Everybody has heard of the Little
House in the Kensington Gardens, which is the only
house in the whole world that the fairies have built
for humans. But no one has really seen it, except
just three or four, and they have not only seen it
but slept in it, and unless you sleep in it you never
see it. This is because it is not there when you
lie down, but it is there when you wake up and step
outside.
In a kind of way everyone may see
it, but what you see is not really it, but only the
light in the windows. You see the light after
Lock-out Time. David, for instance, saw it quite
distinctly far away among the trees as we were going
home from the pantomime, and Oliver Bailey saw it
the night he stayed so late at the Temple, which is
the name of his father’s office. Angela
Clare, who loves to have a tooth extracted because
then she is treated to tea in a shop, saw more than
one light, she saw hundreds of them all together,
and this must have been the fairies building the house,
for they build it every night and always in a different
part of the Gardens. She thought one of the lights
was bigger than the others, though she was not quite
sure, for they jumped about so, and it might have
been another one that was bigger. But if it was
the same one, it was Peter Pan’s light.
Heaps of children have seen the fight, so that is
nothing. But Maimie Mannering was the famous one
for whom the house was first built.
Maimie was always rather a strange
girl, and it was at night that she was strange.
She was four years of age, and in the daytime she was
the ordinary kind. She was pleased when her brother
Tony, who was a magnificent fellow of six, took notice
of her, and she looked up to him in the right way,
and tried in vain to imitate him and was flattered
rather than annoyed when he shoved her about.
Also, when she was batting she would pause though
the ball was in the air to point out to you that she
was wearing new shoes. She was quite the ordinary
kind in the daytime.
But as the shades of night fell, Tony,
the swaggerer, lost his contempt for Maimie and eyed
her fearfully, and no wonder, for with dark there
came into her face a look that I can describe only
as a leary look. It was also a serene look that
contrasted grandly with Tony’s uneasy glances.
Then he would make her presents of his favourite toys
(which he always took away from her next morning)
and she accepted them with a disturbing smile.
The reason he was now become so wheedling and she so
mysterious was (in brief) that they knew they were
about to be sent to bed. It was then that Maimie
was terrible. Tony entreated her not to do it
to-night, and the mother and their coloured nurse threatened
her, but Maimie merely smiled her agitating smile.
And by-and-by when they were alone with their night-light
she would start up in bed crying “Hsh! what
was that?” Tony beseeches her! “It
was nothing-don’t, Maimie, don’t!”
and pulls the sheet over his head. “It is
coming nearer!” she cries; “Oh, look at
it, Tony! It is feeling your bed with its horns-it
is boring for you, oh, Tony, oh!” and she desists
not until he rushes downstairs in his combinations,
screeching. When they came up to whip Maimie
they usually found her sleeping tranquilly, not shamming,
you know, but really sleeping, and looking like the
sweetest little angel, which seems to me to make it
almost worse.
But of course it was daytime when
they were in the Gardens, and then Tony did most of
the talking. You could gather from his talk that
he was a very brave boy, and no one was so proud of
it as Maimie. She would have loved to have a
ticket on her saying that she was his sister.
And at no time did she admire him more than when he
told her, as he often did with splendid firmness,
that one day he meant to remain behind in the Gardens
after the gates were closed.
“Oh, Tony,” she would
say, with awful respect, “but the fairies will
be so angry!”
“I daresay,” replied Tony, carelessly.
“Perhaps,” she said, thrilling,
“Peter Pan will give you a sail in his boat!”
“I shall make him,” replied
Tony; no wonder she was proud of him.
But they should not have talked so
loudly, for one day they were overheard by a fairy
who had been gathering skeleton leaves, from which
the little people weave their summer curtains, and
after that Tony was a marked boy. They loosened
the rails before he sat on them, so that down he came
on the back of his head; they tripped him up by catching
his bootlace and bribed the ducks to sink his boat.
Nearly all the nasty accidents you meet with in the
Gardens occur because the fairies have taken an ill-will
to you, and so it behoves you to be careful what you
say about them.
Maimie was one of the kind who like
to fix a day for doing things, but Tony was not that
kind, and when she asked him which day he was to remain
behind in the Gardens after Lock-out he merely replied,
“Just some day;” he was quite vague about
which day except when she asked “Will it be
today?” and then he could always say for certain
that it would not be to-day. So she saw that
he was waiting for a real good chance.
This brings us to an afternoon when
the Gardens were white with snow, and there was ice
on the Round Pond, not thick enough to skate on but
at least you could spoil it for tomorrow by flinging
stones, and many bright little boys and girls were
doing that.
When Tony and his sister arrived they
wanted to go straight to the pond, but their ayah
said they must take a sharp walk first, and as she
said this she glanced at the time-board to see when
the Gardens closed that night. It read half-past
five. Poor ayah! she is the one who laughs continuously
because there are so many white children in the world,
but she was not to laugh much more that day.
Well, they went up the Baby Walk and
back, and when they returned to the time-board she
was surprised to see that it now read five o’clock
for closing time. But she was unacquainted with
the tricky ways of the fairies, and so did not see
(as Maimie and Tony saw at once) that they had changed
the hour because there was to be a ball to-night.
She said there was only time now to walk to the top
of the Hump and back, and as they trotted along with
her she little guessed what was thrilling their little
breasts. You see the chance had come of seeing
a fairy ball. Never, Tony felt, could he hope
for a better chance.
He had to feel this, for Maimie so
plainly felt it for him. Her eager eyes asked
the question, “Is it to-day?” and he gasped
and then nodded. Maimie slipped her hand into
Tony’s, and hers was hot, but his was cold.
She did a very kind thing; she took off her scarf and
gave it to him! “In case you should feel
cold,” she whispered. Her face was aglow,
but Tony’s was very gloomy.
As they turned on the top of the Hump
he whispered to her, “I’m afraid Nurse
would see me, so I sha’n’t be able to do
it.”
Maimie admired him more than ever
for being afraid of nothing but their ayah, when there
were so many unknown terrors to fear, and she said
aloud, “Tony, I shall race you to the gate,”
and in a whisper, “Then you can hide,”
and off they ran.
Tony could always outdistance her
easily, but never had she known him speed away so
quickly as now, and she was sure he hurried that he
might have more time to hide. “Brave, brave!”
her doting eyes were crying when she got a dreadful
shock; instead of hiding, her hero had run out at the
gate! At this bitter sight Maimie stopped blankly,
as if all her lapful of darling treasures were suddenly
spilled, and then for very disdain she could not sob;
in a swell of protest against all puling cowards she
ran to St. Govor’s Well and hid in Tony’s
stead.
When the ayah reached the gate and
saw Tony far in front she thought her other charge
was with him and passed out. Twilight came on,
and scores and hundreds of people passed out, including
the last one, who always has to run for it, but Maimie
saw them not. She had shut her eyes tight and
glued them with passionate tears. When she opened
them something very cold ran up her legs and up her
arms and dropped into her heart. It was the stillness
of the Gardens. Then she heard clang, then from
another part clang, then clang, clang
far away. It was the Closing of the Gates.
Immediately the last clang had died
away Maimie distinctly heard a voice say, “So
that’s all right.” It had a wooden
sound and seemed to come from above, and she looked
up in time to see an elm tree stretching out its arms
and yawning.
She was about to say, “I never
knew you could speak!” when a metallic voice
that seemed to come from the ladle at the well remarked
to the elm, “I suppose it is a bit coldish up
there?” and the elm replied, “Not particularly,
but you do get numb standing so long on one leg,”
and he flapped his arms vigorously just as the cabmen
do before they drive off. Maimie was quite surprised
to see that a number of other tall trees were doing
the same sort of thing and she stole away to the Baby
Walk and crouched observantly under a Minorca Holly
which shrugged its shoulders but did not seem to mind
her.
She was not in the least cold.
She was wearing a russet-coloured pelisse and had
the hood over her head, so that nothing of her showed
except her dear little face and her curls. The
rest of her real self was hidden far away inside so
many warm garments that in shape she seemed rather
like a ball. She was about forty round the waist.
There was a good deal going on in
the Baby Walk, when Maimie arrived in time to see
a magnolia and a Persian lilac step over the railing
and set off for a smart walk. They moved in a
jerky sort of way certainly, but that was because
they used crutches. An elderberry hobbled across
the walk, and stood chatting with some young quinces,
and they all had crutches. The crutches were
the sticks that are tied to young trees and shrubs.
They were quite familiar objects to Maimie, but she
had never known what they were for until to-night.
She peeped up the walk and saw her
first fairy. He was a street boy fairy who was
running up the walk closing the weeping trees.
The way he did it was this, he pressed a spring in
the trunk and they shut like umbrellas, deluging the
little plants beneath with snow. “Oh, you
naughty, naughty child!” Maimie cried indignantly,
for she knew what it was to have a dripping umbrella
about your ears.
Fortunately the mischievous fellow
was out of earshot, but the chrysanthemums heard her,
and they all said so pointedly “Hoity-toity,
what is this?” that she had to come out and show
herself. Then the whole vegetable kingdom was
rather puzzled what to do.
“Of course it is no affair of
ours,” a spindle tree said after they had whispered
together, “but you know quite well you ought
not to be here, and perhaps our duty is to report
you to the fairies; what do you think yourself?”
“I think you should not,”
Maimie replied, which so perplexed them that they
said petulantly there was no arguing with her.
“I wouldn’t ask it of you,” she
assured them, “if I thought it was wrong,”
and of course after this they could not well carry
tales. They then said, “Well-a-day,”
and “Such is life!” for they can be frightfully
sarcastic, but she felt sorry for those of them who
had no crutches, and she said good-naturedly, “Before
I go to the fairies’ ball, I should like to take
you for a walk one at a time; you can lean on me, you
know.”
At this they clapped their hands,
and she escorted them up to the Baby Walk and back
again, one at a time, putting an arm or a finger round
the very frail, setting their leg right when it got
too ridiculous, and treating the foreign ones quite
as courteously as the English, though she could not
understand a word they said.
They behaved well on the whole, though
some whimpered that she had not taken them as far
as she took Nancy or Grace or Dorothy, and others
jagged her, but it was quite unintentional, and she
was too much of a lady to cry out. So much walking
tired her and she was anxious to be off to the ball,
but she no longer felt afraid. The reason she
felt no more fear was that it was now night-time,
and in the dark, you remember, Maimie was always rather
strange.
They were now loath to let her go,
for, “If the fairies see you,” they warned
her, “they will mischief you, stab you to death
or compel you to nurse their children or turn you
into something tedious, like an evergreen oak.”
As they said this they looked with affected pity at
an evergreen oak, for in winter they are very envious
of the evergreens.
“Oh, la!” replied the
oak bitingly, “how deliciously cosy it is to
stand here buttoned to the neck and watch you poor
naked creatures shivering!”
This made them sulky though they had
really brought it on themselves, and they drew for
Maimie a very gloomy picture of the perils that faced
her if she insisted on going to the ball.
She learned from a purple filbert
that the court was not in its usual good temper at
present, the cause being the tantalising heart of the
Duke of Christmas Daisies. He was an Oriental
fairy, very poorly of a dreadful complaint, namely,
inability to love, and though he had tried many ladies
in many lands he could not fall in love with one of
them. Queen Mab, who rules in the Gardens, had
been confident that her girls would bewitch him, but
alas, his heart, the doctor said, remained cold.
This rather irritating doctor, who was his private
physician, felt the Duke’s heart immediately
after any lady was presented, and then always shook
his bald head and murmured, “Cold, quite cold!”
Naturally Queen Mab felt disgraced, and first she
tried the effect of ordering the court into tears
for nine minutes, and then she blamed the Cupids and
decreed that they should wear fools’ caps until
they thawed the Duke’s frozen heart.
“How I should love to see the
Cupids in their dear little fools’ caps!”
Maimie cried, and away she ran to look for them very
recklessly, for the Cupids hate to be laughed at.
It is always easy to discover where
a fairies’ ball is being held, as ribbons are
stretched between it and all the populous parts of
the Gardens, on which those invited may walk to the
dance without wetting their pumps. This night
the ribbons were red and looked very pretty on the
snow.
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 undancy
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 trap-door
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 good-night.
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
fight 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.