Peter Pan
admitted that he came to the nursery window not to see her but to
listen to stories.
“You see, I don’t know any stories. None of the lost boys knows any
stories.”
“How perfectly awful,” Wendy said.
“Do you know,” Peter asked “why swallows build in the eaves of houses?
It is to listen to the stories. O Wendy, your mother was telling you
such a lovely story.”
“Which story was it?”
“About the prince who couldn’t find the lady who wore the glass
slipper.”
“Peter,” said Wendy excitedly, “that was Cinderella, and he found her,
and they lived happily ever after.”
Peter was so glad that he rose from the floor, where they had been
sitting, and hurried to the window.
“Where are you going?” she cried with misgiving.
“To tell the other boys.”
“Don’t go Peter,” she entreated, “I know such lots of stories.”
Those were her precise words, so there can be no denying that it was
she who first tempted him.
He came back, and there was a greedy look in his eyes now which ought
to have alarmed her, but did not.
“Oh, the stories I could tell to the boys!” she cried, and then Peter
gripped her and began to draw her toward the window.
“Let me go!” she ordered him.
“Wendy, do come with me and tell the other boys.”
Of course she was very pleased to be asked, but she said, “Oh dear, I
can’t. Think of mummy! Besides, I can’t fly.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Oh, how lovely to fly.”
“I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and then away we go.”
“Oo!” she exclaimed rapturously.
“Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be
flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.”
“Oo!”
“And, Wendy, there are mermaids.”
“Mermaids! With tails?”
“Such long tails.”
“Oh,” cried Wendy, “to see a mermaid!”
He had become frightfully cunning. “Wendy,” he said, “how we should all
respect you.”
She was wriggling her body in distress. It was quite as if she were
trying to remain on the nursery floor.
But he had no pity for her.
“Wendy,” he said, the sly one, “you could tuck us in at night.”
“Oo!”
“None of us has ever been tucked in at night.”
“Oo,” and her arms went out to him.
“And you could darn our clothes, and make pockets for us. None of us
has any pockets.”
How could she resist. “Of course it’s awfully fascinating!” she cried.
“Peter, would you teach John and Michael to fly too?”
“If you like,” he said indifferently, and she ran to John and Michael
and shook them. “Wake up,” she cried, “Peter Pan has come and he is to
teach us to fly.”
John rubbed his eyes. “Then I shall get up,” he said. Of course he was
on the floor already. “Hallo,” he said, “I am up!”
Michael was up by this time also, looking as sharp as a knife with six
blades and a saw, but Peter suddenly signed silence. Their faces
assumed the awful craftiness of children listening for sounds from the
grown-up world. All was as still as salt. Then everything was right.
No, stop! Everything was wrong. Nana, who had been barking
distressfully all the evening, was quiet now. It was her silence they
had heard.
“Out with the light! Hide! Quick!” cried John, taking command for the
only time throughout the whole adventure. And thus when Liza entered,
holding Nana, the nursery seemed quite its old self, very dark, and you
would have sworn you heard its three wicked inmates breathing
angelically as they slept. They were really doing it artfully from
behind the window curtains.
Liza was in a bad temper, for she was mixing the Christmas puddings in
the kitchen, and had been drawn from them, with a raisin still on her
cheek, by Nana’s absurd suspicions. She thought the best way of getting
a little quiet was to take Nana to the nursery for a moment, but in
custody of course.
“There, you suspicious brute,” she said, not sorry that Nana was in
disgrace. “They are perfectly safe, aren’t they? Every one of the
little angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to their gentle breathing.”
Here Michael, encouraged by his success, breathed so loudly that they
were nearly detected. Nana knew that kind of breathing, and she tried
to drag herself out of Liza’s clutches.
But Liza was dense. “No more of it, Nana,” she said sternly, pulling
her out of the room. “I warn you if you bark again I shall go straight
for master and missus and bring them home from the party, and then, oh,
won’t master whip you, just.”
She tied the unhappy dog up again, but do you think Nana ceased to
bark? Bring master and missus home from the party! Why, that was just
what she wanted. Do you think she cared whether she was whipped so long
as her charges were safe? Unfortunately Liza returned to her puddings,
and Nana, seeing that no help would come from her, strained and
strained at the chain until at last she broke it. In another moment she
had burst into the dining-room of 27 and flung up her paws to heaven,
her most expressive way of making a communication. Mr. and Mrs. Darling
knew at once that something terrible was happening in their nursery,
and without a good-bye to their hostess they rushed into the street.
But it was now ten minutes since three scoundrels had been breathing
behind the curtains, and Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes.
We now return to the nursery.
“It’s all right,” John announced, emerging from his hiding-place. “I
say, Peter, can you really fly?”
Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew around the room, taking
the mantelpiece on the way.
“How topping!” said John and Michael.
“How sweet!” cried Wendy.
“Yes, I’m sweet, oh, I am sweet!” said Peter, forgetting his manners
again.
It looked delightfully easy, and they tried it first from the floor and
then from the beds, but they always went down instead of up.
“I say, how do you do it?” asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a
practical boy.
“You just think lovely wonderful thoughts,” Peter explained, “and they
lift you up in the air.”
He showed them again.
“You’re so nippy at it,” John said, “couldn’t you do it very slowly
once?”
Peter did it both slowly and quickly. “I’ve got it now, Wendy!” cried
John, but soon he found he had not. Not one of them could fly an inch,
though even Michael was in words of two syllables, and Peter did not
know A from Z.
Of course Peter had been trifling with them, for no one can fly unless
the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as we have
mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on each
of them, with the most superb results.
“Now just wiggle your shoulders this way,” he said, “and let go.”
They were all on their beds, and gallant Michael let go first. He did
not quite mean to let go, but he did it, and immediately he was borne
across the room.
“I flewed!” he screamed while still in mid-air.
John let go and met Wendy near the bathroom.
“Oh, lovely!”
“Oh, ripping!”
“Look at me!”
“Look at me!”
“Look at me!”
They were not nearly so elegant as Peter, they could not help kicking a
little, but their heads were bobbing against the ceiling, and there is
almost nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave Wendy a hand at first,
but had to desist, Tink was so indignant.
Up and down they went, and round and round. Heavenly was Wendy’s word.
“I say,” cried John, “why shouldn’t we all go out?”
Of course it was to this that Peter had been luring them.
Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to do a
billion miles. But Wendy hesitated.
“Mermaids!” said Peter again.
“Oo!”
“And there are pirates.”
“Pirates,” cried John, seizing his Sunday hat, “let us go at once.”
It was just at this moment that Mr. and Mrs. Darling hurried with Nana
out of 27. They ran into the middle of the street to look up at the
nursery window; and, yes, it was still shut, but the room was ablaze
with light, and most heart-gripping sight of all, they could see in
shadow on the curtain three little figures in night attire circling
round and round, not on the floor but in the air.
Not three figures, four!
In a tremble they opened the street door. Mr. Darling would have rushed
upstairs, but Mrs. Darling signed him to go softly. She even tried to
make her heart go softly.
Will they reach the nursery in time? If so, how delightful for them,
and we shall all breathe a sigh of relief, but there will be no story.
On the other hand, if they are not in time, I solemnly promise that it
will all come right in the end.
They would have reached the nursery in time had it not been that the
little stars were watching them. Once again the stars blew the window
open, and that smallest star of all called out:
“Cave, Peter!”
Then Peter knew that there was not a moment to lose. “Come,” he cried
imperiously, and soared out at once into the night, followed by John
and Michael and Wendy.
Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The
birds were flown.
Chapter IV.
THE FLIGHT
“Second to the right, and straight on till morning.”
That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even
birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not
have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said
anything that came into his head.
At first his companions trusted him implicitly, and so great were the
delights of flying that they wasted time circling round church spires
or any other tall objects on the way that took their fancy.
John and Michael raced, Michael getting a start.
They recalled with contempt that not so long ago they had thought
themselves fine fellows for being able to fly round a room.
Not long ago. But how long ago? They were flying over the sea before
this thought began to disturb Wendy seriously. John thought it was
their second sea and their third night.
Sometimes it was dark and sometimes light, and now they were very cold
and again too warm. Did they really feel hungry at times, or were they
merely pretending, because Peter had such a jolly new way of feeding
them? His way was to pursue birds who had food in their mouths suitable
for humans and snatch it from them; then the birds would follow and
snatch it back; and they would all go chasing each other gaily for
miles, parting at last with mutual expressions of good-will. But Wendy
noticed with gentle concern that Peter did not seem to know that this
was rather an odd way of getting your bread and butter, nor even that
there are other ways.
Certainly they did not pretend to be sleepy, they were sleepy; and that
was a danger, for the moment they popped off, down they fell. The awful
thing was that Peter thought this funny.
“There he goes again!” he would cry gleefully, as Michael suddenly
dropped like a stone.
“Save him, save him!” cried Wendy, looking with horror at the cruel sea
far below. Eventually Peter would dive through the air, and catch
Michael just before he could strike the sea, and it was lovely the way
he did it; but he always waited till the last moment, and you felt it
was his cleverness that interested him and not the saving of human
life. Also he was fond of variety, and the sport that engrossed him one
moment would suddenly cease to engage him, so there was always the
possibility that the next time you fell he would let you go.
He could sleep in the air without falling, by merely lying on his back
and floating, but this was, partly at least, because he was so light
that if you got behind him and blew he went faster.
“Do be more polite to him,” Wendy whispered to John, when they were
playing “Follow my Leader.”
“Then tell him to stop showing off,” said John.
When playing Follow my Leader, Peter would fly close to the water and
touch each shark’s tail in passing, just as in the street you may run