by J. M. Barrie
XXIII. Pilkington's
On attaining the age of eight, or thereabout, children fly away from theGardens, and never come back. When next you meet them they are ladiesand gentlemen holding up their umbrellas to hail a hansom.
Where the girls go to I know not, to some private place, I suppose, toput up their hair, but the boys have gone to Pilkington's. He is a manwith a cane. You may not go to Pilkington's in knickerbockers madeby your mother, make she ever so artfully. They must be realknickerbockers. It is his stern rule. Hence the fearful fascination ofPilkington's.
He may be conceived as one who, baiting his hook with realknickerbockers, fishes all day in the Gardens, which are to him but apool swarming with small fry.
Abhorred shade! I know not what manner of man thou art in the flesh,sir, but figure thee bearded and blackavised, and of a lean tortuoushabit of body, that moves ever with a swish. Every morning, I swear,thou readest avidly the list of male births in thy paper, and then arethy hands rubbed gloatingly the one upon the other. 'Tis fear of theeand thy gown and thy cane, which are part of thee, that makes thefairies to hide by day; wert thou to linger but once among their hauntsbetween the hours of Lock-out and Open Gates there would be left not onesingle gentle place in all the Gardens. The little people would flit.How much wiser they than the small boys who swim glamoured to thy craftyhook. Thou devastator of the Gardens, I know thee, Pilkington.
I first heard of Pilkington from David, who had it from Oliver Bailey.
This Oliver Bailey was one of the most dashing figures in the Gardens,and without apparent effort was daily drawing nearer the completionof his seventh year at a time when David seemed unable to get beyondhalf-past five. I have to speak of him in the past tense, for gone isOliver from the Gardens (gone to Pilkington's) but he is still a nameamong us, and some lordly deeds are remembered of him, as that hisfather shaved twice a day. Oliver himself was all on that scale.
His not ignoble ambition seems always to have been to be wrecked uponan island, indeed I am told that he mentioned it insinuatingly in hisprayers, and it was perhaps inevitable that a boy with such an outlookshould fascinate David. I am proud, therefore, to be able to state onwood that it was Oliver himself who made the overture.
On first hearing, from some satellite of Oliver's, of Wrecked Islands,as they are called in the Gardens, David said wistfully that he supposedyou needed to be very very good before you had any chance of beingwrecked, and the remark was conveyed to Oliver, on whom it madean uncomfortable impression. For a time he tried to evade it, butultimately David was presented to him and invited gloomily to sayit again. The upshot was that Oliver advertised the Gardens of hisintention to be good until he was eight, and if he had not been wreckedby that time, to be as jolly bad as a boy could be. He was naturally sobad that at the Kindergarten Academy, when the mistress ordered whoeverhad done the last naughty deed to step forward, Oliver's custom had beento step forward, not necessarily because he had done it, but because hepresumed he very likely had.
The friendship of the two dated from this time, and at first I thoughtOliver discovered generosity in hasting to David as to an equal; he alsowalked hand in hand with him, and even reproved him for delinquencieslike a loving elder brother. But 'tis a gray world even in the Gardens,for I found that a new arrangement had been made which reduced Oliver tolife-size. He had wearied of well-doing, and passed it on, so to speak,to his friend. In other words, on David now devolved the task of beinggood until he was eight, while Oliver clung to him so closely that theone could not be wrecked without the other.
When this was made known to me it was already too late to break thespell of Oliver, David was top-heavy with pride in him, and, faith, Ibegan to find myself very much in the cold, for Oliver was frankly boredby me and even David seemed to think it would be convenient if I wentand sat with Irene. Am I affecting to laugh? I was really distressed andlonely, and rather bitter; and how humble I became. Sometimes when thedog Joey is unable, by frisking, to induce Porthos to play with him,he stands on his hind legs and begs it of him, and I do believe Iwas sometimes as humble as Joey. Then David would insist on my beingsuffered to join them, but it was plain that he had no real occasion forme.
It was an unheroic trouble, and I despised myself. For years I hadbeen fighting Mary for David, and had not wholly failed though she wasadvantaged by the accident of relationship; was I now to be knocked outso easily by a seven year old? I reconsidered my weapons, and I foughtOliver and beat him. Figure to yourself those two boys become asfaithful to me as my coat-tails.
With wrecked islands I did it. I began in the most unpretentious way bytelling them a story which might last an hour, and favoured by many anunexpected wind it lasted eighteen months. It started as the wreck ofthe simple Swiss family who looked up and saw the butter tree, but soona glorious inspiration of the night turned it into the wreck of DavidA---- and Oliver Bailey. At first it was what they were to do when theywere wrecked, but imperceptibly it became what they had done. I spentmuch of my time staring reflectively at the titles of the boys' storiesin the booksellers' windows, whistling for a breeze, so to say, forI found that the titles were even more helpful than the stories. Wewrecked everybody of note, including all Homer's most taking charactersand the hero of Paradise Lost. But we suffered them not to land. Westripped them of what we wanted and left them to wander the high seasnaked of adventure. And all this was merely the beginning.
By this time I had been cast upon the island. It was not my ownproposal, but David knew my wishes, and he made it all right for me withOliver. They found me among the breakers with a large dog, which hadkept me afloat throughout that terrible night. I was the sole survivorof the ill-fated Anna Pink. So exhausted was I that they had to carryme to their hut, and great was my gratitude when on opening my eyes, Ifound myself in that romantic edifice instead of in Davy Jones's locker.As we walked in the Gardens I told them of the hut they had built; andthey were inflated but not surprised. On the other hand they looked forsurprise from me.
"Did we tell you about the turtle we turned on its back?" asked Oliver,reverting to deeds of theirs of which I had previously told them.
"You did."
"Who turned it?" demanded David, not as one who needed information butafter the manner of a schoolmaster.
"It was turned," I said, "by David A----, the younger of the twoyouths."
"Who made the monkeys fling cocoa-nuts at him?" asked the older of thetwo youths.
"Oliver Bailey," I replied.
"Was it Oliver," asked David sharply, "that found the cocoa-nut-treefirst?"
"On the contrary," I answered, "it was first observed by David,who immediately climbed it, remarking, 'This is certainly thecocos-nucifera, for, see, dear Oliver, the slender columns supportingthe crown of leaves which fall with a grace that no art can imitate.'"
"That's what I said," remarked David with a wave of his hand.
"I said things like that, too," Oliver insisted.
"No, you didn't then," said David.
"Yes, I did so."
"No, you didn't so."
"Shut up."
"Well, then, let's hear one you said."
Oliver looked appealingly at me. "The following," I announced, "isone that Oliver said: 'Truly dear comrade, though the perils of thesehappenings are great, and our privations calculated to break thestoutest heart, yet to be rewarded by such fair sights I would endurestill greater trials and still rejoice even as the bird on yonderbough.'"
"That's one I said!" crowed Oliver.
"I shot the bird," said David instantly.
"What bird?"
"The yonder bird."
"No, you didn't."
"Did I not shoot the bird?"
"It was David who shot the bird," I said, "but it was Oliver who sawby its multi-coloured plumage that it was one of the Psittacidae, anexcellent substitute for partridge."
"You didn't see that," said Oliver, rather swollen.
"Yes, I did."
; "What did you see?"
"I saw that."
"What?"
"You shut up."
"David shot it," I summed up, "and Oliver knew its name, but I ate it.Do you remember how hungry I was?"
"Rather!" said David.
"I cooked it," said Oliver.
"It was served up on toast," I reminded them.
"I toasted it," said David.
"Toast from the bread-fruit-tree," I said, "which (as you both remarkedsimultaneously) bears two and sometimes three crops in a year, and alsoaffords a serviceable gum for the pitching of canoes."
"I pitched mine best," said Oliver.
"I pitched mine farthest," said David.
"And when I had finished my repast," said I, "you amazed me by handingme a cigar from the tobacco-plant."
"I handed it," said Oliver.
"I snicked off the end," said David.
"And then," said I, "you gave me a light."
"Which of us?" they cried together.
"Both of you," I said. "Never shall I forget my amazement when I saw youget that light by rubbing two sticks together."
At this they waggled their heads. "You couldn't have done it!" saidDavid.
"No, David," I admitted, "I can't do it, but of course I know that allwrecked boys do it quite easily. Show me how you did it."
But after consulting apart they agreed not to show me. I was not showneverything.
David was now firmly convinced that he had once been wrecked on anisland, while Oliver passed his days in dubiety. They used to argue itout together and among their friends. As I unfolded the story Oliverlistened with an open knife in his hand, and David who was not allowedto have a knife wore a pirate-string round his waist. Irene in her usualinterfering way objected to this bauble and dropped disparaging remarksabout wrecked islands which were little to her credit. I was for defyingher, but David, who had the knack of women, knew a better way; hecraftily proposed that we "should let Irene in," in short, should wreckher, and though I objected, she proved a great success and recognisedthe yucca filamentosa by its long narrow leaves the very day she joinedus. Thereafter we had no more scoffing from Irene, who listened to thestory as hotly as anybody.
This encouraged us in time to let in David's father and mother, thoughthey never knew it unless he told them, as I have no doubt he did. Theywere admitted primarily to gratify David, who was very soft-hearted andknew that while he was on the island they must be missing him very muchat home. So we let them in, and there was no part of the story he likedbetter than that which told of the joyous meeting. We were in need ofanother woman at any rate, someone more romantic looking than Irene, andMary, I can assure her now, had a busy time of it. She was constantlybeing carried off by cannibals, and David became quite an adept atplucking her from the very pot itself and springing from cliff to cliffwith his lovely burden in his arms. There was seldom a Saturday in whichDavid did not kill his man.
I shall now provide the proof that David believed it all to be as trueas true. It was told me by Oliver, who had it from our hero himself. Ihad described to them how the savages had tattooed David's father, andOliver informed me that one night shortly afterward David was discoveredsoftly lifting the blankets off his father's legs to have a look at thebirds and reptiles etched thereon.
Thus many months passed with no word of Pilkington, and you may beasking where he was all this time. Ah, my friends, he was very busyfishing, though I was as yet unaware of his existence. Most suddenly Iheard the whirr of his hated reel, as he struck a fish. I remember thatgrim day with painful vividness, it was a wet day, indeed I think it hasrained for me more or less ever since. As soon as they joined me I sawfrom the manner of the two boys that they had something to communicate.Oliver nudged David and retired a few paces, whereupon David said to mesolemnly,
"Oliver is going to Pilkington's."
I immediately perceived that it was some school, but so little did Iunderstand the import of David's remark that I called out jocularly, "Ihope he won't swish you, Oliver."
Evidently I had pained both of them, for they exchanged glances andretired for consultation behind a tree, whence David returned to saywith emphasis,
"He has two jackets and two shirts and two knickerbockers, all realones."
"Well done, Oliver!" said I, but it was the wrong thing again, and oncemore they disappeared behind the tree. Evidently they decided that thetime for plain speaking was come, for now David announced bluntly:
"He wants you not to call him Oliver any longer."
"What shall I call him?"
"Bailey."
"But why?"
"He's going to Pilkington's. And he can't play with us any more afternext Saturday."
"Why not?"
"He's going to Pilkington's."
So now I knew the law about the thing, and we moved on together, Oliverstretching himself consciously, and methought that even David walkedwith a sedater air.
"David," said I, with a sinking, "are you going to Pilkington's?"
"When I am eight," he replied.
"And sha'n't I call you David then, and won't you play with me in theGardens any more?"
He looked at Bailey, and Bailey signalled him to be firm.
"Oh, no," said David cheerily.
Thus sharply did I learn how much longer I was to have of him. Strangethat a little boy can give so much pain. I dropped his hand and walkedon in silence, and presently I did my most churlish to hurt him byending the story abruptly in a very cruel way. "Ten years have elapsed,"said I, "since I last spoke, and our two heroes, now gay young men,are revisiting the wrecked island of their childhood. 'Did we wreckourselves,' said one, 'or was there someone to help us?' And the otherwho was the younger, replied, 'I think there was someone to help us,a man with a dog. I think he used to tell me stories in the KensingtonGardens, but I forget all about him; I don't remember even his name.'"
This tame ending bored Bailey, and he drifted away from us, but Davidstill walked by my side, and he was grown so quiet that I knew a stormwas brewing. Suddenly he flashed lightning on me. "It's not true," hecried, "it's a lie!" He gripped my hand. "I sha'n't never forget you,father."
Strange that a little boy can give so much pleasure.
Yet I could go on. "You will forget, David, but there was once a boy whowould have remembered."
"Timothy?" said he at once. He thinks Timothy was a real boy, and isvery jealous of him. He turned his back to me, and stood alone andwept passionately, while I waited for him. You may be sure I begged hispardon, and made it all right with him, and had him laughing and happyagain before I let him go. But nevertheless what I said was true. Davidis not my boy, and he will forget. But Timothy would have remembered.