Some Short Stories | Page 3

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SOME SHORT STORIES
BY HENRY JAMES

Contents:
Brooksmith The Real Thing The Story of It Flickerbridge Mrs. Medwin

BROOKSMITH

We are scattered now, the friends of the late Mr. Oliver Offord; but
whenever we chance to meet I think we are conscious of a certain
esoteric respect for each other. "Yes, you too have been in Arcadia," we
seem not too grumpily to allow. When I pass the house in Mansfield
Street I remember that Arcadia was there. I don't know who has it now,
and don't want to know; it's enough to be so sure that if I should ring
the bell there would be no such luck for me as that Brooksmith should
open the door. Mr. Offord, the most agreeable, the most attaching of

bachelors, was a retired diplomatist, living on his pension and on
something of his own over and above; a good deal confined, by his
infirmities, to his fireside and delighted to be found there any afternoon
in the year, from five o'clock on, by such visitors as Brooksmith
allowed to come up. Brooksmith was his butler and his most intimate
friend, to whom we all stood, or I should say sat, in the same relation in
which the subject of the sovereign finds himself to the prime minister.
By having been for years, in foreign lands, the most delightful
Englishman any one had ever known, Mr. Offord had in my opinion
rendered signal service to his country. But I suppose he had been too
much liked--liked even by those who didn't like IT--so that as people of
that sort never get titles or dotations for the horrid things they've NOT
done, his principal reward was simply that we went to see him.
Oh we went perpetually, and it was not our fault if he was not
overwhelmed with this particular honour. Any visitor who came once
came again; to come merely once was a slight nobody, I'm sure, had
ever put upon him. His circle therefore was essentially composed of
habitues, who were habitues for each other as well as for him, as those
of a happy salon should be. I remember vividly every element of the
place, down to the intensely Londonish look of the grey opposite
houses, in the gap of the white curtains of the high windows, and the
exact spot where, on a particular afternoon, I put down my tea-cup for
Brooksmith, lingering an instant, to gather it up as if he