The Greatest Works of J. M. Barrie: 90+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). James Matthew Barrie
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(At this she strikes her colours.)
WENDY. Of course it's awfully fascinating! Would you teach John and Michael to fly too?
PETER (indifferently). If you like.
WENDY (playing rum-turn 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 headfrom 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 andthen 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 wiggle 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.
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 has 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. Theholes 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