Reconstruction had come with its mildew. Black cavernous mouths were lapping up the virus and spitting it out everywhere. Retribution in history had come too with the evolution of the negro.
The old master like a besieged baron of mediaeval civilization, was still looking out upon his broad domains and his cattle upon a hundred hills, but there was rust upon the plow shares, tares in the wheat, cockles in the rye, and the high noon bell in its tower hung lifeless and tongueless. No summons thence to the tired hands and feet and backs upon the old plantation. Labor was disorganized—discipline a dead precedent—the negroes, like the swallows and ravens in the old rookery, homeward and townward as they list, were pluming their flight.
The many-gabled mansion lay fast asleep in the Sabbath nooning. A bee-martin, as it leaped to wing from the neglected meadow, piped a shrill note or two and scurried away after the thieving crow; and the interlacing oaks and elms of a century's growth coquetted with the whispering winds.
Alice felt that she had sustained a mortal shock when she heard the sound of her mother's piano, every chord thrilling with strange dissonance; boisterous, vulgar singing and the shuffling of feet upon the richly carpeted floor.
She started to enter the room when a rude black hand was placed with violence upon her arm, and she was thrust back into the hall, with the remark, "jess git outen here forthwid. Us ladies is musin our selfs er makin dis ole fing farly howl. Daddy ses how dat ef we cullud ladies notices white trash lak yu is eny mo he's ergwine ter whup us an' whup us good," and with this they courtesied toward each other and retired as if they had been princesses of some black realm.
Alice wept out her indignation in her mother's room. Poor Alice! Sowing the wind! By and by what shall the harvest be?
"Ned," called Colonel Seymour, "tell Aleck to come to me." Ned came back in a few minutes concealing a grin with his open hand to his mouth. "Boss," he said, "I seed Ellick, und he tole me how dat I mout tell yu pintedly dat ef yu wants ter see him wusser dan he do yu, yu mout cum ter him er let hit erlone udder. Dem wus his berry wurds." The old man turned away with the wish in his heart that the black vat of reconstruction might be heaped up to the brim with the freedmen who had turned their backs upon their only friends.
As the evening sun was drawing a watery cloud before its face to shut out, if possible, the degradation of the white people of the South, Ephraim rode up at break-neck speed upon the exhausted mare and as he alighted upon the foot-block he threw the bridle towards his old master with the insulting demand, "unsaddle dat beastis Semo, widout yu wants her tu tote de saddle all her life."
"You insolent scoundrel!" exclaimed the old man in white heat, "has it come to this?"
"Looker heer, po white man, dus yu no who's yu er sassin? Ise er spectable cullud gemman, sar, er franksized woter, sar, und what's yu sar? Po down white trash. Take yer ole mar und yer ole umbrill, und yer ole hat, und go ter de debbil." Thus was slipping away the eventide of the day that God, in his infinite condescension aeons ago, had hallowed and blessed.