“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.”