The Victory by Molly Elliot Seawell

Two years and a half afterwards, on an April afternoon, Isabey, riding the ghost of a war horse, came in sight of the old manor house of Harrowby. It was a soft, mild afternoon, as soft and sunny as that day, now four years past, when he had first seen the place. From the top of the cedar lane Isabey's keen eyes could view the whole scene in its minutest details. The broad fields, which he remembered as green in spring and gold in summer with wheat, were unfilled and grown up in blackberry bushes, wild roses, poppies, and the blue cornflower, those bold marauders who seize upon the earth as soon as it is no longer plowed or reaped. Over all brooded a sad peacefulness, a quiet decay and mournful silence; Nature seemed in a melancholy reverie. Spring had come in all the soft splendor of its beauty, and yet no hand seemed uplifted to do her bidding of cheerful toil. There were no sounds of jocund plowmen or cheerful laborers, of laughing, brown-skinned milkmaids who sang at their work. Isabey's eyes traveled toward the old graveyard in the field. The brick wall had fallen into still greater decay than he remembered, and a few lean sheep were browsing among the graves.

Isabey looked farther on toward the house. The fences were down, and the negro quarters, which were wont to be alive with those merry, brown creatures, were silent and deserted. The carriage drive was overgrown with weeds -- there were no carriages any more to traverse it. And the yew hedge was more ragged and decrepit than ever before. The old brick mansion stood out dark and clear against the violet sky, while the river, a darker violet, went upon its ceaseless way singing its eternal refrain. Isabey noticed that most of the shutters in the old mansion were closed; one or two of them had fallen to the ground, and the top of one of the great chimneys showed a huge gap where the mortar of a hundred years had decayed and the bricks had tumbled in. This gave the house a look of desolation.