PETER BREAKS THROUGH
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow
up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old
she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran
with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather
delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh,
why can’t you remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed
between 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, and until Wendy came her mother was the
chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet
mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within
the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover
there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on
it that Wendy could never get, though there it 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 discovered simultaneously that they loved her,
and they all ran to her house to propose to her 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 about the box, and
in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could
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 that her mother not only loved him
but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks
and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know,
and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that
would have made any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at 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 cauliflowers dropped
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’s guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would
be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to 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 calculating expenses,
while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what
might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece
of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at
the beginning again.
“Now don’t interrupt,” he would 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 ten shillings, making two nine and
six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine 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’t speak, my own—and
the pound you lent to that man who came to the door—quiet, child—dot
and carry child—there, you’ve done it!—did I say nine nine seven? yes,
I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on
nine nine seven?”
“Of course we can, George,” she cried. But she was prejudiced in
Wendy’s favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.
“Remember mumps,” he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went
again. “Mumps one pound, that is what 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 fifteen six—don’t waggle your
finger—whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings”—and so on it went, and it
added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through,
with mumps reduced 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 might have seen the
three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom’s Kindergarten school,
accompanied by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just 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 milk the children
drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had
belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She
had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had
become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most
of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by
careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of
to their mistresses. She proved 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 a cough is a thing to have
no patience with and when it needs stocking around your throat. She
believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf,
and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs,
and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the
children 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 she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried
an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the
basement of Miss Fulsom’s school where the nurses wait. They sat on
forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference.
They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to
themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits to
the nursery from Mrs. Darling’s friends, but if they did come she first
whipped off Michael’s pinafore and put him into the one with blue
braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John’s hair.
No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr.
Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the
neighbours talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that
she did not admire him. “I know she admires you tremendously, George,”
Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the children
to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, 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 had sworn, when
engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of those romps!
And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly that
all you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you had dashed at
her you might have got it. There never was a simpler happier family
until the coming of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her
children’s minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after
her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things
straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many
articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake
(but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and
you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like
tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering
humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had
picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and 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, the
naughtiness and evil passions w