Audrey

It was May Day in Virginia, in the year 1727. In England there were George

the First, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King

and Defender of the Faith; my Lord of Orkney, Governor in chief of

Virginia; and William Gooch, newly appointed Lieutenant Governor. In

Virginia there were Colonel Robert Carter, President of the Council and

Governor pro tem.; the Council itself; and Mistress Martha Jaquelin.

By virtue of her good looks and sprightliness, the position of her father

in the community, and the fact that this 1st of May was one and the same

with her sixteenth birthday, young Mistress Jaquelin was May Queen in

Jamestown. And because her father was a worthy gentleman and a gay one,

with French blood in his veins and Virginia hospitality in his heart, he

had made a feast for divers of his acquaintances, and, moreover, had

provided, in a grassy meadow down by the water side, a noble and

seasonable entertainment for them, and for the handful of townsfolk, and

for all chance comers.

Meadow and woodland and marsh, ploughed earth and blossoming orchards, lay

warm in the sunshine. Even the ruined town, fallen from her estate, and

become but as a handmaid to her younger sister, put a good face upon her

melancholy fortunes. Honeysuckle and ivy embraced and hid crumbling walls,

broken foundations, mounds of brick and rubbish, all the untouched

memorials of the last burning of the place. Grass grew in the street, and

the silent square was strewn with the gold of the buttercups. The houses

that yet stood and were lived in might have been counted on the fingers of

one hand, with the thumb for the church. But in their gardens the flowers

bloomed gayly, and the sycamores and mulberries in the churchyard were

haunts of song. The dead below had music, and violets in the blowing

grass, and the undertone of the river. Perhaps they liked the peace of the

town that was dead as they were dead; that, like them, had seen of the

travail of life, and now, with shut eyes and folded hands, knew that it

was vanity.

But the Jaquelin house was built to the eastward of the churchyard and the

ruins of the town, and, facing the sparkling river, squarely turned its

back upon the quiet desolation at the upper end of the island and upon the

text from Ecclesiastes.

In the level meadow, around a Maypole gay with garlands and with

fluttering ribbons, the grass had been closely mown, for there were to be

foot-races and wrestling bouts for the amusement of the guests. Beneath a

spreading tree a dozen fiddlers put their instruments in tune, while

behind the open windows of a small, ruinous house, dwelt in by the sexton,

a rustic choir was trying over "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green."

Young men and maidens of the meaner sort, drawn from the surrounding

country, from small plantation, store and ordinary, mill and ferry, clad

in their holiday best and prone to laughter, strayed here and there, or,

walking up and down the river bank, where it commanded a view of both the

landing and the road, watched for the coming of the gentlefolk. Children,

too, were not lacking, but rolled amidst the buttercups or caught at the

ribbons flying from the Maypole, while aged folk sat in the sun, and a

procession of wide-lipped negroes, carrying benches and chairs, advanced

to the shaven green and put the seats in order about the sylvan stage. It

was but nine of the clock, and the shadow of the Maypole was long upon the

grass. Along the slightly rising ground behind the meadow stretched an

apple orchard in full bloom, and between that line of rose and snow and

the lapping of the tide upon the yellow sands lay, for the length of a

spring day, the kingdom of all content.