Treasures of the Snow

by Patricia St John

  Her father continued to look at her thoughtfully. Although she was small, she was as clever as a woman in looking after the baby, and she was very handy about the house. But she could not do the cooking, or knit the stockings, or do the rough heavy work. And besides, she ought to have some schooling. He sat thinking in silence for a full five minutes. Then he had an idea.

  “I wonder if your grandmother would come,” he said suddenly. “She is old and has rheumatics, and her sight is poor, but she could do the cooking and mending perhaps, and she could help you with your lessons in the evenings. It would be company for you, too, when I am up the mountain. You’re a little girl to be left alone all day long. If I write a letter to the schoolmaster telling him that Grandmother will give you a bit of teaching, maybe he will agree to keep quiet about it.”

  Annette climbed off his knee, and fetched two sheets of paper and a pen and ink from the cupboard.

  “Write to them both now,” she said, “and I will post them when I go for the bread. Then we shall get the answers nice and quickly.”

  Both letters were answered that week. The first answer was Grandmother herself, who arrived by train, bent and crippled, with a wooden box roped up very securely. Annette went down to meet her and watched the little electric train twisting its way up the valley between the hay fields like a caterpillar. It was rather late, the driver explained angrily, because a cow had strayed onto the line and the train had had to stop. He moved off so quickly that Grandmother hardly had time to get down, and her wooden box had to be thrown out after her while the train was moving away.

  Grandmother, however, did not seem at all worried. She leaned on her stick and wanted to know how she was going to get up the hill. Annette, who knew nothing about rheumatism, suggested that they should walk, but Grandmother said, “Nonsense, child,” and in the end they got a lift in an empty farm cart that had brought cheeses down to the train and was now going back up the mountain.

  The road was stony, the wheels wooden, and the mule uncertain, and Annette enjoyed the ride very much more than Grandmother did. But the old woman gritted her teeth and made no complaint. She only let out a tired sigh of relief when she found herself safely on the sofa by the stove, with a cushion at her aching back and Annette bustling about getting her some tea.

  Dani came out from under the table, getting along on his bottom. He stuck three fingers in his mouth and laughed at Grandmother, who put on her glasses to see him better. They sat for some moments staring at each other, her dim old eyes meeting his bright blue ones, and then Dani threw back his head and laughed again.

  “That child will wear out his trousers,” said Grandmother, taking a piece of bread and butter and cherry jam. “He should be taught to crawl.”

  She said no more until she had finished her tea, and then she flicked the crumbs from her black skirt and got up, leaning heavily on her stick.

  “So,” she remarked, “I have come. What I can I will do; what I cannot you must do for me. Now, Annette, turn that baby the right way up and come and show me around the kitchen.” And from that moment Grandmother did what she could, Annette did the rest, and the household ran like clockwork. All except for Dani, who continued to move round and round the table legs on his bottom in spite of Grandmother. So after a few days Annette was sent to the village to buy a yard of thick, black felt, and Grandmother sewed round patches onto the seats of all Dani’s trousers. He did look rather odd in them, but they served their purpose very well indeed, and after all they were hardly ever seen because they were nearly always underneath him.

  The second answer arrived in the shape of the old village schoolmaster, who walked wearily up from the valley late on Saturday afternoon to call on Monsieur Burnier. He was milking cows and saw him coming out the cowshed window. He did not want to argue with the schoolmaster because he was afraid of getting the worst of it, so he ran out the back door and hid in the hayloft. Annette, who was also looking out of the living room window, saw her father’s legs disappear up the ladder just as the schoolmaster came around the corner, and she understood perfectly what was expected of her.

  She opened the door and invited the master in, offering him most politely the best chair with a smart red seat. He was very fond of Annette, and Annette was very fond of him, but today they were a little bit shy of each other. Grandmother folded her hands and sat up straight like an old warhorse ready for battle.

  “I have come to see your father,” began the schoolmaster, coughing nervously, “to discuss his letter about you being away from school. I cannot say that I think it right for a little girl of your age. Besides, it is against the law of the State.”

  “The State will know nothing about it unless you choose to mention her,” said Grandmother. “Besides, I will teach the child myself. I do not think it right for a little boy of Dani’s age to be left without his sister to look after him.”

  “But can’t you look after him?” suggested the schoolmaster gently.

  “Certainly not,” snapped Grandmother. “My sight is so poor that I cannot see where he is going, and my arms are so rheumaticky that I cannot pick him up if he falls. Besides, he moves like an express train, and I am nearly eighty. You do not know what you are talking about.”

  The schoolmaster gazed at Dani, who was face-downwards in the woodpile eating shavings. There was nothing much to be seen of him but the black felt patches and his dimpled brown legs. The master realized Grandmother would not be able to manage him.

  The schoolmaster didn’t know what to do. Perhaps his old friend Monsieur Burnier would be more reasonable. He turned to Annette. “When will your father be in, Annette?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. He has gone out and he may not be back for some time. It is not worth your while to wait, monsieur,” replied Annette steadily, knowing perfectly well that her father would return just as soon as the master disappeared down the valley.

  The schoolmaster sat thinking. He was a good man, and really cared about Annette and his duty toward her. Yet he did not want to give up his old friend into the hands of the law, especially when it was quite clear that the child was needed at home. At last he had an idea. He did not think that it was a very good one, but it was better than nothing.

  “I will let the matter rest,” he said at last, “on one condition only. And that is that every Saturday morning, when Annette comes down for the bread, she shall visit me in my house and I will test her. If I find she is making progress I will say no more, but if I find she is learning nothing then I shall feel it my duty to insist that she attends school like other children.”

  He tried to speak sternly, but Annette beamed at him, and Dani, sensing a family victory, suddenly turned himself the right way up and crowed like a cock. The schoolmaster looked at the two fair, motherless children for a moment, smiled very tenderly, and said good-bye. As soon as he had disappeared into the pine wood Annette ran to the door and called to her father to come down from the hay loft, and she told him the good news.

  So it was that every Saturday morning Annette rapped at the front door of the tall, white house where the schoolmaster lived, with her bread-basket on her back and her tattered exercise book in her hand, and the schoolmaster joyfully let her in. In the winter they sat by the stove, ate spiced fruit tart, and drank hot chocolate, and in the summer they sat on the veranda and ate cherries and drank apple juice. After that the tests would begin.

  They always started with arithmetic, but Annette was not good at arithmetic. As she never knew the answers, the schoolmaster would feel, after a few minutes, that it was a waste of time to ask any more questions, so they would pass on to history, and here Annette never needed any questions. She would lean forward, clasping her knees, and relate how William Tell had won the freedom of Switzerland, and how the brave little son had stood still while the apple on his head was split by the whizzing arrow. Annette knew all about the brave Swiss heroes, and she and the schoolmaster would look at each other with shining eyes, for they both loved c
ourage. After this they would turn to the Bible, which Annette was beginning to know quite well, for she read it aloud to Grandmother every evening.

  By this time the schoolmaster would have forgotten to tell Annette off because she couldn’t do her sums, and instead he would give her fresh books to read and would fill the gaps in her bread basket with spiced gingerbread hearts and knobbly chocolate sticks wrapped in silver paper. Then they would say good-bye to one another, and he would stand at the door and watch her until she reached the edge of the pine wood, because here she always turned around to wave.

  Years ago the schoolmaster had loved a golden-haired girl who lived high up in the mountain, and he had bought this white house and made it beautiful for her. But she went out to pick soldanellas and was killed by a treacherous fall of late snow. So the schoolmaster really lived alone. But in his dreams she was always there, and also a little daughter with corn-colored plaits and eyes like blue gentians who sat on a stool close to his knees. And on Saturday mornings that part of the school-master’s dream came true.

  3

  A Very Special Christmas Present

  It was Christmas Eve again, five years after the beginning of this story, and Dani was now five years old. It was a great day, because for the first time in his life he had been considered old enough to go down to the church with Annette and to see the tree.

  He sat up in bed, drinking a bowl of potato soup, his blond hair only just showing above his enormous white feather duvet, which was almost as fat as it was wide. Annette sat beside him, and in her hand she held a shining gingerbread bear.

  “I’m sorry, Dani,” she said firmly, “but you cannot have it in the bed with you. It would be all crumbs by the morning. Look, I will put him here on the cupboard and the moon will shine in on him and you will be able to see him.”

  Dani opened his mouth to argue, but changed his mind and filled his mouth with potato soup instead. It was unfair of his sister to say he couldn’t hug his bear all night, but, after all, there were lots of other things to be happy about. Dani was always happy from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning to the moment he closed them at night. Tonight he was especially happy because he had heard the bells and seen the glittering Christmas tree and been out in the snow by starlight. He handed his empty bowl to Annette and cuddled down under his feather duvet.

  “Do you think,” he asked, “that Father Christmas would come if I put my slippers on the window-sill?”

  Annette looked rather startled and wondered where he had heard of such a thing, for in Switzerland Father Christmas is not such a well-known person as he is in England. Swiss children have their Christmas bear from the tree on Christmas Eve, and presents from their family on New Year’s Day. On Christmas Day they go to church and have a feast, but few children get a present.

  “They said,” went on Dani, “that he came on a sleigh drawn by reindeer and left presents in good children’s slippers. Am I a good child, Annette?”

  “Yes,” answered Annette, kissing him, “you are a very good child. But you will not get a present from Father Christmas. He only goes to rich little boys.”

  “Aren’t I a rich little boy?” asked Dani, who thought he had everything he wanted in life.

  “No,” replied Annette firmly, “you are not. We are poor, and Papa has to work hard, and Grandmother and I have to go on and on patching your clothes because we cannot afford to buy new ones.”

  Dani chuckled. “I don’t mind being poor,” he said firmly. “I like it. Now tell me a story, Annette. Tell me about Christmas and the little baby and the cows and the great big shining star.”

  So Annette told the story, and Dani, who should have been asleep, listened with his eyes wide open.

  “I should have liked sleeping in the hay better than in the inn,” he said when she had finished. “I should like to sleep with Paquerette. I think it would be fun.”

  Annette shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t,” she replied, “not in the winter without a duvet. You would be very cold and unhappy and long for a warm bed. It was cruel of them to say there was no room for a little new baby—they could have made room somehow.”

  The cuckoo clock on the stairs struck nine. Annette jumped up.

  “You must go to sleep, Dani,” she said, “and I must make Papa’s hot chocolate.”

  She kissed him, tucked him in, put out the light, and left him. But Dani did not go to sleep. Instead, he lay staring out into the darkness, thinking hard.

  He was not a greedy little boy, but he could not help thinking that if Father Christmas happened to come to their house it would be a great pity not to be ready. Of course, it was unlikely he would come, since Dani was only a poor child, but on the other hand it was just possible that he might. And, after all, it wouldn’t hurt to put out the little slipper even if there was nothing in it in the morning.

  The question was where to put it. He could not put it on the windowsill, because he could not open the high, barred shutters by himself. Nor could he put it outside the front door, because the family was all sitting in the front room. The only place was just outside the back door on the little strip of snow that divided the kitchen from the hay barn. Of course Father Christmas probably wouldn’t see it there, but still, there was no harm in trying.

  Dani’s mind was made up. He crept out of bed and tiptoed carefully across the bedroom and down the stairs. He went barefoot, because he did not want anyone to hear him, and in his hand he carried one small scarlet slipper lined with rabbit fur. Annette had made the slippers, and Dani felt Father Christmas might notice them as they were bright and rather unusual.

  It was a struggle to lift the great wooden bar on the kitchen door, and Dani had to stand on a stool before he managed it. He had a moment’s bright glimpse of snow and starlight, and then the bitter cold air struck him like a knife and almost took his breath away. He quickly pushed the slipper onto the step and shut the door again as quickly as he could.

  Back to bed scuttled Dani with a light heart. He cuddled down under the bedclothes, curled himself into a ball, and buried his nose in the pillows. He had already said his proper prayers with Annette before he got into bed, but now he had a little bit to add.

  “Please, dear God,” he whispered, “make Father Christmas and his reindeer come this way. And make him see my red slipper, and make him put a little present inside even if I am only a poor boy.”

  And then the bump that was Dani rolled over sideways and fell asleep to dream, like thousands of other children all over the world, of the old gentleman in the red cloak careening over the snow to the jangle of reindeer bells.

  He woke very early, because children always wake early on Christmas morning, and of course the first thing he thought of was the scarlet slipper. It was such an exciting thought that his heart beat with great thumps, and he peeped over the top of his duvet to see whether Annette was awake.

  But Annette was fast asleep, with her long, fair hair spread all over the pillow, and for all Dani knew it might still have been the middle of the night. In fact, he had almost decided that it must still be the middle of the night, when he heard his father clattering the milk churns in the kitchen below.

  So it must be Christmas morning, and Dani must get down quickly or his father would open the door and find his present before he did. Somehow Dani was absolutely sure that there would be a present. All his doubts of the night before had vanished in his sleep.

  He crept out of the room without waking Annette and slipped into the kitchen where his father was cleaning out the churns.

  Father did not see Dani until he felt two arms clasping his legs and looked down. There was his son, rosy, bright-eyed, and with his hair all scruffy, looking up at him.

  “Has Father Christmas been?” asked Dani. Surely his father, who stayed up so late and got up so early, must have heard the bells and the crunch of hoofs in the snow.

  “Father Christmas?” repeated his father in a puzzled voice. “Why, no, he didn’t come here
. We live too far up the mountain for him.”

  But Dani shook his head. “We don’t,” he said eagerly. “His reindeer can go anywhere, and I expect you were asleep and didn’t hear him. Open the door for me, Papa, in case he has left me a present.”

  His father wished he had known of this earlier so he could have put a chocolate stick on the step, for he hated to disappoint his boy. However, he had to open the back door to roll the churns across to the stable, so he lifted the latch. In an instant Dani had dived between his legs like an eager rabbit, and was kneeling by his slipper in the snow.

  Then he gave a wild, high-pitched scream of excitement and dived back again into the kitchen with his slipper in his arms.

  A miracle had happened. Father Christmas had been and had left a present, and in all his happy five years of life Dani had never had such a perfect present before.

  For curled up in the furry lining of his scarlet slipper was a tiny white kitten, with blue eyes and one black smudge on her nose. It was a weak, thin little kitten, very nearly dead with cold and hunger, and if it had not been for the warmth of the rabbit fur it would certainly have been quite dead. But it still breathed lightly, and Dani’s father, forgetting all about the churns, knelt down on the kitchen floor beside his son and set about making it better.

  First he wrapped it in a piece of warm flannel and laid it against the hot wall of the stove. Then they heated milk in a pan and fed it with a spoon, as it was far too weak to suck. At first it only spluttered and dribbled, but after a while it put out a soft pink tongue and its dim blue eyes grew bright and interested. Then, after about five minutes or so, it twitched its tail and stretched itself. Finally, having had quite enough to eat, it curled itself back into a ball and set up a faint, contented purr.