"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.