The Little White Bird; Or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens

by J. M. Barrie

  XII. The Pleasantest Club in London

  All perambulators lead to the Kensington Gardens.

  Not, however, that you will see David in his perambulator much longer,for soon after I first shook his faith in his mother, it came to him tobe up and doing, and he up and did in the Broad Walk itself, where hewould stand alone most elaborately poised, signing imperiously to theBritish public to time him, and looking his most heavenly just before hefell. He fell with a dump, and as they always laughed then, he pretendedthat this was his funny way of finishing.

  That was on a Monday. On Tuesday he climbed the stone stair of theGold King, looking over his shoulder gloriously at each step, andon Wednesday he struck three and went into knickerbockers. For theKensington Gardens, you must know, are full of short cuts, familiar toall who play there; and the shortest leads from the baby in longclothes to the little boy of three riding on the fence. It is called theMother's Tragedy.

  If you are a burgess of the gardens (which have a vocabulary of theirown), the faces of these quaint mothers are a clock to you, in which youmay read the ages of their young. When he is three they are said to wearthe knickerbocker face, and you may take it from me that Mary assumedthat face with a sigh; fain would she have kept her boy a baby longer,but he insisted on his rights, and I encouraged him that I might notchanother point against her. I was now seeing David once at least everyweek, his mother, who remained culpably obtuse to my sinister design,having instructed Irene that I was to be allowed to share him with her,and we had become close friends, though the little nurse was ever athreatening shadow in the background. Irene, in short, did not improvewith acquaintance. I found her to be high and mighty, chiefly, I think,because she now wore a nurse's cap with streamers, of which the littlecreature was ludicrously proud. She assumed the airs of an officialperson, and always talked as if generations of babies had passed throughher hands. She was also extremely jealous, and had a way of signifyingdisapproval of my methods that led to many coldnesses and evenbickerings between us, which I now see to have been undignified. Ibrought the following accusations against her:

  That she prated too much about right and wrong.

  That she was a martinet.

  That she pretended it was a real cap, with real streamers, when she knewMary had made the whole thing out of a muslin blind. I regret havingused this argument, but it was the only one that really damped her.

  On the other hand, she accused me of spoiling him.

  Of not thinking of his future.

  Of never asking him where he expected to go to if he did such things.

  Of telling him tales that had no moral application.

  Of saying that the handkerchief disappeared into nothingness, when itreally disappeared into a small tin cup, attached to my person by apiece of elastic.

  To this last charge I plead guilty, for in those days I had a patheticfaith in legerdemain, and the eyebrow feat (which, however, is entirelyan affair of skill) having yielded such good results, I naturally castabout for similar diversions when it ceased to attract. It lost its holdon David suddenly, as I was to discover was the fate of all of them;twenty times would he call for my latest, and exult in it, and thetwenty-first time (and ever afterward) he would stare blankly, as ifwondering what the man meant. He was like the child queen who, when thegreat joke was explained to her, said coldly, "We are not amused," and,I assure you, it is a humiliating thing to perform before an infant whointimates, after giving you ample time to make your points, that he isnot amused. I hoped that when David was able to talk--and not merelyto stare at me for five minutes and then say "hat"--his spoken verdict,however damning, would be less expressive than his verdict withoutwords, but I was disillusioned. I remember once in those later years,when he could keep up such spirited conversations with himself that hehad little need for any of us, promising him to do something exceedinglyfunny with a box and two marbles, and after he had watched for a longtime he said gravely, "Tell me when it begins to be funny."

  I confess to having received a few simple lessons in conjuring, in adimly lighted chamber beneath a shop, from a gifted young man with along neck and a pimply face, who as I entered took a barber's pole frommy pocket, saying at the same time, "Come, come, sir, this will neverdo." Whether because he knew too much, or because he wore a trick shirt,he was the most depressing person I ever encountered; he felt none ofthe artist's joy, and it was sad to see one so well calculated to givepleasure to thousands not caring a dump about it.

  The barber's pole I successfully extracted from David's mouth, but thedifficulty (not foreseen) of knowing how to dispose of a barber's polein the Kensington Gardens is considerable, there always being politechildren hovering near who run after you and restore it to you. Theyoung man, again, had said that anyone would lend me a bottle or alemon, but though these were articles on which he seemed ever able tolay his hand, I found (what I had never noticed before) that there isa curious dearth of them in the Gardens. The magic egg-cup I usuallycarried about with me, and with its connivance I did some astonishingthings with pennies, but even the penny that costs sixpence isuncertain, and just when you are saying triumphantly that it willbe found in the egg-cup, it may clatter to the ground, whereon someungenerous spectator, such as Irene, accuses you of fibbing andcorrupting youthful minds. It was useless to tell her, through clenchedteeth, that the whole thing was a joke, for she understood no jokesexcept her own, of which she had the most immoderately high opinion,and that would have mattered little to me had not David liked them also.There were times when I could not but think less of the boy, seeinghim rock convulsed over antics of Irene that have been known to everynursemaid since the year One. While I stood by, sneering, he would giveme the ecstatic look that meant, "Irene is really very entertaining,isn't she?"

  We were rivals, but I desire to treat her with scrupulous fairness, andI admit that she had one good thing, to wit, her gutta-percha tooth. Inearlier days one of her front teeth, as she told me, had fallen out, butinstead of then parting with it, the resourceful child had hammered itin again with a hair-brush, which she offered to show me, with the dentson it. This tooth, having in time passed away, its place was supplied byone of gutta-percha, made by herself, which seldom came out except whenshe sneezed, and if it merely fell at her feet this was a sign that thecold was to be a slight one, but if it shot across the room she knew shewas in for something notable. Irene's tooth was very favourably knownin the Gardens, where the perambulators used to gather round her to hearwhether it had been doing anything to-day, and I would not have grudgedDavid his proprietary pride in it, had he seemed to understand thatIrene's one poor little accomplishment, though undeniably showy, waswithout intellectual merit. I have sometimes stalked away from him,intimating that if his regard was to be got so cheaply I begged toretire from the competition, but the Gardens are the pleasantest club inLondon, and I soon returned. How I scoured the Gardens looking for him,and how skilful I became at picking him out far away among the trees,though other mothers imitated the picturesque attire of him, to Mary'sindignation. I also cut Irene's wings (so to speak) by taking her to adentist.

  And David did some adorable things. For instance, he used my pockets asreceptacles into which he put any article he might not happen to wantat the moment. He shoved it in, quite as if they were his own pockets,without saying, By your leave, and perhaps I discovered it on reachinghome--a tin-soldier, or a pistol--when I put it on my mantle-shelfand sighed. And here is another pleasant memory. One day I had beenover-friendly to another boy, and, after enduring it for some time Davidup and struck him. It was exactly as Porthos does, when I favour otherdogs (he knocks them down with his foot and stands over them, lookingvery noble and stern), so I knew its meaning at once; it was David'sfirst public intimation that he knew I belonged to him.

  Irene scolded him for striking that boy, and made him stand in disgraceat the corner of a seat in the Broad Walk. The seat at the corner ofwhich David stood suffering for love of me, is the one nearest to theRound P
ond to persons coming from the north.

  You may be sure that she and I had words over this fiendish cruelty.When next we met I treated her as one who no longer existed, and atfirst she bridled and then was depressed, and as I was going away sheburst into tears. She cried because neither at meeting nor parting hadI lifted my hat to her, a foolish custom of mine, of which, as I nowlearned to my surprise, she was very proud. She and I still have ourtiffs, but I have never since then forgotten to lift my hat to Irene.I also made her promise to bow to me, at which she affected to scoff,saying I was taking my fun of her, but she was really pleased, and Itell you, Irene has one of the prettiest and most touching little bowsimaginable; it is half to the side (if I may so express myself), whichhas always been my favourite bow, and, I doubt not, she acquired it bywatching Mary.

  I should be sorry to have it thought, as you may now be thinking, that Ilook on children as on puppy-dogs, who care only for play. Perhaps thatwas my idea when first I tried to lure David to my unaccustomed arms,and even for some time after, for if I am to be candid, I must own thatuntil he was three years old I sought merely to amuse him. God forgiveme, but I had only one day a week in which to capture him, and I wasvery raw at the business.

  I was about to say that David opened my eyes to the folly of it, butreally I think this was Irene's doing. Watching her with children Ilearned that partial as they are to fun they are moved almost moreprofoundly by moral excellence. So fond of babes was this little motherthat she had always room near her for one more, and often have I seenher in the Gardens, the centre of a dozen mites who gazed awestruck ather while she told them severely how little ladies and gentlemen behave.They were children of the well-to-pass, and she was from Drury Lane, butthey believed in her as the greatest of all authorities on little ladiesand gentlemen, and the more they heard of how these romantic creatureskeep themselves tidy and avoid pools and wait till they come to a gate,the more they admired them, though their faces showed how profoundlythey felt that to be little ladies and gentlemen was not for them. Youcan't think what hopeless little faces they were.

  Children are not at all like puppies, I have said. But do puppies careonly for play? That wistful look, which the merriest of them sometimeswear, I wonder whether it means that they would like to hear about thegood puppies?

  As you shall see, I invented many stories for David, practising thetelling of them by my fireside as if they were conjuring feats, whileIrene knew only one, but she told it as never has any other fairy-talebeen told in my hearing. It was the prettiest of them all, and wasrecited by the heroine.

  "Why were the king and queen not at home?" David would ask herbreathlessly.

  "I suppose," said Irene, thinking it out, "they was away buying thevictuals."

  She always told the story gazing into vacancy, so that David thought itwas really happening somewhere up the Broad Walk, and when she cameto its great moments her little bosom heaved. Never shall I forget theconcentrated scorn with which the prince said to the sisters, "Neitherof you ain't the one what wore the glass slipper."

  "And then--and then--and then--," said Irene, not artistically toincrease the suspense, but because it was all so glorious to her.

  "Tell me--tell me quick," cried David, though he knew the tale by heart.

  "She sits down like," said Irene, trembling in second-sight, "and shetries on the glass slipper, and it fits her to a T, and then the prince,he cries in a ringing voice, 'This here is my true love, Cinderella,what now I makes my lawful wedded wife.'"

  Then she would come out of her dream, and look round at the grandees ofthe Gardens with an extraordinary elation. "Her, as was only a kitchendrudge," she would say in a strange soft voice and with shining eyes,"but was true and faithful in word and deed, such was her reward."

  I am sure that had the fairy godmother appeared just then and touchedIrene with her wand, David would have been interested rather thanastonished. As for myself, I believe I have surprised this little girl'ssecret. She knows there are no fairy godmothers nowadays, but she hopesthat if she is always true and faithful she may some day turn into alady in word and deed, like the mistress whom she adores.

  It is a dead secret, a Drury Lane child's romance; but what an amount ofheavy artillery will be brought to bear against it in this sad London ofours. Not much chance for her, I suppose.

  Good luck to you, Irene.