Michael, as he gradually took in the features of Smithers’ room, began to feel very much ashamed of himself. He recognized the poverty that stood in the background of this splendid “college career” of Percy or Clarence or whatever other name of feudal magnificence had been awarded to counterbalance “Smithers.” No doubt the champagne in gradual reaction was over-charging him with sentiment, but observing in turn each tribute from home that adorned with a pathetic utility this bleak room dedicated for generations to poor scholars, Michael felt very much inclined to detach himself from the personal ragging of Smithers and go to bed. What seemed to him in this changed mood so particularly sad was that on the evidence of his books Smithers was not sustained by the ascetic glories of learning for the sake of learning. He was evidently no classical scholar with a future of such dignity as would compensate for the scraping and paring of the past. To judge by his books, he was at St. Mary’s to ward off the criticism of outraged Radicals by competing on behalf of the college and the university in scientific knowledge with newer foundations like Manchester or Birmingham. Smithers was merely an advertisement of Oxford’s democratic philanthropy, and would only gain from his university a rather inferior training in chemistry at a considerably greater personal cost but with nothing else that Oxford could and did give so prodigally to others more fortunately born.
At this point in Michael’s meditations Smithers woke up, and from the bedroom came a demand in startled cockney to know who was there. The reformers were just thinking about their reply, when Smithers, in a long nightgown and heavy-eyed with sleep, appeared in the doorway between his two rooms.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” he gasped. “What are you fellers doing in my sitting-room?”
It happened that Cuffe at this moment chose to take down from the wall what was probably an enlarged portrait of Smithers’ mother in order to examine it more closely. The son, supposing he meant to play some trick with it, sprang across the room, snatched it from Cuffe’s grasp, and shouting an objurgation of his native Hackney or Bermondsey, fled through the open window into the deer-park.
Cuffe’s expression of dismay was so absurd that everybody laughed very heartily; and the outburst of laughter turned away their thoughts from damaging Smithers’ humble property and even from annoying any more Smithers himself with proposals for his reformation.
“I say, we can’t let that poor devil run about all night in the park with that picture,” said Grainger. “Let’s catch him and explain we got into his rooms by mistake.”
“I hope he won’t throw himself into the river or anything,” murmured Sinclair anxious not to be involved in any affair that might spoil his reputation for enjoying every rag without the least reproach ever lighting upon him personally.
“I say, for goodness’ sake, let’s catch him,” begged Michael, who had visions of being sent to explain to a weeping mother in a mean street that her son had died in defending her enlargement.
Out into the moon-washed park the pursuers tumbled, and through its verdurous deeps of giant elms they hurried in search of the outlaw.
“It’s like a scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Michael said to Avery, and as he spoke he caught a glimpse of the white-robed Smithers, running like a young druid across a glade where the moonlight was undimmed by boughs.