The Chaplain of the Fleet. Walter Besant

full of bad dreams for thieves, criminals, and debtors, since close at hand was the Fleet Prison, its wards crowded with the careless, who lounged and jested, and the hopeless, who sat in despair; since but a hundred yards from them stood the black and gloomy Newgate, its condemned cells full of wretches, no worse than themselves, waiting to be hanged, its courts full of other wretches, no worse than themselves, waiting to be tried, sentenced, and cast for execution, and its gaol-fever hanging over all alike, delivering the wards from their prisoners, cheating the hangman, hurrying to death judge, jury, counsel, prisoner, and warders together. But they never think upon such things, these poor rogues; each hopes that while his neighbour is hanged, he will escape. They cannot stop to think, they cannot turn back: behind them is the devil driving them downwards; before them, if they dare to lift their eyes, the horrid machinery of justice with pillory, whip, and gallows. Among them, here and there, pretty boys and girls, lying asleep side by side upon the hard wooden stalls; boys with curly hair and rosy faces, girls with long eyelashes, parted lips, and ruddy cheeks – pity, pity, that when they woke they should begin again the only trade they knew: to thieve, filch, and pick pockets, with the reward of ducking, pumping, flogging, and hanging.

      So clear was the air, so bright the morning, that what she saw was impressed upon her memory clearly, so that she can never forget it. The old men and old women are dead; the young men and women are, one supposes, hanged; what else could be their fate? And as for the boys and girls, the little rogues and thieves, who had no conscience and took all, except the whippings, for frolic, are any left still to sleep on hot nights in that foul place, or are all hanged, whipped at the cart-tail, burnt in the hand, or at best, transported to labour under the lash in the plantations?

      Sinner succeeds unto sinner as the year follows year; the crop of gallows fruit increases day by day; but the criminals do not seem to become fewer.

      CHAPTER IX

      HOW THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE MADE TWO WOMEN PRISONERS

      One Sunday evening in the autumn, the market being then quiet, the two ladies and the girl sat round a fire of coal, talking together by its light. The memories of the sisters, by some accident, were carried back to the past, and they told the child the story, of which she already knew a part, how by a great and crying injustice of the law, they had been shut up in prison, for no fault of their own, for nearly thirty years.

      “My father’s eyes,” said Mrs. Deborah, looking at the portrait over the fireplace, “seem to rest upon me to-night.”

      Mrs. Esther shuddered.

      “It is a sign, sister,” she said, “that something will happen to us.”

      Mrs. Deborah laughed a little bitterly. I thought afterwards that the laugh was like that of Sarai, because a thing did happen to her, as will presently be seen.

      “Nothing,” she said, “will happen to you and to me any more, Esther, except more pain and more starvation.”

      “Patience, Deborah,” sighed Mrs. Esther. “We who have borne our captivity for nine-and-twenty years – ”

      “And seven months,” said her sister.

      “Can surely bear it a little longer.”

      “We were girls when we came here,” said Mrs. Deborah; “girls who might have had lovers and become mothers of brave sons – not that you, Kitty, should let your thoughts run on such matters. But there are no honest lovers for honest girls in the Rules of the Fleet.”

      “Lovers!” echoed Mrs. Esther, with a heavy sigh. “Mothers! with sons! Ah, no! not for us.”

      “We are old women now, sister. Well, everything is short that hath an end. Let us take comfort. To earthly prison is a certain end appointed.”

      “We came to the gaol, sister,” continued Mrs. Esther, “two girls, weeping, hand-in-hand. Poor girls! poor girls! My heart bleeds to think of them, so young and so innocent.”

      “We shall go out of it,” said her sister, “with tears of joy. They shall write upon our tombstones, ‘These sisters thank God for death.’”

      “What fault, we asked – ah! Deborah, how often we asked it! – what fault had we committed? For what sin or crime of ours did this ruin fall upon us?”

      “I ask it still,” said Deborah the impatient, “I ask it every day. How can they call this a land of justice, when two innocent women can be locked up for life?”

      “My sister, we may not kick against the pricks. If laws are unjust they must be changed, not disobeyed.”

      Mrs. Deborah replied by a gesture of impatience.

      “We were blessed with parents,” said Mrs. Esther, half talking to herself, half to me, “whose worth and piety were as eminent as their lofty positions in the City. Our respected father was Lord Mayor in the year 1716, when, with our esteemed mother, who was by birth a Balchin, and the granddaughter of Sir Rowland Balchin, also once Lord Mayor, he had the honour of entertaining his Highness Prince George of Denmark. We were present at that royal banquet in the gallery. Our father was also, of course, an alderman – ”

      “Of Portsoken Ward,” said Mrs. Deborah.

      “And Worshipful Master of the Company of Armour Scourers.”

      “And churchwarden of St. Dionis Backchurch,” said Mrs. Deborah.

      “Which he beautified, adding a gallery at his own expense.”

      “And where, in 1718, a tablet was placed in the wall to his memory,” added Mrs. Deborah.

      “And one to the memory of Esther, his wife,” continued the elder sister, “who died in the year 1719, so that we, being still minors, unfortunately became wards of a merchant, an old and trusted friend of our father.”

      “A costly friend he proved to us,” said Mrs. Deborah.

      “Nay, sister, blame him not. Perhaps he thought to multiply our fortunes tenfold. Then came the year of 1720, when, by visitation of the Lord, all orders and conditions of men went mad, and we, like thousands of others, lost our little all, and from rich heiresses of twenty thousand pounds apiece – such, Kitty, was then our enviable condition – became mere beggar-girls.”

      “Worse,” said Mrs. Deborah grimly. “Beggar-wenches are not in debt; they may go and lay their heads where they please.”

      “We were debtors, but to whom I know not; we owed a large sum of money, but how much I know not; nor have ever been able to understand how our guardian ruined us, with himself. I was twenty-two, and my sister twenty-one; we were of age; no one could do anything for us; needs must we come to the Fleet and be lodged in prison.”

      “Esther!” cried her sister, shuddering; “must we tell her all?”

      “My child,” continued Mrs. Esther, “we suffered at first more than we dare to tell you. There was then in charge of the prison a wretch, a murderer, a man whose sins towards me I have, I hope, forgiven, as is my Christian duty. But his sins towards my sister I can never forgive; no, never. It is not, I believe,” she said with more asperity than I had ever before remarked in her – “it cannot be expected of any Christian woman that she should forgive in a wicked man his wickedness to others.”

      “That is my case,” said Mrs. Deborah. “The dreadful cruelties of Bambridge, so far as I am concerned, are forgiven. I cannot, however, forgive those he inflicted upon you, Esther. And I never mean to.”

      This seemed at the moment an edifying example of obedience to the divine law. Afterwards the girl wondered whether any person was justified in nourishing hatred against another. And as to that, Bambridge was dead; he had committed suicide; he had gone where no human hate could harm him.

      Every one knows that this man must have been a most dreadful monster. He was the tenant, so to speak, of the prison, and paid so much a year for the privilege of extorting what money he could from the unfortunate debtors. He made them pay commitment fees, lodging fees, and fees of all kinds, so that the very entrance to the prison cost a poor wretch sometimes more than forty pounds. He took from the two ladies all the money they had, to the