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."