Peter Pan E-Book

J.m Barrie

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

"Peter Pan, the book based on J.M. Barrie's famous play, is filled with unforgettable characters: Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up; the fairy, Tinker Bell; the evil pirate, Captain Hook; and the three children--Wendy, John, and Michael--who fly off with Peter Pan to Neverland, where they meet Indians and pirates and a crocodile that ticks. Renowned children's-book artist Michael Hague has brought the amazing adventures of Peter Pan to life. His beautiful illustrations capture the wild, seductive power of this classic book. This newly designed edition will be enjoyed by fans young and old alike.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 PETER BREAKS THROUGH

Chapter 2 THE SHADOW

Chapter 3 COME AWAY, COME AWAY!

Chapter 4 THE FLIGHT

Chapter 5 THE ISLAND COME TRUE

Chapter 6 THE LITTLE HOUSE

Chapter 7 THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND

Chapter 8 THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON

Chapter 9 THE NEVER BIRD

Chapter 10 THE HAPPY HOME

Chapter 11 WENDY’S STORY

Chapter 12 THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF

Chapter 13 DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?

Chapter 14 THE PIRATE SHIP

Chapter 15 “HOOK OR ME THIS TIME”

Chapter 16 THE RETURN HOME

Chapter 17 WHEN WENDY GREW UP

Peter Pan

J. M. Barrie

First digital edition 2017 by Anna Ruggieri

Chapter 1 PETER BREAKS THROUGH

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she wasplaying in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.

The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.

Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.

Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept thebooks perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces. She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling’s guesses.

Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling’s bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a pieceof paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.

“Now don’t interrupt,” he would beg of her.

“I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven—whois that moving?—eight nine seven, dot and carry seven—don’t speak, my own—and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door—quiet, child—dot and carry child—there, you’ve done it!—did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?”

“Of course we can, George,” she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy’s favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.

“Remember mumps,” he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went again. “Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings—don’t speak—measles one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six—don’t waggle your finger—whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings”—and so on it went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumps reducedto twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated as one.

There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom’s Kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.

Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time, and upat any moment of the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking around your throat. She believed toher last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking sedately by their side when theywere well behaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. On John’s footer [in England soccer was called football, “footer” for short] days she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. Thereis a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom’s school where the nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling’s friends, but if they did come she first whipped off Michael’s pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John’s hair.

No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbours talked.

He had his position in the city to consider.

Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that she didnot admire him. “I know she admires you tremendously, George,” Mrs. Darling would assurehim, and then she would sign to the children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid’s cap, though she had sworn, when engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of those romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never was a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) youwould see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw mapsof other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island orthey are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had apet wolf forsaken by its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have each other’s nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles [simple boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distancesbetween one adventure and another, but nicelycrammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights.

Occasionally in her travels through her children’s minds Mrs. Darling found things she could not understand, and of these quite the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael’s minds, while Wendy’s began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.

“Yes, he is rather cocky,” Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had been questioning her.

“But who is he, my pet?”

“He is Peter Pan, you know, mother.”

At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies. There were odd storiesabout him, as that when children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened. She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person.

“Besides,” she said to Wendy, “he would be grown up by this time.”

“Oh no, he isn’t grown up,” Wendy assured her confidently, “and he is just my size.” She meant that he was her size in both mind and body; she didn’t know how she knew, she just knew it.

Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled pooh-pooh. “Mark my words,” he said, “it is some nonsense Nana has been putting into their heads; just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it will blow over.”

But it would not blow over and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs. Darling quite a shock.

Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their deadfather and had a game with him. It was in this casual way that Wendy one morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had been found on the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when the children went to bed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy said with a tolerant smile:

“I do believe it is that Peter again!”

“Whatever do you mean, Wendy?”

“It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet,” Wendy said, sighing. She was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter-of-factway that she thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so she didn’t know how she knew, she just knew.

“What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house without knocking.”

“I think he comes in by the window,” she said.

“My love, it is three floors up.”

“Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?”

It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the window.

Mrs.Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been dreaming.

“My child,” the mother cried, “why did you not tell me of this before?”

“I forgot,” said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as aspout to climb up by.

Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.

But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all the childrenwere once more in bed. It happened to be Nana’s evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them and sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid away into the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling’s lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over there, John here, and Mrs. Darling by the fire. There should have been a fourth night-light.

While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverlandhad come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which darted about the room like a living thing and I think it must have been this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.

She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at oncethat he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling’s kiss. He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his first teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.

Chapter 2 THE SHADOW

Mrs. Darling screamed, and, as if in answer to a bell, the dooropened, and Nana entered, returned from her evening out. Shegrowledand sprang at the boy, who leapt lightly through the window. AgainMrs. Darling screamed, this time in distress for him, for shethought he was killed, and she ran down into the street to look forhis little body, but it was not there; and she looked up, and inthe black night she could see nothing but what she thought was ashooting star.

She returned to the nursery, and found Nana with something inher mouth, which proved to be the boy’s shadow. As he leaptat the window Nana had closed it quickly, too late to catch him,but his shadow had not had time to get out; slam went the windowand snapped it off.

You may be sure Mrs. Darling examined the shadow carefully, butit was quite the ordinary kind.

Nana had no doubt of what was the best thing to dowith thisshadow. She hung it out at the window, meaning “He is sure tocome back for it; let us put it where he can get it easily withoutdisturbing the children.”

But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out atthe window, it looked solike the washing and lowered the whole toneof the house. She thought of showing it to Mr. Darling, but he wastotting up winter great-coats for John and Michael, with a wettowel around his head to keep his brain clear, and it seemed ashame to trouble him; besides, she knew exactly what he would say:“It all comes of having a dog for a nurse.”

She decided to roll the shadow up and put it away carefully in adrawer, until a fitting opportunity came for telling her husband.Ah me!

The opportunity came a week later, on that never-to-be-forgottenFriday. Of course it was a Friday.

“I ought to have been specially careful on aFriday,” she used to say afterwards to her husband, whileperhaps Nana was on the other side of her, holding her hand.

“No, no,” Mr. Darling always said, “I amresponsible for it all. I, George Darling, did it. MEA CULPA, MEACULPA.” He had had a classical education.

They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday,till every detail of it was stamped on their brains and camethrough on the other side like the faces on a bad coinage.

“If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at27,” Mrs. Darling said.

“If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana’sbowl,” said Mr. Darling.

“If only I had pretended to like the medicine,” waswhat Nana’s wet eyes said.

“My liking for parties, George.”

“My fatal gift of humour, dearest.”

“My touchiness about trifles, dear master andmistress.”

Then one or more of them would break down altogether; Nana atthe thought, “It’s true, it’s true,they ought notto have had a dog for a nurse.” Many a time it was Mr.Darling who put the handkerchief to Nana’s eyes.

“That fiend!” Mr. Darling would cry, andNana’s bark was the echo of it, but Mrs. Darling neverupbraided Peter; there was something inthe right-hand corner of hermouth that wanted her not to call Peter names.

They would sit there in the empty nursery, recalling fondlyevery smallest detail of that dreadful evening. It had begun souneventfully, so precisely like a hundred other evenings, with Nanaputting on the water for Michael’s bath and carrying him toit on her back.

“I won’t go to bed,” he had shouted, like onewho still believed that he had the last word on the subject,“I won’t, I won’t. Nana, it isn’t sixo’clock yet. Oh dear, oh dear, I shan’t love you anymore, Nana. I tell you I won’t be bathed, I won’t, Iwon’t!”

Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her white evening-gown.She had dressed early because Wendy so loved to see her in herevening-gown, with the necklace Georgehad given her. She waswearing Wendy’s bracelet on her arm; she had asked for theloan of it. Wendy loved to lend her bracelet to her mother.

She had found her two older children playing at being herselfand father on the occasion of Wendy’s birth, and John wassaying:

“I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that you are nowa mother,” in just such a tone as Mr. Darling himself mayhave used on the real occasion.

Wendy had danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling musthave done.

Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due tothe birth of a male, and Michael came from his bath to ask to beborn also, but John said brutally that they did not want anymore.

Michael had nearly cried. “Nobody wants me,” hesaid, and of course the lady inthe evening-dress could not standthat.

“I do,” she said, “I so want a thirdchild.”

“Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully.

“Boy.”

Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. andMrs. Darling and Nana to recall now, but not solittle if that wasto be Michael’s last night in the nursery.

They go on with their recollections.

“It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn’tit?” Mr. Darling would say, scorning himself; and indeed hehad been like a tornado.

Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had beendressing for the party, and all had gone well with him until hecame to his tie. It is an astounding thing to have to tell, butthis man, though he knew about stocks and shares, had no realmastery of his tie. Sometimes the thing yielded to him without acontest, but there were occasions when it would have been betterfor the house if he had swallowed his pride and used a made-uptie.

This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery withthe crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.

“Why, what is the matter, father dear?”

“Matter!” he yelled; he really yelled. “Thistie, it will not tie.” He became dangerously sarcastic.“Not round my neck! Round the bed-post! Oh yes, twenty timeshave I made it up round thebed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh dearno! begs to be excused!”

He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and hewent on sternly, “I warn you of this, mother, that unlessthis tie is round my neck we don’t go out to dinner to-night,and ifI don’t go out to dinner to-night, I never go to theoffice again, and if I don’t go to the office again, you andI starve, and our children will be flung into thestreets.”

Even then Mrs. Darling was placid. “Let me try,dear,” she said, and indeed thatwas what he had come to askher to do, and with her nice cool hands she tied his tie for him,while the children stood around to see their fate decided. Some menwould have resented her being able to do it so easily, but Mr.Darling had far too fine a nature for that; he thanked hercarelessly, at once forgot his rage, and in another moment wasdancing round the room with Michael on his back.

“How wildly we romped!” says Mrs. Darling now,recalling it.

“Our last romp!” Mr. Darling groaned.

“O George, do youremember Michael suddenly said to me,‘How did you get to know me, mother?’”

“I remember!”

“They were rather sweet, don’t you think,George?”

“And they were ours, ours! and now they aregone.”

The romp had ended with the appearance of Nana, and mostunluckily Mr. Darling collided against her, covering his trouserswith hairs. They were not only new trousers, but they were thefirst he had ever had with braid on them, and he had had to bitehis lip to prevent the tears coming. Of course Mrs. Darlingbrushedhim, but he began to talk again about its being a mistake tohave a dog for a nurse.

“George, Nana is a treasure.”

“No doubt, but I have an uneasy feeling at times that shelooks upon the children as puppies.”

“Oh no, dear one, I feel sure she knows theyhavesouls.”

“I wonder,” Mr. Darling said thoughtfully, “Iwonder.” It was an opportunity, his wife felt, for tellinghim about the boy. At first he pooh-poohed the story, but he becamethoughtful when she showed him the shadow.

“It is nobody I know,” he said, examining itcarefully, “but it does look a scoundrel.”

“We were still discussing it, you remember,” saysMr. Darling, “when Nana came in with Michael’smedicine. You will never carry the bottle in your mouth again,Nana, and it is all my fault.”