`Well, I think this much, ma'am, as I told you years ago,' said Oak, `that his life is a total blank whenever he isn't hoping for 'ee; but I can't suppose - I hope that nothing so dreadful hangs on to it as you fancy.
His natural manner has always been dark and strange, you know. But since the case is so sad and odd-like, why don't ye give the conditional promise?
I think I would.'
`But is it right? Some rash acts of my past life have taught me that a watched woman must have very much circumspection to retain only a very little credit, and I do want and long to be discreet in this! And six years - why we may all be in our graves by that time, even if Mr Troy does not come back again, which he may not impossibly do! Such thoughts give a sort of absurdity to the scheme. Now, isn't it preposterous, Gabriel? However he came to dream of it, I cannot think. But is it wrong? You know - you are older than I.'
`Eight years older, ma'am.'
`Yes, eight years - and is it wrong?'
`Perhaps it would be an uncommon agreement for a man and woman to make:
I don't see anything really wrong about it,' said Oak, slowly. `In fact the very thing that makes it doubtful if you ought to marry en under any condition, that is, your not caring about him - for I may suppose--'
`Yes, you may suppose that love is wanting,' she said shortly. `love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me - for him or any one else.'
`Well, your want of love seems to me the one thing that takes away harm from such an agreement with him. If wild heat had to do wi' it, making ye long to overcome the awkwardness about your husband's vanishing, it mid be wrong; but a cold-hearted agreement to oblige a man seems different, somehow. The real sin, ma'am in my mind, lies in thinking of ever wedding wi' a man you don't love honest and true.'
`That I'm willing to pay the penalty of,' said Bathsheba, firmly. `You know, Gabriel, this is what I cannot get off my conscience - that I once seriously injured him in sheer idleness. If I had never played a trick upon him, he would never have wanted to marry me. O if I could only pay some heavy damages in money to him for the harm I did, and so get the sin off my soul that way! Well, there's the debt, which can only be discharged in one way, and I believe I am bound to do it if it honestly lies in my power, without any consideration of my own future at all. When a rake gambles away his expectations, the fact that it is an inconvenient debt doesn't make him the less liable. I've ben a rake, and the single point I ask you is, considering that my own scruples, and the fact that in the eye of the law my husband is only missing, will keep any man from marrying me until seven years have passed - am I tree to entertain such an idea, even though 'tis a sort of penance - for it will be that! I hate the act of marriage under such circumstances, and the class of women I should seem to belong to by doing it!'
`It seems to me that all depends upon whe'r you think, as everybody else do, that your husband is dead.'
`I shall get to, I suppose, because I cannot help feeling what would have brought him back long before this time if he had lived.'
`Well, then, in a religious sense you will be as free to think o' marrying again as any real widow of one year's standing. But why don't ye ask Mr Thirdly's advice on how to treat Mr Boldwood?'
`No. When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally.
So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my businessman's - that is, yours - on morals.'
`And on love--'
`My own.'
`I'm afraid there's a hitch in that argument,' said Oak, with a grave smile.
She did not reply at once, and then saying, `Good evening, Mr Oak,' went away.
She had spoken frankly, and neither asked nor expected any reply from Gabriel more satisfactory than that she had obtained. Yet in the centremost parts of her complicated heart there existed at this minute a little pang of disappointment, for a reason she would not allow herself to recognize.
Oak had not once wished her free that he might marry her himself - had not once said, `I could wait for you as well as he.' That was the insect sting. Not that she would have listened to any such hypothesis. O no - for wasn't she saying all the time that such thoughts of the future were improper, and wasn't Gabriel far too poor a man to speak sentiment to her?
Yet he might have just hinted about that old love of his, and asked, in a playful off hand way, if he might speak of it. It would have seemed pretty and sweet, if no more; and then she would have shown how kind and inoffensive a woman's `No' can sometimes be. But to give such cool advice - the very advice she had asked for - it ruffled our heroine all the afternoon.
