The storm ceased; the noble ship rose and fell more regularly on the troubled water, and a boat manned by stout oarsmen put out from it for the base of the cliff. “They are pirates,” thought Signe, “who know the entrance to the secret way.” She little thought that the ship was the Long Serpent, and that it bore Olaf, the boy companion of her early childhood, back to claim his own.
A day and a night the Long Serpent had lain at the entrance of the fiord in the very teeth of the northeaster which prevented it from making the harbor. Olaf had recognized the Castle of the Winds. “The sorcerers,” he said, “have woven a spell to prevent the entrance of the gospel to the fiord. They are masters of the wind through the aid of the Prince of the Power of the Air, but even he cannot prevail against the Christ.”
Standing in the prow of the vessel he lifted his cross-handled sword and bade the god Frey remember that Baldur was dead and that all other deities must yield to him who commanded both wind and sea; and they obeyed him. There was a slight pause in the storm, and Olaf commanded the boat to be lowered, that he might pay a visit to the castle from which pirates had snatched him and sold him to slavery.
He gave the occupants of the castle his usual curt terms, baptism or death. All willingly chose to adhere to the new religion, for the wizards were hated as well as feared by their servants. He liberated the slaves destined for sacrifice, and his anger knew no bounds when he learned that his little friend Signe was among the number.
He was interrupted by the announcement that the wizards were returning and were at that moment at the castle gate with a troop of horsemen. Guarded by his four trusty men-at-arms, two in advance and two in the rear, and with his arm about the trembling Signe, he hastened down the secret way and regained the Long Serpent. But the other captives whom he had liberated fired the castle, and made their escape as best they might in the confusion that followed Olaf saw the bent form of one of the sorcerers upon the watch-tower outlined against a background of flame; and, either at Olaf’s command or by his own black art, the face of the sorcerer may still be seen outlined on the crags at the entrance to the fiord, though the castle has crumbled into formless débris.
I do not know the after-history of Signe — perhaps she became Olaf’s bride; but names of other women, Queen Sigrid the Haughty, Gudrun, the farmer’s daughter, and the imperious Thyri, are linked by tradition with his, and it is possible that she led quite as happy a life as the wife of some simple peasant.
Baldur is dead, and the power of the Jotuns too is over. The stories of the Vikings read like fairy-tales, and King Olaf himself is hardly more to us than a mythical Jack-the-Giant-Killer.
“The reign of violence is dead,
Or dying surely from the world,
While Love triumphant reigns instead.”
CHARLIE’S FIRST DOUGHNUT.
IT was a queer idea that Charlie had of doughnuts, and one that would make a New England boy laugh outright.
He had heard his mamma talk of them all his life, and always as of something surpassingly delicious, and more tempting than had ever been, would ever be, or ever could be seen on any table or in any confectioner’s window in all Italy.
She often described to him their brown crispness and savory odor as they passed hot, piled high in a huge pan, from an American cook-stove to an American pantry, and he fancied he knew as well as if he had tasted it a thousand times, their sweet tenderness as they melted cold on appreciative tongues at American supper-tables.
Nevertheless, as many times as his mamma had told Charlie of their flavor, their looks, and their ingredients, and so sure as he was that he knew as much about them as though he had grown up in Massachusetts instead of in Italy, his idea was, as I have said, a very queer one. For instance, he could never believe — as often as he was told to the contrary — that these crisp, tender, toothsome doughnuts were not dotted thick with raisins. For being particularly fond of raisins, he always associated them in his mind with every unknown dainty described to him as being a specialty of his dear, but unknown native land. Squash pies, apple puddings, buckwheat cakes, molasses candy, johnny cake, and even sweet potatoes — he never thought of any of these strange untasted deliciousnesses upon which his mamma’s American visitors often waxed eloquent, that he did not see them in his mind’s eye gemmed blackly with his favorite fruit. Likewise could he never quite disassociate them with chocolate, it having been his lifelong experience in Italy, that few dainties ever came upon the table without at least a dash or suspicion of chocolate about them — oftener a complete covering, thick, brown and shining, in substance much like the frosting one sees on fine cakes in America.
Thus you see how curious and foreign to one who has never lived in our country, are some of the commonest things of our daily life. To many, many people of this world, candy pulls, coasting frolics, sleigh rides, baked beans, fish balls, mince pies and doughnuts, are as remotely foreign and almost incomprehensible as sleeping in a banyan-tree, hunting crocodiles, pelting masqueraders with confetti from Roman balconies, tramping bare-legged in the wine press, or gathering and eating a dinner of snails, would be to you.
Charlie had lived in Italy ever since he was two years old. Now that he was eight, and could read the most interesting tales in his mother’s American newspapers and magazines quite as well as he could his Italian school books, and had received for his birthday presents a - good many story-books of American child life, he was fully convinced that America was the most glorious country for boys that the sun shines on. This was why he asked so many questions about America, talked so incessantly of it, and bragged so tremendously of being an American to his Italian playmates, that sometimes his mamma almost wished he had been born a Hottentot or a Heathen Chinese.
America was upon his tongue indoors and out.
He could never see one of those melancholy processions of black, blue, or red-petticoated schoolboys marshalled by a priest, in robes for their daily walk — or rather crawl — to the Pincio, that he did not almost prance himself off his little fat legs with joy that he wasn’t a Roman schoolboy, and that he belonged to a blessed country where boys don’t wear petticoats, or scholars pass their recreation hours walking in company with a grave, broad-hatted priest, but leapfrog over each other, turn somersaults, shout like wild Indians, or shake with a St. Vitus’ dance of enjoyment if so it pleases them, without rebuke from anybody!
“Cracky! Ge-ra-say-lum! Heio! I’m molto contento to be an Americano!” he would cry, quite unconscious of any foreign admixture in his words.
“Why, Charlie Norton! what language is that?” his mamma would ask.
And then the young American, swelling like a pau ter pigeon, would answer: “The’Merican language, mamma. That’s always the way we’Merican fellers talk when we go on an old spree into the woods after chestnuts, or down on the river to skate. I’ve read about it in some of my story-books!”
But it was at the dinner-table, in their stone-floored studio in the fifth story of their cold, grim, Roman palace, that Charlie oftenest lost his breath with questions about the good things American boys have to eat when they come home hungry from play or school. And it was there, too, that Mrs. Norton, seeing the dinner already half cold from its journey in a tin box up from Karlin’s restaurant growing still colder, would bid him eat his cheese-covered maccaroni, his oil-fried cucumbers and crisp cuttle-fish in silence, and let her eat hers in peace, or she never would have strength enough to go home to America before he was too big to slide squat a-bumbo downhill, to walk on his hands and head, to go huckleberrying, or to scare her out of her wits some dark night with a pumpkin Jack-o’-lantern.
And then Charlie would become speechless — till the chocolate sweets came on, when he would almost invariably forget himself again: —
“I say, mamma, how many doughnuts could a fellow’ eat at one time?”
One forenoon Mrs. Norton sat in her studio before a pile of dark wet clay. She wore a close cap like a very-old woman, and a long pinafor
e like a very young girl. She was busy shaping something that remotely suggested Charlie’s head as it might look after it had been kicked about for an hour or two in a brisk game of base ball.
Charlie sat before her, evidently bursting with some question about “‘Merica,” but not daring to move his lips while his mother modelled from them.
Mrs. Norton herself spoke at last:
“You are tired, dearie. You need not pose any longer. Go and take this package of American newspapers to Mrs. Millan; the exercise will do you good.”
Mrs. Millan was an old schoolmate of Mrs. Norton’s who was spending the winter in Rome. Charlie left the package of Dixon Telegraphs at her door, and had just turned away when Mrs. Millan called him to wait a moment.
“Here,” she said as she put a small parcel in his hands, “here are a couple of old-fashioned American doughnuts that I made myself. Take them to your mamma; they will remind her of home and of old times.”
DOUGHNUTS!
Charlie nearly tumbled backwards, and Mrs. Millan wondered what in the world made the child blush in such an extraordinary manner.
DOUGHNUTS!
He sniffed at the tissue paper all the way down the street. He looked at the parcel lengthways, sideways, edgeways, broadways, upside, downside, outside, every way but inside. Then he sniffed and sniffed and sniffed till it seemed as if he would draw his little pug nose inside his head, and till the passers-by wondered what strange perfume that bright-eyed ragazzino carried in a paper parcel.
“I wish I could open the package just the weentiest, teentiest bit,” he sighed; “I’m sure mamma wouldn’t care.”
Suddenly a curious expression came over the boy’s face. He stopped short half way across the Piazza di Spagna. “She would never know,” he said, as he looked almost stealthily around. “She will never know,” he repeated as he turned slowly around, and climbed heavily, step by step, the Scala di Spagna. At the top of the stairs he hesitated. He sniffed and sniffed and sniffed at the parcel. He turned his back upon home, and hastened rapidly towards the gardens, where he could eat the doughnuts if he would, and nobody see him.
In the garden he sat upon a stone bench from whence was a glorious view over famous old Rome, its picturesque, red-tiled roofs, its swelling domes and soaring spires, the Tiber in the distance, and beyond the green Campagna, the mist-veiled blue and golden hills. The Italian sun shone warmly. Gay nurses in floating ribbons, brilliant shawls, quaint caps and full short skirts, played about him with their little charges. Here swaggered an Italian officer, all silver and blue. There loitered a gouty cardinal, leaning on a servant’s arm. Statues gleamed among the trees, pretty ladies walked to and fro, or with laughing children fed the floating swans in a miniature lake; and the tinkle of water sounded like drops of silver from yonder grotto. Everything and everybody seemed happy save a little foreign boy in an ulster and blue beret, who sat gloomily regarding two circular golden-brown objects in an open paper upon his lap.
A struggle was going on in that young soul. It was a fateful time for our little American — a time in which his young nature was the battle-ground of good and evil; the scene of one of those terrible conflicts that we all of us have known, and perhaps yet know, and the issues of which are mighty, no matter how trifling their causes.
In this case two doughnuts were the cause: the issue would be either that Charlie should henceforth know himself a liar and thief, or that he would henceforth be strong enough to face any temptation.
He was quite breathless and pale. The doughnuts went up to his mouth, and his lips unclosed — a moment and the battle would be decided, and the victor — ah! which would it be? Alas! the little white teeth thrust themselves into the crisp, sweet morsel, and the tempted little American has his first taste of a good old-fashioned Yankee doughnut.
Just then a troop of black-petticoated, pale-faced schoolboys filed slowly past him, following a grave priest. Instantly comes into his little tossed and troubled heart the usual pity for these continually watched Italian boys who would have been, Charlie thinks, so much happier and healthier had they been born in his own free, far-away country.
Instantly, too, a scarlet blush covers Charlie’s face from his white collar up to his drab hair, and before one could have said “Jack Robinson” (or “Groranni Robansano,” as it might be in an Italian mouth), the doughnuts were re-wrapped in the tissue paper, and Charlie was flying off homewards just as fast as his almost outgrown ulster would let his young legs fly.
— “Oh! mamma, mamma!” he cried, as he burst breathless into the studio where his mother sat, “I — almost — stole—’em — but — I — didn’t — quite just—’cause — some-er — those — poor — Roman — schoolboys — made — faces — at — me — and — I—’membered — in — time — what — you — tçld — me that — they — are — always — cooped up — to — keep—’em — away — from — temptation — while we—’Merican — fellers — are — left — free — to — face — temptation — and — bust — it—”
What more he might have said will remain forever unknown. For just at this point his tongue was paralyzed by the discovery that his mother had a visitor whom he recognized with a great shock to be no other than Mrs. Millan herself.
“And I wasn’t so sharp as I thought I was when I kept saying mamma will never know,” he thought with a spasm of mingled terror and delight.
A year after that Mrs. Norton was one bright day busy packing her trunks, while Charlie capered about her like an insane daddy-long-legs.
“I declare I’m most afraid I’ll break right in two with tickle!” he cried. “I certainly should if I could really believe that we start for America next week.”
At that moment Mrs. Norton opened a pasteboard box which had been carefully packed away for months. As she opened it onç could see that it held a solitary brown, crumbly, dried something. Charlie caught sight of it. “Halloo, what’s—” He broke short off.
Mrs. Norton smiled down tenderly on the crimson face. “One of my treasures, dear. I keep it in remembrance of a Great Victory.”
CAPTAIN SCAMPADORO.
“HERE, Scampadoro! Fine old fellow! Come here, sir!” Scampadoro pricked up his ears, and cast wistful glances toward the speaker. But he stood his ground firmly, or his deck rather, for it was from the trim little yacht “Clovis” that he barked his reply to Tommy Winch, The “Clovis” was moored to a stake in the river, a few rods from the shore. Her owner, Bertie Holden, had gone on board a few moments before, bent on a cruise up the river as far as New London, and of course his trusty dog accompanied him. He always did. Just as he was preparing to hoist sail, however, he bethought him of his gun, which needed some repairs. So leaving Scampadoro in charge of the yacht, he hastened home for the forgotten weapon.
Tommy Winch lived in the little brown cottage on the hill-slope by the river-side, near where the “Clovis” lay at her moorings. Like many other boys, he was more fond of play than work, and it was his special delight to frolic with Scampadoro.
“Here, Scampie!” he continued, “come and find it, sir!” And he concluded this appeal with a series of the most persuasive calls and whistles. But the dog was faithful to his post. He ran up and down the deck, with his eyes intent on Tommy’s movements, giving vent to sundry conversational barks, as if to say, “You see how it is, young fellow! I want to come, but being captain here pro tem, I must not leave.’’
Then Tommy began to tantalize him by throwing stones and chips into the riven “Go fetch it, Scamper! go fetch it!” he shouted with beguiling vivacity.
The temptation was a serious one, but Scampadoro stood dogfully at his post. Tommy continued to throw and shout, till at length he contrived to toss a stick of most alluring aspect right upon the “Clovis’s” rail. Scampadoro made a lively dash for it, being fully convinced that to catch a stick on deck was no violation of duty. But as he snapped at it the stick bounded over in an aggravating manner to the other rail, and then fell into the wate
r.
This was not the worst of it. Captain Scampadoro, springing after it, lost his balance, and tumbled overboard also.
Tommy Winch screamed with delight as Scampadoro came to the surface, shaking the water from his woolly neck, and dismally yelping his disgust at his mishap.
“Find it, and bring it here, old fellow!” he continued.
But Scampadoro was in too deep affliction for such trifling. He paid no attention whatever to Tommy or the stick, but swam around the “Clovis,” making frantic but vain efforts to climb on board again.
Just at this point, when Tommy’s enjoyment was at its height, an interruption happened. This was the way of it. About a half hour before, Tommy had been directed to superintend Old Crumple, the family cow, with explicit instructions to restrain her from wandering out of the grassy lawn into the precious precincts of the kitchen garden. He entered upon this not too laborious duty with great zeal, for he looked upon Crumple in the light of a comrade and friend. When he drove her to pasture, did she not sweeten his toil by bearing him upon her own sleek back?
Now that Tommy’s eye was upon her she behaved with exemplary propriety. She strolled slowly up and down the lawn with almost provoking monotony, grazing cheerfully as she went, and displaying an air of utter unconsciousness of the growing corn only a few rods away. So demure was she, and so like that of a truly model cow was her deportment, that Tommy soon found his task uninteresting. Consequently, “Just for a minute, you know,” he said to himself, he slipped down to the shore for a frolic with Scampadoro.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 587
