Boldwood calls at her house and is told she is not at home. “Of course not,” he murmurs. In thinking of Bathsheba as a woman he had forgotten she is as much of a farmer as he is, and so is out of doors at this time of year. Hardy says love thrives on “visual familiarity, oral strangeness”: he sees her from far off and never speaks to her, so he never thinks of her ordinary troubles. At the end of May he asks again at the house and is sent to the sheep-washing. The pool is a perfectly round basin of brickwork in the meadows, with clear water like a Cyclops’ eye in a green face, and three cuckoos calling. Jan Coggan and Matthew Moon stand waist-deep at the lower hatch, Gabriel Oak thrusts the sheep under with a crutch-shaped pole, and Bathsheba stands by in her best riding-habit with her horse’s reins over her arm.
His good morning is so stiff that she thinks he hoped not to find her. She moves away along the river and he follows past the bend, where the shouts of the washers can be heard but they cannot be seen. “Miss Everdene!” he says, and in the one word, Hardy says, he tells everything. He says without preface, “My life is not my own since I have beheld you clearly.” He is forty-one, he was a confirmed bachelor, and he wants her as his wife. She stammers that she respects him and cannot accept, and says “the valentine again! O that valentine!” to herself, but not a word aloud to him. Then she calls it a wanton thing, and he cannot bear to hear her call it thoughtlessness. He promises to take care of her, to hire a man for the dairy, and to sell the chaise for a pony-carriage if she prefers.
She is sorry for him, and she is frightened by his force. She says only “I have not fallen in love with you”, and begs him to let the matter rest. May he think of her? “I suppose you may.” May he hope? “No, do not hope!” He says he is happier now, and she says, “Don’t be happier if happiness only comes from my agreeing.” He says he will wait. She turns away, and he stands long like a man who does not know where he is. She told him not to hope. He told her he would wait.
Coming Up in Chapter 20
Bathsheba will turn Boldwood’s offer over coldly, finding him earnest, well-off and close at hand, yet not wanted. Next day she will find Gabriel grinding his shears at the bottom of her garden, send Cainy off to catch the bay mare, and take the handle of the grindstone herself.
