“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 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,
