Six months later a little girl was born to the debtor, and when this child was eight years old, her mother, who had long been languishing, died.
The debtor had long grown accustomed to the place. Crushed at first by his imprisonment, he had soon found a dull relief in it. His elder children played regularly about the yard. If he had been a man with strength of purpose, he might have broken the net that held him, or broken his heart; but being what he was, he slipped easily into this smooth descent, and never more took one step upward.
The shabby old debtor with the soft manners and the white hair became the Father of the Marshalsea. And he grew to be proud of the title. All newcomers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the exaction of this ceremony. They were welcome to the Marshalsea, he would tell them.
It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his door at night enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then, at long intervals, even half a sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea, "With the compliments of a collegian taking leave." He received the gifts as tributes to a public character.
Later he established the custom of attending collegians of a certain standing to the gate, and taking leave of them there. The collegian under treatment would often wrap up something in a paper and give it to him, "For the Father of the Marshalsea."
II.--The Child of the Marshalsea
The youngest child of the Father of the Marshalsea, born within the jail, was a very, very little creature indeed when she gained the knowledge that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond the prison gate, her father's feet must never cross that line.
At thirteen she could read and keep accounts--that is, could put down in words and figures how much the bare necessaries they needed would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. From the first she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and to be that something for the sake of the rest. Recognised as useful, even indispensable, she took the place of eldest of the three in all but precedence; was the head of the fallen family, and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and shames. She had been, by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to day schools by desultory starts, during three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at home; but she knew well--no one better--that a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea could be no father to his own children.
To these scanty means of improvement she added others. Her sister Fanny, having a great desire to learn dancing, the Child of the Marshalsea persuaded a dancing-master, detained for a short time, to teach her. And Fanny became a dancer.
There was a ruined uncle in the family group, ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than his ruiner did, on whom Fanny's protection devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man, he had shown no particular sense of being ruined, further than that he left off washing when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any more. Having been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days, when he fell with his brother he resorted for support to playing a clarionet in a small theatre orchestra. It was the theatre in which his niece became a dancer, and he accepted the task of serving as her escort and guardian.