“You are looking at her—I, too, have been looking at her; she is divine,”
came a voice beside her. She did not need to turn to see the speaker. She
had been longing for the sound of his voice for many days. She had not
even a chance of hearing him sing before this evening.
“She is St. Cecilia herself,” said she. “You have seen Sir Joshua’s
picture?”
“My countryman, Piozzi, pointed it out to me,” he replied. “I was
enraptured with the picture. But when the living St. Cecilia entered the
room and I heard her story, I felt ready to throw myself at her feet and
implore her as the guardian of poor singers to take me to her care. Her
face has on it the bloom of a flower dropped fresh from the garden of
God—angelic beyond the voice of man to describe.”
He spoke, as usual, in French to Fanny, but he had greeted Mrs. Burney in
English, and he tried to translate his last phrase to her into the same
language. He failed after the first word or two, and begged Miss Burney
to complete his task for him. She did so, and her stepmother smiled and
nodded in appreciation of his comment.
“She is indeed a beautiful creature,” said Mrs. Burney. “I heard her sing
more than once at Bath. People went mad about her beauty and her singing,
and truly I never heard any singing that so affected me. It was said that
she hated to let her voice be heard in public. Her father, Mr. Linley,
made her sing: she was a gold mine to Mr. Linley and he knew it.”
Signor Rauzzini had listened attentively and picked up all that she had
said without the aid of a word from Fanny.
“But now she will never be heard again no more,” said he in English. “And
she is right in making such a resolution, and her husband is a noble
man to agree with her in this,” he continued, but in French to Fanny.
“Picture that lovely creature placing herself on the level of such a
one as the Agujari! sordid—vulgar—worldly! quarrelling daily with the
_impresario_ on some miserable question of precedence—holding out for the
largest salary—turning a gift which should be divine into gold! Oh; she
was right.”
“Signor Rauzzini no doubt thinks it a pity that such a voice should cease
to give pleasure to the thousands it enchanted,” said Mrs. Burney, not
being able to follow him in French.
“Oh, no, no; just the opposite,” cried Fanny. “He says he admires her the
more for her resolution.”
“I am so glad. Pray tell him that I agree with him,” said Mrs. Burney. “A
good woman will avoid publicity. Her home should be sufficient for her.”
Fanny did not need to translate the words, he grasped their meaning at
once.
“I agree with all of my heart, madame,” he cried. “I would not wish
my mother or my sister to have their names spoken with freedom by
everyone who paid a coin to hear them sing. I should think it—_come si
chiamo?_—Ah! forgive my poor English.” He went off into French once
more—“Pray tell madame that I think it would be odious to hear the name
of my mother or my sister tossed from man to man as they toss the name of
a woman who comes before the public. I think the woman who would hide
herself from all eyes as a violet hides itself under a leaf is the true
woman. The shy, timid, retiring one—I know her—I esteem her. I could love
no other. I have a deep respect for the woman of the Orient who would die
sooner than let her face be seen by a man.”
“What does he say—I like his eagerness?” asked Mrs. Burney.
Fanny translated some of his phrases, and Mrs. Burney nodded and smiled
her approval.
“The bloom on the wing of a butterfly is a very tender thing,” resumed
the Roman; “the breath of a man is sufficient to remove it—a single
breath—and when the bloom has gone the charm of the beautiful creature
has gone also.”
“I am not sure that I like the comparison to the butterfly,” said Fanny,
smiling. “The butterfly is the emblem of all that is fickle—all that is
idle except for its yielding to its fickleness. It is beautiful, but
nothing else.”
He laughed.
“I am rebuked,” he said. “But with us the butterfly is the symbol of the
life—of the soul. Assume that and you will, I think, see that I meant not
to hint at the beauty of the frivolity, but at the beauty of the soul. I
feel that a woman’s life has on it the bloom of a butterfly’s wing, and
if that is once breathed on, its beauty is gone for ever—the woman’s life
is never again what it was—what it was meant to be. But if you wish, I
will not go beyond the violet as my emblem of the best woman—my woman.”
“I thank heaven that I have no voice,” said Fanny gently, after a pause.
Young Mr. Northcote, Sir Joshua’s pupil, had approached Mrs. Burney—his
eye was on Susy—in order to tell her that tea was being served in the
drawing-room.
Mrs. Burney thanked him and took the arm that he offered.
“We shall all go in together,” said Mrs. Burney, with a sign to Fanny.
But Rauzzini contrived to evade her eye by renewing his admiration of the
“St. Cecilia.”
“If I could but reproduce in song the effect that flows from her face I
should be the greatest singer in the world,” said he.
“You need not envy her,” said Fanny. “Do you remember Mr. Handel’s
setting of ‘Alexander’s Feast’?”
“Only an aria or two.”
“One of the lines came into my mind just now when I looked at that
picture. ‘She drew an angel down.’”
“And it was very apt. She would draw an angel down.”
“Yes; but the poet has another line before that one—it refers to a
singer—‘He raised a mortal to the skies.’ That was the line which came to
my mind when I heard you sing. You raise mortals to the skies. Your power
is equal to that of St. Cecilia.”
“Nay, nay; that is what you have done. I have been uplifted to the
highest heaven by you. When you are near me I cannot see anything of the
world. Why have we not met more frequently? Ah, I forgot—I am always
forgetting that the months you spoke of have not yet run out. But I am
not impatient, knowing that the prize will come to me in good time. I
have been away at the Bath and Salisbury and Bristol and I know not
where, singing, singing, singing, and now I go to Paris and Lyon for a
few months, but you may be certain that I shall return to England—then
the separating months shall have passed and you will welcome me—is not
that so?”
“I think I can promise you—every day seems to make it more certain that I
shall welcome you.”
“My angel—my dream!—”
He said the words—both long-drawn monosyllables in French—in a whisper
that gave them the full force of passionate expression. He had need to
whisper, for several people were in the room, and Mr. Boswell was among
the number, and everyone knew that Mr. Boswell, as a gossip-monger, had
no equal in town. He was always pimping and prying—nosing out germs of
scandal—ever ready to make mischief by telling people all the nasty
things other people had said of them. Mr. Boswell had his eye on them—and
his ear. In addition, Mrs. Thrale, who had arrived late, had no idea of
allowing the handsome Roman singer to waste himself with a nonentity like
Miss Burney, and she was now perilously close to him whom she came to
rescue.
But the whisper and the expression imparted to it were enough for Fanny
Burney. He might have talked for hours in his impassioned way without
achieving the effect of his whispered exclamations.
Then Mrs. Thrale hastened up to his side full of her resolution to rescue
him from the conversation with the insignificant person whom his good
nature suffered to engage his attention.
“Why, what is this?” cried the little lady who regarded herself with
complacency as the soul of tact. “Have you explained to Signor Rauzzini
that you are the unmusical member of the family, Miss Burney?”
“I believe that he is aware of that fact already, madam,” replied Fanny.
“And yet he is in close converse with you? He is the most good-natured
man in town,” said Mrs. Thrale. “Does he hope to interest you when your
father failed?”
“He has never ceased to interest me, madam,” said Fanny.
“Then he did not talk about music?”
“Oh, yes; I think he said something about music.”
“Yes, touching a note here and there, as one might in passing a
harpsichord. Of course you could not have lived in Dr. Burney’s house
without being able to understand something of music. But we must not
trespass upon Signor Rauzzini’s courtesy, Miss Burney. Everyone is
talking of him in the drawing-room—he must gratify the company by
mingling with them.”
Then she addressed Rauzzini in French.
“I promised to go in search of you, signor,” she said. “Madame Reynolds
is distracted. I came on my mission famished—I had vowed, as the
crusaders did, not to taste food or drink until I had succeeded in
my emprise. May I ask you to have pity on me now and lead me to the
tea-table?”
He turned to ask Fanny to accompany them, but he found that she had
slipped quietly away. She was already at the door.
“My duty was to Miss Burney, madame, but she has been frightened away,”
said he.
“Oh, she is the shy one of the family, I believe,” said Mrs. Thrale. “I
am sure that all the time you were so good-natured as to talk to her she
was wishing that the floor would open and allow her to sink out of sight.
She would have thought it much more good-natured on your part if you had
taken no notice of her. I have scarcely spoken to her half a dozen times
myself, though I have frequently been to her father’s house. I cannot
rack my brain to discover a congenial topic with such young people. Were
you successful, do you think?”
He made a gesture with his hands that might mean anything. Mrs. Thrale
assumed that it meant nothing—that he felt he was not greatly concerned
whether he had been successful in finding a congenial topic of converse
with Miss Burney or not.
She laughed.
“Poor girl!” she said. “She may have her dreams like other girls.”
“I believe she has—poor girl!” said he. “But I know that in her knowledge
of music she goes deeper—soars higher than most young ladies who have
submitted to lessons from a _maestro_—nay, higher than the _maestro_
himself.”
Mrs. Thrale looked doubtfully at him.
“Is it possible that we are talking of two different people?” said she.
“Ah, that is quite possible,” said he.
“I was referring to Miss Burney, the one of the family who does nothing
except sew—her mother commends her sewing very highly. I fear that you
actually believed that you were in converse with one of her sisters.”
“Madame,” said he, “it is my belief that the one who sews in a family is
far more interesting than the one who sings. But Miss Burney need not, in
my eyes, be any more than Miss Burney to be interesting, though she has
taught me more of music than I ever learned before.”
“Is’t possible? Oh, yes: I should remember that her father told me
that she was his amanuensis—she made a neat copy of all his notes for
the ‘History of Music.’ It is no wonder that she knows something about
it. Such a good daughter! And the father took no trouble about her
education. She did not know her letters till she was eight or nine, I
believe—perhaps twelve. I don’t believe that I ever exchanged half a
dozen words with her before this evening; and as for men—you are the
first man I ever saw taking any notice of her.”
His face lit up strangely, Mrs. Thrale thought, at this revelation. He
gave a laugh.
“So much the better for her—so much the worse for the men,” said he. “And
now, madame, if the tea has not become too strong, and if your hunger has
not made you too weak to walk to the table, I should esteem it an honour
to conduct you thither.”
Mrs. Thrale smiled her acquiescence, and she entered the drawing-room on
the arm of the singer. Nothing could have convinced her that he did not
feel grateful to her for rescuing him from the position in which his good
nature had placed him—by the side of the most insignificant young woman
among all Sir Joshua’s guests.
She believed that she was increasing his debt of gratitude to her by
keeping him with her for the next half-hour. Her sense of protecting him
gave her naturally a sense of patronage, which was quite pleasant for
her to experience, especially when she glanced round the room and saw
several ladies of higher rank than she could pretend to, frowning in her
direction. She knew how Signor Rauzzini was pestered by the attentions
of such as these, and she could almost hear the well-bred sneers of her
friends as they glanced at her and wondered if she never meant to release
the unfortunate young man—she knew just what they would say, and she
accepted their imaginary words as a real compliment to her protective
powers. Her smile down the table was one of great complacency.
She also noticed that the insignificant Miss Burney was glowing as she
had never seen her glow before. Her face was rosy and her eyes were
actually sparkling. Mrs. Thrale had never imagined that such eyes as Miss
Burney’s could sparkle, no matter what their provocation might be.
“Poor girl! Poor child! Her head is turned, as I feared it would be
when I saw the Rauzzini with her. She is the unhappy victim of his good
nature.”
This was the conclusion come to by the little lady whose ability to
pronounce an opinion on such a matter was widely acknowledged; and coming
to such a conclusion, she naturally commended all the more heartily
the step which she had taken for separating the foolish girl and the
fascinating young man.
She would have waved aside any suggestion that might be made to her to
the effect that the increase in Miss Burney’s colouring and the light in
her eyes was due to Miss Burney’s overhearing the conversation between
her mother and Sir Joshua respecting a book which he had stayed up all
night to read and which he had just finished in time to receive his
guests.
The name of the book was “Evelina; or, a Young Lady’s Entrance into the
World,” he said, and he was urging Mrs. Burney to follow his example and
read it without further delay.