If only he could do something to make up for it, but he could think of nothing.
He walked into the chalet a little sheepishly, and his mother, at the sink, looked at him anxiously. She waited a little while for him to speak, but at last, unable to wait any longer, she began to question him.
“Well,” she began, “how did you get on at school today?”
“All right, thank you,” answered Lucien. “I’ve been down to inquire at the Burniers’,” went on his mother, “and Annette and Monsieur Burnier have taken Dani to the doctor in the cart. They will not be back till late. The grandmother spoke very kindly, Lucien. They are good people and I think they will forgive you and not make the trouble you deserve.”
Lucien did not reply. The grandmother might forgive him, but he knew quite well that Annette never would.
“Did the schoolmaster know of what happened?” asked his mother after a pause.
“Yes,” replied Lucien.
“Did he say anything about it?” went on Madame.
“No,” answered Lucien.
His mother was puzzled. She had had a miserable day thinking of what sort of a time her son might be having at school, but nothing seemed to have happened. He even looked slightly more cheerful than he had in the morning.
“I’m going over to milk the cows, Mother,” said Lucien, and he crossed to the stable with a sigh of relief. The stable was a refuge where he could get away from his mother’s questions, and where the cows thought none the worse of him. He started quickly, and then, tilting the bucket, drank about a pint of the warm, frothing milk straight off and felt better. He had had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast.
Tonight he would save some of his supper, and tomorrow he would go back to the woods again and spend another quiet, hidden day. He would do it every day until he was found out … and that might not be for a long time.
He took as long as he could over the milking and then wandered back into the house carrying the buckets. He reached the door at the same time as his sister, who had hurried up the hill and was flushed and out of breath.
“You little coward, Lucien,” she exclaimed as she saw him. “Fancy missing school like that! What has he been doing all day, Mother? You should have made him go!”
Her mother turned around indignantly. “What are you talking about, Marie?” she asked sharply. “Of course he’s been to school. He’s only just come in. Leave the poor child alone and get on with your work.”
“Indeed,” exclaimed Marie. “Well, if he’s only just come in, I should dearly like to know where he’s come from. I happen to have met the schoolmaster on my way up from the station. He was weeding his vegetable patch. He looked over the fence and called out to me. ‘Where’s Lucien?’ he asked, ‘and why has he not come to school? Is he not well?’ I answered, ‘He’s well enough, and he shall come tomorrow if I have to drag him!’ So now you know, Lucien! Goodness knows where you’ve been today, but tomorrow I shall take you to school myself.”
“Fancy you lying to me like that, Lucien,” cried his mother angrily. “You are a wicked boy. I do not know what to do with you. The master must deal with you.” Because she was so worried, and because her boy had deceived her, she threw her apron over her face and began to cry.
Lucien sat down by the stove in bitter, sullen silence. Everyone and everything seemed against him. His only hope of escape had been taken from him Tomorrow he would have to go to school and Annette would be there. If he had gone today she would not have been there.
He picked up a large wood chip and began whittling away with his knife, and once more his fingers felt for the wooden chamois in his pocket.
9
A Visit to the Hospital
Dani lay in the cart on a sack stretched across a soft mattress of hay and gazed up at the blue sky, where tiny, white, woolly clouds floated by. He would have liked to look over the sides of the cart, but this was impossible, for he could not sit up. So he looked at the sky instead, and Annette described the scenery and what was happening as they went along. Dani’s leg ached badly, which made him rather bad tempered. When the cart jolted he squealed, but Annette spoke to him soothingly to calm him down, and it was still nice to feel so important.
“We are at the top of the village now, Dani,” said Annette, “just passing the church, and there is Emil the dustman’s son driving the cows out of the churchyard. Some naughty person must have left the gate open.”
“Are the cows trying to go into church?” enquired Dani with interest.
“No,” replied Annette. “They were trying to jump over the wall, but it was too high. They were jumping over the gravestones instead. Here we are at the infant school, Dani, and there is the teacher scrubbing her steps. I suppose it is her cleaning day and she has given all the infants a holiday. I wish the schoolmaster had cleaning days. Oh! Here is the teacher coming toward the cart. She has seen us and I expect she wants to know how you are. And here come Madame Pilet and Madame Lenoir. They have seen us, too. They were washing their clothes in the fountain.”
Annette was right. They certainly wanted to know how Dani was, for in a tiny village news travels fast and is much talked about and long remembered because there is so little of it. The postman’s wife had heard some of the story from Lucien’s sister when she phoned for the doctor, and the station master’s wife had heard the rest from Marie while she waited for the early train, and by now everyone was talking about it and everyone wanted to find out more.
So Madame Pilet and Madame Lenoir left their husbands’ shirts bubbling like white balloons in the fountain while Madame Durez, who kept the village shop, left her counter and came running out with two customers behind her. The teacher left her scrubbing bucket to get cold, and they all crowded around the cart and stood on tiptoe to stare at Dani, lying flat on his back on his hay mattress—a little paler than usual, but otherwise quite cheerful and pleased to see them.
“Ah, the little cabbage,” cried the teacher, throwing up her hands. “You must tell us about it, Annette.” Although they had all heard the story once and repeated it to somebody else, they were all ready to listen again. So Annette told them about it, and they shook their heads a great deal and clicked their tongues. They were all very angry with Lucien.
“He is a wicked boy,” said the infant school teacher. “I shall warn the little children not to have anything to do with him!”
“And I shall not allow Pierre to play with him,” said the postman’s wife. “He has a cruel heart. You can see it in his face. I feel sorry for his mother, having a child like that.” She thought proudly of her own cheery, freckle-faced son, who was one of the best-loved boys in the village.
Dani’s father flicked his whip rather impatiently and called back that they must not keep the doctor waiting. The women stood back and the cart lumbered on slowly over the cobblestones. Then they all drew together again and started talking in the middle of the road with their heads very close together.
The cart jolted on and the sun rose higher. The horse did not mind in the least keeping the doctor waiting, and Annette had plenty of time to describe the scenery to Dani as they made their slow way to town.
“The river is almost in flood, Dani,” remarked Annette. “It’s because the fine weather has melted the snows so fast. The water is right over the pine-tree roots, and here a tree has fallen right across like a bridge. Oh, Dani! There is a little grey squirrel wondering whether to run along it or not.”
“Where?” cried Dani, and he forgot and tried to sit up, but fell back with a squeal of pain.
“You can’t see,” Annette warned him. “Anyhow, the squirrel has run back into the wood. We are getting near the station now, Dani, and there are three cows on the platform waiting to be put on the train.”
The journey passed pleasantly. At last houses began to appear, and Annette told Dani they were coming into the town.
“Tell me about the shops,” exclaimed Dani eagerly.
He had been to the
town only three times in his short life and thought it was the most wonderful place in the world.
It wasn’t much of a town, really, for there was only one narrow street of shops—but they were very nice shops. There was the cake shop with its windows packed with flat fruit tarts and piles of gingerbread cut into every shape imaginable, and the clothes shop with a display of embroidered national costumes. Best of all was the wood-carver’s shop with its rows of carved cuckoo clocks and the old men who opened their mouths wide and cracked nuts in their wooden teeth. At last Father drove up in front of the hospital.
It was only a little hospital, really, but to Annette and Dani it seemed enormous. The patients all lay out on sunny balconies, and the door was wide open. Papa jumped down from the driver’s seat, tied the reins to the fence, and went in. A few minutes later he returned with two men and a stretcher.
Dani, on his stretcher, was laid on a wooden bench in the outpatients’ hall, with Papa sitting at his head and Annette at his feet. The quiet strangeness of the place and the odd, clean smell made them all go very quiet, so Dani watched the nurses instead. They wore long, white aprons and lace caps. Dani thought they looked exactly like the angels in Grandmother’s big picture Bible.
They waited for a very long time. Papa and Annette nodded and dozed. Dani flung his arms above his head and fell into a deep sleep.
He was woken by the doctor, who appeared very suddenly and seemed in a great hurry. He was an elderly man with a large, black beard and a gruff voice. Annette felt afraid of him.
Everything seemed to happen very quickly after that. Dani was hustled off on a trolley to have the bones in his leg photographed, which was interesting, and he wanted to know whether he would be allowed to keep the photograph to hang up in his house. Then he was trundled back, and the doctor pulled the bad leg until Dani screamed with pain. Then the photographs were brought along, not looking in the least like Dani’s legs.
But the doctor seemed pleased with them. He studied them deeply and nodded his head wisely. Then he turned to Papa and remarked, “This child should stay in the hospital. He has broken his leg very badly.”
But Papa refused completely. He was not going to leave his little son to this man with his black beard and rough hands.
“We will look after Dani at home,” he said firmly. “Surely that is possible?”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “It is possible,” he replied, “but I think he would be better here. I cannot come so far. You would have to keep bringing him in.”
“I don’t mind bringing him in,” said Papa stubbornly, and Annette put her little hand into his big one and gave it a squeeze. She, too, wanted Dani at home.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders again and spread out his hands. Dani was once more trundled off by a nurse in a great hurry, and this time he did not come back for more than half an hour.
When at last he was returned to them, he looked sleepy and strange and could remember absolutely nothing but a funny smell. It was Annette who discovered that he had on a big white plaster from his waist downward. She pointed it out to Dani, who stared down at himself in astonishment.
“Why have I got to wear these hard white trousers?” he asked at last. Then, without waiting for a reply, he said that he did not like the doctor’s big, black beard and he wanted to go home.
Annette did not like it either, and they all wanted to go home—Annette because she was hungry, Dani because he was tired, and Papa because he was thinking about his cows.
When the doctor came back with a second photograph, Dani and his family were nowhere to be seen. In the far distance a sprightly horse was making her way home as fast as possible, pulling a hay cart and three passengers behind her. They had completely forgotten to ask when they should bring Dani back again, or for how long he had to wear his plaster.
They reached home at five o’clock and Dani was put to bed on the sofa, so that he wouldn’t feel lonely, and Annette slept on a mattress beside him in case he should wake in the night and want her. Here Dani stayed for weeks with his leg on a pillow, and everything was arranged around him.
Annette stopped going to school altogether for the time being, and almost became Dani’s slave. She told him all her stories over and over again and played games with him all day long. Grandmother cooked wonderful little meals in the kitchen to tempt the appetite of the “poor little sick boy” whose appetite didn’t need tempting at all, for he was almost as jolly and cheery and hungry on his couch as he was off it. When Annette was busy, he would lie flat on his back on the veranda bed and sing like a happy lark.
He certainly had everything to make him happy; the village saw to that. They had loved his pretty, delicate mother who had grown up amongst them, and when she died they were all prepared to love her children—especially Dani, who had eyes as blue as forget-me-nots and a voice like a bird and was altogether as adorable as a five-year-old can be.
Dani, who had always taken love for granted, was not spoiled by it. He was just pleased and excited, for with so many wonderful presents and visits, he hardly missed his freedom at first.
The village children wandered up the mountains in search of the first alpine flowers for him until the table by his bed looked like an alpine flower garden. Because Dani loved to see them, Grandmother cheerfully put up with the noise and the muddy boots until the veranda, out of school hours, became a sort of public playground where Dani was in charge.
Then there was the schoolmaster, who sent fascinating picture books, and the innkeeper who sent brown speckled eggs, and the baker who made golden doughboys with currant eyes and candied peel buttons. He used to slip them in Annette’s bread basket with a wink, and that was why Dani always insisted on unpacking the shopping-basket himself. He never knew what he might find—and whatever it was, he was quite certain it was for him.
But the postman was best of all. The Burnier family hardly ever received a letter, so the postman himself decided to write Dani a picture postcard each week, and trudged up the hill to deliver it himself. He came a different day each week, so every morning Dani got excited in case he should come.
The postman was never in a hurry, and always saw to it that the postcard was at the very bottom of the sack. He enjoyed Dani’s squeals of excitement as he burrowed among the letters and read the names on all the cards in search of his own. And if the post that day was a little marked and crumpled, no one minded or asked questions.
10
Lucien Makes a Friend
Just as the village supported Dani and did all they could to comfort him, they also shunned Lucien, and did all they could to show how much they despised him.
For a few days he was really tormented. The schoolmaster made a speech about him in school, showing everyone what a bully and coward he was. The children chased him out of the playground and threw mud at him. But they soon gave that up and simply settled down to ignore him. When teams were picked he was always left till last. There was one extra single desk in the classroom, which he had to sit in. Everyone else sat in pairs.
Even the tiny children got out of his way, for their mothers had warned them to have nothing to do with him. “He is a cruel bully and may harm you as he harmed little Dani Burnier,” they said. The little ones looked on him as some kind of monster and ran away whenever he came near them.
Down at the village, the shopkeepers handed over the things he bought without speaking to him. The milkman never chatted with him, and the grocer’s wife never slipped trimmings of gingerbread into his hand as she did for the other children. They never spoke unkindly to him; they just took no notice of him.
Lucien, who was too shy to try to do anything to make them like him, drifted into a lonely little world of his own. He walked to and from school alone, he shopped alone, and in the playground he usually played alone. It was not that the children would not have him, for children forgive and forget quickly. It was simply his shame that kept him from joining in. Always he saw their dislike of him in their fa
ces and imagined they were thinking of Dani. Gradually he grew to be afraid of them, from the milkman right down to the youngest child in the school.
Lucien himself was always thinking of Dani. The thought haunted him, and he longed to ask Annette what the doctor had said. But Annette had neither looked at him nor spoken to him since the day of the accident, and he dared not speak to her.
At home his mother found him more silent but more hard-working, for he had suddenly discovered that only by hard work could he forget his loneliness. Instead of being lazy like he used to be, he started working very hard on the farm. His mother praised him loudly, and his sister became kinder, for she herself was a hard-working girl and Lucien’s laziness had always annoyed her greatly.
There was one place, and one only, where Lucien was completely happy, and that was in the forest. Here the kindly trees shut him in, and the world that disliked him was shut out. Here Lucien fled whenever he had any spare time. Squatting against a tree trunk or boulder, he would carve away at his little figures and forget everything else in the joy of carving. Sitting beneath the pine trees, he would feel the sun on his hair and hands as he worked, and the peace and beauty of the forest in early summer soothed and comforted him.
High up on the borders of the forest there stood a small chalet where a very old man lived by himself. He had retired there long ago and lived alone with his goat, his hens and his cat. He was a strange old man and everyone in the village was afraid of him. He didn’t come down to the village to shop very often, but when he did, the children ran away from him. They called him “the old man of the mountain.” Some said he was a miser, some that he was hiding from the police, and others that he was crazy and bad. Whatever the real reason, no one had ever been inside his home, and no one ever passed that way after dark.
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