“You will be a musician to your finger tips by the time you have finished studying,” he said, as they came away.
Mrs. Friedberg gave Celia a sitting-room at the top of the house, where she could practise without the least fear of being disturbed. It was light and cheerful, and looked out upon the front of the road. Celia liked to sit by the window and watch the omnibuses pass; and she would speculate as to where all the passengers were going. The life and movement in the streets quite fascinated her: it was so entirely different from the quiet seclusion of the Towers.
When Herbert had gone, and her first attack of homesickness had been overcome, the girl amused herself by unpacking and arranging some of the little treasures she had brought from Durlston. The room looked more homelike when her cuckoo-clock was on the mantelpiece, and her own little knick-knacks were arranged on the sideboard. Then there were her numerous books and music, which, with their familiar bindings, greeted her like old friends as she sorted and put them in their places.
The piano had been placed against the wall, but Celia had it moved into the centre of the room; and draped the back of it with stiff ivory silk, on the centre of which was a beautiful representation of St. Cecilia at the organ, the handiwork of her brother.
The appearance of the room was quite transformed by the time she had finished, and she called Lottie Friedberg up to see the changes she had made. A large painting of Herbert Karne, done by himself, rested on an easel of carved oak, and close by was a panel portrait, in the Rembrandt style, of Lady Marjorie Stonor in evening dress. Celia had instinctively placed these two in close proximity to each other, though she did not know why she had done so. There were other pictures and paintings in evidence as well, and Lottie examined them all with keen interest.
“That’s rather a nice-looking fellow,” she observed, pausing before a cabinet photograph in a silver frame; “he looks like an actor, and his eyes are just a wee bit like George Alexander’s, don’t you think so?”
Celia smiled. “I don’t know Mr. Alexander, so I can’t say,” she returned. “But this gentleman does not belong to the dramatic profession. He is a doctor—a great friend of my brother’s.”
“I suppose you met a good many Christian johnnies in Durlston, didn’t you?” queried Lottie, as she turned over the pages of an autograph album. “We don’t see many here. Ma doesn’t like them, because, as they are no good for matrimonial purposes, she thinks it is not much use knowing them. There’s one lives next door, Harold Brooke, and we sometimes meet him at the Earls Court Exhibition with some more fellows. Maud and I got stuck on the big wheel with them once, for more than an hour, and Ma was down below shouting up to us, and looking as wild as can be. Oh, it was such a lark, I can tell you! I must introduce you to the Brookes. Harold is rather good fun, and not so insipid as most goyeshka[2] fellows, but he’s got two stuck-up sisters, and they always pass us by with their noses in the air—because we happen to be Jews, I suppose. They have a cousin staying with them, Enid Wilton, who is rather a nice girl. She is studying music at the Academy, too, so I expect you will meet her there.”
She sat down at the piano, and began to strum a popular ditty. Lottie always made it a rule to learn the latest song directly it came out; she would have considered it quite a crime to have played anything belonging to one of last season’s comic operas.
Celia watched her as she played. She was a well-built girl of eighteen, with very dark hair and eyes, a slightly aquiline nose, and full red lips. Her forehead was low, and not particularly intelligent, and her mouth indicated sensuality. She wore a number of bangles at her wrists, which jingled and knocked against the keyboard as she played. The jingle quite irritated Celia, and she was not sorry when the gong sounded somewhere in the lower regions for supper, and Lottie closed the piano with a bang.