The Wind Boy - Chapter 17 Detra meets the Artist

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seventeen of The Wind Boy by Ethel Cook Eliot.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter seventeen
deter meets the artists, and when they got there, it
was Nan who thought up the most wonderful things to play.

(00:23):
They were games the children had never heard of before,
and they were the greatest fun. Afterwards, they could never
play them over again, for somehow they could not remember
how they had gone. That was strange, for at the
time they had not seemed complicated, but simple as day.

(00:46):
They found themselves in these games, jumping farther than they
had known they could jump, climbing higher, and hiding in
more secret and smaller places that they would ever have
thought of hiding in alone. But after a while they
grew tired of even these wonderful games, and threw themselves

(01:07):
down in the grassy center of the tulip garden to rest. Now,
said Rosemarie, tell me more about the wind Boy. But
we have told you all, Kay answered, there is nothing more. Well,
if he's real and not just a pretend game of yours,

(01:28):
Rosemarie asked, teasingly, why doesn't he come and play with us? Now? Why?
I don't know, Perhaps he will. Perhaps he's been around
all this time wanting to play with us. But Gentien
shook her head. No, Kay, he's nowhere about. I've been

(01:48):
looking for him all afternoon. He hasn't come once. I
would have seen him if he had. Well, now that
he has his clear children playmates back, perhaps he won't
want to come down here any more. Perhaps he only
came before because he was lonely, Kay said. Gentian didn't
have answer. That she herself had been thinking exactly that

(02:12):
thing for hours, with this difference that she had not
the heart to speak it. Let's try to see up
into the clear land. Rosemarie suggested, then, why can't we
see that other tulip garden that you say is just
up there over this one? We can try, Kay answered,

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But it takes a special kind of looking to see it,
doesn't it. Nan, How should we look then? I don't
know exactly, but Gentian went there through the walls of
NaN's attic room. You told me, how did you do that? Gentian?
By getting deep? Still? What is that? Gentian could not explain. Now, Nan,

(03:01):
who had been lying on her back nibbling a sweet
grass blade, said there are many many ways of looking
to see into the clear land. Lets lie quietly on
our backs here for a little, and just try. So.
The four playmates lay on their backs in the cool grass,

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sentineled about by many colored tulips, and tried to see
up into the clear land. But for all their looking
and all their expectant stillness, it did not take shape
for them in the blue spring air. Rosemarie was the
first to grow impatient. She sat up. Oh there is

(03:44):
nothing but blue sky up there, she cried, and white clouds.
I think it must have been all your imagining, Kay,
and Gentian No, no, Kay protested it was not imagining.
You ought to see the statue at mother made of
the wind boy. Then you'd know that he was as
real as you are. Oh. Has your mother seen him too? Yes,

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of course. But the funny thing about that is that
she does not remember she has. I should think that
was a funny thing. Why it's not possible? Should Oh?
But it is, Nan interrupted. She was still stretched on
her back, looking up into the blue spring air. The

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truest and most important things are almost always those we
have no words for. That is what Ka means. I'm
not remembering. Although Nan said this very gently, and it
explained nothing to Rosemarie. Still she at once believed her
and laughed, no more, Let's go and see the statuette.

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Gentian suggested. Then you will love it, Rosemarie, just as
we do, all right, only not for a little while.
It's so cool and comfortable here in the grass, and
I'm finding such funny pictures in the clouds. Wait a little,
I will go and bring the statuette here instead, Nan said,

(05:18):
getting up, Suddenly, it will be all the more beautiful
out here with the sun on it. Now. Neither Cain
nor Gentian would have thought of touching their mother's work,
but it never entered their heads that Nan was doing
anything wrong, and they were right to believe in her.
So she ran away to fetch the statuette. Rose Marie,

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who was sitting up, watched her go running. She looks
just like a relief of a dancing girl on an
old Greek vase in grandfather's study, she said. She moves
as though she were hearing music. Yes, she walks like
that too, I've often noticed, Kay agreed thoughtfully. Sometimes I

(06:07):
almost hear it too, the music, but never quite After that,
they lay quiet, saying no more, until Nan returned with
the statuette held very carefully before her. She stood it
up in their midst in the grassy place. Rosemarie knelt

(06:29):
in front of it. Oh, he is just as you
described him, Kay, she cried. And he is shining too.
You didn't describe that. I've been wondering about that shining,
Kay said, when he's just made out of gray Plasterlina,
where does the shininess come from? Why that's his happiness?

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Nan tried to explain. It shines out through his face
and even through his wings and body. But a statuette
can't be happy. It's only a statuette, that is true.
But your mother could copy the happiness, and here it is.

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I wonder, Genteen said suddenly and softly. I wonder if
that is what the clear land is happiness? And this
land down here is only a copy of that shining,
even ourselves only copies. Ooh, gentiean Nan said, perhaps you

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must ask the great artist up there sometime. I don't know.
Rosemarie was still kneeling in front of the statuette. It
was so alive, seeming she almost expected at any minute
that the breeze would stir its curls and its wings bend.

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As the minutes passed, that still remained, always ready for flight,
but never flying. Her strange surprise grew. That will tell
you how real and beautiful Datter had made him. They
were also absorbed Gentian in her new searching thoughts, Rosemary

(08:21):
in the statuette, Kay in Rosemary's delight, and Nan in
them all that they did not hear the artist coming
down the path toward them. For some time he stood
all unknown above them. But after a while he spoke,

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what is this? His voice rang with wonder and delight.
Who brought this beautiful thing here? I did? Nan answered,
no surprise in her face as she turned to him,
it is yours? Nor what is Detra's? She made it

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last night? She did not go to bed at all.
I should think not who is Deetra? Why she is
our mother? Both Kay and Gentien cried together proudly. Why
have I not known? Then? May I take it up?

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He asked of Nan. You may think it strange that
the great artist should ask of Nan, the general housework girl,
permission to touch a statuette he had found being played
with by the children in his own garden. But if
you think so, that is because you have not seen
the statuette, and you have not seen Nan, Yes, she nodded.

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Detro would like you to see it very gently, Yes, Reverently.
The artist raised the little statuette up and held it
out before him in the afternoon sunlight. He turned it
around and around slowly, his eyes narrow and intent, as

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Deetra's eyes had been narrow and intent when she worked
on it. Is she at home now, the artist, he asked. Finally,
he spoke of Debtra as the artist. The children's eyes
shone with pride. No, she is at the factory, Nan answered.

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She works there all day, but she will come soon
now in a factory, the creator of this working in
a factory. Yes, they are refugees. The father who went
to the war has lost track of them. So Detra
cannot stay at home with her children. She must earn

(10:53):
bread and a roof for their heads. In a factory.
There is better work for her than that, the artist promised.
She shall never go there again. If I can help it,
May I take this to her house for its safety,
and and wait there for her. Nan nodded. She will

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be glad of your praise, she said, But she must
have more than praise. The Artist spoke to himself. She
must be paid for this. If she will let me
have it, it shall be done into bronze. And stand
there just where I found it, beside a fountain here

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in the tulip garden. The wind Boy will stand. All
was on tiptoe about to fly. People will come far
to see it. At that, Gentian clapped her hands. It
was a soft clapping, but the Artist heard and turned
to look down at her. He said, smiling, Now for

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the first time, you were right all the time, little
wind girl, when you assured me that the wind Boy
was real. Your mother has proved to us forever that
he is real, real as ourselves. Detter was very, very
tired when she came home from the factory that evening.

(12:20):
She had not been to bed at all the night before,
you will remember. But when she turned in at her
little garden gate, she braced her body, put back her shoulders,
and made her steps light to greet her children. She
came in with a high head and her eyes smiling.
But she stopped amazed in the door, for there rising

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to meet her was the Artist, his head topped with
its mass of gray curls, just escaping the low ceiling.
Of the little room in his hand. He still held
carefully the wind boy. He could not let it go.
Good evening, said Dattra. Good evening, answered the artist. Datra

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untied her cape at the neck and dropped it beside
her on to a chair. In the cape and in
the shadow of the room, she had looked like tired
working woman, But now without the dark garment, and in
the light of the candles that Nan had just brought in,
she was herself. The self The children always saw her

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wide frank eyes, her high held head, her straight, slim
body made her look like a brighter and human candle.
The artist bowed his head over the statuette. This is beauty,
he said, yes, I know. Dettra replied, tranquility. I saw

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it so clearly last night that I stayed up all
night to work. I want to bite it of you
for my tulip garden. And then Deettra and the artist
sat down on the bench under the window and talked.
Nan was getting supper and setting the table, but it
did not interrupt the artists, for she passed back and

(14:13):
forth as softly as a shadow outside the door under
the cherry tree. Kay and Gentien and Rosemarie had gone
to play, but the sound of their laughter did not
disturb the artists and Deettera either. When you have created
a beautiful thing, that is happiness. But the next happiness

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is to find some one who understands what you have
done and knows that it is beautiful. Deettra had both.
But at last supper was ready and the children had
come in. Rosemarie stood by her grandfather. He got up.
I shall share this with the artists of the world,

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he said, to morrow all the papers shall have news
of your genius and its promise. Then your husband, if
only he is alive and searching, must come upon your
name and find you. I have been thinking of that
all the time you were talking, Detra answered, And if
he does find us, now we shall take this money

(15:21):
you are paying me for the wind boy and buy
the meadows behind this house, and he will turn them
into the tree nurseries he has always wanted. Then we
shall live on here in our adopted country, for there
is nothing left in the old for us. The artist nodded, well,
pleased with the plan. I shall send my wires and

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cables at once, he promised. To morrow the world will
know that here in this little brown house dwells a
new great artist. If your husband is alive, he must
hear or read your name, and come that night. The
little brown house, set like a stepping stone to the

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artist's great one, could scarcely hold its happiness. At last,
the three had reason to hope that a czar would
find them and soon. The artist had been so sure
they had no one to help them before. But Gentie
and awoke in the night to remember the wind boy.

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He said he liked her best, he had kissed her,
he had been a perfect playmate, But now he had
forgotten and was staying away in the clear country with
the clear children. In spite of her happiness, Gentian's blue
eyes in the dark were touched with puzzled wonder and

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of chapter seventeen,