So it was that the assembly which had risen to greet Mr. Jaquelin's latest guests, besides being sufficiently well born, was not at all ill bred, nor uninformed, nor untraveled. But it was not of the gay world as were the three whom it welcomed. It had spent only months, not years, in England; it had never kissed the King's hand; it did not know Bath nor the Wells; it was innocent of drums and routs and masquerades; had not even a speaking acquaintance with great lords and ladies; had never supped with Pope, or been grimly smiled upon by the Dean of St. Patrick's, or courted by the Earl of Peterborough. It had not, like the elder of the two men, studied in the Low Countries, visited the Court of France, and contracted friendships with men of illustrious names; nor, like the younger, had it written a play that ran for two weeks, fought a duel in the Field of Forty Footsteps, and lost and won at the Cocoa Tree, between the lighting and snuffing of the candles, three thousand pounds.
Therefore it stood slightly in awe of the wit and manners and fine feathers, curled newest fashion, of its sometime friends and neighbors, and its welcome, if warm at heart, was stiff as cloth of gold with ceremony. The May Queen tripped in her speech as she besought Mistress Evelyn to take the flower-wreathed great chair standing proudly forth from the humbler seats, and colored charmingly at the lady of fashion's smiling shake of the head and few graceful words of homage. The young men slyly noted the length of the Colonel's periwig and the quality of Mr. Hayward's Mechlin, while their elders, suddenly lacking material for discourse, made shift to take a deal of snuff. The Colonel took matters into his own capable hands.
"Mr. Jaquelin, I wish that my tobacco at Westover may look as finely a fortnight hence as does yours to-day! There promise to be more Frenchmen in my fields than Germans at St. James. Mr. Gary, if I come to Denbigh when the peaches are ripe, will you teach me to make persico? Mr. Allen, I hear that you breed cocks as courageous as those of Tanagra. I shall borrow from you for a fight that I mean to give. Ladies, for how much gold will you sell the recipe for that balm of Mecca you must use? There are dames at Court would come barefoot to Virginia for so dazzling a bloom. Why do you patch only upon the Whig side of the face? Are you all of one camp, and does not one of you grow a white rosebush against the 29th of May? May it please your Majesty the May Queen, I shall watch the sports from this seat upon your right hand. Egad, the miller quits himself as though he were the moss-grown fellow of Sherwood Forest!"
The ice had thawed; and by the time the victorious miller had been pushed forward to receive the smart cocked hat which was the Virginia rendition of the crown of wild olive, it had quite melted. Conversation became general, and food was found or made for laughter. When the twelve fiddlers who succeeded the blacksmith and the miller came trooping upon the green, they played, one by one, to perhaps as light-hearted a company as a May Day ever shone upon. All their tunes were gay and lively ones, and the younger men moved their feet to the music, while a Strephon at the lower end of the lists seized upon a blooming Chloe, and the two began to dance "as if," quoth the Colonel, "the musicians were so many tarantula doctors."
A flower-wreathed instrument of his calling went to the player of the sprightliest air; after which awardment, the fiddlers, each to the tune of his own choosing, marched off the green to make room for Pretty Bessee, her father the beggar, and her suitors the innkeeper, the merchant, the gentleman, and the knight.
The high, quick notes of the song suited the sunshiny weather, the sheen of the river, the azure skies. A light wind brought from the orchard a vagrant troop of pink and white petals to camp upon the silken sleeve of Mistress Evelyn Byrd. The gentleman sitting beside her gathered them up and gave them again to the breeze.
"It sounds sweetly enough," he said, "but terribly old-fashioned:—
'I weigh not true love by the weight of the purse,
And beauty is beauty in every degree.'
That's not Court doctrine."
The lady to whom he spoke rested her cheek upon her hand, and looked past the singers to the blossoming slope and the sky above. "So much the worse for the Court," she said. "So much the better for"—
Haward glanced at her. "For Virginia?" he ended, with a smile. "Do you think that they do not weigh love with gold here in Virginia, Evelyn? It isn't really Arcady."
"So much the better for some place, somewhere," she answered quietly. "I did not say Virginia. Indeed, from what travelers like yourself have told me, I think the country lies not upon this earth. But the story is at an end, and we must applaud with the rest. It sounded sweetly, after all—though it was only a lying song. What next?"
Her father, from his station beside the May Queen, caught the question, and broke the flow of his smiling compliments to answer it. "A race between young girls, my love—the lucky fair who proves her descent from Atalanta to find, not a golden apple, but a golden guinea. Here come from the sexton's house the pretty light o' heels!"
The crowd, gentle and simple, arose, and pushed back all benches, stools, and chairs, so as to enlarge the circumference of the ring, and the six girls who were to run stepped out upon the green. The youngest son of the house of Jaquelin checked them off in a shrill treble:—
"The blacksmith's Meg—Mall and Jenny from the crossroads ordinary—the Widow Constance's Barbara—red-headed Bess—Parson Darden's Audrey!"
A tall, thin, grave gentleman, standing behind Haward, gave an impatient jerk of his body and said something beneath his breath. Haward looked over his shoulder. "Ha, Mr. Le Neve! I did not know you were there. I had the pleasure of hearing you read at Williamsburgh last Sunday afternoon—though this is your parish, I believe? What was that last name that the youngster cried? I failed to catch it."
"Audrey, sir," answered the minister of James City parish; "Gideon Darden's Audrey. You can't but have heard of Darden? A minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, sir; and a scandal, a shame, and a stumbling-block to the Church! A foul-mouthed, brawling, learned sot! A stranger to good works, but a frequenter of tippling houses! A brazen, dissembling, atheistical Demas, who will neither let go of the lusts of the flesh nor of his parish—a sweet-scented parish, sir, with the best glebe in three counties! And he's inducted, sir, inducted, which is more than most of the clergy of Virginia, who neither fight nor drink nor swear, can say for themselves!"
The minister had lost his gravity, and spoke with warmth and bitterness. As he paused for breath, Mistress Evelyn took her eyes from the group of those about to run and opened her fan. "A careless father, at least," she said. "If he hath learning, he should know better than to set his daughter there."
"She's not his own, ma'am. She's an orphan, bound to Darden and his wife, I suppose. There's some story or other about her, but, not being curious in Mr. Darden's affairs, I have never learned it. When I came to Virginia, five years ago, she was a slip of a girl of thirteen or so. Once, when I had occasion to visit Darden, she waylaid me in the road as I was riding away, and asked me how far it was to the mountains, and if there were Indians between them and us."
"Did she so?" asked Haward. "And which is—Audrey?"
"The dark one—brown as a gypsy—with the dogwood in her hair. And mark me, there'll be Darden's own luck and she'll win. She's fleeter than a greyhound. I've seen her running in and out and to and fro in the forest like a wild thing."
Bare of foot and slender ankle, bare of arm and shoulder, with heaving bosom, shut lips, and steady eyes, each of the six runners awaited the trumpet sound that should send her forth like an arrow to the goal, and to the shining guinea that lay thereby. The spectators ceased to talk and laugh, and bent forward, watching. Wagers had been laid, and each man kept his eyes upon his favorite, measuring her chances. The trumpet blew, and the race was on.
When it was over and won, the May Queen rose from her seat and crossed the grass to her fine lady guest.