“Mother’s feast”—in other words the saint’s day of the Superioress—was dawning upon our horizon, and its lights and shadows flecked our checkered paths. Theoretically, it was an occasion of pure joy, assuring us, as it did, a congÉ, and not a congÉ only, but the additional delights of a candy fair in the morning, and an operetta, “The Miracle of the Roses,” at night. Such a round of pleasures filled us with the happiest anticipations; but—on the same principle that the Church always prefaces her feast days with vigils and with fasts—the convent prefaced our congÉ with a competition in geography, and with the collection of a “spiritual bouquet,” which was to be our offering to Reverend Mother on her fÊte.A competition in anything was an unqualified calamity. It meant hours of additional study, a frantic memorizing of facts, fit only to be forgotten, and the bewildering ordeal of being interrogated before the whole school. It meant for me two little legs that shook like reeds, a heart that thumped like a hammer in my side, a sensation of sickening terror when the examiner—Madame Bouron—bore down upon me, and a mind reduced to sudden blankness, washed clean of any knowledge upon any subject, when the simplest question was asked. Tried by this process, I was only one degree removed from idiocy. Even Elizabeth, whose legs were as adamant, whose heart-beats had the regularity of a pendulum, and who, if she knew a thing, could say it, hated to bound states and locate capitals for all the school to hear. “There are to be prizes, too,” she said mournfully. “Madame Duncan said so. I don’t like going up for a prize. It’s worse than a medal at Primes.”

“Oh, well, maybe you won’t get one,” observed Tony consolingly. “You didn’t, you know, last time.”

“I did the time before last,” said Elizabeth calmly. “It was ‘La Corbeille de Fleurs.’”

There was an echo of resentment in her voice, and we all—even Tony—admitted that she had just cause for complaint. To reward successful scholarship with a French book was one of those black-hearted deeds for which we invariably held Madame Bouron responsible. She may have been blameless as the babe unborn; but it was our habit to attribute all our wrongs to her malign influence. We knew “La Corbeille de Fleurs.” At least, we knew its shiny black cover, and its frontispiece, representing a sylphlike young lady in a floating veil bearing a hamper of provisions to a smiling and destitute old gentleman. There was nothing in this picture, nor in the accompanying lines, “Que vois-je? Mon Dieu! Un ange de Ciel, qui vient À mon secours,” which tempted us to a perusal of the story, even had we been in the habit of voluntarily reading French.

As for the “spiritual bouquet,” we felt that our failure to contribute to it on a generous scale was blackening our reputations forever. Every evening the roll was called, and girl after girl gave in her list of benefactions. Rosaries, so many. Litanies, so many. Aspirations, so many. Deeds of kindness, so many. Temptations resisted, so many. Trials offered up, so many. Acts, so many. A stranger, listening to the replies, might have imagined that the whole school was ripe for Heaven. These blossoms of virtue and piety were added every night to the bouquet; and the sum total, neatly written out in Madame Duncan’s flowing hand, was to be presented, with an appropriate address, to Reverend Mother on her feast, as a proof of our respectful devotion.

It was a heavy tax. From what resources some girls drew their supplies remained ever a mystery to us. How could Ellie Plunkett have found the opportunity to perform four deeds of kindness, and resist seven temptations, in a day? We never had any temptations to resist. Perhaps when one came along, we yielded to it so quickly that it had ceased to tempt before its true character had been ascertained. And to whom was Ellie Plunkett so overweeningly kind? “Who wants Ellie Plunkett to be kind to her?” was Tony’s scornful query. There was Adelaide Harrison, too, actually turning in twenty acts as one day’s crop, and smiling modestly when Madame Duncan praised her self-denial. Yet, to our unwarped judgment, she seemed much the same as ever. We, at least, refused to accept her estimate of her own well-spent life.

“Making an act” was the convent phraseology for doing without something one wanted, for stopping short on the verge of an innocent gratification. If I gave up my place in the swing to Viola Milton, that was an act. If I walked to the woods with Annie Churchill, when I wanted to walk with Elizabeth, that was an act. If I ate my bread unbuttered, or drank my tea unsweetened, that was an act. It will be easily understood that the constant practice of acts deprived life of everything that made it worth the living. We were so trained in this system of renunciation that it was impossible to enjoy even the very simple pleasures that our convent table afforded. If there were anything we particularly liked, our nagging little consciences piped up with their intolerable “Make an act, make an act;” and it was only when the last mouthful was resolutely swallowed that we could feel sure we had triumphed over asceticism. There was something maddening in the example set us by our neighbours, by those virtuous and pious girls who hemmed us in at study time and at our meals. When Mary Rawdon gently waved aside the chocolate custard—which was the very best chocolate custard it has ever been my good fortune to eat—and whispered to me as she did so, “An act for the bouquet;” I whispered back, “Take it, and give it to me,” and held out my plate with defiant greed. Annie Churchill told us she hadn’t eaten any butter for a week; whereat Tony called her an idiot, and Annie—usually the mildest of girls—said that “envy at another’s spiritual good” was a very great sin, and that Tony had committed it. There is nothing so souring to the temper as abstinence.

What made it singularly hard to sacrifice our young lives for the swelling of a spiritual bouquet was that Reverend Mother, who was to profit by our piety, had so little significance in our eyes. She was as remote from the daily routine of the school as the Grand Lama is remote from the humble Thibetans whom he rules; and if we regarded her with a lively awe, it was only because of her aloofness, of the reserves that hedged her majestically round. She was an Englishwoman of good family, and of vast bulk. There was a tradition that she had been married and widowed before she became a nun; but this was a subject upon which we were not encouraged to talk. It was considered both disrespectful and indecorous. Reverend Mother’s voice was slow and deep, a ponderous voice to suit her ponderous size; and she spoke with what seemed to us a strange and barbarous accent, pronouncing certain words in a manner which I have since learned was common in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and which a few ripe scholars are now endeavouring to reintroduce. She was near-sighted to the verge of blindness, and always at Mass used a large magnifying glass, like the one held by Leo the Tenth in Raphael’s portrait. She was not without literary tastes of an insipid and obsolete order, the tastes of an English gentlewoman, reared in the days when young ladies read the “Female Spectator,” and warbled “Oh, no, we never mention her.” Had she not “entered religion,” she might have taken Moore and Byron to her heart,—as did one little girl whose “Childe Harold” lay deeply hidden in a schoolroom desk,—but the rejection of these profane poets had left her stranded upon such feeble substitutes as Letitia Elizabeth Landon, whose mysterious death she was occasionally heard to deplore.

Twice on Sundays Reverend Mother crossed our orbit; in the morning, when she instructed the whole school in Christian doctrine, and at night, when she presided over Primes. During the week we saw her only at Mass. We should never even have known about Letitia Elizabeth Landon, had she not granted an occasional audience to the graduates, and discoursed to them sleepily upon the books she had read in her youth. Whatever may have been her qualifications for her post (she had surpassing dignity of carriage, and was probably a woman of intelligence and force), to us she was a mere embodiment of authority, as destitute of personal malice as of personal charm. I detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Rayburn. Elizabeth detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Dane. Emily detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Duncan. These were emotions, amply nourished, and easily understood. We were capable of going to great lengths to prove either our aversion or our love. But to give up chocolate custard for Reverend Mother was like suffering martyrdom for a creed we did not hold.

“It’s because Reverend Mother is so fond of geography that we’re going to have the competition,” said Lilly. “Madame Duncan told me so.”

“Why can’t Reverend Mother, if she likes it so much, learn it for herself?” asked Tony sharply. “I’ll lend her my atlas.”“Oh, she knows it all,” said Lilly, rather scandalized. “Madame Duncan told me it was her favourite study, and that she knew the geography of the whole world.”

“Then I don’t see why she wants to hear us say it,” observed Elizabeth, apparently under the impression that competitions, like gladiatorial shows, were gotten up solely for the amusement of an audience. It never occurred to her, nor indeed to any of us, to attach any educational value to the performance. We conceived that we were butchered to make a convent holiday.

“And it’s because Reverend Mother is so fond of music that we are going to have an operetta instead of a play,” went on Lilly, pleased to have information to impart.

I sighed heavily. How could anybody prefer anything to a play? I recognized an operetta as a form of diversion, and was grateful for it, as I should have been grateful for any entertainment, short of an organ recital. We were none of us surfeited with pleasures. But to me song was at best only an imperfect mode of speech; and the meaningless repetition of a phrase, which needed to be said but once, vexed my impatient spirit. We were already tolerably familiar with “The Miracle of the Roses.” For two weeks past the strains had floated from every music room. We could hear, through the closed doors, Frances Fenton, who was to be St. Elizabeth of Hungary, quavering sweetly,—

We could hear Ella Holrook announcing in her deep contralto,—

and the chorus trilling jubilantly,—

Why, I wondered, did they have to say everything two and three times over? Even when the Landgrave detects St. Elizabeth in the act of carrying the loaves to the poor, his anger finds a vent in iteration.

To which the Saint replies gently, but tediously,—

“Suppose that bread hadn’t been changed to roses,” said Elizabeth speculatively, “I wonder what St. Elizabeth would have done.”

“Oh, she knew it had been, because she prayed it would be,” said Marie, who was something of a theologian.

“But suppose it hadn’t.”

“But it had, and she knew it had, because of her piety and faith,” insisted Marie.

“I shouldn’t have liked to risk it,” murmured Elizabeth.

“I think her husband was a pig,” said Tony. “Going off to the Crusade, and making all that fuss about a few loaves of bread. If I’d been St. Elizabeth”—

She paused, determining her course of action, and Marie ruthlessly interposed. “If you’re not a saint, you can’t tell what you would do if you were a saint. You would be different.”There was no doubt that Tony as a saint would have to be so very different from the Tony whom we knew, that Marie’s dogmatism prevailed. Even Elizabeth was silenced; and, in the pause that followed, Lilly had a chance to impart her third piece of information. “It’s because Reverend Mother’s name is Elizabeth,” she said, “that we’re going to have an operetta about St. Elizabeth; and Bessie Treves is to make the address.”

“Thank Heaven, there is another Elizabeth in the school, or I might have to do it,” cried our Elizabeth, who coveted no barren honours; and—even as she spoke—the blow fell. Madame Rayburn appeared at the schoolroom door, a folded paper in her hand. “Elizabeth,” she said, and, with a hurried glance of apprehension, the saint’s unhappy namesake withdrew. We looked at one another meaningly. “It’s like giving thanks before you’re sure of dinner,” chuckled Tony.

I had no chance to hear any particulars until night, when Elizabeth watched her opportunity, and sallied forth to brush her teeth while I was dawdling over mine. The strictest silence prevailed in the dormitories, and no child left her alcove except for the ceremony of tooth-brushing, which was performed at one of two large tubs, stationed in the middle of the floor. These tubs—blessed be their memory!—served as centres of gossip. Friend met friend, and smothered confidences were exchanged. Our gayest witticisms,—hastily choked by a toothbrush,—our oldest and dearest jests were whispered brokenly to the accompaniment of little splashes of water. It was the last social event of our long social day, and we welcomed it as freshly as if we had not been in close companionship since seven o’clock in the morning. Elizabeth, scrubbing her teeth with ostentatious vigour, found a chance to tell me, between scrubs, that Bessie Treves had been summoned home for a week, and that she, as the only other bearer of Reverend Mother’s honoured name, had been chosen to make the address. “It’s the feast of St. Elizabeth,” she whispered, “and the operetta is about St. Elizabeth, and they want an Elizabeth to speak. I wish I had been christened Melpomene.”

“You couldn’t have been christened Melpomene,” I whispered back, keeping a watchful eye upon Madame Chapelle, who was walking up and down the dormitory, saying her beads. “It isn’t a Christian name. There never was a St. Melpomene.”

“It’s nearly three pages long,” said Elizabeth, alluding to the address, and not to the tragic Muse. “All about the duties of women, and how they ought to stay at home and be kind to the poor, like St. Elizabeth, and let their husbands go to the Crusades.”

“But there are no Crusades any more for their husbands to go to,” I objected.

Elizabeth looked at me restively. She did not like this fractious humour. “I mean let their husbands go to war,” she said.

“But if there are no wars,” I began, when Madame Chapelle, who had not been so inattentive as I supposed, intervened. “Elizabeth and Agnes, go back to your alcoves,” she said. “You have been quite long enough brushing your teeth.”

I flirted my last drops of water over Elizabeth, and she returned the favour with interest, having more left in her tumbler than I had. It was our customary good-night. Sometimes, when we were wittily disposed, we said “Asperges me.” That was one of the traditional jests of the convent. Generations of girls had probably said it before us. Our language was enriched with scraps of Latin and apt quotations, borrowed from Church services, the Penitential Psalms, and the catechism.

For two days Elizabeth studied the address, and for two days more she rehearsed it continuously under Madame Rayburn’s tutelage. At intervals she recited portions of it to us, and we favoured her with our candid criticisms. Tony objected vehemently to the very first line:—

“A woman’s path is ours to humbly tread.”

She said she didn’t intend to tread it humbly at all; that Elizabeth might be as humble as she pleased (Elizabeth promptly disclaimed any personal sympathy with the sentiment), and that Marie and Agnes were welcome to all the humility they could practise (Marie and Agnes rejected their share of the virtue), but that she—Tony—was tired of behaving like an affable worm. To this, Emily, with more courage than courtesy, replied that a worm Tony might be, but an affable worm, never; and Elizabeth headed off any further retort by hurrying on with the address.

“Have you any idea what all that means?” asked Marie discontentedly.

“Oh, I don’t have to say what it means,” returned Elizabeth, far too sensible to try to understand anything she would not be called upon to explain. “Reverend Mother makes that out for herself.”

“It seems to me,” said Tony, “that we are expected to do all the work, and have none of the fun.”

“It seems to me,” said Marie, “that by the time we have filled ourselves up with other people’s pains, we won’t care much about fun. Did Reverend Mother, I wonder, heal wounds and hush up moans?”

“St. Elizabeth did,” explained Elizabeth. “Her husband went to the Holy Land, and was killed, and then she became a nun. There are some lines at the end, that I don’t know yet, about Reverend Mother,—

Madame Rayburn wants me to make an act, and learn the rest of it at recreation this afternoon. That horrid old geography takes up all my study time.”

“I’ve made three acts to-day,” observed Lilly complacently, “and said a whole pair of beads this morning at Mass for the spiritual bouquet.”

“I haven’t made one act,” I cried aghast. “I haven’t done anything at all, and I don’t know what to do.”

“You might make one now,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully, “and go talk to Adelaide Harrison.”

I glanced at Adelaide, who was sitting on the edge of her desk, absorbed in a book. “Oh, I don’t want to,” I wailed.

“If you wanted to, it wouldn’t be an act,” said Elizabeth.

“But she doesn’t want me to,” I urged. “She is reading ‘Fabiola.’”

“Then you’ll give her the chance to make an act, too,” said the relentless Elizabeth.

Argued into a corner, I turned at bay. “I won’t,” I said resolutely; to which Elizabeth replied: “Well, I wouldn’t either, in your place,” and the painful subject was dropped.

Four days before the feast the excitement had reached fever point, though the routine of school life went on with the same smooth precision. Every penny had been hoarded up for the candy fair. It was with the utmost reluctance that we bought even the stamps for our home letters, those weekly letters we were compelled to write, and which were such pale reflections of our eager and vehement selves. Perhaps this was because we knew that every line was read by Madame Bouron before it left the convent; perhaps the discipline of those days discouraged familiarity with our parents; perhaps the barrier which nature builds between the adult and the normal child was alone responsible for our lack of spontaneity. Certain it is that the stiffly written pages despatched to father or to mother every Sunday night gave no hint of our abundant and restless vitality, our zest for the little feast of life, our exaltations, our resentments, our thrice-blessed absurdities. Entrenched in the citadel of childhood, with laws of our own making, and passwords of our own devising, our souls bade defiance to the world.

If all our hopes centred in the congÉ, the candy fair, and the operetta,—which was to be produced on a scale of unwonted magnificence,—our time was sternly devoted to the unpitying exactions of geography. Every night we took our atlases to bed with us, under the impression that sleeping on a book would help us to remember its contents. As the atlases were big, and our pillows very small, this device was pregnant with discomfort. On the fourth night before the feast, something wonderful happened. It was the evening study hour, and I was wrestling sleepily with the mountains of Asia,—hideous excrescences with unpronounceable and unrememberable names,—when Madame Rayburn entered the room. As we rose to our feet, we saw that she looked very grave, and our minds took a backward leap over the day. Had we done anything unusually bad, anything that could call down upon us a public indictment, and was Madame Rayburn for once filling Madame Bouron’s office? We could think of nothing; but life was full of pitfalls, and there was no sense of security in our souls. We waited anxiously.

“Children,” said Madame Rayburn, “I have sorrowful news for you. Reverend Mother has been summoned to France. She sails on her feast day, and leaves for New York to-morrow.”

We stared open-mouthed and aghast. The ground seemed sinking from under our feet, the walls crumbling about us. Reverend Mother sailing for France! And on her feast day, too,—the feast for which so many ardent preparations had been made. The congÉ, the competition, the address, the operetta, the spiritual bouquet, the candy fair,—were they, too, sailing away into the land of lost things? To have asked one of the questions that trembled on our lips would have been an unheard-of liberty. We listened in respectful silence, our eyes riveted on Madame Rayburn’s face.

“You will all go to the chapel now,” she said. “To-night we begin a novena to Mater Admirabilis for Reverend Mother’s safe voyage. She dreads it very much, and she is sad at leaving you. Pray for her devoutly. Madame Dane will bring you down to the chapel.”

She turned to go. Our hearts beat violently. She knew, she could not fail to know, the thought that was uppermost in every mind. She was too experienced and too sympathetic to miss the significance of our strained and wistful gaze. A shadowy smile crossed her face. “Madame Bouron would have told you to-morrow,” she said, “what I think I shall tell you to-night. It is Reverend Mother’s express desire that you should have your congÉ on her feast, though she will not be here to enjoy it with you.”

A sigh of relief, a sigh which we could not help permitting to be audible, shivered softly around the room. The day was saved; yet, as we marched to the chapel, there was a turmoil of agitation in our hearts. We knew that from far-away France—from a mysterious and all-powerful person who dwelt there, and who was called Mother General—came the mandates which governed our community. This was not the first sudden departure we had witnessed; but Reverend Mother seemed so august, so permanent, so immobile. Her very size protested mutely against upheaval. Should we never again see that familiar figure sitting in her stall, peering through her glass into a massive prayer-book, a leviathan of prayer-books, as imposing in its way as she was, or blinking sleepily at us as we filed by? Why, if somebody were needed in France, had it not pleased Mother General to send for Madame Bouron? Many a dry eye would have seen her go. But then, as Lilly whispered to me, suppose it had been Madame Rayburn. There was a tightening of my heart-strings at the thought, a sudden suffocating pang, dimly foreboding the grief of another year.

The consensus of opinion, as gathered that evening in the dormitory, was not unlike the old Jacobite epitaph on Frederick, Prince of Wales. Every one of us was sincerely sorry that Madame Bouron had not been summoned,—

but glad that Madame Dane, or Madame Rayburn, or Madame Duncan, or some other favourite nun had escaped.

The loss of our Superioress was bewildering, but not, for us, a thing of deep concern. We should sleep as sweetly as usual that night.

The next morning we were all gathered into the big First Cours classroom, where Reverend Mother came to bid us good-by. It was a solemn leave-taking. The address was no longer in order; but the spiritual bouquet had been made up the night before, and was presented in our name by Madame Bouron, who read out the generous sum-total of prayers, and acts, and offered-up trials, and resisted temptations, which constituted our feast-day gift. As Reverend Mother listened, I saw a large tear roll slowly down her cheek, and my heart smote me—my heart was always smiting me when it was too late—that I had contributed so meagrely to the donation. I remembered the chocolate custard, and thought—for one mistaken moment—that I should never want to taste of that beloved dish again. Perhaps if I had offered it up, Reverend Mother would cross the sea in safety. Perhaps, because I ate it, she would have storms, and be drowned. The doubtful justice of this arrangement was no more apparent to me than its unlikelihood. We were accustomed to think that the wide universe was planned and run for our reward and punishment. A rainy Sunday following the misdeeds of Saturday was to us a logical sequence of events.

When the bouquet had been presented, Reverend Mother said a few words of farewell. She said them as if she were sad at heart, not only at crossing the ocean, not only at parting from her community, but at leaving us, as well. I suppose she loved us collectively. She couldn’t have loved us individually, knowing us only as two long rows of uniformed, curtsying schoolgirls, whose features she was too near-sighted to distinguish. On the other hand, if our charms and our virtues were lost to her, so were our less engaging qualities. Perhaps, taken collectively, we were rather lovable. Our uniforms were spotless, our hair superlatively smooth,—no blowsy, tossing locks, as in these days of libertinism, and our curtsies as graceful as hours of practice could make them. We sank and rose like the crest of a wave. On the whole, Reverend Mother had the best of us. Madame Bouron might have been pardoned for taking a less sentimental view of the situation.

That afternoon, while we were at French class, Reverend Mother departed. We heard the carriage roll away, but were not permitted to rush to the windows and look at it, which would have been a welcome distraction from our verbs. An hour later, at recreation, Madame Rayburn sent for Elizabeth. She was gone fifteen minutes, and came back, tense with suppressed excitement.

“Oh, what is it?” we cried. “The congÉ is all right?”

“All right,” said Elizabeth.

“And the candy fair?” asked Lilly, whose father had given her a dollar to squander upon sweets.

“Oh, it’s all right, too. The candy is here now; and Ella Holrook and Mary Denniston and Isabel Summers are to have charge of the tables. Madame Dane told me that yesterday.”

Our faces lightened, and then fell. “Is it the competition?” I asked apprehensively.

Elizabeth looked disconcerted. It was plain she knew nothing about the competition, and hated to avow her ignorance. We always felt so important when we had news to tell. “Of course, after studying all that geography, we’ll have to say it sooner or later,” she said. “But”—a triumphant pause—“a new Reverend Mother is coming to-morrow.”

“Ciel!” murmured Marie, relapsing into agitated French; while Tony whistled softly, and Emily and I stared at each other in silence. The speed with which things were happening took our breath away.

“Coming to-morrow,” repeated Elizabeth; “and I’m going to say the address as a welcome to her, on the night of the congÉ, before the operetta.”

“Is her name Elizabeth, too?” I asked, bewildered.

“No, her name is Catherine. Madame Rayburn is going to leave out the lines about St. Elizabeth, and put in something about St. Catherine of Siena instead. That’s why she wanted the address. And she is going to change the part about not sharing the Senate’s stern debate, nor guiding with faltering hand the helm of state, because St. Catherine did guide the helm of state. At least, she went to Avignon, and argued with the Pope.”

“Argued with the Pope!” echoed Marie, scandalized.

“She was a saint, Marie,” said Elizabeth impatiently, and driving home an argument with which Marie herself had familiarized us. “She persuaded the Pope to go back to Rome. Madame Rayburn would like Kate Shaw to make the address; but she says there isn’t time for another girl to study it.”

“When is the feast of St. Catherine of Siena?” cried Tony, fired suddenly by a happy thought. “Maybe we’ll have another congÉ then.”She rushed off to consult her prayer-book. Lilly followed her, and in a moment their two heads were pressed close together, as they scanned the Roman calendar hopefully. But before my eyes rose the image of Reverend Mother, our lost Reverend Mother, with the slow teardrop rolling down her cheek. Her operetta was to be sung to another. Her address was to be made to another. Her very saint was pushed aside in honour of another holy patroness. “The King is dead. Long live the King.”