David Blaize and the Blue Door

‘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.

‘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.