BEN’S COURTSHIP.
Ben had never been to sea with his father. Captain Rhines didn’t
believe it was a good plan for relations to be shipmates; he didn’t
want his son to be “ship’s cousin,” but to rise on his own merits, as
his father had done before him; and if he couldn’t do that, then he
might stay down. But Ben had proved himself to be a man of capacity.
The owners were all willing, and his father wanted him to take the ship
and let him stay at home.
Ben gladly accepted the offer, and was making preparations to go; but
there was a matter of great importance for him to settle, before he
left home. Ben loved Sally Hadlock, though he had never dared to tell
her of it.
She had a great many admirers among the young men, and he felt that it
was risking altogether too much to go on a long voyage, and run the
venture of Sally’s being snapped up by some of them before his return.
The greatest source of apprehension in his mind was the fact, that
he heard she had said, she never could, nor would, marry a man that
followed the sea.
Her father and oldest brother were lost at sea. Sally could never
forget the agony of her mother when her father’s sea chest came home,
nor the trial of those bitter years, during which she and her mother
had struggled along, and kept the family together until the younger
children grew up.
Sally Hadlock was a poor girl, but she was as pretty as a May morning.
Though she knew scarcely a note of music, she could warble like a bird,
and, as the neighbors said, “she was faculized.” Everybody loved and
respected Sally for her kindness to her mother, and because she was
as modest as she was beautiful, and as lively as a humming-bird. Her
mother idolized her, as well she might.
Never was the widow so happy as when, over a good cup of souchong, she
descanted upon the fine qualities of her daughter, utterly regardless
of Sally’s blushes, and whispered, “O, don’t, mother.” “Yes,” the old
lady would say, shoving her spectacles up on her cap, and stirring
slowly her tea, “I’ll put my Sally, though I say it that shouldn’t say
it, for taking a fleece of wool as it comes from the sheep’s back, and
making it into cloth, against any girl in the town; and then she always
has such good luck making soap, and such luck with her bread! she beats
me out and out in hot biscuit. You see this table-cloth; well, she spun
the flax, and bleached the thread, drew it into the loom, and wove it,
all sole alone.”
Sally was not without some dim perception of Ben’s attachment to her.
She knew that he was very fond of her brother Sam; and that if he
wanted to borrow anything they had, he would always come himself, both
to get it and to bring it home.
When he came home from sea, he always brought presents for the widow
Hadlock. Many of them, though very beautiful, didn’t seem altogether
adapted to an old widow; and then her mother would say, “Sally, these
things are very beautiful, but I shall never put off my mourning for
your dear father; they would be very becoming to you.”
Ben went to singing-school, in the school-house. A young man had
recently come into the village from Salem, as a singing-master. He
had a way that took mightily with the girls. This excited a general
antipathy to him among all the young men in the place, who, since his
advent, found themselves at a discount with the ladies. Latterly, his
attentions had been directed particularly to Sally Hadlock, as the
prettiest girl in the village.
The house being crowded one evening, Ben had gone into the seat usually
reserved for the singers. The singing-master, who was an empty coxcomb,
with nothing but good looks to recommend him, ordered him out. Ben,
with his usual good nature, would have obeyed; but the tone was so
contemptuous, and the place so public (probably Sally’s presence might
have had something to do with it), that it stung; Ben replied that he
sat very well, and remained as he was.
This drew the eyes of all upon him, as expecting something interesting.
In a few moments his tormentor returned, and assured him, if he did
not move, and that quick, he would be put out. Upon this, Ben rose up
to his full height, and looking down upon the frightened man of music,
said, “I don’t think there are men enough in this school-house to put
me out.”
This sally was received with a universal shout by the audience, who
not only had not the least doubt of the fact, but also rejoiced in the
discomfiture of the puppy.
Sally was very much grieved at the master’s insulting treatment of Ben,
who had done so much for her mother. It is said that all women are
hero-worshippers.
When she saw him so completely frightened out of his impertinence, and
made ridiculous, noticed the forbearance of Ben, who might have squat
him up like a fly between his fingers and thumb, she became conscious
of a tenderer feeling for her old schoolmate, who that night went home
with her and her mother for the first time.
Ben now determined to make a bold push, and go and see Sally Sunday
night, though he knew she, and everybody else, would know what it
meant. It seems very singular that Ben Rhines, who had been half over
the world, and in a privateer, should be afraid to go over to the
widow Hadlock’s before dark; but he was: so he broke the matter to his
most intimate friend, Sam Johnson, who offered to go with him the next
Sunday night.
It was a pleasant Sabbath afternoon, in August, about four o’clock.
Captain Rhines had been sitting in his arm-chair reading the Apocrypha,
and fell asleep.
Ben was sitting at the window, all dressed up, quite nervous, waiting
for Sam.
Sam came at length, and asked Ben if he wanted to go into the pastures
and get a few blueberries. Ben assented, when, to their astonishment,
old Captain Rhines roused up and inquired, “Where are you going, boys?”
“We’re just going out to get a few blueberries.”
“Well, I don’t care if I go, too.”
Here was a dilemma; but love helps wit. They found a thick bush for the
old gentleman to pick, crawled away on their hands and knees to a safe
distance, then got on their feet, and ran for the widow Hadlock’s.
The old captain having hallooed for them long after they were in the
widow’s parlor, finally went home. Just as they expected, they were
asked to stop to supper.
After supper, Sally and her mother went out to milking, while Ben and
Sam leaned on the fence to look at them. The old speckled cow, which
Sally had milked ever since she was a girl, acted as if bewitched: she
switched Sally’s comb out of her head with her tail, and finally put
her foot in the milk-pail.
While all this was going on, Sam Johnson unaccountably disappeared. Ben
could do no less than offer to carry in the milk for them; was invited
to spend the evening; and the old lady, excusing herself on account of
ill health, slipped off to bed, and Ben and Sally were left together.
In due time Ben asked Sally if she liked him well enough to marry him.
Now Sally was a good, sensible New England girl: she didn’t faint nor
scream, but she blushed a little, and finally consented to marry him,
on condition that he should give up going to sea, and stay at home with
her.
The reader must bear in mind that this is not a love scene of a
sensation novel, but conversation of people, who, loving each other
sincerely, looked upon married life as a sacred obligation, in which
they put their whole heart, and expected to find their sole happiness.
Ben did not therefore reply that he loved Sally to distraction, that
he could not exist a moment without her, and that he would never dream
of going to sea again; but, after some considerable hesitation, he at
length moved his chair nearer to Sally, and looking up full in her
face, said, “Sally, you and I have known each other from the time we
made bulrush caps together in your mother’s pasture, when we were
children, till now; and I think you know me well enough to know that I
am a man of few words, and would never ask a woman to marry me unless I
really loved her, and intended to support her, for you know that must
be thought of.
“As for going to sea, though I have been fortunate, and risen in my
profession faster than any young man in town, faster, perhaps, than I
ought,--for I was mate of a ship before I was twenty,--though I have no
reason to be afraid of men, and can handle the roughest of them like
children, and care nothing for hardship, yet I never liked the sea. O,
how I have longed, on some East India voyage, to see an acre of green
grass, or hear a robin sing! I don’t like to feel that people obey me
just because they are afraid of me, and to go stalking round the decks
like some of those giants we read of in the old story books. I do love
the land better than the sea. I love the flowers; I love to plough and
hoe; I love to see things grow. I’m as loath to go to sea as you can be
to have me;” and he put his arm around her neck and kissed her; “but
the seaman’s life is my profession. I have spent many of the best years
of my life, employed the time that might have been devoted to learning
a trade, or some other business on shore, in fitting myself for it. I
now have a ship offered me: this affords me at once the opportunity of
reaping the fruits of my past labor, and supporting a wife; besides,
Sally, we are both poor. You may think it strange, that, as I have been
officer of a vessel for some time, I should not have laid up something;
but my father became involved some years ago, and I felt it my duty to
help him out; and I am neither sorry for it nor ashamed of it. This
was the reason I did not dress better, because I felt that I ought to
economize, for the sake of the best parents ever a boy had. I suppose
many people, who knew I was earning a good deal of money, thought I was
mean, or spent it in some bad way; and perhaps you did.”
“No, Ben,” replied Sally; “I knew better than that. I knew that, if
you didn’t, like a snail, put everything on your back, you were always
ready to help any one who needed it; and no person can go on long in a
bad course without those who love them finding it out.”
“You see how it is, Sally, if I take this ship, I am at once in
circumstances to be married, with the prospect of a comfortable living.
To be sure, I could work on the land, for I was a farmer till I was
seventeen; but then I should have to run in debt to buy it. There is
not much money to be got off a farm; it always took about what father
earned to pay the hired help, the taxes, and family expenses, and he
soon had to go to sea again for more.”
Poor Sally listened, as Ben thus placed before her the “inevitable
logic of facts.”
She looked first this way, and then that, and finally laid her head on
Ben’s shoulder, and cried like a child.
Ben was greatly distressed: he knew not what to say, and remained
for a long time silent; at length he said, “There is a way that I
have thought of, but I didn’t like to mention it, for fear--” Here he
hesitated.
“For fear of what?” cried Sally, lifting her head from his shoulder,
and looking at him through her tears.
“Why, for fear, if I should do it, and you should marry me on the
strength of it, and we should be poor, see hard times, and people
should look down on us, that then you might perhaps feel--” And here he
stopped again.
“Feel what?”
“Why,” stammered Ben, finding he must out with it, “feel that if you
had only married some of these young men that I know have offered
themselves to you, and that had rich fathers, instead of poor Ben
Rhines, you wouldn’t have needed to have brought the water to wash your
hands.”
“When I marry,” replied Sally, bluntly, “I shall not marry anybody’s
father, but the boy I love. Now, let’s hear your plan, Ben.”
“You know,” he replied, more slowly than he had ever spoken before in
his whole life, “the island off in the bay that father has had the care
of so many years?”
“What, Elm Island?”
“That’s it.”
“Yes, indeed! I’ve been there a hundred times with our Sam and Seth
Warren, after berries.”
“It’s the best land that ever lay out doors, covered with a heavy
growth of spruce and pine, fit for spars; many of them would run
seventy feet without a limb. I think old Mr. Welch would sell it on
credit to any one he knew, and that anybody might cut off the timber,
and have the land, and wood enough to burn, left clear. It would make
a splendid farm, and a man might pick up considerable money by gunning
and fishing; but,” said Ben, his countenance falling, “what a place
for a woman! No society, no neighbors, right among the breakers; and
sometimes, in the winter, there’ll be a month nobody can get on nor
off. It would be a good place to get a living, and lay up money; but
no woman would go on there, and a man would be a brute to ask her. I’m
sorry I said anything about it.”
“There’s one woman will go on there,” replied Sally, “and not repent
of it after she gets there either; and that woman’s Sally Hadlock. I
hold that if a girl loves a man well enough to marry him, she’ll be
contented where he is, and she won’t be contented where he isn’t. As to
the society, I had rather be alone with my husband than have all the
society in the world without him. I had rather be on an island with my
husband, working hard, and carrying my share of the load, than to be
in the best society, and have every comfort, and at the same time know
that my husband is beating about at sea, in sickly climates, perhaps
dying, with nobody to do for him, in order to support me in luxury and
laziness, or in circumstances of comfort which he cannot enjoy with
me; and I say that any woman, that _is_ a woman, will say amen to it.
We may have a hard scratch of it at first, and have to live rough; but
I have always been poor; it’s nothing new to me. What reason on earth
is there, bating sickness or death, why we should not get along? I’ve
always maintained myself, and helped maintain my mother and family. You
have maintained yourself, paid your father’s debts, and more too, for
you have helped my mother lots.”
“Yes, but I was going to sea then,” put in Ben.
“It is strange, then,” continued Sally, without heeding the
interruption, “that we two, who have supported ourselves and other
folks, can’t support our own selves. I see how it is, Ben; this island
can be bought very cheap, on account of the disadvantages of living on
it; that you can pay for it by your own labor, and see no other way of
getting your living on the land. Is that it, Ben?”
“That is it.”
“Well, then,” replied this noble New England girl, reddening to the
very roots of her hair, and her eyes flashing through her tears, “I
will marry you, and go to that island with you; we will take the bitter
with the sweet; we will suffer and enjoy together. If you love me well
enough to give up a ship, and go on to that island to live with me,
I love you well enough to go on it and be happy with you. I thank God,
that if he has given me a handsome face, as they say, he has not given
me an empty head nor an idle hand to go with it. I have worked, and
saved, and denied myself for my mother and brothers, and have been
right happy and well thought of in doing it. I can do the same for
my husband; and if any think _less_ of me on that account, I shan’t
have them for next door neighbors to twit me of it. My home is in my
husband’s heart, and where his interest and duty lie.”
Ben thought she never looked half so beautiful before, and imprinted a
fervent kiss upon the lips that had uttered such noble sentiments. The
day was breaking as they separated.