finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_8_part_0.txt
Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 9
chapter 9
{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-9", "summary": "Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are sitting on the floor of Bathsheba's bedroom and looking through a bunch of papers related to the farm. The narrator describes Liddy as a lighthearted English country girl. They hear someone riding a horse up to the door of the house, and Bathsheba sends a servant to go check it out. When the woman opens the door, a man with a low voice asks if Miss Everdene is at home. The guy is a rich neighbor named Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba doesn't want to see him, though, because she's not presentable. The man just wants to know if there's been any word about Fanny Robin. When Boldwood leaves, Bathsheba asks who he is, and her servants say that he's a handsome, respected man who's been courted by all the women of the neighborhood. But apparently this guy wants to stay a bachelor forever. Liddy asks, out of the blue, whether anyone has ever proposed to Bathsheba. Bathsheba says yeah, but that she said no because the man wasn't good enough for her. She's talking about Oak, btw. Bathsheba admits that she liked Oak. Oh yeah? That's kind of a shocker. Bathsheba doesn't tell Liddy that the man she's talking about is her new shepherd. The meeting is broken up by the arrival of Bathsheba's workmen, who have come to collect their wages. Without a bailiff anymore, Bathsheba is in charge of this business herself.", "analysis": ""}


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."




Chapter 9
Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are sitting on the floor of Bathsheba's bedroom and looking through a bunch of papers related to the farm. The narrator describes Liddy as a lighthearted English country girl. They hear someone riding a horse up to the door of the house, and Bathsheba sends a servant to go check it out. When the woman opens the door, a man with a low voice asks if Miss Everdene is at home. The guy is a rich neighbor named Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba doesn't want to see him, though, because she's not presentable. The man just wants to know if there's been any word about Fanny Robin. When Boldwood leaves, Bathsheba asks who he is, and her servants say that he's a handsome, respected man who's been courted by all the women of the neighborhood. But apparently this guy wants to stay a bachelor forever. Liddy asks, out of the blue, whether anyone has ever proposed to Bathsheba. Bathsheba says yeah, but that she said no because the man wasn't good enough for her. She's talking about Oak, btw. Bathsheba admits that she liked Oak. Oh yeah? That's kind of a shocker. Bathsheba doesn't tell Liddy that the man she's talking about is her new shepherd. The meeting is broken up by the arrival of Bathsheba's workmen, who have come to collect their wages. Without a bailiff anymore, Bathsheba is in charge of this business herself.