[CHAPTER I.]
THE HOMESTEAD.
"The lonely cottage in the guardian nook,
Hath stirred then deeply—with its own dear brook,
Its own small pasture—almost its own sky."
WORDSWORTH.
BENEATH the crags which overhang one of the deep mountain valleys of Westmoreland, there nestles an old farm-house, whose low, irregular roof, deep stone porch, and large round chimneys, make it a type of its class. Its windows are low, wide, and mullioned; and on the sunny side, next the small garden, they are quite embowered by an ancient jasmine, an old-fashioned cabbage rose, and a broad sheet of ivy, whose twisted stems are as large as those of a good-sized tree, and whose long, clinging arms clasp the walls nearly all round the building, festooning and fringing even the great round chimneys. Those chimneys are almost as large as little lime-kilns; but the smoke, which curls up in gentle volumes, is of that pure blue tint which betokens it to be the breath of a peat fire. The house is beautifully white—whitewashed afresh by loving hands at every Whitsuntide Scrow. *
* The great annual house-cleaning of the north.
But the glory of the homestead consists in its two enormous yew trees, a pair of sombre giants, which are so old that they never seem to grow older. They became stiff, twisted and furrowed with age, so many centuries ago, that a few generations time, a few odd scores of years here and there, are nothing to them now—a mere trifle that is not worth noticing. And so there they stretch their huge branches towards each other, across the flagged path which leads straight up from the garden wicket to the pointed porch, making a dim twilight of their own, even at mid-day.
There is a rustic seat encircling the trunk of one of the brother yew trees. Ah! That is Miles's work. Miles, the oldest son of the house, cut those billets and branches out of the little copse-wood at the entrance of the glen, and made them into a seat for his sister Alice to rest on, when she is sewing in the golden light of the summer evenings. There is a cluster of larches, as well as a spreading oak and a sycamore, grouped about the farm buildings; but the place borrows its name from none of these, and for three hundred years it has been known as "The Yews." A slab of stone, let into the wall of the house, just above the porch, bears the date 1559.
Pass through that deep stone porch, and you enter the farm kitchen, a long room, whose low, raftered ceiling is made lower still by the rack which is stretched across it, on which rest flitches of smoked bacon, and a large assortment of dried herbs and simples; for Mrs. Lawson is famed through the dales for her herb teas and febrifuges. She is known, too, for better things than these; for the perfume of her humble piety spreads like an atmosphere around her, though her daily cup has long been seasoned with the bitter herbs of affliction. She does not complain of these distasteful draughts, but declares that they are the best of medicines, the very things to strengthen and purify the soul's health.
"If they were not good for me, I shouldn't have them. My Saviour knows what a bitter cup is; and he wouldn't hand it to me unless he saw I wanted it."
Watch her as she sits in her rocking chair, which is softly cushioned with little diamonds of patchwork. That many-colored patchwork is a mosaic representing her whole life. She has often expounded the story from those little pictured memorials. This lilac spot ("pop," she calls it) is a relic of her first short frock: the pink square is the only survivor of the dress she wore on her first visit to Kendal—to her a wonderful metropolis, which she thought could be like nothing less than Jerusalem itself, "beautiful for situation, on the sides of the north." Ah! That "innocent" chintz was her wedding gown. Her Miles chose it himself, and he had been a good husband to her, "walking in his house with a perfect heart," and trying to bring up his children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."