It was on the afternoon of the sixth day of his voyage, that the boat stopped at the wharf of the small hamlet of C——, and Mark Sutherland debarked, and hired a horse to take him to Cashmere. He left his portmanteau in the care of the landlord of the little tavern, and set out on his ride. Leaving the low banks of the river to the westward behind him, he rode on towards the interior of the State, ascended a line of hills, and descending the other side, entered once more the “Beautiful Valley of the Pearl.” Here then he stood once more upon the scene of his youth’s tragedy! With the profoundest interest he looked around. But all was, or seemed to be, changed! Had it really ever been so beautiful as it had once seemed to him, and had age and decay passed over it? Or had its beauty been only the glamour thrown over the scene by youth, and love, and hope? It might have been his changed and purified vision; for much of imagination, enthusiasm, ideality, had passed away with the morning of Mark’s life, even as the silvery mist of sunrise passes away before the full, broad day.
It might have been the waning season, for it was now late in a dry and burning September; but the beauty and glory had departed from the vale. The luxuriant green freshness of summer had departed, and the brilliant and gorgeous magnificence of autumn had not come. All the vegetation—forests, and shrubberies, and grasses—was dry and parched in the sun, and the very earth beneath seemed calcined by the dry and burning heat. The springs, ponds, and watercourses were low, muddy, and nearly exhausted; and over all the sun-burned, feverish earth, hung a still, coppery, parching sky. You scarcely could tell which was driest and hottest—the burning sky above, or the burning earth below.
It was, as an old field negro said, “like an oven-lid on an oven.” The Pearl itself was now a narrow, shrunken, sluggish stream, creeping between high banks of red and pulverized earth, that was always sliding in and discolouring and thickening the stream of water.
Mark Sutherland rode down to the edge of the river, to the ferry house—once a neat and well-kept little building, now fallen into neglect and dilapidation.
The white-haired negro ferryman was a servant of Clement Sutherland’s, and an old acquaintance of Mark’s. He met his “young master” with a sort of subdued surprise and pleasure, and to his question as to whether they were all well at Cashmere, answered with a sigh that they were just as well as usual.
Mark asked no other questions, and in perfect silence the old man put his passenger over to the Cashmere side.
Here had once been a well-kept wharf, but now it was much worn and out of repair. Under the shade of a group of elms on the right had once stood a pretty boat-house, in the form of a Chinese Pagoda; it was now a heap of ruins. There had once been a little fleet of boats moored under its shadow; there remained now one large, dirty skiff, half-full of mud and water, and floating idly on the turbid stream; and another smaller skiff, high and dry upon the beach, with its timbers shrunken apart, bleaching in the sun.
As Mark rode on through the grounds towards the house, he noticed further signs of approaching desolation. Fences were broken or down, and out-buildings were dilapidated or unroofed. Passing through the orchard, he saw the trees untrimmed; some broken down with their loads of over-ripe fruit, some blighted—a prey to vermin—and some dying or dead, and wrapped in shrouds of cobwebs. Entering the vineyard, he observed the trellis-work broken and falling, the vines trailing on the ground, and the ripe and luscious fruit rotting on its stems. He paused near the garden on his right, and a glance showed him that favourite resort of his youth, once the perfection of order and beauty, now a wilderness where thousands of the most lovely flowers and most noxious weeds dried and decayed together under the burning sun of September. There the deadly nightshade grew ranker than the rose which it crowded out of life; and the poison oak, whose contact is death, twined in and out among the tendrils of the honeysuckle and the clematis.
Everywhere! everywhere! all things betokened indifference and neglect, and prophesied of ruin and despair. While occupied with wondering what could have been the cause of this great and grievous change, Mark Sutherland perceived the approach of an old negro, who touched his hat in respectful salutation, and followed him to the foot of the Rose Terrace, where he stood in readiness to take the horse. Mark dismounted, and threw the reins to the groom, whom he now recognized for an old acquaintance. He held out his hand and spoke kindly to the old man, inquiring after his wife and children.
“All well as can be ’spected—Marse Mark! Ah, chile! things is changed since you was here—‘deed dey is, honey. Tree year han’ runnin’ ole marse crap fail—‘fore my blessed Hebbenly Master, dey did, honey—tree year han’ runnin’. ‘Deed, den, when we-dem had fuss-rate crap, come de tornado, an’ ruin eberyting; and nothin’ eber been fix up right since. An’ ‘pears like nothin’ eber gone right since. Den ole marse he went to speculatin’, and loss heap o’ money—leastways so dey do say. Den arter a bit come de sheriff, executionizin’ down on top o’ we-dem poor coloured people, as hadden nothin’ ‘tal to do wid it—an’ carries away all de best of us—all my poor dear gals an’ boys, as I hoped to spen’ my ole days wid, an’ good many oders. And since dat, seem like we-dem aint had no heart to tend to nothin’—a-pinin’ arter our poor children—it kinder takes all the strength out’n us.”