Mr. Perch resorted to his breast pocket, as if to produce the paragraph but receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves, picked up his hat, and took his leave; and before it was high noon, Mr. Perch had related to several select audiences at the King’s Arms and elsewhere, how Miss Carker, bursting into tears, had caught him by both hands, and said, “Oh! dear dear Perch, the sight of you is all the comfort I have left!” and how Mr. John Carker had said, in an awful voice, “Perch, I disown him. Never let me hear him mentioned as a brother more!”
“Dear John,” said Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remained silent for some few moments. “There are bad tidings in that letter.”
“Yes. But nothing unexpected,” he replied. “I saw the writer yesterday.”
“The writer?”
“Mr. Dombey. He passed twice through the Counting House while I was there. I had been able to avoid him before, but of course could not hope to do that long. I know how natural it was that he should regard my presence as something offensive; I felt it must be so, myself.”
“He did not say so?”
“No; he said nothing: but I saw that his glance rested on me for a moment, and I was prepared for what would happen—for what has happened. I am dismissed!”
She looked as little shocked and as hopeful as she could, but it was distressing news, for many reasons.
“ ‘I need not tell you,’ ” said John Carker, reading the letter, “ ‘why your name would henceforth have an unnatural sound, in however remote a connection with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bears it, would be unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of all engagements between us, from this date, and to request that no renewal of any communication with me, or my establishment, be ever attempted by you.’—Enclosed is an equivalent in money to a generously long notice, and this is my discharge. Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient and considerate one, when we remember all!”
“If it be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for the misdeed of another,” she replied gently, “yes.”
“We have been an ill-omened race to him,” said John Carker. “He has reason to shrink from the sound of our name, and to think that there is something cursed and wicked in our blood. I should almost think it too, Harriet, but for you.”
“Brother, don’t speak like this. If you have any special reason, as you say you have, and think you have—though I say, No!—to love me, spare me the hearing of such wild mad words!”
He covered his face with both his hands; but soon permitted her, coming near him, to take one in her own.
“After so many years, this parting is a melancholy thing, I know,” said his sister, “and the cause of it is dreadful to us both. We have to live, too, and must look about us for the means. Well, well! We can do so, undismayed. It is our pride, not our trouble, to strive, John, and to strive together!”
A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated him to be of good cheer.
“Oh, dearest sister! Tied, of your own noble will, to a ruined man! whose reputation is blighted; who has no friend himself, and has driven every friend of yours away!”
“John!” she laid her hand hastily upon his lips, “for my sake! In remembrance of our long companionship!” He was silent “Now, let me tell you, dear,” quietly sitting by his side, “I have, as you have, expected this; and when I have been thinking of it, and fearing that it would happen, and preparing myself for it, as well as I could, I have resolved to tell you, if it should be so, that I have kept a secret from you, and that we have a friend.”
“What’s our friend’s name, Harriet?” he answered with a sorrowful smile.
“Indeed, I don’t know, but he once made a very earnest protestation to me of his friendship and his wish to serve us: and to this day I believe him.”
“Harriet!” exclaimed her wondering brother, “where does this friend live?”
“Neither do I know that,” she returned. “But he knows us both, and our history—all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at his own suggestion, I have kept the secret of his coming here, from you, lest his acquaintance with it should distress you.”
“Here! Has he been here, Harriet?”
“Here, in this room. Once.”
“What kind of man?”
“Not young. ‘Grey-headed,’ as he said, ‘and fast growing greyer.’ But generous, and frank, and good, I am sure.”
“And only seen once, Harriet?”
“In this room only once,” said his sister, with the slightest and most transient glow upon her cheek; “but when here, he entreated me to suffer him to see me once a week as he passed by, in token of our being well, and continuing to need nothing at his hands. For I told him, when he proffered us any service he could render—which was the object of his visit—that we needed nothing.”
“And once a week—”
“Once every week since then, and always on the same day, and at the
