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.