imiaiiiiiMiiHiiBUiaiWHlli I i THE CHO A TALE OF LOVE AND FOLLY syl\ia:lynd LIBRARY UNlVERSfTY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE THE CHORUS THE CHORUS A TALE OF LOVE AND FOLLY. BY SYLVIA LYND LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. 1915 Printed in Great Britain iy ■Richard Clay & Sons, Limited. brunswick st., stamford st., s.k.. and bungay suffolk. To THE GENEROUS HANDS OF N. F. DRYHURST CONTENTS CHAP. PARE I A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE, A BEAUTIFUL LADY, A VERY YOUNG LADY, THE HERO AND ANOTHER I II SMALL TALK — NINETEEN DASH . . . 14 III INTRODUCES THE HEROINE ... 24 IV SECOND IMPRESSION . . . . -32 V PRELUDE TO AN UNPLEASANT CONCLUSION . 4 1 VI ASIDE ....... 48 VII EARLY SOWING IN A ^VARM BORDER . . 56 VIII CONFESSIONS AND OPINIONS ... 68 IX MRS. HAMEL, ANTHONY HAMEL, NELLY HAYES IN THOUGHT ..... So X HILDA BEGINS TO GROW UP . . '93 XI WEEPING AND KISSING , . . -US XII INEVITABLE . . . . . .137 XIII TRIVIALITIES ...... 139 XIV PANDOLEFSKY ON THE SEX QUESTION . . I50 XV AND ACQUAINTED WITH GRIEF . . . 169 XVI A QUARREL ...... 175 vji viii CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XVII MOVES TOWARDS A CLIMAX . . • 183 XVIII NELLY HAYES ORDERS HER TROUSSEAU . 1 95 XIX A VULGAR ROW — HILDA FORGETS THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO MAKE A SOw's EAR OUT OF A SILK PURSE .... 203 XX MORE UNPLEASANTNESS — THE GARDEN-PARTY 213 XXI MARKING TIME — AN HONEST INDIAN ASS GOES FOR AN UNICORN — FAREWELLS . XXII NELLY HAYES MISSES SOME TRAINS XXIII TEMPTATION AND FALL OF MISS FITCH XXIV MRS. HAMEL TURNS DOWN HER THUMB XXV FLATNESS ..... 220 228 245 264 xxvi london — loneliness — the dangers of the streets — the arm of coincidence stretching in all directions — the happy ending . . . . . 271 epilogue: harlequinade . . . 293 THE CHORUS CHAPTER I A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE, A BEAUTIFUL LADY, A VERY YOUNG LADY, THE HERO AND ANOTHER It was one of the beauty's good days. Seated at the inlaid bureau in the hail, she was writing letters. In her hand was a quill pen stained emerald green, and so large that it seemed as if a puff of wind would put "way" on it and send it out of control altogether. In her sprawling writing she was covering some thin sheets of grey note-paper with green ink. Vague little notes: "Do come down one Friday night and stay the week-end. The house is going to be nice, I think"; or "Mrs. Hamel will be obliged if Messrs. Friilige will send some patterns of brocades and silks for evening gowns"; and so on. She felt very busy and efficient. The room was quiet, save for the squeaking of the pen and an occasional sound, not unlike a hiccup, from the tall clock that swung its pendulum against the wall. At her right a wood fire was blazing ; at her left long, square-paned glass doors revealed the garden, as yet a wilderness of black earth, and the woods of the Warren pencilling the B 2 THE CHORUS sky half a mile away. Somewhere a man was level- ling one of the lawns, making a heavy dunting sound as he pounded. The hall was warm and sweet with the scent of hyacinths that filled with a white foam a lustre bowl on the round table. The great staircase, lazily slanted, sloped away into upper regions of luxury and peace. The fire streamed up the chimney, a grey Persian cat stretched itself on the hearthrug. It was the leisure hour between lunch and the exer- tions of tea. Over all was the cold white light of a March afternoon. Mrs. Hamel was a slender, fair-haired woman whose calm no \vave of thought or feeling had ever disturbed. She w^as like one of those frail shells that survive the fiercest storms — "ladies' finger- nails" children call them. She had only two interests in life, and was not aware of having any : her health and her clothes. Her days were par- titioned between not feeling very well and staying in bed and feeling well enough to put on a new gown and come downstairs. Anthony Hamel had added her to his other pos- sessions much as he had acquired his carpets and his furniture, because she was perfect in her way ; but she always felt a stranger in her own house. It was no home of hers. She was merely another jewel that Anthony had chosen to set, and she had the good sense to let him choose her setting. Her own taste in visual things was eqtirely non-existent. She might have been born blind so little did shape and colour mean anything to her. She liked a couch to be soft and did not care what it was covered with ; she liked her gowns to fit — that was, A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE 8 to be a little tight round the ribs and waist — and was as content in navy blue piped with crimson (a favourite scheme of hers before she married), provided it cost much money, as in the delicate garments Anthony chose for her. However, she trusted his taste. She liked to possess what would probably be the finest house in England even if she did not feel entirely comfortable in it. She enjoyed the position of importance that his genius had made for her. But in sympathy she belonged to the little crowd of Army men and parsons from which she had sprung : men so content to be the sons of other men as not to need to distinguish themselves in their professions. People with an exaggerated respect for the trimness and order, the to-morrow the same as yesterday, of their not important lives. She viewed with a fine disdain her husband's patrons and associates — artists and men of letters — as a horde of ragamuffins and mountebanks. She believed that she had come down in the world, and though she was too well bred actually to boast of her former altitude, she never ceased to condescend to emotion and intelligence as to ignoble things. Withal she was scrupulously faithful in the small- est details of her life, chaste, courageous. She was a diamond, or, better, a clear frosty morning, con- trasting with her countrywomen, who too often are the Sou'wester overwhelming in jollity, or due East. She had no kinship with April weather. The clock against the wall cleared its throat and struck softly. A few minutes later the door leading to the garden was opened and a tall girl in a coat and skirt stepped into the room. 4 THE CHORUS *'Mr. Hamel sent me to say he may be late for tea. He's just firing something." "I hope you've had a good day? " "Splendid. May I wait to hear how the furnace behaves ? They don't need me any more out there." She nodded up the garden. "Yes, do. Just ring for tea, will you ? I'm much too hungry to wait for them." The tall girl, having rung the bell, settled herself in an arm-chair on the other side of the fire and stretched her feet in their neat brown shoes to the blaze. She sat with the seemingly deliberate un- gracefulness of a young man, her elbows on the arms of the chair, her hands, with fingers locking, resting on her breast, her head, its brown hair ruffled from the wind, poked forward. It was quite a surprise to realize how pretty her face was. Her name was Hilda Concannon. She watched Mrs. Hamel crowd her signature on to the last scrawled sheet of note-paper, then she said — "May I bring my friend Nelly Hayes to see you when she comes down ? She's comingr to stav with me at the end of the week." "Yes, do. Young girls are so amusing. Is she as quite modern as you are ? " "Oh no, she's quite ancient. She hasn't any theories. Not a bit like me. There must have been scores of Nelly Hayeses since the beginning of the world. Only most of them get varnished out of recognition. She's the old Eve." "Well, I'm glad there are some natural girls left," said Mrs. Hamel. Hilda smiled cheerfully. A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE 5 "You'd better bring her in to dinner" — Mrs. Hamel corrected herself — "in after dinner on Satur- day night. There will be rather a big party of us." "Thanks ever so much. I shall love to." Hilda Concannon was the daughter of a mill- owner. Her father had retired early from business with a weak heart and a small fortune. From that time he had had no place in which to exercise his powers of order and domination but a double-fronted villa in Ballygrawna. There, with the help of a threatened fit of apoplexy, he was a despot indeed. Hilda, a brother who drank, and her shadowy, low-spirited mother, together with a band of much- cursed maidservants and grooms, constituted his state. For years Hilda had grown accustomed to tip-toeing through life in constant expectation of uproar. Mr. Concannon trod his house in a per- manent simmering anger. Until Hilda did so her- self no one had ever dreamt of combating him, let alone of trying to conquer him. Hilda it was who taught him his first lesson. She had been educated at an expensive English boarding-school, followed by a year in a Belgian convent to which, with one of those curious lapses of logic which distinguish the North of Ireland Protestant, she had been sent to learn to speak French. She was picking up what Art knowledge she could from books and the local Art school, reading for her degree at Queen's College, and feeling all the while that intense arrogance and self-confidence which is the happy lot of people aged eighteen, when the great moment came. Mr. Concannon, incited by the eloquence of a clergy- 6 THE CHORUS man at lunch on the modern girl, her uselessness, idleness and extravagance, pursued Hilda into the garden, whither she had at the earliest moment fled out of reach of the eloquence, and there publicly and idiotically commanded her to "weed the rockery bed." "Don't be silly. Father," said Hilda, summoning a bored voice. "You know the gardener does it." " Is that any reason why you should eat the bread of idleness?" asked Mr. Concannon. (A large meal of meat and wines always made an explosion of temper necessary.) "Remember your father's health, dear," sounded vainly in Hilda's ears. She was a Concannon and the blood of her father flowed strongly in her veins. "And the sooner you have your apoplectic fit, the better," she had ended. It was a famous victory. From that day her father regarded her with a kind of surly admiration. He settled a little income upon her, and though in a subsequent rage he tried to disendow her, his first enthusiasm proved to have been too strong, and his solicitor told him, not without malicious enjoyment, that it was impossible to take the money back again. This unlooked-for good fortune made Hilda thirsty for freedom. She abandoned her intention of taking a degree, and announced that she was going to Paris to learn to paint. This statement was provocative of such domestic anguish, however, that in the end she compromised and went to London instead. There her first bad disappoint- ment awaited her. She found that she should never paint well enough to be in the front rank of her A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE 7 art. She was too ambitious to be content with pottering and too honest to disguise a failure from herself. She believed she could use her gifts of colour and design in metalwork and enamelling, and after a preliminary trial in Regent Street, where she learnt to handle her tools, Anthony Hamel's name, naturally, was suggested to her. So to Anthony Hamel she apprenticed herself. He approved her work ; approved, too, her keen, in- solent young face ; and now for half a year she had lived at Elkins's Farm, in Otterbridge, at the foot of the hill where the Hamels' great house was nearing completion. It was to be named The Height, appropriate to its position and to its owner's success in the world. It crowned the next hill to the Warren, and was set on a green space between beech woods and the pines. It was built of pale stone, roofed with silver slate ; but the greyness was enlivened by the brilliant limewashing of the upper storey and between it and the stone a band of terra-cotta brick. The red appeared again in the chimney-pots, the white in the stacks, and the whole was long and rather low, varied, self-conscious and delightful. The garden was to be terraced to the main road. The chief entrance was at the back, as it were, reached by a steep drive circling the hill. Towards the Warren stretched a rose-garden of pergola'd walks and an orchard. At the far end a smaller white-walled building was the studio. With the long line of its stables and outhouses standing at a lower level it had the air of a hill-town, a little citadel held against commonness, and particularly against the Jabberwock Halls of the golf links from 8 THE CHORUS which it differed much as does a Brabazon water- colour from a Christmas-number oleograph. Mrs. Hamel sealed the last of her envelopes and moved from the bureau to the sofa. "Do make the tea, Hilda," she said. "I am quite exhausted." She arranged the folds of her soft gown and with an effort lifted her small feet on to the couch beside her. Thus composed she ate a hearty meal. The curtains were drawn, the kettle was singing, the lamplight was a benediction. The big silver teapot and the frail painted cups showed each an answering speck of flame. Hilda, busy with the tea-caddy, talked of Nelly Hayes. "She's an Irish girl, too, and that made us friendly at once. You know, English people are not exactly welcoming at first— not the English people in a boarding-house. There was one old lady with a toupee that used to make my blood run cold. It was as much as my iron self-control could do not to believe that she would come upstairs and cut my throat while I was asleep. Have you read the ' Bagman's Dog ' ? " "And who is she? " "Oh, Nelly? I haven't a notion. She told me ' Hayes ' is not her real name. vShe's entrancingly pretty." She saw in her mind's eye Nelly seated on her bed in the dun-coloured Bloomsbu'ry boarding- house — Nelly, wrapped picturesquely in a grimy silk kimono, recounting a family history of the most improbable description. "And so, you see, it's very important that no one A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE 9 should find out where my mother is, for fear father would know and get a hold of Jimmy." "But, my dearest Nelly, your father couldn't possibly take your brother away. If he's such a rufRan as that nobody would allow it. Your mother could divorce him six times over." "She could and she couldn't," came the trailing voice. "There's more in it than that. My mother, do you see, has a man she's fond of (there's nothing in it but that), and he's fond of her, too, but she hasn't much money, and so she lets Joey Harrison pay the bills. He's my guardian and he's tremen- dously rich. When I'm older I'm going to marry him. We have it all arranged. So, you see, it's very important that father shouldn't know about it " And so on. "Father" appeared to be a gentleman with dyed moustaches (Nelly displayed his "photo"), whose only known exploits in the last twelve years were the begetting of Jimmy and the "putting away" of Nelly's pearl pendant. "But I know I can always raise five pounds on it now, and that's one good thing," added his daughter, with stoicism. Unfortunately five pounds would be of little use in the present emergency. They owed the board- ing-house keeper sixteen. It was Nelly herself that was in pawn until she received a remittance. "And then I shall go on a frightful racket and buy a whole lot of new clothes." "But, my child, how hateful for you! Don't vou mind being left behind like this?" Nelly shrugged her shoulders. "I'm used to it," she said. 10 THE CHORUS Hilda believed very few of the stories that had for their origin that fluent, indolent brain. She told Mrs. Hamel — "Father Hayes, so far as I can make out, is a pretty complete villain ; ' a bad egg ' Nelly calls him. Her mother seems to have come down in the world; I've never seen her." "Probably a case of a runaway match with a groom," said Mrs. Hamel, faintly interested. "I've often wondered what became of them." "The 'bad end' in this case would give the gloomiest prophets satisfaction, I should think," said Hilda. "I don't understand much about it, but it's very pitiable. I gather there's a small brother for whom they sacrifice everything. Nelly was marooned in a boarding-house when I met her." She did not mention, and indeed never reminded herself, who it was bailed Nelly out of that par- ticular prison. Mrs. Hamel was already regretting having in- vited the girl. She was probably an impossible creature. "Dear Hilda, how very impetuous you are ! " Hilda guessed her thought, and said — "But, whatever sort of people she has, they haven't affected her in the least. She has sweet manners and the best spirits in the world. You feel the sun comes out when you look at her. I'm going to make a thousand drawings of her while she's here." "And how old is this engaging young person?" "Oh, sixteen or seventeen, I suppose. I've never asked her. She looks less." A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE 11 Men's voices sounded outside, and Anthony Hamel and his lieutenant, Pandolefsky, a young- man with no bridge to his nose and a scarlet shirt, came in from the garden. Pandolefsky was Hamel's right-hand man. He had a wonderful technical skill, and if he had had an original brain as well, Anthony would have been driven out of the field — so much they both admitted. Pandolefsky was anything but an attractive being, combin- ing an adherence to the farmyard theory of life with a distaste for the contents of his water-jug. He had a strong belief that all women were of easily conquerable virtue, provided that the right man assailed them, and added to this faith, as is usually the case, another, namely, that he himself was the right man. It was one of Mrs. Hamel's by-laws that any maidservant found speaking to Mr. Pan- dolefsky disappeared at once without wages, notice, or character. As a result, his progress about the house was marked with a whirring of petticoats and hidden gigglings, which helped to make strong his beliefs. Mrs. Hamel protected herself from the necessity of having him dismissed with her air of wanness and ill-health. Hilda's coming had at the beginning filled both the Hamels with anxiety, for nothing is more destructive of good work than an atmosphere of flirtation, unless, indeed, it is an atmosphere of spite ; and between Pandolefsky and a good-looking girl these were the alternatives. Hilda, however, had, Ulster fashion, taken his measure with disconcerting swiftness, and when he told her, tete-a-tete in the studio one day, that Art was Passion and that we must feel in order to express, she did not disengage her sleeve from his 12 THE CHORUS hot hand, but indicated gravely that what she wished to express was something austere and simple, that in herself she was cultivating, albeit hardily and with regret, the solitary and austere life. Hamel found her after this interview shaking with laughter, the cause of which the utmost per- suasion could not make her reveal. The relations of the trio in the studio, however, could not have been more business-like and friendly. "Well, darling," said Anthony, kissing his wife's hand, "how have you been? Isn't she looking lovely?" His musical voice had a pleasant little roughness, a grain in it. He seated himself for a moment on the back of the sofa, glorious with his red-brown hair and white jersey. "How did the furnace behave?" asked Hilda. She was one of those young women in whom a display of marital affection always aroused a slight feeling of sickness. " How did the furnace behave, O Handmaiden of Art? If I say the whole thing fused you will burst into tears." They had been engaged upon a triptych of enamels for the music-room, and this was the final firing. Pandolefsky in a strong Cockney accent said, "Your peacocks have turned out fine. Miss Con- cannon." "Hilda is becoming such a dab at it that she'll be teaching us soon. She'll be able to strike-break next time you turn rusty, Pandolefsky." "Oh, I wouldn't be a blackleg even for you, Mr. Hamel," said Hilda. So they drank tea together. Mrs. Hamel aloof A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE 13 but kindly, Anthony exuberant and sure of him- self, Hilda cheerful and argumentative, Pandolefsky with a superior smile on his dark red lips for their contented ignorance of that intenser life of which he was so indefatigable an explorer. CHAPTER II SMALL TALK — NINETEEN DASH Mrs. Hamel had collected quite a big party for the week-end. Ernst Eckstein was there and his wife, who in the considered gaiety of her gowns was as decora- tive in a room as a cabinet of old china. They were both rich and young and handsome, and belonged to that esoteric portion of humanity which has known no stronger agitation than a new opera or theory of painting. They were not lightly lifted to clouds of enthusiasm, these young people, but it was extremely easy to set their teeth on edge. Miss Fitch, the novelist, was at The Height too ; a slim, witty woman, her dark hair touched with grey. She had a sharp tongue and a sharper eye, but she was not too sincere to be a pleasant companion. There was a brown-bearded man called Fyvie, who was practising some of Hamel 's ideas with a village industry in the North of England, and teaching his country people to weave thick carpets and rich silks that were unfortunately too expensive for anybody to buy. And there were the Ardens, a charming couple, though Alicia had a tiresome tendency to think that all the world wanted was nice husbands enough to go round. 14 SMALL TALK 15 Ardent Keath, the well-known litterateur, was there, a successful young man, with hair smoothed back and jaded moustache. He had published, at his own expense, two books of poems, and wrote sombre letters to the sixpenny papers in defence of this or that artistic monstrosity. The Hanburys came, also, man and w'ife both enormously rich. They were the patrons, in the more odious sense of the word, of beauty, and, with enjoyment, of poverty. Even in this well-endowed gathering money was still their distinctive quality. Lastly, there was Steven Young — "Stevie," as his friends called him ; not yet rich or successful or well-known — perhaps never going to be, comely, untried. He had a profound admiration for Hamel, an admiration unstimulated by the great man's success. It was said of him by Miss Fitch — and she was the sort of woman who knew — that he was a perfect darling, but that no one would dream of falling in love with him. Also that he was nice, but would never be any nicer. He was a writer of poems and lampoons, and in the intervals of his labours, which were not as yet many, he was one of the most serious young men that it would be possible to meet. His friends, indeed, thought he must have a weak heart, and decided that his smile — not too rare a thing — was pathetic. It gave him a sharp stab of anger whenever he looked at the Hanburys to think that people of their kind should be the employers of a man like Hamel. Anthony was reconstructing their house at Apsley Place for them : "Such a pity he cannot reconstruct the owners at the same time," as Miss Fitch was reported to have said. There was always a 16 THE CHORUS " Hanbury " or two at the Hamels* week-end parties "to keep us in touch with reality" — for Anthony used his house as a sort of hoarding and laboratory, trying experiments there and advertising effects. Every few months one or other of his rooms would become permanent in some ecstatic stranger's house, and an army of workmen would invade his own. He had no fixed allegiance. His brain teemed with fancies. He was always eager to invent wonderful trifles for his palaces and wonderful palaces for his trifles. He knew how much the thought makes for discontent that "nothing can be better than this." "But surely," Hilda had said, "one thing must be the best?" "Yes, but I like to think I haven't found it yet." He was a creative artist to the depths of his being. The senses and what they meant to him were his happiness, how to express and enrich and intensify them a thousandfold his preoccupation. In metal work, enamel and sparkling stones he had first seemed able to recapture the solidity and vividness of Nature. His abundant energy, how- ever, was not so soon exhausted. It became neces- sary to elaborate the smallest details of his life. He designed his house and a hundred prettinesses for it, his garden, his wife's clothes. He was never tired and never idle. His strong craftsman's hands were always busy, his inventive brain brimming with ideas. He could carry out any piece of work, from mounting a play to designing a racing-cup. He might be found at one time carving the plaster of a ceiling with his workmen, at another bottling wine in his cellar. He had never been in need of SMALL TALK 17 money or forced to modify his ideas, and, as a result, success attended him. He had a factory in the East End of London — most spacious and con- venient of factories — run by the invaluable Prestow, where much of his work was carried out. This he frequently visited. Much of his time, too, was spent at the sites where he was to build, surrounded by abject surveyors, or in the old houses whose dry bones he was to make live again. It was said of him that he did not scruple to use another man's idea, if it suited him ; but it was admitted, also, that the man whose idea he acknowledged was on the road to prosperity. For his own enjoyment he worked in his studio whenever he could, painting strange panels and altar-pieces, and modelling in precious metals gauds for women to wear. Occa- sionally he held a little exhibition of these. Mrs. Hanbury, seated next to him at dinner, was loud and eloquent in praise of his salt-cellars. She was promised them for Apsley Deane. Unaware of his custom, she was overwhelmed with her good fortune. "But will you ever be able to make anything so lovely again ? " "My dear lady, if I thought I couldn't I should go straight to my room and blow out my brains." (Twenty minutes with Mrs. Hanbury usually turned a man's mind to graveyard thoughts.) All the same, they were a merry party at the long dinner-table. The talk journeyed among books, pictures and politicians, and the more aggressive happenings in the world. They discussed the war scare, and Mrs. Arden declared that she always pictured herself at the siege of London. "On the c 18 THE CHORUS balcony, in my best gown, defying a glorious Hussar in a pale blue coat." Fyvie, the man with the beard, was maintaining that military training was a capital thing for boys; "makes them grow up straight and muscular, and with some sense of discipline." Steven Young disagreed with him, saying that self-control was the antithesis of discipline, and the last thing taught in an army. Miss Fitch mocked some military acquaintance and described him as "sharpening his moustaches." Mrs. Hamel then quenched the con- versation by saying she thought it "rather a fine thing for a man to fight for his country." They talked then about feminism and whether women were really on the side of peace, and Fyvie boldly stated his enthusiasm for the modern mus- cular young woman. "Plenty of calisthenics," was his old-fashioned phrase. Mrs. Hamel told him he must meet Hilda Concannon, a typical modern girl. "I like her, but I don't pretend to understand her," she said, with rather a contemptuous voice. Ardent Keath told her she should enthuse about the new school of painting, which was aggressively anti- feminist, and which proclaimed in its own indecent way the Kaiser's maxim: "Children, Church and Cookery," with the last two items left out. "That's partly why I like it, of course. It seems a herald of returning sanity." Hanbury's share of this conversation had been simply to note Hilda Concannon's name, and deter- mine to "tease" the young woman should he meet her. He goggled his eyes above his plate. Steven Young talked of the Library censorship, and Miss Fitch imagined its reading new novels SMALL TALK 19 "with the zest for shocks of a child on a switch- back." " Do you expect your new novel to be put on the Index?" "Alas, no; I am not one of those to w^hom all things are pure," laughed Miss Fitch. Ardent Keath marshalled the conversation to- wards the Standard Authors, and enunciated, " Keats is nectar in a golden cup, Shelley a libation poured out for the gods." ("I suppose he's, been trying all dinner-time to say that," thought Miss Fitch.) By the time they had reached dessert the talk had become more personal. Mrs. Arden lamented the approaching marriage of a girl friend to an elderly, ugly widower. "But, Alicia, you've always wanted everyone to get married ! " protested Mrs. Eckstein. "But she's such a nice girl," lamented Mrs. Arden. "That's the worst of it," said Steven Young, "all girls are such nice girls." They discussed the prospective husband and how much character was responsible for action. "And after all," Miss Fitch assured them, "no man can foresee his past." Thus encouraged, the men were left to their cigarettes. Mrs. Hamel led the way into the music-room. It was a lofty, octagonal chamber, with a shallow wooden roof. This ceiling and all the other wooden surfaces, swing-doors and window frames Hamel had painted after the futurist fashion in brilliant red, blue, green, yellow, black. The wall spaces 20 THE CHORUS were white and held round mirrors and candle sconces of gold-bronze, the curtains were of white silk; the carpet, woven in China, was like snow. The coverings of the chairs and sofas repeated the colours of the ceiling, their frames were black, gold- lacquered ; black was the large piano, and the music cabinet gold-encrusted. A line of gold-bronze edged the doors, the handles were the same. It was this room that gave Hamel the reputation in Otterbridge of having all the fittings of his house of gold. At the side of the room farthest from the piano was the fireplace, with its great bronzed fender and flamboyant hearthrug. On the mantelpiece, as yet unset, leant the enamelled plates upon which Hilda and Pandolefsky had shown their skill. Round the fire was the inevitable group of soft chairs and Mrs. Hamel's sofa. She contented her- self with merely sitting upon it this evening, and placing her feet, in their brocaded shoes, upon a gilt-legged tabouret in front of her. She seemed more than ever a Dresden shepherdess amidst the barbaric splendour. Mrs. Hanbury settled her black satin and lace into the other corner of the sofa and made, as Mrs. Hamel inwardly commented, an admirable fire- screen ; Miss Fitch lit her cigarette and amused Mrs. Arden and Mrs. Eckstein on the other side of the hearth. The grey cat, following a maidservant with the coffee, coiled itself on Mrs. Hamel's knees. "I wish — " said Mrs. Eckstein, drawing close to the blaze — "I wish I hadn't left off my petticoat to try and make Ernst think I'm growing thinner." "Oh, my dear, don't want to be thinner," said SMALL TALK 21 Miss Fitch, "I feel my skin too tight for my bones." "I can hardly eat a meal without dread," said Mrs. Eckstein cheerfully. "I know so well what I shall be like in ten more years." "You must strive to be a mystic like me," said Miss Fitch, "and I will strive to become — what is yo