At these words Searle desired him to stop and come round within sight. “You say that’s your college?”
“The place might deny me, sir; but heaven forbid I should seem to take it ill of her. If you’ll allow me to wheel you into the quad I’ll show you my windows of thirty years ago.”
Searle sat staring, his huge pale eyes, which now left nothing else worth mentioning in his wasted face, filled with wonder and pity. “If you’ll be so kind,” he said with great deference. But just as this perverted product of a liberal education was about to propel him across the threshold of the court he turned about, disengaged the mercenary hands, with one of his own, from the back of the chair, drew their owner alongside and turned to me. “While we’re here, my dear fellow,” he said, “be so good as to perform this service. You understand?” I gave our companion a glance of intelligence and we resumed our way. The latter showed us his window of the better time, where a rosy youth in a scarlet smoking-fez now puffed a cigarette at the open casement. Thence we proceeded into the small garden, the smallest, I believe, and certainly the sweetest, of all the planted places of Oxford. I pushed the chair along to a bench on the lawn, turned it round, toward the front of the college and sat down by it on the grass. Our attendant shifted mournfully from one foot to the other, his patron eyeing him open-mouthed. At length Searle broke out: “God bless my soul, sir, you don’t suppose I expect you to stand! There’s an empty bench.”
“Thank you,” said our friend, who bent his joints to sit.
“You English are really fabulous! I don’t know whether I most admire or most abominate you! Now tell me: who are you? what are you? what brought you to this?”
The poor fellow blushed up to his eyes, took off his hat and wiped his forehead with an indescribable fabric drawn from his pocket. “My name’s Rawson, sir. Beyond that it’s a long story.”
“I ask out of sympathy,” said Searle. “I’ve a fellow-feeling. If you’re a poor devil I’m a poor devil as well.”
“I’m the poorer devil of the two,” said the stranger with an assurance for once presumptuous.
“Possibly. I suppose an English poor devil’s the poorest of all poor devils. And then you’ve fallen from a height. From a gentleman commoner—is that what they called you?—to a propeller of Bath-chairs. Good heavens, man, the fall’s enough to kill you!”
“I didn’t take it all at once, sir. I dropped a bit one time and a bit another.”