ood on his gold; he poured it
out before my mother, and she told him so. He's the making of a pirate
himself. Oh, you've never heard, I see. Well, since I'm in for it,--but
you'll never breathe it?--and it's not worth while darkening Effie
with it, let alone she's so giddy my mother'd know I'd been giving it
mouth,--perhaps I oughtn't,--but there!--poor Mary! He used to hang
about the place, having seen her once when she came round from Windsor
in a schooner, and it was a storm,--may-happen he saved her life in it.
And Mary after, Mary'd meet him at church, and in the garden, and on the
river; 't was by pure chance on her part, and he was forever in the way.
Then my mother, innocent of it all, went to Edinboro', as you know, and
I was married and out of the reach, and Mary kept the house those two
months with Mrs. March of the Hill for dowager,--her husband was in
the States that summer,--and Mrs. March is no more nor less than
cracked,--and no wonder he should make bold to visit the house. My
mother'd been home but a day and night, 's you may say, when in walks my
gentleman,--who but he?--fine as a noble of the Court, and Mary presents
him to Mrs. Strathsay as Mr. Helmar of the Bay. Oh, but Mrs. Strathsay
was in a stound. And he began by requesting her daughter's hand. And
that brake the bonds,--and she dashed out sconners of wrath. Helmar's
eyes flashed only once, then he kept them on the ground, and he heard
her through. 'T was the second summer Seavern's fleet was at
the harbor's mouth there, and a ship of war lay anchored a mile
downriver,--many's the dance we had on it's deck!--and Captain Seavern
of late was in the house night and morn,--for when he found Mary offish,
he fairly lay siege to her, and my mother behind him,--and there was
Helmar sleeping out the nights in his dew-drenched boat at the garden's
foot, or lying wakeful and rising and falling with the tide under her
window, and my mother forever hearing the boat-chains clank and stir.
She's had the staple wrenched out of the wall now,--'t was just below
the big bower-window, you remember. And when Mary utterly refused
Seavern, Seavern swore he'd wheel his ship round and raze the house to
its foundations: he was--drunk--you see. And Mary laughed in his face.
And my mother beset her,--I think she went on her knees to her,--she led
her a dreadful life," said Margray, shivering; "and the end of it all
was, that Mary promised to give up Helmar, would my mother