Some of the crop lies trampled and flat as discarded trash. Without the negroes, already much of the land has fallen to ruinate, useless ticky-ticky.
See the trash-house door is open, while the flimsy spent cane, being blown by the wind, spills like jumble weed. The wheel is fixed by a creeping vine already, and unable to turn, even if there were still workers or beasts willing to drive its spindles. And there is a breach in the cane juice gutter. If that precious liquor ran from the mill down to the receivers in the boiling house now, it would never reach, but spill half-way into the river and feed the fish its sweetness. And the works—where once the enormous coppers steamed, foamed and bubbled loud with molten liquor turning to granulate as sugar—is quiet except for the scratching and squealing of creatures who now have their home within the bowl of those vacant teaches. And so many rats! With no small boys to trap them, see how boldly they befoul the once clean floor of that boiling house.
Look upon the grey stone of the temper-lime kiln as we pass—it is cracked and half obscured by plants. But shield your nose from the stench, flap your hands to scatter the flies, and be sure to avert your eye as we travel alongside that petrified negro village.
The gate that guards the path up to the great house is hanging broken from its hinge. The watch hut is empty. But as we near the stables there is the sound of laughing. Byron sits playing marbles with Joseph at the door. Both squatting upon tiny three-legged stools, those two long men have their knees up by their ears as they watch the marbles run.
But let us quickly pass by to find Molly snoozing upon her chair in the doorway of the kitchen, her arms folded across her belly, her grey kerchief slipping to one side. There is no need of tip-toeing, for nothing would wake her as we now take those six small steps that cross that vast breach from the kitchen into the great house.
There, in the dining room, Robert Goodwin idly examines the tarnish upon his silver knife as he sits, leaning an elbow casually upon the dining table. While at the other end of that long piece of furniture, his wife Caroline is seated as upright as her chair back demands. He is reciting to her the instructions that he found in the last letter he received from his papa concerning their arrival in England. How his father advises that they should hire a carriage and pair to take them to Chesterfield rather than taking a post or stage coach. While at the other end of the table Caroline recounts for him, with complex hand gestures and very shrill giggling, the details of the last sea voyage she undertook those many years before.
And your storyteller must report—for it cannot be rendered upon paper in any other way—that Robert and Caroline Goodwin are both speaking to each other at one and the same time.
Robert Goodwin is now quite recovered from his malady. After he was brought home from the cane piece, a sickness confined him to his bed. Curled up tight as a fern frond he lay there for many weeks. He would speak to no one, nor open his eyes to look about him. He took no food, nor sipped any proffered water. There was no mortal illness the doctor could find—no yellow, nor denghie fever, no malaria, nor snake bite. But the doctor warned Caroline that, if he continued to refuse water, his grave would claim him just the same.
Yet no matter how Caroline cajoled, wagging her finger upon him to ‘drink or die’, stamping down her foot, squealing, shaking her fist at his unreasonableness, or stroking his brow to beg him, ‘Whisper, Robert, whisper to me what is wrong so it might be put right,’ he remained insensible to her. She sat vigil beside him—day and night—poking and squeezing a dampened sponge against his lips. Yet still his blue eyes sank into the shadow of their sockets as the bones of his face gradually outlined the skull beneath. She wailed upon him, she dropped to her knees to persuade him to live, she even shook him—although the flimsiness of his gaunt torso nearly had her faint.
Then, one afternoon, a baby’s cry broke outside the window and Robert Goodwin was suddenly roused to swivel his eye towards the sound. Within