Caleb Garth resigns as Bulstrode’s agent

Caleb Garth resigns as Bulstrode’s agent when John Raffles’s account makes continued business with Nicholas Bulstrode morally intolerable to him. The decision ends Caleb’s connection to Bulstrode’s affairs, including the proposed letting of Stone Court, but it is not a public accusation or a final judgment on Bulstrode’s character. Caleb withdraws his labor and benefits while keeping what he has heard from passing beyond him, a combination of firm conscience and deliberate restraint.

Causes and Circumstances

The decision takes shape while Bulstrode is preoccupied with Raffles. He longs for confirmation of a hopeful conjecture about the man, but fears that asking what Raffles has said or done would betray his anxiety. When Caleb arrives, Bulstrode maintains his customary politeness and invites him to sit, presenting himself as ready to attend to a matter of business. Caleb declines the invitation and introduces a decision that Bulstrode has not anticipated.

Caleb acknowledges that Raffles’s account is the reason for his action. He does not disguise the source of his judgment, but neither does he set out the allegations in detail. Bulstrode immediately appeals to Caleb’s conscientiousness and accountability to God, warning him against injuring an innocent man by believing slander too readily. He also points to the mutual benefit of their connection. The appeal cannot restore Caleb’s confidence: the possibility of profit has become an additional reason to leave, because he cannot be at ease working with or benefiting from Bulstrode.

The Resignation

Caleb tells Bulstrode that he must put his business into other hands. He thanks him for the generous way he has dealt with him, mentioning the letting of Stone Court and their other business, but insists that he must give it all up. When Bulstrode calls the decision sudden, Caleb agrees that it is sudden and adds that it is settled. His firmness does not depend on anger or a bargaining demand; he gives no indication that a better offer or further explanation could persuade him to remain.

Bulstrode tries to discover precisely what Raffles has said. Caleb refuses to disclose it, first because disclosure is unnecessary and then because he intends that the account should not pass from his lips unless circumstances unknown to him make it necessary. He sketches, conditionally, the possibility that Bulstrode gained through harmful conduct and deceit, keeping other people from what was rightfully theirs. He imagines that Bulstrode may regret what he did and wish he could return to the past, while recognizing that he cannot make his life clear merely by wishing it otherwise. This guarded description communicates the moral weight Caleb assigns to the story without repeating it as a charge.

Conscience Without Condemnation

Bulstrode tells Caleb that turning his back makes his situation harder. Caleb answers that withdrawing is something he is forced to do, but refuses the posture of a righteous judge. He does not claim to know everything about Bulstrode, and allows that a person may do wrong, then turn inwardly toward a better will without being able to clear away the consequences of the life already lived. If that is Bulstrode’s condition, Caleb says, he is sorry for him. Sympathy, however, does not reverse the decision: Caleb’s own inward conviction prevents him from continuing to work with him.

That distinction governs Caleb’s treatment of both the alleged past and its possible consequences. He says he is prepared to believe better if better is proved, so he does not make his present belief an irrevocable sentence. At the same time, he regards exposing another person’s sin as a crime unless he is clear that disclosure is necessary to save the innocent. His promise of silence is therefore not an attempt to absolve Bulstrode or to deny what he has heard. It is a limit Caleb places on his own speech while accepting the practical cost of ending the business relationship.

Consequences and Significance

When Bulstrode presses him for a solemn assurance that he will not repeat the story, Caleb answers that he has no fear of him and that such tales will never tempt his tongue. Bulstrode’s questions have tried to recast Caleb’s silence as a matter of reassurance or self-protection; Caleb makes clear that it rests instead on his own judgment about when exposure is justified. The exchange ends with his refusal to be intimidated and his departure from the business connection.

Hours later, Caleb tells Susan Garth at home only that he has had a minor difference with Bulstrode. He explains that he has consequently given up the prospect of taking Stone Court and resigned from further business for him. Susan, supposing Bulstrode may have interfered with her husband’s choices about materials and methods of work, does not understand the moral reason Caleb has withheld. The contrast between the gravity of the decision and its understated account at home completes the episode: Caleb relinquishes a practical opportunity without turning private knowledge into gossip. His resignation shows how conscience can require separation even when judgment remains humble, sympathy survives, and silence is chosen rather than imposed.