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Title: Peter Pan
        or the boy who would not grow up

Author: J. M. Barrie


        
Release date: March 7, 2026 [eBook #78131]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78131

Credits: Carla Foust, Mairi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER PAN ***




  +---------------------------+
  |  THE UNIFORM EDITION OF   |
  | THE PLAYS OF J. M. BARRIE |
  +---------------------------+

PETER PAN

OR

THE BOY WHO WOULD NOT
GROW UP




_THE WORKS OF J. M. BARRIE._


_NOVELS, STORIES, PLAYS, AND SKETCHES._

_Uniform Edition._

  AULD LICHT IDYLLS, BETTER DEAD.
  WHEN A MAN’S SINGLE.
  A WINDOW IN THRUMS, AN EDINBURGH ELEVEN.
  THE LITTLE MINISTER.
  SENTIMENTAL TOMMY.
  MY LADY NICOTINE, MARGARET OGILVY.
  TOMMY AND GRIZEL.
  THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD.
  PETER AND WENDY.

  _Also_

  HALF HOURS, DER TAG.
  ECHOES OF THE WAR.


_PLAYS._

_Uniform Edition._

  PETER PAN.
  MARY ROSE.
  DEAR BRUTUS.
  A KISS FOR CINDERELLA.
  ALICE SIT-BY-THE-FIRE.
  WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS.
  QUALITY STREET.
  THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON.
  ECHOES OF THE WAR.

  _Containing_: The Old Lady Shows Her Medals--The New Word--Barbara’s
  Wedding--A Well-Remembered Voice.

  HALF HOURS.

  _Containing_: Pantaloon--The Twelve-Pound Look--Rosalind--The Will.


_Others in Preparation._

_INDIVIDUAL EDITIONS._

  COURAGE.
  PETER PAN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.
      Illustrated by ARTHUR RACKHAM.
  PETER AND WENDY.
      Illustrated by F. D. BEDFORD.
  PETER PAN AND WENDY.
      Illustrated by MISS ATTWELL.
  TOMMY AND GRIZEL.
      Illustrated by BERNARD PARTRIDGE.
  MARGARET OGILVY.

⁂ For particulars concerning _The Thistle Edition_ of the Works of J.
M. Barrie, sold only by subscription, send for circular.


NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS




THE PLAYS OF
J. M. BARRIE


PETER PAN

OR

THE BOY WHO WOULD NOT
GROW UP


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK : : : : : : : : 1928




COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY
J. M. BARRIE

Printed in the United States of America

_All rights reserved under the International Copyright Act.
Performance forbidden and right of representation reserved.
Application for the right of performing this play must be
made to Charles Frohman, Inc., Empire Theatre, New York._

[Illustration]




TO THE FIVE

A DEDICATION


Some disquieting confessions must be made in printing at last the play
of _Peter Pan_; among them this, that I have no recollection of having
written it. Of that, however, anon. What I want to do first is to give
Peter to the Five without whom he never would have existed. I hope,
my dear sirs, that in memory of what we have been to each other you
will accept this dedication with your friend’s love. The play of Peter
is streaky with you still, though none may see this save ourselves. A
score of Acts had to be left out, and you were in them all. We first
brought Peter down, didn’t we, with a blunt-headed arrow in Kensington
Gardens? I seem to remember that we believed we had killed him, though
he was only winded, and that after a spasm of exultation in our
prowess the more soft-hearted among us wept and all of us thought of
the police. There was not one of you who would not have sworn as an
eye-witness to this occurence; no doubt I was abetting, but you used to
provide corroboration that was never given to you by me. As for myself,
I suppose I always knew that I made Peter by rubbing the five of you
violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame. That is
all he is, the spark I got from you.

We had good sport of him before we clipped him small to make him fit
the boards. Some of you were not born when the story began and yet
were hefty figures before we saw that the game was up. Do you remember
a garden at Burpham and the initiation there of No. 4 when he was six
weeks old, and three of you grudged letting him in so young? Have you,
No. 3, forgotten the white violets at the Cistercian abbey in which
we cassocked our first fairies (all little friends of St. Benedict),
or your cry to the Gods, ‘Do I just kill one pirate all the time?’ Do
you remember Marooners’ Hut in the haunted groves of Waverley, and the
St. Bernard dog in a tiger’s mask who so frequently attacked you, and
the literary record of that summer, _The Boy Castaways_, which is
so much the best and the rarest of this author’s works? What was it
that made us eventually give to the public in the thin form of a play
that which had been woven for ourselves alone? Alas, I know what it
was, I was losing my grip. One by one as you swung monkey-wise from
branch to branch in the wood of make-believe you reached the tree of
knowledge. Sometimes you swung back into the wood, as the unthinking
may at a cross-road take a familiar path that no longer leads to home;
or you perched ostentatiously on its boughs to please me, pretending
that you still belonged; soon you knew it only as the vanished wood,
for it vanishes if one needs to look for it. A time came when I saw
that No. 1, the most gallant of you all, ceased to believe that he was
ploughing woods incarnadine, and with an apologetic eye for me derided
the lingering faith of No. 2; when even No. 3 questioned gloomily
whether he did not really spend his nights in bed. There were still two
who knew no better, but their day was dawning. In these circumstances,
I suppose, was begun the writing of the play of Peter. That was a
quarter of a century ago, and I clutch my brows in vain to remember
whether it was a last desperate throw to retain the five of you for a
little longer, or merely a cold decision to turn you into bread and
butter.

This brings us back to my uncomfortable admission that I have no
recollection of writing the play of _Peter Pan_, now being published
for the first time so long after he made his bow upon the stage. You
had played it until you tired of it, and tossed it in the air and gored
it and left it derelict in the mud and went on your way singing other
songs; and then I stole back and sewed some of the gory fragments
together with a pen-nib. That is what must have happened, but I cannot
remember doing it. I remember writing the story of _Peter and Wendy_
many years after the production of the play, but I might have cribbed
that from some typed copy. I can haul back to mind the writing of
almost every other essay of mine, however forgotten by the pretty
public; but this play of Peter, no. Even my beginning as an amateur
playwright, that noble mouthful, _Bandelero the Bandit_, I remember
every detail of its composition in my school days at Dumfries. Not less
vivid is my first little piece, produced by Mr. Toole. It was called
_Ibsen’s Ghost_, and was a parody of the mightiest craftsman that ever
wrote for our kind friends in front. To save the management the cost
of typing I wrote out the ‘parts,’ after being told what parts were,
and I can still recall my first words, spoken so plaintively by a now
famous actress,--‘To run away from my second husband just as I ran
away from my first, it feels quite like old times.’ On the first night
a man in the pit found _Ibsen’s Ghost_ so diverting that he had to be
removed in hysterics. After that no one seems to have thought of it at
all. But what a man to carry about with one! How odd, too, that these
trifles should adhere to the mind that cannot remember the long job of
writing Peter. It does seem almost suspicious, especially as I have
not the original MS. of _Peter Pan_ (except a few stray pages), with
which to support my claim. I have indeed another MS., lately made, but
that ‘proves nothing.’ I know not whether I lost that original MS. or
destroyed it or happily gave it away. I talk of dedicating the play to
you, but how can I prove it is mine? How ought I to act if some other
hand, who could also have made a copy, thinks it worth while to contest
the cold rights? Cold they are to me now as that laughter of yours in
which Peter came into being long before he was caught and written down.
There is Peter still, but to me he lies sunk in the gay Black Lake.

Any one of you five brothers has a better claim to the authorship than
most, and I would not fight you for it, but you should have launched
your case long ago in the days when you most admired me, which were in
the first year of the play, owing to a rumour’s reaching you that my
spoils were one-and-sixpence a night. This was untrue, but it did give
me a standing among you. You watched for my next play with peeled eyes,
not for entertainment but lest it contained some chance witticism of
yours that could be challenged as collaboration; indeed I believe there
still exists a legal document, full of the Aforesaid and Henceforward
to be called Part-Author, in which for some such snatching I was tied
down to pay No. 2 one halfpenny daily throughout the run of the piece.

During the rehearsals of Peter (and it is evidence in my favour
that I was admitted to them) a depressed man in overalls, carrying
a mug of tea or a paint-pot, used often to appear by my side in the
shadowy stalls and say to me, ‘The gallery boys won’t stand it.’ He
then mysteriously faded away as if he were the theatre ghost. This
hopelessness of his is what all dramatists are said to feel at such
times, so perhaps he was the author. Again, a large number of children
whom I have seen playing Peter in their homes with careless mastership,
constantly putting in better words, could have thrown it off with ease.
It was for such as they that after the first production I had to add
something to the play at the request of parents (who thus showed that
they thought me the responsible person) about no one being able to fly
until the fairy dust had been blown on him; so many children having
gone home and tried it from their beds and needed surgical attention.

Notwithstanding other possibilities, I think I wrote Peter, and if so
it must have been in the usual inky way. Some of it, I like to think,
was done in that native place which is the dearest spot on earth to me,
though my last heart-beats shall be with my beloved solitary London
that was so hard to reach. I must have sat at a table with that great
dog waiting for me to stop, not complaining, for he knew it was thus we
made our living, but giving me a look when he found he was to be in the
play, with his sex changed. In after years when the actor who was Nana
had to go to the wars he first taught his wife how to take his place as
the dog till he came back, and I am glad that I see nothing funny in
this; it seems to me to belong to the play. I offer this obtuseness on
my part as my first proof that I am the author.

Some say that we are different people at different periods of our
lives, changing not through effort of will, which is a brave affair,
but in the easy course of nature every ten years or so. I suppose
this theory might explain my present trouble, but I don’t hold with
it; I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing,
as it were, in these lapses of time from one room to another, but all
in the same house. If we unlock the rooms of the far past we can peer
in and see ourselves, busily occupied in beginning to become you and
me. Thus, if I am the author in question the way he is to go should
already be showing in the occupant of my first compartment, at whom
I now take the liberty to peep. Here he is at the age of seven or so
with his fellow-conspirator Robb, both in glengarry bonnets. They are
giving an entertainment in a tiny old washing-house that still stands.
The charge for admission is preens, a bool, or a peerie (I taught you a
good deal of Scotch, so possibly you can follow that), and apparently
the culminating Act consists in our trying to put each other into the
boiler, though some say that I also addressed the spell-bound audience.
This washing-house is not only the theatre of my first play, but has a
still closer connection with Peter. It is the original of the little
house the Lost Boys built in the Never Land for Wendy, the chief
difference being that it never wore John’s hat as a chimney. If Robb
had owned such a hat I have no doubt that it would have been placed on
the washing-house.

Here is that boy again some four years older, and the reading he is
munching feverishly is about desert islands; he calls them wrecked
islands. He buys his sanguinary tales surreptitiously in penny
numbers. I see a change coming over him; he is blanching as he reads
in the high-class magazine, _Chatterbox_, a fulmination against such
literature, and sees that unless his greed for islands is quenched
he is for ever lost. With gloaming he steals out of the house, his
library bulging beneath his palpitating waistcoat. I follow like his
shadow, as indeed I am, and watch him dig a hole in a field at Pathhead
farm and bury his islands in it; it was ages ago, but I could walk
straight to that hole in the field now and delve for the remains. I
peep into the next compartment. There he is again, ten years older, an
undergraduate now and craving to be a real explorer, one of those who
do things instead of prating of them, but otherwise unaltered; he might
be painted at twenty on top of a mast, in his hand a spy-glass through
which he rakes the horizon for an elusive strand. I go from room to
room, and he is now a man, real exploration abandoned (though only
because no one would have him). Soon he is even concocting other plays,
and quaking a little lest some low person counts how many islands there
are in them. I note that with the years the islands grow more sinister,
but it is only because he has now to write with the left hand, the
right having given out; evidently one thinks more darkly down the left
arm. Go to the keyhole of the compartment where he and I join up, and
you may see us wondering whether they would stand one more island.
This journey through the house may not convince any one that I wrote
Peter, but it does suggest me as a likely person. I pause to ask myself
whether I read _Chatterbox_ again, suffered the old agony, and buried
that MS. of the play in a hole in a field.

Of course this is over-charged. Perhaps we do change; except a little
something in us which is no larger than a mote in the eye, and that,
like it, dances in front of us beguiling us all our days. I cannot cut
the hair by which it hangs.

The strongest evidence that I am the author is to be found, I think,
in a now melancholy volume, the aforementioned _The Boy Castaways_; so
you must excuse me for parading that work here. Officer of the Court,
call _The Boy Castaways_. The witness steps forward and proves to be
a book you remember well though you have not glanced at it these many
years. I pulled it out of a bookcase just now not without difficulty,
for its recent occupation has been to support the shelf above. I
suppose, though I am uncertain, that it was I and not you who hammered
it into that place of utility. It is a little battered and bent after
the manner of those who shoulder burdens, and ought (to our shame)
to remind us of the witnesses who sometimes get an hour off from the
cells to give evidence before his Lordship. I have said that it is
the rarest of my printed works, as it must be, for the only edition
was limited to two copies, of which one (there was always some devilry
in any matter connected with Peter) instantly lost itself in railway
carriage. This is the survivor. The idlers in court may have assumed
that it is a handwritten screed, and are impressed by its bulk. It is
printed by Constable’s (how handsomely you did us, dear Blaikie), it
contains thirty-five illustrations and is bound in cloth with a picture
stamped on the cover of the three eldest of you ‘setting out to be
wrecked.’ This record is supposed to be edited by the youngest of the
three, and I must have granted him that honour to make up for his being
so often lifted bodily out of our adventures by his nurse, who kept
breaking into them for the fell purpose of giving him a midday rest.
No. 4 rested so much at this period that he was merely an honorary
member of the band, waving his foot to you for luck when you set off
with bow and arrow to shoot his dinner for him; and one may rummage the
book in vain for any trace of No. 5. Here is the title-page, except
that you are numbered instead of named--

THE BOY
CASTAWAYS
OF BLACK LAKE ISLAND

Being a record of the Terrible
Adventures of Three Brothers
in the summer of 1901
faithfully set forth
by No. 3.

LONDON
Published by J. M. Barrie
in the Gloucester Road
1901

There is a long preface by No. 3 in which we gather your ages at this
first flight. ‘No. 1 was eight and a month, No. 2 was approaching his
seventh lustrum, and I was a good bit past four.’ Of his two elders,
while commending their fearless dispositions, the editor complains that
they wanted to do all the shooting and carried the whole equipment of
arrows inside their shirts. He is attractively modest about himself,
‘Of No. 3 I prefer to say nothing, hoping that the tale as it is
unwound will show that he was a boy of deeds rather than of words,’ a
quality which he hints did not unduly protrude upon the brows of Nos.
1 and 2. His preface ends on a high note, ‘I should say that the work
was in the first instance compiled as a record simply at which we could
whet our memories, and that it is now published for No. 4’s benefit. If
it teaches him by example lessons in fortitude and manly endurance we
shall consider that we were not wrecked in vain.’

Published to whet your memories. Does it whet them? Do you hear once
more, like some long-forgotten whistle beneath your window (Robb at
dawn calling me to the fishing!) the not quite mortal blows that still
echo in some of the chapter headings?--‘Chapter II, No. 1 teaches
Wilkinson (his master) a Stern Lesson--We Run away to Sea. Chapter
III, A Fearful Hurricane--Wreck of the “Anna Pink”--We go crazy from
Want of Food--Proposal to eat No. 3--Land Ahoy.’ Such are two chapters
out of sixteen. Are these again your javelins cutting tunes in the
blue haze of the pines; do you sweat as you scale the dreadful Valley
of Rolling Stones, and cleanse your hands of pirate blood by scouring
them carelessly in Mother Earth? Can you still make a fire (you could
do it once, Mr. Seton-Thompson taught us in, surely an odd place, the
Reform Club) by rubbing those sticks together? Was it the travail of
hut-building that subsequently advised Peter to find a ‘home under the
ground’? The bottle and mugs in that lurid picture, ‘Last night on
the Island,’ seem to suggest that you had changed from Lost Boys into
pirates, which was probably also a tendency of Peter’s. Listen again
to our stolen saw-mill, man’s proudest invention; when he made the
saw-mill he beat the birds for music in a wood.

The illustrations (full-paged) in _The Boy Castaways_ are all
photographs taken by myself; some of them indeed of phenomena that had
to be invented afterwards, for you were always off doing the wrong
things when I pressed the button. I see that we combined instruction
with amusement; perhaps we had given our kingly word to that effect.
How otherwise account for such wording to the pictures as these: ‘It
is undoubtedly,’ says No. 1 in a fir tree that is bearing unwonted
fruit, recently tied to it, ‘the _Cocos nucifera_, for observe the
slender columns supporting the crown of leaves which fall with a grace
that no art can imitate.’ ‘Truly,’ continues No. 1 under the same
tree in another forest as he leans upon his trusty gun, ‘though the
perils of these happenings are great, yet would I rejoice to endure
still greater privations to be thus rewarded by such wondrous studies
of Nature.’ He is soon back to the practical, however, ‘recognising
the Mango (_Magnifera indica_) by its lancet-shaped leaves and the
cucumber-shaped fruit.’ No. 1 was certainly the right sort of voyager
to be wrecked with, though if my memory fails me not, No. 2, to whom
these strutting observations were addressed, sometimes protested
because none of them was given to him. No. 3 being the author is in
surprisingly few of the pictures, but this, you may remember, was
because the lady already darkly referred to used to pluck him from our
midst for his siesta at 12 o’clock, which was the hour that best suited
the camera. With a skill on which he has never been complimented the
photographer sometimes got No. 3 nominally included in a wild-life
picture when he was really in a humdrum house kicking on the sofa.
Thus in a scene representing Nos. 1 and 2 sitting scowling outside the
hut it is untruly written that they scowled because ‘their brother was
within singing and playing on a barbaric instrument. The music,’ the
unseen No. 3 is represented as saying (obviously forestalling No. 1),
‘is rude and to a cultured ear discordant, but the songs like those of
the Arabs are full of poetic imagery.’ He was perhaps allowed to say
this sulkily on the sofa.

Though _The Boy Castaways_ has sixteen chapter-headings, there is no
other letterpress; an absence which possible purchasers might complain
of, though there are surely worse ways of writing a book than this.
These headings anticipate much of the play of _Peter Pan_, but there
were many incidents of our Kensington Gardens days that never get into
the book, such as our Antarctic exploits when we reached the Pole in
advance of our friend Captain Scott and cut our initials on it for
him to find, a strange foreshadowing of what was really to happen. In
_The Boy Castaways_ Captain Hook has arrived but is called Captain
Swarthy, and he seems from the pictures to have been a black man. This
character, as you do not need to be told, is held by those in the know
to be autobiographical. You had many tussels with him (though you
never, I think, got his right arm) before you reached the terrible
chapter (which might be taken from the play) entitled ‘We Board the
Pirate Ship at Dawn--A Rakish Craft--No. 1 Hew-them-Down and No. 2 of
the Red Hatchet--A Holocaust of Pirates--Rescue of Peter.’ (Hullo,
Peter rescued instead of rescuing others? I know what that means and so
do you, but we are not going to give away all our secrets.) The scene
of the Holocaust is the Black Lake (afterwards, when we let women in,
the Mermaids’ Lagoon). The pirate captain’s end was not in the mouth
of a crocodile though we had crocodiles on the spot (‘while No. 2 was
removing the crocodiles from the stream No. 1 shot a few parrots,
_Psittacidae_, for our evening meal’). I think our captain had divers
deaths owing to unseemly competition among you, each wanting to slay
him single-handed. On a special occasion, such as when No. 3 pulled out
the tooth himself, you gave the deed to him, but took it from him while
he rested. The only pictorial representation in the book of Swarthy’s
fate is in two parts. In one, called briefly ‘We string him up,’ Nos.
1 and 2, stern as Athos, are hauling him up a tree by a rope, his face
snarling as if it were a grinning mask (which indeed it was), and his
garments very like some of my own stuffed with bracken. The other, the
same scene next day, is called ‘The Vultures had Picked him Clean,’ and
tells its own tale.

The dog in _The Boy Castaways_ seems never to have been called Nana
but was evidently in training for that post. He originally belonged
to Swarthy (or to Captain Marryat?), and the first picture of him,
lean, skulking, and hunched (how did I get that effect?), ‘patrolling
the island’ in that monster’s interests, gives little indication of
the domestic paragon he was to become. We lured him away to the better
life, and there is, later, a touching picture, a clear forecast of the
Darling nursery, entitled ‘We trained the dog to watch over us while we
slept.’ In this he also is sleeping, in a position that is a careful
copy of his charges; indeed any trouble we had with him was because,
once he knew he was in a story, he thought his safest course was to
imitate you in everything you did. How anxious he was to show that he
understood the game, and more generous than you, he never pretended
that he was the one who killed Captain Swarthy. I must not imply that
he was entirely without initiative, for it was his own idea to bark
warningly a minute or two before twelve o’clock as a signal to No.
3 that his keeper was probably on her way for him (Disappearance of
No. 3); and he became so used to living in the world of Pretend that
when we reached the hut of a morning he was often there waiting for
us, looking, it is true, rather idiotic, but with a new bark he had
invented which puzzled us until we decided that he was demanding the
password. He was always willing to do any extra jobs, such as becoming
the tiger in mask, and when after a fierce engagement you carried home
that mask in triumph, he joined in the procession proudly and never
let on that the trophy had ever been part of him. Long afterwards he
saw the play from a box in the theatre, and as familiar scenes were
unrolled before his eyes I have never seen a dog so bothered. At one
matinee we even let him for a moment take the place of the actor who
played Nana, and I don’t know that any members of the audience ever
noticed the change, though he introduced some ‘business’ that was
new to them but old to you and me. Heigh-ho, I suspect that in this
reminiscence I am mixing him up with his successor, for such a one
there had to be, the loyal Newfoundland who, perhaps in the following
year, applied, so to say, for the part by bringing hedgehogs to the hut
in his mouth as offerings for our evening repasts. The head and coat
of him were copied for the Nana of the play.

They do seem to be emerging out of our island, don’t they, the little
people of the play, all except that sly one, the chief figure, who
draws farther and farther into the wood as we advance upon him? He so
dislikes being tracked, as if there were something odd about him, that
when he dies he means to get up and blow away the particle that will be
his ashes.

Wendy has not yet appeared, but she has been trying to come ever since
that loyal nurse cast the humorous shadow of woman upon the scene and
made us feel that it might be fun to let in a disturbing element.
Perhaps she would have bored her way in at last whether we wanted her
or not. It may be that even Peter did not really bring her to the
Never Land of his free will, but merely pretended to do so because she
would not stay away. Even Tinker Bell had reached our island before we
left it. It was one evening when we climbed the wood carrying No. 4 to
show him what the trail was like by twilight. As our lanterns twinkled
among the leaves No. 4 saw a twinkle stand still for a moment and he
waved his foot gaily to it, thus creating Tink. It must not be thought,
however, that there were any other sentimental passages between No.
4 and Tink; indeed, as he got to know her better he suspected her of
frequenting the hut to see what we had been having for supper, and to
partake of the same, and he pursued her with malignancy.

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open
a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you
don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more
interesting. It is in this way that I get my desultory reading, which
includes the few stray leaves of the original MS. of Peter that I have
said I do possess, though even they, when returned to the drawer, are
gone again, as if that touch of devilry lurked in them still. They show
that in early days I hacked at and added to the play. In the drawer I
find some scraps of Mr. Crook’s delightful music, and other incomplete
matter relating to Peter. Here is the reply of a boy whom I favoured
with a seat in my box and injudiciously asked at the end what he had
liked best. ‘What I think I liked best,’ he said, ‘was tearing up the
programme and dropping the bits on people’s heads.’ Thus am I often
laid low. A copy of my favourite programme of the play is still in the
drawer. In the first or second year of Peter No. 4 could not attend
through illness, so we took the play to his nursery, far away in the
country, an array of vehicles almost as glorious as a travelling
circus; the leading parts were played by the youngest children in
the London company, and No. 4, aged five, looked on solemnly at the
performance from his bed and never smiled once. That was my first and
only appearance on the real stage, and this copy of the programme shows
I was thought so meanly of as an actor that they printed my name in
smaller letters than the others.

I have said little here of Nos. 4 and 5, and it is high time I had
finished. They had a long summer day, and I turn round twice and now
they are off to school. On Monday, as it seems, I was escorting No. 5
to a children’s party and brushing his hair in the ante-room; and by
Thursday he is placing me against the wall of an underground station
and saying, ‘Now I am going to get the tickets; don’t move till I come
back for you or you’ll lose yourself.’ No. 4 jumps from being astride
my shoulders fishing, I knee-deep in the stream, to becoming, while
still a schoolboy, the sternest of my literary critics. Anything he
shook his head over I abandoned, and conceivably the world has thus
been deprived of masterpieces. There was for instance an unfortunate
little tragedy which I liked until I foolishly told No. 4 its subject,
when he frowned and said he had better have a look at it. He read it,
and then, patting me on the back, as only he and No. 1 could touch me,
said, ‘You know you can’t do this sort of thing.’ End of a tragedian.
Sometimes, however, No. 4 liked my efforts, and I walked in the azure
that day when he returned _Dear Brutus_ to me with the comment ‘Not
so bad.’ In earlier days, when he was ten, I offered him the MS. of
my book _Margaret Ogilvy_. ‘Oh, thanks,’ he said almost immediately,
and added, ‘Of course my desk is awfully full.’ I reminded him that he
could take out some of its more ridiculous contents. He said, ‘I have
read it already in the book.’ This I had not known, and I was secretly
elated, but I said that people sometimes liked to preserve this kind of
thing as a curiosity. He said ‘Oh’ again. I said tartly that he was not
compelled to take it if he didn’t want it. He said, ‘Of course I want
it, but my desk----’ Then he wriggled out of the room and came back in
a few minutes dragging in No. 5 and announcing triumphantly, ‘No. 5
will have it.’

The rebuffs I have got from all of you! They were especially crushing
in those early days when one by one you came out of your belief in
fairies and lowered on me as the deceiver. My grandest triumph, the
best thing in the play of _Peter Pan_ (though it is not in it), is
that long after No. 4 had ceased to believe, I brought him back to the
faith for at least two minutes. We were on our way in a boat to fish
the Outer Hebrides (where we caught _Mary Rose_), and though it was a
journey of days he wore his fishing basket on his back all the time,
so as to be able to begin at once. His one pain was the absence of
Johnny Mackay, for Johnny was the loved gillie of the previous summer
who had taught him everything that is worth knowing (which is a matter
of flies) but could not be with us this time as he would have had to
cross and re-cross Scotland to reach us. As the boat drew near the Kyle
of Lochalsh pier I told Nos. 4 and 5 it was such a famous wishing pier
that they had now but to wish and they should have. No. 5 believed at
once and expressed a wish to meet himself (I afterwards found him on
the pier searching faces confidently), but No. 4 thought it more of
my untimely nonsense and doggedly declined to humour me. ‘Whom do you
want to see most, No. 4?’ ‘Of course I would like most to see Johnny
Mackay.’ ‘Well, then, wish for him.’ ‘Oh, rot.’ ‘It can’t do any harm
to wish.’ Contemptuously he wished, and as the ropes were thrown on the
pier he saw Johnny waiting for him, loaded with angling paraphernalia.
I know no one less like a fairy than Johnny Mackay, but for two
minutes No. 4 was quivering in another world than ours. When he came
to he gave me a smile which meant that we understood each other, and
thereafter neglected me for a month, being always with Johnny. As I
have said, this episode is not in the play; so though I dedicate _Peter
Pan_ to you I keep the smile, with the few other broken fragments of
immortality that have come my way.




ACT I




ACT I

THE NURSERY


_The night nursery of the Darling family, which is the scene of our
opening Act, is at the top of a rather depressed street in Bloomsbury.
We have a right to place it where we will, and the reason Bloomsbury is
chosen is that Mr. Roget once lived there. So did we in days when his_
Thesaurus _was our only companion in London; and we whom he has helped
to wend our way through life have always wanted to pay him a little
compliment. The Darlings therefore lived in Bloomsbury._

_It is a corner house whose top window, the important one, looks upon a
leafy square from which Peter used to fly up to it, to the delight of
three children and no doubt the irritation of passers-by. The street is
still there, though the steaming sausage shop has gone; and apparently
the same cards perch now as then over the doors, inviting homeless
ones to come and stay with the hospitable inhabitants. Since the days
of the Darlings, however, a lick of paint has been applied; and our
corner house in particular, which has swallowed its neighbour, blooms
with awful freshness as if the colours had been discharged upon it
through a hose. Its card now says ‘No children,’ meaning maybe that the
goings-on of Wendy and her brothers have given the house a bad name. As
for ourselves, we have not been in it since we went back to reclaim our
old_ Thesaurus.

_That is what we call the Darling house, but you may dump it down
anywhere you like, and if you think it was your house you are very
probably right. It wanders about London looking for anybody in need of
it, like the little house in the Never Land._

_The blind (which is what Peter would have called the theatre curtain
if he had ever seen one) rises on that top room, a shabby little room
if Mrs. Darling had not made it the hub of creation by her certainty
that such it was, and adorned it to match with a loving heart and all
the scrapings of her purse. The door on the right leads into the day
nursery, which she has no right to have, but she made it herself with
nails in her mouth and a paste-pot in her hand. This is the door the
children will come in by. There are three beds and (rather oddly) a
large dog-kennel; two of these beds, with the kennel, being on the left
and the other on the right. The coverlets of the beds (if visitors are
expected) are made out of Mrs. Darling’s wedding-gown, which was such
a grand affair that it still keeps them pinched. Over each bed is a
china house, the size of a linnet’s nest, containing a night-light. The
fire, which is on our right, is burning as discreetly as if it were in
custody, which in a sense it is, for supporting the mantelshelf are
two wooden soldiers, home-made, begun by Mr. Darling, finished by Mrs.
Darling, repainted (unfortunately) by John Darling. On the fire-guard
hang incomplete parts of children’s night attire. The door the parents
will come in by is on the left. At the back is the bathroom door, with
a cuckoo clock over it; and in the centre is the window, which is at
present ever so staid and respectable, but half an hour hence (namely
at 6.30 p.m.) will be able to tell a very strange tale to the police._

_The only occupant of the room at present is Nana the nurse, reclining,
not as you might expect on the one soft chair, but on the floor. She is
a Newfoundland dog, and though this may shock the grandiose, the not
exactly affluent will make allowances. The Darlings could not afford
to have a nurse, they could not afford indeed to have children; and
now you are beginning to understand how they did it. Of course Nana has
been trained by Mrs. Darling, but like all treasures she was born to
it. In this play we shall see her chiefly inside the house, but she was
just as exemplary outside, escorting the two elders to school with an
umbrella in her mouth, for instance, and butting them back into line if
they strayed._

_The cuckoo clock strikes six, and Nana springs into life. This first
moment in the play is tremendously important, for if the actor playing
Nana does not spring properly we are undone. She will probably be
played by a boy, if one clever enough can be found, and must never
be on two legs except on those rare occasions when an ordinary nurse
would be on four. This Nana must go about all her duties in a most
ordinary manner, so that you know in your bones that she performs them
just so every evening at six; naturalness must be her passion; indeed,
it should be the aim of every one in the play, for which she is now
setting the pace. All the characters, whether grown-ups or babes, must
wear a child’s outlook on life as their only important adornment. If
they cannot help being funny they are begged to go away. A good motto
for all would be ‘The little less, and how much it is.’_

_Nana, making much use of her mouth, ‘turns down’ the beds, and carries
the various articles on the fire-guard across to them. Then pushing the
bathroom door open, she is seen at work on the taps preparing Michael’s
bath; after which she enters from the day nursery with the youngest of
the family on her back._

MICHAEL (_obstreperous_). I won’t go to bed, I won’t, I won’t. Nana, it
isn’t six o’clock yet. Two minutes more, please, one minute more? Nana,
I won’t be bathed, I tell you I will not be bathed.

  (_Here the bathroom door closes on them, and_ MRS. DARLING, _who
  has perhaps heard his cry, enters the nursery. She is the loveliest
  lady in Bloomsbury, with a sweet mocking mouth, and as she is
  going out to dinner to-night she is already wearing her evening
  gown because she knows her children like to see her in it. It is
  a delicious confection made by herself out of nothing and other
  people’s mistakes. She does not often go out to dinner, preferring
  when the children are in bed to sit beside them tidying up their
  minds, just as if they were drawers. If_ WENDY _and the boys could
  keep awake they might see her repacking into their proper places the
  many articles of the mind that have strayed during the day, lingering
  humorously over some of their contents, wondering where on earth they
  picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet,
  pressing this to her cheek and hurriedly stowing that out of sight.
  When they wake in the morning the naughtinesses with which they went
  to bed are not, alas, blown away, but they are placed at the bottom
  of the drawer; and on the top, beautifully aired, are their prettier
  thoughts ready for the new day._

  _As she enters the room she is startled to see a strange little face
  outside the window and a hand groping as if it wanted to come in._)

MRS DARLING. Who are you? (_The unknown disappears; she hurries to the
window._) No one there. And yet I feel sure I saw a face. My children!
(_She throws open the bathroom door and_ MICHAEL’S _head appears gaily
over the bath. He splashes; she throws kisses to him and closes the
door. ‘Wendy, John,’ she cries, and gets reassuring answers from the
day nursery. She sits down, relieved, on_ WENDY’S _bed; and_ WENDY
_and_ JOHN _come in, looking their smallest size, as children tend to
do to a mother suddenly in fear for them_.)

JOHN (_histrionically_). We are doing an act; we are playing at being
you and father. (_He imitates the only father who has come under his
special notice._) A little less noise there.

WENDY. Now let us pretend we have a baby.

JOHN (_good-naturedly_). I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that
you are now a mother. (WENDY _gives way to ecstasy_.) You have missed
the chief thing; you haven’t asked, ‘boy or girl?’

WENDY. I am so glad to have one at all, I don’t care which it is.

JOHN (_crushingly_). That is just the difference between gentlemen and
ladies. Now you tell me.

WENDY. I am happy to acquaint you, Mr. Darling, you are now a father.

JOHN. Boy or girl?

WENDY (_presenting herself_). Girl.

JOHN. Tuts.

WENDY. You horrid.

JOHN. Go on.

WENDY. I am happy to acquaint you, Mr. Darling, you are again a father.

JOHN. Boy or girl?

WENDY. Boy. (JOHN _beams_.) Mummy, it’s hateful of him.

  (MICHAEL _emerges from the bathroom in_ JOHN’S _old pyjamas and
  giving his face a last wipe with the towel_.)

MICHAEL (_expanding_). Now, John, have me.

JOHN. We don’t want any more.

MICHAEL (_contracting_). Am I not to be born at all?

JOHN. Two is enough.

MICHAEL (_wheedling_). Come, John; boy, John. (_Appalled_) Nobody wants
me!

MRS. DARLING. I do.

MICHAEL (_with a glimmer of hope_). Boy or girl?

MRS. DARLING (_with one of those happy thoughts of hers_). Boy.

  (_Triumph of_ MICHAEL; _discomfiture of_ JOHN. MR. DARLING _arrives,
  in no mood unfortunately to gloat over this domestic scene. He is
  really a good man as bread-winners go, and it is hard luck for
  him to be propelled into the room now, when if we had brought him
  in a few minutes earlier or later he might have made a fairer
  impression. In the city where he sits on a stool all day, as fixed
  as a postage stamp, he is so like all the others on stools that you
  recognise him not by his face but by his stool, but at home the way
  to gratify him is to say that he has a distinct personality. He is
  very conscientious, and in the days when_ MRS. DARLING _gave up
  keeping the house books correctly and drew pictures instead (which
  he called her guesses), he did all the totting up for her, holding
  her hand while he calculated whether they could have Wendy or not,
  and coming down on the right side. It is with regret, therefore,
  that we introduce him as a tornado, rushing into the nursery in
  evening dress, but without his coat, and brandishing in his hand a
  recalcitrant white tie._)

MR. DARLING (_implying that he has searched for her everywhere and that
the nursery is a strange place in which to find her_). Oh, here you
are, Mary.

MRS. DARLING (_knowing at once what is the matter_). What is the
matter, George dear?

MR. DARLING (_as if the word were monstrous_). Matter! This tie, it
will not tie. (_He waxes sarcastic._) Not round my neck. Round the
bed-post, oh yes; twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post,
but round my neck, oh dear no; begs to be excused.

MICHAEL (_in a joyous transport_). Say it again, father, say it again!

MR. DARLING (_witheringly_). Thank you. (_Goaded by a suspiciously
crooked smile on_ MRS. DARLING’S _face_) I warn you, Mary, that unless
this tie is round my neck we don’t go out to dinner to-night, and if I
don’t go out to dinner to-night I never go to the office again, and if
I don’t go to the office again you and I starve, and our children will
be thrown into the streets.

  (_The children blanch as they grasp the gravity of the situation._)

MRS. DARLING. Let me try, dear.

  (_In a terrible silence their progeny cluster round them. Will she
  succeed? Their fate depends on it. She fails--no, she succeeds.
  In another moment they are wildly gay, romping round the room on
  each other’s shoulders. Father is even a better horse than mother._
  MICHAEL _is dropped upon his bed_, WENDY _retires to prepare for
  hers_, JOHN _runs from_ NANA, _who has reappeared with the bath
  towel_.)

JOHN (_rebellious_). I won’t be bathed. You needn’t think it.

MR. DARLING (_in the grand manner_). Go and be bathed at once, sir.

  (_With bent head_ JOHN _follows_ NANA _into the bathroom_. MR.
  DARLING _swells_.)

MICHAEL (_as he is put between the sheets_). Mother, how did you get to
know me?

MR. DARLING. A little less noise there.

MICHAEL (_growing solemn_). At what time was I born, mother?

MRS. DARLING. At two o’clock in the night-time, dearest.

MICHAEL. Oh, mother, I hope I didn’t wake you.

MRS. DARLING. They are rather sweet, don’t you think, George?

MR. DARLING (_doting_). There is not their equal on earth, and they are
ours, ours!

  (_Unfortunately_ NANA _has come from the bathroom for a sponge and
  she collides with his trousers, the first pair he has ever had with
  braid on them_.)

MR. DARLING. Mary, it is too bad; just look at this; covered with
hairs. Clumsy, clumsy!

  (NANA _goes, a drooping figure_.)

MRS. DARLING. Let me brush you, dear.

  (_Once more she is successful. They are now by the fire, and_ MICHAEL
  _is in bed doing idiotic things with a teddy bear_.)

MR. DARLING (_depressed_). I sometimes think, Mary, that it is a
mistake to have a dog for a nurse.

MRS. DARLING. George, Nana is a treasure.

MR. DARLING. No doubt; but I have an uneasy feeling at times that she
looks upon the children as puppies.

MRS. DARLING (_rather faintly_). Oh no, dear one, I am sure she knows
they have souls.

MR. DARLING (_profoundly_). I wonder, I wonder.

  (_The opportunity has come for her to tell him of something that is
  on her mind._)

MRS. DARLING. George, we must keep Nana. I will tell you why. (_Her
seriousness impresses him._) My dear, when I came into this room
to-night I saw a face at the window.

MR. DARLING (_incredulous_). A face at the window, three floors up?
Pooh!

MRS. DARLING. It was the face of a little boy; he was trying to get in.
George, this is not the first time I have seen that boy.

MR. DARLING (_beginning to think that this may be a man’s job_). Oho!

MRS. DARLING (_making sure that_ MICHAEL _does not hear_). The first
time was a week ago. It was Nana’s night out, and I had been drowsing
here by the fire when suddenly I felt a draught, as if the window were
open. I looked round and I saw that boy--in the room.

MR. DARLING. In the room?

MRS. DARLING. I screamed. Just then Nana came back and she at once
sprang at him. The boy leapt for the window. She pulled down the sash
quickly, but was too late to catch him.

MR. DARLING (_who knows he would not have been too late_). I thought so!

MRS. DARLING. Wait. The boy escaped, but his shadow had not time to get
out; down came the window and cut it clean off.

MR. DARLING (_heavily_). Mary, Mary, why didn’t you keep that shadow?

MRS. DARLING (_scoring_). I did. I rolled it up, George; and here it is.

  (_She produces it from a drawer. They unroll and examine the flimsy
  thing, which is not more material than a puff of smoke, and if let
  go would probably float into the ceiling without discolouring it.
  Yet it has human shape. As they nod their heads over it they present
  the most satisfying picture on earth, two happy parents conspiring
  cosily by the fire for the good of their children_.)

MR. DARLING. It is nobody I know, but he does look a scoundrel.

MRS. DARLING. I think he comes back to get his shadow, George.

MR. DARLING (_meaning that the miscreant has now a father to deal
with_). I dare say. (_He sees himself telling the story to the other
stools at the office._) There is money in this, my love. I shall take
it to the British Museum to-morrow and have it priced.

  (_The shadow is rolled up and replaced in the drawer._)

MRS. DARLING (_like a guilty person_). George, I have not told you all;
I am afraid to.

MR. DARLING (_who knows exactly the right moment to treat a woman as a
beloved child_). Cowardy, cowardy custard.

MRS. DARLING (_pouting_). No, I’m not.

MR. DARLING. Oh yes, you are.

MRS. DARLING. George, I’m not.

MR. DARLING. Then why not tell? (_Thus cleverly soothed she goes on._)

MRS. DARLING. The boy was not alone that first time. He was accompanied
by--I don’t know how to describe it; by a ball of light, not as big as
my fist, but it darted about the room like a living thing.

MR. DARLING (_though open-minded_). That is very unusual. It escaped
with the boy?

MRS DARLING. Yes. (_Sliding her hand into his._) George, what can all
this mean?

MR. DARLING (_ever ready_). What indeed!

  (_This intimate scene is broken by the return of_ NANA _with a bottle
  in her mouth_.)

MRS. DARLING (_at once dissembling_). What is that, Nana? Ah, of
course; Michael, it is your medicine.

MICHAEL (_promptly_). Won’t take it.

MR. DARLING (_recalling his youth_). Be a man, Michael.

MICHAEL. Won’t.

MRS. DARLING (_weakly_). I’ll get you a lovely chocky to take after it.
(_She leaves the room, though her husband calls after her._)

MR. DARLING. Mary, don’t pamper him. When I was your age, Michael, I
took medicine without a murmur. I said ‘Thank you, kind parents, for
giving me bottles to make me well.’

  (WENDY, _who has appeared in her nightgown, hears this and believes_.)

WENDY. That medicine you sometimes take is much nastier, isn’t it,
father?

MR. DARLING (_valuing her support_). Ever so must nastier. And as an
example to you, Michael, I would take it now (_thankfully_) if I hadn’t
lost the bottle.

WENDY (_always glad to be of service_). I know where it is, father.
I’ll fetch it.

  (_She is gone before he can stop her. He turns for help to_ JOHN,
  _who has come from the bathroom attired for bed_.)

MR. DARLING. John, it is the most beastly stuff. It is that sticky
sweet kind.

JOHN (_who is perhaps still playing at parents_). Never mind, father,
it will soon be over.

  (_A spasm of ill-will to_ JOHN _cuts through_ MR. DARLING, _and is
  gone_. WENDY _returns panting_.)

WENDY. Here it is, father; I have been as quick as I could.

MR. DARLING (_with a sarcasm that is completely thrown away on her_).
You have been wonderfully quick, precious quick!

  (_He is now at the foot of_ MICHAEL’S _bed_, NANA _is by its side,
  holding the medicine spoon insinuatingly in her mouth_.)

WENDY (_proudly, as she pours out_ MR. DARLING’S _medicine_). Michael,
now you will see how father takes it.

MR. DARLING (_hedging_). Michael first.

MICHAEL (_full of unworthy suspicions_). Father first.

MR. DARLING. It will make me sick, you know.

JOHN (_lightly_). Come on, father.

MR. DARLING. Hold your tongue, sir.

WENDY (_disturbed_). I thought you took it quite easily, father, saying
‘Thank you, kind parents, for----’

MR. DARLING. That is not the point; the point is that there is more in
my glass than in Michael’s spoon. It isn’t fair, I swear though it were
with my last breath, it is not fair.

MICHAEL (_coldly_). Father, I’m waiting.

MR. DARLING. It’s all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting.

MICHAEL. Father’s a cowardy custard.

MR. DARLING. So are you a cowardy custard.

  (_They are now glaring at each other._)

MICHAEL. I am not frightened.

MR. DARLING. Neither am I frightened.

MICHAEL. Well, then, take it.

MR. DARLING. Well, then, you take it.

WENDY (_butting in again_). Why not take it at the same time?

MR. DARLING (_haughtily_). Certainly. Are you ready, Michael?

WENDY (_as nothing has happened_). One--two--three.

  (MICHAEL _partakes, but_ MR. DARLING _resorts to hanky-panky_.)

JOHN. Father hasn’t taken his!

  (MICHAEL _howls_.)

WENDY (_inexpressibly pained_). Oh father!

MR. DARLING (_who has been hiding the glass behind him_). What do you
mean by ‘oh father’? Stop that row, Michael. I meant to take mine but
I--missed it. (NANA _shakes her head sadly over him, and goes into
the bathroom. They are all looking as if they did not admire him, and
nothing so dashes a temperamental man._) I say, I have just thought
of a splendid joke. (_They brighten._) I shall pour my medicine
into Nana’s bowl, and she will drink it thinking it is milk! (_The
pleasantry does not appeal, but he prepares the joke, listening for
appreciation._)

WENDY. Poor darling Nana!

MR. DARLING. You silly little things; to your beds every one of you; I
am ashamed of you.

  (_They steal to their beds as_ MRS. DARLING _returns with the
  chocolate_.)

MRS. DARLING. Well, is it all over?

MICHAEL. Father didn’t----(_Father glares._)

MR. DARLING. All over, dear, quite satisfactorily. (NANA _comes back_.)
Nana, good dog, good girl; I have put a little milk into your bowl.
(_The bowl is by the kennel, and_ NANA _begins to lap, only begins. She
retreats into the kennel._)

MRS. DARLING. What is the matter, Nana?

MR. DARLING (_uneasily_). Nothing, nothing.

MRS. DARLING (_smelling the bowl_). George, it is your medicine!

  (_The children break into lamentation. He gives his wife an
  imploring look; he is begging for one smile, but does not get it. In
  consequence he goes from bad to worse._)

MR. DARLING. It was only a joke. Much good my wearing myself to the
bone trying to be funny in this house.

WENDY (_on her knees by the kennel_). Father, Nana is crying.

MR. DARLING. Coddle her; nobody coddles me. Oh dear no. I am only the
bread-winner, why should I be coddled? Why, why, why?

MRS. DARLING. George, not so loud; the servants will hear you.

  (_There is only one maid, absurdly small too, but they have got into
  the way of calling her the servants._)

MR. DARLING (_defiant_). Let them hear me; bring in the whole world.
(_The desperate man, who has not been in fresh air for days, has now
lost all self-control._) I refuse to allow that dog to lord it in my
nursery for one hour longer. (NANA _supplicates him_.) In vain, in
vain, the proper place for you is the yard, and there you go to be tied
up this instant.

  (NANA _again retreats into the kennel, and the children add their
  prayers to hers_.)

MRS. DARLING (_who knows how contrite he will be for this presently_).
George, George, remember what I told you about that boy.

MR. DARLING. Am I master in this house or is she? (_To_ NANA
_fiercely_) Come along. (_He thunders at her, but she indicates that
she has reasons not worth troubling him with for remaining where she
is. He resorts to a false bonhomie._) There, there, did she think
he was angry with her, poor Nana? (_She wriggles a response in the
affirmative._) Good Nana, pretty Nana. (_She has seldom been called
pretty, and it has the old effect. She plays rub-a-dub with her paws,
which is how a dog blushes._) She will come to her kind master, won’t
she? won’t she? (_She advances, retreats, waggles her head, her tail,
and eventually goes to him. He seizes her collar in an iron grip and
amid the cries of his progeny drags her from the room. They listen,
for her remonstrances are not inaudible._)

MRS. DARLING. Be brave, my dears.

WENDY. He is chaining Nana up!

  (_This unfortunately is what he is doing, though we cannot see
  him. Let us hope that he then retires to his study, looks up the
  word ‘temper’ in his_ Thesaurus, _and under the influence of those
  benign pages becomes a better man. In the meantime the children have
  been put to bed in unwonted silence, and_ MRS. DARLING _lights the
  night-lights over the beds_.)

JOHN (_as the barking below goes on_). She is awfully unhappy.

WENDY. That is not Nana’s unhappy bark. That is her bark when she
smells danger.

MRS. DARLING (_remembering that boy_). Danger! Are you sure, Wendy?

WENDY (_the one of the family, for there is one in every family, who
can be trusted to know or not to know_). Oh yes.

  (_Her mother looks this way and that from the window._)

JOHN. Is anything there?

MRS. DARLING. All quite quiet and still. Oh, how I wish I was not going
out to dinner to-night.

MICHAEL. Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?

MRS. DARLING. Nothing, precious. They are the eyes a mother leaves
behind her to guard her children.

  (_Nevertheless we may be sure she means to tell_ LIZA, _the little
  maid, to look in on them frequently till she comes home. She goes
  from bed to bed, after her custom, tucking them in and crooning a
  lullaby._)

MICHAEL (_drowsily_). Mother, I’m glad of you.

MRS. DARLING (_with a last look round, her hand on the switch_). Dear
night-lights that protect my sleeping babes, burn clear and steadfast
to-night.

  (_The nursery darkens and she is gone, intentionally leaving the
  door ajar. Something uncanny is going to happen, we expect, for a
  quiver has passed through the room, just sufficient to touch the
  night-lights. They blink three times one after the other and go out,
  precisely as children (whom familiarity has made them resemble) fall
  asleep. There is another light in the room now, no larger than_ MRS.
  DARLING’S _fist, and in the time we have taken to say this it has
  been into the drawers and wardrobe and searched pockets, as it darts
  about looking for a certain shadow. Then the window is blown open,
  probably by the smallest and therefore most mischievous star, and_
  PETER PAN _flies into the room. In so far as he is dressed at all it
  is in autumn leaves and cobwebs._)

PETER (_in a whisper_). Tinker Bell, Tink, are you there? (_A jug
lights up._) Oh, do come out of that jug. (TINK _flashes hither and
thither._) Do you know where they put it? (_The answer comes as of a
tinkle of bells; it is the fairy language._ PETER _can speak it, but
it bores him_.) Which big box? This one? But which drawer? Yes, do
show me. (TINK _pops into the drawer where the shadow is, but before_
PETER _can reach it_, WENDY _moves in her sleep. He flies onto the
mantelshelf as a hiding-place. Then, as she has not waked, he flutters
over the beds as an easy way to observe the occupants, closes the
window softly, wafts himself to the drawer and scatters its contents to
the floor, as kings on their wedding day toss ha’pence to the crowds.
In his joy at finding his shadow he forgets that he has shut up_ TINK
_in the drawer. He sits on the floor with the shadow, confident that he
and it will join like drops of water. Then he tries to stick it on with
soap from the bathroom, and this failing also, he subsides dejectedly
on the floor. This wakens_ WENDY, _who sits up, and is pleasantly
interested to see a stranger._)

WENDY (_courteously_). Boy, why are you crying?

  (_He jumps up, and crossing to the foot of the bed bows to her in the
  fairy way._ WENDY, _impressed, bows to him from the bed_.)

PETER. What is your name?

WENDY (_well satisfied_). Wendy Moira Angela Darling. What is yours?

PETER (_finding it lamentably brief_). Peter Pan.

WENDY. Is that all?

PETER (_biting his lip_). Yes.

WENDY (_politely_). I am so sorry.

PETER. It doesn’t matter.

WENDY. Where do you live?

PETER. Second to the right and then straight on till morning.

WENDY. What a funny address!

PETER. No, it isn’t.

WENDY. I mean, is that what they put on the letters?

PETER. Don’t get any letters.

WENDY. But your mother gets letters?

PETER. Don’t have a mother.

WENDY. Peter!

  (_She leaps out of bed to put her arms round him, but he draws back;
  he does not know why, but he knows he must draw back._)

PETER. You mustn’t touch me.

WENDY. Why?

PETER. No one must ever touch me.

WENDY. Why?

PETER. I don’t know.

  (_He is never touched by any one in the play._)

WENDY. No wonder you were crying.

PETER. I wasn’t crying. But I can’t get my shadow to stick on.

WENDY. It has come off! How awful. (_Looking at the spot where he had
lain._) Peter, you have been trying to stick it on with soap!

PETER (_snappily_). Well then?

WENDY. It must be sewn on.

PETER. What is ‘sewn’?

WENDY. You are dreadfully ignorant.

PETER. No, I’m not.

WENDY. I will sew it on for you, my little man. But we must have more
light. (_She touches something, and to his astonishment the room is
illuminated._) Sit here. I dare say it will hurt a little.

PETER (_a recent remark of hers rankling_). I never cry. (_She seems to
attach the shadow. He tests the combination._) It isn’t quite itself
yet.

WENDY. Perhaps I should have ironed it. (_It awakes and is as glad to
be back with him as he to have it. He and his shadow dance together.
He is showing off now. He crows like a cock. He would fly in order to
impress_ WENDY _further if he knew that there is anything unusual in
that_.)

PETER. Wendy, look, look; oh the cleverness of me!

WENDY. You conceit; of course I did nothing!

PETER. You did a little.

WENDY (_wounded_). A little! If I am no use I can at least withdraw.

  (_With one haughty leap she is again in bed with the sheet over her
  face. Popping on to the end of the bed the artful one appeals._)

PETER. Wendy, don’t withdraw. I can’t help crowing, Wendy, when I’m
pleased with myself. Wendy, one girl is worth more than twenty boys.

WENDY (_peeping over the sheet_). You really think so, Peter?

PETER. Yes, I do.

WENDY. I think it’s perfectly sweet of you, and I shall get up again.
(_They sit together on the side of the bed._) I shall give you a kiss
if you like.

PETER. Thank you. (_He holds out his hand._)

WENDY (_aghast_). Don’t you know what a kiss is?

PETER. I shall know when you give it me. (_Not to hurt his feelings she
gives him her thimble._) Now shall I give you a kiss?

WENDY (_primly_). If you please. (_He pulls an acorn button off his
person and bestows it on her. She is shocked but considerate._) I will
wear it on this chain round my neck. Peter, how old are you?

PETER (_blithely_). I don’t know, but quite young, Wendy. I ran away
the day I was born.

WENDY. Ran away, why?

PETER. Because I heard father and mother talking of what I was to be
when I became a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun;
so I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long time among the
fairies.

WENDY (_with great eyes_). You know fairies, Peter!

PETER (_surprised that this should be a recommendation_). Yes, but they
are nearly all dead now. (_Baldly_) You see, Wendy, when the first baby
laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and
they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So
there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.

WENDY (_breathlessly_). Ought to be? Isn’t there?

PETER. Oh no. Children know such a lot now. Soon they don’t believe
in fairies, and every time a child says ‘I don’t believe in fairies’
there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. (_He skips about
heartlessly._)

WENDY. Poor things!

PETER (_to whom this statement recalls a forgotten friend_). I can’t
think where she has gone. Tinker Bell, Tink, where are you?

WENDY (_thrilling_). Peter, you don’t mean to tell me that there is a
fairy in this room!

PETER (_flitting about in search_). She came with me. You don’t hear
anything, do you?

WENDY. I hear--the only sound I hear is like a tinkle of bells.

PETER. That is the fairy language. I hear it too.

WENDY. It seems to come from over there.

PETER (_with shameless glee_). Wendy, I believe I shut her up in that
drawer!

  (_He releases_ TINK, _who darts about in a fury using language it is
  perhaps as well we don’t understand_.)

You needn’t say that; I’m very sorry, but how could I know you were in
the drawer?

WENDY (_her eyes dancing in pursuit of the delicious creature_). Oh,
Peter, if only she would stand still and let me see her!

PETER (_indifferently_). They hardly ever stand still.

  (_To show that she can do even this_ TINK _pauses between two ticks
  of the cuckoo clock_.)

WENDY. I see her, the lovely! where is she now?

PETER. She is behind the clock. Tink, this lady wishes you were her
fairy. (_The answer comes immediately._)

WENDY. What does she say?

PETER. She is not very polite. She says you are a great ugly girl, and
that she is my fairy. You know, Tink, you can’t be my fairy because I
am a gentleman and you are a lady.

  (TINK _replies_.)

WENDY. What did she say?

PETER. She said ‘You silly ass.’ She is quite a common girl, you know.
She is called Tinker Bell because she mends the fairy pots and kettles.

  (_They have reached a chair_, WENDY _in the ordinary way and_ PETER
  _through a hole in the back_.)

WENDY. Where do you live now?

PETER. With the lost boys.

WENDY. Who are they?

PETER. They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse
is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they
are sent far away to the Never Land. I’m captain.

WENDY. What fun it must be.

PETER (_craftily_). Yes, but we are rather lonely. You see, Wendy, we
have no female companionship.

WENDY. Are none of the other children girls?

PETER. Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their
prams.

WENDY. Peter, it is perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls. John
there just despises us.

  (PETER, _for the first time, has a good look at_ JOHN. _He then
  neatly tumbles him out of bed._)

You wicked! you are not captain here. (_She bends over her brother who
is prone on the floor._) After all he hasn’t wakened, and you meant to
be kind. (_Having now done her duty she forgets_ JOHN, _who blissfully
sleeps on._) Peter, you may give me a kiss.

PETER (_cynically_). I thought you would want it back.

  (_He offers her the thimble._)

WENDY (_artfully_). Oh dear, I didn’t mean a kiss, Peter. I meant a
thimble.

PETER (_only half placated_). What is that?

WENDY. It is like this. (_She leans forward to give a demonstration,
but something prevents the meeting of their faces._)

PETER (_satisfied_). Now shall I give you a thimble?

WENDY. If you please. (_Before he can even draw near she screams._)

PETER. What is it?

WENDY. It was exactly as if some one were pulling my hair!

PETER. That must have been Tink. I never knew her so naughty before.

  (TINK _speaks. She is in the jug again._)

WENDY. What does she say?

PETER. She says she will do that every time I give you a thimble.

WENDY. But why?

PETER (_equally nonplussed_). Why, Tink? (_He has to translate the
answer._) She said ‘You silly ass’ again.

WENDY. She is very impertinent. (_They are sitting on the floor now._)
Peter, why did you come to our nursery window?

PETER. To try to hear stories. None of us knows any stories.

WENDY. How perfectly awful!

PETER. Do you know why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to
listen to the stories. Wendy, your mother was telling you such a lovely
story.

WENDY. Which story was it?

PETER. About the prince, and he couldn’t find the lady who wore the
glass slipper.

WENDY. That was Cinderella. Peter, he found her and they were happy
ever after.

PETER. I am glad. (_They have worked their way along the floor close to
each other, but he now jumps up._)

WENDY. Where are you going?

PETER (_already on his way to the window_). To tell the other boys.

WENDY. Don’t go, Peter. I know lots of stories. The stories I could
tell to the boys!

PETER (_gleaming_). Come on! We’ll fly.

WENDY. Fly? You can fly!

  (_How he would like to rip those stories out of her; he is dangerous
  now._)

PETER. Wendy, come with me.

WENDY. Oh dear, I mustn’t. Think of mother. Besides, I can’t fly.

PETER. I’ll teach you.

WENDY. How lovely to fly!

PETER. I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back and then away we
go. Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying
about with me, saying funny things to the stars. There are mermaids,
Wendy, with long tails. (_She just succeeds in remaining on the nursery
floor._) Wendy, how we should all respect you.

  (_At this she strikes her colours._)

WENDY. Of course it’s awfully fas-cin-a-ting! Would you teach John and
Michael to fly too?

PETER (_indifferently_). If you like.

WENDY (_playing rum-tum on John_). John, wake up; there is a boy here
who is to teach us to fly.

JOHN. Is there? Then I shall get up. (_He raises his head from the
floor._) Hullo, I am up!

WENDY. Michael, open your eyes. This boy is to teach us to fly.

  (_The sleepers are at once as awake as their father’s razor; but
  before a question can be asked_ NANA’S _bark is heard_.)

JOHN. Out with the light, quick, hide!

  (_When the maid_ LIZA, _who is so small that when she says she will
  never see ten again one can scarcely believe her, enters with a
  firm hand on the troubled_ NANA’S _chain the room is in comparative
  darkness_.)

LIZA. There, you suspicious brute, they are perfectly safe, aren’t
they? Every one of the little angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to
their gentle breathing. (NANA’S _sense of smell here helps to her
undoing instead of hindering it. She knows that they are in the room._
MICHAEL, _who is behind the window curtain, is so encouraged by_ LIZA’S
_last remark that he breathes too loudly_. NANA _knows that kind of
breathing and tries to break from her keeper’s control_.) No more of
it, Nana. (_Wagging a finger at her_) I warn you if you bark again I
shall go straight for master and missus and bring them home from the
party, and then won’t master whip you just! Come along, you naughty dog.

  (_The unhappy_ NANA _is led away. The children emerge exulting from
  their various hiding-places. In their brief absence from the scene
  strange things have been done to them; but it is not for us to reveal
  a mysterious secret of the stage. They look just the same._)

JOHN. I say, can you really fly?

PETER. Look! (_He is now over their heads._)

WENDY. Oh, how sweet!

PETER. I’m sweet, oh, I am sweet!

  (_It looks so easy that they try it first from the floor and then
  from their beds, without encouraging results._)

JOHN (_rubbing his knees_). How do you do it?

PETER (_descending_). You just think lovely wonderful thoughts and they
lift you up in the air. (_He is off again._)

JOHN. You are so nippy at it; couldn’t you do it very slowly once?
(PETER _does it slowly_.) I’ve got it now, Wendy. (_He tries; no, he
has not got it, poor stay-at-home, though he knows the names of all the
counties in England and_ PETER _does not know one_.)

PETER. I must blow the fairy dust on you first. (_Fortunately his
garments are smeared with it and he blows some dust on each._) Now,
try; try from the bed. Just wriggle your shoulders this way, and then
let go.

  (_The gallant_ MICHAEL _is the first to let go, and is borne across
  the room_.)

MICHAEL (_with a yell that should have disturbed_ LIZA). I flewed!

  (JOHN _lets go, and meets_ WENDY _near the bathroom door though they
  had both aimed in an opposite direction_.)

WENDY. Oh, lovely!

JOHN (_tending to be upside down_). How ripping!

MICHAEL (_playing whack on a chair_). I do like it!

THE THREE. Look at me, look at me, look at me!

  (_They are not nearly so elegant in the air as_ PETER, _but their
  heads have bumped the ceiling, and there is nothing more delicious
  than that_.)

JOHN (_who can even go backwards_). I say, why shouldn’t we go out?

PETER. There are pirates.

JOHN. Pirates! (_He grabs his tall Sunday hat._) Let us go at once!

  (TINK _does not like it. She darts at their hair. From down below in
  the street the lighted window must present an unwonted spectacle: the
  shadows of children revolving in the room like a merry-go-round.
  This is perhaps what_ MR. _and_ MRS. DARLING _see as they come
  hurrying home from the party, brought by_ NANA _who, you may be sure,
  has broken her chain._ PETER’S _accomplice, the little star, has seen
  them coming, and again the window blows open_.)

PETER (_as if he had heard the star whisper_ Cave). Now come!

  (_Breaking the circle he flies out of the window over the trees of
  the square and over the house-tops, and the others follow like a
  flight of birds. The broken-hearted father and mother arrive just
  in time to get a nip from_ TINK _as she too sets out for the Never
  Land_.)




ACT II




ACT II

THE NEVER LAND


_When the blind goes up all is so dark that you scarcely know it has
gone up. This is because if you were to see the island bang (as Peter
would say) the wonders of it might hurt your eyes. If you all came in
spectacles perhaps you could see it bang, but to make a rule of that
kind would be a pity. The first thing seen is merely some whitish
dots trudging along the sward, and you can guess from their tinkling
that they are probably fairies of the commoner sort going home afoot
from some party and having a cheery tiff by the way. Then Peter’s
star wakes up, and in the blink of it, which is much stronger than in
our stars, you can make out masses of trees, and you think you see
wild beasts stealing past to drink, though what you see is not the
beasts themselves but only the shadows of them. They are really out
pictorially to greet Peter in the way they think he would like them to
greet him; and for the same reason the mermaids basking in the lagoon
beyond the trees are carefully combing their hair; and for the same
reason the pirates are landing invisibly from the longboat, invisibly
to you but not to the redskins, whom none can see or hear because
they are on the war-path. The whole island, in short, which has been
having a slack time in Peter’s absence, is now in a ferment because
the tidings have leaked out that he is on his way back; and everybody
and everything know that they will catch it from him if they don’t
give satisfaction. While you have been told this the sun (another of
his servants) has been bestirring himself. Those of you who may have
thought it wiser after all to begin this Act in spectacles may now take
them off._

_What you see is the Never Land. You have often half seen it before,
or even three-quarters, after the night-lights were lit, and you might
then have beached your coracle on it if you had not always at the great
moment fallen asleep. I dare say you have chucked things on to it, the
things you can’t find in the morning. In the daytime you think the
Never Land is only make-believe, and so it is to the likes of you, but
this is the Never Land come true. It is an open-air scene, a forest,
with a beautiful lagoon beyond but not really far away, for the Never
Land is very compact, not large and sprawly with tedious distances
between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. It is summer
time on the trees and on the lagoon but winter on the river, which
is not remarkable on Peter’s island where all the four seasons may
pass while you are filling a jug at the well. Peter’s home is at this
very spot, but you could not point out the way into it even if you
were told which is the entrance, not even if you were told that there
are seven of them. You know now because you have just seen one of the
lost boys emerge. The holes in these seven great hollow trees are the
‘doors’ down to Peter’s home, and he made seven because, despite his
cleverness, he thought seven boys must need seven doors._

_The boy who has emerged from his tree is Slightly, who has perhaps
been driven from the abode below by companions less musical than
himself. Quite possibly a genius, Slightly has with him his home-made
whistle to which he capers entrancingly, with no audience save a Never
ostrich which is also musically inclined. Unable to imitate Slightly’s
graces the bird falls so low as to burlesque them and is driven from
the entertainment. Other lost boys climb up the trunks or drop from
branches, and now we see the six of them, all in the skins of animals
they think they have shot, and so round and furry in them that if
they fall they roll. Tootles is not the least brave though the most
unfortunate of this gallant band. He has been in fewer adventures
than any of them because the big things constantly happen while he has
stepped round the corner; he will go off, for instance, in some quiet
hour to gather firewood, and then when he returns the others will be
sweeping up the blood. Instead of souring his nature this has sweetened
it and he is the humblest of the band. Nibs is more gay and debonair,
Slightly more conceited. Slightly thinks he remembers the days before
he was lost, with their manners and customs. Curly is a pickle, and
so often has he had to deliver up his person when Peter said sternly,
‘Stand forth the one who did this thing,’ that now he stands forth
whether he has done it or not. The other two are First Twin and Second
Twin, who cannot be described because we should probably be describing
the wrong one. Hunkering on the ground or peeping out of their holes,
the six are not unlike village gossips gathered round the pump._

TOOTLES. Has Peter come back yet, Slightly?

SLIGHTLY (_with a solemnity that he thinks suits the occasion_). No,
Tootles, no.

  (_They are like dogs waiting for the master to tell them that the day
  has begun._)

CURLY (_as if_ PETER _might be listening_). I do wish he would come
back.

TOOTLES. I am always afraid of the pirates when Peter is not here to
protect us.

SLIGHTLY. I am not afraid of pirates. Nothing frightens me. But I do
wish Peter would come back and tell us whether he has heard anything
more about Cinderella.

SECOND TWIN (_with diffidence_). Slightly, I dreamt last night that the
prince found Cinderella.

FIRST TWIN (_who is intellectually the superior of the two_). Twin, I
think you should not have dreamt that, for I didn’t, and Peter may say
we oughtn’t to dream differently, being twins, you know.

TOOTLES. I am awfully anxious about Cinderella. You see, not knowing
anything about my own mother I am fond of thinking that she was rather
like Cinderella.

  (_This is received with derision._)

NIBS. All I remember about my mother is that she often said to father,
‘Oh how I wish I had a cheque book of my own.’ I don’t know what a
cheque book is, but I should just love to give my mother one.

SLIGHTLY (_as usual_). My mother was fonder of me than your mothers
were of you. (_Uproar._) Oh yes, she was. Peter had to make up names
for you, but my mother had wrote my name on the pinafore I was lost in.
‘Slightly Soiled’; that’s my name.

  (_They fall upon him pugnaciously; not that they are really worrying
  about their mothers, who are now as important to them as a piece of
  string, but because any excuse is good enough for a shindy. Not for
  long is he belaboured, for a sound is heard that sends them scurrying
  down their holes: in a second of time the scene is bereft of human
  life. What they have heard from near-by is a verse of the dreadful
  song with which on the Never Land the pirates stealthily trumpet
  their approach--_

      Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
      The flag of skull and bones,
      A merry hour, a hempen rope,
      And hey for Davy Jones!

  _The pirates appear upon the frozen river dragging a raft, on which
  reclines among cushions that dark and fearful man_, CAPTAIN JAS
  HOOK. _A more villainous-looking brotherhood of men never hung in a
  row on Execution dock. Here, his great arms bare, pieces of eight
  in his ears as ornaments, is the handsome_ CECCO, _who cut his name
  on the back of the governor of the prison at Gao. Heavier in the
  pull is the gigantic black who has had many names since the first
  one terrified dusky children on the banks of the Guidjo-mo._ BILL
  JUKES _comes next, every inch of him tattooed, the same_ JUKES _who
  got six dozen on the_ Walrus _from_ FLINT. _Following these are_
  COOKSON, _said to be_ BLACK MURPHY’S _brother (but this was never
  proved); and_ GENTLEMAN STARKEY, _once an usher in a school; and_
  SKYLIGHTS _(Morgan’s Skylights); and_ NOODLER, _whose hands are
  fixed on backwards; and the spectacled boatswain_, SMEE, _the only
  Nonconformist in_ HOOK’S _crew; and other ruffians long known and
  feared on the Spanish main_.

  _Cruelest jewel in that dark setting is_ HOOK _himself, cadaverous
  and blackavised, his hair dressed in long curls which look like black
  candles about to melt, his eyes blue as the forget-me-not and of a
  profound insensibility, save when he claws, at which time a red spot
  appears in them. He has an iron hook instead of a right hand, and
  it is with this he claws. He is never more sinister than when he is
  most polite, and the elegance of his diction, the distinction of
  his demeanour, show him one of a different class from his crew, a
  solitary among uncultured companions. This courtliness impresses even
  his victims on the high seas, who note that he always says ‘Sorry’
  when prodding them along the plank. A man of indomitable courage, the
  only thing at which he flinches is the sight of his own blood, which
  is thick and of an unusual colour. At his public school they said of
  him that he ‘bled yellow.’ In dress he apes the dandiacal associated
  with Charles II., having heard it said in an earlier period of his
  career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts.
  A holder of his own contrivance is in his mouth enabling him to smoke
  two cigars at once. Those, however, who have seen him in the flesh,
  which is an inadequate term for his earthly tenement, agree that the
  grimmest part of him is his iron claw._

  _They continue their distasteful singing as they disembark--_

      Avast, belay, yo ho, heave to,
      A-pirating we go,
      And if we’re parted by a shot
      We’re sure to meet below!

  NIBS, _the only one of the boys who has not sought safety in his
  tree, is seen for a moment near the lagoon, and_ STARKEY’S _pistol is
  at once upraised. The captain twists his hook in him._)

STARKEY (_abject_). Captain, let go!

HOOK. Put back that pistol, first.

STARKEY. ’Twas one of those boys you hate; I could have shot him dead.

HOOK. Ay, and the sound would have brought Tiger Lily’s redskins on
us. Do you want to lose your scalp?

SMEE (_wriggling his cutlass pleasantly_). That is true. Shall I after
him, Captain, and tickle him with Johnny Corkscrew? Johnny is a silent
fellow.

HOOK. Not now. He is only one, and I want to mischief all the seven.
Scatter and look for them. (_The boatswain whistles his instructions,
and the men disperse on their frightful errand. With none to hear save_
SMEE, HOOK _becomes confidential_.) Most of all I want their captain,
Peter Pan. ’Twas he cut off my arm. I have waited long to shake his
hand with this. (_Luxuriating_) Oh, I’ll tear him!

SMEE (_always ready for a chat_). Yet I have oft heard you say your
hook was worth a score of hands, for combing the hair and other homely
uses.

HOOK. If I was a mother I would pray to have my children born with this
instead of that (_his left arm creeps nervously behind him. He has
a galling remembrance_). Smee, Pan flung my arm to a crocodile that
happened to be passing by.

SMEE. I have often noticed your strange dread of crocodiles.

HOOK (_pettishly_). Not of crocodiles but of that one crocodile. (_He
lays bare a lacerated heart._) The brute liked my arm so much, Smee,
that he has followed me ever since, from sea to sea, and from land to
land, licking his lips for the rest of me.

SMEE (_looking for the bright side_). In a way it is a sort of
compliment.

HOOK (_with dignity_). I want no such compliments; I want Peter Pan,
who first gave the brute his taste for me. Smee, that crocodile would
have had me before now, but by a lucky chance he swallowed a clock, and
it goes tick, tick, tick, tick inside him; and so before he can reach
me I hear the tick and bolt. (_He emits a hollow rumble._) Once I heard
it strike six within him.

SMEE (_sombrely_). Some day the clock will run down, and then he’ll get
you.

HOOK (_a broken man_). Ay, that is the fear that haunts me. (_He
rises._) Smee, this seat is hot; odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I am
burning.

  (_He has been sitting, he thinks, on one of the island mushrooms,
  which are of enormous size. But this is a hand-painted one placed
  here in times of danger to conceal a chimney. They remove it, and
  tell-tale smoke issues; also, alas, the sound of children’s voices._)

SMEE. A chimney!

HOOK (_avidly_). Listen! Smee, ’tis plain they live here, beneath the
ground. (_He replaces the mushroom. His brain works tortuously._)

SMEE. (_hopefully_). Unrip your plan, Captain.

HOOK. To return to the boat and cook a large rich cake of jolly
thickness with sugar on it, green sugar. There can be but one room
below, for there is but one chimney. The silly moles had not the sense
to see that they did not need a door apiece. We must leave the cake on
the shore of the mermaids’ lagoon. These boys are always swimming about
there, trying to catch the mermaids. They will find the cake and gobble
it up, because, having no mother, they don’t know how dangerous ’tis to
eat rich damp cake. They will die!

SMEE (_fascinated_). It is the wickedest, prettiest policy ever I heard
of.

HOOK (_meaning well_). Shake hands on ’t.

SMEE. No, Captain, no.

  (_He has to link with the hook, but he does not join in the song._)

HOOK.

    Yo ho, yo ho, when I say ‘paw,’
    By fear they’re overtook,
    Naught’s left upon your bones when you
    Have shaken hands with Hook!

  (_Frightened by a tug at his hand_, SMEE _is joining in the chorus
  when another sound stills them both. It is a tick, tick as of
  a clock, whose significance_ HOOK _is, naturally, the first to
  recognise. ‘The crocodile!’ he cries, and totters from the scene._
  SMEE _follows. A huge crocodile, of one thought compact, passes
  across, ticking, and oozes after them. The wood is now so silent that
  you may be sure it is full of redskins._ TIGER LILY _comes first. She
  is the belle of the Piccaninny tribe, whose braves would all have her
  to wife, but she wards them off with a hatchet. She puts her ear to
  the ground and listens, then beckons, and_ GREAT BIG LITTLE PANTHER
  _and the tribe are around her, carpeting the ground. Far away some
  one treads on a dry leaf._)

TIGER LILY. Pirates! (_They do not draw their knives; the knives slip
into their hands._) Have um scalps? What you say?

PANTHER. Scalp um, oho, velly quick.

THE BRAVES (_in corroboration_). Ugh, ugh, wah.

  (_A fire is lit and they dance round and over it till they seem part
  of the leaping flames._ TIGER LILY _invokes Manitou; the pipe of
  peace is broken; and they crawl off like a long snake that has not
  fed for many moons_. TOOTLES _peers after the tail and summons the
  other boys, who issue from their holes_.)

TOOTLES. They are gone.

SLIGHTLY (_almost losing confidence in himself_). I do wish Peter was
here.

FIRST TWIN. H’sh! What is that? (_He is gazing at the lagoon and
shrinks back._) It is wolves, and they are chasing Nibs!

  (_The baying wolves are upon them quicker than any boy can scuttle
  down his tree._)

NIBS (_falling among his comrades_). Save me, save me!

TOOTLES. What should we do?

SECOND TWIN. What would Peter do?

SLIGHTLY. Peter would look at them through his legs; let us do what
Peter would do.

  (_The boys advance backwards, looking between their legs at the
  snarling red-eyed enemy, who trot away foiled._)

FIRST TWIN (_swaggering_). We have saved you, Nibs. Did you see the
pirates?

NIBS (_sitting up, and agreeably aware that the centre of interest is
now to pass to him_). No, but I saw a wonderfuller thing, Twin. (_All
mouths open for the information to be dropped into them._) High over
the lagoon I saw the loveliest great white bird. It is flying this way.
(_They search the firmament._)

TOOTLES. What kind of a bird, do you think?

NIBS (_awed_). I don’t know; but it looked so weary, and as it flies it
moans ‘Poor Wendy.’

SLIGHTLY (_instantly_). I remember now there are birds called Wendies.

FIRST TWIN (_who has flown to a high branch_). See, it comes, the
Wendy! (_They all see it now._) How white it is! (_A dot of light is
pursuing the bird malignantly._)

TOOTLES. That is Tinker Bell. Tink is trying to hurt the Wendy. (_He
makes a cup of his hands and calls_) Hullo, Tink! (_A response comes
down in the fairy language._) She says Peter wants us to shoot the
Wendy.

NIBS. Let us do what Peter wishes.

SLIGHTLY. Ay, shoot it; quick, bows and arrows.

TOOTLES (_first with his bow_). Out of the way, Tink; I’ll shoot it.
(_His bolt goes home, and_ WENDY, _who has been fluttering among the
tree-tops in her white nightgown, falls straight to earth. No one could
be more proud than_ TOOTLES.) I have shot the Wendy; Peter will be so
pleased. (_From some tree on which_ TINK _is roosting comes the tinkle
we can now translate, ‘You silly ass.’_ TOOTLES _falters_.) Why do you
say that? (_The others feel that he may have blundered, and draw away
from_ TOOTLES.)

SLIGHTLY (_examining the fallen one more minutely_). This is no bird; I
think it must be a lady.

NIBS (_who would have preferred it to be a bird_). And Tootles has
killed her.

CURLY. Now I see, Peter was bringing her to us. (_They wonder for what
object._)

SECOND TWIN. To take care of us? (_Undoubtedly for some diverting
purpose._)

OMNES (_though every one of them had wanted to have a shot at her_).
Oh, Tootles!

TOOTLES (_gulping_). I did it. When ladies used to come to me in dreams
I said ‘Pretty mother,’ but when she really came I shot her! (_He
perceives the necessity of a solitary life for him._) Friends, good-bye.

SEVERAL (_not very enthusiastic_). Don’t go.

TOOTLES. I must; I am so afraid of Peter.

  (_He has gone but a step toward oblivion when he is stopped by a
  crowing as of some victorious cock._)

OMNES. Peter!

  (_They make a paling of themselves in front of_ WENDY _as_ PETER
  _skims round the tree-tops and reaches earth._)

PETER. Greeting, boys! (_Their silence chafes him._) I am back; why do
you not cheer? Great news, boys, I have brought at last a mother for us
all.

SLIGHTLY (_vaguely_). Ay, ay.

PETER. She flew this way; have you not seen her?

SECOND TWIN (_as_ PETER _evidently thinks her important_). Oh mournful
day!

TOOTLES (_making a break in the paling_). Peter, I will show her to you.

THE OTHERS (_closing the gap_). No, no.

TOOTLES (_majestically_). Stand back all, and let Peter see.

  (_The paling dissolves, and_ PETER _sees_ WENDY _prone on the
  ground_.)

PETER. Wendy, with an arrow in her heart! (_He plucks it out._) Wendy
is dead. (_He is not so much pained as puzzled._)

CURLY. I thought it was only flowers that die.

PETER. Perhaps she is frightened at being dead? (_None of them can say
as to that._) Whose arrow? (_Not one of them looks at_ TOOTLES.)

TOOTLES. Mine, Peter.

PETER (_raising it as a dagger_). Oh dastard hand!

TOOTLES (_kneeling and baring his breast_). Strike, Peter; strike true.

PETER (_undergoing a singular experience_). I cannot strike; there is
something stays my hand.

  (_In fact_ WENDY’S _arm has risen_.)

NIBS. ’Tis she, the Wendy lady. See, her arm. (_To help a friend_) I
think she said ‘Poor Tootles.’

PETER (_investigating_). She lives!

SLIGHTLY (_authoritatively_). The Wendy lady lives.

  (_The delightful feeling that they have been cleverer than they
  thought comes over them and they applaud themselves._)

PETER (_holding up a button that is attached to her chain_). See, the
arrow struck against this. It is a kiss I gave her; it has saved her
life.

SLIGHTLY. I remember kisses; let me see it. (_He takes it in his
hand._) Ay, that is a kiss.

PETER. Wendy, get better quickly and I’ll take you to see the mermaids.
She is awfully anxious to see a mermaid.

  (TINKER BELL, _who may have been off visiting her relations, returns
  to the wood and, under the impression that_ WENDY _has been got rid
  of, is whistling as gaily as a canary. She is not wholly heartless,
  but is so small that she has only room for one feeling at a time._)

CURLY. Listen to Tink rejoicing because she thinks the Wendy is dead!
(_Regardless of spoiling another’s pleasure_) Tink, the Wendy lives.

  (TINK _gives expression to fury._)

SECOND TWIN (_tell-tale_). It was she who said that you wanted us to
shoot the Wendy.

PETER. She said that? Then listen, Tink, I am your friend no more.
(_There is a note of acerbity in_ TINK’S _reply; it may mean ‘Who wants
you?’_) Begone from me for ever. (_Now it is a very wet tinkle._)

CURLY. She is crying.

TOOTLES. She says she is your fairy.

PETER (_who knows they are not worth worrying about_). Oh well, not
for ever, but for a whole week.

  (TINK _goes off sulking, no doubt with the intention of giving all
  her friends an entirely false impression of_ WENDY’S _appearance_.)

Now what shall we do with Wendy?

CURLY. Let us carry her down into the house.

SLIGHTLY. Ay, that is what one does with ladies.

PETER. No, you must not touch her; it wouldn’t be sufficiently
respectful.

SLIGHTLY. That is what I was thinking.

TOOTLES. But if she lies there she will die.

SLIGHTLY. Ay, she will die. It is a pity, but there is no way out.

PETER. Yes, there is. Let us build a house around her! (_Cheers again,
meaning that no difficulty baffles_ PETER.) Leave all to me. Bring the
best of what we have. Gut our house. Be sharp. (_They race down their
trees._)

  (_While_ PETER _is engrossed in measuring_ WENDY _so that the house
  may fit her_, JOHN _and_ MICHAEL, _who have probably landed on the
  island with a bump, wander forward, so draggled and tired that if you
  were to ask_ MICHAEL _whether he is awake or asleep he would probably
  answer ‘I haven’t tried yet.’_)

MICHAEL (_bewildered_). John, John, wake up. Where is Nana, John?

JOHN (_with the help of one eye but not always the same eye_). It is
true, we did fly! (_Thankfully_) And here is Peter. Peter, is this the
place?

  (PETER, _alas, has already forgotten them, as soon maybe he will
  forget_ WENDY. _The first thing she should do now that she is here is
  to sew a handkerchief for him, and knot it as a jog to his memory._)

PETER (_curtly_). Yes.

MICHAEL. Where is Wendy? (PETER _points_.)

JOHN (_who still wears his hat_). She is asleep.

MICHAEL. John, let us wake her and get her to make supper for us.

  (_Some of the boys emerge, and he pinches one._)

John, look at them!

PETER (_still house-building_). Curly, see that these boys help in the
building of the house.

JOHN. Build a house?

CURLY. For the Wendy.

JOHN (_feeling that there must be some mistake here_). For Wendy? Why,
she is only a girl.

CURLY. That is why we are her servants.

JOHN (_dazed_). Are you Wendy’s servants?

PETER. Yes, and you also. Away with them. (_In another moment they are
woodsmen hacking at trees, with_ CURLY _as overseer_.) Slightly, fetch
a doctor. (SLIGHTLY _reels and goes. He returns professionally in_
JOHN’S _hat_.) Please, sir, are you a doctor?

SLIGHTLY (_trembling in his desire to give satisfaction_). Yes, my
little man.

PETER. Please, sir, a lady lies very ill.

SLIGHTLY (_taking care not to fall over her_). Tut, tut, where does she
lie?

PETER. In yonder glade. (_It is a variation of a game they play._)

SLIGHTLY. I will put a glass thing in her mouth. (_He inserts an
imaginary thermometer in_ WENDY’S _mouth and gives it a moment to
record its verdict. He shakes it and then consults it._)

PETER (_anxiously_). How is she?

SLIGHTLY. Tut, tut, this has cured her.

PETER (_leaping joyously_). I am glad.

SLIGHTLY. I will call again in the evening. Give her beef tea out of a
cup with a spout to it, tut, tut.

  (_The boys are running up with odd articles of furniture._)

PETER (_with an already fading recollection of the Darling nursery_).
These are not good enough for Wendy. How I wish I knew the kind of
house she would prefer!

FIRST TWIN. Peter, she is moving in her sleep.

TOOTLES (_opening_ WENDY’S _mouth and gazing down into the depths_).
Lovely!

PETER. Oh, Wendy, if you could sing the kind of house you would like to
have.

  (_It is as if she had heard him._)

WENDY (_without opening her eyes_).

    I wish I had a woodland house,
    The littlest ever seen,
    With funny little red walls
    And roof of mossy green.

  (_In the time she sings this and two other verses, such is the
  urgency of_ PETER’S _silent orders that they have knocked down
  trees, laid a foundation and put up the walls and roof, so that she
  is now hidden from view. ‘Windows,’ cries_ PETER, _and_ CURLY _rushes
  them in, ‘Roses,’ and_ TOOTLES _arrives breathless with a festoon for
  the door. Thus springs into existence the most delicious little house
  for beginners._)

FIRST TWIN. I think it is finished.

PETER. There is no knocker on the door. (TOOTLES _hangs up the sole of
his shoe_.) There is no chimney; we must have a chimney. (_They await
his deliberations anxiously._)

JOHN (_unwisely critical_). It certainly does need a chimney.

  (_He is again wearing his hat, which_ PETER _seizes, knocks the top
  off it and places on the roof. In the friendliest way smoke begins to
  come out of the hat._)

PETER (_with his hand on the knocker_). All look your best; the first
impression is awfully important. (_He knocks, and after a dreadful
moment of suspense, in which they cannot help wondering if any one is
inside, the door opens and who should come out but_ WENDY! _She has
evidently been tidying a little. She is quite surprised to find that
she has nine children._)

WENDY (_genteelly_). Where am I?

SLIGHTLY. Wendy lady, for you we built this house.

NIBS and TOOTLES. Oh, say you are pleased.

WENDY (_stroking the pretty thing_). Lovely, darling house!

FIRST TWIN. And we are your children.

WENDY (_affecting surprise_). Oh?

OMNES (_kneeling, with outstretched arms_). Wendy lady, be our mother!
(_Now that they know it is pretend they acclaim her greedily._)

WENDY (_not to make herself too cheap_). Ought I? Of course it is
frightfully fascinating; but you see I am only a little girl; I have no
real experience.

OMNES. That doesn’t matter. What we need is just a nice motherly person.

WENDY. Oh dear, I feel that is just exactly what I am.

OMNES. It is, it is, we saw it at once.

WENDY. Very well then, I will do my best. (_In their glee they go
dancing obstreperously round the little house, and she sees she must
be firm with them as well as kind._) Come inside at once, you naughty
children, I am sure your feet are damp. And before I put you to bed I
have just time to finish the story of Cinderella.

  (_They all troop into the enchanting house, whose not least
  remarkable feature is that it holds them. A vision of_ LIZA _passes,
  not perhaps because she has any right to be there; but she has so few
  pleasures and is so young that we just let her have a peep at the
  little house. By and by_ PETER _comes out and marches up and down
  with drawn sword, for the pirates can be heard carousing far away
  on the lagoon, and the wolves are on the prowl. The little house,
  its walls so red and its roof so mossy, looks very cosy and safe,
  with a bright light showing through the blind, the chimney smoking
  beautifully, and_ PETER _on guard. On our last sight of him it is so
  dark that we just guess he is the little figure who has fallen asleep
  by the door. Dots of light come and go. They are inquisitive fairies
  having a look at the house. Any other child in their way they would
  mischief, but they just tweak_ PETER’S _nose and pass on. Fairies,
  you see, can touch him._)




ACT III




ACT III

THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON


_It is the end of a long playful day on the lagoon. The sun’s rays have
persuaded him to give them another five minutes, for one more race over
the waters before he gathers them up and lets in the moon. There are
many mermaids here, going plop-plop, and one might attempt to count the
tails did they not flash and disappear so quickly. At times a lovely
girl leaps in the air seeking to get rid of her excess of scales, which
fall in a silver shower as she shakes them off. From the coral grottoes
beneath the lagoon, where are the mermaids’ bedchambers, comes fitful
music._

_One of the most bewitching of these blue-eyed creatures is lying
lazily on Marooners’ Rock, combing her long tresses and noting effects
in a transparent shell. Peter and his band are in the water unseen
behind the rock, whither they have tracked her as if she were a trout,
and at a signal ten pairs of arms come whack upon the mermaid to
enclose her. Alas, this is only what was meant to happen, for she
hears the signal (which is the crow of a cock) and slips through their
arms into the water. It has been such a near thing that there are
scales on some of their hands. They climb on to the rock crestfallen._

WENDY (_preserving her scales as carefully as if they were rare postage
stamps_). I did so want to catch a mermaid.

PETER (_getting rid of his_). It is awfully difficult to catch a
mermaid.

  (_The mermaids at times find it just as difficult to catch him,
  though he sometimes joins them in their one game, which consists in
  lazily blowing their bubbles into the air and seeing who can catch
  them. The number of bubbles_ PETER _has flown away with! When the
  weather grows cold mermaids migrate to the other side of the world,
  and he once went with a great shoal of them half the way._)

They are such cruel creatures, Wendy, that they try to pull boys and
girls like you into the water and drown them.

WENDY (_too guarded by this time to ask what he means precisely by
‘like you,’ though she is very desirous of knowing_). How hateful!

  (_She is slightly different in appearance now, rather rounder, while_
  JOHN _and_ MICHAEL _are not quite so round. The reason is that when
  new lost children arrive at his underground home_ PETER _finds new
  trees for them to go up and down by, and instead of fitting the tree
  to them he makes them fit the tree. Sometimes it can be done by
  adding or removing garments, but if you are bumpy, or the tree is an
  odd shape, he has things done to you with a roller, and after that
  you fit._

  _The other boys are now playing King of the Castle, throwing each
  other into the water, taking headers and so on; but these two
  continue to talk._)

PETER. Wendy, this is a fearfully important rock. It is called
Marooners’ Rock. Sailors are marooned, you know, when their captain
leaves them on a rock and sails away.

WENDY. Leaves them on this little rock to drown?

PETER (_lightly_). Oh, they don’t live long. Their hands are tied, so
that they can’t swim. When the tide is full this rock is covered with
water, and then the sailor drowns.

  (WENDY _is uneasy as she surveys the rock, which is the only one in
  the lagoon and no larger than a table. Since she last looked around a
  threatening change has come over the scene. The sun has gone, but the
  moon has not come. What has come is a cold shiver across the waters
  which has sent all the wiser mermaids to their coral recesses. They
  know that evil is creeping over the lagoon. Of the boys_ PETER _is of
  course the first to scent it, and he has leapt to his feet before the
  words strike the rock--_

      ‘And if we’re parted by a shot
      We’re sure to meet below.’

  _The games on the rock and around it end so abruptly that several
  divers are checked in the air. There they hang waiting for the word
  of command from_ PETER. _When they get it they strike the water
  simultaneously, and the rock is at once as bare as if suddenly they
  had been blown off it. Thus the pirates find it deserted when their
  dinghy strikes the rock and is nearly stove in by the concussion._)

SMEE. Luff, you spalpeen, luff! (_They are_ SMEE _and_ STARKEY, _with_
TIGER LILY, _their captive, bound hand and foot_.) What we have got to
do is to hoist the redskin on to the rock and leave her there to drown.

  (_To one of her race this is an end darker than death by fire or
  torture, for it is written in the laws of the Piccaninnies that there
  is no path through water to the happy hunting ground. Yet her face is
  impassive; she is the daughter of a chief and must die as a chief’s
  daughter; it is enough._)

STARKEY (_chagrined because she does not mewl_). No mewling. This is
your reward for prowling round the ship with a knife in your mouth.

TIGER LILY (_stoically_). Enough said.

SMEE (_who would have preferred a farewell palaver_). So that’s it! On
to the rock with her, mate.

STARKEY (_experiencing for perhaps the last time the stirrings of a
man_). Not so rough, Smee; roughish, but not so rough.

SMEE (_dragging her on to the rock_). It is the captain’s orders.

  (_A stave has in some past time been driven into the rock, probably
  to mark the burial place of hidden treasure, and to this they moor
  the dinghy._)

WENDY (_in the water_). Poor Tiger Lily!

STARKEY. What was that? (_The children bob._)

PETER (_who can imitate the captain’s voice so perfectly that even the
author has a dizzy feeling that at times he was really_ HOOK). Ahoy
there, you lubbers!

STARKEY. It is the captain; he must be swimming out to us.

SMEE (_calling_). We have put the redskin on the rock, Captain.

PETER. Set her free.

SMEE. But, Captain----

PETER. Cut her bonds, or I’ll plunge my hook in you.

SMEE. This is queer!

STARKEY (_unmanned_). Let us follow the captain’s orders.

  (_They undo the thongs and_ TIGER LILY _slides between their legs
  into the lagoon, forgetting in her haste to utter her war-cry, but_
  PETER _utters it for her, so naturally that even the lost boys are
  deceived. It is at this moment that the voice of the true_ HOOK _is
  heard_.)

HOOK. Boat ahoy!

SMEE (_relieved_). It is the captain.

  (HOOK _is swimming, and they help him to scale the rock. He is in
  gloomy mood._)

STARKEY. Captain, is all well?

SMEE. He sighs.

STARKEY. He sighs again.

SMEE (_counting_). And yet a third time he sighs. (_With foreboding_)
What’s up, Captain?

HOOK (_who has perhaps found the large rich damp cake untouched_). The
game is up. Those boys have found a mother!

STARKEY. Oh evil day!

SMEE. What is a mother?

WENDY (_horrified_). He doesn’t know!

HOOK (_sharply_). What was that?

  (PETER _makes the splash of a mermaid’s tail_.)

STARKEY. One of them mermaids.

HOOK. Dost not know, Smee? A mother is--(_he finds it more difficult to
explain than he had expected, and looks about him for an illustration.
He finds one in a great bird which drifts past in a nest as large as
the roomiest basin._) There is a lesson in mothers for you! The nest
must have fallen into the water, but would the bird desert her eggs?
(PETER, _who is now more or less off his head, makes the sound of a
bird answering in the negative. The nest is borne out of sight._)

STARKEY. Maybe she is hanging about here to protect Peter?

  (HOOK’S _face clouds still further and_ PETER _just manages not to
  call out that he needs no protection_.)

SMEE (_not usually a man of ideas_). Captain, could we not kidnap these
boys’ mother and make her our mother?

HOOK. Obesity and bunions, ’tis a princely scheme. We will seize the
children, make them walk the plank, and Wendy shall be our mother!

WENDY. Never! (_Another splash from_ PETER.)

HOOK. What say you, bullies?

SMEE. There is my hand on ’t.

STARKEY. And mine.

HOOK. And there is my hook. Swear. (_All swear._) But I had forgot;
where is the redskin?

SMEE (_shaken_). That is all right, Captain; we let her go.

HOOK (_terrible_). Let her go?

SMEE. ’Twas your own orders, Captain.

STARKEY (_whimpering_). You called over the water to us to let her go.

HOOK. Brimstone and gall, what cozening is here? (_Disturbed by their
faithful faces_) Lads, I gave no such order.

SMEE. ’Tis passing queer.

HOOK (_addressing the immensities_). Spirit that haunts this dark
lagoon to-night, dost hear me?

PETER (_in the same voice_). Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I hear you.

HOOK (_gripping the stave for support_). Who are you, stranger, speak.

PETER (_who is only too ready to speak_). I am Jas Hook, Captain of the
_Jolly Roger_.

HOOK (_now white to the gills_). No, no, you are not.

PETER. Brimstone and gall, say that again and I’ll cast anchor in you.

HOOK. If you are Hook, come tell me, who am I?

PETER. A codfish, only a codfish.

HOOK (_aghast_). A codfish?

SMEE (_drawing back from him_). Have we been captained all this time by
a codfish?

STARKEY. It’s lowering to our pride.

HOOK (_feeling that his ego is slipping from him_). Don’t desert me,
bullies.

PETER (_top-heavy_). Paw, fish, paw!

  (_There is a touch of the feminine in_ HOOK, _as in all the greatest
  pirates, and it prompts him to try the guessing game_.)

HOOK. Have you another name?

PETER (_falling to the lure_). Ay, ay.

HOOK (_thirstily_). Vegetable?

PETER. No.

HOOK. Mineral?

PETER. No.

HOOK. Animal?

PETER (_after a hurried consultation with_ TOOTLES). Yes.

HOOK. Man?

PETER (_with scorn_). No.

HOOK. Boy?

PETER. Yes.

HOOK. Ordinary boy?

PETER. No!

HOOK. Wonderful boy?

PETER (_to_ WENDY’S _distress_). Yes!

HOOK. Are you in England?

PETER. No.

HOOK. Are you here?

PETER. Yes.

HOOK (_beaten, though he feels he has very nearly got it_). Smee, you
ask him some questions.

SMEE (_rummaging his brains_). I can’t think of a thing.

PETER. Can’t guess, can’t guess! (_Foundering in his cockiness_) Do you
give it up?

HOOK (_eagerly_). Yes.

PETER. All of you?

SMEE and STARKEY. Yes.

PETER (_crowing_). Well, then, I am Peter Pan!

  (_Now they have him._)

HOOK. Pan! Into the water, Smee. Starkey, mind the boat. Take him dead
or alive!

PETER (_who still has all his baby teeth_). Boys, lam into the pirates!

  (_For a moment the only two we can see are in the dinghy, where_
  JOHN _throws himself on_ STARKEY. STARKEY _wriggles into the lagoon
  and_ JOHN _leaps so quickly after him that he reaches it first. The
  impression left on_ STARKEY _is that he is being attacked by the_
  TWINS. _The water becomes stained. The dinghy drifts away. Here
  and there a head shows in the water, and once it is the head of
  the crocodile. In the growing gloom some strike at their friends_,
  SLIGHTLY _getting_ TOOTLES _in the fourth rib while he himself is
  pinked by_ CURLY. _It looks as if the boys were getting the worse of
  it, which is perhaps just as well at this point, because_ PETER, _who
  will be the determining factor in the end, has a perplexing way of
  changing sides if he is winning too easily_. HOOK’S _iron claw makes
  a circle of black water round him from which opponents flee like
  fishes. There is only one prepared to enter that dreadful circle. His
  name is_ PAN. _Strangely, it is not in the water that they meet._
  HOOK _has risen to the rock to breathe, and at the same moment_ PETER
  _scales it on the opposite side. The rock is now wet and as slippery
  as a ball, and they have to crawl rather than climb. Suddenly they
  are face to face._ PETER _gnashes his pretty teeth with joy, and is
  gathering himself for the spring when he sees he is higher up the
  rock than his foe. Courteously he waits_; HOOK _sees his intention,
  and taking advantage of it claws twice_. PETER _is untouched, but
  unfairness is what he never can get used to, and in his bewilderment
  he rolls off the rock. The crocodile, whose tick has been drowned
  in the strife, rears its jaws, and_ HOOK, _who has almost stepped
  into them, is pursued by it to land. All is quiet on the lagoon now,
  not a sound save little waves nibbling at the rock, which is smaller
  than when we last looked at it. Two boys appear with the dinghy, and
  the others despite their wounds climb into it. They send the cry
  ‘Peter--Wendy’ across the waters, but no answer comes._)

NIBS. They must be swimming home.

JOHN. Or flying.

FIRST TWIN. Yes, that is it. Let us be off and call to them as we go.

  (_The dinghy disappears with its load, whose hearts would sink it if
  they knew of the peril of_ WENDY _and her captain. From near and far
  away come the cries ‘Peter--Wendy’ till we no longer hear them._

  _Two small figures are now on the rock, but they have fainted. A
  mermaid who has dared to come back in the stillness stretches up her
  arms and is slowly pulling_ WENDY _into the water to drown her_.
  WENDY _starts up just in time_.)

WENDY. Peter!

  (_He rouses himself and looks around him._)

Where are we, Peter?

PETER. We are on the rock, but it is getting smaller. Soon the water
will be over it. Listen!

  (_They can hear the wash of the relentless little waves._)

WENDY. We must go.

PETER. Yes.

WENDY. Shall we swim or fly?

PETER. Wendy, do you think you could swim or fly to the island without
me?

WENDY. You know I couldn’t, Peter; I am just a beginner.

PETER. Hook wounded me twice. (_He believes it; he is so good at
pretend that he feels the pain, his arms hang limp._) I can neither
swim nor fly.

WENDY. Do you mean we shall both be drowned?

PETER. Look how the water is rising!

  (_They cover their faces with their hands. Something touches_ WENDY
  _as lightly as a kiss_.)

PETER (_with little interest_). It must be the tail of the kite we made
for Michael; you remember it tore itself out of his hands and floated
away. (_He looks up and sees the kite sailing overhead._) The kite! Why
shouldn’t it carry you? (_He grips the tail and pulls, and the kite
responds._)

WENDY. Both of us!

PETER. It can’t lift two. Michael and Curly tried.

  (_She knows very well that if it can lift her it can lift him also,
  for she has been told by the boys as a deadly secret that one of the
  queer things about him is that he is no weight at all. But it is a
  forbidden subject._)

WENDY. I won’t go without you. Let us draw lots which is to stay behind.

PETER. And you a lady, never! (_The tail is in her hands, and the kite
is tugging hard. She holds out her mouth to_ PETER, _but he knows they
cannot do that_.) Ready, Wendy!

  (_The kite draws her out of sight across the lagoon._

  _The waters are lapping over the rock now, and_ PETER _knows that it
  will soon be submerged. Pale rays of light mingle with the moving
  clouds, and from the coral grottoes is to be heard a sound, at once
  the most musical and the most melancholy in the Never Land, the
  mermaids calling to the moon to rise._ PETER _is afraid at last, and
  a tremor runs through him, like a shudder passing over the lagoon;
  but on the lagoon one shudder follows another till there are hundreds
  of them, and he feels just the one._)

PETER (_with a drum beating in his breast as if he were a real boy at
last_). To die will be an awfully big adventure.

  (_The blind rises again, and the lagoon is now suffused with
  moonlight. He is on the rock still, but the water is over his feet.
  The nest is borne nearer, and the bird, after cooing a message to
  him, leaves it and wings her way upwards._ PETER, _who knows the
  bird language, slips into the nest, first removing the two eggs and
  placing them in_ STARKEY’S _hat, which has been left on the stave.
  The hat drifts away from the rock, but he uses the stave as a
  mast. The wind is driving him toward the open sea. He takes off his
  shirt, which he had forgotten to remove while bathing, and unfurls
  it as a sail. His vessel tacks, and he passes from sight, naked and
  victorious. The bird returns and sits on the hat._)




ACT IV




ACT IV

THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND


_We see simultaneously the home under the ground with the children
in it and the wood above ground with the redskins on it. Below, the
children are gobbling their evening meal; above, the redskins are
squatting in their blankets near the little house guarding the children
from the pirates. The only way of communicating between these two
parties is by means of the hollow trees._

_The home has an earthen floor, which is handy for digging in if you
want to go fishing; and owing to there being so many entrances there is
not much wall space. The table at which the lost ones are sitting is a
board on top of a live tree trunk, which has been cut flat but has such
growing pains that the board rises as they eat, and they have sometimes
to pause in their meals to cut a bit more off the trunk. Their seats
are pumpkins or the large gay mushrooms of which we have seen an
imitation one concealing the chimney. There is an enormous fireplace
which is in almost any part of the room where you care to light it, and
across this Wendy has stretched strings, made of fibre, from which she
hangs her washing. There are also various tomfool things in the room of
no use whatever._

_Michael’s basket bed is nailed high up on the wall as if to protect
him from the cat, but there is no indication at present of where
the others sleep. At the back between two of the tree trunks is a
grindstone, and near it is a lovely hole, the size of a band-box, with
a gay curtain drawn across so that you cannot see what is inside. This
is Tink’s withdrawing-room and bed-chamber, and it is just as well that
you cannot see inside, for it is so exquisite in its decoration and
in the personal apparel spread out on the bed that you could scarcely
resist making off with something. Tink is within at present, as one
can guess from a glow showing through the chinks. It is her own glow,
for though she has a chandelier for the look of the thing, of course
she lights her residence herself. She is probably wasting valuable
time just now wondering whether to put on the smoky blue or the
apple-blossom._

_All the boys except Peter are here, and Wendy has the head of the
table, smiling complacently at their captivating ways, but doing
her best at the same time to see that they keep the rules about
hands-off-the-table, no-two-to-speak-at-once, and so on. She is
wearing romantic woodland garments, sewn by herself, with red berries
in her hair which go charmingly with her complexion, as she knows;
indeed she searched for red berries the morning after she reached the
island. The boys are in picturesque attire of her contrivance, and if
these don’t always fit well the fault is not hers but the wearers’, for
they constantly put on each other’s things when they put on anything
at all. Michael is in his cradle on the wall. First Twin is apart on a
high stool and wears a dunce’s cap, another invention of Wendy’s, but
not wholly successful because everybody wants to be dunce._

_It is a pretend meal this evening, with nothing whatever on the table,
not a mug, nor a crust, nor a spoon. They often have these suppers and
like them on occasions as well as the other kind, which consist chiefly
of bread-fruit, tappa rolls, yams, mammee apples and banana splash,
washed down with calabashes of poe-poe. The pretend meals are not
Wendy’s idea; indeed she was rather startled to find, on arriving, that
Peter knew of no other kind, and she is not absolutely certain even now
that he does eat the other kind, though no one appears to do it more
heartily. He insists that the pretend meals should be partaken of with
gusto, and we see his band doing their best to obey orders._

WENDY (_her fingers to her ears, for their chatter and clatter are
deafening_). Si-lence! Is your mug empty, Slightly?

SLIGHTLY (_who would not say this if he had a mug_). Not quite empty,
thank you.

NIBS. Mummy, he has not even begun to drink his poe-poe.

SLIGHTLY (_seizing his chance, for this is tale-bearing_). I complain
of Nibs!

  (JOHN _holds up his hand_.)

WENDY. Well, John?

JOHN. May I sit in Peter’s chair as he is not here?

WENDY. In your father’s chair? Certainly not.

JOHN. He is not really our father. He did not even know how to be a
father till I showed him.

  (_This is insubordination._)

SECOND TWIN. I complain of John!

  (_The gentle_ TOOTLES _raises his hand_.)

TOOTLES (_who has the poorest opinion of himself_). I don’t suppose
Michael would let me be baby?

MICHAEL. No, I won’t.

TOOTLES. May I be dunce?

FIRST TWIN (_from his perch_). No. It’s awfully difficult to be dunce.

TOOTLES. As I can’t be anything important would any of you like to see
me do a trick?

OMNES. No.

TOOTLES (_subsiding_). I hadn’t really any hope.

  (_The tale-telling breaks out again._)

NIBS. Slightly is coughing on the table.

CURLY. The twins began with tappa rolls.

SLIGHTLY. I complain of Nibs!

NIBS. I complain of Slightly!

WENDY. Oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think that spinsters are to be
envied.

MICHAEL. Wendy, I am too big for a cradle.

WENDY. You are the littlest, and a cradle is such a nice homely thing
to have about a house. You others can clear away now. (_She sits down
on a pumpkin near the fire to her usual evening occupation, darning._)
Every heel with a hole in it!

  (_The boys clear away with dispatch, washing dishes they don’t have
  in a non-existent sink and stowing them in a cupboard that isn’t
  there. Instead of sawing the table-leg to-night they crush it into
  the ground like a concertina, and are now ready for play, in which
  they indulge hilariously._

  _A movement of the Indians draws our attention to the scene above.
  Hitherto, with the exception of_ PANTHER, _who sits on guard on top
  of the little house, they have been hunkering in their blankets,
  mute but picturesque; now all rise and prostrate themselves before
  the majestic figure of_ PETER, _who approaches through the forest
  carrying a gun and game bag. It is not exactly a gun. He often
  wanders away alone with this weapon, and when he comes back you are
  never absolutely certain whether he has had an adventure or not. He
  may have forgotten it so completely that he says nothing about it;
  and then when you go out you find the body. On the other hand he may
  say a great deal about it, and yet you never find the body. Sometimes
  he comes home with his face scratched, and tells_ WENDY, _as a thing
  of no importance, that he got these marks from the little people for
  cheeking them at a fairy wedding, and she listens politely, but she
  is never quite sure, you know; indeed the only one who is sure about
  anything on the island is_ PETER.)

PETER. The Great White Father is glad to see the Piccaninny braves
protecting his wigwam from the pirates.

TIGER LILY. The Great White Father save me from pirates. Me his velly
nice friend now; no let pirates hurt him.

BRAVES. Ugh, ugh, wah!

TIGER LILY. Tiger Lily has spoken.

PANTHER. Loola, loola! Great Big Little Panther has spoken.

PETER. It is well. The Great White Father has spoken.

  (_This has a note of finality about it, with the implied ‘And now
  shut up,’ which is never far from the courteous receptions of
  well-meaning inferiors by born leaders of men. He descends his tree,
  not unheard by_ WENDY.)

WENDY. Children, I hear your father’s step. He likes you to meet him at
the door. (PETER _scatters pretend nuts among them and watches sharply
to see that they crunch with relish_.) Peter, you just spoil them, you
know!

JOHN (_who would be incredulous if he dare_). Any sport, Peter?

PETER. Two tigers and a pirate.

JOHN (_boldly_). Where are their heads?

PETER (_contracting his little brows_). In the bag.

JOHN. (_No, he doesn’t say it. He backs away._)

WENDY (_peeping into the bag_). They are beauties! (_She has learned
her lesson._)

FIRST TWIN. Mummy, we all want to dance.

WENDY. The mother of such an armful dance!

SLIGHTLY. As it is Saturday night?

  (_They have long lost count of the days, but always if they want to
  do anything special they say this is Saturday night, and then they do
  it._)

WENDY. Of course it is Saturday night, Peter? (_He shrugs an
indifferent assent._) On with your nighties first.

  (_They disappear into various recesses, and_ PETER _and_ WENDY _with
  her darning are left by the fire to dodder parentally. She emphasises
  it by humming a verse of ‘John Anderson my Jo,’ which has not the
  desired effect on_ PETER. _She is too loving to be ignorant that he
  is not loving enough, and she hesitates like one who knows the answer
  to her question._)

What is wrong, Peter?

PETER (_scared_). It is only pretend, isn’t it, that I am their father?

WENDY (_drooping_). Oh yes.

  (_His sigh of relief is without consideration for her feelings._)

But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine.

PETER (_determined to get at facts, the only things that puzzle him_).
But not really?

WENDY. Not if you don’t wish it.

PETER. I don’t.

WENDY (_knowing she ought not to probe but driven to it by something
within_). What are your exact feelings for me, Peter?

PETER (_in the class-room_). Those of a devoted son, Wendy.

WENDY (_turning away_). I thought so.

PETER. You are so puzzling. Tiger Lily is just the same; there is
something or other she wants to be to me, but she says it is not my
mother.

WENDY (_with spirit_). No, indeed it isn’t.

PETER. Then what is it?

WENDY. It isn’t for a lady to tell.

  (_The curtain of the fairy chamber opens slightly, and_ TINK, _who
  has doubtless been eavesdropping, tinkles a laugh of scorn_.)

PETER (_badgered_). I suppose she means that she wants to be my mother.

  (TINK’S _comment is ‘You silly ass.’_)

WENDY (_who has picked up some of the fairy words_). I almost agree
with her!

  (_The arrival of the boys in their nightgowns turns_ WENDY’S _mind to
  practical matters, for the children have to be arranged in line and
  passed or not passed for cleanliness._ SLIGHTLY _is the worst. At
  last we see how they sleep, for in a babel the great bed which stands
  on end by day against the wall is unloosed from custody and lowered
  to the floor. Though large, it is a tight fit for so many boys, and_
  WENDY _has made a rule that there is to be no turning round until one
  gives the signal, when all turn at once_.

  FIRST TWIN _is the best dancer and performs mightily on the bed and
  in it and out of it and over it to an accompaniment of pillow fights
  by the less agile; and then there is a rush at_ WENDY.)

NIBS. Now the story you promised to tell us as soon as we were in bed!

WENDY (_severely_). As far as I can see you are not in bed yet.

  (_They scramble into the bed, and the effect is as of a boxful of
  sardines._)

WENDY (_drawing up her stool_). Well, there was once a gentleman----

CURLY. I wish he had been a lady.

NIBS. I wish he had been a white rat.

WENDY. Quiet! There was a lady also. The gentleman’s name was Mr.
Darling and the lady’s name was Mrs. Darling----

JOHN. I knew them!

MICHAEL (_who has been allowed to join the circle_). I think I knew
them.

WENDY. They were married, you know; and what do you think they had?

NIBS. White rats?

WENDY. No, they had three descendants. White rats are descendants also.
Almost everything is a descendant. Now these three children had a
faithful nurse called Nana.

MICHAEL (_alas_). What a funny name!

WENDY. But Mr. Darling--(_faltering_) or was it Mrs. Darling?--was
angry with her and chained her up in the yard; so all the children flew
away. They flew away to the Never Land, where the lost boys are.

CURLY. I just thought they did; I don’t know how it is, but I just
thought they did.

TOOTLES. Oh, Wendy, was one of the lost boys called Tootles?

WENDY. Yes, he was.

TOOTLES (_dazzled_). Am I in a story? Nibs, I am in a story!

PETER (_who is by the fire making Pan’s pipes with his knife, and is
determined that_ WENDY _shall have fair play, however beastly a story
he may think it_). A little less noise there.

WENDY (_melting over the beauty of her present performance, but without
any real qualms_). Now I want you to consider the feelings of the
unhappy parents with all their children flown away. Think, oh think, of
the empty beds. (_The heartless ones think of them with glee._)

FIRST TWIN (_cheerfully_). It’s awfully sad.

WENDY. But our heroine knew that her mother would always leave the
window open for her progeny to fly back by; so they stayed away for
years and had a lovely time.

  (PETER _is interested at last_.)

FIRST TWIN. Did they ever go back?

WENDY (_comfortably_). Let us now take a peep into the future. Years
have rolled by, and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting
at London station?

  (_The tension is unbearable._)

NIBS. Oh, Wendy, who is she?

WENDY (_swelling_). Can it be--yes--no--yes, it is the fair Wendy!

TOOTLES. I am glad.

WENDY. Who are the two noble portly figures accompanying her? Can
they be John and Michael? They are. (_Pride of_ MICHAEL.) ‘See, dear
brothers,’ says Wendy, pointing upward, ‘there is the window standing
open.’ So up they flew to their loving parents, and pen cannot inscribe
the happy scene over which we draw a veil. (_Her triumph is spoilt
by a groan from_ PETER _and she hurries to him_.) Peter, what is it?
(_Thinking he is ill, and looking lower than his chest._) Where is it?

PETER. It isn’t that kind of pain. Wendy, you are wrong about mothers.
I thought like you about the window, so I stayed away for moons and
moons, and then I flew back, but the window was barred, for my mother
had forgotten all about me and there was another little boy sleeping in
my bed.

  (_This is a general damper._)

JOHN. Wendy, let us go back!

WENDY. Are you sure mothers are like that?

PETER. Yes.

WENDY. John, Michael! (_She clasps them to her._)

FIRST TWIN (_alarmed_). You are not to leave us, Wendy?

WENDY. I must.

NIBS. Not to-night?

WENDY. At once. Perhaps mother is in half-mourning by this time! Peter,
will you make the necessary arrangements?

  (_She asks it in the steely tones women adopt when they are prepared
  secretly for opposition._)

PETER (_coolly_). If you wish it.

  (_He ascends his tree to give the redskins their instructions. The
  lost boys gather threateningly round_ WENDY.)

CURLY. We won’t let you go!

WENDY (_with one of those inspirations women have, in an emergency, to
make use of some male who need otherwise have no hope_). Tootles, I
appeal to you.

TOOTLES (_leaping to his death if necessary_). I am just Tootles and
nobody minds me, but the first who does not behave to Wendy I will
blood him severely. (PETER _returns_.)

PETER (_with awful serenity_). Wendy, I told the braves to guide you
through the wood as flying tires you so. Then Tinker Bell will take you
across the sea. (_A shrill tinkle from the boudoir probably means ‘and
drop her into it.’_)

NIBS (_fingering the curtain which he is not allowed to open_). Tink,
you are to get up and take Wendy on a journey. (_Star-eyed_) She says
she won’t!

PETER (_taking a step toward that chamber_). If you don’t get up, Tink,
and dress at once---- She is getting up!

WENDY (_quivering now that the time to depart has come_). Dear ones, if
you will all come with me I feel almost sure I can get my father and
mother to adopt you.

  (_There is joy at this, not that they want parents, but novelty is
  their religion._)

NIBS. But won’t they think us rather a handful?

WENDY (_a swift reckoner_). Oh no, it will only mean having a few
beds in the drawing-room; they can be hidden behind screens on first
Thursdays.

  (_Everything depends on_ PETER.)

OMNES. Peter, may we go?

PETER (_carelessly through the pipes to which he is giving a finishing
touch_). All right.

  (_They scurry off to dress for the adventure_.)

WENDY (_insinuatingly_). Get your clothes, Peter.

PETER (_skipping about and playing fairy music on his pipes, the only
music he knows_). I am not going with you, Wendy.

WENDY. Yes, Peter!

PETER. No.

  (_The lost ones run back gaily, each carrying a stick with a bundle
  on the end of it._)

WENDY. Peter isn’t coming!

(_All the faces go blank._)

JOHN (_even_ JOHN). Peter not coming!

TOOTLES (_overthrown_). Why, Peter?

PETER (_his pipes more riotous than ever_). I just want always to be a
little boy and to have fun.

  (_There is a general fear that they are perhaps making the mistake of
  their lives._)

Now then, no fuss, no blubbering. (_With dreadful cynicism_) I hope you
will like your mothers! Are you ready, Tink? Then lead the way.

  (TINK _darts up any tree, but she is the only one. The air above is
  suddenly rent with shrieks and the clash of steel. Though they cannot
  see, the boys know that_ HOOK _and his crew are upon the Indians.
  Mouths open and remain open, all in mute appeal to_ PETER. _He is
  the only boy on his feet now, a sword in his hand, the same he slew
  Barbicue with; and in his eye is the lust of battle._

  _We can watch the carnage that is invisible to the children._ HOOK
  _has basely broken the two laws of Indian warfare, which are that
  the redskins should attack first, and that it should be at dawn.
  They have known the pirate whereabouts since, early in the night,
  one of_ SMEE’S _fingers crackled. The brushwood has closed behind
  their scouts as silently as the sand on the mole; for hours they
  have imitated the lonely call of the coyote; no stratagem has been
  overlooked, but, alas, they have trusted to the pale-faces’ honour
  to await an attack at dawn, when his courage is known to be at
  the lowest ebb._ HOOK _falls upon them pell-mell, and one cannot
  withhold a reluctant admiration for the wit that conceived so subtle
  a scheme and the fell genius with which it is carried out. If the
  braves would rise quickly they might still have time to scalp, but
  this they are forbidden to do by the traditions of their race, for
  it is written that they must never express surprise in the presence
  of the pale-face. For a brief space they remain recumbent, not a
  muscle moving, as if the foe were here by invitation. Thus perish
  the flower of the Piccaninnies, though not unavenged, for with_ LEAN
  WOLF _fall_ ALF MASON _and_ CANARY ROBB, _while other pirates to bite
  dust are_ BLACK GILMOUR _and_ ALAN HERB, _that same_ HERB _who is
  still remembered at Manaos for playing skittles with the mate of the_
  Switch _for each other’s heads_. CHAY TURLEY, _who laughed with the
  wrong side of his mouth (having no other), is tomahawked by_ PANTHER,
  _who eventually cuts a way through the shambles with_ TIGER LILY _and
  a remnant of the tribe_.

  _This onslaught passes and is gone like a fierce wind. The victors
  wipe their cutlasses, and squint, ferret-eyed, at their leader. He
  remains, as ever, aloof in spirit and in substance. He signs to them
  to descend the trees, for he is convinced that_ PAN _is down there,
  and though he has smoked the bees it is the honey he wants. There is
  something in_ PETER _that at all times goads this extra-ordinary man
  to frenzy; it is the boy’s cockiness, which disturbs_ HOOK _like an
  insect. If you have seen a lion in a cage futilely pursuing a sparrow
  you will know what is meant. The pirates try to do their captain’s
  bidding, but the apertures prove to be not wide enough for them; he
  cannot even ram them down with a pole. He steals to the mouth of a
  tree and listens._)

PETER (_prematurely_). All is over!

WENDY. But who has won?

PETER. Hst! If the Indians have won they will beat the tom-tom; it is
always their signal of victory.

  (HOOK _licks his lips at this and signs to_ SMEE, _who is sitting
  on it, to hold up the tom-tom. He beats upon it with his claw, and
  listens for results._)

TOOTLES. The tom-tom!

PETER (_sheathing his sword_). An Indian victory!

  (_The cheers from below are music to the black hearts above._)

You are quite safe now, Wendy. Boys, good-bye. (_He resumes his pipes._)

WENDY. Peter, you will remember about changing your flannels, won’t you?

PETER. Oh, all right!

WENDY. And this is your medicine.

  (_She puts something into a shell and leaves it on a ledge between
  two of the trees. It is only water, but she measures it out in
  drops._)

PETER. I won’t forget.

WENDY. Peter, what are you to me?

PETER (_through the pipes_). Your son, Wendy.

WENDY. Oh, good-bye!

  (_The travellers start upon their journey, little witting that_ HOOK
  _has issued his silent orders: a man to the mouth of each tree, and
  a row of men between the trees and the little house. As the children
  squeeze up they are plucked from their trees, trussed, thrown like
  bales of cotton from one pirate to another, and so piled up in the
  little house. The only one treated differently is_ WENDY, _whom_ HOOK
  _escorts to the house on his arm with hateful politeness. He signs to
  his dogs to be gone, and they depart through the wood, carrying the
  little house with its strange merchandise and singing their ribald
  song. The chimney of the little house emits a jet of smoke fitfully,
  as if not sure what it ought to do just now._

  HOOK _and_ PETER _are now, as it were, alone on the island. Below_,
  PETER _is on the bed, asleep, no weapon near him; above_, HOOK,
  _armed to the teeth, is searching noiselessly for some tree down
  which the nastiness of him can descend. Don’t be too much alarmed
  by this; it is precisely the situation_ _PETER_ _would have chosen;
  indeed if the whole thing were pretend--. One of his arms droops over
  the edge of the bed, a leg is arched, and the mouth is not so tightly
  closed that we cannot see the little pearls. He is dreaming, and in
  his dreams he is always in pursuit of a boy who was never here, nor
  anywhere: the only boy who could beat him._

  HOOK _finds the tree. It is the one set apart for_ SLIGHTLY, _who
  being addicted when hot to the drinking of water has swelled in
  consequence and surreptitiously scooped his tree for easier descent
  and egress. Down this the pirate wriggles a passage. In the aperture
  below his face emerges and goes green as he glares at the sleeping
  child. Does no feeling of compassion disturb his sombre breast? The
  man is not wholly evil: he has a_ Thesaurus _in his cabin, and is no
  mean performer on the flute. What really warps him is a presentiment
  that he is about to fail. This is not unconnected with a beatific
  smile on the face of the sleeper, whom he cannot reach owing to
  being stuck at the foot of the tree. He, however, sees the medicine
  shell within easy reach, and to_ WENDY’S _draught he adds from a
  bottle five drops of poison distilled when he was weeping from the
  red in his eye. The expression on_ PETER’S _face merely implies that
  something heavenly is going on_. HOOK _worms his way upwards, and
  winding his cloak around him, as if to conceal his person from the
  night of which he is the blackest part, he stalks moodily toward the
  lagoon._

  _A dot of light flashes past him and darts down the nearest tree,
  looking for_ PETER, _only for_ PETER, _quite indifferent about the
  others when she finds him safe_.)

PETER (_stirring_). Who is that? (TINK _has to tell her tale, in one
long ungrammatical sentence_.) The redskins were defeated? Wendy and
the boys captured by the pirates! I’ll rescue her, I’ll rescue her!
(_He leaps first at his dagger, and then at his grindstone, to sharpen
it._ TINK _alights near the shell, and rings out a warning cry_.) Oh,
that is just my medicine. Poisoned? Who could have poisoned it? I
promised Wendy to take it, and I will as soon as I have sharpened my
dagger. (TINK, _who sees its red colour and remembers the red in the
pirate’s eye, nobly swallows the draught as_ PETER’S _hand is reaching
for it_.) Why, Tink, you have drunk my medicine! (_She flutters
strangely about the room, answering him now in a very thin tinkle._)
It was poisoned and you drank it to save my life! Tink, dear Tink, are
you dying? (_He has never called her dear Tink before, and for a moment
she is gay; she alights on his shoulder, gives his chin a loving bite,
whispers ‘You silly ass,’ and falls on her tiny bed. The boudoir, which
is lit by her, flickers ominously. He is on his knees by the opening._)

Her light is growing faint, and if it goes out, that means she is
dead! Her voice is so low I can scarcely tell what she is saying.
She says--she says she thinks she could get well again if children
believed in fairies! (_He rises and throws out his arms he knows not
to whom, perhaps to the boys and girls of whom he is not one._) Do you
believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap
your hands! (_Many clap, some don’t, a few hiss. Then perhaps there is
a rush of Nanas to the nurseries to see what on earth is happening.
But_ TINK _is saved_.) Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! And now to
rescue Wendy!

  (TINK _is already as merry and impudent as a grig, with not a thought
  for those who have saved her_. PETER _ascends his tree as if he were
  shot up it. What he is feeling is_ ‘_Hook or me this time!_’ _He
  is frightfully happy. He soon hits the trail, for the smoke from
  the little house has lingered here and there to guide him. He takes
  wing._)




ACT V




ACT V


SCENE 1

THE PIRATE SHIP

_The stage directions for the opening of this scene are as follows:--1
Circuit Amber checked to 80. Battens, all Amber checked, 3 ship’s
lanterns alight, Arcs: prompt perch 1. Open dark amber flooding back,
O.P. perch open dark amber flooding upper deck. Arc on tall steps at
back of cabin to flood back cloth. Open dark Amber. Warning for slide.
Plank ready. Call Hook._

_In the strange light thus described we see what is happening on the
deck of the_ Jolly Roger, _which is flying the skull and crossbones and
lies low in the water. There is no need to call Hook, for he is here
already, and indeed there is not a pirate aboard who would dare to call
him. Most of them are at present carousing in the bowels of the vessel,
but on the poop Mullins is visible, in the only great-coat on the ship,
raking with his glass the monstrous rocks within which the lagoon is
cooped. Such a look-out is supererogatory, for the pirate craft floats
immune in the horror of her name._

_From Hook’s cabin at the back Starkey appears and leans over the
bulwark, silently surveying the sullen waters. He is bare-headed and is
perhaps thinking with bitterness of his hat, which he sometimes sees
still drifting past him with the Never bird sitting on it. The black
pirate is asleep on deck, yet even in his dreams rolling mechanically
out of the way when Hook draws near. The only sound to be heard is made
by Smee at his sewing-machine, which lends a touch of domesticity to
the night._

_Hook is now leaning against the mast, now prowling the deck, the
double cigar in his mouth. With Peter surely at last removed from his
path we, who know how vain a tabernacle is man, would not be surprised
to find him bellied out by the winds of his success, but it is not so;
he is still uneasy, looking long and meaninglessly at familiar objects,
such as the ship’s bell or the Long Tom, like one who may shortly be
a stranger to them. It is as if Pan’s terrible oath ‘Hook or me this
time!’ had already boarded the ship._

HOOK (_communing with his ego_). How still the night is; nothing
sounds alive. Now is the hour when children in their homes are a-bed;
their lips bright-browned with the good-night chocolate, and their
tongues drowsily searching for belated crumbs housed insecurely on
their shining cheeks. Compare with them the children on this boat
about to walk the plank. Split my infinitives, but ’tis my hour of
triumph! (_Clinging to this fair prospect he dances a few jubilant
steps, but they fall below his usual form._) And yet some disky spirit
compels me now to make my dying speech, lest when dying there may be
no time for it. All mortals envy me, yet better perhaps for Hook to
have had less ambition! O fame, fame, thou glittering bauble, what if
the very---- (SMEE, _engrossed in his labours at the sewing-machine,
tears a piece of calico with a rending sound which makes the Solitary
think for a moment that the untoward has happened to his garments_.)
No little children love me. I am told they play at Peter Pan, and that
the strongest always chooses to be Peter. They would rather be a Twin
than Hook; they force the baby to be Hook. The baby! that is where
the canker gnaws. (_He contemplates his industrious boatswain._)
’Tis said they find Smee lovable. But an hour agone I found him
letting the youngest of them try on his spectacles. Pathetic Smee, the
Nonconformist pirate, a happy smile upon his face because he thinks
they fear him! How can I break it to him that they think him lovable?
No, bi-carbonate of Soda, no, not even---- (_Another rending of the
calico disturbs him, and he has a private consultation with_ STARKEY,
_who turns him round and evidently assures him that all is well. The
peroration of his speech is nevertheless for ever lost, as eight bells
strikes and his crew pour forth in bacchanalian orgy. From the poop
he watches their dance till it frets him beyond bearing._) Quiet, you
dogs, or I’ll cast anchor in you! (_He descends to a barrel on which
there are playing-cards, and his crew stand waiting, as ever, like
whipped curs._) Are all the prisoners chained, so that they can’t fly
away?

JUKES. Ay, ay, Captain.

HOOK. Then hoist them up.

STARKEY (_raising the door of the hold_). Tumble up, you ungentlemanly
lubbers.

  (_The terrified boys are prodded up and tossed about the deck._ HOOK
  _seems to have forgotten them; he is sitting by the barrel with his
  cards_.)

HOOK (_suddenly_). So! Now then, you bullies, six of you walk the plank
to-night, but I have room for two cabin-boys. Which of you is it to be?
(_He returns to his cards._)

TOOTLES (_hoping to soothe him by putting the blame on the only person,
vaguely remembered, who is always willing to act as a buffer_). You
see, sir, I don’t think my mother would like me to be a pirate. Would
your mother like you to be a pirate, Slightly?

SLIGHTLY (_implying that otherwise it would be a pleasure to him to
oblige_). I don’t think so. Twin, would your mother like----

HOOK. Stow this gab. (_To_ JOHN) You boy, you look as if you had a
little pluck in you. Didst never want to be a pirate, my hearty?

JOHN (_dazzled by being singled out_). When I was at school I--what do
you think, Michael?

MICHAEL (_stepping into prominence_). What would you call me if I
joined?

HOOK. Blackbeard Joe.

MICHAEL. John, what do you think?

JOHN. Stop, should we still be respectful subjects of King George?

HOOK. You would have to swear ‘Down with King George.’

JOHN (_grandly_). Then I refuse!

MICHAEL. And I refuse.

HOOK. That seals your doom. Bring up their mother.

  (WENDY _is driven up from the hold and thrown to him. She sees at the
  first glance that the deck has not been scrubbed for years._)

So, my beauty, you are to see your children walk the plank.

WENDY (_with noble calmness_). Are they to die?

HOOK. They are. Silence all, for a mother’s last words to her children.

WENDY. These are my last words. Dear boys, I feel that I have a message
to you from your real mothers, and it is this, ‘We hope our sons will
die like English gentlemen.’

  (_The boys go on fire._)

TOOTLES. I am going to do what my mother hopes. What are you to do,
Twin?

FIRST TWIN. What my mother hopes. John, what are----

HOOK. Tie her up! Get the plank ready.

  (WENDY _is roped to the mast; but no one regards her, for all eyes
  are fixed upon the plank now protruding from the poop over the ship’s
  side. A great change, however, occurs in the time_ HOOK _takes to
  raise his claw and point to this deadly engine. No one is now looking
  at the plank: for the tick, tick of the crocodile is heard. Yet it
  is not to bear on the crocodile that all eyes slew round, it is that
  they may bear on_ HOOK. _Otherwise prisoners and captors are equally
  inert, like actors in some play who have found themselves ‘on’ in a
  scene in which they are not personally concerned. Even the iron claw
  hangs inactive, as if aware that the crocodile is not coming for it.
  Affection for their captain, now cowering from view, is not what has
  given_ HOOK _his dominance over the crew, but as the menacing sound
  draws nearer they close their eyes respectfully_.

  _There is no crocodile. It is_ PETER, _who has been circling the
  pirate ship, ticking as he flies far more superbly than any clock.
  He drops into the water and climbs aboard, warning the captives
  with upraised finger (but still ticking) not for the moment to give
  audible expression to their natural admiration. Only one pirate sees
  him_, WHIBBLES _of the eye patch, who comes up from below_. JOHN
  _claps a hand on_ WHIBBLES’ _mouth to stifle the groan; four boys
  hold him to prevent the thud_; PETER _delivers the blow, and the
  carrion is thrown overboard. ‘One!’ says_ SLIGHTLY, _beginning to
  count_.

  STARKEY _is the first pirate to open his eyes. The ship seems to
  him to be precisely as when he closed them. He cannot interpret
  the sparkle that has come into the faces of the captives, who are
  cleverly pretending to be as afraid as ever. He little knows that the
  door of the dark cabin has just closed on one more boy. Indeed it is
  for_ HOOK _alone he looks, and he is a little surprised to see him_.)

STARKEY (_hoarsely_). It is gone, Captain! There is not a sound.

  (_The tenement that is_ HOOK _heaves tumultuously and he is himself
  again_.)

HOOK (_now convinced that some fair spirit watches over him_). Then
here is to Johnny Plank--

    Avast, belay, the English brig
    We took and quickly sank,
    And for a warning to the crew
    We made them walk the plank!

  (_As he sings he capers detestably along an imaginary plank and his
  copy-cats do likewise, joining in the chorus._)

    Yo ho, yo ho, the frisky cat,
    You walks along it so,
    Till it goes down and you goes down
    To tooral looral lo!

  (_The brave children try to stem this monstrous torrent by breaking
  into the National Anthem._)

STARKEY (_paling_). I don’t like it, messmates!

HOOK. Stow that, Starkey. Do you boys want a touch of the cat before
you walk the plank? (_He is more pitiless than ever now that he
believes he has a charmed life._) Fetch the cat, Jukes; it is in the
cabin.

JUKES. Ay, ay, sir. (_It is one of his commonest remarks, and is only
recorded now because he never makes another. The stage direction_
‘_Exit_ JUKES’ _has in this case a special significance. But only the
children know that some one is awaiting this unfortunate in the cabin,
and_ HOOK _tramples them down as he resumes his ditty_:)

    Yo ho, yo ho, the scratching cat
    Its tails are nine you know,
    And when they’re writ upon your back,
    You’re fit to----

  (_The last words will ever remain a matter of conjecture, for from
  the dark cabin comes a curdling screech which wails through the ship
  and dies away. It is followed by a sound, almost more eerie in the
  circumstances, that can only be likened to the crowing of a cock._)

HOOK. What was that?

SLIGHTLY (_solemnly_). Two!

  (CECCO _swings into the cabin, and in a moment returns, livid_.)

HOOK (_with an effort_). What is the matter with Bill Jukes, you dog?

CECCO. The matter with him is he is dead--stabbed.

PIRATES. Bill Jukes dead!

CECCO. The cabin is as black as a pit, but there is something terrible
in there: the thing you heard a-crowing.

HOOK (_slowly_). Cecco, go back and fetch me out that doodle-doo.

CECCO (_unstrung_). No, Captain, no. (_He supplicates on his knees, but
his master advances on him implacably._)

HOOK (_in his most syrupy voice_). Did you say you would go, Cecco?

  (CECCO _goes. All listen. There is one screech, one crow._)

SLIGHTLY (_as if he were a bell tolling_). Three!

HOOK. ’Sdeath and oddsfish, who is to bring me out that doodle-doo?

  (_No one steps forward._)

STARKEY (_injudiciously_). Wait till Cecco comes out.

  (_The black looks of some others encourage him._)

HOOK. I think I heard you volunteer, Starkey.

STARKEY (_emphatically_). No, by thunder!

HOOK (_in that syrupy voice which might be more engaging when
accompanied by his flute_). My hook thinks you did. I wonder if it
would not be advisable, Starkey, to humour the hook?

STARKEY. I’ll swing before I go in there.

HOOK (_gleaming_). Is it mutiny? Starkey is ringleader. Shake hands,
Starkey.

  (STARKEY _recoils from the claw. It follows him till he leaps
  overboard._)

Did any other gentleman say mutiny?

  (_They indicate that they did not even know the late_ STARKEY.)

SLIGHTLY. Four!

HOOK. I will bring out that doodle-doo myself.

  (_He raises a blunderbuss but casts it from him with a menacing
  gesture which means that he has more faith in the claw. With a
  lighted lantern in his hand he enters the cabin. Not a sound is to
  be heard now on the ship, unless it be_ SLIGHTLY _wetting his lips to
  say ‘Five.’_ HOOK _staggers out_.)

HOOK (_unsteadily_). Something blew out the light.

MULLINS (_with dark meaning_). Some--thing?

NOODLER. What of Cecco?

HOOK. He is as dead as Jukes.

  (_They are superstitious like all sailors, and_ MULLINS _has planted
  a dire conception in their minds_.)

COOKSON. They do say as the surest sign a ship’s accurst is when there
is one aboard more than can be accounted for.

NOODLER. I’ve heard he allus boards the pirate craft at last. (_With
dreadful significance_) Has he a tail, Captain?

MULLINS. They say that when he comes it is in the likeness of the
wickedest man aboard.

COOKSON (_clinching it_). Has he a hook, Captain?

  (_Knives and pistols come to hand, and there is a general cry ‘The
  ship is doomed!’ But it is not his dogs that can frighten_ JAS HOOK.
  _Hearing something like a cheer from the boys he wheels round, and
  his face brings them to their knees._)

HOOK. So you like it, do you! By Caius and Balbus, bullies, here is
a notion: open the cabin door and drive them in. Let them fight the
doodle-doo for their lives. If they kill him we are so much the better;
if he kills them we are none the worse.

  (_This masterly stroke restores their confidence; and the boys,
  affecting fear, are driven into the cabin. Desperadoes though the
  pirates are, some of them have been boys themselves, and all turn
  their backs to the cabin and listen, with arms outstretched to it as
  if to ward off the horrors that are being enacted there._

  _Relieved by_ PETER _of their manacles, and armed with such weapons
  as they can lay their hands on, the boys steal out softly as
  snowflakes, and under their captain’s hushed order find hiding-places
  on the poop. He releases_ WENDY; _and now it would be easy for them
  all to fly away, but it is to be_ HOOK _or him this time. He signs
  to her to join the others, and with awful grimness folding her cloak
  around him, the hood over his head, he takes her place by the mast,
  and crows._)

MULLINS. The doodle-doo has killed them all!

SEVERAL. The ship’s bewitched.

  (_They are snapping at_ HOOK _again_.)

HOOK. I’ve thought it out, lads; there is a Jonah aboard.

SEVERAL (_advancing upon him_). Ay, a man with a hook.

  (_If he were to withdraw one step their knives would be in him, but
  he does not flinch._)

HOOK (_temporising_). No, lads, no, it is the girl. Never was luck on a
pirate ship wi’ a woman aboard. We’ll right the ship when she has gone.

MULLINS (_lowering his cutlass_). It’s worth trying.

HOOK. Throw the girl overboard.

MULLINS (_jeering_). There is none can save you now, missy.

PETER. There is one.

MULLINS. Who is that?

PETER (_casting off the cloak_). Peter Pan, the avenger!

  (_He continues standing there to let the effect sink in._)

HOOK (_throwing out a suggestion_). Cleave him to the brisket.

  (_But he has a sinking feeling that this boy has no brisket._)

NOODLER. The ship’s accurst!

PETER. Down, boys, and at them!

  (_The boys leap from their concealment and the clash of arms resounds
  through the vessel. Man to man the pirates are the stronger, but they
  are unnerved by the suddenness of the onslaught and they scatter,
  thus enabling their opponents to hunt in couples and choose their
  quarry. Some are hurled into the lagoon; others are dragged from dark
  recesses. There is no boy whose weapon is not reeking save_ SLIGHTLY,
  _who runs about with a lantern, counting, ever counting_.)

WENDY (_meeting_ MICHAEL _in a moment’s lull_). Oh, Michael, stay with
me, protect me!

MICHAEL (_reeling_). Wendy, I’ve killed a pirate!

WENDY. It’s awful, awful.

MICHAEL. No, it isn’t, I like it, I like it.

  (_He casts himself into the group of boys who are encircling_ HOOK.
  _Again and again they close upon him and again and again he hews a
  clear space._)

HOOK. Back, back, you mice. It’s Hook; do you like him? (_He lifts up_
MICHAEL _with his claw and uses him as a buckler. A terrible voice
breaks in._)

PETER. Put up your swords, boys. This man is mine.

  (HOOK _shakes_ MICHAEL _off his claw as if he were a drop of water,
  and these two antagonists face each other for their final bout. They
  measure swords at arms’ length, make a sweeping motion with them, and
  bringing the points to the deck rest their hands upon the hilts._)

HOOK (_with curling lip_). So, Pan, this is all your doing!

PETER. Ay, Jas Hook, it is all my doing.

HOOK. Proud and insolent youth, prepare to meet thy doom.

PETER. Dark and sinister man, have at thee.

  (_Some say that he had to ask_ TOOTLES _whether the word was sinister
  or canister_.

  HOOK _or_ PETER _this time! They fall to without another word._ PETER
  _is a rare swordsman, and parries with dazzling rapidity, sometimes
  before the other can make his stroke_. HOOK, _if not quite so nimble
  in wrist play, has the advantage of a yard or two in reach, but
  though they close he cannot give the quietus with his claw, which
  seems to find nothing to tear at. He does not, especially in the most
  heated moments, quite see_ PETER, _who to his eyes, now blurred or
  opened clearly for the first time, is less like a boy than a mote of
  dust dancing in the sun. By some impalpable stroke_ HOOK’S _sword is
  whipped from his grasp, and when he stoops to raise it a little foot
  is on its blade. There is no deep gash on_ HOOK, _but he is suffering
  torment as from innumerable jags_.)

BOYS (_exulting_). Now, Peter, now!

  (PETER _raises the sword by its blade, and with an inclination of
  the head that is perhaps slightly overdone, presents the hilt to his
  enemy_.)

HOOK. ’Tis some fiend fighting me! Pan, who and what art thou?

  (_The children listen eagerly for the answer, none quite so eagerly
  as_ WENDY.)

PETER (_at a venture_). I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has
broken out of the egg.

HOOK. To ’t again!

  (_He has now a damp feeling that this boy is the weapon which is to
  strike him from the lists of man; but the grandeur of his mind still
  holds and, true to the traditions of his flag, he fights on like
  a human flail._ PETER _flutters round and through and over these
  gyrations as if the wind of them blew him out of the danger zone, and
  again and again he darts in and jags_.)

HOOK (_stung to madness_). I’ll fire the powder magazine. (_He
disappears they know not where._)

CHILDREN. Peter, save us!

  (PETER, _alas, goes the wrong way and_ HOOK _returns_.)

HOOK (_sitting on the hold with gloomy satisfaction_). In two minutes
the ship will be blown to pieces.

  (_They cast themselves before him in entreaty._)

CHILDREN. Mercy, mercy!

HOOK. Back, you pewling spawn. I’ll show you now the road to dusty
death. A holocaust of children, there is something grand in the idea!

  (PETER _appears with the smoking bomb in his hand and tosses it
  overboard_. HOOK _has not really had much hope, and he rushes at his
  other persecutors with his head down like some exasperated bull in
  the ring; but with bantering cries they easily elude him by flying
  among the rigging_.

  _Where is_ PETER? _The incredible boy has apparently forgotten the
  recent doings, and is sitting on a barrel playing upon his pipes.
  This may surprise others but does not surprise_ HOOK. _Lifting a
  blunderbuss he strikes forlornly not at the boy but at the barrel,
  which is hurled across the deck._ PETER _remains sitting in the air
  still playing upon his pipes. At this sight the great heart of_
  HOOK _breaks. That not wholly unheroic figure climbs the bulwarks
  murmuring_ ‘Floreat Etona,’ _and prostrates himself into the water,
  where the crocodile is waiting for him open-mouthed_. HOOK _knows the
  purpose of this yawning cavity, but after what he has gone through he
  enters it like one greeting a friend_.

  _The curtain rises to show_ PETER _a very Napoleon on his ship. It
  must not rise again lest we see him on the poop in_ HOOK’S _hat and
  cigars, and with a small iron claw_.)


Scene 2

THE NURSERY AND THE TREE-TOPS

_The old nursery appears again with everything just as it was at the
beginning of the play, except that the kennel has gone and that the
window is standing open. So Peter was wrong about mothers; indeed there
is no subject on which he is so likely to be wrong._

_Mrs. Darling is asleep on a chair near the window, her eyes tired with
searching the heavens. Nana is stretched out listless on the floor. She
is the cynical one, and though custom has made her hang the children’s
night things on the fire-guard for an airing, she surveys them not
hopefully but with some self-contempt._

MRS. DARLING (_starting up as if we had whispered to her that her brats
are coming back_). Wendy, John, Michael! (NANA _lifts a sympathetic
paw to the poor soul’s lap_.) I see you have put their night things
out again, Nana! It touches my heart to watch you do that night after
night. But they will never come back.

  (_In trouble the difference of station can be completely ignored,
  and it is not strange to see these two using the same handkerchief.
  Enter_ LIZA, _who in the gentleness with which the house has been run
  of late is perhaps a little more masterful than of yore_.)

LIZA (_feeling herself degraded by the announcement_). Nana’s dinner is
served.

  (NANA, _who quite understands what are_ LIZA’S _feelings, departs
  for the dining-room with our exasperating leisureliness, instead of
  running, as we would all do if we followed our instincts_.)

LIZA. To think I have a master as have changed places with his dog!

MRS. DARLING (_gently_). Out of remorse, Liza.

LIZA (_surely exaggerating_). I am a married woman myself. I don’t
think it’s respectable to go to his office in a kennel, with the
street boys running alongside cheering. (_Even this does not rouse her
mistress, which may have been the honourable intention._) There, that
is the cab fetching him back! (_Amid interested cheers from the street
the kennel is conveyed to its old place by a cabby and friend, and_
MR. DARLING _scrambles out of it in his office clothes_.)

MR. DARLING (_giving her his hat loftily_). If you will be so good,
Liza. (_The cheering is resumed._) It is very gratifying!

LIZA (_contemptuous_). Lot of little boys.

MR. DARLING (_with the new sweetness of one who has sworn never to lose
his temper again_). There were several adults to-day.

  (_She goes off scornfully with the hat and the two men, but he has
  not a word of reproach for her. It ought to melt us when we see how
  humbly grateful he is for a kiss from his wife, so much more than he
  feels he deserves. One may think he is wrong to exchange into the
  kennel, but sorrow has taught him that he is the kind of man who
  whatever he does contritely he must do to excess; otherwise he soon
  abandons doing it._)

MRS. DARLING (_who has known this for quite a long time_). What sort of
a day have you had, George?

  (_He is sitting on the floor by the kennel._)

MR. DARLING. There were never less than a hundred running round the
cab cheering, and when we passed the Stock Exchange the members came
out and waved.

  (_He is exultant but uncertain of himself, and with a word she could
  dispirit him utterly._)

MRS. DARLING (_bravely_). I am so proud, George.

MR. DARLING (_commendation from the dearest quarter ever going to his
head_). I have been put on a picture postcard, dear.

MRS. DARLING (_nobly_). Never!

MR. DARLING (_thoughtlessly_). Ah, Mary, we should not be such
celebrities if the children hadn’t flown away.

MRS. DARLING (_startled_). George, you are sure you are not enjoying it?

MR. DARLING (_anxiously_). Enjoying it! See my punishment: living in a
kennel.

MRS. DARLING. Forgive me, dear one.

MR. DARLING. It is I who need forgiveness, always I, never you. And now
I feel drowsy. (_He retires into the kennel._) Won’t you play me to
sleep on the nursery piano? And shut that window, Mary dearest; I feel
a draught.

MRS. DARLING. Oh, George, never ask me to do that. The window must
always be left open for them, always, always.

  (_She goes into the day nursery, from which we presently hear her
  playing the sad song of Margaret. She little knows that her last
  remark has been overheard by a boy crouching at the window. He steals
  into the room accompanied by a ball of light._)

PETER. Tink, where are you? Quick, close the window. (_It closes._)
Bar it. (_The bar slams down._) Now when Wendy comes she will think
her mother has barred her out, and she will have to come back to
me! (TINKER BELL _sulks_.) Now, Tink, you and I must go out by the
door. (_Doors, however, are confusing things to those who are used
to windows, and he is puzzled when he finds that this one does not
open on to the firmament. He tries the other, and sees the piano
player._) It is Wendy’s mother! (TINK _pops on to his shoulder and
they peep together_.) She is a pretty lady, but not so pretty as my
mother. (_This is a pure guess._) She is making the box say ‘Come
home, Wendy.’ You will never see Wendy again, lady, for the window is
barred! (_He flutters about the room joyously like a bird, but has to
return to that door._) She has laid her head down on the box. There are
two wet things sitting on her eyes. As soon as they go away another
two come and sit on her eyes. (_She is heard moaning ‘Wendy, Wendy,
Wendy.’_) She wants me to unbar the window. I won’t! She is awfully
fond of Wendy. I am fond of her too. We can’t both have her, lady! (_A
funny feeling comes over him._) Come on, Tink; we don’t want any silly
mothers.

  (_He opens the window and they fly out._

  _It is thus that the truants find entrance easy when they alight on
  the sill_, JOHN _to his credit having the tired_ MICHAEL _on his
  shoulders. They have nothing else to their credit; no compunction for
  what they have done, not the tiniest fear that any just person may be
  awaiting them with a stick. The youngest is in a daze, but the two
  others are shining virtuously like holy people who are about to give
  two other people a treat._)

MICHAEL (_looking about him_). I think I have been here before.

JOHN. It’s your home, you stupid.

WENDY. There is your old bed, Michael.

MICHAEL. I had nearly forgotten.

JOHN. I say, the kennel!

WENDY. Perhaps Nana is in it.

JOHN (_peering_). There is a man asleep in it.

WENDY (_remembering him by the bald patch_). It’s father!

JOHN. So it is!

MICHAEL. Let me see father. (_Disappointed_) He is not as big as the
pirate I killed.

JOHN (_perplexed_). Wendy, surely father didn’t use to sleep in the
kennel?

WENDY (_with misgivings_). Perhaps we don’t remember the old life as
well as we thought we did.

JOHN (_chilled_). It is very careless of mother not to be here when we
come back.

  (_The piano is heard again._)

WENDY. H’sh! (_She goes to the door and peeps._) That is her playing!
(_They all have a peep._)

MICHAEL. Who is that lady?

JOHN. H’sh! It’s mother.

MICHAEL. Then are you not really our mother, Wendy?

WENDY (_with conviction_). Oh dear, it is quite time to be back!

JOHN. Let us creep in and put our hands over her eyes.

WENDY (_more considerate_). No, let us break it to her gently.

  (_She slips between the sheets of her bed; and the others, seeing the
  idea at once, get into their beds. Then when the music stops they
  cover their heads. There are now three distinct bumps in the beds._
  MRS. DARLING _sees the bumps as soon as she comes in, but she does
  not believe she sees them_.)

MRS. DARLING. I see them in their beds so often in my dreams that I
seem still to see them when I am awake! I’ll not look again. (_She sits
down and turns away her face from the bumps, though of course they are
still reflected in her mind._) So often their silver voices call me,
my little children whom I’ll see no more.

  (_Silver voices is a good one, especially about_ JOHN; _but the heads
  pop up_.)

WENDY (_perhaps rather silvery_). Mother!

MRS. DARLING (_without moving_). That is Wendy.

JOHN (_quite gruff_). Mother!

MRS. DARLING. Now it is John.

MICHAEL (_no better than a squeak_). Mother!

MRS. DARLING. Now Michael. And when they call I stretch out my arms to
them, but they never come, they never come!

  (_This time, however, they come, and there is joy once more in the
  Darling household. The little boy who is crouching at the window sees
  the joke of the bumps in the beds, but cannot understand what all the
  rest of the fuss is about._

       *       *       *       *       *

  _The scene changes from the inside of the house to the outside, and
  we see_ MR. DARLING _romping in at the door, with the lost boys
  hanging gaily to his coat-tails. So we may conclude that_ WENDY _has
  told them to wait outside until she explains the situation to her
  mother, who has then sent_ MR. DARLING _down to tell them that they
  are adopted. Of course they could have flown in by the window like
  a covey of birds, but they think it better fun to enter by a door.
  There is a moment’s trouble about_ SLIGHTLY, _who somehow gets shut
  out. Fortunately_ LIZA _finds him_.)

LIZA. What is the matter, boy?

SLIGHTLY. They have all got a mother except me.

LIZA (_starting back_). Is your name Slightly?

SLIGHTLY. Yes’m.

LIZA. Then I am your mother.

SLIGHTLY. How do you know?

LIZA (_the good-natured creature_). I feel it in my bones.

  (_They go into the house and there is none happier now than_
  SLIGHTLY, _unless it be_ NANA _as she passes with the importance of a
  nurse who will never have another day off_. WENDY _looks out at the
  nursery window and sees a friend below, who is hovering in the air
  knocking off tall hats with his feet. The wearers don’t see him. They
  are too old. You can’t see_ PETER _if you are old. They think he is a
  draught at the corner._)

WENDY. Peter!

PETER (_looking up casually_). Hullo, Wendy.

  (_She flies down to him, to the horror of her mother, who rushes to
  the window._)

WENDY (_making a last attempt_). You don’t feel you would like to say
anything to my parents, Peter, about a very sweet subject?

PETER. No, Wendy.

WENDY. About me, Peter?

PETER. No.

  (_He gets out his pipes, which she knows is a very bad sign. She
  appeals with her arms to_ MRS. DARLING, _who is probably thinking
  that these children will all need to be tied to their beds at night_.)

MRS. DARLING (_from the window_). Peter, where are you? Let me adopt
you too.

  (_She is the loveliest age for a woman, but too old to see_ PETER
  _clearly_.)

PETER. Would you send me to school?

MRS. DARLING (_obligingly_). Yes.

PETER. And then to an office?

MRS. DARLING. I suppose so.

PETER. Soon I should be a man?

MRS. DARLING. Very soon.

PETER (_passionately_). I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn
things. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want
always to be a little boy and to have fun.

  (_So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend._)

MRS. DARLING (_shivering every time_ WENDY _pursues him in the air_).
Where are you to live, Peter?

PETER. In the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it high
up among the tree-tops where they sleep at night.

WENDY (_rapturously_). To think of it!

MRS. DARLING. I thought all the fairies were dead.

WENDY (_almost reprovingly_). No indeed! Their mothers drop the babies
into the Never birds’ nests, all mixed up with the eggs, and the mauve
fairies are boys and the white ones are girls, and there are some
colours who don’t know what they are. The row the children and the
birds make at bath time is positively deafening.

PETER. I throw things at them.

WENDY. You will be rather lonely in the evenings, Peter.

PETER. I shall have Tink.

WENDY (_flying up to the window_). Mother, may I go?

MRS. DARLING (_gripping her for ever_). Certainly not. I have got you
home again, and I mean to keep you.

WENDY. But he does so need a mother.

MRS. DARLING. So do you, my love.

PETER. Oh, all right.

MRS. DARLING (_magnanimously_). But, Peter, I shall let her go to you
once a year for a week to do your spring cleaning.

  (WENDY _revels in this, but_ PETER, _who has no notion what a spring
  cleaning is, waves a rather careless thanks_.)

MRS. DARLING. Say good-night, Wendy.

WENDY. I couldn’t go down just for a minute?

MRS. DARLING. No.

WENDY. Good-night, Peter!

PETER. Good-night, Wendy!

WENDY. Peter, you won’t forget me, will you, before spring-cleaning
time comes?

  (_There is no answer, for he is already soaring high. For a moment
  after he is gone we still hear the pipes._ MRS. DARLING _closes and
  bars the window_.)

       *       *       *       *       *

_We are dreaming now of the Never Land a year later. It is bed-time
on the island, and the blind goes up to the whispers of the lovely
Never music. The blue haze that makes the wood below magical by day
comes up to the tree-tops to sleep, and through it we see numberless
nests all lit up, fairies and birds quarrelling for possession, others
flying around just for the fun of the thing and perhaps making bets
about where the little house will appear to-night. It always comes and
snuggles on some tree-top, but you can never be sure which; here it is
again, you see John’s hat first as up comes the house so softly that it
knocks some gossips off their perch. When it has settled comfortably
it lights up, and out come Peter and Wendy._

_Wendy looks a little older, but Peter is just the same. She is cloaked
for a journey, and a sad confession must be made about her; she flies
so badly now that she has to use a broomstick._

       *       *       *       *       *

WENDY (_who knows better this time than to be demonstrative at
partings_). Well, good-bye, Peter; and remember not to bite your nails.

PETER. Good-bye, Wendy.

WENDY. I’ll tell mother all about the spring cleaning and the house.

PETER (_who sometimes forgets that she has been here before_). You do
like the house?

WENDY. Of course it is small. But most people of our size wouldn’t
have a house at all. (_She should not have mentioned size, for he has
already expressed displeasure at her growth. Another thing, one he has
scarcely noticed, though it disturbs her, is that she does not see him
quite so clearly now as she used to do._) When you come for me next
year, Peter--you will come, won’t you?

PETER. Yes. (_Gloating_) To hear stories about me!

WENDY. It is so queer that the stories you like best should be the ones
about yourself.

PETER (_touchy_). Well, then?

WENDY. Fancy your forgetting the lost boys, and even Captain Hook!

PETER. Well, then?

WENDY. I haven’t seen Tink this time.

PETER. Who?

WENDY. Oh dear! I suppose it is because you have so many adventures.

PETER (_relieved_). ’Course it is.

WENDY. If another little girl--if one younger than I am---- (_She can’t
go on._) Oh, Peter, how I wish I could take you up and squdge you! (_He
draws back._) Yes, I know. (_She gets astride her broomstick._) Home!
(_It carries her from him over the tree-tops._

  _In a sort of way he understands what she means by ‘Yes, I know,’ but
  in most sorts of ways he doesn’t. It has something to do with the
  riddle of his being. If he could get the hang of the thing his cry
  might become ‘To live would be an awfully big adventure!’ but he can
  never quite get the hang of it, and so no one is as gay as he. With
  rapturous face he produces his pipes, and the Never birds and the
  fairies gather closer till the roof of the little house is so thick
  with his admirers that some of them fall down the chimney. He plays
  on and on till we wake up._)


_The End_

       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber’s note


Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Italization
was standardized.

Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
changes:

  Page 48: “the tidings has leaked”        “the tidings have leaked”
  Page 140: “he has a sinking”             “he has a sinking feeling”




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