'I couldn't help it. I am a married woman, Peter.'
'No, you're not.'
'Yes, and the little girl in the bed is my baby.'
'No, she's not.'
But he supposed she was; and he took a step towards the sleeping child with his dagger upraised. Of course he did not strike. He sat down on the floor instead and sobbed; and Wendy did not know how to comfort him, though she could have done it so easily once. She was only a woman now, and she ran out of the room to try to think.
Peter continued to cry, and soon his sobs woke Jane. She sat up in bed, and was interested at once.
'Boy,' she said, 'why are you crying?'
Peter rose and bowed to her, and she bowed to him from the bed.
'Hullo,' he said.
'Hullo,' said Jane.
'My name is Peter Pan,' he told her.
'Yes, I know.'
'I came back for my mother,' he explained; 'to take her to the Neverland.'
'Yes, I know,' Jane said, 'I been waiting for you.'
When Wendy returned diffidently she found Peter sitting on the bed-post crowing gloriously, while Jane in her nighty was flying round the room in solemn ecstasy.
'She is my mother,' Peter explained; and Jane descended and stood by his side, with the look on her face that he liked to see on ladies when they gazed at him.
'He does so need a mother,' Jane said.
'Yes, I know,' Wendy admitted rather forlornly; 'no one knows it so well as I.'
'Good-bye,' said Peter to Wendy; and he rose in the air, and the shameless Jane rose with him; it was already her easiest way of moving about.
Wendy rushed to the window.
'No, no,' she cried.
'It is just for spring-cleaning time,' Jane said; 'he wants me always to do his spring cleaning.'
'If only I could go with you,' Wendy sighed.
'You see you can't fly,' said Jane.
Of course in the end Wendy let them fly away together. Our last glimpse of her shows her at the window, watching them receding into the sky until they were as small as stars.
As you look at Wendy you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring-cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly. When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.
THE END
Other Novels
Better Dead
Chapter I
When Andrew Riach went to London, his intention was to become private secretary to a member of the Cabinet. If time permitted, he proposed writing for the Press.
"It might be better if you and Clarrie understood each other," the minister said.
It was their last night together. They faced each other in the manse-parlour at Wheens, whose low, peeled ceiling had threatened Mr. Eassie at his desk every time he looked up with his pen in his mouth until his wife died, when he ceased to notice things. The one picture on the walls, an engraving of a boy in velveteen, astride a tree, entitled "Boyhood of Bunyan," had started life with him. The horsehair chairs were not torn, and you did not require to know the sofa before you sat down on it, that day thirty years before, when a chubby minister and his lady walked to the manse between two cart-loads of furniture, trying not to look elated.
Clarrie rose to go, when she heard her name. The love-light was in her eyes, but Andrew did not open the door for her, for he was a Scotch graduate. Besides, she might one day be his wife.
The minister's toddy-ladle clinked against his tumbler, but Andrew did not speak. Clarrie was the girl he generally adored.
"As for Clarrie," he said at last, "she puts me in an awkward position. How do I know that I love her?"
"You have known each other a long time," said the minister.
His guest was cleaning his pipe with a hair-pin, that his quick eye had detected on the carpet.
"And she is devoted to you," continued Mr. Eassie.
The young man nodded.
"What I fear," he said, "is that we have known each other too long. Perhaps my feeling for Clarrie is only brotherly—"
"Hers for you, Andrew, is more than sisterly."
"Admitted. But consider, Mr. Eassie, she has only seen the world in soirées. Every girl has her day-dreams, and Clarrie has perhaps made a dream of me. She is impulsive, given to idealisation, and hopelessly illogical."
The minister moved uneasily in his chair.
"I have reasoned out her present relation to me," the young man went on, "and, the more you reduce it to the usual formulae, the more illogical it becomes. Clarrie could possibly describe me, but define me—never. What is our prospect of happiness in these circumstances?"
"But love—" began Mr. Eassie.
"Love!" exclaimed Andrew. "Is there such a thing? Reduce it to syllogistic form, and how does it look in Barbara?"
For the moment there was almost some expression in his face, and he suffered from a determination of words to the mouth.
"Love