“Would you like?” asked Lisa, sparkling with almost as happy a smile as he remembered when she sat at the little table in the crowded Black Hat, before the beginning of trouble.
The mandoline was hanging against the wall, decked with a bunch of ribbons, red, white, and green. She took it down, and seated herself by the window, in the sunlight, and began to tinkle out “Batti, batti,” in thin, wiry tones, while the boy left his bricks on the floor and came and stood at her knee, open-mouthed, open-eyed, intently listening.
“Sing, Lisa, sing,” said la Zia.
Lisa laughed, blushed, looked shyly at Vansittart, as if she feared his critical powers, and then began that tenderest melody in a fresh young voice, whose every note was round and ripe and full of power. Nor was the singer lacking in expression; the tender legato passages were given with a pleading pathos that touched the listener almost to tears.
“Brava, Signora mia!” he cried, at the end of the song. “Your voice is worlds too good to be drowned in a middle-aged chorus. To my ear you sing ‘Batti, batti,’ as well as the most famous Zerlina I ever heard. Two years hence, or sooner perhaps, we shall have the new Venetian prima donna, Signora Vivanti, taking the town by storm. But we must make haste, and find our Maestro, able to coach you in all the great operas.”
He had to explain that word coach to Lisa, whose knowledge of English had made rapid progress during her residence in the country, and who had a quick apprehension of every new word or phrase.
He left her, charmed at the discovery that she could sing so well, and that her future was therefore so full of hope. He was pleased with her gentleness, her simplicity, her frank acceptance of his friendly services, pleased most of all by the thought that by his protection of these two lonely women he was in some measure atoning for his crime. Yet there were points upon which his conscience remained unsatisfied—questions that he wanted to ask—and to this end he dropped in upon the little family on the third floor three or four times before the Easter holidays.
He was not long in finding the ideal singing-master. An application to one of the chief music publishers and concert-givers brought him in relation with a Milanese musician, who played the ’cello at the Apollo, the new opera-house on the Embankment—the very man Vansittart wanted, ugly enough to satisfy the most jealous husband, elderly, but not old enough to fall asleep in the middle of a lesson; a man of character and talent, but not one of Fortune’s favourites, and therefore willing to give lessons on moderate terms.
This gentleman’s opinion of Signora Vivanti’s voice was most encouraging, and his manner of expressing that opinion seemed so modest and conscientious that Vansittart was fain to believe him.
“La Signora is absolutely ignorant of music,” said the Professor, “but if she is industrious and persevering she has a fortune in her throat.”