James Matthew Barrie - The Complete Works of J. M. Barrie (With Illustrations)

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Musaicum Books presents to you this carefully created volume of «The Complete Works of J. M. Barrie (With Illustrations)». This ebook has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices.
Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) is one of the greatest Scottish novelists and playwrights, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan.
Content:
Peter Pan Adventures
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
Peter and Wendy
Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up
When Wendy Grew Up
Novels
Better Dead
When a Man's Single
Auld Licht Idylls
A Window in Thrums
The Little Minister
Sentimental Tommy
Tommy and Grizel
The Little White Bird
Farewell Miss Julie Logan
Novellas
A Tillyloss Scandal
Life in a Country Manse
Lady's Shoe
Short Stories
A Holiday in Bed and Other Sketches
Two of Them and Other Stories
Other Short Stories
Inconsiderate Waiter
The Courting of T'Nowhead's Bell
Dite Deuchars
The Minister's Gown
Shutting a Map
An Invalid in Lodgings
The Mystery of Time-Tables
Mending the Clock
The Biggest Box in the World
The Coming Dramatist
The Result of a Tramp
The Other «Times»
How Gavin Birse Put it to Mag Lownie
The Late Sherlock Holmes
Plays
Ibsen's Ghost
Jane Annie
Walker, London
The Professor's Love Story
The Little Minister: A Play
The Wedding Guest
Little Mary
Quality Street
The Admirable Crichton
What Every Woman Knows
Der Tag (The Tragic Man)
Dear Brutus
Alice Sit-by-the-Fire
A Kiss for Cinderella
Shall We Join the Ladies?
Half an Hour
Seven Women
Old Friends
Mary Rose
The Boy David
Pantaloon
The Twelve-Pound Look
Rosalind
The Will
The Old Lady Shows Her Medals
The New Word
Barbara's Wedding
A Well-Remembered Voice
Essays
Neither Dorking Nor The Abbey
Charles Frohman: A Tribute
Courage
Preface to The Young Visiters
Captain Hook at Eton
The Man from Nowhere
Woman and the Press
A Plea for Smaller Books
Boy's Books
The Lost Works of George Meredith
The Humor of Dickens
Ndintpile Pont(?)…

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(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.

The Home Under the Ground

Table of Contents

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.

Michaels 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). Silence! 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 insurbordination.)

SECOND TWIN. I complain of John!

(The gentle TOOTLED raises his hand.)

TOOTLES (who has the poorest opinion of himself). I don'tsuppose 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 difficultto 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 wiih 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 ina 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 theonly one who is sure about anything on the island is PETER.)

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