Kabanata Kabanata 6 · My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so

. 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 forever 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 them

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 tired man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat

on, he was unanimously set at naught,—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.