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Last summer I saw her in a home of wealth and luxury. She was fifteen, the eldest of a family of four children. Behind her was a long line of ancestry of which anyone might rightfully be proud. Her face was pure and sweet and her eyes revealed the frankness and honest purpose of past generations. After breakfast she played for the hymns at prayers and in a clear, true, soprano led the singing.
Then Constance O'Neill's deep, smooth alto flowed into Betty's soprano; and at the last all nine girls joined in "Adeste Fideles." Christmas morning began with music and laughter. "This is your place, Betty. You are lord of Christmas morning." Betty stood, blushing, red as the holly in her hand, before the breakfast table. Miss Hyle, the teacher at the head of the table, had given up her place.
A she-ghost wouldn't want an inner chamber to herself. A live woman, with a valuable soprano voice, wouldn't start off at night to sprain her ankles over the old graves of the North-End cemetery.
But her singing he did not question. It was too wholly her, and he sat always amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice. And he could not help but contrast it with the weak pipings and shrill quaverings of factory girls, ill-nourished and untrained, and with the raucous shriekings from gin-cracked throats of the women of the seaport towns. She enjoyed singing and playing to him.
She knew it well; it is a strict canon in unison, and she had heard it sung by two grey-haired men in the Papal choir in Rome, soprano voices of a rarer and more radiant timbre than any woman's sexful voice, and subtle, and, in some complex way, hardly of the earth at all voices in which no accent of sex transpired, abstract voices aloof from any stress of passion, undistressed by any longing, even for God.
It had been two weeks since he had remonstrated with Colette for the surprisingly sudden announcement, made in seeming seriousness, that she was going to study opera with a view to going on the stage. The fact that she had a light, sweet soprano adapted only to the rendition of drawing-room ballads did not lessen in his eyes the probability of her carrying out this resolve.
The lawns were green with the green of spring. Roses ran riot everywhere. The windows of the handsome old-fashioned houses were open, and Abby was afforded glimpses of fluttering white gowns, heard the tinkle of the mandolin, the cold precise strains of the piano, the sudden uplifting of a youthful soprano.
Amy sang, in clear soprano: "'The moon looks down on old Cro' Nest, She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below." "Imagine the cone and wave, please," said Miss Hargrove; and then, in an alto rich with her heart's deep feeling, she sang with Amy: "'Ouphe and goblin! imp and sprite! Elf of eve! and starry fay!
On being assured that those, perhaps, who might be selected to replace the offenders might refuse the service, if not allowed the same ridiculous prerogatives, and thus expose Their Royal Majesties to double mortification, the Queen seemed satisfied, and no more was said upon the subject, except to an Italian soprano, to whom the King signified his displeasure at his singing a 'salva regina' in the dress of a grenadier of the new faction.
Thus, the lowest register is the special province of the alto and the bass; soprano and tenor can come down only a few notes into it. The middle and the highest registers are the special province of soprano and tenor. The ordinary alto and bass can come up only part way into the middle register and cannot follow soprano and tenor at all into the highest.
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