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,—
“Had it been his father,
We had much rather;”
but glad that Madame Dane, or Madame Rayburn, or Madame Duncan, or some other favourite nun had escaped.
“Since it’s only Fred