You would not wish to injure me by being too ready to believe a slander," said Bulstrode, casting about for pleas that might be adapted to his hearer's mind.
"That is a poor reason for giving up a connection which I think I may say will be mutually beneficial."
"I would injure no man if I could help it," said Caleb; "even if I thought God winked at it.
I hope I should have a feeling for my fellow-creature.
But, sir—I am obliged to believe that this Raffles has told me the truth.
And I can't be happy in working with you, or profiting by you. It hurts my mind.
I must beg you to seek another agent."
"Very well, Mr. Garth.
But I must at least claim to know the worst that he has told you.
I must know what is the foul speech that I am liable to be the victim of," said Bulstrode, a certain amount of anger beginning to mingle with his humiliation before this quiet man who renounced his benefits.
"That's needless," said Caleb, waving his hand, bowing his head slightly, and not swerving from the tone which had in it the merciful intention to spare this pitiable man. "What he has said to me will never pass from my lips, unless something now unknown forces it from me.
If you led a harmful life for gain, and kept others out of their rights by deceit, to get the more for yourself, I dare say you repent—you would like to go back, and can't: that must be a bitter thing"—Caleb paused a moment and shook his head—"it is not for me to make your life harder to you."
"But you do—you do make it harder to me," said Bulstrode constrained into a genuine, pleading cry.
"You make it harder to me by turning your back on me."
"That I'm forced to do," said Caleb, still more gently, lifting up his hand.
"I am sorry.
I don't judge you and say, he is wicked, and I am righteous.
God forbid.
I don't know everything.
A man may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life clear. That's a bad punishment.
If it is so with you,—well, I'm very sorry for you.
But I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go on working with you.
That's all, Mr. Bulstrode.
Everything else is buried, so far as my will goes.
And I wish you good-day."
"One moment, Mr. Garth!" said Bulstrode, hurriedly.
"I may trust then to your solemn assurance that you will not repeat either to man or woman what—even if it have any degree of truth in it—is yet a malicious representation?"
Caleb's wrath was stirred, and he said, indignantly—
"Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it?
I am in no fear of you.
Such tales as that will never tempt my tongue."
"Excuse me—I am agitated—I am the victim of this abandoned man."
"Stop a bit! you have got to consider whether you didn't help to make him worse, when you profited by his vices."
"You are wronging me by too readily believing him," said Bulstrode, oppressed, as by a nightmare, with the inability to deny flatly what Raffles might have said; and yet feeling it an escape that Caleb had not so stated it to him as to ask for that flat denial.
"No," said Caleb, lifting his hand deprecatingly; "I am ready to believe better, when better is proved.
I rob you of no good chance.
As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm clear it must be done to save the innocent.
That is my way of thinking, Mr. Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need to swear.
I wish you good-day."
Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said to his wife, incidentally, that he had had some little differences with Bulstrode, and that in consequence, he had given up all notion of taking Stone Court, and indeed had resigned doing further business for him.
"He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?" said Mrs. Garth, imagining that her husband had been touched on his sensitive point, and not been allowed to do what he thought right as to materials and modes of work.
"Oh," said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his hand gravely.
And Mrs. Garth knew that this was a sign of his not intending to speak further on the subject.
As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately mounted his horse and set off for Stone Court, being anxious to arrive there before Lydgate.
His mind was crowded with images and conjectures, which were a language to his hopes and fears, just as we hear tones from the vibrations which shake our whole system.
The deep humiliation with which he had winced under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past and rejection of his patronage, alternated with and almost gave way to the sense of safety in the fact that Garth, and no other, had been the man to whom Raffles had spoken.
It seemed to him a sort of earnest that Providence intended his rescue from worse consequences; the way being thus left open for the hope of secrecy.
That Raffles should be afflicted with illness, that he should have been led to Stone Court rather than elsewhere—Bulstrode's heart fluttered at the vision of probabilities which these events conjured up.
If it should turn out that he was freed from all danger of disgrace—if he could breathe in perfect liberty—his life should be more consecrated than it had ever been before.
He mentally lifted up this vow as if it would urge the result he longed for—he tried to believe in the potency of that prayerful resolution—its potency to determine death.