Chapter V: Part 5

THE WAR

BY PERCY MINIMUS

War is a very fearful thing, I'm sure you'll all agree,
But sometimes we have got to fight in order to be free.
The Germans want to slaughter us, and do not understand
We are a people famed in fight, and also good and grand.
We never were unkind to them and never turned them out
When unto England's shores they came, to trade and look about.

But all the time, I grieve to say, they only came as spies,
So that, when came the dreadful "Day," they'd take us by
surprise.
Which they did do, and if our ships had not been all prepared,
The Germans would have landed, and not you or I been spared.
Now all is changed, and very soon, upon the Belgian strand,
I promise you a million men of English breed shall land.

And thanks to good Lord Kitchener, their wants will be supplied
With splendid food and cosy clothes and many things beside;
But he must bring the big siege guns when Antwerp we shall
reach,
Because with these fine weapons we have got to make a breach.
So let us pray that very soon we smash the cruel Hun,
And if, by dreadful luck, we lose--oh, then God's will be done!

We applauded Percy minimus for his sporting attempt, feeling of course, it was piffle really, but good for a kid. Then the Doctor said he was going to read Rice.

"Mr. Fortescue," said Dunston, "has evinced the deepest interest in the achievement of Rice. He tells me that there is now a movement in art--including the sacred art of poesy--which is known as the Futurist Movement. Rice's effort reminds Mr. Fortescue of this lamentable outrage on the Muses, for it appears that the Futurists desire to thrust all that man has done for art into the flames--to forget the glories of Greece, to pour scorn on the Renaissance, to begin again with primal chaos in a world where all shall be without form and void. This is Nihilism and a crime against culture. For some mysterious reason, the boy Rice, who we may safely assume has never heard of the Futurists until this moment, appears to have emulated their methods and shared their unholy extravagance of epithets, their frenzied anarchy, their scorn of all that is lovely and of good repute. He even permits himself expressions that at another time would win something more than a rebuke. I will now read Rice, not for my pleasure or yours, but that at least you may learn what is not poetry, and can never be mistaken for poetry by those who, like ourselves, have drunk at the Pierian spring."

WAR

BY RICE

Smash! Crash! Crash! Bang! Crash! Bang!
Rattle, rattle, rattle, and crash again.
Air full of puffs of smoke where shells are bursting overhead,
Scream of shrapnel over the trenches and yells of rage!
Roar of men charging and howling a savage song---
"Now we shan't be long!" Tramp of feet--then flop! they fall,
Dropping out here, there, and everywhere, and rolling head
over heels like rabbits.
And some sit up after the charge, and some don't.
Shot through the heart or head, they roll gloriously over--all
in!
But on go the living, shouting and screaming, and some bleeding
and not knowing it.
As loud as the "Jack Johnsons" they howl, their rifles are at
the charge and the bayonets are white--
The white arm that goes in in front and out behind--
Or in behind and out in front of the Germans running away.
The Boche hates the white arm--it sends him to hell by the
million!
Crash! Crash! Squash! Smash! Smash! Smash!
The trench is reached. Blood spurts and bones crack like china.
Gurgles! Chokes! Yells! Helmets fly, bayonets stick
And won't come out! Everybody is dead or dying in the
trench--except twelve Tommies!
Damns, growls, yells choked with blood!
Death, awful wounds, mess, corpses, legs, arms, heads--all
separate!
The trench is taken, and England has gained
A hundred yards! Hoorooh!
Hoorooh! Hoorooh! Hoorooh!
And what must it be to be there!!!

Signed RICE.

I looked at Rice while his poem was being intoned by the Doctor. He had turned very red, but he stuck it well, and somehow, though, of course, it was right bang off, and no rhymes or anything, I liked it. And Mr. Fortescue liked it, as he afterwards told Rice; but the Doctor and Mr. Peacock fairly hated it, so that was the end of Rice.

They thought nothing of Tracey's poem, either. The Doctor said:

"Tracey has produced what, for reasons best known to himself, he calls 'a satire.' It possesses a certain element of crude humour, which, on such a solemn theme, is utterly out of place. Upon the whole, I regard it as discreditable in a Sixth Form boy, and do not think the better of Tracey for having written it."

He then read Tracey.

A SATIRE

BY TRACEY

No doubt, O Kaiser, you have thought
Napoleon was a duffer
Compared to you, when you set out
To make Old England suffer.
But if you read your history books,
You'll very quickly find, Sir,
That Boney knew, despite his faults,
How to make up his mind, Sir.

You flutter up, you flutter down,
You flutter night and day, Sir,
Yet somehow victory won't look
Your mad and fluttering way, Sir,
But when the war by us is won,
And in Berlin our men, Sir,
You'll be a bit surprised to find
Where you will flutter then, Sir.

We laughed and thought it ripping; but the Doctor seemed to be hurt, and said: "Silence, silence, boys! It ill becomes us to jest at the spectacle of a fallen potentate, and still less so before he has fallen.

"A more pleasing effort is that of Travers minor," went on the Doctor, picking up the poem of Travers. "We have here nothing to be described as a picture of war, but rather the views of an intelligent and Christian boy upon war. Personally, I think well of these verses. They are unostentatious--no flash of fire--but a temperate lament on war in general and a final conviction not lacking in shrewdness. I will not say that I entirely agree with Travers minor in his concluding assertion, but he may be right--he may be right. At any rate, the poem is a worthy expression of an educated mind, and by no means the worst of those with which we are called to deal."

He then read Travers minor, and we were all frightfully disappointed, for it turned out that Travers hated war, so the result wasn't a war poem at all, but a very tame affair without any dash about it--in fact, very feeble, I thought. His brother would have despised him for writing it. Of course, Peacock wanted a poem praising up the glory of war, not sitting on it, like Travers minor did.

THE FOG OF WAR

BY TRAVERS MINOR

From out the awful fog of war
One thing too well we see--
That man has not yet reached unto
His highest majesty.
For battle is a fiendish art
We share with wolf and bear,
But man has got a soul to save--
He will not save it there.
This is the twentieth century,
We boast our great good sense.
And yet can only go to war
At horrible expense
Of human life. It makes us beasts;
We shout and spend our breath
To hear a thousand enemies
Have all been blown to death.
And each of all those thousand men
Was doubtless good and kind,
As those, no doubt, remember well
Whom he has left behind.
And when I hear that war brings out
Our finest qualities,
I do believe with all my heart
That is a pack of lies.

A deadly silence greeted the prize poem of Travers minor, and I believe the Doctor felt rather sick with us for not applauding it. And Tracey, who was very mad at what the Doctor had said about him, whispered rather loud that Travers minor's effort was almost worthy of _Hymns Ancient and Modern_.

There were only three poems left now, and the excitement increased a good deal, because nobody had won Peacock's guinea yet, so it was clear that either Mitchell, or Thwaites, or Sutherland minor was the lucky bargee. Both Mitchell and Thwaites seemed beyond the wildest hope, and we felt pretty sure that Sutherland must have done the trick. But he hadn't. The Doctor picked up his poem and put on a doubtful expression.

"I confess that Sutherland gives me pause," he said. "For skill in rhyming, Sutherland deserves all praise--he is ingenious and correct--but such is the faultiness of his ear that he flouts the fundamentals of prosody in each of his four stanzas. In fact, Sutherland's poetry, regarded as such, is excruciating. He has ideas, though not of a particularly exalted character; and even if he had given us something better worthy to be called a poem, his lamentable failure in metre would have debarred him from victory. His last verse contains an objectionable suspicion we might associate rather with a commercial traveller or small tradesman, than with one of us."

Well, Sutherland's wasn't bad really, though rather rocky from a poetical point of view, as the Doctor truly said.

KHAKI FOR EVER

BY SUTHERLAND

Loud roars the dreadful cannon above the bloody field,
While, like the lightning, through the smoke's dim shroud
The tongues of flame are flashing, where, concealed,
The vainglorious enemy's battery doth vaunt and laugh aloud,
Thinking that men of British race are going to yield.

Poor German cannon-fodder! Little do they know
That those who wear khaki have never yet
Wherever, at the call of Bellona, they may go,
Surrendered to a lesser foe than Death. They've met
Far finer fighters than the Boche, and made their life's-blood
flow.

Whether upon the open battle-front, or in a trench,
Or in a fort, or keeping communications,
With such a leader as great General French
The British khaki boys defeat all nations,
And in the foeman's gore their glittering bayonets they quench.

And they will win, for right is on their side;
And when they do, the neutrals shall not share
The rich-earned booty the Allies divide;
For, as they would not sail in and fight, it is not fair
That they should win the fruits of this bloody tide.

We could see what the Doctor meant about Sutherland's poem--it didn't flow exactly; but it might have been worse. Then Dr. Dunston picked up Mitchell's poem and frowned; and Peacock frowned; and Fortescue also frowned. We didn't know what was going to happen, for the Doctor made no preliminary remarks on the subject of Mitchell. He just gave his glasses a hitch and glared over the top of Mitchell's effort and then read it out.

OLD ENGLAND FOR EVER

BY MITCHELL

Oh, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel,
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs,
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of man!
Rejoice, ye men of England, ring your bells.
King George, your King and England's, doth approach,
Commander of this hot, malicious day!
Our armour, that marched hence so silver bright,
Hither returns all gilt with German blood;
Our colours do return in those same hands
That did display them when we first marched forth;
And, like a jolly troup of huntsmen, come
Our lusty English all with purple hands,
Dyed in the slaughter of their Teuton foes.
But to their home they will no more return
Till Belgium's free and France is also free;
Then to their pale, their white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders--
Even to that England, hedged in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark still secure,
Will they return and hear our thunderous cheers.
But Belgium first, unhappy, stricken land,
Which has, we know, and all too well we know,
Sluiced out her innocent soul through streams of blood,
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To us for justice and rough chastisement,
And, by the glorious worth of our descent,
Our arm shall do it, or our life be spent.

The Doctor stopped suddenly and flung his eyes over us. Naturally we were staggered and full of amazement to think of a hard blade like Mitchell producing such glorious stuff. Any fool could see it was poetry of the classiest kind.

"Do you desire to hear more?" shouted the Doctor.

And we said, "Yes, sir!"

"Then seek it in the immortal pages from whence the boy Mitchell has dared to steal it!" he thundered out, growing his well-known, deadly red colour. "With predatory hand and audacity from which the most hardened criminal would have shrunk, this abominable boy, insolently counting on the ignorance of those whose unfortunate duty it is to instruct him, has appropriated the Bard to his own vile uses; and his cunning has led him to interpolate and alter the text in such a manner that sundry passages are made to appear as one. Mitchell will meet me in my study after morning school. I need say no more. Words fail me----"

And they actually did, which was a record in its way. The Doctor panted for a bit, then he picked up Mitchell's poem, or rather, Shakespeare's, as if it was a mouse that had been dead a fortnight, and dropped it on the ground. It was rather a solemn moment--especially for Mitchell--and the only funny thing about it was to see the Sixth. Of course, they'd been had by Mitchell, just the same as us in the Fifth--in fact, everybody; but they tried to look as if they'd known it was Shakespeare from the first. As for Mitchell, he had made the rather rash mistake of thinking old Dunston and Peacock and Fortescue didn't know any more about Shakespeare than he did; and now he sat awful white, but resigned. As a matter of fact, he got the worst flogging he ever did get, and had a narrow squeak of being expelled also. It calmed him down for days afterwards, and he was also called "King John" till the end of the term, as a mark of contempt, which he badly hated.

Then the Doctor snorted himself calm, and his face grew its usual colour. He picked up Thwaites, and ended with the tamest poem of the lot, in my opinion. Which shows that grown-up people and boys have a very different idea about what is poetry and what isn't.

"The verses of Thwaites have won the poet's bay," said Dr. Dunston. "Thwaites alone has written a work worthy to be called a poem. His stanzas possess music and reveal thought and feeling. Neither technically are they open to grave objection. I congratulate Thwaites. Though not robust, or a pillar of strength, either in his class, or in the field, he possesses a refined mind, a capacity of emotion and a power for expressing that emotion in terms of poetry that time and application may possibly ripen and mature. Such, at least, is my opinion, and those who have sat in judgment share it with me."

He then gave us Thwaites--twittering sort of stuff, and interesting, not because Thwaites had got "the poet's bay," whatever that is, but because he had landed Peacock's guinea. Nobody much liked his prize poem except the masters, and even Thwaites himself said it wasn't any real good, and was written when he had a beastly sore throat and was feeling utterly down on his luck. In fact, he was going to call it "Lines Written in Dejection at Merivale," like real poets do, only he got better before he finished the last verse, and so didn't.

TO THE EARTH

BY THWAITES

Suffer, sad earth; no pain can equal thine:
Thy giant heart must ever be a shrine
For all the sorrows of Humanity.
As one by one the stricken ages die,
The bright beams of the stars are turned to tears,
And howling winds that whistle down the years
Sigh "Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow!" and are gone
Into the silence of oblivion.
Suffer, great world; the poison fangs of Death
Can only wound, not kill thee.... Lo! the breath
Of everlasting dawn is in the wind;
The distant throbbing of a giant Mind
Shall set the music of the Universe
Once more in time--with harmony coerce
The discord of a warring race to cease
And sorrow die within the arms of peace.

Thwaites spent his guinea almost entirely on tuck, and though he was very generous with it, and shared the grub with the competitors Rice and Sutherland minor, who were his friends, he still kept enough to make himself ill again. For it was one of the unlucky things about Thwaites that any muck really worth eating always bowled him over. He wrote a poem three times as long as his War poem, called "Effect of Cocoanut Rock on the Tummy of Thwaites"; but Dunston wouldn't have purred much over that.

THE REVENGE

If anybody has done a crime, Dr. Dunston generally speaks to them before the school, so that all may hear what the crime is. And according to the way he speaks to them, we know the sort of fate in store.

If he says he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, there is great hope, for, as Mitchell pointed out, that means the Doctor has himself committed the crime in far-off times when he was young; but if he doesn't say he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, then the crime is probably a crime he never committed; and these are the sort he punishes worst.

Well, in the case of Tudor, he had never committed Tudor's crime, and he himself said, when ragging Tudor before punishment, that he had never even heard of such a crime. Therefore the consequences were bad for Tudor, and he was flogged and his greatest treasure taken away from him for ever.

It was, no doubt, a very peculiar crime, and Mitchell told Tudor that it was not so much the crime itself as the destructive consequences, that had put the Doctor into such a bate. But we found out next term that the destructive consequences had been sent home in a bill for Tudor's father to pay, and they amounted to two pounds, so Tudor caught it at home also.

Well, it was like this: Tudor came back for the spring term with a remarkably interesting tool called a glazier's diamond. He had saved up and bought it with his own money, and it was valuable, having in it a real diamond, the beauty of which was that it could cut glass. It could also mark glass for ever; and, after a good deal of practice, on out-of-the-way panes of glass in secluded places, Tudor had thoroughly learned the difficult art of writing on glass. We were allowed to walk round the kitchen garden sometimes upon Sunday afternoons, and, occasionally, if a boy was seedy and separated from the rest for a day or two, for fear he had got something catching, such a boy was allowed in the kitchen garden under the eye of Harris, the kitchen gardener.

And Tudor often got queer and threatened to develop catching things, though he never really did; but on the days when he threatened, he generally escaped lessons and was allowed in the kitchen garden. Needless to say, that this place was full of opportunities for practising the art of writing on glass, and, as nothing was easier than to escape from the eye of Harris, he used these opportunities, and wrote his name and mine and many others on cucumber frames, and on the side of a hot-house used for growing grapes, and also on the window of a potting-shed.

I am Pratt, and Tudor and me were in the Lower Fourth. It was a class that Dr. Dunston, unfortunately, took for history, and on those occasions we went to his study for the lesson and stood in a row, which extended from the window to the front of Doctor Dunston's desk. He sat behind the desk, and took the class from there. But there was a great difference in Tudor and me, because I was at the top of the Lower Fourth and he was at the bottom. In the case of the Doctor's history class, however, this was a great advantage for Tudor, because the bottom of the class was by the window, and the top was in front of the Doctor.

Well, Tudor actually got the great idea of writing with his glazier's diamond on the Doctor's window! I advised him not, but he disdained my advice, and wrote in the left-hand top corner of the bottom sheet of glass. He wrote very small, but with great clearness, and it took him seven history lessons to finish, because it was only at rare moments he could do it. But the Doctor was now and then called out of his study by Mrs. Dunston, or somebody; and once he had to go and see the mother of a new boy who had written home to say he was being starved. It took ten minutes to calm this mother down, and during that interval Tudor finished his work. He had written the amusing words--

"BEYNON IS A LOUSE,"

and we were all rather pleased, except Beynon. But he well deserved the insult, being a fearful outsider and generally hated; and, in any case, he couldn't hit back, for though he had been known to sneak many a time and oft, yet it wasn't likely he would sneak about a thing that showed him in his true colours, like the writing on the Doctor's study window.

Well, it was a triumph in a way, and everybody heard of it, and it was a regular adventure to go into the Doctor's study and see the insult to Beynon, which, of course, would last forever, unless somebody broke the window; and, in fact, Beynon once told me, in a fit of rage, that he meant to break the window and take the consequences. But he hadn't the pluck, even when he got an excellent chance to do so; and when, in despair, he tried to bribe other chaps to break the window, he hadn't enough money, so he failed in every way, and the insult stood.

I must tell you the writing was very small, and could only be seen by careful scrutiny. It was absolutely safe from the Doctor, or, in fact, anybody who didn't know it was there; and, naturally, Tudor never felt the slightest fear that it would ever be seen by the eyes of an enemy.

When, therefore, it was discovered, and shown to the Doctor, and all was lost, Tudor felt bitterly surprised. It came out that a housemaid, who disliked Beynon, found it when she was cleaning the window, and she showed it to Milly Dunston, and the hateful Milly, who loathed Tudor, because he had once given her a cough lozenge of a deadly kind, and made her suck it before she had found out the truth, promptly told her mother about the inscription, and her mother sneaked to the Doctor.

Discovery might still have been avoided, but, unfortunately, Tudor's glazier's diamond was well known, because he had been reported by Brown for scratching Brown's looking-glass over the mantelpiece in Brown's study, when he thought Brown was miles away, and Brown came in at the critical moment. So Dunston knew only too well that Tudor had a glazier's diamond, and, owing to the laws of cause and effect, felt quite sure that Tudor had done the fatal deed.

Therefore Tudor suffered the full penalty, and Dr. Dunston told the school that Tudor's coarseness was only exceeded by his lawless insolence and contempt for private property. That it should have been done in his own study, during intervals of respite in the history lesson, naturally had its effect on the Doctor, and made it worse for Tudor. The glazier's diamond had to be given up, and Tudor was flogged; but being very apt to crock and often bursting out coughing without any reason, the Doctor did not flog Tudor to any great extent; and it was not the flogging, but the loss of his glazier's diamond that made Tudor so mad and resolved him on his revenge.

Well, he had a very revengeful nature, as a matter of fact, and if anybody scored on him, he was never, as you may say, contented with life in general until he had scored back. And he always did so, and sometimes, though he might have to wait for a term or even two, he was like the elephant that a man stuck a pin into, who remembered it and instantly killed the man when he met him again twenty years later.

To be revenged in an ordinary way is, of course, easy; but to be revenged against the Doctor is far from easy, and I reminded Tudor how hard it had been even to revenge himself on Brown, when Brown scored heavily off him; and if it was hard to be revenged on a master like Brown, what would it be to strike a blow at the Doctor?

He said it might or might not come off; but he should be poor company for me, or anybody, until he had had a try, and he developed his scheme of a revenge, and thought of nothing else until the idea was ready to be put into execution.

He said:

"It's not so much a revenge, really, as simple justice. He took my glazier's diamond, which was the thing I valued most in the world, naturally; and what I ought to do, if I could, Pratt, would be to take from him the thing he values most in the world."

I said:

"That's hidden from you."

And he said:

"No, it isn't: the thing that he values most in the world is Mrs. Dunston."

I said:

"Well, you can't take her away from him."

And he said:

"I might. Some people would remove her by death. Of course, I wouldn't do anything like that. She's all right, though how she can live with a grey and brutal beast like the Doctor, I don't know--or anybody. But, of course, I can't strike him there. I've merely decided to take something he can't do without. He'll be able to make it good in time, but not all in a minute; and in the meanwhile he'll look a fool, besides being useless to the world at large."

It was dangerous, but interesting.

I said:

"What could you take so important as all that, without being spotted?"

And he said:

"Swear not to tell anybody living."

And I swore.

Then he said:

"His glasses!"

It was a great thought, worthy of Tudor, and, of course, without his glasses the Doctor would be hopelessly done. He cannot read a line without them, and when he takes a Greek class, strange to say, he wears two pairs--his ordinary double-glasses, against the naked eye, and a pair of common spectacles, of very large size, on his nose outside. In this elaborate way he reads Greek.

Well, I praised Tudor, but reminded him it was stealing.

And he said:

"I know: that's where the justice comes in. He stole my glazier's diamond. Now I'm going to steal his glasses."

"Shall you ever give them back?" I asked.

And he said:

"I may, or I may not. The first thing is to get them."

"He takes them off to stretch his eyes sometimes," I reminded Tudor.

"Yes, and for tea," said Tudor. "If he goes in to Mrs. Dunston's room for a hasty cup of tea, he generally leaves the glasses in the study on his desk till he comes back to work."

Well, Tudor got them. In a week from the day he decided to take them, he had an opportunity. Every day that week he had contrived to be around when tea-time came on, and once Dr. Dunston found him hanging about the passage, and told him to be gone. But he was crowned with success, and that same night in the playground, by the light of my electric torch, Tudor showed me the solemn sight of the double-eyeglasses of the Doctor actually in his hand!

Well, he was fearfully excited about it, and concealed the glasses for a few hours in his playbox. Then, fearing there might be a hue and cry, and everything stirred to its foundations, he took the glasses out just before supper, and concealed them in a crevice on the top of the playground wall, only known to me and him.

That night he did not sleep for hours, and more did I. I pictured the Doctor's terrible anger at having to stop reading the news of the War, and Tudor told me next morning that he had put the Doctor out of action for all school purposes, as well as private reading, and we might hope for at least three days without him, as it would take fully that time to manufacture such glasses as he wore.

But a bitter disappointment was in store for Tudor, and when the usual moment came for prayers in the chapel before breakfast, lo and behold, Dr. Dunston sailed in with a pair of glasses perched on his nose in the customary place! We could hardly believe our eyes; then we quickly perceived that Dunston evidently kept a reserve pair of glasses for fear of accidents. And the accident had happened, and he had fallen back upon the reserve pair, no doubt in triumph.

Well, Tudor said it was gall and wormwood to be done like that, and even thought of stealing the second pair of glasses; but then a strange and sudden thing overtook Tudor, and the very next Sunday a man came to preach at the chapel service for a good cause; and the good cause was a Medical Drug Fund for natives in the wilds of Africa. These natives become Christians under steady pressure, and after that always seem to be in need of drugs, especially quinine; and Tudor, who, owing to his lungs and one thing and another, had a good experience of drugs, was deeply interested, and gave sixpence to the Medical Drug Fund, and showed a strong inclination to become a collector for the Medical Drug Missionary. I had often read of sermons altering a person's ideas, and making him or her inclined to be different from that moment onwards, but I never saw it actually happen in real life before. Yet, in the case of Tudor, that Medical Drug sermon, and the stirring anecdotes of the savage tribes, tamed into well-behaved invalids by the Missionary, had a wonderful effect upon him, and it took the strange form of making him rather down-hearted about Dr. Dunston's glasses. Nothing had been said when they disappeared, and no fuss was made at all; and I advised him just to take them back quietly, when a chance presented itself, and slip them under some papers on the Doctor's desk, and leave the rest to time.

I said:

"You'd better do it now, while this feeling about being a collector for the Missionary is on you. It will soon pass off, and then you won't want to give them back."

He said:

"To show you how I did feel before hearing the Drug Missionary, Pratt, I may tell you I had an idea of taking the glasses home next holidays, and buying a new glazier's diamond and writing on the glasses the bitter words, 'THOU SHALT NOT STEAL,' and then returning them to his desk next term. But there are two very good reasons why I shall not do that. One is this strong pro-missionary feeling in me, and the other is that, if I did, Dunston would guess to a dead certainty who had done it, knowing only too well what I can do in the matter of writing on glass."

"He would," I told Tudor. "So the sooner you put them back unharmed, the better."

"I shall," said Tudor, "and I'm going to return them in a very peculiar way. I am going to hide them in a certain place, and then I am going to write an anonymous letter to Dunston, telling him they are in that place."

Well, I thought nothing of this idea.

I said:

"Why make it so beastly complicated? Besides, anonymous letters are often traced by skilled detectives, and if it was found you wrote it, where are you then?"

And he said:

"I have no fear about that, because the letter will all be carefully printed; and my reason for writing a letter at all is to explain to him that the Unknown, who took his glasses away, is sorry."

"What on earth does that matter to him?" I said.

"It matters to me," explained Tudor. "As you know, that Drug Missionary made a great impression upon me, and I have come to be very sick with myself that I did this thing. Of course, I am not nearly sick enough to give the show away and tell Dunston I did it, but I am sick enough to say I am sorry, and I want him to know it--anonymously."

Well, this was beyond me, and I told Tudor so. He then said:

"Sometimes, Pratt, people don't pay quite enough income tax; but presently there comes a feeling over them that they have defrauded the innocent and trustful Government, and their hearts are softened--I dare say often by a missionary, like mine was--and then they send five-pound notes by great stealth to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and feel better. And their consciences are quickly cured. But they take jolly good care not to send their names, because they know that, if they did, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would go much further, and, far from rewarding them for their conduct, would very likely want more still, and never trust them again about their incomes, and persecute them to their dying day. And it's like that with me."

Then I saw what he meant; and I also saw that there may be a great danger in listening to missionaries, and was exceedingly sorry that Tudor had done so. I still advised him not to write to the Doctor, and felt sure his conscience would be just as comfortable if he didn't; but when Tudor decides to carry out a project, he carries it out, and he is generally very unpleasant till he has. Accordingly, he dropped the Doctor's glasses into a deep Indian jar which stood on the mantelpiece in the study, and then, in great secret with me, he wrote his letter. It happened he had just got a new Latin Delectus, and at the end of this book was a sheet of clean paper without a mark upon it. We cut it out with a penknife, and took a school envelope and two halfpenny stamps, and wrote the letter and posted it to the Doctor on the following day.

Well, the letter ran in these words, all printed, so that there was no handwriting in it; and the envelope, needless to say, was also printed in a very dexterous and utterly misleading manner.

"DEAR SIR,

"I regret to have to confess that I stole your eyeglasses in a bad moment. There was a very good reason, but, all the same, I am sorry, and also clearly know now that it was a very wrong thing to do. It was a revenge, but it came to nothing, because you had a pair in reserve. I am glad you had. I prefer to be Unknown.

"Your glasses are in a beautiful and rare Indian jar at the left-hand corner of your mantel-piece, and I hope you will forgive, because my eyes have been opened by the visit of the Drug Missionary to Merivale, and I am sorry.

"I am, dear Sir, your well-wisher,
"THE UNKNOWN."

Well, this good and mysterious letter Tudor posted, and the very next morning, curiously enough, he entirely ceased to want to collect for the Drug Missionary. In fact, from that moment he fell back quite into his usual way of looking at things, and, by the next evening, actually said he was sorry he had given Dr. Dunston back his glasses. But he was sorrier still three days later, for then a very shattering event indeed happened to Tudor. The Doctor sent for him, and he went without the least fear, to find his anonymous letter lying on the Doctor's desk.

I heard the whole amazing story afterwards. The Doctor asked him first if he had written the letter, and, being taken utterly unawares and frightfully fluttered at the shock, almost before he knew what he was doing, you may say, Tudor confessed that he had.

Then the Doctor told him how vain it was for any boy to seek to deceive him. He said: "You see how swiftly your sin has found you out, Tudor."

And Tudor admitted it had. He was now, of course, prepared for the worst, yet, as he told me, his chief feeling at that moment was not so much terror as a frightful longing to know how the Doctor had spotted him. Of course, he couldn't dare to ask, so he merely admitted that his sin certainly had found him out quicker than he expected; and then, rather craftily, he said he was glad it had.

Well, the Doctor didn't believe this; but he was not in a particularly severe mood that evening, strange to say, and he told Tudor exactly what had happened. He said:

"It may interest you to know, misguided boy, that mentioning your anonymous letter to Mr. Brown, and informing him that I had found my lost glasses in the spot indicated, he evinced a kindly concern, and even assured me that he would probably have no great difficulty in discovering the culprit. In the brief space of four-and-twenty hours he did so. Perceiving that the paper on which you wrote was obviously from a book of a certain folio, his first care was to ascertain, by comparisons of size, from what work it had come. Perceiving also that the paper was extraordinarily clean, he had no difficulty in concluding it was extracted from a new book. He then discovered that the page came from a Latin Delectus, and, on further inquiry, was able to learn that three copies of the work had recently been issued to members of the Lower Fourth. Pursuing his investigations, when the boys had retired to rest, he speedily marked down the mutilated volume in your desk, Tudor; and while I have already thanked him for his zeal and penetration, I feel little doubt that a time will come when, looking back on this dark page in your history, you will thank him also."

Well, Tudor didn't give his views about Brown, but he said the glasses had been very much on his mind, only he had not liked to return them without saying he was bitterly sorry. He told me afterwards that he was very nearly saying to Dr. Dunston that some boys would have returned the glasses without even an anonymous letter of regret; but fortunately he did not.

The Doctor then took him through the letter, and invited him to throw light upon it. He was chiefly interested in the part about revenge, and he forced Tudor to explain that the revenge was because Dr. Dunston had taken away his glazier's diamond. Dr. Dunston then said that incident was long ago closed, and that, in fact, after the pane of glass in his study had been taken out and a new one put in, he had dismissed the matter from his mind. He seemed much surprised that Tudor had not dismissed the matter from his mind also, and he told him that the revengeful spirit always came to grief in the long run. He then wound up by saying:

"You sign yourself 'The Unknown,' wretched boy, but let this be a lesson to you that henceforth you are neither unknown to your head master or your God. For the rest, since you have the grace, in this penitential though patronizing communication, to express sincere regret at your conduct, and also to record the fact that you are my 'Well-wisher,' though that is not at all the sort of expression suitable from a Fourth Form scholar to his head master--since, I say, I find these signs of grace, I shall not inflict the extreme penalty on this occasion. For the moment I have not determined on my next step, and will thank you to wait upon me this time to-morrow. Now you may go."

And Tudor said:

"Thank you very much, sir," and went.

He was a great deal cast down, and admitted, for once, I was right. But though his feeling for the Doctor was now, on the whole, one of patience and thankfulness, his feeling for Brown was very different, and when the wretched Brown grinned at Tudor, and rotted him in class, and told the whole story of how he had played the beastly sleuth-hound on Tudor, and started calling him "The Unknown," Tudor took it with dignified silence, and from that instant started to plan the greatest revenge of his life. He told me that it might not be at Merivale he would be revenged, but in the world at large, and if it was not until Brown had grown old and bald-headed, the end was bound to be just the same, and the rest of Brown's life, however long it might last, would undoubtedly be ruined by Tudor. And he also said that he was jolly glad the missionary feeling had left him, so that not a shadow of remorse might come between him and Brown when "The Day" arrived.

Well, there was only one thing more rather interesting about Tudor's revenge on the Doctor, and that was Dr. Dunston's revenge on Tudor. Tudor went to him again at the appointed time, and, after a lot of jaw, the Doctor told Tudor that he must now write out the complete article on "Optics," in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, including all the algebra and everything. There were exactly ten huge pages of this deadly stuff, and Tudor was fairly frantic at first; but curious to relate, after he had done one page, he found it quite interesting in its way. Then it got more and more interesting, as it went on, and Tudor finally decided that there was no doubt, with his strong feeling for the science of optics, that he ought to take it up as a profession.

I asked him if he should take up microscopes or telescopes, and he said telescopes certainly, because that meant astronomy, and in time you might rise to be Astronomer Royal of Greenwich, which was something.

I said:

"It is a great thing to know the stars and comets by their names."

And he said:

"Yes, Pratt, and another great advantage of astronomy is that you may be out all night whenever you choose, and nobody can say a word against you."

So the extraordinary event came about that what Dr. Dunston intended as a stiff imposition and sharp punishment on Tudor, really worked in a very different manner, and instead of crushing Tudor and grinding him under the heel of Dr. Dunston, so to speak, only put into Tudor the splendid idea of mastering the heavens, and then, some day, getting the perfect freedom by night of an Astronomer Royal of Greenwich.

THE "TURBOT'S" AUNT

Of course, he was not really called "Turbot"; but just after he came to Merivale, some ass in the Fifth started the silly rag of calling everybody after a fish, and pretty well every fish known to science was rung in. In fact, they just about went round. Sometimes the likeness was fairly clear and the simile was good. For instance, being head of the school, I was called "Salmon," which is the king of fish; and as I am underhung and have rather fierce eyes, there was a certain fitness in calling me "Salmon." But after I had decided that Abbott could not have his colours for "footer," being lame, there was a feeling against me among Abbott's friends, and Tracey called me "Tinned Salmon," which was merely silly and not in the least amusing. Nor was it amusing to call Maybrick "Sardine" because he kept tins of this fish in his desk; but "John Dory" was all right for Nicholas, that being the ugliest fish in the sea, and Nicholas the ugliest chap at Merivale. "Porpoise" was true for Preston, who inclines to great fatness, and blows after exertion in a very porpoise-like way; but to call Briggs "Herring" because he was a "doter on a bloater," as Tracey said, and to call Tracey himself a "Torpedo Ray" because he was always trying to give shocks, was footling without being funny. On the other hand, it was neat to call Pratt "Cuttlefish," because he was always inky to the elbows; and as far as Bradwell was concerned, the nickname of "Turbot" suited him very well, owing to his eyes, which always goggled if a master spoke to him, and also owing to his mouth, which was all lips and rather one-sided when he laughed.

Kids, of course, have a poor sense of what is really funny, owing to their general ignorance. Yet they prefer their own feeble jokes to ours. A joke that the Sixth sees in a moment is utterly lost on them, while utter piffle, that no sane person would smile at, makes them scream. We, for instance, called Mitchell "Shark" because of his well-known habits over money, but this did not amuse the kids in the least; while they called Forbes minimus "Whale" because he was the smallest boy in the school; which naturally could not cause anybody but an idiot the least amusement.

Well, Bradwell was far from interesting from a mental point of view, having, as our master, Mr. Fortescue, said, apparently outgrown his brains. He was just at his seventeenth birthday when these remarkable events happened; but at first glance, and, in fact, until you talked to him, you would at once have said he was grown up. He was in the Lower Fifth, and it really looked as though a master was in the Lower Fifth rather than a pupil. And he was only there because it would have been a burlesque to put him any lower, though in strict justice, as far as his knowledge was concerned, he would have been in his right place in the Upper Third. But he had to stop in the Lower Fifth, and even there was an absurd sight, being six feet high and very large in every way, and having a distinct moustache, which, owing to its being black, could not be hidden. What a scissors could do he did; but it was there, and grew by night, and could not be concealed. He was a very finely made chap, and had magnificent muscles; but such was his awkwardness and stupidity that he couldn't even use these muscles properly, and he was no earthly good even in the gym. At games he failed utterly, though he tried hard; but he was too slow even for a full-back at "footer," and couldn't get down quick enough for a "goaley"; in fact, rapid movement seemed utterly beyond his power. At cricket he was also an object of utter scorn, for despite his hands, which were huge, he couldn't hold the simplest catch; and despite his reach, which was that of a six-foot chap, he had not the humblest idea of timing a ball, or the vaguest notion of how to play a stroke. In fact, such was his unworthiness that he could only have played in the third eleven, and as that was naturally composed of kids of eleven and twelve, it would have been an outrage to see him in it. Bradwell meant well, but he was rather barred, not from dislike, but simply because he had, as it were, grown up before his time, and had a kid's mind in a man's body. In fact, he fell between two stools, in a manner of speaking, because, to the Sixth and the masters, he was a thing of nought, while to those who had a mind like his own, he was grown up and no use in any way.

I was the only one at Merivale who understood his weird case, and when he first came, I let him fag for me; but he was awful as a fag, and such was his over-anxiety to please and shine that he never did either. I had, in fact, to chuck him. At sixteen years and eleven months of age he led rather a lonely life; but when the War broke out, he said he was very interested in it, and asked me sometimes if I would be so good as to explain military matters to him. Which I did in the simplest words possible, as anything like regular military terms would have been far beyond him. On hearing that aeroplanes have great difficulty in descending by night, he invented a scheme of stretching strong nets with a big mesh on poles ten feet above the ground, spread over half a mile of landing-place, to catch them. This showed mind in a way; but he never appeared to have any real martial instinct, and when once a girl in Merivale handed him a white feather, he stopped and took off his hat and said:

"I quite understand what you mean, but I shan't be seventeen for a fortnight yet."

This the girl naturally refused to believe, and the "Turbot" came to me and complained about it.

As a matter of fact, I rather backed up the girl--not for giving "Turbot" a white feather, which is a vulgar and silly thing to give anybody, because you never know, as the great case of Fortescue showed--but because she didn't believe "Turbot" when he said he was only just about to be seventeen. To look at him, he might easily have been married, which shows appearances are very deceptive. But, anyway, I said:

"You can't blame a flapper for thinking you are of age to join the Army, Bradwell. Anybody would think so, and lots of younger-looking chaps than you have said they were eighteen, and been passed without a murmur, though their birth certificates would have given them away. But anybody six feet high and with a clearly visible black moustache, and with your muscles, would pass the authorities, and you may bet that many have."

He merely goggled, and said no doubt I was right.

I must tell you that "Turbot" had no father or mother, and, in fact, nobody but a single, oldish aunt who lived at Plymouth. But he had a guardian, who sent him to Merivale when his family unfortunately died; and at first he stopped at Merivale in the holidays. But once the aunt took him for a fortnight at Easter; and she appeared to like him, for, after that, he always went to her. The guardian did not, however, like "Turbot," and "Turbot" would have been quite content to stop at Merivale in the holidays, rather than spend his time with the guardian, who had no friendly feeling for him. In fact, you may say that "Turbot" was a duty rather than a pleasure to the guardian.

Then, at the beginning of the autumn term, in the first year of the War, "Turbot's" aunt wrote to Dr. Dunston and asked if "Turbot" might spend Saturday till Monday with her, because it was going to be his birthday; and the Doctor gave permission.

So "Turbot" went, and naturally was not missed in any way till Monday morning. Then at roll-call before chapel, the "Turbot's" well-known bleat was not heard, and it was soon perceived that he'd done something very much out of the common.

Nothing had been heard from his aunt, apparently, and so a telegram was dispatched to her, and, as no reply came to it, Dr. Dunston began to worry. He then sent off a telegram to the guardian, and the excitement decidedly thickened. After dinner the Doctor sent for me, as head boy, and told me that the guardian had heard nothing whatever about "Turbot."