The Little White Bird
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J. M. Barrie >> The Little White Bird
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14 THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD
OR
ADVENTURES IN
KENSINGTON GARDENS
BY
J.M. BARRIE
CONTENTS
I. David and I Set Forth Upon a Journey
II. The Little Nursery Governess
III. Her Marriage, Her Clothes, Her Appetite, and an
Inventory of Her Furniture.
IV. A Night-Piece
V. The Fight For Timothy
VI. A Shock
VII. The Last of Timothy
VIII. The Inconsiderate Waiter
IX. A Confirmed Spinster
X. Sporting Reflections
XI. The Runaway Perambulator
XII. The Pleasantest Club in London
XIII. The Grand Tour of the Gardens
XIV. Peter Pan
XV. The Thrush's Nest
XVI. Lock-Out Time
XVII. The Little House
XVIII. Peter's Goat
XIX. An Interloper
XX. David and Porthos Compared
XXI. William Paterson
XXII. Joey
XXIII. Pilkington's
XXIV. Barbara
XXV. The Cricket Match
XXVI. The Dedication
THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD
I
David and I Set Forth Upon a Journey
Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an
invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will
come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these:
"Dear madam, I decline." And if David asks why I decline, I
explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman.
"Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her
birthday, and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to
David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer.
"Twenty-six, is she, David?" I replied. "Tell her I said she
looks more."
I had my delicious dream that night. I dreamt that I too was
twenty-six, which was a long time ago, and that I took train to a
place called my home, whose whereabouts I see not in my waking
hours, and when I alighted at the station a dear lost love was
waiting for me, and we went away together. She met me in no
ecstasy of emotion, nor was I surprised to find her there; it was
as if we had been married for years and parted for a day. I like
to think that I gave her some of the things to carry.
Were I to tell my delightful dream to David's mother, to whom I
have never in my life addressed one word, she would droop her
head and raise it bravely, to imply that I make her very sad but
very proud, and she would be wishful to lend me her absurd little
pocket handkerchief. And then, had I the heart, I might make a
disclosure that would startle her, for it is not the face of
David's mother that I see in my dreams.
Has it ever been your lot, reader, to be persecuted by a pretty
woman who thinks, without a tittle of reason, that you are bowed
down under a hopeless partiality for her? It is thus that I have
been pursued for several years now by the unwelcome sympathy of
the tender-hearted and virtuous Mary A----. When we pass in the
street the poor deluded soul subdues her buoyancy, as if it were
shame to walk happy before one she has lamed, and at such times
the rustle of her gown is whispered words of comfort to me, and
her arms are kindly wings that wish I was a little boy like
David. I also detect in her a fearful elation, which I am unaware
of until she has passed, when it comes back to me like a faint
note of challenge. Eyes that say you never must, nose that says
why don't you? and a mouth that says I rather wish you could:
such is the portrait of Mary A---- as she and I pass by.
Once she dared to address me, so that she could boast to David
that I had spoken to her. I was in the Kensington Gardens, and
she asked would I tell her the time please, just as children ask,
and forget as they run back with it to their nurse. But I was
prepared even for this, and raising my hat I pointed with my
staff to a clock in the distance. She should have been
overwhelmed, but as I walked on listening intently, I thought
with displeasure that I heard her laughing.
Her laugh is very like David's, whom I could punch all day in
order to hear him laugh. I dare say she put this laugh into him.
She has been putting qualities into David, altering him, turning
him forever on a lathe since the day she first knew him, and
indeed long before, and all so deftly that he is still called a
child of nature. When you release David's hand he is immediately
lost like an arrow from the bow. No sooner do you cast eyes on
him than you are thinking of birds. It is difficult to believe
that he walks to the Kensington Gardens; he always seems to have
alighted there: and were I to scatter crumbs I opine he would
come and peck. This is not what he set out to be; it is all the
doing of that timid-looking lady who affects to be greatly
surprised by it. He strikes a hundred gallant poses in a day;
when he tumbles, which is often, he comes to the ground like a
Greek god; so Mary A---- has willed it. But how she suffers that
he may achieve! I have seen him climbing a tree while she stood
beneath in unutterable anguish; she had to let him climb, for
boys must be brave, but I am sure that, as she watched him, she
fell from every branch.
David admires her prodigiously; he thinks her so good that she
will be able to get him into heaven, however naughty he is.
Otherwise he would trespass less light-heartedly. Perhaps she
has discovered this; for, as I learn from him, she warned him
lately that she is not such a dear as he thinks her.
"I am very sure of it," I replied.
"Is she such a dear as you think her?" he asked me.
"Heaven help her," I said, "if she be not dearer than that."
Heaven help all mothers if they be not really dears, for their
boy will certainly know it in that strange short hour of the day
when every mother stands revealed before her little son. That
dread hour ticks between six and seven; when children go to bed
later the revelation has ceased to come. He is lapt in for the
night now and lies quietly there, madam, with great, mysterious
eyes fixed upon his mother. He is summing up your day. Nothing
in the revelations that kept you together and yet apart in play
time can save you now; you two are of no age, no experience of
life separates you; it is the boy's hour, and you have come up
for judgment. "Have I done well to-day, my son?" You have got
to say it, and nothing may you hide from him; he knows all. How
like your voice has grown to his, but more tremulous, and both so
solemn, so unlike the voice of either of you by day.
"You were a little unjust to me to-day about the apple; were you
not, mother?"
Stand there, woman, by the foot of the bed and cross your hands
and answer him.
"Yes, my son, I was. I thought--"
But what you thought will not affect the verdict.
"Was it fair, mother, to say that I could stay out till six, and
then pretend it was six before it was quite six?"
"No, it was very unfair. I thought--"
"Would it have been a lie if I had said it was quite six?"
"Oh, my son, my son! I shall never tell you a lie again."
"No, mother, please don't."
"My boy, have I done well to-day on the whole?"
Suppose he were unable to say yes.
These are the merest peccadilloes, you may say. Is it then a
little thing to be false to the agreement you signed when you got
the boy? There are mothers who avoid their children in that
hour, but this will not save them. Why is it that so many women
are afraid to be left alone with their thoughts between six and
seven? I am not asking this of you, Mary. I believe that when
you close David's door softly there is a gladness in your eyes,
and the awe of one who knows that the God to whom little boys say
their prayers has a face very like their mother's.
I may mention here that David is a stout believer in prayer, and
has had his first fight with another young Christian who
challenged him to the jump and prayed for victory, which David
thought was taking an unfair advantage.
"So Mary is twenty-six! I say, David, she is getting on. Tell
her that I am coming in to kiss her when she is fifty-two."
He told her, and I understand that she pretended to be indignant.
When I pass her in the street now she pouts. Clearly preparing
for our meeting. She has also said, I learn, that I shall not
think so much of her when she is fifty-two, meaning that she will
not be so pretty then. So little does the sex know of beauty.
Surely a spirited old lady may be the prettiest sight in the
world. For my part, I confess that it is they, and not the young
ones, who have ever been my undoing. Just as I was about to fall
in love I suddenly found that I preferred the mother. Indeed, I
cannot see a likely young creature without impatiently
considering her chances for, say, fifty-two. Oh, you mysterious
girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must
come into the open then. If the mouth has fallen sourly yours
the blame: all the meannesses your youth concealed have been
gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways
and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in
your twilight like evening primroses.
Is it not strange that, though I talk thus plainly to David about
his mother, he still seems to think me fond of her? How now, I
reflect, what sort of bumpkin is this, and perhaps I say to him
cruelly: "Boy, you are uncommonly like your mother."
To which David: "Is that why you are so kind to me?"
I suppose I am kind to him, but if so it is not for love of his
mother, but because he sometimes calls me father. On my honour
as a soldier, there is nothing more in it than that. I must not
let him know this, for it would make him conscious, and so break
the spell that binds him and me together. Oftenest I am but
Captain W---- to him, and for the best of reasons. He addresses me
as father when he is in a hurry only, and never have I dared ask
him to use the name. He says, "Come, father," with an accursed
beautiful carelessness. So let it be, David, for a little while
longer.
I like to hear him say it before others, as in shops. When in
shops he asks the salesman how much money he makes in a day, and
which drawer he keeps it in, and why his hair is red, and does he
like Achilles, of whom David has lately heard, and is so
enamoured that he wants to die to meet him. At such times the
shopkeepers accept me as his father, and I cannot explain the
peculiar pleasure this gives me. I am always in two minds then,
to linger that we may have more of it, and to snatch him away
before he volunteers the information, "He is not really my
father."
When David meets Achilles I know what will happen. The little
boy will take the hero by the hand, call him father, and drag him
away to some Round Pond.
One day, when David was about five, I sent him the following
letter: "Dear David: If you really want to know how it began,
will you come and have a chop with me to-day at the club?"
Mary, who, I have found out, opens all his letters, gave her
consent, and, I doubt not, instructed him to pay heed to what
happened so that he might repeat it to her, for despite her
curiosity she knows not how it began herself. I chuckled,
guessing that she expected something romantic.
He came to me arrayed as for a mighty journey, and looking
unusually solemn, as little boys always do look when they are
wearing a great coat. There was a shawl round his neck. "You
can take some of them off," I said, "when we come to summer."
"Shall we come to summer?" he asked, properly awed.
"To many summers," I replied, "for we are going away back, David,
to see your mother as she was in the days before there was you."
We hailed a hansom. "Drive back six years," I said to the cabby,
"and stop at the Junior Old Fogies' Club."
He was a stupid fellow, and I had to guide him with my umbrella.
The streets were not quite as they had been in the morning. For
instance, the bookshop at the corner was now selling fish. I
dropped David a hint of what was going on.
"It doesn't make me littler, does it?" he asked anxiously; and
then, with a terrible misgiving: "It won't make me too little,
will it, father?" by which he meant that he hoped it would not do
for him altogether. He slipped his hand nervously into mine, and
I put it in my pocket.
You can't think how little David looked as we entered the portals
of the club.
II
The Little Nursery Governess
As I enter the club smoking-room you are to conceive David
vanishing into nothingness, and that it is any day six years ago
at two in the afternoon. I ring for coffee, cigarette, and
cherry brandy, and take my chair by the window, just as the
absurd little nursery governess comes tripping into the street.
I always feel that I have rung for her.
While I am lifting the coffee-pot cautiously lest the lid fall
into the cup, she is crossing to the post-office; as I select the
one suitable lump of sugar she is taking six last looks at the
letter; with the aid of William I light my cigarette, and now she
is re-reading the delicious address. I lie back in my chair, and
by this time she has dropped the letter down the slit. I toy
with my liqueur, and she is listening to hear whether the postal
authorities have come for her letter. I scowl at a fellow-member
who has had the impudence to enter the smoking-room, and her two
little charges are pulling her away from the post-office. When I
look out at the window again she is gone, but I shall ring for
her to-morrow at two sharp.
She must have passed the window many times before I noticed her.
I know not where she lives, though I suppose it to be hard by.
She is taking the little boy and girl, who bully her, to the St.
James's Park, as their hoops tell me, and she ought to look
crushed and faded. No doubt her mistress overworks her. It must
enrage the other servants to see her deporting herself as if she
were quite the lady.
I noticed that she had sometimes other letters to post, but that
the posting of the one only was a process. They shot down the
slit, plebeians all, but it followed pompously like royalty. I
have even seen her blow a kiss after it.
Then there was her ring, of which she was as conscious as if it
rather than she was what came gaily down the street. She felt it
through her glove to make sure that it was still there. She took
off the glove and raised the ring to her lips, though I doubt not
it was the cheapest trinket. She viewed it from afar by
stretching out her hand; she stooped to see how it looked near
the ground; she considered its effect on the right of her and on
the left of her and through one eye at a time. Even when you saw
that she had made up her mind to think hard of something else,
the little silly would take another look.
I give anyone three chances to guess why Mary was so happy.
No and no and no. The reason was simply this, that a lout of a
young man loved her. And so, instead of crying because she was
the merest nobody, she must, forsooth, sail jauntily down Pall
Mall, very trim as to her tackle and ticketed with the
insufferable air of an engaged woman. At first her complacency
disturbed me, but gradually it became part of my life at two
o'clock with the coffee, the cigarette, and the liqueur. Now
comes the tragedy.
Thursday is her great day. She has from two to three every
Thursday for her very own; just think of it: this girl, who is
probably paid several pounds a year, gets a whole hour to herself
once a week. And what does she with it? Attend classes for
making her a more accomplished person? Not she. This is what
she does: sets sail for Pall Mall, wearing all her pretty things,
including the blue feathers, and with such a sparkle of
expectation on her face that I stir my coffee quite fiercely. On
ordinary days she at least tries to look demure, but on a
Thursday she has had the assurance to use the glass door of the
club as a mirror in which to see how she likes her engaging
trifle of a figure to-day.
In the meantime a long-legged oaf is waiting for her outside the
post-office, where they meet every Thursday, a fellow who always
wears the same suit of clothes, but has a face that must ever
make him free of the company of gentlemen. He is one of your
lean, clean Englishmen, who strip so well, and I fear me he is
handsome; I say fear, for your handsome men have always annoyed
me, and had I lived in the duelling days I swear I would have
called every one of them out. He seems to be quite unaware that
he is a pretty fellow, but Lord, how obviously Mary knows it. I
conclude that he belongs to the artistic classes, he is so easily
elated and depressed; and because he carries his left thumb
curiously, as if it were feeling for the hole of a palette, I
have entered his name among the painters. I find pleasure in
deciding that they are shocking bad pictures, for obviously no
one buys them. I feel sure Mary says they are splendid, she is
that sort of woman. Hence the rapture with which he greets her.
Her first effect upon him is to make him shout with laughter. He
laughs suddenly haw from an eager exulting face, then haw again,
and then, when you are thanking heaven that it is at last over,
comes a final haw, louder than the others. I take them to be
roars of joy because Mary is his, and they have a ring of youth
about them that is hard to bear. I could forgive him everything
save his youth, but it is so aggressive that I have sometimes to
order William testily to close the window.
How much more deceitful than her lover is the little nursery
governess. The moment she comes into sight she looks at the
post-office and sees him. Then she looks straight before her,
and now she is observed, and he rushes across to her in a glory,
and she starts--positively starts--as if he had taken her by
surprise. Observe her hand rising suddenly to her wicked little
heart. This is the moment when I stir my coffee violently. He
gazes down at her in such rapture that he is in everybody's way,
and as she takes his arm she gives it a little squeeze, and then
away they strut, Mary doing nine-tenths of the talking. I fall
to wondering what they will look like when they grow up.
What a ludicrous difference do these two nobodies make to each
other. You can see that they are to be married when he has
twopence.
Thus I have not an atom of sympathy with this girl, to whom
London is famous only as the residence of a young man who
mistakes her for someone else, but her happiness had become part
of my repast at two P.M., and when one day she walked down Pall
Mall without gradually posting a letter I was most indignant. It
was as if William had disobeyed orders. Her two charges were as
surprised as I, and pointed questioningly to the slit, at which
she shook her head. She put her finger to her eyes, exactly like
a sad baby, and so passed from the street.
Next day the same thing happened, and I was so furious that I bit
through my cigarette. Thursday came, when I prayed that there
might be an end of this annoyance, but no, neither of them
appeared on that acquainted ground. Had they changed their post-
office? No, for her eyes were red every day, and heavy was her
foolish little heart. Love had put out his lights, and the
little nursery governess walked in darkness.
I felt I could complain to the committee.
Oh, you selfish young zany of a man, after all you have said to
her, won't you make it up and let me return to my coffee? Not
he.
Little nursery governess, I appeal to you. Annoying girl, be
joyous as of old during the five minutes of the day when you are
anything to me, and for the rest of the time, so far as I am
concerned, you may be as wretched as you list. Show some
courage. I assure you he must be a very bad painter; only the
other day I saw him looking longingly into the window of a cheap
Italian restaurant, and in the end he had to crush down his
aspirations with two penny scones.
You can do better than that. Come, Mary.
All in vain. She wants to be loved; can't do without love from
morning till night; never knew how little a woman needs till she
lost that little. They are all like this.
Zounds, madam, if you are resolved to be a drooping little figure
till you die, you might at least do it in another street.
Not only does she maliciously depress me by walking past on
ordinary days, but I have discovered that every Thursday from two
to three she stands afar off, gazing hopelessly at the romantic
post-office where she and he shall meet no more. In these windy
days she is like a homeless leaf blown about by passers-by.
There is nothing I can do except thunder at William.
At last she accomplished her unworthy ambition. It was a wet
Thursday, and from the window where I was writing letters I saw
the forlorn soul taking up her position at the top of the street:
in a blast of fury I rose with the one letter I had completed,
meaning to write the others in my chambers. She had driven me
from the club.
I had turned out of Pall Mall into a side street, when whom
should I strike against but her false swain! It was my fault,
but I hit out at him savagely, as I always do when I run into
anyone in the street. Then I looked at him. He was hollow-eyed;
he was muddy; there was not a haw left in him. I never saw a
more abject young man; he had not even the spirit to resent the
testy stab I had given him with my umbrella. But this is the
important thing: he was glaring wistfully at the post-office and
thus in a twink I saw that he still adored my little governess.
Whatever had been their quarrel he was as anxious to make it up
as she, and perhaps he had been here every Thursday while she was
round the corner in Pall Mall, each watching the post-office for
an apparition. But from where they hovered neither could see the
other.
I think what I did was quite clever. I dropped my letter unseen
at his feet, and sauntered back to the club. Of course, a
gentleman who finds a letter on the pavement feels bound to post
it, and I presumed that he would naturally go to the nearest
office.
With my hat on I strolled to the smoking-room window, and was
just in time to see him posting my letter across the way. Then I
looked for the little nursery governess. I saw her as woe-begone
as ever; then, suddenly--oh, you poor little soul, and has it
really been as bad as that!
She was crying outright, and he was holding both her hands. It
was a disgraceful exhibition. The young painter would evidently
explode if he could not make use of his arms. She must die if
she could not lay her head upon his breast. I must admit that he
rose to the occasion; he hailed a hansom.
"William," said I gaily, "coffee, cigarette, and cherry brandy."
As I sat there watching that old play David plucked my sleeve to
ask what I was looking at so deedily; and when I told him he ran
eagerly to the window, but he reached it just too late to see the
lady who was to become his mother. What I told him of her
doings, however, interested him greatly; and he intimated rather
shyly that he was acquainted with the man who said,
"Haw-haw-haw." On the other hand, he irritated me by betraying
an idiotic interest in the two children, whom he seemed to regard
as the hero and heroine of the story. What were their names?
How old were they? Had they both hoops? Were they iron hoops, or
just wooden hoops? Who gave them their hoops?
"You don't seem to understand, my boy," I said tartly, "that had
I not dropped that letter, there would never have been a little
boy called David A----." But instead of being appalled by this he
asked, sparkling, whether I meant that he would still be a bird
flying about in the Kensington Gardens.
David knows that all children in our part of London were once
birds in the Kensington Gardens; and that the reason there are
bars on nursery windows and a tall fender by the fire is because
very little people sometimes forget that they have no longer
wings, and try to fly away through the window or up the chimney.
Children in the bird stage are difficult to catch. David knows
that many people have none, and his delight on a summer afternoon
is to go with me to some spot in the Gardens where these
unfortunates may be seen trying to catch one with small pieces of
cake.
That the birds know what would happen if they were caught, and
are even a little undecided about which is the better life, is
obvious to every student of them. Thus, if you leave your empty
perambulator under the trees and watch from a distance, you will
see the birds boarding it and hopping about from pillow to
blanket in a twitter of excitement; they are trying to find out
how babyhood would suit them.
Quite the prettiest sight in the Gardens is when the babies stray
from the tree where the nurse is sitting and are seen feeding the
birds, not a grownup near them. It is first a bit to me and then
a bit to you, and all the time such a jabbering and laughing from
both sides of the railing. They are comparing notes and
inquiring for old friends, and so on; but what they say I cannot
determine, for when I approach they all fly away.
The first time I ever saw David was on the sward behind the
Baby's Walk. He was a missel-thrush, attracted thither that hot
day by a hose which lay on the ground sending forth a gay trickle
of water, and David was on his back in the water, kicking up his
legs. He used to enjoy being told of this, having forgotten all
about it, and gradually it all came back to him, with a number of
other incidents that had escaped my memory, though I remember
that he was eventually caught by the leg with a long string and a
cunning arrangement of twigs near the Round Pond. He never tires
of this story, but I notice that it is now he who tells it to me
rather than I to him, and when we come to the string he rubs his
little leg as if it still smarted.
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