Fan | Page 3

her feet and sat down again on her chair. She was silent, looking now neither angry nor frightened, but seemed half-dazed, and bending forward a little she covered her eyes with her hand.
"Oh, mother, poor mother--are you hurt?" whispered Fan, trying to draw the hand away to look into the bowed face.
"You go back to your corner and leave your mother to me," he said; and Fan, after hesitating a few moments, rose and shrank away.
Presently he got up again, and seizing his wife by the wrist, dragged her hand forcibly from her face.
"Where's the coppers, you blarsted drunkard?" he shouted in her ear. "D'ye think to get off with the little crack on the crown I've giv' you? I'll do for you to-night if you won't hand over."
"Oh, father, father!" cried the girl, starting up in an agony of terror. "Oh, have mercy and don't hit her, and I'll go out and try to get threepence. Oh, father, there's nothing in the house!"
"Then go, and don't be long about it," he said, going back to his seat.
The mother roused herself at this.
"You sha'n't stir a step to-night, Fan," she said, but in a voice not altogether resolute. "What'll come to you, going into the streets at this time of night?"
"Something grand, like what's come to her mother, perhaps," said he with a laugh.
"Not a step, Fan, if I die for it," retorted the mother, stung by his words. But the girl quickly and with trembling hands had already thrust on her old shapeless hat, and wrapped her shawl about her; then she took a couple of boxes of safety matches, old and greasy from long use, and moved towards the door as her mother rose to prevent her from going out.
"Oh, mother, let me go," she pleaded. "It's best for all of us. It'll kill me to stay in. Let me go, mother; I sha'n't be long."
Her mother still protested; but Fan, seeing her irresolution, slipped past her and was out of the door in a moment.
Once out of the house she ran swiftly along the dark sloppy street until she came to the wide thronged thoroughfare, bright with the flaring gas of the shops; then, after a few moments' hesitation, walked rapidly northwards.
Even in that squalid street where she lived, those who knew Fan from living in the same house, or in one of those immediately adjoining it, considered it a disgraceful thing for her parents to send her out begging; for that was what they called it, although the begging was made lawful by the match-selling pretext. To them it was a very flimsy one, since the cost of a dozen such boxes at any oil-shop in the Edgware Road was twopence-three-farthings--eleven farthings for twelve boxes of safety matches! The London poor know how hard it is to live and pay their weekly rent, and are accustomed to make every allowance for each other; and those who sat in judgment on the Harrods--Fan's parents--were mostly people who were glad to make a shilling by almost any means; glad also, many of them, to get drunk occasionally when the state of the finances allowed it; also they regarded it as the natural and right thing to do to repair regularly every Monday morning to the pawnbroker's shop to pledge the Sunday shoes and children's frocks, with perhaps a tool or two or a pair of sheets and blankets not too dirty and ragged to tempt the cautious gentleman with the big nose.
But they were not disreputable, they knew where to draw the line. Had Fan been a coarse-fibred girl with a ready insolent tongue and fond of horse- play, it would not have seemed so shocking; for such girls, and a large majority of them are like that, seem fitted to fight their way in the rough brutish world of the London streets; and if they fall and become altogether bad, that only strikes one as the almost inevitable result of girlhood passed in such conditions. That Fan was a shy, modest, pretty girl, with a delicate type of face not often seen among those of her class, made the case look all the worse for those who sent her out, exposing her to almost certain ruin.
Poor unhappy Fan knew what they thought, and to avoid exciting remarks she always skulked away, concealing her little stock-in-trade beneath her dilapidated shawl, and only bringing it out when at a safe distance from the outspoken criticisms of Moon Street. Sometimes in fine weather her morning expeditions were as far as Netting Hill, and as she frequently appeared at the same places at certain hours, a few individuals got to know her; in some instances they had began by regarding the poor dilapidated girl with a kind of resentment, a feeling