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DAVID BLAIZE AND THE BLUE DOOR
* * * * * *
BOOKS BY
E. F. BENSON
REX
DAVID OF KING’S
DAVID BLAIZE
DAVID BLAIZE AND
THE BLUE DOOR
DODO THE SECOND
MRS. AMES
THE OAKLEYITES
HODDER & STOUGHTON, LTD.
PUBLISHERS LONDON, E.C.4
* * * * * *
[Illustration: The flame-cats and the black man
coming down the chimney]
DAVID BLAIZE AND THE BLUE DOOR
by
E. F. BENSON
[Illustration]
Illustrated by H. J. Ford
Hodder and Stoughton
Limited London
Made and Printed in Great Britain by C. Tinling & Co., Ltd.,
Liverpool, London and Prescot.
ILLUSTRATIONS
The flame-cats and the black man coming down the chimney
David finds the Blue Door
David shakes the bottle at the cats
The game-cupboard comes to life
David calls on Miss Muffet
The spider chases Miss Muffet
David finds the Mint-man in the bank
The recovering of Uncle Popacatapetl
The telegram rescues Uncle P. from the Mint-man
David dances with the giraffe
David and the Rhyme family
Miss Bones sitting on David’s thumb
David and the cow porter on the pile of luggage
David uses the telephone in the cow porter’s tail
The bald-headed men in the hairdresser’s get up to catch the train
How Canon and Mrs. Rook quarrelled over a stick
David does the lark-flight
The birds carry up David to get his flying certificate
David rescues the Brigadier-General
Field-Marshal David inspects his guard of honour
David and the trout
Noah pursues David
David in the registry office
David runs for home
David reaches home
CHAPTER I
Ever since he was four years old, and had begun to think seriously, as a
boy should, David Blaize had been aware that there was a real world
lying somewhere just below the ordinary old thing in which his father
and mother and nurse and the rest of the fast-asleep grown-up people
lived. Boys began to get drowsy, he knew, about the time that they were
ten, though they might still have occasional waking moments, and soon
after that they went sound asleep, and lost all chance of ever seeing
the real world. If you asked grown-ups some tremendously important
question, such as ‘Why do the leaves fall off the trees when there is
glass on the lake?’ as likely as not they would begin talking in their
sleep about frost and sap, just as if that had got anything to do with
the real reason. Or they might point out that it wasn’t real glass on
the lake, but ice, and, if they were more than usually sound asleep,
take a piece of the lake-glass and let you hold it in your fingers till
it became water. That was to show you that what you had called glass was
really frozen water, another word for which was ice. They thought that
it was very wonderful of them to explain it all so nicely, and tell you
at great length that real glass did not become water if you held it in
your fingers, which you must remember to wash before dinner. Perhaps
they would take you to the nursery window when you came in from your
walk, and encourage you to put your finger on the pane in order to see
that glass did not become water. This sort of thing would make David
impatient, and he asked, ‘Then why don’t you put ice in the window, and
then you could boil it for tea in the kettle?’ And if his nurse wanted
to go to sleep again, she would say, ‘Now you’re talking nonsense,
Master David.’
Now that was the ridiculous thing! Of course he was talking nonsense
just to humour Nannie. He was helping her with her nonsense about the
difference between ice and glass. He had been wanting to talk sense all
the time, and learn something about the real world, in which the fish
put a glass roof on their house for the winter as soon as they had
collected enough red fire-leaves to keep them warm until the hot weather
came round again. That might not be the precise way in which it
happened, but it was something of that sort. Instead of pinching herself
awake, poor sleepy Nannie went babbling on about ice and glass and sap
and spring, in a way that was truly tedious and quite beside the real
point.
Yet when the sleepy things tried to awake to the real world, they could
not get their grown-up dreams out of their heads. Sometimes his mother
would come up to the nursery before he went to bed, and take him on her
knee, which was a soft, comfortable place, and tell him a story, which
often began quite well and seriously. David always asked that the
electric light should be put out first, because then the flame-cats
would come out of their holes, and play puss-in-the-corner all over the
nursery. They always helped the story to seem true and serious, for they
were real, only the electric light must be put out first, because it
gave them shocks, and naturally you could not play when you were being
shocked. He knew that to be true even in the sleepy grown-up world,
because once when his mother was playing with him, he had put out his
tongue at Nannie when she came to say it was bed-time, and his mother
couldn’t play any more, because she was shocked. That was why the
flame-cats must have the electric light put out.
Well, there were the flame-cats dancing (sometimes they had a ball
instead of puss-in-the-corner), and here was he very comfortable and
wide-awake, and sometimes, as I have said, the story began quite well,
with an air of truth and reality about it. There was a little green man
with whiskers who lived in the pear-tree, and washed his hands with
Pears’ soap. Or there was a red-faced old woman who lived in the
apple-tree, and kept a sharp look-out for dumplings coming round the
corner, for these were her deadliest enemies, and pulled pieces off her,
and made them into apple-dumplings. Sometimes they pulled her nose off
when they caught her or a finger or two which never grew again till next
spring, and often, if spring was late, from going to sleep again after
Nannie Equinox had called him, there was practically nothing left of
her. So when the regiment of dumplings came round the corner, Grandmamma
Apple-tree hid in the grass, and pretended she was Mr. Winfall, the
tailor, who had made David’s new sailor clothes. Then Colonel Dumpling
would stumble over her, and sometimes he did not know whether she was
Grandmamma Appletree or Mr. Winfall. So he began very politely, like a
subscription paper with a half-penny stamp in case it proved to be Mr.
Winfall, who had the habit of eating Colonel Dumpling whenever he saw
him, and often some privates as well, cleared his throat and said in his
best suetty voice:
‘Dear Sir or Madam.’
He never got further than that because, if it proved to be Mr. Winfall,
Mr. Winfall ate him whether he had an apple inside or not, and if it was
Grandmamma Apple-tree, she was so indignant, as every proper female
should be at being taken for a man, that she began abusing Colonel
Dumpling in a red voice if she was ripe, and a green one if she wasn’t,
and gave the whole show away. So she lost an arm or a leg if there were
many people in the house, or a finger or two if father and mother were
alone, and Colonel Dumpling said to his regiment:
‘Attention! Slow fatigue March! Right-about Kitchen Turn!’
Now all this sort of thing was clearly true, and belonged to the real
world, but too often, unfortunately, David’s mother got grown-up and
sleepy again, and began talking the most dreadful nonsense. A little
girl with golden hair and blue eyes made her unwelcome presence known by
singing, or a baby would be found underneath a gooseberry bush (David
always hoped that it got frightfully pricked), or a sweet lovely fairy
would fly in, just when everything was getting on so nicely, and make
rubbish out of it. He was too polite to let his mother know how boring
she had become, and so whenever the golden-haired little girl or the
sweet fairy appeared, he would try to go on with Colonel Dumpling’s part
of the story in his own mind, or watch the flame-cats getting tired as
the fire burned low.
Nannie was not so good at stories, but she had flashes of sense, as
when, one night, when David preferred to sit up in bed instead of lying
down to go to sleep, she hinted that a black man _might_ possibly come
down the chimney, unless he put his head properly on the pillow. David
knew that it was not likely, for it would have to be a very small man
indeed, and fireproof, but there was some glimmering of a real idea in
it. So he was not the least frightened, and asked, with interest, if he
would be like bacon or beef before he got through the fire. This
exploded any sense there might have been in Nannie’s original idea at
once, because she threatened to go downstairs and tell his mother if he
wouldn’t lie down. A very poor ending to the black man coming down the
chimney! Nannie clearly knew nothing about him really if she so quickly
got sleepy and talked about fetching his mother. Nobody grown-up ever
woke to the real world for more than a minute or two at a time, except
perhaps his father, who spent so many hours in a big room called ‘The
Laboratory.’ There he seemed to dabble in realities, for he could put a
fragment of something on the water, and it began to blaze, or he could
mix a powder out of certain bottles, and when it was lit it burned with
so red a flame that his father looked as if he was illuminated inside
like a turnip-ghost. Or he could, by another mixture, produce a smell
that he said was ‘Tincture of Rotten Eggs’ and was really made of the
ghosts of bad eggs ground up and exorcised. But then, poor man, he got
grown-up, and when, subsequently, David wanted to know what the ghosts
of bad eggs looked like when they were exercised, he muttered in his
sleep something about sulphuretted hydrogen.
* * * * *
David was now just ‘turned six,’ as Nannie expressed it, and knew that
he had only about four years more in front of him before he began to
lapse into that drowsy state of grown-uppishness which begins when boys
are ten or thereabouts, and lasts, getting worse and worse, till they
are twenty or seventy or anything else. If he was going to find the real
world of which he caught glimpses now and then, he must do so without
losing much time. There was probably a door into it, and for a long time
he had hoped that it was the door in the ground by the lake. But one day
he had found that door open, and it was an awful disappointment to see
that it only contained a tap and a round opening, to which presently the
gardener fixed a long curly pipe. When he turned the tap, the pipe gave
some jolly chuckling noises, and began to stream with water at its far
end. That was very delightful, and consoled David a little for the
disappointment.
Then one night he had a clue. He had just lain down in his bed, when he
heard a door beginning to behave as doors do when they think they are
quite alone, and nobody is looking. Then, as you know, they unlatch
themselves, and begin walking to and fro on their hinges, hitting
themselves against their frames. This often happened to the nursery door
when he came downstairs in the morning, after he was quite sure he had
shut it. His mother therefore sent him up to shut it again, and sure
enough the door was always open, having undone itself to go for a walk
on its hinges. But on this night he thought that the sound of the door
came from under his pillow, but he very carelessly fell asleep just as
he was listening in order to make sure, and the next thing he knew was
that Nannie was telling him it was morning. Again, on the very next
night he had only just put his head on the pillow when the door began
banging. It sounded muffled, and there was no doubt this time that it
came from under his pillow. He sat up in bed, broad awake, and pulled
his pillow away. By the light of the flame-cats who were dancing
to-night, he could see the smooth white surface of his bolster, but,
alas, there was no door there.
David was now quite sure that somewhere under his pillow was the door he
was looking for. One time he had allowed himself to go to sleep before
finding it, and the other time he had got too much awake. So on the
third night he took the pin-partridge to bed with him, in the hope that
it would keep him just awake enough, by pricking him with the head of
its pin-leg. The pin-partridge had, of course, come out of Noah’s Ark,
and in the course of some terrible adventures had lost a leg. So Nannie
had taken a pin, and driven it into the stump, so that it could stand
again. The pin-leg was rather longer than the wooden one, which made the
partridge lean a little to one side, as if it was listening to the
agreeable conversation of the animal next it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: David finds the Blue Door]
Sure enough, on this third night, David had only just lain down, with
the pin-partridge in one hand, and the pin ready to scratch his leg to
keep him just awake enough, when the door began banging again, just
below his pillow. He listened a little while, pressing the pin-head
against his calf so that it hurt a little, but not enough to wake him up
hopelessly, and moved his head about till he was sure that his ear was
directly above the door. Then very quietly he pushed his pillow aside,
and there, in the middle of his bolster was a beautiful shining blue
door with a gold handle, swinging gently to and fro, as if it was alone.
He got up, pushed it open and entered. For fear of some dreadful
misfortune happening, like finding his mother on the other side of it,
who might send him back to shut it, he closed it very carefully and
softly. He found that there was a key hanging up on the wall beside it,
and to his great joy it fitted the keyhole. He locked it, and put the
key back on its nail, so that when he came back he could let himself
out, and in the meantime nobody could possibly reach him.