第 十四 章 · It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be

. It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be

black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive

and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.

Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s

temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had

believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed

in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose

solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had

believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I

had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and

independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all

coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella

see it on any account.

How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault,

how much Miss Havisham’s, how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to

me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well

or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.

Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my

shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s ’prentice, I should be

distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt

that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight

upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have

been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I

have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its

interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance

any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my

way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly

entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.

I remember that at a later period of my “time,” I used to stand about

the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my

own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness

between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both

there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite

as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that

after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe

while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I _am_ glad to

know of myself in that connection.

For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I

proceed to add was Joe’s. It was not because I was faithful, but

because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier

or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of

industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,

that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible

to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing

man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it

has touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well that any good

that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented

Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.

What I wanted, who can say? How can _I_ say, when I never knew? What I

dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and

commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one of

the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she

would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing

the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me.

Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were

singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss

Havisham’s would seem to show me Estella’s face in the fire, with her

pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me,—often at

such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the

wall which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her

just drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at

last.

After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would

have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of

home than ever, in my own ungracious breast.