There were huge piles of luggage all round David, as he saw when the
steam cleared away a little. There were trunks, portmanteaux,
dress-baskets, lunch-baskets, tea-baskets, gun-cases, golf-clubs,
gladstone-bags, carpet-bags, despatch-cases, hat-boxes,
collection-boxes, band-boxes, hampers, milk-cans, hold-alls,
fish-baskets, safes, unsafes (the sort that fly open as you are getting
into the train), Christmas boxes, rug-straps, and a sort of palisade of
umbrellas and sticks on the top. All of them had green printed labels
on, and wherever he turned, he saw that the labels were
DAVID BLAIZE, Esq.,
Passenger to Anywhere.
‘That’s no earthly use at all,’ thought David. ‘It doesn’t tell me where
I’m going. And how did I get so much luggage?’
[Illustration: David and the cow porter on the pile of luggage]
He began climbing up the wall of luggage that was made of the more solid
pieces, when he heard somebody climbing up the other side.
‘Hurrah, it’s probably a porter,’ he said to himself. ‘Hi, porter!’
‘I’m coming,’ said a slow, placid voice. ‘Moo! I’m coming.’
The first thing that came over the edge of the wall of luggage was the
cap of a flying man, then two broken horns, then a mild hairy sort of
face, the mouth of which went round and round.
‘Oh, are you the cow and the other pilot?’ asked David.
‘Hush,’ said the cow. ‘I’m incognito, disguised as a porter, and
collecting evidence.’
‘What about?’ asked David.
‘Anything, as long as it’s evidence. Don’t give me away, and I’ll help
you. Is this all you’ve got? That’s nothing to what people travel with
now.’
‘Yes, that’s all,’ said David. ‘At least I suppose that’s all.’
‘You mayn’t have less than a hundred pieces, and they must all weigh a
hundred pounds each,’ said the cow, referring to a blue paper of
regulation which she carried. ‘But I won’t take no notice if you’re a
bit under weight.’
The cow had climbed up a little higher, and David could see she had a
dark blue coat, with a red tie like the people at Waterloo.
‘Perhaps I’d better get you out first,’ said the cow. ‘You seem sort of
hemmed in. If you’ll stop just where you are, I’ll butt my way
somewhere. Steady now, stop just where you are.’
David clung to the portmanteau which was on the top of the pile, and
heard the cow retreat a few steps, and breathe heavily.
‘Now, I’m coming,’ she said, and next moment she charged through a weak
part of the wall, which consisted only of lighter articles like
dressing-cases and gun-cases and bags of golf-clubs. A lunch-basket had
stuck on her horns, and she shook her head till it fell off with a great
clatter of tin-plates and knives and forks.
‘That was a good bit of evidence,’ she said panting. ‘What train are you
going by?’
‘The 11.29 I think,’ said David.
The cow looked at the labels.
‘That’s all right then,’ she said. ‘That’s the one that goes Anywhere.
It’s whistling loud still, so you’ve got heaps of time. There’s more
time than luggage.’
‘But doesn’t its whistling mean that it’s just going off?’ asked David.
He had a firm idea in his mind that he _must_ catch the 11.29, or the
whole plan would go wrong.
‘Not a bit of it, dearie,’ said the cow. ‘It whistles loudest when it’s
going to stop longest, and whistles faintest when it’s going to stop
shortest. Now if it was whistling soft, we should have to hurry. The
moment it stops whistling altogether, then it’s off, and you have to
wait for the next. Usually there isn’t a next, and then the trouble
begins.’
‘Then do they whistle all the time they stand still?’ asked David.
‘Naturally. When they go, there’s something else to think about.’
She looked at him with a mild milky sort of eye. She was dressed in a
large jacket, and a pair of trousers which covered her completely all
but her face and her tail.
‘And to think that I ever thought of tossing you,’ she said. ‘Well,
bye-gones are gone-byes, and now I feel like a mother to you. Let’s get
going with your bits of luggage, or the train you’re going to get will
get gone.’
She took up four or five bags on her horns, put some of the lighter
stuff like gun-cases and golf-clubs over her ears, and then turned her
back to David.
‘Just sling the rest on my tail,’ she said. ‘Stick it through the cords
or through the handles. You just put it on.’
She moved backwards and forwards in the most obliging manner, while
David put her tail through the handles of boxes and portmanteaux, just
as you would string beads on to a thread. Her tail had a surprising sort
of spring in it, and when he had put it through a cord or a handle, she
gave it a little jerk, and the box hopped along it. Very soon all the
heavy stuff was neatly strung on her tail, and she took up the sticks
and umbrellas that lay about on the platform, in her mouth.
‘Now, all you’ve got to do is to hold on to the end of my tail,’ she
said, ‘and off we go to the 11.29. There’s no more evidence about here.’
They threaded their way down miles of crowded platforms past train after
train that was puffing and whistling to show that it wasn’t going yet.
Occasionally one stopped whistling, on which all the doors slammed, and
next moment there wasn’t any train there at all. There were a tremendous
lot of people travelling; now and then in the crowd he got a glimpse of
some one he knew like Miss Muffet, or the shoemaker, or members of the
happy families, but for the most part they were all strangers. The cow’s
head, wreathed in luggage, seemed miles away, but very soon David found
there was a sort of telephone in her tail, and he talked to the end of
it, asking whatever he wanted to know, and then put it to his ear. When
she wished to speak to him a bell rang at the end of it.
[Illustration: David uses the telephone
in the cow porter’s tail]
‘I haven’t got my ticket yet,’ said David.
‘Of course not. You don’t know where you’re going yet,’ said she.
‘Travellers by the Anywhere Express take their tickets when they’ve got
there. Otherwise you might take a ticket say for France, and find
yourself at Fiji, and the ticket wouldn’t be any use.’
‘Is the Anywhere Express likely to go abroad this time?’ asked David,
who would have enjoyed that.
‘Nothing’s likely with the Anywhere Express. It never goes where you
expect it to. It’s the unlikeliest thing that ever happened. But it
always goes to lots of somewheres, which is why it’s the Anywhere. You
see it takes hundreds of somewheres to make an Anywhere.’
‘Does it go every night?’ asked David.
‘It goes every day and every night,’ said the cow. ‘But it only goes
from here when it has got here. I should think it was five or six years
since it was here last. I saw it once when I was a calf.’
‘Then shan’t I get back here for five or six years?’ asked he.
‘Round about that, I should say. Here we are. It’s begun to whistle
softly. You’ll take all your bits of things in the carriage with you, I
suppose, and then you’ll have them handy, in case of being hungry or if
it rains, or there’s a cricket match. Which glass do you go, dearie?’
‘Which glass?’ asked David.
‘Yes; there’s first glass, where you can see out of the windows, and
second, where you can’t, and third, where there aren’t any windows at
all, and very few doors. I always go second, because it’s ugly country
hereabouts.’
‘But it might be pretty farther on,’ said David.
‘Please yourself, dearie,’ said the cow. ‘Here’s a beautiful carriage
now. That’ll make a sweet home for you for five or six years.’
David followed the cow, when she had finished sticking in the door into
the carriage. It was a large bare room with a quantity of hooks on the
walls, and a small three-legged stool standing in the middle of it.
‘Now I’ll get rid of your luggage,’ said the cow.
She began tossing the pieces on her horns in the neatest manner on to
the hooks. Then she switched her tail, and the portmanteaux and dress
baskets and wine-cases and all the heavier things flew this way and that
on to _their_ hooks, or piled themselves in the corners.
David looked round his sweet little house with some dismay.
‘But if I get very sleepy, can’t I go to bed?’ he asked.
‘Why, of course you can,’ said the cow. ‘You can go to bed anywhere you
like all over the floor, or you can hang yourself up to a hook, or get
inside a portmanteau. And the motion will never disturb you, as it’s an
empty-speed express.’
‘What’s that?’ asked David.
‘Why, a full-speed express goes as fast as it can, doesn’t it? And an
empty-speed express goes as slow as it can. Hullo! It’s stopped
whistling.’
The cow jumped out of the door, which immediately slammed to after her,
and disappeared among the crowd on the platform. The train started at a
great speed, so it seemed to David, but as it got going, it went slower
and slower, until he could scarcely believe that it was moving at all.
He felt rather lonely at the idea of spending five or six years in the
train, but after all, if it moved so slowly, it would not be difficult
to jump out. Unless he found another cow-porter, which didn’t seem
likely, he would have to leave his luggage behind, but he would not
really miss it much, since he had never had it before, and had not the
slightest idea what it contained.
A pecking noise at the window attracted his attention, and he saw a crow
sitting on the ledge outside.
‘Let me in,’ it said. ‘It’s time to rest. I shall stop flying for the
present.’
David let down the window, and the crow fluttered on to the floor.
‘But if you stop flying, shall I become invisible?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course. You’re getting dim now. Pop! Now you’ve gone.’
David held up his hand in front of him, but he could see nothing at all
of it. It must have been there, because when he touched the end of his
nose with it, it felt quite solid. But he had certainly vanished for the
present, for there was nothing whatever of him to be seen.
‘I wish you wouldn’t interfere with me like that,’ he said. ‘You
wouldn’t like it if I made you invisible.’
The crow had put its head under its wing, and tucked up one leg, and its
voice sounded muffled.
‘You seem to think,’ it said, ‘that everything is to be managed as you
want it. But if you imagine I’m going to go on flying all night, without
a rest, just in order to keep you visible, you make a mistake. You
aren’t so pretty as all that, my young fellah.’
‘But you’ll fly again before long, won’t you?’ asked David.
All the answer he got was:
‘Haugh! Rumph, haugh! Rumph! Rumph!’ for the crow had gone fast asleep,
and was snoring.
David poked it with the place where his fingers usually were, to wake
it, but it only snored louder and louder. Then he picked it up and shook
it, but the only result was that its snoring became perfectly deafening.
‘I’ll drop it out of the window,’ he said to himself,’ and then it must
fly.’
But this was no good, for the crow didn’t even take its head from under
its wing, or put its leg down, but fell quietly on to the ground below
the window, without waking. Just then there came a bend in the line, and
though the train was scarcely moving at all, it was soon out of sight.
‘Well, there’s no help for it,’ thought David, ‘and so I may as well go
to sleep too. It seems to make one sleepy to be invisible.’
Then, so he supposed, he must have gone completely to sleep, for when
the next thing happened, it was quite light. As he had been travelling
since 11.29 P.M., it was perfectly obvious that it was now morning. For
some reason he felt inclined to lick his hand and rub it behind his
ears, but he remembered that only cats did that, and instead he drew his
three-legged stool to the window and looked out. He found he was visible
again, and supposed the crow must have begun flying.
The train seemed to be running very slowly round and round a field.
Occasionally it stopped dead, and began to whistle, but usually it
splashed quietly along, into puddles and out of puddles, without any
lines in front of it. Sometimes they curved a little to avoid a tree,
but they crushed their way through an ordinary hedge, and birds flew out
scolding them and saying, ‘I wish you would look where you are going.’
Then a voice from the engine said, ‘Sorry you _have_ been troubled,’
just like a young lady in the telephone exchange.
But the country seemed familiar to David, and presently he saw that the
train was in a field just beyond the High Street of the village he had
left at 11.29. It was slowly going back to it again, to a spot some
fifty yards away from the place they had started from. Then it began to
make a very sharp curve, in order to avoid a horse that was lying down
in the field, and the engine came just opposite his window.
‘A rare good run, David,’ shouted the engine-driver. ‘We shall stop at
the hairdresser’s in a minute now, if you want to have anything done.’
David had not had his hair cut lately, so this seemed rather a good
opportunity.
‘How long do we stop there?’ he shouted.
‘Two or three weeks. You’ll just have time.’
In spite of the slowness with which they were moving, there was a
tremendous rattle of wheels somewhere, and the noise seemed to come from
overhead. Then looking up, he saw that there were hundreds of wheels all
turning round. There were long bands hanging from them, and just then
the engine began whistling to show it had stopped. Clouds of steam
poured in through the carriage window and, as that cleared away, David
saw that he was standing in the hairdresser’s shop, and that underneath
the wheels was sitting a row of old gentlemen having their heads brushed
with circular brushes. Others were being shampooed, others were
apparently having their heads painted, others were having breakfast, but
they were all, without exception, absolutely bald.
There was a looking-glass in front of each of them, and David saw the
face of a kind old gentleman in it. The looking-glasses were of the sort
that stood on his mother’s dressing-table, which showed your left-hand
side where the bruise was, which came when you fell out of a tree, and
your right-hand side, where a tooth had been taken out, and full face
where both these things happened. And in each looking-glass was the
reflection of a bald old gentleman, nodding and smiling at him.
After his solitary night in the train, David longed for a little
conversation again, and he went to the nearest old gentleman, who was
eating eggs and bacon, while the hairdresser scrubbed his head with the
circular brush.
‘Good morning, David,’ said he. ‘Have you had a good journey? The hard
brush, please,’ he added to the hairdresser. ‘That doesn’t do me any
good. Aha, aha, that’s better. And now I’ll have a shampoo.’
David thought this rather an odd way of doing things, since you usually
had your shampoo first, and your brushing afterwards, but the
hairdresser didn’t seem to mind. The old gentleman bent over the basin,
with his eggs and bacon on his knee, and continued breakfasting.
‘Boiling or freezing, sir?’ asked the hairdresser.
‘Boiling first and then freezing,’ said the old gentleman, with his
mouth full. ‘No, freezing first and boiling afterwards. And where did
you come from?’ he asked David.
‘From the house next the Bank, I think,’ said David. ‘I came by the
11.29.’
‘A fine train,’ said he, ‘a very fine train. There’s nothing slower
anywhere.’
The hairdresser wrapped a towel round his head, and began drying it.
‘And what will you have on, sir?’ he asked.
The old gentleman considered a little.
‘I think a map of south-west London would be best,’ he said. ‘I’m going
up there next week, and I don’t know my way about. It would be very
tiresome to get lost. But if you give me a nice map of south-west
London, with 25 Brompton Square marked in red, why, all I shall have to
do, if I get lost, is to ring the nearest bell of the nearest house, and
ask for a couple of looking-glasses.’
‘What for?’ asked David.
‘Why, I shall sit in front of one, and reflect the top of my head in the
other. Then I shall see where I am, and where I want to go to. Send the
geographer and the painter at once.’
This old gentleman got so interested in his map that he did not talk to
David any more, and so he strolled on to the next one, who, so he
learned, was going to Egypt, and was having a spider’s web painted on
his head to keep the flies off. He, too, seemed to know David, which
made it very pleasant.
‘And so you’ve come by the 11.29,’ he said. ‘A dangerous trip, because
you go so slow that it’s almost impossible to stop in case of an
accident. I leave for Egypt by the same train. I wonder if it would be
wiser to have some fly papers as well. Or a picture of a mummy or two,
to give me local colour.’
‘Whatever you please, sir,’ said the hairdresser.
‘Well, we can’t go wrong with a mummy. I think a mummy and a spider’s
web, and leave out the fly-papers.’
The next old gentleman was having his own face painted in oils on the
back of his head, and he put his finger on his lip, and beckoned with
the other hand to David.
‘Is it like me?’ he whispered. ‘Give me your candid opinion. Don’t mind
the artist.’
He nodded his head up and down, so that David should see his real face
and his painted face.
‘Very like indeed,’ said David. ‘But what’s it for?’
He assumed an air of great secrecy.
‘You mustn’t tell anybody,’ he said. ‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes,’ said David.
‘Well, if I have my own face at the back of my head, it will be such a
puzzle. People in the street will see me looking at them, as if I was
coming towards them, and all the time I shall be going away. What do you
think of that?’
‘It’s—it’s certainly very puzzling,’ said David.
‘Isn’t it? And then when I’m tired of going that way, I shall begin to
walk backwards, and all the people the other side of me will think the
same thing. In quite a short time nobody will know where I am. I shall
always be going away when they think I’m coming, and when they think I’m
coming I shall always be going away!’
‘But that’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ asked David.
He took no notice of this, and called out to the painter, who had R.A.
embroidered on his collar.
‘Mind you put a cigarette in my mouth. And then this side will smoke a
pipe. That’ll puzzle them worse than ever. It will, it will—won’t it?’
he said to David triumphantly.
[Illustration: The bald-headed men in the hairdresser’s
get up to catch the train]
David could not understand what it was all about, but at that moment the
door opened, and the cow looked in.
‘Passengers by the Bald Express to take their seats,’ she called. ‘All
others to remain standing.’
Instantly there was a scene of the utmost confusion, and all the old
gentlemen began running into each other. The worst of them was the one
who had had his face painted on the back of his head, because nobody
could possibly guess which way he was coming. But by degrees the room
cleared, as the whistling of the engine, which had gone on all the time,
grew fainter, and finally, when it stopped, David found himself quite
alone. The sound of wheels going round overhead ceased, and its place
was taken by a rumble that gradually got less. He ran out on to the
platform, and there was the empty-speed express crawling out of the
station, carrying the kind old gentlemen to Egypt and London S.W., and
wherever the backward-forward one meant to puzzle people. He felt that
it must be quite easy to catch it up, but the faster he ran the farther
he got away from it. At last, perfectly breathless, he stopped, not
quite certain whether he really wanted to catch it or not. He longed to
know if the spider’s web would keep off the flies, or the map of London
S.W. show the other old gentleman where he was, but, after all, there
were so many different things to explore.
He began to run again, after he had got his breath, not after the train
any more, but Anywhere. He felt that with every step he took he was
getting lighter, and in a minute he was running on the very tips of his
toes. Then his left foot didn’t touch the ground at all, and then his
right foot. He simply found himself running in the air.