“Do you, Andrew?” returned madame pleasantly. “Very well, then, you can clean them, and save me the trouble. But don’t forget to rub all the whiting out of the creases.”
Andrew changed countenance as he turned slowly about to descend the stairs. Mrs. Chevreuse had been gradually taking the care of the altar from his rather careless hands, and this had been his diplomatic way of escaping the candlestick cleaning of that day without asking her to do it. He hobbled down-stairs again discomfited, and the lady went smiling back to her work.
“It is all very well for Sharp’s rifles,” she remarked, threading her needle; “but I don’t like being fired at in that spiral manner.”
Still weaving again with hand and heart, she heard Jane going about, like a neat household machine doing everything in its exact time and place, severe on interruption, merciless on mud or dust, ever ready to have a skirmish on these grounds with Andrew; she heard the rattle of paper from the next room, as letters and parcels were opened, the scratching of F. Chevreuse’s quill as he wrote answers to one or two correspondents, or made up accounts, and the little tap with which he pressed the stamp upon the letters.
How peaceful and sweet her life was, all she loved within reach, all she hoped for so sure! She breathed a sigh of thanksgiving, then dropped her work and listened; for the priest was preparing to go out. Every morning was spent by him in collecting for his church. He had found in Crichton a thousand or more practical Catholics, with one shabby old chapel to worship in, and nearly as many nominal Catholics who did not worship at all; and in three years, with scarcely any capital to begin with besides faith, he had raised and nearly finished a large and beautiful church, and gathered into it the greater part of the wanderers.
“Be prudent, my son!” the mother had warned him when he began what seemed so venturesome an enterprise.
“I am so,” he replied, with decision. “It would be the height of imprudence to leave these people any longer straying like lost sheep. When the Master of the universe commands that a house be built for him, is it for me to fear he will not be able to pay for it?”
She said no more. Mme. Chevreuse always remembered to distinguish between the son and the priest, and was never more proud of her motherhood than when her natural authority was confronted by the supernatural authority of her child. But she always sighed when he started on a collecting-tour, for his faith had to be supplemented by hard work, and often he came back worn with fatigue, and depressed by the sights of poverty, sorrow, and sin he had witnessed.
All had gone well with the church, however—so well that a new enterprise had been added, and a convent school was just making its small beginning in Crichton.