Grandmother and the Priests Page 8

  “I don’t have to eat — ” Rose said, imploringly.

  “The pie? Certainly not,” said Cook, in a sturdy tone. “I’ll make a beef-and-kidney little pasty for you, all for yourself. There, now, give us a smile. And if you’re a good girl, you can have your dinner right downstairs with me, in the kitchen.” This was a favor, indeed, for Cook ate alone, majestically, and not even Grandmother dared disturb her serious meals.

  Rose went down to the kitchen with Cook, who had baked the lark-pasty while Rose had slept, and had discreetly hidden it in the pantry. It was jolly there, in the late afternoon, with the fire dancing on the brick wall, the kettle singing, the girls joking, and Cook always threatening meek little Egbert, who came and went with his brushes and pails and polishing-cloths, his small figure wrapped in a blue-and-white-striped apron from neck to ankles. The wind and the rain increased in force, but they only added to the air of warmth and comfort in the kitchen now. The copper vessels shone like gold on the wall, and there was the rich fragrance of cake and soup and a roast wafting through the room. At tea, Rose had jam sandwiches and a slice of cake, and a boiled egg. This was the loveliest place in the world. And she would dine with Cook. Rose reminded her of this frequently, until she groaned with exasperation.

  They had a fine dinner together, of beef-and-kidney pie, and the larks were almost forgotten. The kitchen bell jangled on its spring, and Cook glowered at it. “She knows as it’s My Dinner,” she said, not moving. “She can wait.” The bell flew wildly. “Humph,” said Cook, buttering another scone. The kettle maid left before dinner; the scullery maid was never permitted in the other parts of the house. She peered through the doorway where she was washing up. “Ain’t that her tearing the bell to bits?” she asked.

  “It is,” said Cook, comfortably.

  “Maybe she’s got a fit,” suggested the girl, with some happiness.

  “Not her,” said Cook. “It’s fits she gives to others. She’ll wait till I’ve done.”

  But Grandmother did not wait. After about five minutes she charged into the kitchen, wrapped in a red silk robe which gave her hair, on kid curlers, an orange tinge. Rose had never before seen Grandmother without ‘paint and powder’. The Liver, her temper, and her lack of cosmetics made her skin darkly sallow and coarse, and it was sprinkled all over with big gingery freckles. Her pale mouth was writhing with rage, and all hell was in her green eyes.

  “And you didna hear me ring, damn you?” she screamed at Cook.

  Cook turned slowly on her immense rump, like a liner moving into position. She regarded steaming Grandmother with dispassionate dignity.

  “It is My Dinner, Madam,” she said, and pointed at the kitchen clock on its shelf. “It was agreed — I think, Madam — when I entered this household, after Lady Humphrey had made me a much better offer, and where my wits were I don’t know — it was agreed that My Dinner was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. I’m not one as breaks my word, nor do I expect others to do so.” She set her teacup down smartly.

  Grandmother paused. Women like Cook were not to be had at the beckoning of a finger. She said, still simmering, but in a lower tone, “It’s Elsie’s day off, and that you knew, Cook. You could have done me the favor, your damned dinner or no damned dinner. It’s nae wonder ye have the backside on you like a lorry horse.”

  “My anatomy,” said Cook, with majesty, “belongs to me. I gave you no rights to it, Madam, for your uncalled-for comments.” Rose gazed at Cook with admiration, awed at her lofty periods.

  “Oh S — ,” said Grandmother, and she suddenly grinned.

  “Wot can I do for you, Madam?” asked Cook. “I’m one as lives and lets live.”

  Grandmother snorted. She turned her blue-green glare on Rose. “It wasna you I wanted, Cook. It was the bairn I was looking for, and I couldna find her, and I rang the bell. It’s a fancy my friends have taken for her, and they’ll be wanting her ladyship’s presence. After dinner,” added Grandmother, hastily, no doubt understanding that Rose had innocently put some curb on her tongue the night before. “And where has her ladyship been?” she demanded of Rose, the fierce eyes looking like green fire.

  “With me, Madam. I invited her to have dinner with me,” said Cook.

  “No!” exclaimed Grandmother, marveling, “and you not wanting the Angel Gabriel at your dinner, if himself should ask!”

  Cook lifted her large arm grandly, and poured another cup of tea.

  “I makes exceptions, sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes,” she added.

  “Aweel, aweel,” said Grandmother, marveling still more. She contemplated Rose thoughtfully. “And have ye nae better dress than that damned Tartan frock?” she demanded.

  “No, Grandmother. Except my Sunday-school blue wool. And it’s only Thursday.”

  “Put on the damned blue wool,” said Grandmother. “Sunday!” she snorted again. “A shame it is that ye havena proper clothes. I had twenty frocks at your age.”

  “I believe,” said Cook, “that Leeds do have shops, though they’re closed now. But tomorrow.”

  Grandmother did not like this hint at all. “You’ll be minding your own business, Cook,” she said, curtly. “It’s nae your pocket. Mind you, now,” she said to Rose. “At half-past nine.”

  Though Grandmother was of the school that believed children should rarely if ever be seen before their twenty-first birthday, she had no interest in their bedtime. Cook shook her head as Grandmother flounced from the room. “It’s a good thing, it was, that you napped this afternoon, Rosie,” she said.

  She permitted Rose to help the scullery maid dry the dishes, and then she took her upstairs to wash her and comb her hair and tie it with a blue ribbon. She buttoned the many back buttons on Rose’s fine blue wool frock, which was becoming a little too short. “There’s some,” she commented, kindly, “that does not like red hair. I fancy it, myself. Tomorrow, I’ll curl it proper, with the iron. Too late now.”

  She led Rose to the door of the drawing-room, admonished her to behave herself, and Rose was on her own again.

  Rose recognized some of the priests from the night before, but three were not there tonight. Three strange ones had taken their place.

  Rose’s old friends greeted her with affection and she was introduced to the three burly strangers. She gathered, later, that one had just arrived from Scotland with gossip and messages, and had dropped in on Grandmother hopeful, as were the others, that he might save her soul. The rich brown burr of him rang heartily in the room, though he was a very old man, and Rose listened to it in her chimney corner. She noticed that the Scots priest laughed much less than did the others, and she thought him ill at first for all his height and his air of ancient vitality. As for Grandmother, she had made a miraculous recovery, her lips very red, her nose very white, and her hair done in an elaborate style. She wore a black velvet dress of more discreet cut than of the night before, for Scotsmen are priggish and even those laymen who indulge in immorality do it as modestly as possible. Grandmother said, “Ah, Faether MacBurne, and ye’ll not be disappointing us?”

  Father MacBurne was long and lean, with the red, prominent face of the Scot, the curved Semitic nose of the true Celt, and the Celt’s fierce eyes. But his hair was very white though thick, and his hands were slightly gnarled. “Very weel, Rose Mary,” he said, “but it’s nae a sad story like the others.”

  Father MacBurne and the Doughty Chieftain

  “When I was a bairn,” said the priest, “the Scots in the Highlands, the Orkney Islands and the Outer and Inner Hebrides ignored England still, or if forced to acknowledge her existence they did it with bloody dispatch. They wanted nothing to do with the Sassenach, his Parliament, his monarch, his tax-gatherers and his religion. Their fief was still to their vanished kings, and chieftains and clans, and it was a company of valiant Englishmen, indeed, who braved those men in the shadow of their dark hills and before their darker faces. The mace and the dirk were still called into active use, and many an unwa
ry Sassenach was buried in some wild glen together with his tax-papers or his warrants.”

  The clans, still powerful, had their own laws, which were administered rigidly by local chieftains. It was unusual for any Scotsmen, in those remote places, to resort to city magistrates, except for high crimes calling for ropes or long prison terms or suchlike. But if a man merely fought with his neighbor, as always, he sought out his own chieftain and laid the matter before him. However, if the case concerned murder — and it often did — then sometimes, but only sometimes, it was referred to the city magistrates for disposal via the hangman’s rope. It was a terrible thing to be consigned to those granite cities, with the granite statues guarding every intersection, and with a granite sky arched overhead like frozen stone. Your Highlander hated those cities, for he was usually Catholic, and the cities had the odor of Calvin and Knox, and there was no cross permitted on a steeple, not even a Catholic one. And the Scotsman had his own Parliament, as he has today.

  Occasionally London was shocked by some unusual amount of blood being shed ‘up there, among the ruddy Scots’, and made inquiries about the matter. But on the whole London preferred to have no part in those affairs. It could be dangerous. And what were a few score Scotsmen more or less? Let well enough alone, said London, wisely, remembering the border raids not so far back in history, and burning hamlets and the mad scream of bagpipes in the black crannies of the hills. London only asked, reasonably, that taxes be paid, and did not press the point too much if returns were languid. The tax-gatherer had learned not to look too closely in hedges where boxes of gold sovereigns might be hidden. He took the man’s word for what he ‘owed’. If it seemed somewhat small, in view of the large herds of sheep and the rich meadows and the size of the house, compromise, as always, was the better part of taxation.

  The Highlander despised the meek townsman with his books and his bank statements and his eagerness to be legal. Where was the rascal’s spirit, then? Where was his blood, his pride? Where was the passion of his soul, the remembrance of his ancestors? All had died in the granite cities. All had died, with liberty. Aye, and he paraded in his larcenous kilts, in the streets, on the holidays, looking brave then, with the bagpipes skirling and his legs stumping, but he was a weak fox for all that, he with the white town-face and the womanish eyes. He was no true son of Scotland. Be damned to him.

  The Scotsman, unlike the Irishman — though they are blood-brothers — is rarely sentimental. He is a harsher and bitterer breed, with long cold memory and an unforgiving heart. A feud with an Irishman can frequently be resolved in a burst of good temper and humor, and after a drink or two, especially if a priest intervenes in a spirit of brotherly love and conciliation. But a feud with a Scotsman is for life. He will reluctantly give his word, then keep it, but God help the man who gives a Scotsman his word and does not keep it.

  And, if he wants something badly enough, he will get it.

  Hence the tale of the Doughty Chieftain.

  Douglass MacDougall was the laird of an island so remote that even the inhabitants of the Isle of Skye had seldom heard of it. Very cold, craggy and assaulted by the sea, it was doubted by many that even potatoes, turnips, barley and oats could be grown there, and few believed that cattle or even the hardy sheep could survive in that bitter weather. The race of Somerled had once ruled all the Islands, and had given birth to the lairds of Lome, brothers in blood and war and raids on Norway and Sweden. All, then, had called themselves MacDougalls. But later came the clans of Argyll, Campbell, MacLean, MacNaughton and MacDonald, and various others, to make life lively for the outlander and themselves. Robert the Bruce had ranged over the Islands and had done certain bloody things to the lairds of Lome, and especially to the MacDougalls. The latter were believed by almost everyone to have been pretty well exterminated by Bruce — who went after his countrymen during boring interludes of peace with the Saxon dog. A Scotsman may be one of the most courageous men on earth, but he knows when to retire and lick his wounds, and the few MacDougalls who survived the general slaughter retired to that far isle and thought long and homicidal thoughts. However, reality faced the few families. After a very long time, they thought of asking the help of the great houses of MacLeod and MacNeill, and such, but learned that these had come under the influence of William III and Queen Anne, and were receiving handsome subsidies in return for a cease-fire between all the clans of Scotland, and another cease-fire against England. Protestantism, too, had invaded the ancient Catholic clans, and the MacDougalls were firmly Catholic. There was nothing for it but to hate in the liveliest fashion, fashion songs of war and murder, play the bagpipes stirringly, and, in the hope that the new world would forget their existence, to lie low.

  They lay low for centuries, but their hatred did not.

  A warrior people do not breed lavishly, for it is hard to stay awake for love after the arm has been busy all day lopping off heads in battle or bashing in skulls with a mace. Too, the warrior has a wide swath of modesty in him, and a fear of women, the latter the result of a simple and primitive perspicacity. None of these things are conducive to large families around the hearth. After centuries following Bruce the inhabitants of Douglass MacDougall’s isle numbered some fewer than three thousand darkly Catholic souls, counting even the youngest baby in its cradle and its oldest men. The cattle and the sheep could boast a larger population and breeding rate, even in that fearful climate where the midnight sun could be expected every summer.

  Young Father Robert MacBurne had just been ordained in Edinburgh when he was taken by the Bishop to his home. His lordship was by way of being Robert’s uncle, oldest brother to Robert’s mother, and he was a kindly soul. His manse was poor, bare and cold, with niggardly fires — all he could afford. He eyed Robert with affection, asked about the family, and gossiped a little. He was unnaturally effusive, and Robert began to feel a sensation of nasty premonition. As the Bishop’s nephew, he had not exactly hoped for preferred treatment and a parish that would give him luxuries, for he knew that Scotsmen will bend themselves backwards until their heads touch their heels rather than use favoritism where favoritism among other races is the natural thing, and expected. So he began to fear that his uncle was about to assign him to a parish where he would be lucky to get a joint of mutton once a month, and where the old ladies put buttons in the offering plates rather than shillings, or even pennies, and where his church would be about the most poverty-stricken building in the whole county.

  The Bishop was short. He was also stout, which was amazing, considering the tiny funds at his disposal and the condition of his larder. Robert was convinced all his life that in some mysterious way the angels must have fed the Bishop while he slept his innocent sleep, or that sheer piety gave him his roundness of face and figure. It could have been nothing else — the angels or the piety. It simply could not have been roast beef and pasties and other luscious things, or even potatoes. The Bishop was also rosy and jolly, the latter unusual for a Scotsman, and he had a high and subtle humor, another trait not customarily found in his countrymen. He was a philosopher and a learned man, possessed of miraculous patience and great gentleness. The gentleness was incredible, considering the state of the Church in Scotland. It was merely a heavenly bonus granted by God to the harassed priests in their Bishop’s character. If he could ‘take a’ that like a ‘mon’, then a priest could ‘take’ what he had to, and he always had to.

  Robert, incessantly hungry because he was young as well as poor, was diverted from direful premonitions when he discovered that in some mystifying way his uncle had been able to secure a leg of young lamb, potatoes, some sprouts, white bread, and ale in honor of his nephew’s visit, not to mention lemon-cheese tarts which made a man’s mouth water at the mere look of them. (With these the Bishop, with noble gestures, produced a fourth of a bottle of brandy, hoarded for just this occasion.) Robert was further astonished at being offered a glass of Scotland’s best whiskey. He was so overcome with affection, and amazement, that he almo
st forgot his forebodings. Then it came to him: he was being fattened like a lamb for the slaughter. Or, to use another simile, it was the condemned man’s final meal.

  The lamb and the condemned man, both simultaneously present in young Robert, did not mar his appetite, however. He even forgot to glance apologetically at his uncle’s rueful face when he took the fourth offering of young mutton, after he had first had a monster bowl of broth stiff with barley, carrots and potatoes, a dish which would have surfeited anyone, in itself, but a hungry young priest. “My, my,” marveled the Bishop, when Robert had demolished five tarts, and inhaled several cups of tea rich with cream and sugar. “It gives an auld heart pleasure to see such an appetite. They’d not be feedin’ ye well, in the Seminary, young Bob?”

  Robert, blissful with food, ale, whiskey and brandy and tarts, sighed dolefully and shook his head. “I’ve nae had a meal like this since I was a lad.”