by Unknown
Maimie walked alongside one of them for some distance without meeting anybody, but at last she saw a fairy cavalcade approaching. To her surprise they seemed to be returning from the ball, and she had just time to hide from them by bending her knees and holding out her arms and pretending to be a garden chair. There were six horsemen in front and six behind, in the middle walked a prim lady wearing a long train held up by two pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, reclined a lovely girl, for in this way do aristocratic fairies travel about. She was dressed in golden rain, but the most enviable part of her was her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and of course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat could have glorified it. The high-born fairies obtain this admired effect by pricking their skin, which lets the blue blood come through and dye them, and you cannot imagine anything so dazzling unless you have seen the ladies’ busts in the jewellers’ windows.
Maimie also noticed that the whole cavalcade seemed to be in a passion, tilting their noses higher than it can be safe for even fairies to tilt them, and she concluded that this must be another case in which the doctor had said “Cold, quite cold!”
Well, she followed the ribbon to a place where it became a bridge over a dry puddle into which another fairy had fallen and been unable to climb out. At first this little damsel was afraid of Maimie, who most kindly went to her aid, but soon she sat in her hand chatting gaily and explaining that her name was Brownie, and that though only a poor street singer she was on her way to the ball to see if the Duke would have her.
“Of course,” she said, “I am rather plain,” and this made Maimie uncomfortable, for indeed the simple little creature was almost quite plain for a fairy.
It was difficult to know what to reply.
“I see you think I have no chance,” Brownie said falteringly.
“I don’t say that,” Maimie answered politely, “of course your face is just a tiny bit homely, but—” Really it was quite awkward for her.
Fortunately she remembered about her father and the bazaar. He had gone to a fashionable bazaar where all the most beautiful ladies in London were on view for half-a-crown the second day, but on his return home instead of being dissatisfied with Maimie’s mother he had said, “You can’t think, my dear, what a relief it is to see a homely face again.”
Maimie repeated this story, and it fortified Brownie tremendously, indeed she had no longer the slightest doubt that the Duke would choose her. So she scudded away up the ribbon, calling out to Maimie not to follow lest the Queen should mischief her.
But Maimie’s curiosity tugged her forward, and presently at the seven Spanish chestnuts, she saw a wonderful light. She crept forward until she was quite near it, and then she peeped from behind a tree.
The light, which was as high as your head above the ground, was composed of myriads of glow-worms all holding on to each other, and so forming a dazzling canopy over the fairy ring. There were thousands of little people looking on, but they were in shadow and drab in colour compared to the glorious creatures within that luminous circle who were so bewilderingly bright that Maimie had to wink hard all the time she looked at them.
It was amazing and even irritating to her that the Duke of Christmas Daisies should be able to keep out of love for a moment: yet out of love his dusky grace still was: you could see it by the shamed looks of the Queen and court (though they pretended not to care), by the way darling ladies brought forward for his approval burst into tears as they were told to pass on, and by his own most dreary face.
Maimie could also see the pompous doctor feeling the Duke’s heart and hear him give utterance to his parrot cry, and she was particularly sorry for the Cupids, who stood in their fools’ caps in obscure places and, every time they heard that “Cold, quite cold,” bowed their disgraced little heads.
She was disappointed not to see Peter Pan, and I may as well tell you now why he was so late that night. It was because his boat had got wedged on the Serpentine between fields of floating ice, through which he had to break a perilous passage with his trusty paddle.
The fairies had as yet scarcely missed him, for they could not dance, so heavy were their hearts. They forget all the steps when they are sad and remember them again when they are merry. David tells me that fairies never say “We feel happy”: what they say is, “We feel dancey.”
Well, they were looking very undancey indeed, when sudden laughter broke out among the onlookers, caused by Brownie, who had just arrived and was insisting on her right to be presented to the Duke.
Maimie craned forward eagerly to see how her friend fared, though she had really no hope; no one seemed to have the least hope except Brownie herself, who, however, was absolutely confident. She was led before his grace, and the doctor putting a finger carelessly on the ducal heart, which for convenience sake was reached by a little trapdoor in his diamond shirt, had begun to say mechanically, “Cold, qui — ,” when he stopped abruptly.
“What’s this?” he cried, and first he shook the heart like a watch, and then put his ear to it.
“Bless my soul!” cried the doctor, and by this time of course the excitement among the spectators was tremendous, fairies fainting right and left.
Everybody stared breathlessly at the Duke, who was very much startled and looked as if he would like to run away. “Good gracious me!” the doctor was heard muttering, and now the heart was evidently on fire, for he had to jerk his fingers away from it and put them in his mouth.
The suspense was awful!
Then in a loud voice, and bowing low, “My Lord Duke,” said the physician elatedly, “I have the honour to inform your excellency that your grace is in love.”
You can’t conceive the effect of it. Brownie held out her arms to the Duke and he flung himself into them, the Queen leapt into the arms of the Lord Chamberlain, and the ladies of the court leapt into the arms of her gentlemen, for it is etiquette to follow her example in everything. Thus in a single moment about fifty marriages took place, for if you leap into each other’s arms it is a fairy wedding. Of course a clergyman has to be present.
How the crowd cheered and leapt! Trumpets brayed, the moon came out, and immediately a thousand couples seized hold of its rays as if they were ribbons in a May dance and waltzed in wild abandon round the fairy ring. Most gladsome sight of all, the Cupids plucked the hated fools’ caps from their heads and cast them high in the air. And then Maimie went and spoiled everything. She couldn’t help it. She was crazy with delight over her little friend’s good fortune, so she took several steps forward and cried in an ecstasy, “Oh, Brownie, how splendid!”
Everybody stood still, the music ceased, the lights went out, and all in the time you may take to say “Oh dear!” An awful sense of her peril came upon Maimie, too late she remembered that she was a lost child in a place where no human must be between the locking and the opening of the gates, she heard the murmur of an angry multitude, she saw a thousand swords flashing for her blood, and she uttered a cry of terror and fled.
How she ran! and all the time her eyes were starting out of her head. Many times she lay down, and then quickly jumped up and ran on again. Her little mind was so entangled in terrors that she no longer knew she was in the Gardens. The one thing she was sure of was that she must never cease to run, and she thought she was still running long after she had dropped in the Figs and gone to sleep. She thought the snowflakes falling on her face were her mother kissing her goodnight. She thought her coverlet of snow was a warm blanket, and tried to pull it over her head. And when she heard talking through her dreams she thought it was mother bringing father to the nursery door to look at her as she slept. But it was the fairies.
I am very glad to be able to say that they no longer desired to mischief her. When she rushed away they had rent the air with such cries as “Slay her!” “Turn her into something extremely unpleasant!” and so on, but the pursuit was delayed while they discussed who should march in front, and this gave Duchess
Brownie time to cast herself before the Queen and demand a boon.
Every bride has a right to a boon, and what she asked for was Maimie’s life. “Anything except that,” replied Queen Mab sternly, and all the fairies chanted “Anything except that.” But when they learned how Maimie had befriended Brownie and so enabled her to attend the ball to their great glory and renown, they gave three huzzas for the little human, and set off, like an army, to thank her, the court advancing in front and the canopy keeping step with it. They traced Maimie easily by her footprints in the snow.
But though they found her deep in snow in the Figs, it seemed impossible to thank Maimie, for they could not waken her. They went through the form of thanking her, that is to say, the new King stood on her body and read her a long address of welcome, but she heard not a word of it. They also cleared the snow off her, but soon she was covered again, and they saw she was in danger of perishing of cold.
“Turn her into something that does not mind the cold,” seemed a good suggestion of the doctor’s, but the only thing they could think of that does not mind cold was a snowflake. “And it might melt,” the Queen pointed out, so that idea had to be given up.
A magnificent attempt was made to carry her to a sheltered spot, but though there were so many of them she was too heavy. By this time all the ladies were crying in their handkerchiefs, but presently the Cupids had a lovely idea. “Build a house round her,” they cried, and at once everybody perceived that this was the thing to do; in a moment a hundred fairy sawyers were among the branches, architects were running round Maimie, measuring her; a bricklayer’s yard sprang up at her feet, seventy-five masons rushed up with the foundation stone and the Queen laid it, overseers were appointed to keep the boys off, scaffoldings were run up, the whole place rang with hammers and chisels and turning lathes, and by this time the roof was on and the glaziers were putting in the windows.
The house was exactly the size of Maimie and perfectly lovely. One of her arms was extended and this had bothered them for a second, but they built a verandah round it, leading to the front door. The windows were the size of a coloured picture-book and the door rather smaller, but it would be easy for her to get out by taking off the roof. The fairies, as is their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were all so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it. So they gave it ever so many little extra touches, and even then they added more extra touches.
For instance, two of them ran up a ladder and put on a chimney.
“Now we fear it is quite finished,” they sighed. But no, for another two ran up the ladder, and tied some smoke to the chimney.
“That certainly finishes it,” they cried reluctantly.
“Not at all,” cried a glow-worm, “if she were to wake without seeing a night-light she might be frightened, so I shall be her night-light.”
“Wait one moment,” said a china merchant, “and I shall make you a saucer.”
Now alas, it was absolutely finished.
Oh, dear no!
“Gracious me,” cried a brass manufacturer, “there’s no handle on the door,” and he put one on.
An ironmonger added a scraper and an old lady ran up with a door-mat. Carpenters arrived with a water-butt, and the painters insisted on painting it.
Finished at last!
“Finished! how can it be finished,” the plumber demanded scornfully, “before hot and cold are put in?” and he put in hot and cold. Then an army of gardeners arrived with fairy carts and spades and seeds and bulbs and forcing-houses, and soon they had a flower garden to the right of the verandah and a vegetable garden to the left, and roses and clematis on the walls of the house, and in less time than five minutes all these dear things were in full bloom.
Oh, how beautiful the little house was now! But it was at last finished true as true, and they had to leave it and return to the dance. They all kissed their hands to it as they went away, and the last to go was Brownie. She stayed a moment behind the others to drop a pleasant dream down the chimney.
All through the night the exquisite little house stood there in the Figs taking care of Maimie, and she never knew. She slept until the dream was quite finished and woke feeling deliciously cosy just as morning was breaking from its egg, and then she almost fell asleep again, and then she called out, “Tony,” for she thought she was at home in the nursery. As Tony made no answer, she sat up, whereupon her head hit the roof, and it opened like the lid of a box, and to her bewilderment she saw all around her the Kensington Gardens lying deep in snow. As she was not in the nursery she wondered whether this was really herself, so she pinched her cheeks, and then she knew it was herself, and this reminded her that she was in the middle of a great adventure. She remembered now everything that had happened to her from the closing of the gates up to her running away from the fairies, but however, she asked herself, had she got into this funny place? She stepped out by the roof, right over the garden, and then she saw the dear house in which she had passed the night. It so entranced her that she could think of nothing else.
“Oh, you darling, oh, you sweet, oh, you love!” she cried.
Perhaps a human voice frightened the little house, or maybe it now knew that its work was done, for no sooner had Maimie spoken than it began to grow smaller; it shrank so slowly that she could scarce believe it was shrinking, yet she soon knew that it could not contain her now. It always remained as complete as ever, but it became smaller and smaller, and the garden dwindled at the same time, and the snow crept closer, lapping house and garden up. Now the house was the size of a little dog’s kennel, and now of a Noah’s Ark, but still you could see the smoke and the door-handle and the roses on the wall, every one complete. The glow-worm light was waning too, but it was still there. “Darling, loveliest, don’t go!” Maimie cried, falling on her knees, for the little house was now the size of a reel of thread, but still quite complete. But as she stretched out her arms imploringly the snow crept up on all sides until it met itself, and where the little house had been was now one unbroken expanse of snow.
Maimie stamped her foot naughtily, and was putting her fingers to her eyes, when she heard a kind voice say, “Don’t cry, pretty human, don’t cry,” and then she turned round and saw a beautiful little naked boy regarding her wistfully. She knew at once that he must be Peter Pan.
XVIII. Peter’s Goat
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.”
