文档介绍：SOME SHORT STORIES
SOME SHORT
STORIES
BY HENRY JAMES
1
SOME SHORT STORIES
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 e 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; e merely once was a slight nobody, I'm sure, had ever
put upon him. His circle therefore was posed 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 o