David Blaize and the Blue Door

‘Worms!’ it said.

‘I believe that’s all you ever think about,’ said David.

The stupid mouth began opening and shutting, and David began counting, rather relieved to find that he could do so again. The seventh time it opened the trout said:

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘What else do you think about then?’ asked David.

‘Worms,’ said the trout.

‘But that’s the same thing,’ said David.

This time the trout opened and shut its mouth so often without saying anything at all that David felt that there was no use in waiting any longer for it to speak. Even when it did speak, too, it was almost stupider than when it didn’t, and since he had come through the blue door he had met nobody so completely uninteresting. The groups round the fires looked just as hopeless, and he felt that he was only wasting his time. But he could not resist saying what he thought.

‘You’re much the stupidest thing I ever saw,’ he said. ‘I shall go away.’

‘That’s what I always wanted you to do,’ said the trout. ‘And mind you don’t come back.’

David wondered whether fish might not be a little brighter at the top end of the lake where the stream flowed into it, and he waved his way up there. But even swimming fish-fashion had ceased to amuse him, for he did not want to do anything that fishes did.

‘If I learned to swim like them,’ he said to himself, ‘I should grow like them perhaps, and that would be awful. I shall get out of the water altogether when I come to the end of the roof. They never put it up over the stream.’

By and by the roof got thinner, and when he came into the stream, he found, as he had expected, that there was no roof at all. He put his head up very cautiously for fear he was not far enough away from the camp, and that he might be pursued again, but found that a mist had come up, quite covering the lawn, though bugles were still sounding there, and he felt safe in landing on the far side of the stream, underneath the shelter of the bridge. The moonlight felt very warm and comfortable after the water, and the moment he stepped on to land he was quite dry again, if he had ever really been wet at all.

He had hardly taken his second foot out of the water when there was a great swirl in the stream behind him, and the head of a huge wicked pike snapped at his heel.

‘You little wretch,’ it said. ‘How dare you come into my lake? If I had only known about you a minute sooner, I’d have eaten you up.’

David bounded up the bank. He had never seen anything so ugly and cruel.

‘You beastly fish,’ he said. ‘If I had teeth like you, I should go to the dentist. I’m not frightened of you.’

He was terrified really, but when you are frightened, it is always comforting to say you’re not.

‘Yes, you are,’ said the pike, snapping his jaws, and shouldering his way up through the shallow water. ‘You daren’t come down into the stream again.’

‘I don’t want to come into your muddy stream,’ said David. ‘I should if I wanted to. And for that matter you daren’t come up here.’

‘Yes, I dare,’ said the pike, pushing farther up, till half his horrid body was out of the stream. ‘And I’m coming too.’

David really didn’t feel sure that he wasn’t, for since he had got through the blue door, he had found that animals and soldiers and flowers could do all sorts of things that you wouldn’t expect they were able to. So he made himself very dignified, and walked away from the stream, trying very hard not to hurry till he was out of sight of the pike.

‘Coward, coward,’ yelled the pike. ‘You wait till I catch you.’

David felt pretty safe now, for he knew that he must be able to run on land as fast as a pike, but he continued to walk away, along by the hedge, till he had put a considerable distance between himself and the stream. It was not quite proper for a bird-boy and a Field-Marshal to run away from a fish, but this was such an awful fish..

There were two signboards, he knew, in this field, one down by the river about fishing, and the other where there was a path across it, on which was the notice, ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.’ He did not mind about that notice since both the field and the notice belonged to his father, but when he came to the second signboard and looked up at it, he felt suddenly frozen with terror, and his teeth chattered like Mr. Funk the bather. For instead of the ordinary notice this was written up in large capitals:

TRESPASSERS WILL BE MARRIED

WITH THE UTMOST RIGOUR OF

THE LAW

‘Oh, what am I to do?’ thought poor David. ‘There’s a girl coming into it after all. I know she’ll spoil everything.’

He began running back towards the stream again, for he felt he would rather fight the pike than be married, but then he thought of those savage jaws and those dreadful teeth, and his legs simply would not take him any nearer the stream. They said ‘No!’ just as if they had spoken aloud. Between his mind that said that he had better face any danger sooner than be married, and his legs that said that they would go anywhere except towards the pike, he completely lost his head, and began running in circles round the field, saying to himself in a most determined voice:

‘I won’t be married, I won’t be eaten by the pike, I won’t be married to a pike, I won’t be eaten by anybody.’

So round and round he ran, though all the time there was nothing easier than to walk out of the gate and get away from the marriage-meadow altogether, for there was not a soul in sight nor any sound except that of the pike still calling ‘Coward! Coward!’ But David had quite lost his head, and such a simple thing as that never occurred to him at all. And then he saw that he wasn’t alone in the field, for there was a man in a hard hat and an ulster following him round and round. He was not running, but was sliding, and all the time he got nearer and nearer to David. All the time, too, David knew that he knew who it was, but he had forgotten, just as he had forgotten how to fly, or how to count when he was talking to that foolish trout. Nearer and nearer he crept, and David, looking round, saw that he was already extending a stiff wooden arm to catch him. When he saw that he was on the point of being caught, he recovered his wits and knew that all he had to do was to get away from the marriage-meadow at once. So, with redoubled speed, he bolted towards the side of the field nearest him, just outside which there stood a house with the door wide open. He didn’t care at all whether he was prosecuted for going into a house that wasn’t his own; all that mattered was to escape from this dreadful field where all trespassers were married.

In he rushed with the sliding figure close behind him, and the door banged to after them.

CHAPTER VIII

David was completely out of breath, and leaned against the wall to recover, while his pursuer did the same. He remembered who it was now.

‘Oh, it’s you, Noah!’ he panted. ‘I couldn’t remember who you were. Why did you run after me?’

Noah wiped his face with the edge of his ulster.

‘To catch you,’ said he. ‘What else should I run after you for? The point is: Why did you run away?’

David didn’t see why he should tell Noah that his legs had been running away from the pike, and his mind from being married. It had got nothing to do with Noah, and besides it was a slightly undignified confession.

‘I like running,’ he said. ‘I shall walk and run, and fly and swim, just as I choose.’

‘Hoity-toity!’ said Noah. ‘I expect that’ll be as she chooses.’

‘Whom do you mean by “she”?’ asked David quite cheerfully, for he had escaped from the awful meadow without being caught, and all risk of being married was over.

‘I can’t tell you yet,’ said Noah, ‘but you’ll soon know. I’m not certain who we have on our books this morning. Hark! There are the church-bells beginning. That’s for you.’

This all sounded rather mysterious, but he couldn’t ask Noah any more questions this moment, for he had gone inside a big cupboard in the wall, where he appeared to be dressing-up. While he was doing this, David had a look round the room. There was a row of chairs against the wall and a big open fire-place, and in the centre a table on which were all sorts of writing materials, a large book on which was printed ‘Female Register,’ and a bottle of water and a glass. At each corner of the room was a pillar that looked as if it didn’t support the roof exactly, but went through it. Somehow this made David feel a little uncomfortable, for it reminded him of the giraffe at the animals’ ball. Also he saw that on the top of the paper in the writing-case were printed the words ‘Registry Office.’ He did not know what it meant, but it and the pillars in the corners of the room made him feel uneasy, as he felt before a thunderstorm.

There was a sound of whispering in the cupboard, and he heard Noah’s voice say:

‘I go in first: wait till I call you. One of you announce me.’

There was a short pause, and David distinctly heard the noise of somebody eating. Then a rather hoarse voice said:

‘I’ll have finished in a moment. I call that a good bit of meat.’

David guessed that this must be Miss Bones, though he could not imagine what she was doing here. It sounded like Miss Bones’s voice, and it also sounded like the sort of thing that Miss Bones said. Then the same voice said, just as if its mouth was full:

‘The Registrar,’ and a rude swallowing sound followed.