BENNIE BEN CREE
Being the Story of his Adventure to Southward in the Year '62
By Arthur Colton
Doubleday & McClure Co. New York
1900
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IN MEMORIAM
Dedicated
TO MY MOTHER
BENNIE BEN CREE
CHAPTER I.--BENSON AND CREE--THE COMMODORE INN, FORE AND AFT; AND A
POINT STATED BY MY UNCLE BENSON.
|If anyone would understand how Ben Cree comes to be what he is for
better or worse, he should know first the Commodore Inn and what it
meant in those days to have the great wharves for a playground. And I
cannot conceive to this day how one can amuse oneself, or be satisfied
with any neat door-yard or inland village street, unless one is born a
girl with a starched pinafore, which I should think would be a pity.
First, then, you should picture the Commodore Inn; its red bricks
streaked with the rain and the beat of damp winds; its high veranda,
with the paint coming off the white pillars, and the worn stone steps
leading underneath. In front is the brick sidewalk, the cobbled street,
the bit of open space with Harrier's junk-shop on the right corner; and
then the warehouses on either side, all leading down to the slip, Doty's
Slip, which is flanked by noble wharves, with huge piles leaning awry
and very slippery. The warehouses are roomy and full of queer smells, as
if the varied merchandize of fifty years had left something for its
old friends, the warehouses, to remember it by. The contents of these
warehouses changed continually: cotton, tobacco, slabs of crude rubber,
and multitudes of boxes whose contents might be learned sometimes by
asking the wharf-master, if you did not mind his cuffing you on the
ears. Next there would be the river and its hurrying tides, its choppy
waves, the ferryboats, sailboats, and tugs going to and fro: to right
and left--seen well by climbing the warehouse roofs--are masts of
many ships with innumerable amusing ropes, other wharves with the like
slippery brown piles and dark places underneath where the water thieves
hid and bored holes up through the planks into the molasses barrels. Mr.
Hooley, the wharf policeman, told me of that, and there was much that
was attractive in it. For there was a time, before my ideas became
settled, when I thought of many different careers. To be a wharf
policeman seemed too ambitious a thought, too vain and far away; so that
I asked Mr. Hooley's advice about water thieving, having respect for his
opinion.
“Naw, Bennie Ben,” he said, “'tis low. 'Tis not for the son of yer
father, an' yer mother a lady as was ever bor-rn.”
“Do you think I could be a wharf policeman, Mr. Hooley?”
“Ah,” he said, looking mysterious, “who knows that? Don't ye let young
Dillon lick ye, an' maybe--but 'tis a long way fer ye to grow.”
But I was speaking of the river. The navy yard lay nearly opposite, and
the Wallabout, as that water is called behind the Government Cob Dock.
And that stretch of busy river, with its tumult and tides, I love still
no less, and love the thick smell of the wharves and warehouses.
My two grandfathers, Benson and Cree, were shipping merchants together,
“Benson & Cree,” long ago, when you did not have to go beyond the Harlem
for a bit of country. Indeed, my Grandmother Cree, I am told, had a
great flower and vegetable garden, and there was an orchard behind the
house, where in my time was but a little yard. The house was built for
some colonial gentleman's residence, and my grandfathers bought it
when prosperity came to them. And there they lived together with their
families, and there were my father and mother born, for they were
cousins, and also Uncle Benson and the two others who went down off
Barnegat: a great, warmhearted house, red-walled and white-pillared.
The firm in its best days owned five ships. And by an odd arrangement
one of them was always sailed by a member of the firm. They had their
turns, one abroad and one at home. From this came the rhyme,
"Benson and Cree,
One at home and one at sea”;
my father used to sing it, when absent-minded, to a queer haphazard
tune. And I have heard Harrier, the junk-shop man, sing it too. But my
father, if he saw me listening, would stop and seem ashamed, which I
could not explain at first.
My father was an only child, and my mother an only daughter, but there
were once three Benson boys. I am not sure of my Grandfather Cree, nor
of my two grandmothers, at what dates they died, but in the year 1838
three of the five ships were lost: one of them with Grandfather Benson
(in what waters is unknown), one of them with two of his sons off
Bamegat, and one of them left a tilted wreck in the mid-Atlantic. And
that same year my father made his last voyage, though still young in a
way; for he came back with his knee crushed by the smack of a loose spar
in a heavy sea, and walked with a crutch forever after.
When my time came, there was no firm of Benson & Cree. Our fortunes
had not fallen altogether, but were moderate enough. Only three persons
remained of the two families. Uncle Ben Benson was captain and part
owner of the _Saratoga_, a good ship, carrying steam and sail, and
landing merchandize at Doty's Slip. The house was now the Commodore
Inn, kept by Tom Cree, my father. Ah, that was a brave man, loud-voiced,
joyful! I believe I would break my knee willingly, and carry a crutch
to the end of my days, to be so good a man, so simple and full of the
pleasure of things.
My mother was singularly quiet in her ways, but I think the success
of the Commodore came from my father's popularity and my mother's
management, and it was her hand that was on the tiller.
And now, speaking of the Commodore as if it were a ship, I come to what
is properly the beginning of this story.
Very few of those who came to the Commodore--and they were mostly
seafaring folk of the better class--ever saw my mother. She never
appeared on the front porch with the pillars, where my father sat often
and shouted heartily to any friend in sight; but she was always above,
and often in her sewing-room that looked out on the little garden in the
rear. I never knew her to come out of the front door, or to look from
the windows on the slip; but whenever she went abroad it was through the
back door and the little garden, gliding so quietly, so gently, that
it seemed wonderful to me, who could not move, any more than could my
father, without a thunderous racket. I can see her plainly, with her
black shawl and sweet still face under an overhanging bonnet, going out
through the little garden.
How early or in what way I learned it I am not sure, but it seems as if
it had always been a settled thing that I must not speak to her of the
slip, or the river, or the ships, or anything in view from the
front porch; but things which could be seen from the windows of her
sewing-room, the garden, the people in the other street, the carriages
and 'busses, steeples and distant roofs, these I might talk about. When
Uncle Benson came home, once a year perhaps, the difference between the
porch or inn parlour and the sewing-room was notable. For below the talk
was all of the sea, winds, and islands, and full queer phrases of the
shipping.
My father loud and merry, and my uncle full of dry stories; my father's
huge beard rumpled on his chest with laughter; Uncle Benson, as always
when ashore, clean shaven and very natty in his clothes. But when we
went above to the sewing-room, my mother would make tea on the hob,
while the two men played backgammon, and you would have thought, for all
that was said of it, that there was no sea at all, flowing and wrapped
about the world. It was all quiet talk of the house, the new minister at
the Broadway Church, and how it were well for Bennie to mind better his
books.
All this did not seem strange to me until it was explained, and then it
seemed strange. For the things one is accustomed to when a little child
appear only a part of common nature, whatever they are, and no more to
be wondered at than tides and the flight of gulls.
I had learned the story of that sudden, disastrous year, '38, though
not from my father. He was a man curiously without shrewdness to suspect
what I might be thinking, and without that kind of courage--if I may
say so with affection--which enables a man to approach at need a subject
which is sad or sore to him inwardly. So that, while I had my own
thoughts, the thing was not all explained till I was a well-grown,
clumsy lad.
In this while it had come slowly upon me, until at last it was a great
conviction, that I must be neither a water-thief, nor policeman, nor a
doctor driving his carriage, nor a preacher in a carpeted pulpit, but a
seaman and sometime a ship-captain like Uncle Benson, which idea became
a hunger and thirst. But when I told my father of it, he looked at me
queerly, and told me to mind my books. And I noticed that he would talk
no more of sea matters when I was near, 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.
Uncle 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 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.