Some Short Stories | Page 7

the opportunity
to deal--for once in his life--with some of his own dumb preferences,
his limitations of sympathy, WEEDING a little in prospect and
returning to a purer tradition. It was not unknown to me that he
considered that toward the end of our host's career a certain laxity of
selection had crept in.
At last it came to be the case that we all found the closed door more
often than the open one; but even when it was closed Brooksmith
managed a crack for me to squeeze through; so that practically I never
turned away without having paid a visit. The difference simply came to
be that the visit was to Brooksmith. It took place in the hall, at the
familiar foot of the stairs, and we didn't sit down, at least Brooksmith
didn't; moreover it was devoted wholly to one topic and always had the
air of being already over--beginning, so to say, at the end. But it was
always interesting--it always gave me something to think about. It's
true that the subject of my meditation was ever the same--ever "It's all
very well, but what WILL become of Brooksmith?" Even my private
answer to this question left me still unsatisfied. No doubt Mr. Offord
would provide for him, but WHAT would he provide?--that was the
great point. He couldn't provide society; and society had become a
necessity of Brooksmith's nature. I must add that he never showed a
symptom of what I may call sordid solicitude-- anxiety on his own
account. He was rather livid and intensely grave, as befitted a man
before whose eyes the "shade of that which once was great" was
passing away. He had the solemnity of a person winding up, under

depressing circumstances, a long-established and celebrated business;
he was a kind of social executor or liquidator. But his manner seemed
to testify exclusively to the uncertainty of OUR future. I couldn't in
those days have afforded it--I lived in two rooms in Jermyn Street and
didn't "keep a man"; but even if my income had permitted I shouldn't
have ventured to say to Brooksmith (emulating Mr. Offord) "My dear
fellow, I'll take you on." The whole tone of our intercourse was so
much more an implication that it was I who should now want a lift.
Indeed there was a tacit assurance in Brooksmith's whole attitude that
he should have me on his mind.
One of the most assiduous members of our circle had been Lady
Kenyon, and I remember his telling me one day that her ladyship had in
spite of her own infirmities, lately much aggravated, been in person to
inquire. In answer to this I remarked that she would feel it more than
any one. Brooksmith had a pause before saying in a certain
tone--there's no reproducing some of his tones--"I'll go and see her." I
went to see her myself and learned he had waited on her; but when I
said to her, in the form of a joke but with a core of earnest, that when
all was over some of us ought to combine, to club together, and set
Brooksmith up on his own account, she replied a trifle disappointingly:
"Do you mean in a public-house?" I looked at her in a way that I think
Brooksmith himself would have approved, and then I answered: "Yes,
the Offord Arms." What I had meant of course was that for the love of
art itself we ought to look to it that such a peculiar faculty and so much
acquired experience shouldn't be wasted. I really think that if we had
caused a few black-edged cards to be struck off and circulated--"Mr.
Brooksmith will continue to receive on the old premises from four to
seven; business carried on as usual during the alterations"--the greater
number of us would have rallied.
Several times he took me upstairs--always by his own proposal--and
our dear old friend, in bed (in a curious flowered and brocaded casaque
which made him, especially as his head was tied up in a handkerchief
to match, look, to my imagination, like the dying Voltaire) held for ten
minutes a sadly shrunken little salon. I felt indeed each time as if I were
attending the last coucher of some social sovereign. He was royally

whimsical about his sufferings and not at all concerned--quite as if the
Constitution provided for the case about his successor. He glided over
OUR sufferings charmingly, and none of his jokes--it was a gallant
abstention, some of them would have been so easy--were at our
expense. Now and again, I confess, there was one at Brooksmith's, but
so pathetically sociable as to make the excellent man look at me in a
way that seemed to say: "Do exchange a glance with me, or