The Wind Boy - Chapter 16 Rosemarie comes to School

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter sixteen of The Wind Boy by Ethel Cook Eliot.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter sixteen,
Rose Marie comes to school in the little brown house
over the hedge. Kay was waking too, but even before

(00:21):
his eyes were opened, he remembered that something unpleasant was
waiting for him in this day. What was it? Oh? Yes,
the mask business. The policeman had told the artist that
he Kay was the masker. Before night. Every one in
the village would think that he was the masker. Every one,

(00:45):
that is, except Gentian and Nan and Detter. They would
not believe the policeman, but they would be bothered all
the same. But why was Gentean laughing? Had she forgotten
all about last night and the policeman. Kay jumped out
of bed and ran to the head of the stairs.

(01:07):
The laughter was coming from the sitting room, and there
was Gentian clapping her hands. She only clapped her hands
when she was very, very happy. What is it? Why
are you laughing? Kay called down to her. At his voice,
she came dancing out into the hall. She was still

(01:28):
in her nightgown and her hair was all rumpled from
her pillow. Her cheeks were rosy from sleep. Oh, Kay,
she cried, do come and see the wind boy. He
is perfect? Is the wind boy down there? Hello, wind boy,
Kay sang out, Oh no, not our wind boy, the statuette.

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I could hardly wait for morning to see if Mother
had followed him to the clear land and got him happy.
I was awake before dawn. But Kay was bounding down
the stairs. He had forgotten about the statuette. Of course. Well,
some good thing had to come out of last night.

(02:13):
At any rate, Detro was just finishing her early breakfast
at the little low table by the tulips, and right
in the middle of the table, with the early sun
just touching his head, stood the finished wind Boy. Hay
went close and stood looking. Yes, Gentian was right, he

(02:36):
was perfect. It was the wind Boy, as he had
looked when he caught the mask that Nan had thrown
and scattered it to bets on the lawn. His face
and body, too, were all a light and joyous. He
was about to fly up, up and away into the
blue air. He was standing on very tiptoes, his wings

(03:01):
spread wide, his whole body every bit of him ready. Indeed,
the statuette, little as it was, and made only of
Plastelina was so alive and lighted from within that it
was not easy for the children to remember that it
was just a statuette and not the wind boy himself. Oh, mother,

(03:27):
he is just himself as he became last night. Nan
was right, you did follow him up there. Then Detter
was smiling, happily but sleepily. She had not been to
bed at all, but had worked all night in the
clear land. Yes, she said, last night he was different.

(03:50):
I saw him right. He had never been like that before.
There was always a cloud over him somehow, But last
night he shone out to my eyes, clear and radiant
like this. Oh, I have never never done work of
this sort before. I know that. Kay and Gentien were

(04:13):
looking at each other now their eyes said. She thinks
she did it, but it was really us, ourselves and Nan.
We made the wind boy happy. And Kay exclaimed aloud,
I don't care now they can do what they want
to me. It was worth it. Deetro looked away from

(04:35):
the statuette and at Kay, puzzled, what don't you care about, Kay?
What was worth it? And worth what? But with her words,
the village clock began to strike. It was seven o'clock. Oh,
I must hurry, Dettor cried, jumping up, or I shall

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miss my train. She suddenly kissed and hugged both her children,
snatched up her cape, and ran away out of the house.
But Kay had meant what he had said. The statuette
was so lovely, and his mother was made so happy
by it, that he was now ready to face the

(05:18):
day and all the humiliation it might hold for him.
He marched off to school by Gentiean's side, with his
coppery head held high, and the minute he got into
the school yard he knew that the thing that was
to happen had already begun. When the children playing around

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the door saw his approach, they pretended great fear and
ran away, screaming, the masker, he'll bite, Oh, oh, the masker.
So the policeman had already been talking, and news had spread,
but there was nothing to do but march in and
take his accustomed seat, and there wait for what must come.

(06:05):
Miss Todd, he thought, kept her gaze on him steadily
and strangely. From the very first there was an unusual
hubbub in the room, but it stopped when he entered.
Then school began. Kay's cheeks were afire, but his head
was very, very high. He was thinking, I'm glad mother

(06:28):
won't know till to night. Anyway, she'll have all day
to think about the wind boy and be happy in
But he was sorry for Gentian, who was sitting very
erect behind her little desk, with her hands tightly clasped
in her lap and her lips set together. At first,
school went as usual. Miss Todd's perfect order and drill

(06:52):
were not to be shaken by the excitement that lay
under the morning. But whenever Kay looked up from his
books or paper, he seemed to find her keen eyes
upon him, and she did not call on him to recite.
Although his turn came over and over, she passed him by,

(07:14):
but still looking at him. Never had school seemed so
long to Kay and Gentian, though in truth it had
often seemed long enough. Well, if Kay was to be
expelled and put to shame, why didn't Miss Todd do
it now? That would be better than this. Behind the

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ticking of the school clock and the lessons and the recitations,
the whole school was simply waiting. Everyone knew that. And
then toward recess time, at last it came a step
out in the hall. A boy near Kay whispered the policeman,

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so that it was they had been waiting for the
policeman to come to take him away to prison. In
his own country, they did not put little boys into prison,
so he had not thought of that happening. But who
knew what they might or might not do here in
this strange foreign land. Well let them now, less than

(08:23):
ever did he mean to tell on Rosemarie. Suddenly a
knock at the schoolroom door. Everyone jumped a little, even
Miss Todd, just as though after the steps they had
not been waiting for it. Kay straightened back his shoulders
and tried not to look at Gentian, but somehow he

(08:43):
could not help seeing her. Her wide blue Gentian eyes
swam before his gaze, eyes terrified for him. Then Miss
Todd opened the door, and there came in, not the
police policeman, but the artist, and with him Rose Marie.

(09:05):
The school gasped in its surprise. You could hear it
all about the room. But the artist did not take
the chair Miss Todd so politely offered him. He came
and stood by her desk and looked at all the children.
He looked at them all in turn, and they looked back.

(09:27):
It made Gentian think of the shoe man who measured
her and Kay by looking into their eyes. What was
the great artist measuring them for when he came to
Gentie and he smiled a greeting, but she could not
smile back. She was too troubled for Kay. But the

(09:47):
artist seemed to understand her soberness. He spoke rather quickly, then,
in a low, clear voice. I have come to tell
you that the masker has been found, he said, and
that it will not frighten you again. At twilight you
can play on the streets near my house now without

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thought of it. It will never come again. Miss Todd
at her desk nodded, and now there was no doubt
about it any longer. She was looking at Kay in
great sternness. But the Artist was not stern, he said,
And the policeman assures me that he knows who the

(10:33):
masker was. It was, he says, a boy, a boy
in this school. Indeed he caught him with the mask
in his hands. His name is Kay. Is Kay here? Now?
Kay stand up? Miss Todd's voice, to Kay's surprise, had

(10:55):
sorriness mixed with its sternness. Kay stood up by his seat.
The artist looked at him seriously but kindly, but Kay
was too troubled and ashamed to see the kindness. I
hear that for many days all was a twilight. Kay,

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you have gone around in a horrid mask, frightening other children.
The policeman caught you with the mask, so he thinks
it must have been you all the time. Was it?
I was just carrying the mask when he caught me.
I had never been the masker. If you weren't, who was.

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Kay did not answer that. He stayed silent, trying hard
not to look at Rosemarie. Won't you tell? No. All
the other children and even Miss Todd gasped at Kay's
firm No. It must have been because Kay was a

(12:01):
foreigner and did not know how great a man the
artist was, and how important to this village that he
dared speak so firmly. Is no why the artists had
given them this very school and its big playground. No
other village of its size in the country had such

(12:22):
a fine school and playground. But the artist did not
mind Kay's firm no a bit. He liked it. Well, Kay,
if you won't tell, he said, then Rose Marie is
here just for that he turned and looked down at
his little granddaughter. Rosemare had stood all this while looking

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at no one in the school but Kay. She was
a little shy at being up there before all the
eyes of the village children. But aside from that shyness,
she was her natural self, her merry self, with dimples
just around the corner. Now that her grandfather had turned

(13:08):
to her, she had to speak. She did it quickly,
rather breathlessly, and still looking at Kay. I was the masker.
It was I who frightened you all. My governess has
her supper at twilight, and then I could get out
without her knowing. Last night Kay chased me and caught me,

(13:29):
and I gave him the mask. He was taking it
back to the windboy to tear up when the policeman
caught him. He never woreries at all. Never was a
schoolroom so silent as that school was for a minute
after Rosemary had finished. Then the artist spoke again. Rosemarie

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didn't know about the little boy who was made sick.
You see, we did not want her to be frightened,
and so no one mentioned the mask to her ever,
or what harm it was doing. Rosemarie had no children
to play with. So she found that running around in

(14:14):
the twilight, frightening people and looking in at windows where
there were children was the next best thing to having playmates.
That is why it would not be fair to punish
her for her masquerading any more than she has already
been punished. And now I want her to have children

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to play with forever after, so that she will not
have to look into windows. And so I am here
to ask miss Todd if she may come to the
school and indeed begin working with you and playing with
you this very morning. And then, and the artist added

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one thing more, I hope you will all be friends
with Rosemarie, for she needs your friendship. But already you
know now from what has happened, that she has one
true and loyal friend here, and that is Kay. Then,
after a few quiet words at the door with missus Todd,

(15:25):
the Artist went away, leaving Rosemarie at school. Just at first,
the children could hardly attend to their lessons. It was
as though a princess at least had come to school
among them. Before this, they had only glimpsed Rosemarie as
she went by, sitting between her two attendants in the

(15:46):
back seat of her grandfather's big car, wrapped around in
furze or silk, and now here she was one of them,
in a plain gingham frock, with every day leather sandals
and brown socks. Why she looked just like any schoolgirl.

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But almost at once Rosemarie's merry brown eyes and the
tasks of her dark dancing curls did away with their
feelings of strangeness. She was truly one of them even
before they went out to play at recess time. But
recess did add the finishing touch. Rose Marie was such

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a merry little girl. It was she who thought up
the games to play and right away led in everything.
You would think that she had been comrading with the
other children all her life. Perhaps that was because she
had so often imagined what she would do had she playmates.

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And of course she never, as the other children had
done in the past, left Gentien and Kay out. Rather,
they were first she turned to in everything. Had she
not been watching them from our high nursery window for
a year now? Did she not know them well? So,

(17:11):
for the first time since they had come to the village,
Kay and Gentian forgot that they were foreigners and left
off all strangeness they raced and shouted and laughed with
the rest, and at the close of school, Rosemary ran
home between them, the happiest little girl in the village.

(17:33):
But she pulled them to a stop at the corner.
How can you run so fast, she asked, My breath
is gone. It's the sandals, I think, Kay answered, And
then all the rest of the way home they walked
very slowly for Kay and Gentie and had to tell
Rosemary about the shoe man and his blue curtained store

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with the crystal light flooding down the stairs, and the
little oven bird in place of a door bell. Rosemarie
was enchanted. Gentine and Kay were very late in getting
home from school that day. When Nan saw their faces,
she asked, what happened to you? Was school so wonderful? Oh?

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It was? They cried, and then between them they told
her all about the morning. Nan was as happy as
they over all that had happened. And now school will
never seem unpleasant to you again, she said, when they
were done, and you will call there gladly every morning,

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just as the other children do. It is your school now,
and the village will get to be your village, that is,
just as your mother wants it, how contented she will be.
But they were hardly done with their dinner because they
had talked so much before Rosemarie came skipping through the

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hole in the hedge, just as though she had been
doing it every day for a year, and was at
their window. Her dancing curls and merry eyes might have
belonged to some fairy, but her cheeks were too hard
and rosy for any but a very human little girl.

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Come in, Come in, cried the children. No, come out,
called back, Rosemarie. Let's play in the tulip garden. Grandfather
says we may, and without miss Prine's coming along to
bother us either. But mother doesn't let us go there,
the children said wistfully. It would be such a beautiful

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place to play. Nan had heard from the kitchen, and
now she came into the sitting room. Your mother would
not mind your going through the hedge now, she assured them,
since it's Rosemarie herself that asks you. It was only
because she thought you were not wanted there that she
forbade it before. But Rosemarie had run around and in

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at the door. Now she was in the room with them.
To Gentian's and Kay's surprise. She threw her arms around
NaN's neck and gave her a great hug. Do you
know Nan, they asked, Of course I do. Didn't she
come in starry brightness to tell me everything and make

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me brave? Grandfather thinks she was only a dream, But
he won't think so now when I show her to
him and see what she has made happen. I'm your
playmate now, I'm even going to your school a funny
dream to manage all that. Then Nan and Gentian and

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Kay and Rosemarie all laughed together, though Kay and Gentian
did not yet know exactly what it was about. And
just as Gentian Monday morning, up in the clear school,
had danced round and round in the arbor and then
out of it, so here now those four took hands

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and danced round and round in the room and out
the door, and there round and round under the cherry tree,
to the music of their laughter. But it was Nan
who stopped first. I am forgetting all about the dishes,
she said. At that they laughed more. What a thing

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to remember, Rosemary cried, But Kay said, Nan is like that.
If there weren't dishes or some such thing to be done,
I think she'd fly straight away and be a fairy.
Maybe help you with the dishes, then asked Rosemary, I've
never helped any one washing dishes. Do you do it

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in the kitchen? How jolly? So the children went in
with Nann and helped clear the table. Nan gave them
a clean towel each, a towel with the sunshine still
in it, for they had come from the line at
the door when Nan had hung them that morning. And
after she dipped the glasses and plates, knives and forks

(22:19):
into rainbow soap SuDS and washed them well, and the
children took them to dry. Then Rosemarie, because she was
the guest, was allowed to sweep up the crumbs under
the table while Kay held the dustpan for her, and
to hang the newly washed towels out in the sunshine
at the back door. Again it was the greatest fun

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in her life, now for the tulip garden. Kay cried,
who had grown a little impatient of all this house working.
Good bye, then come home in time for supper. Nan said, oh,
but you come too, Nan, Rosemary pleaded, it will be
so much more fun with you along. But I thought

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you didn't want to groan up. Miss Prane's not going
Rosemarie laughed, her lightest, jolliest laugh. Well you're not, miss Prine,
she said, Why, you're like us, only more so so.
Nan put off the mendings she had intended until evening,

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and ran away with the children through the hole in
the hedge and down the grassy paths toward the tulip garden.
End of chapter sixteen.