MY state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been
so unexpectedly exonerated, did not impel me to frank disclosure; but I hope it
had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.
I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference to Mrs
Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But I loved Joe -
perhaps for no better reason in those early days than because the dear fellow
let me love him - and, as to him, my inner self was not so easily composed. It
was much upon my mind (particularly when I first saw him looking about for his
file) that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the
reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The
fear of losing Joe's confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the
chimney-corner at night staring drearily at my for ever lost companion and
friend, tied up my tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it,
I never afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair whisker,
without thinking that he was meditating on it. That, if Joe knew it, I never
afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at yesterday's meat or
pudding when it came on to-day's table, without thinking that he was debating
whether I had been in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it, and at any subsequent
period of our joint domestic life remarked that his beer was flat or thick, the
conviction that he suspected Tar in it, would bring a rush of blood to my face.
In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too
cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with
the world at that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in
this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line of
action for myself.
As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship, Joe took me on
his back again and carried me home. He must have had a tiresome journey of it,
for Mr Wopsle, being knocked up, was in such a very bad temper that if the
Church had been thrown open, he would probably have excommunicated the whole
expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In his lay capacity, he persisted in
sitting down in the damp to such an insane extent, that when his coat was taken
off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers
would have hanged him if it had been a capital offence.
By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little drunkard,
through having been newly set upon my feet, and through having been fast asleep,
and through waking in the heat and lights and noise of tongues. As I came to
myself (with the aid of a heavy thump between the shoulders, and the restorative
exclamation `Yah! Was there ever such a boy as this!' from my sister), I found
Joe telling then about the convict's confession, and all the visitors suggesting
different ways by which he had got into the pantry. Mr Pumblechook made out,
after carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of
the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then let himself
down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bedding cut into strips; and as
Mr Pumblechook was very positive and drove his own chaise-cart - over everybody
- it was agreed that it must be so. Mr Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out `No!'
with the feeble malice of a tried man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat on,
he was unanimously set at nought - not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he
stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out: which was not
calculated to inspire confidence.
This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as a slumberous
offence to the company's eyesight, and assisted me up to bed with such a strong
hand that I seemed to have fifty boots on, and to be dangling them all against
the edges of the stairs. My state of mind, as I have described it, began before
I was up in the morning, and lasted long after the subject had died out, and had
ceased to be mentioned saving on exceptional occasions.
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