Peter Pan
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.
Chapter II.
THE SHADOW
Mrs. Darling screamed, and, as if in answer to a bell, the door opened,
and Nana entered, returned from her evening out. She growled and sprang
at the boy, who leapt lightly through the window. Again Mrs. Darling
screamed, this time in distress for him, for she thought he was killed,
and she ran down into the street to look for his little body, but it
was not there; and she looked up, and in the black night she could see
nothing but what she thought was a shooting star.
She returned to the nursery, and found Nana with something in her
mouth, which proved to be the boy’s shadow. As he leapt at the window
Nana had closed it quickly, too late to catch him, but his shadow had
not had time to get out; slam went the window and snapped it off.
You may be sure Mrs. Darling examined the shadow carefully, but it was
quite the ordinary kind.
Nana had no doubt of what was the best thing to do with this shadow.
She hung it out at the window, meaning “He is sure to come back for it;
let us put it where he can get it easily without disturbing the
children.”
But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out at the
window, it looked so like the washing and lowered the whole tone of the
house. She thought of showing it to Mr. Darling, but he was totting up
winter great-coats for John and Michael, with a wet towel around his
head to keep his brain clear, and it seemed a shame to trouble him;
besides, she knew exactly what he would say: “It all comes of having a
dog for a nurse.”
She decided to roll the shadow up and put it away carefully in a
drawer, until a fitting opportunity came for telling her husband. Ah
me!
The opportunity came a week later, on that never-to-be-forgotten
Friday. Of course it was a Friday.
“I ought to have been specially careful on a Friday,” she used to say
afterwards to her husband, while perhaps Nana was on the other side of
her, holding her hand.
“No, no,” Mr. Darling always said, “I am responsible for it all. I,
George Darling, did it. _Mea culpa, mea culpa_.” He had had a classical
education.
They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday, till every
detail of it was stamped on their brains and came through on the other
side like the faces on a bad coinage.
“If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at 27,” Mrs.
Darling said.
“If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana’s bowl,” said Mr.
Darling.
“If only I had pretended to like the medicine,” was what Nana’s wet
eyes said.
“My liking for parties, George.”
“My fatal gift of humour, dearest.”
“My touchiness about trifles, dear master and mistress.”
Then one or more of them would break down altogether; Nana at the
thought, “It’s true, it’s true, they ought not to have had a dog for a
nurse.” Many a time it was Mr. Darling who put the handkerchief to
Nana’s eyes.
“That fiend!” Mr. Darling would cry, and Nana’s bark was the echo of
it, but Mrs. Darling never upbraided Peter; there was something in the
right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted her not to call Peter names.
They would sit there in the empty nursery, recalling fondly every
smallest detail of that dreadful evening. It had begun so uneventfully,
so precisely like a hundred other evenings, with Nana putting on the
water for Michael’s bath and carrying him to it on her back.
“I won’t go to bed,” he had shouted, like one who still believed that
he had the last word on the subject, “I won’t, I won’t. Nana, it isn’t
six o’clock yet. Oh dear, oh dear, I shan’t love you any more, Nana. I
tell you I won’t be bathed, I won’t, I won’t!”
Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her white evening-gown. She had
dressed early because Wendy so loved to see her in her evening-gown,
with the necklace George had given her. She was wearing Wendy’s
bracelet on her arm; she had asked for the loan of it. Wendy loved to
lend her bracelet to her mother.
She had found her two older children playing at being herself and
father on the occasion of Wendy’s birth, and John was saying:
“I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that you are now a mother,” in
just such a tone as Mr. Darling himself may have used on the real
occasion.
Wendy had danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling must have
done.
Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due to the
birth of a male, and Michael came from his bath to ask to be born also,
but John said brutally that they did not want any more.
Michael had nearly cried. “Nobody wants me,” he said, and of course the
lady in the evening-dress could not stand that.
“I do,” she said, “I so want a third child.”
“Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully.
“Boy.”
Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. and Mrs.
Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was to be
Michael’s last night in the nursery.
They go on with their recollections.
“It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn’t it?” Mr. Darling
would say, scorning himself; and indeed he had been like a tornado.
Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had been dressing for
the party, and all had gone well with him until he came to his tie. It
is an astounding thing to have to tell, but this man, though he knew
about stocks and shares, had no real mastery of his tie. Sometimes the
thing yielded to him without a contest, but there were occasions when
it would have been better for the house if he had swallowed his pride
and used a made-up tie.
This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery with the
crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.
“Why, what is the matter, father dear?”
“Matter!” he yelled; he really yelled. “This tie, it will not tie.” He
became dangerously sarcastic. “Not round my neck! Round the bed-post!
Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my
neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be excused!”
He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on
sternly, “I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my
neck we don’t go out to dinner to-night, and if I don’t go out to
dinner to-night, I never go to the office again, and if I don’t go to