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.