Chapter 6

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

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 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 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.