CHAPTER XXVII.

MY DÉBUT.

THAT night Gretchen and I sat with our two heads bent over one book: Dod's Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage of Great Britain and Ireland. The 'titled classes' were a new study for us; but Herr Droigel, in his business capacity, had occasionally to post himself up as regarded 'who was who,' and always kept a volume by him sacred to the nobility, in addition to one containing records of the landed gentry.

For the time being Gretchen's and my 'who' resolved himself into Sir Thomas Brooks; and from Dod we elicited the information that 'Sir Brooks,' the fourth baronet, had been born some fifty years previously; that he married-first, daughter of Michael Mowbray, Esq. of Hopedene, Northumberland (she died 1829); and second, Lady Muriel Marguerite, third daughter of the tenth Earl of Fortfergus. Residences: Bolton-row, Mayfair, London; Hopedean, Northumberland; and the Retreat, Fairport. Heir presumptive: his brother, Henry Algernon, born at Richmond.' Gretchen read that last sentence; I did not. I sawwith my eyes fixed on the Retreat, Fairport, with my body in London, with my mind in the town I remembered so well-the town twenty miles from Lovedale, where the waves lapped in on the sands, and the bay lay calm and unruffled, reflecting back the moonlight.

Half-an-hour's walk from my uncle's house brought one to the Retreat. I had known the place all

my life as belonging to a vague Sir Thomas, who visited at the Great House, and who was a great power in the county.

'Evidently,' said Gretchen, interrupting my reverie, 'the first wife brought the money, and his second wife is helping Sir Thomas Brooks, fourth baronet, to spend it.'

The amount of knowledge of the world possessed by some persons by no means gifted in other respects seems to me marvellous now, and it seemed naturally more marvellous to me then.

'Do you think I shall have to sing?' I inquired, all in a tremor.

'No,' Gretchen replied coolly, 'I should not think so. I imagine you are asked solely for the pleasure of your society, and because your uncle keeps a chemist's shop at Fairport.'

"You talk nonsense,' I said sharply.

'And you talk like a baby,' she answered. 'If you are not wanted to sing, why in the world do you suppose these people should ask you at all? In fact, I am sure they never have asked you: they have told somebody to bring a certain number of musical people, and that somebody has doubtless applied to papa for assistance. Sing-of course you will have to sing; and I for one am glad of it.'

And was I? Yes, on the whole I think so. Stronger even than my natural timidity was the desire to know what I could do, what others would say when they heard Herr Droigel's pupil; heard the result of weeks, months, years of practice; and yet the whole thing seemed to me unreal.

That the time was close at hand when I, Annie Trenet, should be led on to a platform, and curtsey to an applauding audience, and sing my little song,' and prove a success or a failure, appeared like a dream.

Still, if I were ever to sing in public, I knew it was time I began. I had been on Herr Droigel's hands. long enough. All he could teach me, all I was capable of learning, had been taught and learnt; the days were now being spent uselessly. Even if I wished to put off the final plunge, I felt it would be neither politic nor just to do so.

It was only to take one step and then— I would be brave and take that one step. So I decided before going to sleep.

But as time went on my courage sank below zero. Spite of all the efforts he made to conceal it, Herr Droigel could not completely hide the anxiety he felt.

He did not say anything to me on the subject nearest his heart, but I could not fail to see the importance he attached to the impression my first appearance might cause. He did not tell me to practise any particular song, he never bade me take care of catching cold, or warn me to play no tricks with my voice, as had been the case formerly, but I found his eyes often fixed upon me. He failed to find pleasure in his favourite dishes; he talked little, and walked up and down the garden and through every room in the house a good deal, and he interested himself about my dress to an extent which would at any other time have caused Gretchen and myself to shriek with laughter.

As matters stood, we all, however, felt a serious crisis was at hand, and were disposed to treat even apparent trifles in a serious and becoming manner.

'Though I am not in the least degree doubtful of the result,' said

VOL. XI.

Gretchen, 'it is impossible not to feel a little anxious about your début. · It means riches or poverty for all of us.'

'Is there no medium,' I asked, 'no middle path between the two?'

'I think not,' she replied; it is not a question of power, but of courage. You can sing, we know ; it only remains to be seen whether you will do so before an audience.'

'Trust me, Gretchen,' I answered, 'I will try to be brave.'

As a rule, Herr Droigel, so long as our demands on his purse were not too frequent or too heavy, allowed us to dress as we pleased without hindrance or comment.

If sometimes Gretchen or I, in the vanity of our hearts, exhibited to him a new bonnet or mantle, or asked if he did not think the colour of a dress lovely, he was wont to say: 'Ah, my dears, youth is beautiful in anything. Everything is becoming to the young.' But now all seemed changed.

Over my attire for Sir Brooks' party he fidgeted himself and me to an extent which was simply incomprehensible.

He himself accompanied me to a modiste, with whom there had evidently been confidences exchanged previously.

'Is this the young lady?' she said in broken English; and on being assured that I was, she stood back to survey me critically, as Worth might now.

Mon Dieu, but you had reason,' she went on after a pause. 'It shall be just as you made suggestion. The coiffure

'Shall be in keeping, rest assured,' finished Herr Droigel with a satisfied smile; and then he left me with madame, who treated me as she might a lay figure she had been instructed to dress to the best advantage.

'What colour is it to be?' I asked innocently, thinking there could be

XX

no guilt in inquiring what I was to wear; but Madame flung up her hands and turned up her eyes at the question.

If

I must wait, I should see. my good guardian had not spoken, were not her lips sealed? His taste was perfect, so was his judgment. I should be dressed à ravir.

So far as I was concerned, I did not see much to ravish my eyes when the dress did come home. It lay spread out on the bed when I ascended the stairs after tea, and a young lady sent by Madame the modiste mounted guard over it.

What had I not pictured to myself as the dress I should like to wear! White looped up with roses, or flowers of the blue convolvulus; blue wreathed with clematis ; pink trimmed with soft lace. What a blessing it is young people are not always free agents, and consequently cannot bedizen themselves after the desire of their hearts!

And the dress I beheld? you ask. It was black, of a filmy gauzy material; a poor thing, I thought, though it cost a great deal of money, and produced a considerable effect; with a white tracery running through it, with a soft floating effect disappointing to me.

I should have liked a gown stiff as brocade, grand as velvet, and there-well there it lay, and I had to make the best of it.

That morning a hairdresser had come to curl my hair, and I had, in obedience to Herr Droigel, been running about in the air all day to uncurl it.

He wanted it to fall in 'heavy lumps,' he explained. Those were the days in which women had hair in plenty of their own, and mine was exceptionally thick and long-so long, that even in curls it fell almost to my waist, and we had to put it out of the way as best we could while the important question of robing proceeded.

As for the assistant, she was in ecstasies; for me, I was disgusted. I looked in the glass and beheld a pale face and dark hair, a black dress against a white skin, and nothing to relieve or soften either.

Had I been going to a funeral, I could not have assumed a more sombre guise.

A coral necklace might have brightened up my appearance, but even that was denied me. A double row of jet beads was clasped round my throat, and thus ornamented, the young person pronounced me 'perfect.'

'Let Monsieur see,' she suggested; and Monsieur having seen and being satisfied, I was hurried into a brougham duly hired for the occasion, and consequently called ours; and we drove off amidst an almost unintelligible series of ut terances from Madame Droigel, and smiles and kissing of hands from Gretchen, who farther prospered our undertaking by throwing an old shoe after our vehicle as it emerged from the gate.

The die was cast, the step taken. During the drive, which seemed to me to occupy hours, Herr Droigel talked laboriously-I use the word advisedly-till,utterly worn out with the flow of unmeaning words and the unwonted movement of the carriage, I told him I could listen no longer-that I was getting such a headache I should not be able to sing a note.

6

Sing!' he repeated; 'who said anything about your singing?'

Ah, Herr Droigel,' I replied, we should never-that is, I should never have been asked by Sir Brooks' (Gretchen and I had fallen into this form of expression) for the mere pleasure of my society.

'And what knowest thou, Annie, of Sir Brooks, or any other Sir, to warrant such an assertion?'

'I know nothing of him,' I replied, "but I do know something

of his friends; and they-the Wiffordes, at all events-would as soon think of inviting their coachman to dinner as of asking me to spend an evening with them.'

'Soh, soh; then the Ladies Wifforde, your Great-House heiresses, are acquainted with our baronet ; what you call hand-and-glove?'

'I cannot say anything about hand-and-glove, but they visit at the Retreat, Sir Thomas's place near Fairport, and Sir ThomasSir Brooks-visits at the Great House.'

'That is odd-that is what we may call one coincidence,' remarked my companion. But it is the lady who asks, not the husband. She has, O such divine impulses; she loves music and musicians, paintings and painters, books and authors.'

'She must have a very large heart,' I observed.

'Don't be satirical, miss. Satire may be the correct thing at forty, but it is a mistake for a girl in her teens. No, as I was saying, the Lady Brooks is artistic herself, to her tips of her taper fingers. She gets up little operas, she has charming afternoons, she takes singers, such as Serlini for instance, to her bosom, she can act herself in short charming pieces with a marvellous spirit. Poor Sir Brooks-well, he is Sir Brooks; fat, heavy, English, beefish, phlegmatic, good-natured, with an adorable rent-roll, a rentroll calculated to make all the world perceive his good qualities; but Lady Brooks is the light of the household. You shall see her, you shall judge for yourself,' he added, as our modest conveyance, falling in the wake of a dashing carriage and pair which had just drawn off, stopped in front of a brilliantly lighted house, which Herr Droigel informed me in an impressive whisper was the abode of Sir Brooks.

At that moment I think I lost my

senses, and never perfectly recovered them again till I awoke, late the next day, in my own bed, in my own little room. I remember, as in a dream, the red carpet on which I stepped, the hall filled with brilliant flowers and servants no less gorgeous. I remember some one taking my cloak, and some one else, in a small back room, asking if I would have tea. Two or three people were there with whom Herr Droigel shook hands and chatted while he stirred his tea and sipped it, and swelled out his chest, and protruded an immense extent of shirt-frill, in which glistened a diamond brooch.

My master looked magnificent that evening. Any one might have taken him for the prince or grandduke of some German state a few acres square-he was at once so dignified and so condescendingso affable, and yet so stately.

Looking at him, I felt inclined to rub my eyes and ask, could this be my Droigel or another? Could this be the person I habitually beheld clad in an old dressing-gown, with slippers down at heel, unshorn, unkempt, very frequently unwashed? Was this man so grand in his presence, so kingly in his manner, so self-possessed, with such an air of society-the Droigel I had hitherto seen in the bosom of his family, concocting horrible plats, babbling with madame, looking after the peccadillos of the servants, or shrieking out to me that one note was too flat and the next too sharp, and the general effect of my singing enough to set 'his teeth on edge'?

As for me, no one took the smallest notice of my existence, except that, when we passed from the small room into a large apartment, at one end of which stood, in a sort of alcove, a grand piano, that bade fair to be rent to pieces by reason of the blows a fashionable pianist was dealing it, a lady glided up to Herr

Droigel, and, pressing his hand, said,

'How good of you to come! how can I thank you sufficiently! And so you have brought your little girl. Quite right; it will amuse her.' And then, with a very fashionable smile, passed on to give currency to some other conventional white lie.

It was madame, with the divine impulses. She was very fair; I saw that, spite of the state of semi-idiotcy to which I was reduced.

She spoke of me as a child; as if I were ten years of age, and had been brought there as a treat. Was she mad, or was I?

the

On most persons, I suppose, first sight of a brilliant party produces an effect such as might be induced by a goblet of sparkling wine given to one who had never previously tasted anything stronger than water.

For me, I can honestly say, I was mentally intoxicated. When I walked, I seemed treading on air; when any one spoke and I answered, the voices sounded to me unreal; when I looked at the brilliantly-lighted rooms, at the beautiful ladies, at the gentlemen leaning over to catch their words, I felt I must be either in dream or in fairyland.

No transformation-scene was ever less real to me than the scene which greeted my eyes that night: the shifting colours, the changing faces, the scent of flowers and perfumes, the sound of music, the hum of voices-there, in a sentence, I was drunk for the time, as a man who has quaffed new wine.

Suddenly upon the assemblage there fell a hush; the hum of voices subsided; there was a pause, during which it seemed to me, still looking and feeling as in a dream, each guest held his or her breath. Up the centre of the room a path was cleared, and then, led by Sir Brooks, the tips of her fingers resting on his

arm, a lady moved slowly towards our end of the apartment.

Like a queen she inclined her head to those who gave her greeting; like a queen she walked; like a queen she wore a mask between her heart and the crowd who looked upon her face. Ah, Heaven! how more and more dreamlike the scene grew when I beheld her— when I saw the sovereign to whom in the years gone by I had given my allegiance, Serlini-than whom there never was but one, than whom there can never be another!

She sang. I was not three yards distant. I could have caught the train of her sweeping dress bystretching out a hand. She sang. Why should I try to describe that which is historical? She stirred the hearts of the young by indicating the feelings to come; by some curious sympathy her tones evoked olden memories in the aged, by touching strings no hands had strayed over for a quarter of a century; at once she was all things to all men. She came simply and naturally, like the primroses of spring or the lilies of summer, and men and women rejoiced; why, it might have puzzled them to explain, as it puzzles me now to record.

Why do those who have once heard the nightingale always remember that song with mingled feelings of pleasure and pain? Wherefore do they recollect it to the end of life?

Who shall say? Who shall explain these things-why the trill of a bird, the tones of a voice, the rhythm of an air, linger in the memory-why, when the singer is dead and gone, that conjuror Time, who steals so much of our best and brightest from us, relents, and gives back, like an echo, note for note of the melody which charmed away our senses in the long ago?

The song was sung, and she was gone. Herr Droigel played the ac