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Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)
PETER PAN [PETER AND WENDY] BY J. M. BARRIE [James Matthew Barrie]
A Millennium Fulcrum Edition (c)1991 by Duncan Research
Contents ---------
Chapter 1 PETER BREAKS THROUGH
Chapter 2 THE SHADOW
Chapter 3 COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
Chapter 4 THE FLIGHT
Chapter 5 THE ISLAND COME TRUE
Chapter 6 THE LITTLE HOUSE
Chapter 7 THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
Chapter 8 THE MERMAID'S LAGOON
Chapter 9 THE NEVER BIRD
Chapter 10 THE HAPPY HOME
Chapter 11 WENDY'S STORY
Chapter 12 THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
Chapter 13 DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
Chapter 14 THE PIRATE SHIP
Chapter 15 "HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
Chapter 16 THE RETURN HOME
Chapter 17 WHEN WENDY GREW UP
Chapter 1
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow
up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years
old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and
ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather
delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh,
why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed
between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must
grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of
the end.
Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and
until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady,
with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic
mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the
puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and
her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get,
though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been
boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved
her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr.
Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He
got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew
about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy
thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and
then going off in a passion, slamming the door.
Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him
but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about
stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed
to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a
way that would have made any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books
perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a
Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped
out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces.
She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs.
Darling's guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would
be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling
was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat
on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and calculating
expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it,
come what might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil
and a piece of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had
to begin at the beginning again.
"Now don't interrupt," he would beg of her.
"I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can
cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine
and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with
five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven -- who is
that moving? -- eight nine seven, dot and carry seven -- don't speak,
my own -- and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door --
quiet, child -- dot and carry child -- there, you've done it! -- did I
say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can
we try it for a year on nine nine seven?"
"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced in
Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.
"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went
again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay
it will be more like thirty shillings -- don't speak -- measles one
five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six -- don't
waggle your finger -- whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings" -- and so
on it went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy
just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds
of measles treated as one.
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a
narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the
three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school,
accompanied by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a
passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had
a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children
drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had
belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She
had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had
become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most
of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by
careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained
of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse.
How thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night
if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel
was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a
thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking around your
throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like
rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled
talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her
escorting the children to school, walking sedately by their side when
they were well behaved, and butting them back into line if they
strayed. On John's footer [in England soccer was called football,
"footer" for short] days she never once forgot his sweater, and she
usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a
room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school where the nurses wait.
They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only
difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social
status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented
visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling's friends, but if they did
come she first whipped off Michael's pinafore and put him into the one
with blue braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's
hair.
No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr.
Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the
neighbours talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling
that she did not admire him. "I know she admires you tremendously,
George," Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the
children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in
which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join.
Such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid's cap, though she
had sworn, when engaged, that she would never see ten again. The
gaiety of those romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would
pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss, and
then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never was
a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her
children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after
her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things
straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many
articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake
(but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this,
and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like
tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect,
lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on
earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not
so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a
kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the
morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed
have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on
the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts,
ready for you to put on.
I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind.
Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map
can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map
of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round
all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your
temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for
the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing
splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking
craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are
mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with
six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small
old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were
all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the
round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the
dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine,
three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either
these are part of the island or they are another map showing through,
and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand
still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had
a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting,
while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying
over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands,
Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together.
John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet
wolf forsaken by its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a
family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of
them that they have each other's nose, and so forth. On these magic
shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles [simple
boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the
surf, though we shall land no more.
Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most
compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances
between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play
at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least
alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes
very real. That is why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs. Darling
found things she could not understand, and of these quite the most
perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was
here and there in John and Michael's minds, while Wendy's began to be
scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than
any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had
an oddly cocky appearance.
"Yes, he is rather cocky," Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had
been questioning her.
"But who is he, my pet?"
"He is Peter Pan, you know, mother."
At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her
childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with
the fairies. There were odd stories about him, as that when children
died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be
frightened. She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was
married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such
person.
"Besides," she said to Wendy, "he would be grown up by this time."
"Oh no, he isn't grown up," Wendy assured her confidently, "and he is
just my size." She meant that he was her size in both mind and body;
she didn't know how she knew, she just knew it.
Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled pooh-pooh. "Mark my
words," he said, "it is some nonsense Nana has been putting into their
heads; just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it
will blow over."
But it would not blow over and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs.
Darling quite a shock.
Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them.
For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event
happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their dead
father and had a game with him. It was in this casual way that Wendy
one morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had
been found on the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when
the children went to bed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when
Wendy said with a tolerant smile:
"I do believe it is that Peter again!"
"Whatever do you mean, Wendy?"
"It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet," Wendy said, sighing.
She was a tidy child.
She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought Peter
sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her
bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so
she didn't know how she knew, she just knew.
"What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house
without knocking."
"I think he comes in by the window," she said.
"My love, it is three floors up."
"Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?"
It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the window.
Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural
to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been
dreaming.
"My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of this
before?"
"I forgot," said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her
breakfast.
Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.
But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined
them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they
did not come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the
floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She
rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a
tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of
thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.
Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.
But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the
night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be
said to have begun.
On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed. It
happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them
and sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid
away into the land of sleep.
All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and
sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.
It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into
shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by
three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling's
lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look
at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over there, John here, and Mrs.
Darling by the fire. There should have been a fourth night-light.
While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland had
come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He
did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the
faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found
in the faces of some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent the
film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and
Michael peeping through the gap.
The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was
dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on
the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your
fist, which darted about the room like a living thing and I think it
must have been this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.
She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at
once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there we
should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling's kiss. He was a
lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of
trees but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his
first teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed the little
pearls at her.