The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
time, and this may be only a senile fancy.
THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN'S ROMANCE
'Yes, I will tell you anything about my life that you would like to
know, Mr. Twain,' she said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest
eyes rest placidly upon my face, 'for it is kind and good of you to like
me and care to know about me.'
She had been absently scraping blubber-grease from her cheeks with
a small bone-knife and transferring it to her fur sleeve, while she
watched the Aurora Borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky
and wash the lonely snow plain and the templed icebergs with the rich
hues of the prism, a spectacle of almost intolerable splendour and
beauty; but now she shook off her reverie and prepared to give me the
humble little history I had asked for. She settled herself comfortably
on the block of ice which we were using as a sofa, and I made ready to
listen.
She was a beautiful creature. I speak from the Esquimaux point of view.
Others would have thought her a trifle over-plump. She was just twenty
years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching girl in her
tribe. Even now, in the open air, with her cumbersome and shapeless fur
coat and trousers and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face was at
least apparent; but her figure had to be taken on trust. Among all the
guests who came and went, I had seen no girl at her father's hospitable
trough who could be called her equal. Yet she was not spoiled. She
was sweet and natural and sincere, and if she was aware that she was a
belle, there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed that
knowledge.
She had been my daily comrade for a week now, and the better I knew her
the better I liked her. She had been tenderly and carefully brought up,
in an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the polar regions,
for her father was the most important man of his tribe and ranked at the
top of Esquimaux civilisation. I made long dog-sledge trips across the
mighty ice floes with Lasca--that was her name--and found her company
always pleasant and her conversation agreeable. I went fishing with her,
but not in her perilous boat: I merely followed along on the ice and
watched her strike her game with her fatally accurate spear. We went
sealing together; several times I stood by while she and the family dug
blubber from a stranded whale, and once I went part of the way when she
was hunting a bear, but turned back before the finish, because at bottom
I am afraid of bears.
However, she was ready to begin her story, now, and this is what she
said:
'Our tribe had always been used to wander about from place to place over
the frozen seas, like the other tribes, but my father got tired of that,
two years ago, and built this great mansion of frozen snow-blocks--look
at it; it is seven feet high and three or four times as long as any of
the others--and here we have stayed ever since. He was very proud of his
house, and that was reasonable, for if you have examined it with care
you must have noticed how much finer and completer it is than houses
usually are. But if you have not, you must, for you will find it has
luxurious appointments that are quite beyond the common. For instance,
in that end of it which you have called the “parlour,” the raised
platform for the accommodation of guests and the family at meals is the
largest you have ever seen in any house--is it not so?'
'Yes, you are quite right, Lasca; it is the largest; we have nothing
resembling it in even the finest houses in the United States.' This
admission made her eyes sparkle with pride and pleasure. I noted that,
and took my cue.
'I thought it must have surprised you,' she said. 'And another thing;
it is bedded far deeper in furs than is usual; all kinds of furs--seal,
sea-otter, silver-grey fox, bear, marten, sable--every kind of fur in
profusion; and the same with the ice-block sleeping-benches along the
walls which you call “beds.” Are your platforms and sleeping-benches
better provided at home?'
'Indeed, they are not, Lasca--they do not begin to be.' That pleased
her again. All she was thinking of was the number of furs her aesthetic
father took the trouble to keep on hand, not their value. I could have
told her that those masses of rich furs constituted wealth--or would in
my country--but she would not have understood that; those were not the
kind of things that ranked as riches with her people. I could have
told her that the clothes she had on, or the every-day clothes of
the commonest person about her, were worth twelve or fifteen hundred
dollars, and that I was not acquainted with anybody at home who wore
twelve-hundred dollar toilets to go fishing in; but she would not have
understood it, so I said nothing. She resumed:
'And then the slop-tubs. We have two in the parlour, and two in the rest
of the house. It is very seldom that one has two in the parlour. Have
you two in the parlour at home?'
The memory of those tubs made me gasp, but I recovered myself before she
noticed, and said with effusion:
'Why, Lasca, it is a shame of me to expose my country, and you must not
let it go further, for I am speaking to you in confidence; but I give
you my word of honour that not even the richest man in the city of New
York has two slop-tubs in his drawing-room.'
She clapped her fur-clad hands in innocent delight, and exclaimed:
'Oh, but you cannot mean it, you cannot mean it!'
'Indeed, I am in earnest, dear. There is Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is
almost the richest man in the whole world. Now, if I were on my dying
bed, I could say to you that not even he has two in his drawing-room.
Why, he hasn't even one--I wish I may die in my tracks if it isn't
true.'
Her lovely eyes stood wide with amazement, and she said, slowly, and
with a sort of awe in her voice:
'How strange--how incredible--one is not able to realise it. Is he
penurious?'
'No--it isn't that. It isn't the expense he minds, but--er--well, you
know, it would look like showing off. Yes, that is it, that is the idea;
he is a plain man in his way, and shrinks from display.'
'Why, that humility is right enough,' said Lasca, 'if one does not carry
it too far--but what does the place look like?'
'Well, necessarily it looks pretty barren and unfinished, but--'
'I should think so! I never heard anything like it. Is it a fine
house--that is, otherwise?'
'Pretty fine, yes. It is very well thought of.'
The girl was silent awhile, and sat dreamily gnawing a candle-end,
apparently trying to think the thing out. At last she gave her head a
little toss and spoke out her opinion with decision:
'Well, to my mind there's a breed of humility which is itself a species
of showing off when you get down to the marrow of it; and when a man is
able to afford two slop-tubs in his parlour, and doesn't do it, it may
be that he is truly humble-minded, but it's a hundred times more likely
that he is just trying to strike the public eye. In my judgment, your
Mr. Vanderbilt knows what he is about.'
I tried to modify this verdict, feeling that a double slop-tub standard
was not a fair one to try everybody by, although a sound enough one
in its own habitat; but the girl's head was set, and she was not to be
persuaded. Presently she said:
'Do the rich people, with you, have as good sleeping-benches as ours,
and made out of as nice broad ice-blocks?'
'Well, they are pretty good--good enough--but they are not made of
ice-blocks.'
'I want to know! Why aren't they made of ice-blocks?'
I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expensiveness of ice
in a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man or your
ice-bill will weigh more than your ice. Then she cried out:
'Dear me, do you buy your ice?'
'We most surely do, dear.'
She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said:
'Oh, I never heard of anything so silly! My! there's plenty of it--it
isn't worth anything. Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight,
right now. I wouldn't give a fish-bladder for the whole of it.'
'Well, it's because you don't know how to value it, you little
provincial muggings. If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could
buy all the whales in the market with it.'
She looked at me doubtfully, and said:
'Are you speaking true?'
'Absolutely. I take my oath to it.'
This made her thoughtful. Presently she said, with a little sigh:
'I wish I could live there.'
I had merely meant to furnish her a standard of values which she could
understand; but my purpose had miscarried. I had only given her the
impression that whales were cheap and plenty in New York, and set her
mouth to watering for them. It seemed best to try to mitigate the evil
which I had done, so I said:
'But you wouldn't care for whale-meat if you lived there. Nobody does.'
'What!'
'Indeed they don't.'
'Why don't they?'
'Wel-l-l, I hardly know. It's prejudice, I think. Yes, that is it--just
prejudice. I reckon somebody that hadn't anything better to do started
a prejudice against it, some time or other, and once you get a caprice
like that fairly going, you know it will last no end of time.'
'That is true--perfectly true,' said the girl, reflectively. 'Like our
prejudice against soap, here--our tribes had a prejudice against soap at
first, you know.'
I glanced at her to see if she was in earnest. Evidently she was. I
hesitated, then said, cautiously:
'But pardon me. They had a prejudice against soap? Had?'--with falling
inflection.
'Yes--but that was only at first; nobody would eat it.'
'Oh--I understand. I didn't get your idea before.'
She resumed:
'It was just a prejudice. The first time soap came here from the
foreigners, nobody liked it; but as soon as it got to be fashionable,
everybody liked it, and now everybody has it that can afford it. Are you
fond of it?'
'Yes, indeed; I should die if I couldn't have it--especially here. Do
you like it?'
'I just adore it! Do you like candles?'
'I regard them as an absolute necessity. Are you fond of them?'
Her eyes fairly danced, and she exclaimed:
'Oh! Don't mention it! Candles!--and soap!--'
'And fish-interiors!--'
'And train-oil--'
'And slush!--'
'And whale-blubber!--'
'And carrion! and sour-krout! and beeswax! and tar! and turpentine! and
molasses! and--'
'Don't--oh, don't--I shall expire with ecstasy!--'
'And then serve it all up in a slush-bucket, and invite the neighbours
and sail in!'
But this vision of an ideal feast was too much for her, and she swooned
away, poor thing. I rubbed snow in her face and brought her to, and
after a while got her excitement cooled down. By-and-by she drifted into
her story again:
'So we began to live here in the fine house. But I was not happy. The
reason was this: I was born for love: for me there could be no true
happiness without it. I wanted to be loved for myself alone. I wanted
an idol, and I wanted to be my idol's idol; nothing less than mutual
idolatry would satisfy my fervent nature. I had suitors in plenty--in
over-plenty, indeed--but in each and every case they had a fatal defect:
sooner or later I discovered that defect--not one of them failed to
betray it--it was not me they wanted, but my wealth.'
'Your wealth?'
'Yes; for my father is much the richest man in this tribe--or in any
tribe in these regions.'
I wondered what her father's wealth consisted of. It couldn't be the
house--anybody could build its mate. It couldn't be the furs--they were
not valued. It couldn't be the sledge, the dogs, the harpoons, the boat,
the bone fish-hooks and needles, and such things--no, these were not
wealth. Then what could it be that made this man so rich and brought
this swarm of sordid suitors to his house? It seemed to me, finally,