Bennie Ben Cree | Page 3

and would send me away from the inn parlour to go up to the sewing-room. So, whenever I pressed him to say I was to be a sailor, he would put it aside with a look on his face that puzzled me, for it was not only sadness, but fear. The sweat would come on his forehead and his hand shake. I think I was little comfort to anyone in those days, knocking about the streets and wharves, idle, sullen, and restless, wronging those in my thoughts who loved me most.
That old song I took to humming to myself--
"Benson and Cree, One at home and one at sea," till I had fairly got it changed, so that it ran-- "Bennie Ben Cree, Come away to the sea,"
and the lilt of the tune never failed to put a beating in my ears and a burning in my eyes, and fill my head with foolish fancies. I would sing it to Harrier in his shop, and Harrier would say, "Aye, aye, sonny! Them's new words."
So it was come the year '61; and late in the month of May the Saratoga lay in the slip being fitted out for government use to blockade Southern ports, and sometime, then or later, was towed across to the navy yard. She was sold to the service, with the option of repurchase if not destroyed, and Uncle Benson was enlisted to command her, and looked a fit proper man in his uniform, which excited me almost beyond endurance.
Now I am come to a scene in the little inn parlour behind the public room. It was my father's office, and in a manner his room of state. You should see in mind a square room with pleasant curtains and a gay carpet on the floor, a round stove with no fire in it at this time; there are six or eight stout chairs of varied shape, about the number of my father's cronies, who came evenings to pack themselves in, and make the air white with smoke and salty with old sea memories. In the corner is a snug desk, and about the walls models of "Benson & Cree's" five ships; portraits of the family, and a painting of an unlikely looking coast; on one side shelves with a few books, but mainly pink and white shells, and stuffed fishes.
Unclel Benson and my father are sitting looking at me, who am standing awkwardly enough and shifting my feet about. Uncle Benson is saying, "We're going to put it to you, Ben," and my father bursts in nervously:
"That's it, Ben. We're going to put it to you, just how it is, don't you see?"
My uncle coughed, and beginning in an oddly stiff and formal way told the story of the year 1838, for the most part what I knew already, as I told him, not meaning to be impolite.
"Aye, Ben," said he, quietly, "but I'm going on. You don't know that your mother, for a year or more----"
"Eighteen months," said my father, leaning forward and speaking huskily.
"Eighteen months. Well, well, a wonderful woman, your mother, but women take trouble different ways. Some take it hard."
I stared at them, bewildered enough, while they looked long at each other, seeming to take comfort from it. Uncle Benson, leaning forward, touched my father's knee.
"You and me, Tom, we most gave it up."
And my father pulled his beard fiercely.
"Gave what up?" I cried. "What was it?"
"Aye," said my father with a start, "we're going to put it to you, Ben."
"Why," said Uncle Benson softly, "'twas a shock she had, 'twas a tough time, and you weren't a man, Tom, to see what to do."
"No good at all," said my father, shaking his head.
Again they fell to looking at each other, and there seemed to be no ending of my impatience.
"Oh," said Uncle Benson at last, "but we're not putting it to you, Ben."
"Aye," said my father, "we're going to put it to you."
And my uncle went on.
"Eighteen months it was, and right you are. A moaning, trembling, walking the floor like one as has a bad dream and no let up. Wrong, wrong in her head, and by times very wild, Ben, and suffering terrible with fancies; by times not knowing anyone, and always it was some one going down with the seas clapping over him. She said the sea was hungry and cruel, Ben, having her fancies, poor woman. She used to tell a-whispering, how she could hear the big seas mad and raging all about her, and at other times little waves on the beach, like a beast sipping and licking its lips. Fancies she had very odd. And when you were born it came back again, but only for a few weeks. And other whiles it has been as we