The Little White Bird; Or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens

by J. M. Barrie

  XXII. Joey

  Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt inher maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted theirfortunate papa. The reason they do this is because every offer refusedby their mother means another pantomime to them. You see you can't trustto your father's taking you to the pantomime, but you can trust toevery one of the poor frenzied gentlemen for whom that lady has wept adelicious little tear on her lovely little cambric handkerchief. It ispretty (but dreadfully affecting) to see them on Boxing Night gatheringtogether the babies of their old loves. Some knock at but one door andbring a hansom, but others go from street to street in private 'buses,and even wear false noses to conceal the sufferings you inflict uponthem as you grew more and more like your sweet cruel mamma.

  So I took David to the pantomime, and I hope you follow my reasoning,for I don't. He went with the fairest anticipations, pausing on thethreshold to peer through the hole in the little house called "PayHere," which he thought was Red Riding Hood's residence, and askedpolitely whether he might see her, but they said she had gone to thewood, and it was quite true, for there she was in the wood gathering astick for her grandmother's fire. She sang a beautiful song about theBoys and their dashing ways, which flattered David considerably, but sheforgot to take away the stick after all. Other parts of the play werenot so nice, but David thought it all lovely, he really did.

  Yet he left the place in tears. All the way home he sobbed in thedarkest corner of the growler, and if I tried to comfort him he struckme.

  The clown had done it, that man of whom he expected things so fair. Hehad asked in a loud voice of the middling funny gentleman (then in themiddle of a song) whether he thought Joey would be long in coming, andwhen at last Joey did come he screamed out, "How do you do, Joey!" andwent into convulsions of mirth.

  Joey and his father were shadowing a pork-butcher's shop, pocketing thesausages for which their family has such a fatal weakness, and so whenthe butcher engaged Joey as his assistant there was soon not a sausageleft. However, this did not matter, for there was a box rather like anice-cream machine, and you put chunks of pork in at one end and turneda handle and they came out as sausages at the other end. Joey quiteenjoyed doing this, and you could see that the sausages were excellentby the way he licked his fingers after touching them, but soonthere were no more pieces of pork, and just then a dear little Irishterrier-dog came trotting down the street, so what did Joey do but popit into the machine and it came out at the other end as sausages.

  It was this callous act that turned all David's mirth to woe, and droveus weeping to our growler.

  Heaven knows I have no wish to defend this cruel deed, but as Joey toldme afterward, it is very difficult to say what they will think funny andwhat barbarous. I was forced to admit to him that David had perceivedonly the joyous in the pokering of the policeman's legs, and had calledout heartily "Do it again!" every time Joey knocked the pantaloon downwith one kick and helped him up with another.

  "It hurts the poor chap," I was told by Joey, whom I was agreeablysurprised to find by no means wanting in the more humane feelings, "andhe wouldn't stand it if there wasn't the laugh to encourage him."

  He maintained that the dog got that laugh to encourage him also.

  However, he had not got it from David, whose mother and father and nursecombined could not comfort him, though they swore that the dog was stillalive and kicking, which might all have been very well had not Davidseen the sausages. It was to inquire whether anything could be done toatone that in considerable trepidation I sent in my card to the clown,and the result of our talk was that he invited me and David to have teawith him on Thursday next at his lodgings.

  "I sha'n't laugh," David said, nobly true to the memory of the littledog, "I sha'n't laugh once," and he closed his jaws very tightly as wedrew near the house in Soho where Joey lodged. But he also gripped myhand, like one who knew that it would be an ordeal not to laugh.

  The house was rather like the ordinary kind, but there was a convenientsausage-shop exactly opposite (trust Joey for that) and we saw apoliceman in the street looking the other way, as they always do lookjust before you rub them. A woman wearing the same kind of clothes aspeople in other houses wear, told us to go up to the second floor, andshe grinned at David, as if she had heard about him; so up we went,David muttering through his clenched teeth, "I sha'n't laugh," and assoon as we knocked a voice called out, "Here we are again!" at which ashudder passed through David as if he feared that he had set himself animpossible task. In we went, however, and though the voice had certainlycome from this room we found nobody there. I looked in bewilderment atDavid, and he quickly put his hand over his mouth.

  It was a funny room, of course, but not so funny as you might expect;there were droll things in it, but they did nothing funny, you couldsee that they were just waiting for Joey. There were padded chairswith friendly looking rents down the middle of them, and a table and ahorse-hair sofa, and we sat down very cautiously on the sofa but nothinghappened to us.

  The biggest piece of furniture was an enormous wicker trunk, with a verylively coloured stocking dangling out at a hole in it, and a notice onthe top that Joey was the funniest man on earth. David tried to pull thestocking out of the hole, but it was so long that it never came to anend, and when it measured six times the length of the room he had tocover his mouth again.

  "I'm not laughing," he said to me, quite fiercely. He even managed notto laugh (though he did gulp) when we discovered on the mantelpiece aphotograph of Joey in ordinary clothes, the garments he wore before hebecame a clown. You can't think how absurd he looked in them. But Daviddidn't laugh.

  Suddenly Joey was standing beside us, it could not have been moresudden though he had come from beneath the table, and he was wearing hispantomime clothes (which he told us afterward were the only clothes hehad) and his red and white face was so funny that David made gurglingsounds, which were his laugh trying to force a passage.

  I introduced David, who offered his hand stiffly, but Joey, instead oftaking it, put out his tongue and waggled it, and this was so droll thatDavid had again to save himself by clapping his hand over his mouth.Joey thought he had toothache, so I explained what it really meant,and then Joey said, "Oh, I shall soon make him laugh," whereupon thefollowing conversation took place between them:

  "No, you sha'n't," said David doggedly.

  "Yes, I shall."

  "No, you sha'n't not."

  "Yes, I shall so."

  "Sha'n't, sha'n't, sha'n't."

  "Shall, shall, shall."

  "You shut up."

  "You're another."

  By this time Joey was in a frightful way (because he saw he was gettingthe worst of it), and he boasted that he had David's laugh in hispocket, and David challenged him to produce it, and Joey searched hispockets and brought out the most unexpected articles, including a duckand a bunch of carrots; and you could see by his manner that the simplesoul thought these were things which all boys carried loose in theirpockets.

  I daresay David would have had to laugh in the end, had there not been ahalf-gnawed sausage in one of the pockets, and the sight of it remindedhim so cruelly of the poor dog's fate that he howled, and Joey's heartwas touched at last, and he also wept, but he wiped his eyes with theduck.

  It was at this touching moment that the pantaloon hobbled in, alsodressed as we had seen him last, and carrying, unfortunately, atrayful of sausages, which at once increased the general gloom, for heannounced, in his squeaky voice, that they were the very sausages thathad lately been the dog.

  Then Joey seemed to have a great idea, and his excitement was soimpressive that we stood gazing at him. First, he counted the sausages,and said that they were two short, and he found the missing two up thepantaloon's sleeve. Then he ran out of the room and came back with thesausage-machine; and what do you think he did? He put all the sausagesinto the end of the machine that they had issued from, and turned thehandle backward, and then out came the dog a
t the other end!

  Can you picture the joy of David?

  He clasped the dear little terrier in his arms; and then we noticed thatthere was a sausage adhering to its tail. The pantaloon said we musthave put in a sausage too many, but Joey said the machine had not workedquite smoothly and that he feared this sausage was the dog's bark, whichdistressed David, for he saw how awkward it must be to a dog to have itsbark outside, and we were considering what should be done when the dogclosed the discussion by swallowing the sausage.

  After that, David had the most hilarious hour of his life, enteringinto the childish pleasures of this family as heartily as if he had beenbrought up on sausages, and knocking the pantaloon down repeatedly. Youmust not think that he did this viciously; he did it to please the oldgentleman, who begged him to do it, and always shook hands warmly andsaid "Thank you," when he had done it. They are quite a simple people.

  Joey called David and me "Sonny," and asked David, who addressed him as"Mr. Clown," to call him Joey. He also told us that the pantaloon's namewas old Joey, and the columbine's Josy, and the harlequin's Joeykin.

  We were sorry to hear that old Joey gave him a good deal of trouble.This was because his memory is so bad that he often forgets whether itis your head or your feet you should stand on, and he usually begins theday by standing on the end that happens to get out of bed first. Thushe requires constant watching, and the worst of it is, you dare not drawattention to his mistake, he is so shrinkingly sensitive about it. Nosooner had Joey told us this than the poor old fellow began to turnupside down and stood on his head; but we pretended not to notice, andtalked about the weather until he came to.

  Josy and Joeykin, all skirts and spangles, were with us by this time,for they had been invited to tea. They came in dancing, and danced offand on most of the time. Even in the middle of what they were sayingthey would begin to flutter; it was not so much that they meant todance as that the slightest thing set them going, such as sitting in adraught; and David found he could blow them about the room like piecesof paper. You could see by the shortness of Josy's dress that she wasvery young indeed, and at first this made him shy, as he always is whenintroduced formally to little girls, and he stood sucking his thumb, andso did she, but soon the stiffness wore off and they sat together on thesofa, holding each other's hands.

  All this time the harlequin was rotating like a beautiful fish, andDavid requested him to jump through the wall, at which he is such anadept, and first he said he would, and then he said better not, for thelast time he did it the people in the next house had made such a fuss.David had to admit that it must be rather startling to the people on theother side of the wall, but he was sorry.

  By this time tea was ready, and Josy, who poured out, remembered to askif you took milk with just one drop of tea in it, exactly as her motherwould have asked. There was nothing to eat, of course, except sausages,but what a number of them there were! hundreds at least, strings ofsausages, and every now and then Joey jumped up and played skipping ropewith them. David had been taught not to look greedy, even though he feltgreedy, and he was shocked to see the way in which Joey and old Joeyand even Josy eyed the sausages they had given him. Soon Josy developednobler feelings, for she and Joeykin suddenly fell madly in love witheach other across the table, but unaffected by this pretty picture, Joeycontinued to put whole sausages in his mouth at a time, and then rubbedhimself a little lower down, while old Joey secreted them about hisperson; and when David wasn't looking they both pounced on his sausages,and yet as they gobbled they were constantly running to the top of thestair and screaming to the servant to bring up more sausages.

  You could see that Joey (if you caught him with his hand in your plate)was a bit ashamed of himself, and he admitted to us that sausages were apassion with him.

  He said he had never once in his life had a sufficient number ofsausages. They had maddened him since he was the smallest boy. He toldus how, even in those days, his mother had feared for him, though fondof a sausage herself; how he had bought a sausage with his first penny,and hoped to buy one with his last (if they could not be got in anyother way), and that he always slept with a string of them beneath hispillow.

  While he was giving us these confidences, unfortunately, his eyes cameto rest, at first accidentally, then wistfully, then with a horrid gleamin them, on the little dog, which was fooling about on the top of thesausage-machine, and his hands went out toward it convulsively, whereatDavid, in sudden fear, seized the dog in one arm and gallantly clenchedhis other fist, and then Joey begged his pardon and burst into tears,each one of which he flung against the wall, where it exploded with abang.

  David refused to pardon him unless he promised on wood never to look inthat way at the dog again, but Joey said promises were nothing to himwhen he was short of sausages, and so his wisest course would be topresent the dog to David. Oh, the joy of David when he understood thatthe little dog he had saved was his very own! I can tell you he was nowin a hurry to be off before Joey had time to change his mind.

  "All I ask of you," Joey said with a break in his voice, "is to call himafter me, and always to give him a sausage, sonny, of a Saturday night."

  There was a quiet dignity about Joey at the end, which showed that hemight have risen to high distinction but for his fatal passion.

  The last we saw of him was from the street. He was waving his tongue atus in his attractive, foolish way, and Josy was poised on Joeykin's handlike a butterfly that had alighted on a flower. We could not exactly seeold Joey, but we saw his feet, and so feared the worst. Of course theyare not everything they should be, but one can't help liking them.