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DAVID BLAIZE

by

E. F. BENSON

Author of “The Oakleyites,” “Arundel,”
“Dodo,” “Dodo the Second,” etc.







[Illustration]

New York
George H. Doran Company

Copyright, 1916,
By George H. Doran Company

Printed in the United States of America




DAVID BLAIZE




Table of Contents

      Chapter I
      Chapter II
      Chapter III
      Chapter IV
      Chapter V
      Chapter VI
      Chapter VII
      Chapter VIII
      Chapter IX
      Chapter X
      Chapter XI
      Chapter XII
      Chapter XIII
      Chapter XIV
      Chapter XV
      Chapter XVI




                              DAVID BLAIZE




                               CHAPTER I


There was a new class-room in course of construction for the first form
at Helmsworth Preparatory School, and the ten senior boys, whose united
ages amounted to some hundred and thirty years, were taken for the time
being in the school museum. This was a big boarded room, covered with
corrugated iron and built out somewhat separate from the other class
rooms at the corner of the cricket-field. The arrangement had many
advantages from the point of view of the boys, for the room was full of
agreeably distracting and interesting objects, and Cicero almost ceased
to be tedious, even when he wrote about friendship, if, when you were
construing, you could meditate on the skeleton of a kangaroo which stood
immediately in front of you, and refresh yourself with the sight of the
stuffed seal on whose nose the short-sighted Ferrers Major had balanced
his spectacles before Mr. Dutton came in. Or, again, it was agreeable to
speculate on the number of buns a mammoth might be able to put
simultaneously into his mouth, seeing that a huge yellowish object that
stood on the top of one of the cases was just one of his teeth....

Of course it depended on how many teeth a mammoth had, but the number of
a boy’s teeth might be some guide, and David, in the throes of grinding
out the weekly letter to his father, passed his tongue round his own
teeth, trying to count them by the sensory quality of it. But, losing
count, he put an inky forefinger into his mouth instead. There seemed to
be fourteen in his lower jaw and thirteen and a half in the upper, for
half of a front tooth had been missing ever since, a few weeks ago, he
had fallen out of a tree on to his face, and the most industrious
scrutiny of that fatal spot had never resulted in his finding it. In any
case, then, he had twenty-seven and a half teeth, and it was reasonable
to suppose that a mammoth, therefore, unless he had fallen out of a tree
(if there were such in the glacial age) had at least twenty-eight. That
huge yellow lump of a thing, then, as big as David’s whole head, was
only one twenty-eighth of his chewing apparatus. Why, an entire bun
could stick to it and be unobserved. A mammoth could have twenty-eight
buns in his mouth and really remain unaware of the fact. Fancy having a
bun on every tooth and not knowing! How much ought a mammoth’s
pocket-money to be if you had to provide on this scale? And when would
its mouth be really full? And how... David was growing a little
sleepy.

“Blaize!” said Mr. Dutton’s voice.

David sucked his finger.

“Yes, sir!” he said.

“Have you finished your letter home?”

“No, sir,” said David, with engaging candour.

“Then I would suggest that you ceased trying to clean your finger and
get on with it.”

“Rather, sir!” said David.

The boys’ desks, transferred from their old class-room, stood in a
three-sided square in the centre of the museum, while Mr. Dutton’s
table, with his desk on it, was in the window. The door of the museum
was open, so too was the window by the master’s seat, for the hour was
between four and five of the afternoon and the afternoon that of a
sweltering July Sunday. Mr. Dutton himself was a tall and ineffective
young man, entirely undistinguished for either physical or mental
powers, who had taken a somewhat moderate degree at Cambridge, and had
played lacrosse. By virtue of the mediocrity of his attainments, his
scholastic career had not risen to the heights of a public school, and
he had been obliged to be content with a mastership at this preparatory
establishment. He bullied in a rather feeble manner the boys under his
charge, and drew in his horns if they showed signs of not being afraid
of him. But in these cases he took it out of them by sending in the
gloomiest reports of their conduct and progress at the end of term, to
the fierce and tremendous clergyman who was the head of the place. The
Head inspired universal terror both among his assistant masters and his
pupils, but he inspired also a whole-hearted admiration. He did not take
more than half a dozen classes during the week, but he was liable to
descend on any form without a moment’s notice like a bolt from the blue.
He used the cane with remarkable energy, and preached lamb-like sermons
in the school chapel on Sunday. The boys, who were experienced augurs on
such subjects, knew all about this, and dreaded a notably lamb-like
sermon as presaging trouble on Monday. In fact, Mr. Acland had his
notions about discipline, and completely lived up to them in his
conduct.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Having told Blaize to get on with his home-letter, Mr. Dutton resumed
his employment, which was not what it seemed. On his desk, it is true,
was a large Prayer-book, for he had been hearing the boys their
Catechism, in the matter of which Blaize had proved himself wonderfully
ignorant, and had been condemned to write out his duty towards his
neighbour (who had very agreeably attempted to prompt him) three times,
and show it up before morning school on Monday. There was a Bible there
also, out of which, when the Sunday letters home were finished, Mr.
Dutton would read a chapter about the second missionary journey of St.
Paul, and then ask questions. But while these letters were being written
Mr. Dutton was not Sabbatically employed, for nestling between his books
was a yellow-backed volume of stories by Guy de Maupassant.... Mr.
Dutton found him most entertaining: he skated on such very thin ice, and
never quite went through.

Mr. Dutton turned the page.... Yes, how clever not to go through, for
there was certainly mud underneath. He gave a faint chuckle of interest,
and dexterously turned the chuckle into a cough. At that sound a small
sigh of relief, a sense of relaxation went round the class, for it was
clear that old Dutton (Dubs was his more general nomenclature) was deep
in his yellow book. When that consummation, so devoutly wished, was
arrived at, any diversion of a moderately quiet nature might be indulged
in.

Crabtree began: he was a boy of goat-like face, and had been known as
Nanny, till the somewhat voluminous appearance of his new pair of
trousers had caused him to be rechristened Bags. He had finished his
letter to his mother with remarkable speed, and had, by writing small,
conveyed quite sufficient information to her on a half-sheet. There was
thus the other half-sheet, noiselessly torn off, to be framed into
munitions of aerial warfare. He folded it neatly into the form of a
dart, he inked the point of it by dipping it into the china receptacle
at the top of his desk, and launched it with unerring aim, enfilading
the cross-bench where David sat. It hit him just exactly where the other
half of his missing tooth should have been, for his lip was drawn back
and his tongue slightly protruded in the agonies of composing a suitable
letter to his father. The soft wet point struck it full, and spattered
ink over his lip.

“Oh, damn,” said David very softly.

Then he paused, stricken to stone, and quite ready to deny that he had
spoken at all. His eyes apprehensively sought Mr. Dutton, and he saw
that he had not heard, being deep in the misfortunes that happened to
Mademoiselle Fifi.

“I’ll lick you afterwards, Bags,” he said gently.

“Better lick yourself now,” whispered Bags.

A faint giggle at Bags’s repartee went round the class, like the sound
of a breaking ripple. This penetrated into Mr. Dutton’s consciousness,
and, shifting his attitude a little without looking up, he leaned his
forehead on his open hand, so that he could observe the boys through the
chinks of his fingers. David, of course, was far too old a hand to be
caught by this paltry subterfuge, for “playing chinks” was a manœuvre of
the enemy which had got quite stale through repetition, and he therefore
gently laid down on the sloping top of his locker the dart which he had
just dipped again in his inkpot to throw back at Bags, and with an
industrious air turned to his letter again.

The twenty minutes allotted on Sunday afternoon school for writing home
to parents was already more than half spent, but the date which he had
copied off his neighbour and “My dear Papa” was as far as the first fine
careless rapture of composition had carried him. It was really difficult
to know what to say to his dear papa, for all the events of the past
week were completely thrown into shadow by the one sunlit fact that he
had got his school-colours for cricket, and had made twenty-four runs in
the last match. But, as he knew perfectly well, his father cared as
little for cricket as he did for football; indeed, David ironically
doubted if he knew the difference between them, and that deplorable fact
restricted the zone of interests common to them. And really the only
