[27] were in French, but almost all the explanations were, and this didn’t a bit prevent Brooksmith from following them. I know Mr. Offord used to read passages to him from Montaigne
[28] and Saint-Simon,
[29] for he read perpetually when he was alone — when they were alone, I should say — and Brooksmith was always about. Perhaps you’ll say no wonder Mr. Offord’s butler regarded him as ‘rather mad.’ However, if I’m not sure what he thought about Montaigne I’m convinced he admired Saint-Simon. A certain feeling for letters must have rubbed off on him from the mere handling of his master’s books, which he was always carrying to and fro and putting back in their places.
I often noticed that if an anecdote or a quotation, much more a lively discussion, was going forward, he would, if busy with the fire or the curtains, the lamp or the tea, find a pretext for remaining in the room till the point should be reached. If his purpose was to catch it you were not discreet to call him off, and I shall never forget a look, a hard, stony stare (I caught it in its passage), which, one day when there were a good many people in the room, he fastened upon the footman who was helping him in the service and who, in an undertone, had asked him some irrelevant question. It was the only manifestation of harshness that I ever observed on Brooksmith’s part, and at first I wondered what was the matter. Then I became conscious that Mr. Offord was relating a very curious anecdote, never before perhaps made so public, and imparted to the narrator by an eye-witness of the fact, bearing upon Lord Byron’s life in Italy. Nothing would induce me to reproduce it here; but Brooksmith had been in danger of losing it. If I ever should venture to reproduce it I shall feel how much I lose in not having my fellow-auditor to refer to.
The first day Mr. Offord’s door was closed was therefore a dark date in contemporary history. It was raining hard and my umbrella was wet, but Brooksmith took it from me exactly as if this were a preliminary for going upstairs. I observed however that instead of putting it away he held it poised and trickling over the rug, and then I became aware that he was looking at me with deep, acknowledging eyes — his air of universal responsibility. I immediately understood; there was scarcely need of the question and the answer that passed between us. When I did understand that the old man had given up, for the first time, though only for the occasion, I exclaimed dolefully: ‘What a difference it will make — and to how many people!’
