“There’s Jim again at the door,” said Mrs. Furze to Phœbe; “let him in.”
“Excuse me, ma’am, but never will I go to the door to let that man in again as long as I live.”
“Phœbe! do you know what you are saying? I direct you to let him in.”
“No, ma’am; you may direct, but I shan’t. Nothing shall make me go to the door to the biggest liar and scoundrel in this town, and if you don’t know it yourself, Mrs. Furze, you ought.”
“You do not expect me to stand this, Phœbe? You will have a month’s wages and go to-night.”
“This morning, ma’am, if you please.”
Before noon her box was packed, and she too had departed.
CHAPTER XVII
Tom began to understand, as soon as he left the Terrace, that a consciousness of his own innocence was not all that was necessary for his peace of mind. What would other people say? There was a damning chain of evidence, and what was he to do for a living with no character?
He did not return home nor to the shop. He took the road to Chapel Farm. He did not go to the house direct, but went round it, and walked about, and at last found himself on the bridge. It was there that he met Catharine after her jump into the water; it was there, although he knew nothing about it, that she parted from Mr. Cardew. It was no thundery, summer day now, but cold and dark. The wind was north-east, persistent with unvarying force; the sky was covered with an almost uniform sheet of heavy grey clouds, with no form or beauty in them; there was nothing in the heavens or earth which seemed to have any relationship with man or to show any interest in him. Tom was not a philosopher, but some of his misery was due to a sense of carelessness and injustice somewhere in the government of the world. He was religious after his fashion, but the time had passed when a man could believe, as his forefathers believed, that the earth is a school of trial, and that after death is the judgment. What had he done to be visited thus? How was his integrity to be discovered? He had often thought that it was possible that a man should be convicted of some dreadful crime; that he should be execrated, not only by the whole countryside, but by his own wife and children; that his descendants for ages might curse him as the solitary ancestor who had brought disgrace into the family, and that he might be innocent. There might be hundreds of such; doubtless there have been. Perhaps, even worse, there have been men who have been misinterpreted, traduced, forsaken, because they have been compelled for a reason sacredly secret to take a certain course which seemed disreputable, and the word which would have explained everything they have loyally sworn, for the sake of a friend, never to speak, and it has remained unspoken for ever. As he stood leaning over the parapet he saw Catharine coming along the path. She did not attempt to avoid him, for she wandered what he could be doing. He told her the whole story. “Miss Catharine, there is just one thing I want to know: do you believe I am guilty?”