Treasures of the Snow (4 page)

Annette had no difficulty explaining it to herself. She believed that such a pure white kitten must surely have dropped straight from heaven. She sat down on the floor and gathered Dani and the kitten onto her lap, and here Grandmother found them half an hour later when she came in expecting to find her Christmas coffee steaming on the table.

L
ucien lay under his large feather duvet and wished it was not time to get up. His bed was so warm and the air outside so cold. He sighed and cuddled down again under the bedclothes.

“Lucien!” His mother’s voice sounded really angry, and Lucien jumped up in a hurry. This was the third time she had called him and he had pretended not to hear. He could still get up and be in time for school, although he would not have time to do the milking. But, after all, if he didn’t do the milking, his mother would have to, and these days she did it more often than not.

“Other boys don’t have to milk before they go to school,” muttered Lucien as he buttoned his jacket, “and I don’t see why I should always have to work harder than everyone else just because I don’t happen to have a father.”

He went downstairs looking sulky and defiant and sat down to gobble up his bread and coffee. His mother came in from the stable when he was halfway through.

“Lucien,” she said sharply, “why don’t you get up when I call you? It happens day after day! You’re no help to me in the mornings at all. Your sister gets up early enough and goes off to work without any fuss. I know other boys have fathers, but we only have three cows and we can’t live without them. You’re a big, strong boy now and it’s shameful that you should leave all the early work to me like this.”

Lucien scowled. “I work at night,” he whined. “I never get any play. I have to fetch in the wood, and I have farther up the hill to come than any of the others, and I fetch down the fodder for you and clean the shed on Saturdays.”

His mother sniffed. “I’ve usually done most of it by the time you get home from school,” she replied. “I know you don’t get as much time in winter as other children, but I do all I can, and this early-morning milking is wearing me out. You’re quite old enough to do it now, and in future you’re to get up properly. Now hurry off or you’ll be late for school.”

Lucien struggled into his coat and turned away with a sulky good-bye. He unhitched the sled and went whizzing away into the frosty dark. Except for the smooth sound of the sled runners, the world was quite silent, as if it was holding its breath before the coming of dawn. Usually Lucien felt in awe of the greatness of it, but today he was too cross to think about it.

“It’s so unfair,” he muttered. “Everyone’s against me. It’s not my fault I don’t get my lessons done properly. I’m always having to work at home. It’s reading today, and I suppose I shall be bottom again, and that show-off Annette Burnier will be top. I bet she doesn’t have to milk cows before school. Oh!”

He tried to stop, but it was too late; he had reached the fork in the path, and he had been so busy feeling cross that he had not looked where he was going. He had bumped straight into Annette’s sled sideways on and sent her right into the ditch.

It was careless sledding, and Lucien, crimson in the face and truly upset, jumped off his sled to help, but Annette was before him. She had never liked Lucien much, and she was badly shaken. She turned on him, waist deep in snow, her eyes blazing.

“You great clumsy donkey,” she shouted, half crying. “Can’t you look where you are going? Look at my book—all my work is smudged and torn! I shall tell the master it’s all your fault.”

Lucien, who was never good at keeping his temper, lost it at once.

“All right,” he shouted back. “There’s no need to make such a fuss. I didn’t do it on purpose. Anyone would think I’d killed you instead of tearing your old exercise book. It won’t hurt you to lose your marks. I’m going on.”

He jumped onto his sled and whizzed away, arriving just in time for school. Inside he felt really bad about it, but his manners were never very good at the best of times, and he tried not to think of what he had done.

“She’s only got to get out,” he muttered, “and I don’t suppose she would have let me help her in any case. Thank goodness I’m in time for school. I’ve been late twice this week already.”

But getting out of that snowdrift was a very different matter from getting in, and poor Annette had quite a struggle. By the time she had managed to get herself out and collect her books, she was really crying—crying with cold and shock and sore knees and, most of all, crying with rage. When she crept into school a quarter of an hour later, her eyes were red and her nose was blue and her poor raw hands and knees were grazed and bleeding. With her torn, wet books, she looked a sorry sight.

“Annette,” said the master, quite concerned, “what has happened to you, my child?”

For a few seconds Annette fought hard with the temptation to tell tales, but the sight of Lucien sitting so smug and safe in his desk was too much for her.

“It was Lucien,” she burst out angrily. “He knocked me into a ditch, and went off and left me. I couldn’t get out.” She stuffed her knuckles into her eyes and began crying again. She was really very badly shaken, and oh, so angry!

The class all felt sorry for her and angry with Lucien, who hung his head and looked very sullen indeed.

The master caned Lucien for behaving in such an unkind way, which cheered Annette up and made her feel much better. Later, when the marks were read out, Annette came out top and felt better still.

Lucien came out bottom and was told to stay in and do extra work after school. So he sat through morning school and lunchtime with the others, and came back to afternoon school and sat on alone when the others had gone. All the time the rage and hatred and bad temper in his heart were getting bigger and bigger till he felt as if he was going to burst.

At last he was let out from school and wandered up the hill dragging his sled behind him. What a terrible day it had been! His mother had been cross with him, Annette had told tales about him, the master had caned him, and he had come out bottom. Was ever a boy so badly treated?

The shadows on the fields were strangely blue that night. High up, the mountaintops were still sunlit, with ragged wisps of cloud trailing about them. The quietness of the mountains seemed to hold out its arms to Lucien. Children and Nature are very close together, and often Nature’s silence can do more to heal angry, unhappy children than any human words can. So, as he trudged up the hill, Lucien’s rage began to change to a sort of weary misery. Thinking he was alone, he stuffed his knuckles into his eyes and began to cry a little.

Then he suddenly discovered that he was not alone. He was again at the place where the path divided, and a little boy was standing in the snow looking up at him in great astonishment. A happy, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed little boy, his fair hair stuck out like a thatch from under his woolly cap, his face glowing with good health and good humour.

It was Dani, making a snowman. He had just put on the head and was arranging the eyes. It was the best snowman Dani had ever made, and he was just about to fetch Annette to look at it.

“Why are you crying?” asked Dani.

“I’m not crying,” retorted Lucien angrily.

“Ooh, you are,” replied Dani, “and I know why. It’s because the master caned you; Annette told us.”

He did not mean to be cruel, for he was usually a kind little boy. But Lucien had been nasty to Annette, and that, to Dani, was quite unforgivable. Lucien’s temper flared up instantly, and lifting his foot he kicked Dani’s snowman into little bits. Dani lifted up his voice and gave a loud howl of alarm and disappointment.

Annette, crossing from the shed, saw what was happening in an instant. She flew down the path like a young tigress and slapped Lucien full in the face. Lucien lifted his hand to hit her back, but the sight of Monsieur Burnier coming out of the chalet with a bucket made him think better of it. Everything was clearly against him.

“Sneak! Telltale! Coward!” shouted Lucien. “Baby! Coming into school crying like that.”

“Great, rough bully,” shouted back Annette, “leaving me in the ditch like that, and then kicking poor Dani’s snowman. He never did you any harm. Why can’t you leave him alone? I’m jolly glad you were caned! Come on, Dani, come home.”

She marched angrily off up the path, with Dani trotting behind her. At the door of the chalet she turned and noticed a patch of pink sky behind the far mountains. Once, Grandmother had taught her a text from the Bible, which said, “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.”* She suddenly thought of it now. Well, there was still time —Lucien was still there. After all, it was nasty of her to have told tales. She hesitated.

But he’d been much worse than she had. It was up to him to say he was sorry. If she asked him to forgive her it would seem as if she was to blame, and of course she wasn’t—oh, no, not in the least! She went in and slammed the door behind her.

Lucien went slowly home with his face stinging from that slap, more furious than he had been all day long. But, as he walked, he glanced up and noticed a wonderful thing. The clouds had come up in a purple bank, blotting out the mountain behind his home, but just in one spot they had broken, and in that gap Lucien could see the snowy crest, radiant with golden light.

He was used to winter sunsets, but the beauty of this one made Lucien catch his breath and look again. The pure, high radiance suddenly made his anger seem a poor, small thing, not worth hanging on to. How nice it would be to start again! There was still time to catch Annette if he ran.

But no! Annette was a show-off and would probably take no notice of him. And anyhow, why should he apologize to a girl?

So, because neither would be the first to forgive, the quarrel began—a quarrel that was to last for a very long time and was to bring with it a great deal of unhappiness for both of them.

As Lucien stood there thinking, a cloud blew across the gap, and the radiant mountaintop was hidden from view.

A
nnette’s birthday took place in March, and Dani made plans about it for weeks beforehand, for nothing pleased Dani so much as giving presents. Some people might have said his presents were not worth very much, but Dani thought they were beautiful. He kept them in a secret cupboard meant for storing wood. Annette knew that she must never go there, and pretended to think that it was full of wood chips for the stove.

Already the cupboard contained a family of fir cones, painted all different colors and arranged in a row. Father fir cone was red, Mother fir cone was green, and there were five little fir cones painted bright yellow. Then there was a beautiful picture Dani had drawn of Paquerette, the light brown cow, grazing in a field of enormous blue gentians nearly as big as herself. There was a pure white pebble and a little bracelet made from the plaited hairs of the bull’s tail. And sometimes there was a chocolate stick, but it never stayed long because Dani loved chocolate sticks and usually ate them himself after a day or two.

But now the great day was nearly here, and tomorrow would be the real birthday. Dani’s curly head was full of it, and as soon as Annette had gone to school, Dani explained his plan to Grandmother. She was sitting on the veranda in the spring sunshine, chopping dandelion leaves for that evening’s soup, when her little grandson came up and rested his elbows on her knee.

“Grandmother,” announced Dani, “I’m going up the mountain to where the snow has melted to pick soldanellas and crocuses for Annette’s birthday. I will put them on the breakfast table with all my presents.”

His grandmother, who hated him being out of her sight, looked doubtful.

“You are too little to go up the mountain alone,” she replied. “The slopes are slippery and you will fall into the snowdrifts.”

“Klaus will go with me,” said Dani earnestly. Grandmother chuckled. “A lot of good may she do you,” she replied, and then gave a little shriek because Klaus, without the slightest warning, had leaped into Grandmother’s lap and begun rubbing her white head against her, purring lovingly.