Early next morning the whole family drove to the station in the mule cart and arrived half an hour too early because they were so afraid of missing the train. They stood on the platform among the milk churns waiting for Monsieur Givet, who soon joined them. Annette carried their luggage in a brown paper parcel, and her hand was clasped tightly in her father’s.
Dani, in his cloak and hood, seemed unusually shy and kept edging off behind the milk churns. He seemed nervous and didn’t want to be hugged when it came to say good-bye. The train was far down the valley before Annette understood why. Then she noticed strange movements under Dani’s cloak, as if he was having hiccups.
“What is that under your cloak, Dani?” she asked, gazing in astonishment at it.
Dani went pink. “It’s only one, ’Nette,” he replied nervously. “One what?” inquired Annette, glancing worriedly up at Monsieur Givet. But the doctor was reading a book and not listening.
“Just him,” explained Dani, and he undid a button. The face and whiskers of a white kitten appeared in the gap for a moment, then pulled back inside.
“Dani,” cried Annette, horrified, “you’re a very, very naughty boy! You know Grandmother said you couldn’t have kittens in the hospital. I don’t know what we shall do with him.”
Dani gazed thoughtfully out of the window and said nothing. He couldn’t think of a single excuse for his wickedness, but under his cloak he gave the white kitten a secret squeeze. The white kitten curled its warm body against Dani’s and purred like a little steam engine, and neither of them felt the least bit sorry about it.
25
Getting Better
Dani went straight to bed when they reached the town. He was taken to a large room full of lame children like himself, with a tired-looking nurse in charge. He took one look at them and decided they needed cheering up, so he offered to do kangaroo hops on his bear crutches all down the ward. It was a great success, and within an hour Dani was friends with everybody. The white kitten was given a basket in the kitchen and was allowed in during visiting time.
Annette’s arrival was not quite so happy. She was welcomed kindly by Madame Givet, who was young and pretty and jolly, and taken to her room at the top of the house. When she was left alone, she ran across to the window and looked out to see houses and slushy snow in the streets and low grey skies. She gazed out for a moment and then flung herself on the bed and wept bitterly for her home.
Here Madame Givet found her half an hour later when she came up to see what had happened to her. She said nothing but slipped away and returned with baby Claire in her arms, and laid her down on the bed beside Annette. It was the best thing she could have done. Five minutes later Annette was sitting up smiling, with baby Claire chuckling and giggling on her lap, and in another minute Annette was chuckling back.
She was happy and busy at Monsieur Givet’s house. In the mornings she helped Madame and looked after the children, in the afternoons she sat with Dani, and in the evenings she did her lessons. The children were not always good with her, and often, to begin with, Madame Givet would have to be sent for to keep the peace. Although she sometimes felt cross and impatient with them, she tried hard to remember what Grandmother had said. Gradually the love of Jesus in her began to make her patient and kind and unselfish, and she found that she could speak gently and keep her temper.
Dani was in the hospital a week before he had his operation. He went off to the operating room feeling quite excited. But when he woke up hours later, he was very upset to find that his bed had been tipped up and there were large iron weights on the end of his leg, which hurt dreadfully. He felt sick and hot, and screamed for Annette.
All that week Dani lay on his back, with the weights hanging on his leg, feeling feverish and miserable. Annette came every day and read to him and told him stories and tried to make him forget how badly his leg was hurting him. But it was a miserable week. Dull clouds hung low over the grey waters of the lake, and Dani tossed and fretted and tried to be brave but couldn’t manage it.
In those long days there was just one thing that comforted Dani. On the wall opposite him was a picture with some writing under it that Dani couldn’t read. When he was tired of the pain, and tired of stories, and tired of the grey lake and the other children, he looked at his picture, because he never got tired of it.
It was a picture of the Lord Jesus sitting in a field of flowers, and the children of the world were standing around him, looking up into his face. On the grass at his feet sat a black boy, and on his knee was an Indian child. His arms were around a little girl in a blue dress, and the children of China and the South Seas were nestling up to him.
It was about a week after the operation when Dani and Annette first talked properly about that picture. The lights were on, and most of the children were asleep, but Annette still sat beside Dani. She had stayed late the past few nights because he was so restless without her.
Now he lay with his arms flung around his head on his pillow. His eyes were very bright. He was very, very tired and wanted badly to go to sleep, but the pain in his leg kept him awake. So he rolled his head around to look at the picture with the writing underneath.
“What does it say, ’Nette?” asked Dani suddenly.
“It says, ‘Let the little children come to me,’” replied Annette, who was looking tired, too.
“I know that story,” went on Dani, in a tired little voice; “Grandmother told it to me. Are those the children in the Bible?”
“No,” said Annette, “they’re not the children from the Bible story, Dani. They are other children from all over the world—India and Africa, and I think the little girl in the blue dress is probably from Switzerland.”
“Why?” asked Dani.
“I suppose to show that all children can come to Jesus, and not just the ones in the Bible.”
“How?” asked Dani.
“I don’t know quite how to explain. You just say you want to come, Dani, and then you’re there. I suppose Jesus sort of picks you up in His arms, like the children in the Bible, even though you can’t see Him.”
“Oh,” said Dani, “I see. Annette, my leg hurts so badly. I wish I could go to sleep.”
He began to cry fretfully and throw his arms about. Annette shook up the pillows and gave him a drink, and he sank back with a tired sigh.
“Sing to me,” he commanded, and Annette sang very softly because she was shy of the nurse hearing.
As she sang, Dani closed his eyes.
In the few seconds before he fell asleep, Dani thought he saw the picture again, but instead of the Indian child sitting on Jesus’s lap, he recognized himself, with his bear crutches lying in the grass at his feet.
“It’s me,” said Dani to himself, and he fell fast asleep, full of joy.
While Dani lay sleeping, Monsieur Givet came and lifted one of the weights off his leg, and his fever left him. When he woke up he thought he must somehow have gotten into a new world, and he lay quite still thinking about it for a long time. He felt cool and comfortable, and his leg had stopped hurting. The big glass doors of the ward had been flung open, and through them Dani could see, for the first time, sparkling blue water, misty blue mountains on the other side of the lake, and blue sky.
“I’m going to get well,” said Dani to himself.
The door opened, and Annette clattered up the ward, warm and rosy from the wind. She usually popped across after breakfast just to see how he was.
“Isn’t it a lovely day, Dani?” she cried. “Look at the lake and the mountains on the other side, and the little ships.”
Dani turned his face seriously toward her.
“Annette, where are my bear crutches?”
“Here, Dani, behind your locker. Why?”
“Well, you know that poor little boy in the corner?
He might like them. Give them to him.”
“Why, Dani? You like them so much yourself.”
“I know. But I shan’t want them ever anymore.
I’m going to get better and run about in ordinary boots.”
And he was quite right. He never did want them anymore. He became perfectly well.
26
A New Start
Just as the weeks passed in the valley, so the weeks passed in the mountains. The snow began to melt, and the little streams became torrents, and the first crocuses pushed up in the fields along the river. The cattle and goats shut up in the stables began to stamp restlessly and cry for freedom. Spring was coming to the mountains.
Grandmother was busy with the spring cleaning and Papa was busy with the new calves. This was a good thing, for when they were busy they did not miss the children quite so badly. Grandmother, who was really much too old and blind to be spring cleaning, would often sit down suddenly and imagine she heard the hop and clatter of one boot and one crutch climbing the steps, and the cheerful sound of a little boy singing out of tune. How they missed the children!
Lucien missed them, too. He lived farther up the mountain than any other child, and he never walked home alone without wishing Annette was walking beside him. But he was not lonely or unhappy at school any longer. He had proved to them that he was sorry for what he had done by his brave journey across the mountain, and they had accepted him back as one of themselves.
And Lucien himself was different. Ever since that night when he had asked Jesus to come into his heart, he had known that there must be a difference. The old bad temper and laziness and unhappiness could not stay for long in a heart that was open to the love of Jesus. Gradually Lucien began to find that, as long as he kept close to Jesus by praying and reading his Bible every day, the love was stronger than the bad temper and the laziness, and that he was growing into a nicer sort of boy.
Often when school was over he would go across to Grandmother’s chalet and help with the spring cleaning. They were great friends now. Indeed, Grandmother would hardly have known what to do without him, for he chopped her wood and did her shopping and brought letters up from the village. This he liked best of all, for they were usually from Annette, and Grandmother always got him to read them aloud to her. There was sometimes a picture from Dani, too. Grandmother kept them all safely in the front of her Bible and often spread them out on the table to look at them. By the end of February she had quite a collection, called “Me in Bed,” “Me Chasing Goats,” “Me Having Medicine,” “Me and Nurse,” “Me and Annette,” “Me and Snowball-Kitten.” Grandmother thought they were all lovely, of course.
Another sadness came into Lucien’s life. His friend, the old wood carver, was going to leave the mountain to go and live down by the lake with his son, Monsieur Givet, and his family. It had all been arranged that afternoon when they first recognized each other.
He was to leave at the beginning of March, and the day before he went Lucien climbed up through the forest to help him pack. He had given away the goat, the cat, and the hens, and sold nearly all his little figures. But he was not selling the house. He was just shutting it up to wait till he came back.
“I shall often come back, Lucien,” he explained. “I couldn’t leave the mountain for long. I’ll stop down there for a while, but then I shall hear the mountains calling me, and back I’ll come for a bit of a holiday.”
He looked thoughtfully across the valley, then glanced around the bare shelves of the hut.
“I’m taking a few of my figures for the children,” he remarked. “They may like them. One, Lucien, I kept for you. I came across it when I was sorting through them the other night. It’s one I thought I couldn’t part with, but I’d like you to have it if you’d like it.”
Lucien looked up eagerly. “I’d love to have one, Monsieur,” he replied. “It will remind me of you, and besides, I might be able to copy it.”
The old man went to the cupboard and took out the gift he had laid aside for Lucien. He put it in the boy’s hands and watched him closely as he examined it.
It looked simple enough at first sight. It was a wooden cross made of two pieces of rough wood, but the crossbeam was fixed to the post by beautifully carved ropes, twisted in knots. Lucien’s fingers touched the perfect carving gently, and he lifted shining eyes to his old master.
“It’s beautiful,” he cried. “I can’t think how you carved those ropes without breaking the wood.” Then he added rather shyly, “It’s the cross where Jesus was crucified, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied the old man simply. “I carved it the night my master died—the night he spoke to me about the love and mercy of God—and the night I believed I could be forgiven. Once you and I had a talk about loving. The cross is the place where we see love made perfect.”
Lucien looked up again quickly.
“Perfect love,” he repeated. “That’s what it says in Grandmother’s verse. It keeps coming. It’s what Annette and I talked about the night before she went away.”
“Yes,” agreed the old man. “You’ll often hear it. Perfect love. It means love that goes on doing until there isn’t any more to be done, and that goes on suffering until it can’t suffer any more. That’s why, when Jesus hung on the cross, He said, ‘It is finished.’ There wasn’t one sin left that couldn’t be forgiven, not one sinner who couldn’t be saved, because He had died. He had loved perfectly.”
The old man seemed to have forgotten Lucien and to be talking to himself. But Lucien was listening all the same. He said good-bye to his old friend and promised to come up early next morning and carry his pack to the station on the way to school. Then he ran home. He was in a hurry because he wanted to write to Annette so that the old man could take a letter with him next morning. But the first thing to do was to hang his little cross carefully above his bed. Then he ran out to the kitchen to find a pen and paper.
The kitchen was in rather a mess. His mother was over with the cows and had not had time to wash the pans or empty the bucket. Lucien usually helped her, but tonight he was in a hurry. If he slipped back into his bedroom he could write without being disturbed, and she would clear the mess and not know he had come in.
He hurried off and curled himself up on the floor by his bed. He was just starting to write when he happened to glance up and caught sight of the carved cross hanging on the wall.
He stared at it for a moment or two, thinking hard. What was it the old man had said? “Perfect love goes on doing until there isn’t anything more to be done.”
He in some small way wanted to be like Jesus and to love perfectly, too. And there were all those dirty pans out in the kitchen waiting to be washed.
He went rather pink and got up slowly. When his mother came in half an hour later, she found the kitchen all clean and tidy and a happy-hearted Lucien writing at the table.
He went up to the old man early next morning while the forest was still dark, and they came down together, leaving the lonely hut waiting for his return.
The old man went off on the train that had carried away Annette and Dani, and his eyes fixed sadly on the mountains.
“When the narcissi begin to come out, I shall come back,” he reminded Lucien as the train was starting off. “You write and tell me when they’re out in the valley, and that will give me plenty of time to get back before they flower in the mountain. Don’t forget, Lucien.”
It was not very long after this that Lucien collected a letter for Grandmother from the post office and hurried up the hill to give it to her, for he knew it was from Annette. He clattered up the veranda steps shouting the good news, and Grandmother came eagerly out.
“Read it to me, Lucien,” she said, and sat down in the sunshine, folding her hands and shutting her eyes so she could concentrate on the words.
It was a very short letter, and Lucien read it all in one breath.
“Dear Papa and Grandmother,” it said, “Dani and I are coming home the day after tomorrow. Dani is quite well again. We are longing to see you, and Dani says please bring Klaus to the station. Your loving Annette.”
There was also a note from Madame Givet g
iving the exact time of their arrival, and a picture from Dani called, “Me Coming Home in the Train.”
Just for a few minutes Grandmother began to cry —the shaky little cry of a very weak old woman— but she quickly wiped away her tears and pretended to become a very strong old woman, because there was such a lot to be done.
“Go over to the shed and give that letter to Monsieur Burnier, Lucien,” she said firmly, “and then come back here and help me right away. There’s a lot to be done—beds to air, cakes to cook, and the furniture to be rubbed up. We must have everything looking its best for the children.”
Papa, on receiving the news, said, “Oh!” and scratched his head. Then for the first time in his life he upset the milk pail, and shortly afterward disappeared into the forest and didn’t come back for a long time.
The next day dawned clear and beautiful. There was no school. Lucien was up at daybreak picking flowers. He arranged them in a bowl on the veranda table and then set out for the station, walking slowly because there was plenty of time and plenty to think about. Grandmother, Papa, and Klaus had gone in the mule cart.
It was such a lovely spring morning, not unlike the day just over a year ago when Dani had fallen, thought Lucien. What a dark day that had been. The memory of it spoiled his happy thoughts. It had all been his fault they had ever had to go away, and perhaps after all they wouldn’t be very pleased to see him. Annette had said Dani was well, but Lucien could hardly believe it.
He reached the station feeling very nervous, and stood away from the others, with his hands in his pockets, because he suddenly felt a little afraid of meeting them, and wished he hadn’t come.
Papa kept his eyes fixed on the far point down the valley where the train would appear between the mountains, and Grandmother struggled with Klaus, who seemed to want to set off down the line and meet the train on her own.
“It’s coming,” cried Papa.
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