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!"