I went the next day--his messenger had given me a new address--and found my friend lodged in a short sordid street in Marylebone, one of those corners of London that wear the last expression of sickly meanness.The room into which I was shown was above the small establishment of a dyer and cleaner who had inflated kid gloves and discoloured shawls in his shop-front.There was a great deal of grimy infant life up and down the place, and there was a hot moist smell within, as of the "boiling" of dirty linen.Brooksmith sat with a blanket over his legs at a clean little window where, from behind stiff bluish-white curtains, he could look across at a huckster's and a tinsmith's and a small greasy public-house.He had passed through an illness and was convalescent, and his mother, as well as his aunt, was in attendance on him.I liked the nearer relative, who was bland and intensely humble, but I had my doubts of the remoter, whom I connected perhaps unjustly with the opposite public-house--she seemed somehow greasy with the same grease--and whose furtive eye followed every movement of my hand as to see if it weren't going into my pocket.It didn't take this direction--Icouldn't, unsolicited, put myself at that sort of ease with Brooksmith.Several times the door of the room opened and mysterious old women peeped in and shuffled back again.I don't know who they were; poor Brooksmith seemed encompassed with vague prying beery females.
He was vague himself, and evidently weak, and much embarrassed, and not an allusion was made between us to Mansfield Street.The vision of the salon of which he had been an ornament hovered before me however, by contrast, sufficiently.He assured me he was really getting better, and his mother remarked that he would come round if he could only get his spirits up.The aunt echoed this opinion, and I became more sure that in her own case she knew where to go for such a purpose.I'm afraid I was rather weak with my old friend, for I neglected the opportunity, so exceptionally good, to rebuke the levity which had led him to throw up honourable positions--fine stiff steady berths in Bayswater and Belgravia, with morning prayers, as I knew, attached to one of them.Very likely his reasons had been profane and sentimental; he didn't want morning prayers, he wanted to be somebody's dear fellow; but Icouldn't be the person to rebuke him.He shuffled these episodes out of sight--I saw he had no wish to discuss them.I noted further, strangely enough, that it would probably be a questionable pleasure for him to see me again: he doubted now even of my power to condone his aberrations.He didn't wish to have to explain; and his behaviour was likely in future to need explanation.When Ibade him farewell he looked at me a moment with eyes that said everything: "How can I talk about those exquisite years in this place, before these people, with the old women poking their heads in? It was very good of you to come to see me; it wasn't my idea--SHE brought you.We've said everything; it's over; you'll lose all patience with me, and I'd rather you shouldn't see the rest." Isent him some money in a letter the next day, but I saw the rest only in the light of a barren sequel.
A whole year after my visit to him I became aware once, in dining out, that Brooksmith was one of the several servants who hovered behind our chairs.He hadn't opened the door of the house to me, nor had I recognised him in the array of retainers in the hall.
