A large, old-fashioned, weird-looking wooden building, with strangely
shaped bay windows and stranger gables projecting here and there from
the slanting roof, where the green moss clung in patches to the moldy
shingles, or formed a groundwork for the nests the swallows built year
after year beneath the decaying eaves. Long, winding piazzas, turning
sharp, sudden angles, and low, square porches, where the summer sunshine
held many a fantastic dance, and where the winter storm piled up its
drifts of snow, whistling merrily as it worked, and shaking the loosened
casement as it went whirling by.
Huge trees of oak and maple, whose
topmost limbs had borne and cast the leaf for nearly a century of years,
tall evergreens, among whose boughs the autumn wind ploughed mournfully,
making sad music for those who cared to listen, and adding to the
loneliness which, during many years, had invested the old place. A wide
spreading grassy lawn, with the carriage road winding through it, over
the running brook, and onward 'neath graceful forest trees, until it
reached the main highway, a distance of nearly half a mile.
A spacious garden in the rear, with bordered walks and fanciful mounds, with
climbing roses and creeping vines showing that somewhere there was a
taste, a ruling hand, which, while neglecting the somber building and
suffering it to decay, lavished due care upon the grounds, and not on
these alone, but also on the well-kept barns, and the whitewashed
dwellings in front, where numerous, happy, well-fed negroes lived and
lounged, for ours is a Kentucky scene, and Spring Bank a Kentucky home.
As we have described it so it was on a drear December night, when a
fearful storm, for that latitude, was raging, and the snow lay heaped
against the fences, or sweeping-down from the bending trees, drifted
against the doors, and beat against the windows, whence a cheerful light
was gleaming, telling of life and possible happiness within. There were
no flowing curtains before the windows, no drapery sweeping to the
floor, nothing save blinds without and simple shades within, neither of
which were doing service now, for the master of the house would have it
so in spite of his sister's remonstrances.
Some one might lose their way on that terrible night, he said, and the
blaze of the fire on the hearth, which could be seen from afar, would be
to them a beacon light to guide them on their way. Nobody would look in
upon them, as Adaline, or 'Lina as she chose to be called, and as all
did call her except himself, seemed to think there might, and even if
they did, why need she care? To be sure she was not quite as fixey as
she was on pleasant days when there was a possibility of visitors, and
her cheeks were not quite so red, but she was looking well enough, and
she'd undone all those little tags or braids which disfigured her so
shockingly in the morning, but which, when brushed and carefully
arranged, did give her hair that waving appearance she so much desired.