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

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 hecould 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.)

Table of Contents

The Scene is the same nursery, with this slight change – Michael's bed is now where Wendy's was and vice versa, and in front of John's bed, hiding the upper part of it from the audience, is a clothes horse on which depend (covering it), a little girl's garments to air at the fire. Time early evening. Lights in.

Wendy emerges from bathroom. She is now a grown-up woman, wearing a pretty dress with train, and she sails forward to fire in an excessively matrony manner. She comes straight to audience, points out to them with pride her long skirt and that her hair is up. Then takes a child's nightgown off fireguard and after pointing it out with rapture to audience exit into bathroom. She comes out with her little daughter Jane, who is in the nightgown. Wendy is drying Jane's hair.

JANE (naughty) Won't go to bed, Mummy, won't go to bed!

WENDY (excessively prim) Jane! When I was a little girl I went to bed the moment I was told. Come at once! (Jane dodges her and after pursuit is caught.) Naughtikins! (sits by fire with Jane on her knee warming toes) to run your poor old Mother out of breath! When she's not so young as she used to be!

JANE How young used you to be, Mummy?

WENDY Quite young. How time flies!

JANE Does it fly the way you flew when you were a little girl?

WENDY The way I flew. Do you know Darling it is all so long ago. I sometimes wonder whether I ever did really fly.

JANE Yes you did.

WENDY Those dear old days.

JANE Why can't you fly now, Mother?

WENDY Because I'm grown up, sweetheart; when people grow up they forget the way.

JANE Why do they forget the way?

WENDY Because they are no longer young and innocent. It is only the young and innocent that can fly.

JANE What is young and innocent? I do wish I were young and innocent! (Wendy suddenly hugs her)

WENDY Come to bed, dearest. (Takes her to bed right, down stage)

JANE Tell me a story. Tell me about Peter Pan.

WENDY (standing at foot of bed) I've told it you so often that I believe you could tell it to me now better than I could tell it to you.

JANE (putting bed clothes round them to suggest a tent) Go on Mother. This is the Little House. What do you see?

WENDY I see – just this nursery.

JANE But what do you see long ago in it?