Maimie felt quite shy, but Peter knew not what shy was.
“I hope you have had a good night,” he said earnestly.
“Thank you,” she replied, “I was so cosy and warm. But you”--and she
looked at his nakedness awkwardly--“don't you feel the least bit cold?”
Now cold was another word Peter had forgotten, so he answered, “I think
not, but I may be wrong: you see I am rather ignorant. I am not exactly
a boy, Solomon says I am a Betwixt-and-Between.”
“So that is what it is called,” said Maimie thoughtfully.
“That's not my name,” he explained, “my name is Peter Pan.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, “I know, everybody knows.”
You can't think how pleased Peter was to learn that all the people
outside the gates knew about him. He begged Maimie to tell him what they
knew and what they said, and she did so. They were sitting by this time
on a fallen tree; Peter had cleared off the snow for Maimie, but he sat
on a snowy bit himself.
“Squeeze closer,” Maimie said.
“What is that?” he asked, and she showed him, and then he did it. They
talked together and he found that people knew a great deal about him,
but not everything, not that he had gone back to his mother and been
barred out, for instance, and he said nothing of this to Maimie, for it
still humiliated him.
“Do they know that I play games exactly like real boys?” he asked very
proudly. “Oh, Maimie, please tell them!” But when he revealed how he
played, by sailing his hoop on the Round Pond, and so on, she was simply
horrified.
“All your ways of playing,” she said with her big eyes on him, “are
quite, quite wrong, and not in the least like how boys play!”
Poor Peter uttered a little moan at this, and he cried for the first
time for I know not how long. Maimie was extremely sorry for him, and
lent him her handkerchief, but he didn't know in the least what to do
with it, so she showed him, that is to say, she wiped her eyes, and then
gave it back to him, saying “Now you do it,” but instead of wiping his
own eyes he wiped hers, and she thought it best to pretend that this was
what she had meant.
She said, out of pity for him, “I shall give you a kiss if you like,”
but though he once knew he had long forgotten what kisses are, and he
replied, “Thank you,” and held out his hand, thinking she had offered to
put something into it. This was a great shock to her, but she felt she
could not explain without shaming him, so with charming delicacy she
gave Peter a thimble which happened to be in her pocket, and pretended
that it was a kiss. Poor little boy! he quite believed her, and to this
day he wears it on his finger, though there can be scarcely anyone who
needs a thimble so little. You see, though still a tiny child, it was
really years and years since he had seen his mother, and I daresay the
baby who had supplanted him was now a man with whiskers.
But you must not think that Peter Pan was a boy to pity rather than to
admire; if Maimie began by thinking this, she soon found she was very
much mistaken. Her eyes glistened with admiration when he told her of
his adventures, especially of how he went to and fro between the island
and the Gardens in the Thrush's Nest.
“How romantic,” Maimie exclaimed, but it was another unknown word, and
he hung his head thinking she was despising him.
“I suppose Tony would not have done that?” he said very humbly.
“Never, never!” she answered with conviction, “he would have been
afraid.”
“What is afraid?” asked Peter longingly. He thought it must be some
splendid thing. “I do wish you would teach me how to be afraid, Maimie,”
he said.
“I believe no one could teach that to you,” she answered adoringly, but
Peter thought she meant that he was stupid. She had told him about Tony
and of the wicked thing she did in the dark to frighten him (she knew
quite well that it was wicked), but Peter misunderstood her meaning and
said, “Oh, how I wish I was as brave as Tony.”
It quite irritated her. “You are twenty thousand times braver than
Tony,” she said, “you are ever so much the bravest boy I ever knew!”
He could scarcely believe she meant it, but when he did believe he
screamed with joy.
“And if you want very much to give me a kiss,” Maimie said, “you can do
it.”
Very reluctantly Peter began to take the thimble off his finger. He
thought she wanted it back.
“I don't mean a kiss,” she said hurriedly, “I mean a thimble.”
“What's that?” Peter asked.
“It's like this,” she said, and kissed him.
“I should love to give you a thimble,” Peter said gravely, so he gave
her one. He gave her quite a number of thimbles, and then a delightful
idea came into his head! “Maimie,” he said, “will you marry me?”
Now, strange to tell, the same idea had come at exactly the same time
into Maimie's head. “I should like to,” she answered, “but will there be
room in your boat for two?”
“If you squeeze close,” he said eagerly.
“Perhaps the birds would be angry?”
He assured her that the birds would love to have her, though I am not so
certain of it myself. Also that there were very few birds in winter.
“Of course they might want your clothes,” he had to admit rather
falteringly.
She was somewhat indignant at this.
“They are always thinking of their nests,” he said apologetically, “and
there are some bits of you”--he stroked the fur on her pelisse--“that
would excite them very much.”
“They sha'n't have my fur,” she said sharply.
“No,” he said, still fondling it, however, “no! Oh, Maimie,” he said
rapturously, “do you know why I love you? It is because you are like a
beautiful nest.”
Somehow this made her uneasy. “I think you are speaking more like a bird
than a boy now,” she said, holding back, and indeed he was even
looking rather like a bird. “After all,” she said, “you are only a
Betwixt-and-Between.” But it hurt him so much that she immediately
added, “It must be a delicious thing to be.”
“Come and be one then, dear Maimie,” he implored her, and they set off
for the boat, for it was now very near Open-Gate time. “And you are not
a bit like a nest,” he whispered to please her.
“But I think it is rather nice to be like one,” she said in a woman's
contradictory way. “And, Peter, dear, though I can't give them my fur, I
wouldn't mind their building in it. Fancy a nest in my neck with little
spotty eggs in it! Oh, Peter, how perfectly lovely!”
But as they drew near the Serpentine, she shivered a little, and said,
“Of course I shall go and see mother often, quite often. It is not as
if I was saying good-bye for ever to mother, it is not in the least like
that.”
“Oh, no,” answered Peter, but in his heart he knew it was very like
that, and he would have told her so had he not been in a quaking fear
of losing her. He was so fond of her, he felt he could not live without
her. “She will forget her mother in time, and be happy with me,” he kept
saying to himself, and he hurried her on, giving her thimbles by the
way.
But even when she had seen the boat and exclaimed ecstatically over its
loveliness, she still talked tremblingly about her mother. “You know
quite well, Peter, don't you,” she said, “that I wouldn't come unless
I knew for certain I could go back to mother whenever I want to? Peter,
say it!”
He said it, but he could no longer look her in the face.
“If you are sure your mother will always want you,” he added rather
sourly.
“The idea of mother's not always wanting me!” Maimie cried, and her face
glistened.
“If she doesn't bar you out,” said Peter huskily.
“The door,” replied Maimie, “will always, always be open, and mother
will always be waiting at it for me.”
“Then,” said Peter, not without grimness, “step in, if you feel so sure
of her,” and he helped Maimie into the Thrush's Nest.
“But why don't you look at me?” she asked, taking him by the arm.
Peter tried hard not to look, he tried to push off, then he gave a great
gulp and jumped ashore and sat down miserably in the snow.
She went to him. “What is it, dear, dear Peter?” she said, wondering.
“Oh, Maimie,” he cried, “it isn't fair to take you with me if you think
you can go back. Your mother”--he gulped again--“you don't know them as
well as I do.”
And then he told her the woful story of how he had been barred out, and
she gasped all the time. “But my mother,” she said, “my mother”--
“Yes, she would,” said Peter, “they are all the same. I daresay she is
looking for another one already.”
Maimie said aghast, “I can't believe it. You see, when you went away
your mother had none, but my mother has Tony, and surely they are
satisfied when they have one.”
Peter replied bitterly, “You should see the letters Solomon gets from
ladies who have six.”
Just then they heard a grating creak, followed by creak, creak, all
round the Gardens. It was the Opening of the Gates, and Peter jumped
nervously into his boat. He knew Maimie would not come with him now, and
he was trying bravely not to cry. But Maimie was sobbing painfully.
“If I should be too late,” she called in agony, “oh, Peter, if she has
got another one already!”
Again he sprang ashore as if she had called him back. “I shall come and
look for you to-night,” he said, squeezing close, “but if you hurry away
I think you will be in time.”
Then he pressed a last thimble on her sweet little mouth, and covered
his face with his hands so that he might not see her go.
“Dear Peter!” she cried.
“Dear Maimie!” cried the tragic boy.
She leapt into his arms, so that it was a sort of fairy wedding, and
then she hurried away. Oh, how she hastened to the gates! Peter, you may
be sure, was back in the Gardens that night as soon as Lock-out sounded,
but he found no Maimie, and so he knew she had been in time. For long
he hoped that some night she would come back to him; often he thought he
saw her waiting for him by the shore of the Serpentine as his bark drew
to land, but Maimie never went back. She wanted to, but she was afraid
that if she saw her dear Betwixt-and-Between again she would linger with
him too long, and besides the ayah now kept a sharp eye on her. But she
often talked lovingly of Peter and she knitted a kettle-holder for him,
and one day when she was wondering what Easter present he would like,
her mother made a suggestion.
“Nothing,” she said thoughtfully, “would be so useful to him as a goat.”
“He could ride on it,” cried Maimie, “and play on his pipe at the same
time!”
“Then,” her mother asked, “won't you give him your goat, the one you
frighten Tony with at night?”
“But it isn't a real goat,” Maimie said.
“It seems very real to Tony,” replied her mother.
“It seems frightfully real to me too,” Maimie admitted, “but how could I
give it to Peter?”
Her mother knew a way, and next day, accompanied by Tony (who was really
quite a nice boy, though of course he could not compare), they went to
the Gardens, and Maimie stood alone within a fairy ring, and then her
mother, who was a rather gifted lady, said,
“My daughter, tell me, if you can,
What have you got for Peter Pan?”
To which Maimie replied,
“I have a goat for him to ride,
Observe me cast it far and wide.”
She then flung her arms about as if she were sowing seed, and turned
round three times.
Next Tony said,
“If P. doth find it waiting here,
Wilt ne'er again make me to fear?”
And Maimie answered,
“By dark or light I fondly swear
Never to see goats anywhere.”
She also left a letter to Peter in a likely place, explaining what she
had done, and begging him to ask the fairies to turn the goat into one
convenient for riding on. Well, it all happened just as she hoped, for
Peter found the letter, and of course nothing could be easier for the
fairies than to turn the goat into a real one, and so that is how Peter
got the goat on which he now rides round the Gardens every night playing
sublimely on his pipe. And Maimie kept her promise and never frightened
Tony with a goat again, though I have heard that she created another
animal. Until she was quite a big girl she continued to leave presents
for Peter in the Gardens (with letters explaining how humans play with
them), and she is not the only one who has done this. David does it, for
instance, and he and I know the likeliest place for leaving them in, and
we shall tell you if you like, but for mercy's sake don't ask us before
Porthos, for were he to find out the place he would take every one of
them.
Though Peter still remembers Maimie he is become as gay as ever, and
often in sheer happiness he jumps off his goat and lies kicking merrily
on the grass. Oh, he has a joyful time! But he has still a vague memory
that he was a human once, and it makes him especially kind to the
house-swallows when they revisit the island, for house-swallows are the
spirits of little children who have died. They always build in the eaves
of the houses where they lived when they were humans, and sometimes they
try to fly in at a nursery window, and perhaps that is why Peter loves
them best of all the birds.
And the little house? Every lawful night (that is to say, every night
except ball nights) the fairies now build the little house lest there
should be a human child lost in the Gardens, and Peter rides the marshes
looking for lost ones, and if he finds them he carries them on his goat
to the little house, and when they wake up they are in it and when they
step out they see it. The fairies build the house merely because it
is so pretty, but Peter rides round in memory of Maimie and because he
still loves to do just as he believes real boys would do.
But you must not think that, because somewhere among the trees the
little house is twinkling, it is a safe thing to remain in the Gardens
after Lock-out Time. If the bad ones among the fairies happen to be out
that night they will certainly mischief you, and even though they are
not, you may perish of cold and dark before Peter Pan comes round. He
has been too late several times, and when he sees he is too late he runs
back to the Thrush's Nest for his paddle, of which Maimie had told him
the true use, and he digs a grave for the child and erects a little
tombstone and carves the poor thing's initials on it. He does this at
once because he thinks it is what real boys would do, and you must have
noticed the little stones and that there are always two together. He
puts them in twos because it seems less lonely. I think that quite the
most touching sight in the Gardens is the two tombstones of Walter
Stephen Matthews and Phoebe Phelps. They stand together at the spot
where the parishes of Westminster St. Mary's is said to meet the parish
of Paddington. Here Peter found the two babes, who had fallen unnoticed
from their perambulators, Phoebe aged thirteen months and Walter
probably still younger, for Peter seems to have felt a delicacy about
putting any age on his stone. They lie side by side, and the simple
inscriptions read
+-----------+ +-----------+
| | | |
| W | | 13a. |
| | | P.P. |
| St. M | | 1841 |
| | | |
+-----------+ +-----------+
David sometimes places white flowers on these two innocent graves.
But how strange for parents, when they hurry into the Gardens at the
opening of the gates looking for their lost one, to find the sweetest
little tombstone instead. I do hope that Peter is not too ready with his
spade. It is all rather sad.