by J. M. Barrie
“It isn’t that kind of pain,” Peter replied darkly.
“Then what kind is it?”
“Wendy, you are wrong about mothers.”
The underground house. (Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie, Retold for the Nursery by May Byron. Illustrated by Kathleen Atkins)
They all gathered round him in affright, so alarming was his agitation; and with a fine candour he told them what he had hitherto concealed.
“Long ago,” he said, “I thought like you that my mother would always keep the window open for me; so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred,3 for mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed.”
I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it scared them.
“Are you sure mothers are like that?”
“Yes.”
So this was the truth about mothers. The toads!
Still it is best to be careful; and no one knows so quickly as a child when he should give in. “Wendy, let us go home,” cried John and Michael together.
“Yes,” she said, clutching them.
“Not to-night?” asked the lost boys bewildered. They knew in what they called their hearts4 that one can get on quite well without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you can’t.
“At once,” Wendy replied resolutely, for the horrible thought had come to her: “Perhaps mother is in half mourning5 by this time.”
This dread made her forgetful of what must be Peter’s feelings, and she said to him rather sharply, “Peter, will you make the necessary arrangements?”
“If you wish it,” he replied, as coolly as if she had asked him to pass the nuts.
Not so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, that neither did he.
But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them off6 vindictively as fast as possible.
Then having given the necessary instructions to the redskins he returned to the home, where an unworthy scene had been enacted in his absence. Panic-stricken at the thought of losing Wendy the lost boys had advanced upon her threateningly.
“It will be worse than before she came,” they cried.
“We shan’t let her go.”
“Let’s keep her prisoner.”
“Ay, chain her up.”
In her extremity an instinct told her to which of them to turn.
“Tootles,” she cried, “I appeal to you.”
Was it not strange? She appealed to Tootles, quite the silliest one.
Grandly, however, did Tootles respond. For that one moment he dropped his silliness and spoke with dignity.
“I am Tootles,” he said, “and nobody minds me. But the first who does not behave to Wendy like an English gentleman I will blood7 him severely.”
He drew back his hanger;8 and for that instant his sun was at noon. The others held back uneasily. Then Peter returned, and they saw at once that they would get no support from him. He would keep no girl in the Neverland against her will.
“Wendy,” he said, striding up and down, “I have asked the redskins to guide you through the wood, as flying tires you so.”
“Thank you, Peter.”
“Then,” he continued, in the short sharp voice of one accustomed to be obeyed, “Tinker Bell will take you across the sea. Wake her, Nibs.”
Nibs had to knock twice before he got an answer, though Tink had really been sitting up in bed listening for some time.
“Who are you? How dare you? Go away,” she cried.
“You are to get up, Tink,” Nibs called, “and take Wendy on a journey.”
Of course Tink had been delighted to hear that Wendy was going; but she was jolly well determined not to be her courier, and she said so in still more offensive language. Then she pretended to be asleep again.
“She says she won’t,” Nibs exclaimed, aghast at such insubordination, whereupon Peter went sternly toward the young lady’s chamber.
“Tink,” he rapped out, “if you don’t get up and dress at once I will open the curtains, and then we shall all see you in your négligée.”
This made her leap to the floor. “Who said I wasn’t getting up?” she cried.
In the meantime the boys were gazing very forlornly at Wendy, now equipped with John and Michael for the journey. By this time they were dejected, not merely because they were about to lose her, but also because they felt that she was going off to something nice to which they had not been invited. Novelty was beckoning to them as usual.
Crediting them with a nobler feeling Wendy melted.
“Dear ones,” she said, “if you will all come with me I feel almost sure I can get my father and mother to adopt you.”
The invitation was meant specially for Peter; but each of the boys was thinking exclusively of himself, and at once they jumped with joy.
“But won’t they think us rather a handful?” Nibs asked in the middle of his jump.
“Oh no,” said Wendy, rapidly thinking it out, “it will only mean having a few beds in the drawing-room; they can be hidden behind the screens on first Thursdays.”9
“Peter, can we go?” they all cried imploringly. They took it for granted that if they went he would go also, but really they scarcely cared. Thus children are ever ready, when novelty knocks, to desert their dearest ones.10
“All right,” Peter replied with a bitter smile, and immediately they rushed to get their things.
“And now, Peter,” Wendy said, thinking she had put everything right, “I am going to give you your medicine before you go.” She loved to give them medicine, and undoubtedly gave them too much. Of course it was only water, but it was out of a calabash, and she always shook the bottle and counted the drops, which gave it a certain medicinal quality. On this occasion, however, she did not give Peter his draught, for just as she had prepared it, she saw a look on his face that made her heart sink.
“Get your things, Peter,” she cried, shaking.
“No,” he answered, pretending indifference, “I am not going with you, Wendy.”
“Yes, Peter.”
“No.”
To show that her departure would leave him unmoved, he skipped up and down the room, playing gaily on his heartless pipes. She had to run about after him, though it was rather undignified.
“To find your mother,” she coaxed.
Now, if Peter had ever quite had a mother, he no longer missed her. He could do very well without one. He had thought them out, and remembered only their bad points.
“No, no,” he told Wendy decisively; “perhaps she would say I was old, and I just want always to be a little boy and to have fun.”
“But, Peter—”
“No.”
And so the others had to be told.
“Peter isn’t coming.”
Peter not coming! They gazed blankly at him, their sticks over their backs, and on each stick a bundle. Their first thought was that if Peter was not going he had probably changed his mind about letting them go.
But he was far too proud for that. “If you find your mothers,”11 he said darkly, “I hope you will like them.”
The awful cynicism of this made an uncomfortable impression, and most of them began to look rather doubtful. After all, their faces said, were they not noodles to want to go?
“Now then,” cried Peter, “no fuss, no blubbering; good-bye, Wendy”; and he held out his hand cheerily, quite as if they must really go now, for he had something important to do.
She had to take his hand, and there was no indication that he would prefer a thimble.
“You will remember
about changing your flannels, Peter?” she said, lingering over him. She was always so particular about their flannels.
“Yes.”
“And you will take your medicine?”
“Yes.”
That seemed to be everything; and an awkward pause followed. Peter, however, was not the kind that breaks down before other people. “Are you ready, Tinker Bell?” he called out.
“Ay, ay.”
“Then lead the way.”
Tink darted up the nearest tree; but no one followed her, for it was at this moment that the pirates made their dreadful attack upon the redskins. Above, where all had been so still, the air was rent with shrieks and the clash of steel. Below, there was dead silence. Mouths opened and remained open. Wendy fell on her knees, but her arms were extended toward Peter. All arms were extended to him,12 as if suddenly blown in his direction; they were beseeching him mutely not to desert them. As for Peter, he seized his sword, the same he thought he had slain Barbecue with; and the lust of battle was in his eye.
1. “She is not dead, is she?” The observation, naïve as it may seem, makes an important point about storytelling and narration. Narrative depends on the idea of the past made present, and it uses the past tense (“There once was . . .”) to evoke what feels like a present moment. Hence the sentence “There was a lady also” does not imply that the lady is (now) dead. The twins are new to storytelling and have not yet grown accustomed to that use of the past tense. Still, the twins’ question is a profound one, reminding us of how all narratives are permeated with a sense of mortality and how many take up, directly or indirectly, the theme of death.
2. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world. The narrator will close his story with words about how children are gay, innocent, and heartless. Here, the children are positioned as creatures who run off to play (forgetting the adults who love them) and return as soon as they have needs only adults can meet. The narrator uses the first person plural, identifying with children (“off we skip” and “we have an entirely selfish time”), at the same time that he produces adult judgments about children (“attractive,” “selfish,” “noble”). The narrator slides from one pronoun position to another and then cuts short his childlike “confidence and certainty” with “distinctly adult judgements” (Rose 71). Barrie wrote poignantly about the divide between adults and children and his dawning recognition that he no longer had a “way” with children: “I remember more vividly than most things the day I first knew it was gone. The blow was struck by a little girl, with whom I had the smallest acquaintance, but I was doing my best to entertain her when suddenly I saw upon her face the look that means, ‘You are done with all this, my friend.’ It is the cruelest, most candid look that ever comes into the face of a child. I had to accept it as final, though I swear I had a way with them once. That was among the most rueful days of my life” (The Greenwood Hat, 151–52).
3. “but the window was barred.” In Barrie’s wartime play Dear Brutus (1917), one character tells another: “We who have made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the second chance. But . . . there is no second chance, not for most of us. When we reach the window it is Lock-Out Time. The iron bars are up for life.”
4. in what they called their hearts. The narrator adds a not-so-subtle dig at “heartless” children.
5. in half mourning. The Victorian era is particularly known for its complex set of rituals around mourning. For Queen Victoria’s own funeral, London was festooned in purple and white, since the queen herself hated black funerals. For Victorian women, there were three stages of mourning: deep or full mourning (a year and a day), second mourning (nine months), and half mourning (three to six months). The first phase required the wearing of dull black clothing without ornament and a weeping veil. In the next two phases, jewelry and other decorative touches were permitted. In the reference to Mrs. Darling’s grief, we are reminded again of how a story about childhood adventures and play is filled with allusions to loss, mourning, and sorrow. Yet in the screenplay for Peter Pan, Barrie follows Wendy’s comments about “Mother in half mourning” with a vision of Mr. and Mrs. Darling at home, “brightly practicing a new dance to a gramophone and not in mourning.”
6. Peter was killing them off. Peter has few reservations about killing grown-ups, just as he feels no great regrets about “thinning out” the ranks of the lost boys. Magical thinking, here as elsewhere, reigns supreme, so that ordinary acts—for example, the clapping of hands, laughter, and short breaths—become endowed with the power to give life or to end it.
7. blood. To cause blood to flow or to wet or smear with blood.
8. hanger. A short sword that was usually hung from a belt.
9. “first Thursdays.” Mrs. Darling’s “at home,” a set day on which she receives visitors without a formal invitation, is on the first Thursday of each month.
10. to desert their dearest ones. Rather than being innocents, healers, or agents of hope, children are seen as egocentric and unable to form lasting bonds. Barrie broke with Wordsworth’s view of children as those who bring “hope” with their “forward-looking thoughts.”
11. “If you find your mothers.” Early performances of Peter Pan included a scene called “The Beautiful Mothers.” In it, Wendy designs a series of tests to audition applicants for the position of mother for each of the lost boys. Initially there were to be twenty applicants onstage, then a mere dozen, and they were removed from the play, most likely for practical reasons—the scene was short and would have added significantly to the cast numbers.
12. All arms were extended to him. The chapter closes with a dramatic scene that reveals the theatrical origins of Peter and Wendy: sword raised, Peter is surrounded by the lost boys and the Darling children. His authority has been restored by the perils of the clash between pirates and redskins, and he is triumphant once again just at the moment when everyone is about to desert him.
CHAPTER 12
The Children Are Carried Off
The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof that the unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskins fairly is beyond the wit of the white man.
By all the unwritten laws of savage warfare1 it is always the redskin who attacks, and with the wiliness of his race he does it just before the dawn, at which time he knows the courage of the whites to be at its lowest ebb. The white men have in the meantime made a rude stockade on the summit of yonder undulating ground, at the foot of which a stream runs; for it is destruction to be too far from water. There they await the onslaught, the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers and treading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until just before the dawn. Through the long black night the savage scouts wriggle, snake-like, among the grass without stirring a blade. The brushwood closes behind them as silently as sand into which a mole has dived. Not a sound is to be heard, save when they give vent to a wonderful imitation of the lonely call of the coyote. The cry is answered by other braves; and some of them do it even better than the coyotes, who are not very good at it. So the chill hours wear on, and the long suspense is horribly trying to the paleface who has to live through it for the first time; but to the trained hand those ghastly calls and still ghastlier silences are but an intimation of how the night is marching.
That this was the usual procedure was so well known to Hook that in disregarding it he cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance.
The Piccaninnies, on their part, trusted implicitly to his honour, and their whole action of the night stands out in marked contrast to his. They left nothing undone that was consistent with the reputation of their tribe. With that alertness of the senses which is at once the marvel and despair of civilised peoples, they knew that the pirates were on the island from the moment one of them trod on a dry stick; and in an incredibly short space of time the coyote cries began. Every foot of ground between the spot where Hook had landed his forces and the home under the trees was stealthily
examined by braves wearing their moccasins with the heels in front. They found only one hillock with a stream at its base, so that Hook had no choice; here he must establish himself and wait for just before the dawn. Everything being thus mapped out with almost diabolical cunning, the main body of the redskins folded their blankets around them, and in the phlegmatic manner that is to them the pearl of manhood squatted above the children’s home, awaiting the cold moment when they should deal pale death.
Here dreaming, though wide-awake, of the exquisite tortures to which they were to put him at break of day, those confiding savages were found by the treacherous Hook. From the accounts afterwards supplied by such of the scouts as escaped the carnage, he does not seem even to have paused at the rising ground, though it is certain that in that grey light he must have seen it: no thought of waiting to be attacked appears from first to last to have visited his subtle mind; he would not even hold off till the night was nearly spent; on he pounded with no policy but to fall to. What could the bewil dered scouts do, masters as they were of every warlike artifice save this one, but trot helplessly after him, exposing themselves fatally to view, the while they gave pathetic utterance to the coyote cry.
Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors, and they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them. Fell from their eyes then the film through which they had looked at victory. No more would they torture at the stake. For them the happy hunting-grounds now. They knew it; but as their father’s sons they acquitted themselves. Even then they had time to gather in a phalanx that would have been hard to break had they risen quickly, but this they were forbidden to do by the traditions of their race. It is written that the noble savage must never express surprise in the presence of the white. Thus terrible as the sudden appearance of the pirates must have been to them, they remained stationary for a moment, not a muscle moving; as if the foe had come by invitation. Then, indeed, the tradition gallantly upheld, they seized their weapons, and the air was torn with the warcry; but it was now too late.