Dombey and Son
action in it. While he was yet uninformed of the traitor’s retreat, it
served to divert his mind from his own calamity, and to entertain it
with another prospect. The brother and sister of his false favourite
had no such relief; everything in their history, past and present, gave
his delinquency a more afflicting meaning to them.
The sister may have sometimes sadly thought that if she had remained
with him, the companion and friend she had been once, he might have
escaped the crime into which he had fallen. If she ever thought so, it
was still without regret for what she had done, without the least doubt
of her duty, without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion. But
when this possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant
brother, as it sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen,
reproachful touch as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his
cruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh
inward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which it
was at once his consolation and his self-reproach that he did not stand
alone, were the sole kind of reflections to which the discovery gave
rise in him.
It was on the very same day whose evening set upon the last chapter,
and when Mr Dombey’s world was busiest with the elopement of his wife,
that the window of the room in which the brother and sister sat at
their early breakfast, was darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man
coming to the little porch: which man was Perch the Messenger.
“I’ve stepped over from Balls Pond at a early hour,” said Mr Perch,
confidentially looking in at the room door, and stopping on the mat to
wipe his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, “agreeable to my
instructions last night. They was, to be sure and bring a note to you,
Mr Carker, before you went out in the morning. I should have been here
a good hour and a half ago,” said Mr Perch, meekly, “but for the state
of health of Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I
do assure you, five distinct times.”
“Is your wife so ill?” asked Harriet.
“Why, you see,” said Mr Perch, first turning round to shut the door
carefully, “she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart,
Miss. Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Not
but what the strongest nerves had good need to be shook, I’m sure. You
feel it very much yourself, no doubts.”
Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.
“I’m sure I feel it myself, in my humble way,” Mr Perch went on to say,
with a shake of his head, “in a manner I couldn’t have believed if I
hadn’t been called upon to undergo. It has almost the effect of drink
upon me. I literally feels every morning as if I had been taking more
than was good for me over-night.”
Mr Perch’s appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms. There
was an air of feverish lassitude about it, that seemed referable to
drams; and, which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to those
numerous discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses, being
treated and questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making.
“Therefore I can judge,” said Mr Perch, shaking his head and speaking
in a silvery murmur, “of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarly
sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.”
Here Mr Perch waited to be confided in; and receiving no confidence,
coughed behind his hand. This leading to nothing, he coughed behind his
hat; and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground and
sought in his breast pocket for the letter.
“If I rightly recollect, there was no answer,” said Mr Perch, with an
affable smile; “but perhaps you’ll be so good as cast your eye over it,
Sir.”
John Carker broke the seal, which was Mr Dombey’s, and possessing
himself of the contents, which were very brief, replied, “No. No answer
is expected.”
“Then I shall wish you good morning, Miss,” said Perch, taking a step
toward the door, and hoping, I’m sure, that you’ll not permit yourself
to be more reduced in mind than you can help, by the late painful
rewelation. The Papers,” said Mr Perch, taking two steps back again,
and comprehensively addressing both the brother and sister in a whisper
of increased mystery, “is more eager for news of it than you’d suppose
possible. One of the Sunday ones, in a blue cloak and a white hat, that
had previously offered for to bribe me—need I say with what
success?—was dodging about our court last night as late as twenty
minutes after eight o’clock. I see him myself, with his eye at the
counting-house keyhole, which being patent is impervious. Another one,”
said Mr Perch, “with military frogs, is in the parlour of the King’s
Arms all the blessed day. I happened, last week, to let a little
obserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see it
worked up in print, in a most surprising manner.”
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
connexion 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
same hour, he his gone past; always on foot; always going in the same
direction—towards London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me,
and wave his hand cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made that
promise when he proposed these curious interviews, and has kept it so
faithfully and pleasantly, that if I ever felt any trifling uneasiness
about them in the beginning (which I don’t think I did, John; his
manner was so plain and true) it very soon vanished, and left me quite
glad when the day was coming. Last Monday—the first since this terrible
event—he did not go by; and I have wondered whether his absence can
have been in any way connected with what has happened.”
“How?” inquired her brother.
“I don’t know how. I have only speculated on the coincidence; I have
not tried to account for it. I feel sure he will return. When he does,
dear John, let me tell him that I have at last spoken to you, and let
me bring you together. He will certainly help us to a new livelihood.
His entreaty was that he might do something to smooth my life and
yours; and I gave him my promise that if we ever wanted a friend, I
would remember him. Then his name was to be no secret.”
“Harriet,” said her brother, who had listened with close attention,
“describe this gentleman to me. I surely ought to know one who knows me
so well.”
His sister painted, as vividly as she could, the features, stature, and
dress of her visitor; but John Carker, either from having no knowledge
of the original, or from some fault in her description, or from some
abstraction of his thoughts as he walked to and fro, pondering, could
not recognise the portrait she presented to him.
However, it was agreed between them that he should see the original
when he next appeared. This concluded, the sister applied herself, with
a less anxious breast, to her domestic occupations; and the grey-haired
man, late Junior of Dombey’s, devoted the first day of his unwonted
liberty to working in the garden.