第6章

He had given me his address--the place where he would be to be heard of.For a long time I had no occasion to make use of the information: he proved on trial so very difficult a case.The people who knew him and had known Mr.Offord didn't want to take him, and yet I couldn't bear to try to thrust him among strangers--strangers to his past when not to his present.I spoke to many of our old friends about him and found them all governed by the odd mixture of feelings of which I myself was conscious--as well as disposed, further, to entertain a suspicion that he was "spoiled,"with which, I then would have nothing to do.In plain terms a certain embarrassment, a sensible awkwardness when they thought of it, attached to the idea of using him as a menial: they had met him so often in society.Many of them would have asked him, and did ask him, or rather did ask me to ask him, to come and see them, but a mere visiting-list was not what I wanted for him.He was too short for people who were very particular; nevertheless I heard of an opening in a diplomatic household which led me to write him a note, though I was looking much less for something grand than for something human.Five days later I heard from him.The secretary's wife had decided, after keeping him waiting till then, that she couldn't take a servant out of a house in which there hadn't been a lady.The note had a P.S.: "It's a good job there wasn't, sir, such a lady as some."A week later he came to see me and told me he was "suited,"committed to some highly respectable people--they were something quite immense in the City--who lived on the Bayswater side of the Park."I daresay it will be rather poor, sir," he admitted; "but I've seen the fireworks, haven't I, sir?--it can't be fireworks EVERY night.After Mansfield Street there ain't much choice."There was a certain amount, however, it seemed; for the following year, calling one day on a country cousin, a lady of a certain age who was spending a fortnight in town with some friends of her own, a family unknown to me and resident in Chester Square, the door of the house was opened, to my surprise and gratification, by Brooksmith in person.When I came out I had some conversation with him from which I gathered that he had found the large City people too dull for endurance, and I guessed, though he didn't say it, that he had found them vulgar as well.I don't know what judgement he would have passed on his actual patrons if my relative hadn't been their friend; but in view of that connexion he abstained from comment.

None was necessary, however, for before the lady in question brought her visit to a close they honoured me with an invitation to dinner, which I accepted.There was a largeish party on the occasion, but I confess I thought of Brooksmith rather more than of the seated company.They required no depth of attention--they were all referable to usual irredeemable inevitable types.It was the world of cheerful commonplace and conscious gentility and prosperous density, a full-fed material insular world, a world of hideous florid plate and ponderous order and thin conversation.

There wasn't a word said about Byron, or even about a minor bard then much in view.Nothing would have induced me to look at Brooksmith in the course of the repast, and I felt sure that not even my overturning the wine would have induced him to meet my eye.

We were in intellectual sympathy--we felt, as regards each other, a degree of social responsibility.In short we had been in Arcadia together, and we had both come to THIS! No wonder we were ashamed to be confronted.When he had helped on my overcoat, as I was going away, we parted, for the first time since the earliest days of Mansfield Street, in silence.I thought he looked lean and wasted, and I guessed that his new place wasn't more "human" than his previous one.There was plenty of beef and beer, but there was no reciprocity.The question for him to have asked before accepting the position wouldn't have been "How many footmen are kept?" but "How much imagination?"The next time I went to the house--I confess it wasn't very soon--Iencountered his successor, a personage who evidently enjoyed the good fortune of never having quitted his natural level.Could any be higher? he seemed to ask--over the heads of three footmen and even of some visitors.He made me feel as if Brooksmith were dead;but I didn't dare to inquire--I couldn't have borne his "I haven't the least idea, sir." I despatched a note to the address that worthy had given me after Mr.Offord's death, but I received no answer.Six months later however I was favoured with a visit from an elderly dreary dingy person who introduced herself to me as Mr.

Brooksmith's aunt and from whom I learned that he was out of place and out of health and had allowed her to come and say to me that if I could spare half an hour to look in at him he would take it as a rare honour.