Toni, the Little Woodcarver - Johanna Spyri (universal ebook reader .txt) 📗

poor Toni's fate, exclaimed in great excitement:

"How can a mother allow such a thing to happen to her child! It is wholly inconceivable, quite incomprehensible!"

"You really can have no idea," replied the doctor soothingly, "what poor mothers are obliged to let happen to their children. But don't believe that it causes them less pain than others. You see how many suffer that we know nothing about, and how hard poverty oppresses."

"Will you be able to help the poor young boy?" asked the lady from Geneva.

"If I can only bring out the right emotion in him," he replied, "so that the spell, which holds him imprisoned, can be broken. Now everything in him is numbed and lifeless."

"Oh, do help him! Do help him!" begged the sick lady imploringly. "Oh, if I could do something for him!" And she walked to and fro thinking about a way to help, for Toni's condition went deeply to her heart.

It was the second week of August, when Toni came to the sanitarium. Day after day, week after week passed and the doctor could only bring the same sad news to the two women, who every morning awaited his report with great anxiety. Not the slightest change was noticed. Every means was tried to amuse the boy, to see if he would perhaps laugh. Other attempts were devised to disturb him, to make him cry. They performed all kinds of tricks to attract his attention. All, all were in vain; no trace of interest or emotion was aroused in Toni.

"If he could only be made to laugh or to cry once!" repeated the doctor over and over again.

When he had been four weeks in the sanitarium all hope disappeared, for the doctor had exhausted every means.

"Now I will try one thing more," he said one morning to his wife. "I have written to my friend, the Pastor, and asked him if the boy was very much attached to his mother, and if so, to send for her right away. Perhaps to see her again would make an impression on him."

The two women looked forward in great suspense to Elsbeth's arrival.

In the first week of September the last guests left the hotel in Interlaken where Elsbeth had spent the summer. She immediately started on her way home, for she wanted to get everything in order before Toni came down from the mountain. She never thought but that he was still up there, and had no suspicion of all that had happened. When she reached home, she went at once to the Matten farm to enquire for Toni and to bring the goat home.

The farmer was very friendly, and thought her goat was now by far one of the finest, because she had had good fodder so long. But when Elsbeth asked after her Toni, he broke off abruptly and said he had so much to do, she must go to the Pastor, for he would have the best knowledge about the boy. It immediately seemed to Elsbeth that it was a little strange for the Pastor to know best what happened up on the mountain and while she was leading home the goat, and thinking about the matter, a feeling of anxiety came over her and grew stronger and stronger. As soon as she reached home, she quickly tied the goat, without going into the cottage at all, and ran back the same way she had come, down again to Kandergrund.

The Pastor told her with great consideration, how Toni had not borne the life on the mountain very well and they had been obliged to bring him down, and since it seemed best for him that he should go at once to a good physician for the right care, he had sent the boy immediately to Bern.

His mother was very much shocked and wanted to travel the next day to see for herself if her child was very ill.

But the Pastor said that would not do, but that she should wait until the doctor allowed a visit, and she could be sure that Toni was receiving the best care.

With a heavy heart Elsbeth went back to her cottage. She could do nothing but leave it all to the dear Lord, who alone had been her trust for so many years. But it was only a few days later when the Pastor sent her word that she was to go to Bern at once, as the doctor wished her to come.

Early the following day Elsbeth started. About noon she reached Bern and soon was standing in front of the door of the sanitarium.

She was led to the doctor's living-room and here received with great friendliness by his wife and with still keener sympathy by the lady from Geneva, who had so lived in the history of poor Toni and his mother that she could hardly think of anything else but how to help these two. She had had only the one child and could so well understand the mother's trouble. She had even asked the doctor to allow her to be present when he took the boy to his mother, in order to share in the joy, if the poor boy's delight at seeing her again would affect him as they hoped.

Soon the doctor appeared, and after he had prepared the mother not to expect Toni to speak at the first moment, he brought him in. He led him by the hand into the room, then he let go and stepped to one side.

The mother ran to her Toni and tried to seize his hand. He drew back and pressed into the corner staring into vacancy.

The women and the doctor exchanged sad looks.

His mother went up to him and caressed him. "Toneli, Toneli," she said again and again in a tender voice, "don't you know me? Don't you know your mother any more?"

As always before Toni pressed against the wall, made no motion and stared before him.

In tender tones the mother continued mournfully:

"Oh, Toneli, say just a single word! Only look at me once! Toneli, don't you hear me?"

Toneli remained unmoved.

Still once again the mother looked at him full of tenderness, but only met his staring eyes. It was too much for poor Elsbeth, that the only possession she had on earth, and the one she loved with all her heart, her Toni, should be lost to her, and in such a sad way! She forgot everything around her. She fell on her knees beside her child, and while the tears were bursting from her eyes, she poured out aloud the sorrow in her heart:

Oh God of Love, oh Father-heart,
In whom my trust is founded,
I know full well how good Thou art—
E'en when by grief I am wounded.

Oh Lord, it surely can not be
That Thou wilt let me languish
In hopeless depths of misery
And live in tears of anguish.

Toni's eyes took on a different expression. He looked at his mother. She did not see him and went on imploring in the midst of her tears:

Oh Lord, my soul yearns for thine aid
In this dark vale of weeping;
For Thee I have waited, hoped and prayed,
Assured of thy safe keeping.

Suddenly Toni threw himself on his mother and sobbed aloud. She threw her arms around him and her tears of sorrow turned to loud sobs of joy. The child sobbed aloud also.

"It is won," said the doctor in great delight to the women, who, deeply moved, were looking on at the mother and boy.

Then the doctor opened the door of the next room and beckoned Elsbeth to go in there with Toni. He thought it would be good for both to be alone for a while. In there after a while Toni began to talk quite naturally with his mother and asked her:

"Are we going home, Mother, to the stone hut? Shan't I have to go up on the mountain any more?"

And she quieted him and said she would now take him right home, and they would stay there together. Soon all Toni's thoughts came back again quite clearly, and after a while he said:

"But I must earn something, Mother."

"Don't trouble about that now," said Elsbeth quietly; "the dear Lord will show a way when it is time."

Then they began to talk about the goat, how pretty and fat she had grown, and Toni gradually became quite lively.

After an hour the doctor brought them both into the living-room back to the ladies. Toni was entirely changed, his eyes had now an earnest but quite different expression. The lady from Geneva was indescribably delighted. She sat down beside him at once, and he had to tell her where he had been to school and what he had liked to study.

But the doctor beckoned to Elsbeth to come to him.

"Listen, my good woman," he began, "the words which you repeated made a deep, penetrating impression on the boy's heart. Did he know the hymn already?"

"Oh, my Lord," exclaimed Elsbeth, "many hundred times I have repeated it beside his little bed, when he was very small, often with many tears, and he would weep too, when he didn't know why."

"He wept because you wept, he suffered because you suffered," said the doctor. "Now I understand how he was aroused by these words. With such impressions in early childhood it is no wonder he became a quiet and reserved boy. This explains to me much in the past."

Then the lady from Geneva came up for she wanted to talk with the mother.

"My dear, good woman, he certainly must not go up on the mountain again. He is not fit for it," she said in great eagerness. "We must find something different for him. Has he no taste for some other occupation? But it must be light, for he is not strong and needs care."

"Oh, yes, he has a great desire to learn something," said his mother. "From a little boy he has wished for it, but I hardly dare mention it."

"There, there, my good woman, tell me right away about it," said the lady encouragingly, expecting something unheard-of.

"He wants so much to be a wood-carver, and has a good deal of talent for it, but the cost of board and instruction together is more than eighty francs."

"Is that all?" exclaimed the lady in the greatest surprise, "is that all? Come, my boy," and she ran to Toni again, "would you really like to become a wood-carver—better than anything else?"

The joy which shone in Toni's eyes, when he answered that he would, showed the lady what she had to do. She had such a longing to help Toni, that she wanted to act immediately that very hour.

"Would you like to learn at once, go to a teacher right away?" she asked him.

Toni gladly replied that he would.

But now came a new thought. She turned to the doctor. "Perhaps he ought to recover his health first?"

The doctor replied that he had been already thinking about that. The mother had told him that she knew a very good master up in Frutigen. "Now I think," he went on to say, "that carving is not a strenuous work, and one of the most important things for Toni is to have for some time good, nourishing food. In Frutigen there is a very good inn, if he only could—"

"I will undertake that, Doctor, I will undertake that," interrupted the lady. "I will go with him. We will start to-morrow. In Frutigen I will provide for Toni's board and lodging and for everything he needs." In her great delight the lady shook hands with both the mother and the boy repeatedly, and went out to instruct her maid about preparations for the journey.

When the mother with her boy had been taken to their room, the doctor said with great delight to his wife:

"We have two recoveries. Our lady is also cured. A new interest has come to her, and you will see she will have new life in providing for this young boy. This