“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?”