FAN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XVI, 16 April 1898, Page 489

FAN.

A slender girl of about fifteen years, with jet-black eyes of a remarkable brightness and a tangled mass of shining black hair falling over her brow from beneath the torn brim of a ragged straw hat, stood at my mother’s door one morning in November and asked: •Can you just lend me a cup of coffee and a cup of sugar and flour enough for a bakin’ of bread? I’ll pay it all back when I can.’ My mother had never seen the girl before. She was untidy in her dress; her shoes were not mates, and they were buttonless and full of holes. ‘What is your name?’ my mother asked. ‘Fan.’ ‘And your other name?’ ‘Tracy.* ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Oh, just a little way down the road, the first house from here. I believe they call it the old Peters place. We knew the place very well. No one had lived there for years. The house, which was in the woods a short distance from the river, had been shabby in its best days, and now wSs little better than a hovel. Scarcely a pane of glass was whole, and such of the doors as remained were off their hinges. The floors were sunken, and the plaster was falling from the walls. The house was unfit for human habitation.

The girl’s appearance seemed to indicate that the new family was in harmony with the condition of the house.

‘Do your parents live there?’ my mother asked.

‘I aint got but one parent —my dad. We just come here three days ago, and dad was told he could live in the old Peters house rent free, and if he can get work we’ll settle here.’ ‘How many are there of you?’ ‘Just dad'and me and my little brother Carey; he’s only six, and little for his age.’ My mother gave the girl the articles for which she asked, whereupon she said, with a sudden outburst: ‘l’ll tell you, honest now, mebbe I sha’n’t be able to pay you back these things. Dad aint got work yet, and mebbe he won’t get anything to do; but if he does, and if I can, I’ll pay you back.’ We did not see the girl again for a week, but in that time we learned a little more about the Tracy family. Mrs Hornby came over to our house one afternoon to ‘set awhile.’ Mrs Hornby was an elderly person of so much leisure that she spent most of her time in ‘setting awhile’ in the homes of her neighbours; but she had so much gossip to relate that she was not, as a rule, unwelcome. ‘You’ve heard about a man named Tracy and his two children moving into the old Peters place, haven’t you, Mrs Harley?’ asked Mrs Hornby. ‘Yes,’ replied my mother. ‘The girl has been up here to borrow some things.’ ‘Oh! I think they live mostly on what they can "borrow.” They’d better call it begging and be done with it. Have they paid you back?’ ‘No; but the girl was honest enough to tell me that she couldn’t pay me back if her father did not get work here.’

‘Work!’ ejaculated Mrs Hornby, contemptuously. ‘AU the work that Tracy fellow does won’t hurt him much nor do his family any good. He spends most of his time down to Jim Fifer’s saloon near the Ferry. My! I’d lead the way and carry an axe if the women of this neighbourhood would go down there some night and tear down that saloon to the ground!’ ‘Then the Tracys are so poor because the father is a drinking man?’ ‘Yes; and you may well say poor. I was going by the old Peters place yesterday, and I just thought I’d step in and see how the children were getting along in that old shell.’ ‘Have they made the old place at all habitable?’

‘Well, the man has exerted himself enough to hang a door or two and patch the floor up some. They don’t use but two rooms, and all but one window in them are boarded up. They’ve got a rusty old cook-stove, one or two old chairs, a battered and patched-up old bedstead, a little pine table, and an old red cupboard, and that's ev’ry stick of furniture they have, excepting what that girl, Fan,

has made out of some old boxes. She’s a terror, that Fan is!* ‘One must allow a good deal for her surroundings and the influence she has probably been under all her life,’ said my mother. ‘Well, she needn’t be so saucy, anyhow. She just as good as told me that she didn’t thank me for coming around, and I going there with the kindest motives! And when I asked her if she didn’t have a broom to keep the place clean with, she had the impudence to ask me if I couldn’t lend her mine, as I probably had no use for it, or I wouldn’t have so much time to attend to other folks’s dooryards—the saucy thing!’ ‘Did you see the little boy?’

‘Yes, and he had better manners. He sat back in a corner on a box and kept as quiet as a mouse. He’s a pale, sickly-looking little fellow, and he walks a little lame. I’ve seen him out in the timber picking up sticks to burn. I’ve heard of them “borrowing” things all over the neighbourhood, but I haven’t heard of their paying anything back.’ However, the next day Fan came up to our bouse and returned the sugar she tad borrowed the week before, and asked for some more flour. My mother, who was frying doughnuts, gave Fan three or four of these, in addition to the flour, to carry home to her little brother.

‘Oh, I’m ever so much obliged, Mrs Harley!’ Fan exclaimed, with tears in her eyes. ‘Carey’ll be so pleased! I was trying to make up my mind to ask you for one for him, but I was ashamed. Dad don’t earn scarcely’ anything, but he’s husking corn now for a farmer, and I hope he’ll have steady work for awhile.’ But the next evening we heard that ‘dad’ had been at Jim Fifer’s saloon all day, and w e knew that Fan’s hopes had come to naught. At ten o’clock that same evening my father, as he was preparing to go to bed, heard what seemed to him a light, timid knock on the front door. It was a dark, cold and stormy night; the wind blew with such force that my father could not be sure that what he heard was a knock at the door. He listened, and when the knock was repeated he opened the door. Fan and Carey Tracy stood there in the cold, bareheaded and without wraps. They had been crying. and Carey’s lips were quivering still. ‘Will y’ou let us come in out of the storm, Mr Harley?’ said Fan, with bitterness in her voice. ‘We’ve no place to go, and I wouldn’t ask for any’ place for myself—l’d crawl into a haystack or stay in the woods all night; but I don’t dare to with Carey. He isn’t strong, and I wish you'd please take him in, anyhow.’ ‘Come in, both of you,’ replied my father. ‘Why are you out at this time of the night?’ Fan hesitated. ‘l’ll have to tell you the honest truth,’ she said, presently. ‘Father came home from that Ferry saloon about an hour ago, and turned us out. He never would have done it if he hadn’t been drinking. He isn’t mean to us when he’s sober. It’s the fault of the saloon that he acts so, and I’ll —l’ll tear down that saloon to the ground! I just will!’ ‘But that would be breaking the law, and another saloon would probably be built in its place,’ said father. ‘Perhaps if you spoke to the saloonkeeper it might ’ ‘I have been to him,’ interrupted Fan. I’ve coaxed and begged him not to let father have drink, but what good did it do? Not a bit.’ She put an arm round Carey protectingly, and the little fellow clung to her side. My mother rose and prepared a bed for Fan and her litle brother. The next morning my father went home with them to see if he could not make some appeal to Tracy in behalf of his helpless children.

The man was sober now and repentank He promised earnestly that this should be the last time that he would drink rum.

‘But he’s promised that so many times!’ said Fan, wearily, following my father a short distance from the old house. ‘He promised it over end over to mother before she died, and he’d keep his promise if he could. He can’t while there are saloons around. But there’ll be one less in this neighbourhood some day, if this happens again!’ It did happen again. It happened three days, later, but this time Tracy

did not at first turn his children out of the house. He fell to the floor in a drunken stupor the moment he stumbled across his own threshold, and lay there a helpless, degraded creature, a shame and a sorrow to his children and to himself. Fan had put little Carey to bed before his father came home. Now she sat alone in the dim light of a smouldering fire in the rusty stove at one end of the room. Her father lay, breathing heavily, just where he had fallen when he had stumbled into the bouse, and Fan sat or crouched down on the floor by the stove and looked at him.

Her face took on a sullen, dogged look as she sat there. Her brow contracted in a deep frown, and her thin fingers worked nervously together as she clasped her hands in her lap. Sometimes she whispered some-

thing to herself, and shook her head savagely, but she did not stir from her position until long after the fire had died out and the room was cold and dark. Finally she got up and touched the sleeping man lightly on the shoulder. ‘Father,’ she said. He made no reply, and Fan bent over him and shook him lightly. ‘Father,’ she said, again, ‘don’t you want to go to bed?’ He struck at her in the darkness, and sprang suddenly to his feet, raging and cursing. Fan knew what might come. She ran to the bed and dragged Carey from it. His clothes were on a chair by the bed: Fan picked them up and fled from the house with the child in her arms, a ragged old quilt wrapped around him. She did not stop running until Carey’s weight

compelled her to do so. He clung to her, frightened and crying. •There, there; don't be afraid; sister will take care of you,’ said Fan, soothingly. She sat down on a fallen log, put on the child’s clothes and wrapped the old quilt around him, saying to herself as she did so: ‘l’ll do it! I’ll do it! I’ve said that. I would and I will! But I’ll give Jim Fifer fair warning first. I’ll go and tell him to his face.’ ‘Where we going now. Fan? asked Carey, as Fan fumbled about excitedly, trying to tie one of the little fellow’s ragged shoes in the darkness. ‘Are we going up to Mr Harley's again. Fan?’ ‘I hate to go up there again, Carey. ‘But it’s raining now. Fan, and we can't stay out here in the woods all night, can we?’ 'No. not if it rains, Carey; but we can—l know where we’ll go. Carey!’ she said, with sudden resolution. •It’s where we’ve got the best right to go; it's where we’ve got a perfect right to go; come on.’ She sprang suddenly to her feet and started down the road at such a rapid rate, with the little boy's hand clasped so tightly in hers, that he begged: ‘Wait, Fan, wait! yon go too fast, and you hurt my hand.’ ‘I didn't mean to. Carey. I’ll walk slower now.’ In half-an-hour they came to Jim Fifer's saloon down by the Ferry. The little one-roomed frame house was dark, and Fan shook her fist savagely toward it as she hurried by with Carey clinging close to her side. ‘l'll do this neighbourhood a good service by ridding it of you. I’d do it this minute if I didn’t have Carey with me,’ she gasped. Jim Fifer lived in a new house at the edge of the timber a short disstance from his saloon. A bright light shone in two of the front windows of the house. ’They're up.' said Fan to herself. It's a good thing they are. or I’d get ’em up. My father’s earnings have helped to pay for that house, and I’ve a right to stay in it. I’ll tell Jim Fifer so!’ She rapped loudly at the door. Jim Fifer opened it. Fan strode in boldly with Carey’s hand in hers. ‘I think you know us. Jim Fifer.’ she said, when she had closed the door and was standing with her back against it. She stood and looked fiercely at him. while his wife, a sadeyed, troubled-looking young woman, stared at the two children in wonder. ‘J don’t have to tell you, Jim Fifer, that we are Mr Tracy’s children. He came home from your saloon mad with drink awhile ago and chased us out into the cold and darkness: he’s done it many a time when drink has made him crazy. We’d no place to go, and as your whisky made him drive us out, I thought you’d feel that it was your place to take us in.’ She spoke fearlessly, with her big, shining black eyes fixed on the man’s face. One arm was thrown protectingly around her little brother, who had his face in her skirts and was trembling and crying with terror of the man whom he regarded as the cause of all their misfortune. Before the man could make any reply his wife uttered a cry. and ran to him and hid her face on his breast. In a voice broken by sobs she cried out pitifully:

‘O James! James! is it true? Does she tell the truth? Fifer hung his head in silence, and Fan said in a lower and gentler tone: ‘lt is true, every word of it, Mrs Fifer. We’ve often been turned out at night into the cold and the wet. and we. go ragged and hungry because of that saloon.’ ‘James! James! James!' cried Mrs Fifer, in an agony of shame and distress. There had been strange influences at work in Jim Fifer's heart for two or three days; a slumbering conscience hud suddenly been quickened into life. Several things had happened to trouble him. Other eases of distress had come to him. and his young wife had been pleading with him that very evening to forsake the business. He loved her. and he loved his own two little boys sleeping safely in their beds in the next room. He thought of them, and of the disgrace that he wns piling up for their future, as he looked at the two wet. ragged. pale. and hungry-looking children of Joe Tracy. His wife was thinking of them, too, for she suddenly cried out in a sharper note of pleading distress:

'James, James, think of our own two little boys!’ ‘I am thinking of them, Martha,’ he said. 'Then I know what you will do, James,’ she said. He nodded his head two or three times without speaking, and suddenly broke away from his wife's embrace and ran hatless from the house. His wife turned toward the two children, and took little Carey up into her arms, crying over him and kissing him. Five minutes later a red glow illumined the woods down by the ferry. A sheet of flame shot up among the trees, making their black and leafless branches stand out boldly in its light. The flames rose higher and higher, and Mrs Fifer and Fan could see in the brilliant firelight a bareheaded man standing in the road with folded arms looking at the destruction of his easks of liquor. He had dragged them out into the road and set fire to them. The place at the Ferry was never re-opened as a saloon. In the little building Jim Fifer set up the business of a shoemaker, to which he had been trained. There he prospered, and became a respected citizen. My father and several others interested themselves particularly in Tracy. There was a little house of two or three rooms on our farm into which they moved. Mrs Fifer did much for the children. There were still remains of manliness and honour in poor Tracy, and the time came when Fan and Carey were, proud to call him father, and when he was all that a father ought to be to his children.

J. L. HARBOUR.