The Chevalier's daughter

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

[CHAPTER VII.]

A SUDDEN SUMMONS.

FOR about a fortnight or more after the departure of the pastor we had a very quiet, pleasant time. The weather was lovely, and we made long excursions out of doors. We gathered apples and quinces, and hunted for herbs and flowers, for Andrew was a good deal of an herbalist (a botanist, I think they call it now, though I am sure herbalist is the prettier word), and he was in correspondence with some learned gentleman in London on the subject of plants. He told me many things about flowers that I had never known or dreamed of before, showing me the several parts of the blossom, the leaves, and roots, by means of a pocket magnifying-glass which he always carried about him.

He read to my mother and myself as we sat at our embroidery or spinning, and he held endless gossips with my mother about old families in Cornwall and Devonshire, and people and places she used to know. I listened with great interest to these tales, for I had begun now to look upon Tre Madoc as my future home, and any detail concerning it was of interest to me. I was growing more and more fond of my cousin all the time, and the image of Lord Percy had quite ceased to haunt my imagination.

I do not think that I ever spent two happier weeks in all my life. For one thing, I was at peace with myself. The events of the last month had aroused my conscience and wakened the religious principles implanted by education to new life. I laid aside the dreams of worldly pleasure and ambition, which usually occupied so much of my time, and kept my conscience in a state of chronic discomfort, and I really did begin to experience some of those higher and holier joys of which poor Lucille had spoken in that memorable conference of ours. True, we were still under the power of our enemies—still in danger at any time of losing liberty and life. But one becomes used to danger as to everything else, and somehow to me the presence of my cousin seemed a protection, though if I had been asked why, I could not have told for my life.

Andrew was very earnest with my parents to consent to our being married immediately. He said, and with some show of reason, that he should then have the right to protect me, whatever happened, and that the fact of my father's daughter having married a British subject might be some advantage to him. This, however, my father doubted. He had no idea that the English government would quarrel with Louis on any such frivolous pretext.

Both he and my mother were opposed to such early marriages, though they were common enough at the time. And moreover, they wished to learn a little more about Andrew before giving their only child wholly into his hands. So the matter was postponed for an indefinite time.

Of course I should have acquiesced in any arrangement made by my honored parents, and I do not think I should have found any difficulty in doing so, for, as I have said, I liked Andrew better and better every day. But my heart had not awaked to love in its highest sense. I looked upon Andrew as a big brother, very nice to play with, and to order about, but that was all. I had, besides, very high though very indefinite notions of the duties and responsibilities of a married woman, and dreaded assuming them, all the more because my mind was more awakened to a sense of duty than it had ever been before. On the whole I very much preferred to let matters remain as they were.

The feast of St. Michael occurred during Andrew's stay, and it was to be celebrated with more pomp than usual. The new curé was very zealous in beating up for pilgrims to the shrine, and, as we heard, preached more than one sermon on the subject. We had had a bad harvest that year of everything but apples, and the fishing had been unusually unsuccessful. This the curé attributed to the anger of our great patron, St. Michael, because his feast day had been neglected of late, owing—so he said, though I don't think it was true—to the influence of the heretics who were allowed to defile the holy soil of La Manche with their presence; and he threatened the people with still severer judgments unless the great archangel were appeased by a grand pilgrimage, and by the purification of the holy soil before mentioned.