01-Chapter 1 PETER BREAKS THROUGH-iv

CHAPTER 1  PETER BREAKS THROUGH  

All children, except one, grow up. Theysoon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day whenshe was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked anotherflower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked ratherdelightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, whycan't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passedbetween 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 housenumber on their street), and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. Shewas a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Herromantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from thepuzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and hersweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though thereit 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 discoveredsimultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose toher 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 aboutthe box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleoncould 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 thather mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep oneswho know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quiteseemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a waythat would have made any woman respect him.

Mrs. Darling was married in white, andat 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 cauliflowersdropped 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'sguesses.

Wendy came first, then John, thenMichael.

For a week or two after Wendy came itwas doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouthto 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 calculatingexpenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come whatmight, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece ofpaper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at thebeginning again.

"Now don't interrupt," hewould 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 tenshillings, making two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes threenine 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'tspeak, my own—and the pound you lent to that man whocame to the door—quiet, child—dotand carry child—there, you've done it! —did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the questionis, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?” "Ofcourse we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy'sfavour, and he was really the grander character of the two.

"Remember mumps," he warnedher almost threateningly, and off he went again. "Mumps one pound, that iswhat 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 fifteensix—don't waggle your finger—whooping-cough,say fifteen shillings”—and so on it went, and it addedup differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumpsreduced 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 mighthave seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergartenschool, accompanied by their nurse.

Mrs. Darling loved to have everythingjust 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 milkthe children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, whohad belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She hadalways thought children important, however, and the Darlings had becomeacquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her sparetime peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids,whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. Sheproved 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 acough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking aroundyour throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies likerhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk aboutgerms, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting thechildren 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 days shenever once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouthin case of rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school wherethe nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that wasthe only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior socialstatus to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits tothe nursery from Mrs. Darling's friends, but if they did come she first whippedoff Michael's pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding, andsmoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.

No nursery could possibly have beenconducted more correctly, and Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondereduneasily whether the neighbours talked.

He had his position in the city toconsider.

Nana also troubled him in another way.He had sometimes a feeling that she did not admire him. "I know sheadmires you tremendously, George," Mrs. Darling would assure him, and thenshe would sign to the children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dancesfollowed, 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 hadsworn, when engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of thoseromps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly thatall you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you had dashed at her youmight have got it. There never was a simpler happier family until the coming ofPeter Pan.

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter whenshe was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every goodmother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put thingsstraight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articlesthat have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course youcan't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it veryinteresting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would seeher on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents,wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweetand 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, thenaughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded upsmall 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 seena 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 todraw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going roundall the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on acard, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is alwaysmore or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, andcoral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonelylairs, 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 onevery small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that wereall, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond,needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate puddingday, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out yourtooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they areanother map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially asnothing will stand still.

Of course the Neverlands vary a gooddeal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it atwhich John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo withlagoons 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 hadno friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by itsparents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if theystood 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 beachingtheir coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of thesurf, though we shall land no more.

Of all delectable islands the Neverlandis the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tediousdistances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you playat 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 whythere are night-lights.

Occasionally in her travels through herchildren's minds Mrs. Darling found things she could not understand, and ofthese quite the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, andyet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds, while Wendy's began tobe scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than any ofthe other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly cockyappearance.

"Yes, he is rather cocky,"Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had been questioning her.

"But who is he, mypet?" "He is Peter Pan, you know, mother." At firstMrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood she justremembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies. There were oddstories about him, as that when children died he went part of the way withthem, so that they should not be frightened. She had believed in him at thetime, but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whetherthere was any such person.

"Besides," she said to Wendy,"he would be grown up by this time." "Oh no, he isn't grownup," Wendy assured her confidently, "and he is just mysize." She meant that he was her size in both mind and body; shedidn't know how she knew, she just knew it.

Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, buthe smiled pooh-pooh. "Mark my words," he said, "it is somenonsense Nana has been putting into their heads; just the sort of idea a dogwould have. Leave it alone, and it will blow over." But it would notblow over and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs. Darling quite a shock.

Children have the strangest adventureswithout being troubled by them. For instance, they may remember to mention, aweek after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they had mettheir dead father and had a game with him. It was in this casual way that Wendyone morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had been foundon the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when the children went tobed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy said with a tolerantsmile: "I do believe it is that Peter again!" "Whatever doyou mean, Wendy?" "It is so naughty of him not to wipe hisfeet," Wendy said, sighing. She was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter-of-factway that she thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and saton the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she neverwoke, 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 thewindow," she said.

"My love, it is three floorsup." "Were not the leaves at the foot of the window,mother?" It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near thewindow.

Mrs. Darling did not know what to think,for it all seemed so natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by sayingshe 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 theleaves. 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. Shecrawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strangefoot. She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down atape 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 thevery next night showed, the night on which the extraordinary adventures ofthese children may be said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all thechildren 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 herhand and slid away into the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy thatshe smiled at her fears now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

It was something for Michael, who on hisbirthday was getting into shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nurserydimly lit by three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling'slap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the fourof 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. Shedreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had brokenthrough from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him beforein the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found inthe faces of some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent the film thatobscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping throughthe gap.

The dream by itself would have been atrifle, but while she was dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and aboy did drop on the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no biggerthan your fist, which darted about the room like a living thing and I think itmust have been this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.

She started up with a cry, and saw theboy, and somehow she knew at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendyhad 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 oftrees but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his firstteeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.