Boldwood has made his offer, and Bathsheba, who does not love him, cannot find one honest reason to refuse it. Hardy sets out the case like a clerk: he is rich, respected and next door, and many women of her neighbourhood would have been proud to publish the match. She says in one breath that it would be ungenerous not to marry him and that she could not do it to save her life. She also knows that she began the game with a valentine, and that she ought to pay for it.
The next morning she finds Gabriel grinding his shears at the bottom of her garden while Cainy Ball turns the stone, and every cottage in the village is whetting steel as if for a campaign. She sends the boy off after the bay mare, takes the handle herself, and asks whether the men talked about her walk behind the sedge with Boldwood. They did: her name and his would be flung over the pulpit together before the year was out. She wants Gabriel to contradict it. He will not tell a story to please her, and when she asks, in a quiet voice, what he thinks of her conduct, he tells her. It is unworthy of any thoughtful, meek and comely woman, and the valentine was no way to treat a man like Boldwood.
The worst of it, for her, is how he says it. She asks whether her unworthiness lies in not marrying him, and he says he gave up thinking of that long ago. 'Or wishing it, I suppose,' she adds, and he echoes her words as coolly as a man reading a price: 'Or wishing it either.' She had hoped for a lover's protest. She gets the cold light of morning. She sends him from the farm, first at the end of the week and then at once, and Gabriel takes his shears and walks away in placid dignity, as Moses left Pharaoh. Bathsheba has won the argument, and her lower lip is trembling.
Coming Up in Chapter 21
Gabriel Oak has ceased feeding the Weatherbury flock for about four-and-twenty hours when Sunday afternoon brings Joseph Poorgrass, Matthew Moon, and the rest running to the house. Sheep have broken into young clover and are bloating. Without Gabriel, the flock may die.
