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.