It was some time before Tom caught up his violin and began to tune it. His father had seated himself at the harpsichord, and Betsy had astonished her brother by her singing of Handel’s “Sweet Bird.” He affirmed that she was the greatest singer in the world. All that Pacchierotti and the Agujari had said about her singing failed to do full justice to it, he declared. He had heard singers in Italy who were accounted great, but the greatest of them might sit at her feet with profit.
“She will sing ‘Angels, ever bright and fair’ with true effect now, I promise you,” said the father, with a shrewd smile.
“Ah, yes! now—now!” said the girl; and before her father had touched the keys of the harpsichord she had flashed into the recitative.
Her brother clasped his hands over his bosom, and, with his eyes fixed on her face, listened in amazement. She had become the embodiment of the music. She was the spirit of the song made visible. All the pure maidenly ecstasy, all the virginal rapture was made visible. Before she had ended the recitative, every one who ever heard that lovely singer was prepared to hear the rustling of the angels’ wings. It was the greatest painter of the day who heard her sing the sublime melody, and painted his greatest picture—one of the greatest pictures ever painted in the world—from her.
“Saint Cecilia—Saint Cecilia, and none other,” said Sir Joshua Reynolds. “She sings and draws the angels down when she calls upon them.”
But the jingling harpsichord!
“It is unworthy of her,” cried her father, taking his hands off the keys before playing the prelude to the air.
In an instant her brother had caught up his violin; he had been tuning it while they had been talking—and began to improvise an obbligato with the confidence of a master of the instrument. And then with the first sound of the harpsichord came that exquisite voice of passionate imploration:
“‘Angels, ever bright and fair,
Take, oh, take me to your care.’”