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.