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ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN - "New Forces in Old China"

Christoph Martin Wieland - "Geschichte des Agathon, Teil 2"

Jules Verne - "De la Terre … la Lune"

Jacob Burckhardt - "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy"

The Little White Bird

J >> J. M. Barrie >> The Little White Bird




The way it was done was this. The Queen ordered him to kneel,
and then said that for playing so beautifully she would give him
the wish of his heart. Then they all gathered round Peter to
hear what was the wish of his heart, but for a long time he
hesitated, not being certain what it was himself.

"If I chose to go back to mother," he asked at last, "could you
give me that wish?"

Now this question vexed them, for were he to return to his mother
they should lose his music, so the Queen tilted her nose
contemptuously and said, "Pooh, ask for a much bigger wish than
that."

"Is that quite a little wish?" he inquired.

"As little as this," the Queen answered, putting her hands near
each other.

"What size is a big wish?" he asked.

She measured it off on her skirt and it was a very handsome
length.

Then Peter reflected and said, "Well, then, I think I shall have
two little wishes instead of one big one."

Of course, the fairies had to agree, though his cleverness rather
shocked them, and he said that his first wish was to go to his
mother, but with the right to return to the Gardens if he found
her disappointing. His second wish he would hold in reserve.

They tried to dissuade him, and even put obstacles in the way.

"I can give you the power to fly to her house," the Queen said,
"but I can't open the door for you.

"The window I flew out at will be open," Peter said confidently.
"Mother always keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back."

"How do you know?" they asked, quite surprised, and, really,
Peter could not explain how he knew.

"I just do know," he said.

So as he persisted in his wish, they had to grant it. The way
they gave him power to fly was this: They all tickled him on the
shoulder, and soon he felt a funny itching in that part and then
up he rose higher and higher and flew away out of the Gardens and
over the house-tops.

It was so delicious that instead of flying straight to his old
home he skimmed away over St. Paul's to the Crystal Palace and
back by the river and Regent's Park, and by the time he reached
his mother's window he had quite made up his mind that his second
wish should be to become a bird.

The window was wide open, just as he knew it would be, and in he
fluttered, and there was his mother lying asleep. Peter alighted
softly on the wooden rail at the foot of the bed and had a good
look at her. She lay with her head on her hand, and the hollow
in the pillow was like a nest lined with her brown wavy hair. He
remembered, though he had long forgotten it, that she always gave
her hair a holiday at night. How sweet the frills of her night-
gown were. He was very glad she was such a pretty mother.

But she looked sad, and he knew why she looked sad. One of her
arms moved as if it wanted to go round something, and he knew
what it wanted to go round.

"Oh, mother," said Peter to himself, "if you just knew who is
sitting on the rail at the foot of the bed."

Very gently he patted the little mound that her feet made, and he
could see by her face that she liked it. He knew he had but to
say "Mother" ever so softly, and she would wake up. They always
wake up at once if it is you that says their name. Then she
would give such a joyous cry and squeeze him tight. How nice
that would be to him, but oh, how exquisitely delicious it would
be to her. That I am afraid is how Peter regarded it. In
returning to his mother he never doubted that he was giving her
the greatest treat a woman can have. Nothing can be more
splendid, he thought, than to have a little boy of your own. How
proud of him they are; and very right and proper, too.

But why does Peter sit so long on the rail, why does he not tell
his mother that he has come back?

I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two
minds. Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and
sometimes he looked longingly at the window. Certainly it would
be pleasant to be her boy again, but, on the other hand, what
times those had been in the Gardens! Was he so sure that he
would enjoy wearing clothes again? He popped off the bed and
opened some drawers to have a look at his old garments. They
were still there, but he could not remember how you put them on.
The socks, for instance, were they worn on the hands or on the
feet? He was about to try one of them on his hand, when he had a
great adventure. Perhaps the drawer had creaked; at any rate,
his mother woke up, for he heard her say "Peter," as if it was
the most lovely word in the language. He remained sitting on the
floor and held his breath, wondering how she knew that he had
come back. If she said "Peter" again, he meant to cry "Mother"
and run to her. But she spoke no more, she made little moans
only, and when next he peeped at her she was once more asleep,
with tears on her face.

It made Peter very miserable, and what do you think was the first
thing he did? Sitting on the rail at the foot of the bed, he
played a beautiful lullaby to his mother on his pipe. He had
made it up himself out of the way she said "Peter," and he never
stopped playing until she looked happy.

He thought this so clever of him that he could scarcely resist
wakening her to hear her say, "Oh, Peter, how exquisitely you
play." However, as she now seemed comfortable, he again cast
looks at the window. You must not think that he meditated flying
away and never coming back. He had quite decided to be his
mother's boy, but hesitated about beginning to-night. It was the
second wish which troubled him. He no longer meant to make it a
wish to be a bird, but not to ask for a second wish seemed
wasteful, and, of course, he could not ask for it without
returning to the fairies. Also, if he put off asking for his
wish too long it might go bad. He asked himself if he had not
been hardhearted to fly away without saying good-bye to Solomon.
"I should like awfully to sail in my boat just once more," he
said wistfully to his sleeping mother. He quite argued with her
as if she could hear him. "It would be so splendid to tell the
birds of this adventure," he said coaxingly. "I promise to come
back," he said solemnly and meant it, too.

And in the end, you know, he flew away. Twice he came back from
the window, wanting to kiss his mother, but he feared the delight
of it might waken her, so at last he played her a lovely kiss on
his pipe, and then he flew back to the Gardens.

Many nights and even months passed before he asked the fairies
for his second wish; and I am not sure that I quite know why he
delayed so long. One reason was that he had so many good-byes to
say, not only to his particular friends, but to a hundred
favourite spots. Then he had his last sail, and his very last
sail, and his last sail of all, and so on. Again, a number of
farewell feasts were given in his honour; and another comfortable
reason was that, after all, there was no hurry, for his mother
would never weary of waiting for him. This last reason
displeased old Solomon, for it was an encouragement to the birds
to procrastinate. Solomon had several excellent mottoes for
keeping them at their work, such as "Never put off laying to-day,
because you can lay to-morrow," and "In this world there are no
second chances," and yet here was Peter gaily putting off and
none the worse for it. The birds pointed this out to each other,
and fell into lazy habits.

But, mind you, though Peter was so slow in going back to his
mother, he was quite decided to go back. The best proof of this
was his caution with the fairies. They were most anxious that he
should remain in the Gardens to play to them, and to bring this
to pass they tried to trick him into making such a remark as "I
wish the grass was not so wet," and some of them danced out of
time in the hope that he might cry, "I do wish you would keep
time!" Then they would have said that this was his second wish.
But he smoked their design, and though on occasions he began, "I
wish--" he always stopped in time. So when at last he said to
them bravely, "I wish now to go back to mother for ever and
always," they had to tickle his shoulders and let him go.

He went in a hurry in the end because he had dreamt that his
mother was crying, and he knew what was the great thing she cried
for, and that a hug from her splendid Peter would quickly make
her to smile. Oh, he felt sure of it, and so eager was he to be
nestling in her arms that this time he flew straight to the
window, which was always to be open for him.

But the window was closed, and there were iron bars on it, and
peering inside he saw his mother sleeping peacefully with her arm
round another little boy.

Peter called, "Mother! mother!" but she heard him not; in vain he
beat his little limbs against the iron bars. He had to fly back,
sobbing, to the Gardens, and he never saw his dear again. What a
glorious boy he had meant to be to her. Ah, Peter, we who have
made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the
second chance. But Solomon was right; there is no second chance,
not for most of us. When we reach the window it is Lock-out
Time. The iron bars are up for life.


XVII

The Little House

Everybody has heard of the Little House in the Kensington
Gardens, which is the only house in the whole world that the
fairies have built for humans. But no one has really seen it,
except just three or four, and they have not only seen it but
slept in it, and unless you sleep in it you never see it. This
is because it is not there when you lie down, but it is there
when you wake up and step outside.

In a kind of way everyone may see it, but what you see is not
really it, but only the light in the windows. You see the light
after Lock-out Time. David, for instance, saw it quite
distinctly far away among the trees as we were going home from
the pantomime, and Oliver Bailey saw it the night he stayed so
late at the Temple, which is the name of his father's office.
Angela Clare, who loves to have a tooth extracted because then
she is treated to tea in a shop, saw more than one light, she saw
hundreds of them all together, and this must have been the
fairies building the house, for they build it every night and
always in a different part of the Gardens. She thought one of
the lights was bigger than the others, though she was not quite
sure, for they jumped about so, and it might have been another
one that was bigger. But if it was the same one, it was Peter
Pan's light. Heaps of children have seen the light, so that is
nothing. But Maimie Mannering was the famous one for whom the
house was first built.

Maimie was always rather a strange girl, and it was at night that
she was strange. She was four years of age, and in the daytime
she was the ordinary kind. She was pleased when her brother
Tony, who was a magnificent fellow of six, took notice of her,
and she looked up to him in the right way, and tried in vain to
imitate him and was flattered rather than annoyed when he shoved
her about. Also, when she was batting she would pause though the
ball was in the air to point out to you that she was wearing new
shoes. She was quite the ordinary kind in the daytime.

But as the shades of night fell, Tony, the swaggerer, lost his
contempt for Maimie and eyed her fearfully, and no wonder, for
with dark there came into her face a look that I can describe
only as a leary look. It was also a serene look that contrasted
grandly with Tony's uneasy glances. Then he would make her
presents of his favourite toys (which he always took away from
her next morning) and she accepted them with a disturbing smile.
The reason he was now become so wheedling and she so mysterious
was (in brief) that they knew they were about to be sent to bed.
It was then that Maimie was terrible. Tony entreated her not to
do it to-night, and the mother and their coloured nurse
threatened her, but Maimie merely smiled her agitating smile.
And by-and-by when they were alone with their night-light she
would start up in bed crying "Hsh! what was that?" Tony
beseeches her! "It was nothing--don't, Maimie, don't!" and pulls
the sheet over his head. "It is coming nearer!" she cries; "Oh,
look at it, Tony! It is feeling your bed with its horns--it is
boring for you, oh, Tony, oh!" and she desists not until he
rushes downstairs in his combinations, screeching. When they
came up to whip Maimie they usually found her sleeping
tranquilly, not shamming, you know, but really sleeping, and
looking like the sweetest little angel, which seems to me to make
it almost worse.

But of course it was daytime when they were in the Gardens, and
then Tony did most of the talking. You could gather from his
talk that he was a very brave boy, and no one was so proud of it
as Maimie. She would have loved to have a ticket on her saying
that she was his sister. And at no time did she admire him more
than when he told her, as he often did with splendid firmness,
that one day he meant to remain behind in the Gardens after the
gates were closed.

"Oh, Tony," she would say, with awful respect, "but the fairies
will be so angry!"

"I daresay," replied Tony, carelessly.

"Perhaps," she said, thrilling, "Peter Pan will give you a sail
in his boat!"

"I shall make him," replied Tony; no wonder she was proud of him.

But they should not have talked so loudly, for one day they were
overheard by a fairy who had been gathering skeleton leaves, from
which the little people weave their summer curtains, and after
that Tony was a marked boy. They loosened the rails before he
sat on them, so that down he came on the back of his head; they
tripped him up by catching his boot-lace and bribed the ducks to
sink his boat. Nearly all the nasty accidents you meet with in
the Gardens occur because the fairies have taken an ill-will to
you, and so it behoves you to be careful what you say about them.

Maimie was one of the kind who like to fix a day for doing
things, but Tony was not that kind, and when she asked him which
day he was to remain behind in the Gardens after Lock-out he
merely replied, "Just some day;" he was quite vague about which
day except when she asked "Will it be to-day?" and then he could
always say for certain that it would not be to-day. So she saw
that he was waiting for a real good chance.

This brings us to an afternoon when the Gardens were white with
snow, and there was ice on the Round Pond, not thick enough to
skate on but at least you could spoil it for to-morrow by
flinging stones, and many bright little boys and girls were doing
that.

When Tony and his sister arrived they wanted to go straight to
the pond, but their ayah said they must take a sharp walk first,
and as she said this she glanced at the time-board to see when
the Gardens closed that night. It read half-past five. Poor
ayah! she is the one who laughs continuously because there are so
many white children in the world, but she was not to laugh much
more that day.

Well, they went up the Baby Walk and back, and when they returned
to the time-board she was surprised to see that it now read five
o'clock for closing time. But she was unacquainted with the
tricky ways of the fairies, and so did not see (as Maimie and
Tony saw at once) that they had changed the hour because there
was to be a ball to-night. She said there was only time now to
walk to the top of the Hump and back, and as they trotted along
with her she little guessed what was thrilling their little
breasts. You see the chance had come of seeing a fairy ball.
Never, Tony felt, could he hope for a better chance.

He had to feel this, for Maimie so plainly felt it for him. Her
eager eyes asked the question, "Is it to-day?" and he gasped and
then nodded. Maimie slipped her hand into Tony's, and hers was
hot, but his was cold. She did a very kind thing; she took off
her scarf and gave it to him! "In case you should feel cold,"
she whispered. Her face was aglow, but Tony's was very gloomy.

As they turned on the top of the Hump he whispered to her, "I'm
afraid Nurse would see me, so I sha'n't be able to do it."

Maimie admired him more than ever for being afraid of nothing but
their ayah, when there were so many unknown terrors to fear, and
she said aloud, "Tony, I shall race you to the gate," and in a
whisper, "Then you can hide," and off they ran.

Tony could always outdistance her easily, but never had she known
him speed away so quickly as now, and she was sure he hurried
that he might have more time to hide. "Brave, brave!" her doting
eyes were crying when she got a dreadful shock; instead of
hiding, her hero had run out at the gate! At this bitter sight
Maimie stopped blankly, as if all her lapful of darling treasures
were suddenly spilled, and then for very disdain she could not
sob; in a swell of protest against all puling cowards she ran to
St. Govor's Well and hid in Tony's stead.

When the ayah reached the gate and saw Tony far in front she
thought her other charge was with him and passed out. Twilight
came on, and scores and hundreds of people passed out, including
the last one, who always has to run for it, but Maimie saw them
not. She had shut her eyes tight and glued them with passionate
tears. When she opened them something very cold ran up her legs
and up her arms and dropped into her heart. It was the stillness
of the Gardens. Then she heard clang, then from another part
clang, then clang, clang far away. It was the Closing of the
Gates.

Immediately the last clang had died away Maimie distinctly heard
a voice say, "So that's all right." It had a wooden sound and
seemed to come from above, and she looked up in time to see an
elm tree stretching out its arms and yawning.

She was about to say, "I never knew you could speak!" when a
metallic voice that seemed to come from the ladle at the well
remarked to the elm, "I suppose it is a bit coldish up there?"
and the elm replied, "Not particularly, but you do get numb
standing so long on one leg," and he flapped his arms vigorously
just as the cabmen do before they drive off. Maimie was quite
surprised to see that a number of other tall trees were doing the
same sort of thing, and she stole away to the Baby Walk and
crouched observantly under a Minorca Holly which shrugged its
shoulders but did not seem to mind her.

She was not in the least cold. She was wearing a russet-coloured
pelisse and had the hood over her head, so that nothing of her
showed except her dear little face and her curls. The rest of
her real self was hidden far away inside so many warm garments
that in shape she seemed rather like a ball. She was about forty
round the waist.

There was a good deal going on in the Baby Walk, when Maimie
arrived in time to see a magnolia and a Persian lilac step over
the railing and set off for a smart walk. They moved in a jerky
sort of way certainly, but that was because they used crutches.
An elderberry hobbled across the walk, and stood chatting with
some young quinces, and they all had crutches. The crutches were
the sticks that are tied to young trees and shrubs. They were
quite familiar objects to Maimie, but she had never known what
they were for until to-night.

She peeped up the walk and saw her first fairy. He was a street
boy fairy who was running up the walk closing the weeping trees.
The way he did it was this, he pressed a spring in the trunk and
they shut like umbrellas, deluging the little plants beneath with
snow. "Oh, you naughty, naughty child!" Maimie cried
indignantly, for she knew what it was to have a dripping umbrella
about your ears.

Fortunately the mischievous fellow was out of earshot, but the
chrysanthemums heard her, and they all said so pointedly "Hoity-
toity, what is this?" that she had to come out and show herself.
Then the whole vegetable kingdom was rather puzzled what to do.

"Of course it is no affair of ours," a spindle tree said after
they had whispered together, "but you know quite well you ought
not to be here, and perhaps our duty is to report you to the
fairies; what do you think yourself?"

"I think you should not," Maimie replied, which so perplexed them
that they said petulantly there was no arguing with her. "I
wouldn't ask it of you," she assured them, "if I thought it was
wrong," and of course after this they could not well carry tales.
They then said, "Well-a-day," and "Such is life!" for they can be
frightfully sarcastic, but she felt sorry for those of them who
had no crutches, and she said good-naturedly, "Before I go to the
fairies' ball, I should like to take you for a walk one at a
time; you can lean on me, you know."

At this they clapped their hands, and she escorted them up to the
Baby Walk and back again, one at a time, putting an arm or a
finger round the very frail, setting their leg right when it got
too ridiculous, and treating the foreign ones quite as
courteously as the English, though she could not understand a
word they said.

They behaved well on the whole, though some whimpered that she
had not taken them as far as she took Nancy or Grace or Dorothy,
and others jagged her, but it was quite unintentional, and she
was too much of a lady to cry out. So much walking tired her and
she was anxious to be off to the ball, but she no longer felt
afraid. The reason she felt no more fear was that it was now
night-time, and in the dark, you remember, Maimie was always
rather strange.

They were now loath to let her go, for, "If the fairies see you,"
they warned her, "they will mischief you, stab you to death or
compel you to nurse their children or turn you into something
tedious, like an evergreen oak." As they said this they looked
with affected pity at an evergreen oak, for in winter they are
very envious of the evergreens.

"Oh, la!" replied the oak bitingly, "how deliciously cosy it is
to stand here buttoned to the neck and watch you poor naked
creatures shivering!"

This made them sulky though they had really brought it on
themselves, and they drew for Maimie a very gloomy picture of the
perils that faced her if she insisted on going to the ball.

She learned from a purple filbert that the court was not in its
usual good temper at present, the cause being the tantalising
heart of the Duke of Christmas Daisies. He was an Oriental
fairy, very poorly of a dreadful complaint, namely, inability to
love, and though he had tried many ladies in many lands he could
not fall in love with one of them. Queen Mab, who rules in the
Gardens, had been confident that her girls would bewitch him, but
alas, his heart, the doctor said, remained cold. This rather
irritating doctor, who was his private physician, felt the Duke's
heart immediately after any lady was presented, and then always
shook his bald head and murmured, "Cold, quite cold!" Naturally
Queen Mab felt disgraced, and first she tried the effect of
ordering the court into tears for nine minutes, and then she
blamed the Cupids and decreed that they should wear fools' caps
until they thawed the Duke's frozen heart.

"How I should love to see the Cupids in their dear little fools'
caps!" Maimie cried, and away she ran to look for them very
recklessly, for the Cupids hate to be laughed at.

It is always easy to discover where a fairies' ball is being
held, as ribbons are stretched between it and all the populous
parts of the Gardens, on which those invited may walk to the
dance without wetting their pumps. This night the ribbons were
red and looked very pretty on the snow.

Maimie walked alongside one of them for some distance without
meeting anybody, but at last she saw a fairy cavalcade
approaching. To her surprise they seemed to be returning from
the ball, and she had just time to hide from them by bending her
knees and holding out her arms and pretending to be a garden
chair. There were six horsemen in front and six behind, in the
middle walked a prim lady wearing a long train held up by two
pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, reclined a lovely
girl, for in this way do aristocratic fairies travel about. She
was dressed in golden rain, but the most enviable part of her was
her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and
of course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat
could have glorified it. The high-born fairies obtain this
admired effect by pricking their skin, which lets the blue blood
come through and dye them, and you cannot imagine anything so
dazzling unless you have seen the ladies' busts in the jewellers'
windows.

Maimie also noticed that the whole cavalcade seemed to be in a
passion, tilting their noses higher than it can be safe for even
fairies to tilt them, and she concluded that this must be another
case in which the doctor had said "Cold, quite cold!"

Well, she followed the ribbon to a place where it became a bridge
over a dry puddle into which another fairy had fallen and been
unable to climb out. At first this little damsel was afraid of
Maimie, who most kindly went to her aid, but soon she sat in her
hand chatting gaily and explaining that her name was Brownie, and
that though only a poor street singer she was on her way to the
ball to see if the Duke would have her.

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