Grandmother and the Priests Read Free Page B

threateningly.
     
    Rose shook her head. The maid sighed. “And now I’ve got to get a kid’s tea,” she grumbled. “Very well, you. Sit there and be quiet,” and she lifted the child and set her down with a thump on a giant rocking chair whose horsehair chafed her thighs immediately. “Not a word out of you,” the maid warned, and slammed the door after her. Rose was suddenly very tired, yawned and drowsed, the chair swaying under her. She came awake to see the maid angrily lighting a small fire. There was a tray on the table of sandwiches, tea, cream, sugar, pound cake, a hot scone or two, and jam. Rose was hungry at once, climbed down from the chair, stood at the table and began to devour the food. The fire caught; the wind thundered in the chimney; the windows rattled. It was a cold night.
     
    The maid scrubbed her with coolish water in a large bowl afterwards, sneered at her flannel nightgown which boasted no lace or embroidered buttons, and thumped her into the icy bed. “Where’s Grandmother?” Rose asked.
     
    “Better things to do than to bother with the likes of you,” said the maid. “Go to sleep. The chamber’s under the bed, and mind you use it properly.”
     
    Rose did not sleep for a long time. She watched the small fire on the hearth, and listened to its brisk crackling. She listened to the wind pounding at the windows, shouting in the chimney, growling in the eaves. The rain sounded like a cataract. She was at Grandmother’s, in Leeds, the first of many visits, which were not welcomed. But she had already learned that there is little welcome for anyone in the world, and so was not disturbed. She said her prayers tranquilly enough, praying dutifully for dear Papa and Mama and all the Poor. God, she was certain, was standing right there beside the bed. She had known much about Him since she had been hardly two years old, long before anyone had ever spoken His Name to her. Rose turned her head on the sweetly scented bolster, and there, over the fireplace, stood a crucifix, the first she had ever seen. It was very large, and the Body of the Christ appeared made of dark gold. Rose had never as yet heard of Him, fully, but all at once she was filled with understanding. She fell asleep as if under the blessing of a sleepless Guardian.
     
    That was all Rose ever remembered of the first of the many visits to Grandmother’s house in Leeds. It seemed to her that those visits never ended all the rest of her life, and she returned to the memory of them as one returns to an old cathedral of one’s deepest memories — though Grandmother’s house was hardly a cathedral.
     
    Rose was going on five on her next visit, and it was this visit that impressed itself forever on her memory, as the beginning of her friendship with Grandmother’s holy men. They were the only holy creatures ever to enter Grandmother’s houses, until the end of her life.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Rose was four in the last September and British children begin their education at that age. The little girl was sent to a very small private school run by a dejected but punishing Miss Brothers in the latter’s shabby but genteel house. Rose did not like the schoolmistress and was bored by the other children, who ranged from four to fourteen. Children, at four, learned their letters at once, and began to read, or God help them.
     
    After the Christmas holidays she was sent to Grandmother’s again. She was delighted to be free of Miss Brothers and her schoolmates and chattered freely while her mother packed her luggage, a uniqueness that caused her mother to eye her with reflection. The train excited her as before. She read a storybook in that compartment filled with adults. They did not smile at her; children in England are not regarded as objects of interest but only as nuisances. The rain began, the dull gray rain of midwinter, and the shouting winds. Hamlets moved sluggishly beyond the windows; narrow little streets were revealed,