Bathsheba comes into the old hall in finished dress, with Liddy behind her, and finds her men settled on a long form and a settle at the far end, as far from the mistress as the room allows. She opens the time-book and pours a small heap of coin from a canvas bag. Liddy sews at her elbow, now and then lifting a half-sovereign to admire it “merely as a work of art”, careful that her face does not say she would like to keep it. Bathsheba says the bailiff is dismissed for thieving and that she will have no bailiff at all. The men breathe out in amazement.
She asks next about Fanny, and the answers are all about searching and none about finding. Jacob Smallbury dragged Newmill Pond with Boldwood and found nothing, and the new shepherd has been to Buck’s Head, by Yalbury, where nobody had seen her. Then comes the paying, man by man. Joseph Poorgrass gets ten shillings over his wages as a present, because she is new, and Bathsheba blushes at being generous in public while Henery Fray lifts his eyebrows. Andrew Randle cannot get a sentence out, and Laban Tall’s wife answers for her husband, calling him “a simple tool”. Gabriel Oak stands at the doorpost with folded arms, accepts young Cain Ball as his under-shepherd, and is staggered by how coolly she speaks to him. Hardy puts it down to her rise in the world, as the gods grew more haughty when they moved up above Olympus.
Billy Smallbury comes in last, snow clogged on his boots, with the worst news yet. The Eleventh Dragoon-Guards marched away last week playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me”, and Fanny has most likely gone after her young man, who nobody can name. Gabriel says nothing, for he is in doubt. Bathsheba sends word to Boldwood, tells her men they now have a mistress instead of a master, and promises to be afield before any of them are up. “In short, I shall astonish you all.” She sweeps out, her black silk dragging a few straws along the floor, and the door closes behind her.
Coming Up in Chapter 11
On the same snowy night, far to the north, a small figure will walk beside a river and count the windows of a high barracks wall aloud. Throwing snow with no skill at all, she will at last strike the fifth window, and a man’s voice will answer from the dark.
