Fan | Page 6

so bad neither, when he's not in the drink. He's sorry he hit me now."
"Oh, mother, I can't bear it! I hate him--I hate him; and he _isn't_ my father, and he hates me, and he'll kill me some day when I come home with nothing."
"Who says he isn't your father--where did you hear that, Fan?"
"He calls me bastard every day, and I know what that means. Mother, is he my father?"
"The brute--no!"
"Then why did you marry him, mother? Oh, we could have been so happy together!"
"Yes, Fan, I know that now, but I didn't know it then. I married him three months before you was born, so that you'd be the child of honest parents. He had a hundred pounds with me, but it all went in a year; and it's always been up and down, up and down with us ever since, but now it's nothing but down."
"A hundred pounds!" exclaimed Fan in amazement "And who was my father?"
"Go to bed, Fan, and don't ask questions. I've been very foolish to say so much. You are too young to understand such things."
"But, mother, I do understand, and I want to know who my father is. Oh, do--do tell me!"
"What for?"
"Because when I know I'll go to him and tell him how--how he treats us, and ask him to help us to go away into the country where he'll never find us any more." Her mother laughed. "You're a brave girl if you'd do that," she said, her face softening. "No, Fan, it can't be done."
"Oh, please tell me, and I'll do it. Why can't it be done, mother?"
"I can't tell you any more, child. Go to bed, and forget all about it. You hear bad things enough in the street, and it 'ud only put badness into your head to hear talk of such things."
Fan's pleading eyes were fixed on her mother's face with a strange meaning and earnestness in them; then she said:
"Mother, I hear bad things in the street every day, but they don't make me bad. Oh, do tell me about my father, and why can't I go to him?"
The unhappy woman looked down, and yet could hardly meet those grey beautiful eyes fixed so earnestly on her face. She hesitated, and passed her trembling fingers over Fan's disordered hair, and finally burst into tears.
"Oh, Fan, I can't help it," she said, half sobbing. "You have just his eyes, and it brings it all back when I look into them. It was wicked of me to go wrong, for I was brought up good and honest in the country; but he was a gentleman, and kind and good to me, and not a working-man and a drunken brute like poor Joe. But I sha'n't ever see him again. I don't know where he is, and he wouldn't know me if he saw me; and perhaps he's dead now. I loved him and he loved me, but we couldn't marry because he was a gentleman and me only a servant-girl, and I think he had a wife. But I didn't care, because he was good to me and loved me, and he gave me a hundred pounds to get married, and I can't ever tell you his name, Fan, because I promised never to name him to anyone, and kissed the Book on it when he gave me the hundred pounds, and it would be wicked to tell now. And Joe, he wanted to marry me; he knew it all, and took the hundred pounds and said it would make no difference. He'd love you just the same, he said, and never throw it up to me; and that's why I married Joe. Oh, what a fool I was, to be sure! But it can't be helped now, and it's no use saying more about it. Now go to bed, Fan, and forget all I've said to you."
Fan rose and went sorrowfully to her bed; but she did not forget, or try to forget, what she had heard. It was sad to lose that hope of ever seeing her father, but it was a secret joy to know that he had been kind and loving to her poor mother, and that he was a gentleman, and not one like Joe Harrod; that thought kept her awake in her cold bed for a long time--long after Joe and his wife were peacefully sleeping side by side.

CHAPTER II
That troubled evening was followed by a quiet period, lasting from Wednesday to Saturday, during which there were no brawls indoors, and Fan was free of the hateful task of going out to collect pence in the streets. Joe had been offered a three or four days' job; he had accepted it gratefully because it was only for three or four