MRS. BEELBROW’S LIONS

Mrs. Poulteney-Beelbrow is the kind of woman who drips with refinement. Everything else has been squeezed out of her. Even her hair, which once was red, has been dried to a rusty gray. Her narrow face is pinched and bloodless; the lines of her figure blurred by shapeless and colourless materials, as though she resented any suggestion of organic functioning, as though blood itself were not quite “nice.” The voice is high pitched, toneless, ice-cold. She speaks with dead monotony, without enthusiasm. And yet one can hardly describe Mrs. Beelbrow as a woman who has not had enthusiasms. Lions!—lions have been the determining passion of Mrs. Beelbrow’s life. A life amidst lions can hardly be called an apathetic life, you might say.

I would like to have known Mrs. Beelbrow when she was quite young, although the condition is difficult to visualize. She is now—that quite indeterminate age which æsthetic women sometimes arrive at too soon and forsake too early. She might easily be in the early thirties; on the other hand she might be in the late forties; even later, even earlier—she is so refined, you see. You can imagine her doing nothing so vulgar as visiting the Royal Academy or reading a popular magazine. As for the cinema, or a revue—oh, my dear!

It is only her eyes which sometimes give you an inkling of a restless soul. They are almost green with a tiny gray pupil. She sometimes smiles with her lips, but never with her eyes, which are always roaming—searching—lions.

She was a Miss Poulteney (you know, the Hull shipping people), and she married Beelbrow the stockbroker. God knows why! You can seldom find Beelbrow. Sometimes you may observe him standing against the wall at one of those overpowering receptions she gives. He is tubby, genial and negative. He smiles at his wife—busily occupied with lions—and mutters:

“Wonderful woman, my wife—wonderful! um-m.”

And then he retires to the refreshment-room and waits on people.

Everyone will tell you that Mrs. Beelbrow was once a remarkably talented violinist, though we have never met any one who has heard her play. She certainly knows something about music, and can talk shiveringly about every ancient and modern composer of note, in addition to many composers without note. But do not imagine that her discriminations are confined to music. She shivers about architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature. She dissects tone-poems, eulogizes discords, subdivides futurism into seven distinct planes, considers Synge too sensational, professes a pallid admiration for Bach when performed in an empty church, is coldly contemptuous of the Renaissance, dislikes Dickens, Scott, Zola and Tolstoi (in spite of the latter being a Russian and a lion). By the way, everything Russian exercises a curious influence over her—Russian and Chinese. Things Japanese she condemns as bourgeois. She is enormously refined, a sybarite of æsthetic values. She has no children, but she keeps a marmoset, a Borzoi, five chows, two smoke-gray Persian cats, a parakeet, and some baby crocodiles in a sunk tank in the conservatory. The latter she keeps because they remind her of the slow movement of some sonata by Sibelius.

But it is of the lions she keeps that we would speak. They are not real lions, of course. Real lions are peculiarly commonplace—reminiscent of Landseer and the Zoölogical Gardens. Mrs. Beelbrow’s lions roar in drawing-rooms and concert halls. They are mostly indigenous to the soil of Central or Eastern Europe. She imports them from Russia, Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, or Tcheko-Slovakia. No other breeds are any good. Neither must they be popular in the generally accepted sense. If you say to Mrs. Beelbrow: “I heard Kreisler play the Bach chaconne very finely last night,” she shivers and says: “Ah! but have you heard De Borch play the slow movement of the Sczhklski sonata?”

You weakly reply “No.” The name of De Borch seems familiar, but you had never heard of him as a violinist.

She leans backward and regards you through half-closed eyes. Upon her face there creeps an expression of genuine sympathy. There is an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, and she turns away. You mutter “Damn!” and also repair to the refreshment-room, where Mr. Beelbrow waits on you. (The refreshments are very good.) He says:

“Have you seen my wife? She’s a wonderful woman—wonderful—um-m!”

We should mention that this “um-m” of Mr. Beelbrow is a curious kind of low hum that he affixes at the end of every statement. It seems to deliberately contradict just what he has said. It is like a genteel “I don’t think!”

It is said that in the old days Mrs. Beelbrow used to make a hobby of genuine lions, famous opera singers and painters. There is a full length of her by Sarjeant in the billiard-room; a very good portrait, too, if somewhat merciless. It is characteristic of her that it should now be in the billiard-room—a room that is only used on the night of a great crush to deposit hats and coats that are crowded out of the cloak-room. Sarjeant is passé. If you mention the portrait to her, she says:

“Ah! but have you seen the pastel of me by Splitz?”

The pastel by Splitz is in the place of honour in the drawing-room. You suspect that it is meant to be a woman by the puce-coloured drapery and what appears to be long hair—or is it a waterfall in the background? She says of it:

“It is wonderful! Splitz got into it the expression of all that I have yearned for and never achieved. You can feel the wave-lengths of my thoughts vibrating esoterically.”

(Good luck to Splitz! I hope he got his cheque.)

The day came when Mrs. Beelbrow tired of genuine lions.

They were a little disillusioning, too business-like, and too fond of being waited on by Mr. Beelbrow in the refreshment-room. And so she said:

“I will make my own lions.”

She travelled abroad, taking with her the marmoset, two of the chows, one smoke-gray Persian cat, the parakeet, the crocodiles in a special tank, and Mr. Beelbrow. It was in Budapest that she discovered her first embryo lion. His name was Skrâtch. She heard him playing the fiddle in an obscure café. She went to hear him three nights running. On the third night she went up to him after the performance, and she said:

“Come with me. I will make you a lion.”

Now we are anxious to deal fairly by Skrâtch. He was young, talented, poor and hungry. He had the normal ambitions, desires, appetites, and the weaknesses of the normal young man. He had often dreamed of being a lion, and after one or two beers he frequently persuaded himself that the accomplishment was not impossible. Nevertheless, he had never been blind to its difficulties. And here was a woman who came to him and said, quite simply: “I will make you a lion,” in the same way that she might have said, “I will cut you a liver-sausage sandwich.”

How could you expect Skrâtch to take it?

When he arrived in London he impressed us as being quite a pleasant, amiable young man. He had a thin body, but rather puffy, sallow cheeks, jet black hair, and brown eyes. He was obviously at first a little apprehensive, suspicious. The eyes seemed to say:

“Oh, well, anyway they can’t eat me.”

He lived at Mrs. Beelbrow’s and had what she called finishing lessons with a Polish professor. It was exactly a year before Skrâtch was launched into lionhood. During that time no one heard him play a note. And yet a most remarkable thing happened in connection with the launching. Months before Skrâtch appeared in public the newspapers were always containing paragraphs about “a remarkable young violinist shortly expected from Budapest. Said to be a second Ysaye.” Mrs. Beelbrow’s drawing-room was always crowded, but Skrâtch never played. He was introduced to all kinds of people, and whispered about. I remember meeting there the critics of the—no, perhaps this kind of revelation is not quite fair. Anyway, when Skrâtch gave his first orchestral concert at the Queen’s Hall the affair had been so cleverly prepared that the place was packed. The Press reviews, when not eulogistic, were for the most part non-committal. Dogs are afraid to bark at a lion. It would be a terrible blunder to condemn a real lion. One must wait and see what the general verdict is.

There is no denying also that Skrâtch did play very well. He was what is known as a talented violinist. One may assert without fear of contradiction that there were at that time in London probably thirty or forty violinists (leaving out, of course, the few supreme artists) equally as talented as Skrâtch. But they had not the flair of lions. They just went on with their job, playing when an opportunity occurred but for the most part teaching.

The following day an advertisement appeared in the papers announcing that “owing to the colossal success of Herr Skrâtch’s concert, three more would follow on such-and-such dates.” (The advertisement must have been sent in before the colossally successful concert took place.) From that day forward Skrâtch did indeed become a qualified lion. The more responsible papers certainly began to damn him with faint praise, and even to pull him to pieces. But if you assert a thing frequently enough, insistently enough, and in large enough type, people will come to accept it. He became a kind of papier-mâché lion, and it didn’t do the boy any good. For two years the hoardings and the newspapers reeked with advertisements and notices about the “great violinist Skrâtch.”

And then he began to develop in other ways. From a slim, nervous boy he rapidly became a robustious, self-assured, florid man. His body filled out, his cheeks reddened, his hair grew unmanageable. He adopted an eccentric mode of dress. And Mrs. Beelbrow? The affair reacted upon her just as one might expect. She became more precious, more aloof, more impossible. She floated round the drawing-room with her protégé with an air which implied:

“Look at me! I’m the woman who made a lion!”

She wore a tiger skin and left Mr. Beelbrow at home to look after the live stock.

And after the first flush of triumph and excitement, Skrâtch treated Mrs. Beelbrow with complete indifference and contempt. He left lighted cigar-ends on the lid of the grand piano, spilt wine on his bed-linen, walked about the house all day in a dressing-gown, threw his boots at the servants, and snubbed visitors. He would get up from table in the middle of a meal and walk out of the room without an apology. He was even rude to her in public, and she revelled in it. The ruder he was the more delighted she appeared. She would glance round the room proudly, as much as to say:

“There! didn’t I tell you I had made a lion?”

They went about everywhere together. They went to the opera, the theatre, to concerts and receptions, for motor rides in the country, and they were always alone. Mr. Beelbrow was very busy, you see, making money in the city. (He had to do that to pay for Herr Skrâtch’s publicity campaign.) Of course, people began to talk. They might have talked on much less evidence than they had. The thing was simply thrown at them. She glued herself to him, and he accepted her and what she gave him as only right and proper. Sometimes he would treat her with playful familiarity. He would put his arm round her shoulders and call her “ol gel!” All very well, but how old really was Mrs. Beelbrow? What was happening in the dark places of her heart? Of course, it couldn’t go on for ever. We all shook our heads and were very wise, and we were right. It went on for nine months, and then Mr. Beelbrow—no, Mr. Beelbrow did nothing. He just sat tight, helped people to hock-cup, and expatiated upon his wife’s remarkable character and abilities. The disruption came from outside.

Another woman appeared on the scene. Her name was Fanny Friedlander. She was an accompanist. Now, if you had wanted to invent a complete antithesis to Mrs. Beelbrow, Fanny would have saved you the trouble. She was it. She was young, common, ignorant and frivolous; at the same time she had emotional warmth. There was something sympathetic and lovable about her. She was not exclusively a man-hunter. She liked to be petted and admired. When she accompanied she wore red carnations in her hair, and cast glad, furtive glances at the audience, and sometimes at the soloist, who, of course, was Herr Skrâtch.

Herr Skrâtch was not the kind of gentleman to make any bones about such a position. He flirted with her outrageously, even on the platform. Whether Mrs. Beelbrow made any protest about this affair at its inception is not known. By the time the infatuation was apparent it was too late. Inflated by his meretricious successes, he was in no mood to brook interference. Mrs. Beelbrow’s face expressed little. I really believe she was rather fascinated by the girl herself. She seemed to be watching a little bewildered and uncertain how to act.

It ended in the three of them going about everywhere together, the usual unsatisfactory triangle. The fact that she had to play his accompaniments was sufficient excuse for Fanny Friedlander to go with him to concerts where he was playing, and to call at Mrs. Beelbrow’s for rehearsals, but hardly an excuse for her to go to the opera, the theatre, and motor rides, or even to stop all the afternoon at Mrs. Beelbrow’s and then to stay on to dinner. It was surmised that Mrs. Beelbrow only tolerated it because she knew that if she turned the girl out, Skrâtch would have gone with her. She appeared to be content with the crumbs the younger woman left over. Ah! but only for the moment, we were convinced.

At that time, as if conscious of his delinquency, Herr Skrâtch was a little more polite to Mrs. Beelbrow; whilst the girl made no end of a fuss of her in a loud common way that must have jarred the good lady’s sensibilities horribly. We waited to see what would happen next, what would be the next move of Mrs. Beelbrow to rid herself of this dangerous rival. To our surprise, a few weeks later the girl went there to live. She was actually living in the Beelbrows’ house! Was there ever a queerer ménage à quatre? There was Mrs. Beelbrow, the lion-hunter, badly mauled by one of her own lions, entertaining her most dangerous enemy. She must have shut her eyes to all kinds of things. Skrâtch was behaving abominably. The girl was not the kind you could trust anyway. There was Mr. Beelbrow, quite negative, merely earning the money to support the absurd drama.

“It’s incredible,” said Jimmy Beale, one night in the club, “that a woman as conceited as Mrs. Beelbrow is could possibly put up with such a damned indignity. It’s making her look the prize fool of London.”

“Love is more powerful than a sense of dignity,” remarked some sententious bore from the corner.

Love? Well, an unanalyzable quantity. I was perhaps the only one fortunate enough to have the opportunity to judge of the dénouement by any practical evidence. And even then it was only a fluke, a glance. It occurred a few nights before Skrâtch disappeared. Some say he went back to the obscure café in Budapest, taking the girl with him. It is hardly likely in view of the handsome dot which someone presented to Fanny.

It was one of Mrs. Beelbrow’s most overwhelming crushes. You could not hear yourself speak for the roar of lions. I was squeezed against the folding doors. Behind a palm in the corner was an empire mirror, tilted at an angle. It was about the only thing I could see. It gave me a good view of certain people a little farther down the room. The first person I saw was Mrs. Beelbrow, and as I glanced at her I saw an expression come over her face, an expression I can only describe as one of blind jealousy—a nasty, vindictive, dangerous look.

“Oh, ho!” I thought, and sought for the reflection of Fanny or Herr Skrâtch. But to my astonishment I realized very clearly that her glance was not directed at these two at all. She was looking at Mr. Beelbrow, whose wicked, malevolent little eyes were fixed on Fanny’s. Skrâtch for the moment was occupied with some other woman.

You might imagine that the defection of Skrâtch would have broken Mrs. Beelbrow’s heart for the business. But, oh dear, no! don’t you believe it. Whatever you may say or think about Mrs. Beelbrow she has proved herself a true and indomitable lion-hunter. Only last Thursday I was again in her crowded drawing-room. A little East-end Jewess was playing the piano quite nicely. Mrs. Beelbrow was standing by the folding-doors, her face set and taut. When the child had finished, she murmured:

“Ah, if Teresa Carreño could have heard that! Teresa never reached that velvety warmth in her mezzo passages. I believe the child must be the reincarnation of—who would it be? Liszt? No, someone more southern, more Byzantine. I will make her a lion.”

In the refreshment-room Mr. Beelbrow was ladling out hock-cup as usual. When I approached him he said:

“Halloa, old boy! Have some of this? Good! Have you seen my wife? She’s a wonderful woman—wonderful—um-m.”