gabriel.

"Not at all," said Mr. Oak.

"For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd," continued Joseph
Poorgrass, with winning sauvity.

"Ay, that ye be, shepard," said the company.

"Thank you very much," said Oak, in the modest tone good manners
demanded, thinking, however, that he would never let Bathsheba see
him playing the flute; in this resolve showing a discretion equal to
that related to its sagacious inventress, the divine Minerva herself.

"Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church," said the
old maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject,
"we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood--everybody
said so."

"Danged if ye bain't altered now, malter," said a voice with the
vigour natural to the enunciation of a remarkably evident truism.
It came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and
spiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he
contributed to general laughs.

"O no, no," said Gabriel.

"Don't ye play no more shepherd" said Susan Tall's husband, the young
married man who had spoken once before.  "I must be moving and when
there's tunes going on I seem as if hung in wires.  If I thought
after I'd left that music was still playing, and I not there, I
should be quite melancholy-like."

"What's yer hurry then, Laban?" inquired Coggan.  "You used to bide
as late as the latest."

"Well, ye see, neighbours, I was lately married to a woman, and she's
my vocation now, and so ye see--"  The young man halted lamely.

"New Lords new laws, as the saying is, I suppose," remarked Coggan.

"Ay, 'a b'lieve--ha, ha!" said Susan Tall's husband, in a tone
intended to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding
them at all.  The young man then wished them good-night and withdrew.

Henery Fray was the first to follow.  Then Gabriel arose and went off
with Jan Coggan, who had offered him a lodging.  A few minutes later,
when the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, Fray
came back again in a hurry.  Flourishing his finger ominously he
threw a gaze teeming with tidings just where his eye alighted by
accident, which happened to be in Joseph Poorgrass's face.

"O--what's the matter, what's the matter, Henery?" said Joseph,
starting back.

"What's a-brewing, Henrey?" asked Jacob and Mark Clark.

"Baily Pennyways--Baily Pennyways--I said so; yes, I said so!"

"What, found out stealing anything?"

"Stealing it is.  The news is, that after Miss Everdene got home she
went out again to see all was safe, as she usually do, and coming in
found Baily Pennyways creeping down the granary steps with half a a
bushel of barley.  She fleed at him like a cat--never such a tomboy
as she is--of course I speak with closed doors?"

"You do--you do, Henery."

"She fleed at him, and, to cut a long story short, he owned to having
carried off five sack altogether, upon her promising not to persecute
him.  Well, he's turned out neck and crop, and my question is, who's
going to be baily now?"

The question was such a profound one that Henery was obliged to drink
there and then from the large cup till the bottom was distinctly
visible inside.  Before he had replaced it on the table, in came the
young man, Susan Tall's husband, in a still greater hurry.

"Have ye heard the news that's all over parish?"

"About Baily Pennyways?"

"But besides that?"

"No--not a morsel of it!" they replied, looking into the very midst
of Laban Tall as if to meet his words half-way down his throat.

"What a night of horrors!" murmured Joseph Poorgrass, waving his
hands spasmodically.  "I've had the news-bell ringing in my left ear
quite bad enough for a murder, and I've seen a magpie all alone!"

"Fanny Robin--Miss Everdene's youngest servant--can't be found.
They've been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she
isn't come in.  And they don't know what to do about going to bed for
fear of locking her out.  They wouldn't be so concerned if she hadn't
been noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d'
think the beginning of a crowner's inquest has happened to the poor
girl."

"Oh--'tis burned--'tis burned!" came from Joseph Poorgrass's dry
lips.

"No--'tis drowned!" said Tall.

"Or 'tis her father's razor!" suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid
sense of detail.

"Well--Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go
to bed.  What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the
girl, mis'ess is almost wild."

They all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old
maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from
his hole.  There, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down
again and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red,
bleared eyes.

From the bedroom window above their heads Bathsheba's head and
shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the
air.

"Are any of my men among you?" she said anxiously.

"Yes, ma'am, several," said Susan Tall's husband.

"To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in
the villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin.
Do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet.  She must have
left whilst we were all at the fire."

"I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the
parish, ma'am?" asked Jacob Smallbury.

"I don't know," said Bathsheba.

"I've never heard of any such thing, ma'am," said two or three.

"It is hardly likely, either," continued Bathsheba.  "For any lover
of hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable
lad.  The most mysterious matter connected with her absence--indeed,
the only thing which gives me serious alarm--is that she was seen
to go out of the house by Maryann with only her indoor working gown
on--not even a bonnet."

"And you mean, ma'am, excusing my words, that a young woman would
hardly go to see her young man without dressing up," said Jacob,
turning his mental vision upon past experiences.  "That's true--she
would not, ma'am."

"She had, I think, a bundle, though I couldn't see very well," said a
female voice from another window, which seemed that of Maryann.  "But
she had no young man about here.  Hers lives in Casterbridge, and I
believe he's a soldier."

"Do you know his name?" Bathsheba said.

"No, mistress; she was very close about it."

"Perhaps I might be able to find out if I went to Casterbridge
barracks," said William Smallbury.

"Very well; if she doesn't return to-morrow, mind you go there and try
to discover which man it is, and see him.  I feel more responsible
than I should if she had had any friends or relations alive.  I do
hope she has come to no harm through a man of that kind....  And then
there's this disgraceful affair of the bailiff--but I can't speak of
him now."

Bathsheba had so many reasons for uneasiness that it seemed she did
not think it worth while to dwell upon any particular one.  "Do as I
told you, then," she said in conclusion, closing the casement.

"Ay, ay, mistress; we will," they replied, and moved away.

That night at Coggan's, Gabriel Oak, beneath the screen of closed
eyelids, was busy with fancies, and full of movement, like a river
flowing rapidly under its ice.  Night had always been the time at
which he saw Bathsheba most vividly, and through the slow hours
of shadow he tenderly regarded her image now.  It is rarely that
the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of
sleeplessness, but they possibly did with Oak to-night, for the
delight of merely seeing her effaced for the time his perception
of the great difference between seeing and possessing.

He also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from
Norcombe.  _The Young Man's Best Companion_, _The Farrier's Sure
Guide_, _The Veterinary Surgeon_, _Paradise Lost_, _The Pilgrim's
Progress_, _Robinson Crusoe_, Ash's _Dictionary_, and Walkingame's
_Arithmetic_, constituted his library; and though a limited series,
it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by
diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a
furlong of laden shelves.

The malthouse was "inwrapped with ivy" and had a cupola on the roof and one window, which formed a small square in the door. Inside, the room glowed with light from the hearth. "The stone-flag floor was worn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undulations everywhere." At one side were a curved settle and a small bedstead. The fragrance of malt filled the room. As Gabriel entered, everyone turned to look at him. An old maltster recognized Gabriel's name; he had known Oak's father and grandfather, and he launched into a garrulous account of them. This made Gabriel seem less of a stranger. He was offered a drink from the "God-forgive-me," a tall, two-handled mug standing among the coals. Gabriel rejected an offer to get him a cleaner cup, and, thus, drinking with the group, he was accepted by them. There were many country types present, including men of all sorts -- the old and decrepit, the scroungers, the cheerful, the shy, and the aggressive. They recalled other drinking bouts and discussed Miss Everdene's family. Her late uncle, who had left her the farm, and her father, a "celebrated bankrupt," fickle and romantic, were properly gone over. Bathsheba had become a beauty, they thought. And her bailiff was dishonest. Gossip was rampant, and all was punctuated by the reminiscences of the ancient maltster. Gabriel's flute showed from his pocket, and the men asked for a tune. He obliged, confessing that he was down on his luck and the flute had served to earn him a little money. When the men began leaving, Gabriel went off with Jan Coggan, who had offered him a room. Shortly, a man came running in with the news that Miss Everdene had caught her bailiff stealing and had dismissed him, and that Fanny Robin, the mistress's youngest employee, had disappeared. Bathsheba sent word that she would like to talk with one or two of the men, and those who were left in the malthouse went to see her. On their arrival, she spoke to them from an upper window, instructing them to make inquiries about Fanny the next day in the neighboring villages. Someone reported that Fanny had a soldier friend in Casterbridge. Gabriel, in a bed at last, lay awake thinking of Bathsheba, delighted to have seen her again. He resolved to fetch his belongings, which consisted mostly of the few books which "constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves."

The malthouse chapter is important to Hardy's project of depicting his Wessex world. Besides offering some fine sketches of local figures, Hardy presents the atmosphere of the old malthouse, showing us country customs and affording us a general insight into the variety of characters composing this "simple" world. There is a veritable gallery of personality types, all speaking variations of the local dialect, and all charming in their idiosyncrasies. They serve as foils for each other and also as the medium for disseminating background information. Most important, together they function as a collective commentator on country life and current events.


THE HOMESTEAD--A VISITOR--HALF-CONFIDENCES

By daylight, the bower of Oak's new-found mistress, Bathsheba
Everdene, presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of
Classic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion
which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had
once been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now
altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast
tract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest
demesnes.

Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front,
and above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped
gables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their
Gothic extraction.  Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed
cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or
sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings.  A
gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted
at the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the
nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot
or two in the centre.  This circumstance, and the generally sleepy
air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and
contrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination
that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the
vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to
face the other way.  Reversals of this kind, strange deformities,
tremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon
edifices--either individual or in the aggregate as streets and
towns--which were originally planned for pleasure alone.

Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the
main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as
bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their
century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs
themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look
over his shoulder.  Going up, the floors above were found to have a
very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and
being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be
eaten into innumerable vermiculations.  Every window replied by a
clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed
every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the
house, like a spirit, wherever he went.

In the room from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her
servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting
upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles,
and rubbish spread out thereon--remnants from the household stores
of the late occupier.  Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter,
was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent
advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl.  The beauty
her features might have lacked in form was amply made up for by
perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened
ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in a
Terburg or a Gerard Douw; and, like the presentations of those great
colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary
between comeliness and the ideal.  Though elastic in nature she was
less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness,
which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness
superadded by way of duty.

Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to
the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular
disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at
distant objects.  To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak
of her was to raise the image of a dried Normandy pippin.

"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.

"Oh 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."

"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 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?"

"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 Salpae, 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."

Bathsheba's home, which "presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance," was once the manorial hall of a small estate. Ornate stone pilasters, finials, and other Gothic features adorned it. All the outlines were softened by a mossy growth. The entire complex of buildings was mellowed, and its new function, as a farmhouse, seemed to have turned it front to rear, reversing its focus. Within, the floors, at present uncarpeted, creaked and sagged. Bathsheba and her maid-companion, Liddy, were in one of the upper rooms, sorting the belongings of the former owner. Liddy was the old maltster's great-granddaughter, and "her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl." Maryann Money could be heard scrubbing, and Mrs. Coggan was busy in the kitchen. A horse tramped up the footpath, and the women were thrown into confusion when they saw that the rider was a gentleman. He knocked, and the responsibility for answering the door was delegated from one to another. Eventually Mrs. Coggan, flour-covered, opened it and announced Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba could not see him, said Mrs. Coggan, for she was "dusting bottles sir, and is quite a object." Boldwood explained that he was merely inquiring as to whether Fanny had been found. Later, the girls told Bathsheba that Boldwood was a gentleman farmer, a forty-year-old bachelor. He had befriended Fanny and had sent her to school. Then he had gotten her the position with Bathsheba's uncle. Boldwood, they agreed, was kind, but "never was such a hopeless man for a woman!" He had resisted all female attempts to ensnare him. Bathsheba, in a petulant mood, told Maryann that she should long since have been married off. The girl agreed: "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!" To Liddy's question, "Did anybody ever want to marry you, miss?" Bathsheba answered, "A man wanted to once." But "he wasn't quite good enough" for her. At this point, a file of employees was seen arriving.

To describe the manor house, Hardy draws on the terminology of architecture, with which he is professionally conversant. He adds the mellowed tones of a painter's appreciation and creates the venerable, musty atmosphere of the estate. This is our first meeting with the gossiping female servants; they are as absorbing as their male counterparts in the previous chapter. Into this preserve comes the very masculine Boldwood. Through conversation with busybody Liddy, Bathsheba learns about him. He is fond of children , but impervious to womanly charms and wiles.


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.

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.


OUTSIDE THE BARRACKS--SNOW--A MEETING

For dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a
certain town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury,
at a later hour on this same snowy evening--if that may be called a
prospect of which the chief constituent was darkness.

It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing
any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love
becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope:
when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at
opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation
does not prompt to enterprise.

The scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river,
behind which rose a high wall.  On the right was a tract of land,
partly meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a
wide undulating upland.

The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this
kind than amid woodland scenery.  Still, to a close observer, they
are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of
manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones
as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf.  Many are not
so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering
the general torpidity of a moor or waste.  Winter, in coming to the
country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might
have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the
transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of
fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an
obliteration by snow.

This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid
moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were
forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing,
and without more character than that of being the limit of something
else--the lowest layer of a firmament of snow.  From this chaotic
skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received
additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby.
The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were
the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor;
for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and
that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any
intervening stratum of air at all.

We turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were
flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall
behind it, and darkness as to both.  These features made up the mass.
If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any
thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath.  The
indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys
here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong
shapes of windows, though only in the upper part.  Below, down to the
water's edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection.

An indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their
regularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy
atmosphere.  It was a neighbouring clock striking ten.  The bell was
in the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling
snow, had lost its voice for the time.

About this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had
fallen, then one had the room of ten.  Not long after a form moved
by the brink of the river.

By its outline upon the colourless background, a close observer
might have seen that it was small.  This was all that was positively
discoverable, though it seemed human.

The shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow,
though sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep.  At this
time some words were spoken aloud:--

"One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five."

Between each utterance the little shape advanced about half a dozen
yards.  It was evident now that the windows high in the wall were
being counted.  The word "Five" represented the fifth window from the
end of the wall.

Here the spot stopped, and dwindled smaller.  The figure was
stooping.  Then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the
fifth window.  It smacked against the wall at a point several yards
from its mark.  The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the
execution of a woman.  No man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or
squirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter
imbecility as was shown here.

Another attempt, and another; till by degrees the wall must have
become pimpled with the adhering lumps of snow.  At last one fragment
struck the fifth window.

The river would have been seen by day to be of that deep smooth sort
which races middle and sides with the same gliding precision, any
irregularities of speed being immediately corrected by a small
whirlpool.  Nothing was heard in reply to the signal but the gurgle
and cluck of one of these invisible wheels--together with a few small
sounds which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man
laughter--caused by the flapping of the waters against trifling
objects in other parts of the stream.

The window was struck again in the same manner.

Then a noise was heard, apparently produced by the opening of the
window.  This was followed by a voice from the same quarter.

"Who's there?"

The tones were masculine, and not those of surprise.  The high
wall being that of a barrack, and marriage being looked upon with
disfavour in the army, assignations and communications had probably
been made across the river before to-night.

"Is it Sergeant Troy?" said the blurred spot in the snow,
tremulously.

This person was so much like a mere shade upon the earth, and the
other speaker so much a part of the building, that one would have
said the wall was holding a conversation with the snow.

"Yes," came suspiciously from the shadow. "What girl are you?"

"Oh, Frank--don't you know me?" said the spot.  "Your wife, Fanny
Robin."

"Fanny!" said the wall, in utter astonishment.

"Yes," said the girl, with a half-suppressed gasp of emotion.

There was something in the woman's tone which is not that of the
wife, and there was a manner in the man which is rarely a husband's.
The dialogue went on:

"How did you come here?"

"I asked which was your window.  Forgive me!"

"I did not expect you to-night.  Indeed, I did not think you would
come at all.  It was a wonder you found me here.  I am orderly
to-morrow."

"You said I was to come."

"Well--I said that you might."

"Yes, I mean that I might.  You are glad to see me, Frank?"

"Oh yes--of course."

"Can you--come to me!"

"My dear Fan, no!  The bugle has sounded, the barrack gates are
closed, and I have no leave.  We are all of us as good as in the
county gaol till to-morrow morning."

"Then I shan't see you till then!"  The words were in a faltering
tone of disappointment.

"How did you get here from Weatherbury?"

"I walked--some part of the way--the rest by the carriers."

"I am surprised."

"Yes--so am I.  And Frank, when will it be?"

"What?"

"That you promised."

"I don't quite recollect."

"O you do!  Don't speak like that.  It weighs me to the earth.  It
makes me say what ought to be said first by you."

"Never mind--say it."

"O, must I?--it is, when shall we be married, Frank?"

"Oh, I see.  Well--you have to get proper clothes."

"I have money.  Will it be by banns or license?"

"Banns, I should think."

"And we live in two parishes."

"Do we?  What then?"

"My lodgings are in St. Mary's, and this is not.  So they will have
to be published in both."

"Is that the law?"

"Yes.  O Frank--you think me forward, I am afraid!  Don't, dear
Frank--will you--for I love you so.  And you said lots of times you
would marry me, and--and--I--I--I--"

"Don't cry, now!  It is foolish.  If I said so, of course I will."

"And shall I put up the banns in my parish, and will you in yours?"

"Yes"

"To-morrow?"

"Not to-morrow.  We'll settle in a few days."

"You have the permission of the officers?"

"No, not yet."

"O--how is it?  You said you almost had before you left
Casterbridge."

"The fact is, I forgot to ask.  Your coming like this is so sudden
and unexpected."

"Yes--yes--it is.  It was wrong of me to worry you.  I'll go away
now.  Will you come and see me to-morrow, at Mrs. Twills's, in North
Street?  I don't like to come to the Barracks.  There are bad women
about, and they think me one."

"Quite, so.  I'll come to you, my dear.  Good-night."

"Good-night, Frank--good-night!"

And the noise was again heard of a window closing.  The little spot
moved away.  When she passed the corner a subdued exclamation was
heard inside the wall.

"Ho--ho--Sergeant--ho--ho!" An  expostulation followed, but it was
indistinct; and it became lost amid a low peal of laughter, which was
hardly distinguishable from the gurgle of the tiny whirlpools
outside.

Hours later, in snow and darkness, a figure appeared on the public path that was bordered by a river. In the background could be heard the constant gurgling of water. The figure was counting out the windows of a barracks. Stopping at the fifth, it threw a small snowball which "smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No man . . . could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here." After many efforts, the girl finally struck the proper window. The window opened and a man's voice asked who was there. The girl identified herself as Fanny Robin. She regarded herself as Sergeant Troy's wife because of his frequent promises, and she wished to publish their marriage banns. They agreed to meet the next day. Then she went away, amid the guffaws of Troy's companions.

Hardy lets the weather serve to show the interrelation between atmospheric conditions and mood. The approach of winter is well portrayed, and the bleakness of the barracks territory reflects Fanny's dismal situation. The tall "verticality" of the barracks wall is dramatically contrasted with the smallness of the little waif; her credulity is contrasted with Troy's blustering. Using nature to mirror mood or situation is a common device in Hardy. Note the seasons in which major events occur throughout the book. Spring is often a time of happiness and renewal; winter, a time of death and despair.


FARMERS--A RULE--AN EXCEPTION

The first public evidence of Bathsheba's decision to be a farmer in
her own person and by proxy no more was her appearance the following
market-day in the cornmarket at Casterbridge.

The low though extensive hall, supported by beams and pillars,
and latterly dignified by the name of Corn Exchange, was thronged
with hot men who talked among each other in twos and threes, the
speaker of the minute looking sideways into his auditor's face and
concentrating his argument by a contraction of one eyelid during
delivery.  The greater number carried in their hands ground-ash
saplings, using them partly as walking-sticks and partly for poking
up pigs, sheep, neighbours with their backs turned, and restful
things in general, which seemed to require such treatment in the
course of their peregrinations.  During conversations each subjected
his sapling to great varieties of usage--bending it round his back,
forming an arch of it between his two hands, overweighting it on the
ground till it reached nearly a semicircle; or perhaps it was hastily
tucked under the arm whilst the sample-bag was pulled forth and a
handful of corn poured into the palm, which, after criticism, was
flung upon the floor, an issue of events perfectly well known to
half-a-dozen acute town-bred fowls which had as usual crept into the
building unobserved, and waited the fulfilment of their anticipations
with a high-stretched neck and oblique eye.

Among these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided, the single one of
her sex that the room contained.  She was prettily and even daintily
dressed.  She moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard
after them as a romance after sermons, was felt among them like a
breeze among furnaces.  It had required a little determination--far
more than she had at first imagined--to take up a position here, for
at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every
face had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned
rigidly fixed there.

Two or three only of the farmers were personally known to Bathsheba,
and to these she had made her way.  But if she was to be the
practical woman she had intended to show herself, business must
be carried on, introductions or none, and she ultimately acquired
confidence enough to speak and reply boldly to men merely known to
her by hearsay.  Bathsheba too had her sample-bags, and by degrees
adopted the professional pour into the hand--holding up the grains
in her narrow palm for inspection, in perfect Casterbridge manner.

Something in the exact arch of her upper unbroken row of teeth, and
in the keenly pointed corners of her red mouth when, with parted
lips, she somewhat defiantly turned up her face to argue a point with
a tall man, suggested that there was potentiality enough in that
lithe slip of humanity for alarming exploits of sex, and daring
enough to carry them out.  But her eyes had a softness--invariably a
softness--which, had they not been dark, would have seemed mistiness;
as they were, it lowered an expression that might have been piercing
to simple clearness.

Strange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigor, she always allowed
her interlocutors to finish their statements before rejoining with
hers.  In arguing on prices, she held to her own firmly, as was
natural in a dealer, and reduced theirs persistently, as was
inevitable in a woman.  But there was an elasticity in her firmness
which removed it from obstinacy, as there was a _naivete_ in her
cheapening which saved it from meanness.

Those of the farmers with whom she had no dealings (by far the
greater part) were continually asking each other, "Who is she?"
The reply would be--

"Farmer Everdene's niece; took on Weatherbury Upper Farm; turned away
the baily, and swears she'll do everything herself."

The other man would then shake his head.

"Yes, 'tis a pity she's so headstrong," the first would say.  "But we
ought to be proud of her here--she lightens up the old place.  'Tis
such a shapely maid, however, that she'll soon get picked up."

It would be ungallant to suggest that the novelty of her engagement
in such an occupation had almost as much to do with the magnetism
as had the beauty of her face and movements.  However, the interest
was general, and this Saturday's _debut_ in the forum, whatever it
may have been to Bathsheba as the buying and selling farmer, was
unquestionably a triumph to her as the maiden.  Indeed, the sensation
was so pronounced that her instinct on two or three occasions was
merely to walk as a queen among these gods of the fallow, like a
little sister of a little Jove, and to neglect closing prices
altogether.

The numerous evidences of her power to attract were only thrown into
greater relief by a marked exception.  Women seem to have eyes in
their ribbons for such matters as these.  Bathsheba, without looking
within a right angle of him, was conscious of a black sheep among the
flock.

It perplexed her first.  If there had been a respectable minority on
either side, the case would have been most natural.  If nobody had
regarded her, she would have taken the matter indifferently--such
cases had occurred.  If everybody, this man included, she would have
taken it as a matter of course--people had done so before.  But the
smallness of the exception made the mystery.

She soon knew thus much of the recusant's appearance.  He was a
gentlemanly man, with full and distinctly outlined Roman features,
the prominences of which glowed in the sun with a bronze-like
richness of tone.  He was erect in attitude, and quiet in demeanour.
One characteristic pre-eminently marked him--dignity.

Apparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age
at which a man's aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of
a dozen years or so; and, artificially, a woman's does likewise.
Thirty-five and fifty were his limits of variation--he might have
been either, or anywhere between the two.

It may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and
generous enough to fling passing glances at any specimen of moderate
beauty they may discern by the way.  Probably, as with persons
playing whist for love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under
any circumstances from that worst possible ultimate, the having to
pay, makes them unduly speculative.  Bathsheba was convinced that
this unmoved person was not a married man.

When marketing was over, she rushed off to Liddy, who was waiting
for her beside the yellow gig in which they had driven to town.
The horse was put in, and on they trotted--Bathsheba's sugar, tea,
and drapery parcels being packed behind, and expressing in some
indescribable manner, by their colour, shape, and general lineaments,
that they were that young lady-farmer's property, and the grocer's
and draper's no more.

"I've been through it, Liddy, and it is over.  I shan't mind it
again, for they will all have grown accustomed to seeing me there;
but this morning it was as bad as being married--eyes everywhere!"

"I knowed it would be," Liddy said.  "Men be such a terrible class of
society to look at a body."

"But there was one man who had more sense than to waste his time upon
me."  The information was put in this form that Liddy might not for a
moment suppose her mistress was at all piqued.  "A very good-looking
man," she continued, "upright; about forty, I should think.  Do you
know at all who he could be?"

Liddy couldn't think.

"Can't you guess at all?" said Bathsheba with some disappointment.

"I haven't a notion; besides, 'tis no difference, since he took less
notice of you than any of the rest.  Now, if he'd taken more, it
would have mattered a great deal."

Bathsheba was suffering from the reverse feeling just then, and they
bowled along in silence.  A low carriage, bowling along still more
rapidly behind a horse of unimpeachable breed, overtook and passed
them.

"Why, there he is!" she said.

Liddy looked.  "That!  That's Farmer Boldwood--of course 'tis--the
man you couldn't see the other day when he called."

"Oh, Farmer Boldwood," murmured Bathsheba, and looked at him as he
outstripped them.  The farmer had never turned his head once, but
with eyes fixed on the most advanced point along the road, passed as
unconsciously and abstractedly as if Bathsheba and her charms were
thin air.

"He's an interesting man--don't you think so?" she remarked.

"O yes, very.  Everybody owns it," replied Liddy.

"I wonder why he is so wrapt up and indifferent, and seemingly so far
away from all he sees around him."

"It is said--but not known for certain--that he met with some bitter
disappointment when he was a young man and merry.  A woman jilted
him, they say."

"People always say that--and we know very well women scarcely ever
jilt men; 'tis the men who jilt us.  I expect it is simply his nature
to be so reserved."

"Simply his nature--I expect so, miss--nothing else in the world."

"Still, 'tis more romantic to think he has been served cruelly, poor
thing'!  Perhaps, after all, he has!"

"Depend upon it he has.  Oh yes, miss, he has!  I feel he must have."

"However, we are very apt to think extremes of people.  I shouldn't
wonder after all if it wasn't a little of both--just between the
two--rather cruelly used and rather reserved."

"Oh dear no, miss--I can't think it between the two!"

"That's most likely."

"Well, yes, so it is.  I am convinced it is most likely. You may take
my word, miss, that that's what's the matter with him."

Bathsheba followed up her decision to be a good farmer by attending the corn market at Casterbridge the next day. She saw how the men bargained, using facial contortions and gesticulations, manipulating their sticks as props or as prods for livestock as if they were extensions of their hands. She stood out, completely feminine, moving between them "as a chaise among carts." She first approached farmers whom she knew and, as her confidence grew, gathered courage to address others. She had brought her sample bags of corn and was soon pouring grains into her hand with professional skill. The impression was conveyed that she was learning her business rapidly, despite her femininity. "Strange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigour, she always allowed her interlocutors to finish their statements before rejoining with hers." But she stood firm on her pricings. The men were interested because of her pluck and admired her as much for that as for her appearance. Only one man seemed aloof -- a dignified, striking man of about forty. Because he ignored her, Bathsheba was convinced that he was unmarried. She was intrigued, and on the way home with Liddy she commented on him. Liddy did not know whom she meant. Just then a low carriage passed by with the mystery man in it, and Liddy identified him as Farmer Boldwood, whom Bathsheba had earlier refused to see. He didn't turn in greeting but rode indifferently by. The rest of the girls' trip was spent in conjecture as to the reason for his standoffishness. Had he been jilted? Was it merely that his nature was reserved? For each possibility Bathsheba offered, Liddy parroted agreement.

Obviously Hardy attended many country markets, appreciatively noting the mannerisms of the participants. Here he has preserved a bit of Wessexiana just on the verge of change. Bathsheba's character is developing. Shy in her appearance among so many unknown men, she nonetheless stands her ground for the furtherance of her farm and makes progress in achieving the respect of her competitors. Though it has been suggested that Hardy is somewhat antifeminist, the paragraph he devotes to Bathsheba's managerial techniques does not seem grudging. She lets the men talk, but "in arguing on prices she held to her own firmly, as was natural in a dealer, and reduced theirs persistently, as was inevitable in a woman. But there was an elasticity in her firmness which removed it from obstinacy, as there was a naivete in her cheapening which saved it from meanness."


SORTES SANCTORUM--THE VALENTINE

It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of
February.  Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better
companion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her.  The mouldy pile
was dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the
shutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the
walls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own,
for the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the
day; and Bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals,
looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor
before night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid
the unpleasantness.  Liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was
always rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task
thought, and yet enough to exercise it.

On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather.  Liddy
looking at it said,--

"Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of
the Bible and key?"

"Don't be so foolish, Liddy.  As if such things could be."

"Well, there's a good deal in it, all the same."

"Nonsense, child."

"And it makes your heart beat fearful.  Some believe in it; some
don't; I do."

"Very well, let's try it," said Bathsheba, bounding from her seat
with that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in
towards a dependent, and entering into the spirit of divination at
once.  "Go and get the front door key."

Liddy fetched it.  "I wish it wasn't Sunday," she said, on returning.
"Perhaps 'tis wrong."

"What's right week days is right Sundays," replied her mistress in a
tone which was a proof in itself.

The book was opened--the leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away
at much-read verses by the forefingers of unpractised readers in
former days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to
the vision.  The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by
Bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye.  They slightly thrilled
and abashed her.  It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the
concrete.  Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention,
and placed the key on the book.  A rusty patch immediately upon the
verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told
that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the
purpose.

"Now keep steady, and be silent," said Bathsheba.

The verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba blushed
guiltily.

"Who did you try?" said Liddy curiously.

"I shall not tell you."

"Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this morning, miss?"
Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had
taken.

"No, indeed," said Bathsheba, with serene indifference.

"His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss."

"I know it."

"And you did not see his goings on!"

"Certainly I did not, I tell you."

Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively.

This move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting.  "What
did he do?" Bathsheba said perforce.

"Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service."

"Why should he?" again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look.
"I didn't ask him to."

"Oh no.  But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he
didn't.  There, 'tis like him.  Rich and gentlemanly, what does he
care?"

Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had
opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension, rather
than that she had nothing to say.

"Dear me--I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday,"
she exclaimed at length.

"Valentine! who for, miss?" said Liddy.  "Farmer Boldwood?"

It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at
this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right.

"Well, no.  It is only for little Teddy Coggan.  I have promised him
something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him.  Liddy, you
may as well bring me my desk and I'll direct it at once."

Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed
design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous
market-day at the chief stationer's in Casterbridge.  In the centre
was a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender
might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion
than any generalities by a printer could possibly be.

"Here's a place for writing," said Bathsheba.  "What shall I put?"

"Something of this sort, I should think," returned Liddy promptly:--

   "The rose is red,
   The violet blue,
   Carnation's sweet,
   And so are you."

"Yes, that shall be it.  It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child
like him," said Bathsheba.  She inserted the words in a small though
legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped
her pen for the direction.

"What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how
he would wonder!" said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows,
and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought
of the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated.

Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length.  Boldwood's had
begun to be a troublesome image--a species of Daniel in her kingdom
who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said
that he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her
the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all.  She was
far from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity.  Still,
it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man
in the parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like Liddy
should talk about it.  So Liddy's idea was at first rather harassing
than piquant.

"No, I won't do that.  He wouldn't see any humour in it."

"He'd worry to death," said the persistent Liddy.

"Really, I don't care particularly to send it to Teddy," remarked her
mistress.  "He's rather a naughty child sometimes."

"Yes--that he is."

"Let's toss as men do," said Bathsheba, idly.  "Now then, head,
Boldwood; tail, Teddy.  No, we won't toss money on a Sunday, that
would be tempting the devil indeed."

"Toss this hymn-book; there can't be no sinfulness in that, miss."

"Very well.  Open, Boldwood--shut, Teddy.  No; it's more likely to
fall open.  Open, Teddy--shut, Boldwood."

The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut.

Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with
off-hand serenity directed the missive to Boldwood.

"Now light a candle, Liddy.  Which seal shall we use? Here's a
unicorn's head--there's nothing in that.  What's this?--two
doves--no.  It ought to be something extraordinary, ought it not,
Liddy? Here's one with a motto--I remember it is some funny one, but
I can't read it. We'll try this, and if it doesn't do we'll have
another."

A large red seal was duly affixed.  Bathsheba looked closely at the
hot wax to discover the words.

"Capital!" she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely.
"'Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and clerke too."

Liddy looked at the words of the seal, and read--

   "MARRY ME."

The same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in
Casterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to Weatherbury
again in the morning.

So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done.  Of love as a
spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively
she knew nothing.

To while away Sunday afternoon, Bathsheba and the chatterbox Liddy, who, "like a little brook, though shallow was always rippling," practice an old superstition: divining one's future husband by consulting the Bible with a key. Bathsheba turned to the Book of Ruth and, reading, she was a bit abashed. "It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the concrete." After they went through the ritual with the key and Bible, Liddy asked of whom Bathsheba had been thinking, surmising that her mistress's mind might have been on Boldwood, as her own had been. She was sure that everyone in the church had focused attention on Bathsheba except Boldwood, who sat in the same line of pews. Bathsheba seemed unperturbed by this. As the girls chatted, she recalled having bought a valentine for little Teddy Coggan and proceeded to inscribe it with a verse. Liddy prodded her into sending it to Boldwood instead. Whatever her reason, Bathsheba did address it to the farmer, and from her supply of seals she selected one that said, "Marry me." "So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. Of love as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing."

In four short pages, two giddy girls carry out a silly act that will avalanche into a tragedy. Liddy  misleads Bathsheba, while her mistress, "bounding from her seat with that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in towards a dependent," acted on her maid's idle suggestion. Hardy has, in addition, shown us old country customs and, not for the first time, has suggested that women can be guilty of somewhat unpredictable behavior.