Bennie Ben Cree | Page 4

see now, quite right. But she would so shrink and tremble at any speaking of the sea that we quit saying anything, as you know well, and I hope and trust she has had no pain from that, nor looked upon salt water, these twenty years.
"So now it's put to you, Ben, for you want to go out with me, and I'm thinking for the matter of the war she'd be no more than other women perhaps, but for the rest it's different. And now we've put it to you, we'll ask what you think."
I was fumbling with my jacket, struggling not to see how the case stood, which nevertheless seemed clear enough, and my eyes were hot with thinking of things greater and stranger than I had known before. "I think as you do," I said at last, as stiff and steady as I could make out.
"Aye," said he, "and that's all right. But I'll tell you what I think. We've been saying, he and I, it might come all right in time, and if a Ben Benson Cree must be a landsman after all he should have the credit of seeing the thing for himself, and what was reasonable and right. That's how we put it. But now it's been many years, and a man can't tell but things may be quiet, and she might make no trouble at all. A man can't tell, now, can he?"
"Why, no," my father burst in nervously. "How can he? We put it to you, how can he?"
"And it's a job I don't hanker for, but I'm going to do it for you, Ben, sort of hitch it in with conversation, sort of by the way."
"That's it," said my father. "You hitch it in sort of by the way."
My uncle stood up, buttoned his coat, and went softly from the room.
My father sat quite silent, but his face was full of trouble and fear, like that of a child who is frightened at the wind or the dark, though in a bodily sense I suppose he was a man that never feared anything. He pawed his great beard with a shaking hand, a hand bigger than mine is now, which is no small affair.
So we waited for a time that no doubt seemed longer than it was; I do not know how long, or what Uncle Benson said by way of conversation. But at last there was a sudden cry and something fell, jarring the floor with a dull, soft sound.
My father jumped forward. I shot past him and up the stairway, he struggling and thumping behind with his crutch. In the sewing-room Uncle Benson was lifting my mother to the sofa. She lay with her hands to her face, murmuring, moaning, in a swift incessant way to make one shiver, with her pretty bright hair loose on her forehead.
"Here!" cried my uncle, sharply. "Tell her it won't be. Quick, boy!"
I fell on my knees beside her crying:
"I'll never go, if you don't like, never, never!"
The murmuring and moaning ceased gradually. She took both hands from her face and put them around my neck, and my father and Uncle Benson, bending over her, gave a great sigh that was like a sob, both together; and looking up I saw my father gripping the other's shoulder, as if to hold himself up.
"Two fools, Tom, two fools," said Uncle Benson grimly.
Then my father did what I think was an odd thing, but keen; for he stumped over to the cupboard and brought out the backgammon board. And there they played backgammon it might be an hour, making their points vigorously with great racket, as if nothing else could interest them, my mother the while holding hard to my rough head.
So the Saratoga sailed away in due time, and left me behind to make a poor pretense at books, but to get along better when the summer came, with helping in the business of the inn.

CHAPTER II.
LACRIM? RERUM--THE THREE MEN IN THE PUBLIC.
It was in the latter part of September that I first observed the three strangers at the corner table in the public room, though they may have been there before. Afterwards, whenever passing through, I would look for them, and they were noticeable men; the eldest of the three an easy-looking gentleman with an air of commanding and greyish hair and beard; the second, who always sat beside him against the wall, was odd and humorous in his manner and had a look of imperturbable happiness, round faced, smooth-shaven, with straight hair and rather long, thin lips sticking out when something amused him, a well-muscled, large-framed man; the third stranger always sat opposite the others, with his back and square, slender shoulders to the rest of the room. And when all three men