The Californians Read online

  Between the mines, his store, and his various enterprises in San Francisco, Polk rapidly became a wealthy man. Even in those days he was accounted an unscrupulous one, but he was powerful enough to hold the opinion of men in contempt and too shrewd to elbow such law as there was. And his gratitude and friendship for Don Roberto never flickered. He advised him to invest his gold in city lots, and as himself bought adjoining ones, Don Roberto invested without hesitation. Polk had acquired a taste for Spanish cooking, cigaritos, and life on horseback; his influences on the Californian were far more subtle and revolutionising. Don Roberto was still hospitable, because it became a grandee so to be; but he had a Yankee major-domo who kept an account of every cent that was expended. He had no miserly love of gold in the concrete, but he had an abiding sense of its illimitable power, all of his brother-in-law's determination to become one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the country, and a ferocious hatred of poverty. He saw his old friends fall about him: advice did them no good, and any permanent alliance with their interests would have meant his own ruin; so he shrugged his shoulders and forgot them. The American flag always floated above his rooms. In time he and Polk opened a bank, and he sat in its parlour for five hours of the day; it was the passion of his maturity and decline. When Polk's sister, some eleven years after the Occupation of California by the United States, came out to visit the brother who had left her teaching a small school in Boston, he married her promptly, feeling himself blessed in another New England relative. She was thirty-two at the time, and her complexion was dark and sallow: but she carried her tall angular figure with impressive dignity, and her chill manners gave her a certain distinction. Don Roberto was delighted with her, and as she was by nature as economical as his familiar could desire, he dismissed the major-domo and gave her carte blanche at the largest shops in the city; even if he had wished it, she could not have been induced to buy more than four gowns a year. But she was a very ambitious woman. As the wife of a great Californian grandee, she had seen herself the future leader of San Francisco society. Her ambitions were realised in a degree only. Don Roberto built her a huge wooden palace on Nob Hill,—on which was the highest flagstaff and the biggest flag in San Francisco,—placed a suitable number of servants at her command, and gave her a carriage. But he only permitted her to give two large dinners and one ball during the season, and would go to other people's entertainments but seldom. As their ideas of duty were equally rigid, she would not go without him; but they had a circle of intimate and aristocratic friends with whom they lunched and dined informally,—the Polks, the Belmonts, the Montgomerys, the Tarltons, the Brannans, the Gearys, and the Folsoms.

  They had been married ten years when Magdaléna, their only child, was born.

  * * *

  III

  Mrs. Yorba was so ill when her daughter came that the child struggled miserably into existence, and, failing to cry, was put away as dead, and forgotten for a time. It was discovered to be breathing by Mrs. Polk, who coaxed it through several months of puny existence with all a native Californian woman's resource. During this time it never cried, only whimpered miserably at rare intervals. It was finally discovered to be tongue-tied, and as soon as it was old enough an operation was performed. After that the child's health mended, although she seemed in no hurry to use her tongue. As she progressed in years she still spoke but seldom, only mildly remonstrating when Helena Belmont pulled her hair or vented her exuberant vitality upon Magdaléna's inferior person. Once only did she lose her temper,—when Helena hung up all her dolls in a row and slit them that she might have the pleasure of seeing the sawdust pour out,—and then she leaped upon her tormentor with a hoarse growl of rage, and the two pommelled each other black and blue. But as a rule she was gentle and much-enduring, and Helena was very kind and clamoured constantly for her society. As the girls grew older they studied together, and the friendship, born of propinquity, was strengthened by mutual tastes and sympathy. Helena was probably the only person who ever understood the reticent, proud, apparently cold and impassive temperament of the girl who was an unhappy and incongruous mixture of Spanish and New England traits; and Magdaléna was Helena's most enthusiastic admirer and attentive audience.

  Magdaléna had one other friend, her aunt, Mrs. Polk, for whom she was named. That lady was enormously stout and something of an invalid, but carried the tokens of early beauty in a skin of brilliant fairness and a pair of magnificent dark eyes fringed with lashes so long and thick that Magdaléna, when a child, found it her greatest pleasure to count them. Mrs. Polk knew little of her husband and liked him less. She had obeyed her brother's orders and married him, loving a dazzling caballero—who had since gambled away his acres—the while. But Polk ministered to the luxury that she loved; and though his high-pitched voice never ceased to shake her nerves, and his hard cold face to inspire active dislike, as the years went on and she saw how it was with her people, she accepted her lot with philosophy, and finally—as youth fled—with gratitude. Mrs. Yorba she detested, but she loved the child she had saved to a life of doubtful happiness, and—she had no children of her own—would gladly have adopted her. She lived a life of retirement, and had a scanty though kindly brain: therefore she never understood Magdaléna as well as Helena did at the age of six; but she could love warmly, and that meant much to her niece.

  The three large and aristocratically ugly mansions of Don Roberto Yorba, Hiram Polk, and Colonel "Jack" Belmont stood side by side on Nob Hill. Belmont was not as wealthy as the others, but a "palatial residence" does not mean illimitable riches even yet in San Francisco. Belmont had married a Boston girl of far greater family pretensions than Mrs. Yorba's, but of no more stately appearance nor correct demeanour. The two women were intimate friends until her husband's notorious infidelities and erraticisms when under the periodical influence of alcohol killed Mrs. Belmont. Neither Don Roberto nor Polk drank to excess, and they kept their mistresses in more decent seclusion than is the habit of the average San Franciscan. It would never occur to Mrs. Yorba to suspect her husband or any other man of infidelity, did she live in California an hundred years, and Mrs. Polk was too indifferent to give the matter a thought.

  Although she lived in retirement, rarely venturing out into the winds and fogs of San Francisco, Mrs. Polk surrounded herself with all the luxuries of a pampered woman of wealth and fashion. Her house was magnificent, her private apartments almost stifling in their sumptuousness. Polk squeezed every dollar before he parted with it, but his wife had long since accomplished the judicious exercise of a violent Spanish temper, and her bills were seldom disputed.

  Magdaléna and Helena loved these scented gorgeous apartments, and ran through the connecting gardens daily to see her. Their delight was to sit at her feet and listen to the tales of California when the grandee owned the land, when the caballero, in gorgeous attire, sang at the gratings of the beauties of Monterey. Mrs. Polk would sing these old love-songs of Spain to the accompaniment of the guitar which had entranced her caballeros in the sala of her girlhood; and Helena, who had a charming voice, learned them all—to the undoing of her own admirers later on. It was she who asked a thousand questions of that Arcadian time, and Mrs. Polk responded with enthusiasm. Doubtless she exaggerated the splendours, the brilliancy, the unleavened pleasure; but it was a time far behind her, and she was happy again in the rememoration. As for Magdaléna, she seldom spoke. She listened with fixed eyes and bated breath to those descriptions of the beautiful women of her race, seeing for the time her soul's face as beautiful, gazing at her reflected image aghast when she turned suddenly upon one of the long mirrors. Her soul sang in accompaniment to her aunt's rich voice, and her hands moved unconsciously as those listless Spanish fingers swept the guitar. When Helena imperiously demanded to be taught, and quickly became as proficient as her teacher, Magdaléna kept her eyes on the floor lest the others should see the dismay in them. Had it occurred to Mrs. Polk to ask her niece if she would like to learn these old songs of her
race, Magdaléna would have shaken her head shyly, realising even sooner than she did that there was no medium for the music in her soul, as there was none for the thoughts in her mind. Although her aunt loved her, she did not scruple to tell her that she was not to be either a beautiful or a brilliant woman; but although Magdaléna made no reply, she had a profound belief that the Virgin would in time grant her passionate nightly prayers for a beautiful face and an agile tongue. Beauty was her right; no woman of her father's house had ever been plain, and she had convinced herself that if she were a good girl the Virgin would acknowledge her rights by her eighteenth birthday. As her intellect developed, she was haunted by an uneasy scepticism of miracles, particularly after she learned to draw, but she still prayed; it was a dream she could not relinquish. Nor was this all she prayed for. She had all the Californian's indolence, which was ever at war with the intellect she had inherited from her New England ancestors. Her most delectable instinct was to lie in the sun or on the rug by the fire all day and dream; and she was thoroughly convinced that the Virgin aided her in the fight for mental energy, and was the prime factor in the long periods of victory of mind over temperament.

  And only her deathless ambition enabled her to keep pace with Helena. She sat up late into the night poring over lessons that her brilliant friend danced through while dressing in the morning. Her memory was bad, and she never mastered spelling; even after her schooldays were over, she always carried a little dictionary in her pocket. She laboured for years at the piano, not only under her father's orders, but because she passionately loved music, but she had neither ear nor facility, and to her importunities for both the Virgin gave no heed.

  And the bitterness of it all lay in the fact that she was not stupid; she was fully aware that her intellect was something more than commonplace; but the machinery was heavy, and, so far as she could see, there was not a drop of cleverness with which to oil the wheels. She had read extensively even before she was sixteen,—letters, essays, biographies, histories, and a number of novels by classic authors; and although she was obliged to read each book three times in order to write it on her memory, she slowly assimilated it and developed her brain cells. Up to this age she was seldom actively unhappy, for she had the hopes of youth and religion, her aunt, Helena, and, above all, her sweet inner life, which was an almost constant dwelling upon the poetical past, linked to a future of exalted ideals: not only should she be more beautiful than Helena or Tiny Montgomery or Ila Brannan, but she should hold rooms spell-bound with her eloquence, or the music in her finger-tips; and when in solitude her soul would rise to such heights as her fettered mind hinted at vaguely but insistently. Wild imaginings for a plain tongue-tied little hybrid, but what man's inner life is like unto the husk to whose making he gave no hand?

  * * *

  IV

  Helena remained an hour longer, then ran home to don a white frock and Roman sash. Her father, with all his vagaries, seldom failed to dine at home; and he expected to find his little daughter, smartly dressed, presiding at his table. His sister, Mrs. Cartright, who had managed his house since his wife's death, made no attempt to manage Helena, and never thought of taking the head of the table.

  Magdaléna stood for some time looking out over the darkening bay, at the white mist riding in to hang before the mountains beyond. She had seen California wet under blinding rain-storms, but never ugly. Even the fogs were beautiful, the great waves of sand whirling through the streets of San Francisco picturesque. California was associated in her mind, however, with perpetual blue skies and floods of yellow light. She had wondered occasionally if all people were not happy in such a country,—where the sun shone for eight months in the year, where flowers grew more thickly than weeds, and fruit was abundant and luscious. She had read of the portion to which man was born, and had decided that if Thackeray and Dickens had lived in California they would have been more cheerful; but to-day, assailed by a presentiment general rather than specific, she accepted, for the first time, life in something like its true proportions.

  "There are no more caballeros," she thought, putting into form such sense of the change as she could grasp. "And Helena is going away, for years; and papa will not let me go, I know, although I mean to ask him; and aunt is way down in Santa Barbara, and writes that she may not return for months. And I don't know my music lesson for to-morrow, and papa will be so angry, because he pays five dollars a lesson; and Mrs. Price is so cross." She paused and shivered as the white fog crept up to the verandah. It was very quiet. She could hear the ocean roaring through the Golden Gate. Again the presentiment assailed her. "None of those things was it," she thought in terror. "Uncle Jack Belmont says, according to Balzac, our presentiments always mean something." She noticed anew how beautiful the night was: the white wreaths floating on the water, the dark blue sky that was bursting into stars, the mysterious outline of the hills, the ravishing perfumes rising from the garden below. "It is like a poem," she thought. "Why does no one write about it? Oh!" with a hard gasp, "if I could—if I could only write!" A meteor shot down the heavens. For the moment it seemed that the fallen star flashed through her brow and lodged, effulgent, in her brain. "I—I—think I could," she thought. "I—I—am sure that I could." And so, the cruel desires of art, and the tree of her crucifix were born.

  She went inside hastily, afraid of her thoughts. She changed her frock for a white one, smoothed her sleek hair, and walked downstairs. She never ran, like Helena—unless, to be sure, Helena dragged her; she had all the dignity of her father's race, all its iron sense of convention.

  She went into the big parlours to await her parents' return; they had been spending a day or two at their country house in Menlo Park, and would return in time for dinner. The gas had been lighted and turned low; Magdaléna had never seen any rooms but her own in this house sufficiently lighted by day or by night, except when guests were present. Mrs. Yorba would waste neither gas nor carpets; in consequence, the house had a somewhat sepulchral air; even its silence was never broken, save when Helena gave a sudden furious war-whoop and slid down the banisters.

  The walls of the parlour were tinted a pale buff, the ceilings frescoed with cherubs and flowers. On the great plate-glass windows were curtains of dark red velvet trimmed with gold fringe. The large square pieces of furniture were upholstered with red velvet. The floor was covered with a red Brussels carpet with a design of squirming devil-fish. Three or four small chairs were covered with Indian embroidery, and there were two Chinese tables of teak-wood and mottled marble. Gas having been an afterthought, the pipes were visible, although painted to match the walls. Magdaléna had seen few rooms and had not awakened to the hideousness of these; her aunt had mingled little taste with her splendour, and the Belmont mansion was furnished throughout its lower part in satin damask with no attempt at art's variousness. Magdaléna opened the piano and felt vaguely for the music in the keys. She forgot the star, remembered only her passionate love of exultant sound, her longing to find the soul of this most mysterious of all instruments. But her stiff fingers only sprawled helplessly over the keys, and after a few moments she desisted and sat staring with dilating eyes, the presentiment again assailing her. Her shattered caballeros rose before her, but she shook her head; they, under what influence she knew not, had faded out into ghost-land.

  A carriage drove up to the door. She went forward and stood in the hall, awaiting her parents. They entered almost immediately. Both kissed her lightly, her mother inquiring absently if she had been a good girl, and remarking that she had neuralgia and should go to bed at once. Her father grunted and asked her if she and Helena Belmont had behaved themselves, and, more particularly, if she had been outside the house without an attendant; he never failed to ask this when he had been away from the house for twenty-four hours. Magdaléna replied in the negative, and did not feel called upon to confess her minor sins. She had a conscience, but she had also a strong distaste for her father's temper.

  Don Roberto had been a han
dsome caballero in his youth, but his face, like that of most Californians, had coarsened as it receded from its prime. The nose was thick, the outlines of the jaw lost in rolls of flesh. But the full curves of his mouth had been compressed into a straight line, and the consequent elevation of the lower lip had almost obliterated an originally weak chin. He was bald and wore a skull-cap, but his black eyes were fiery and restless, his skin fair with the fairness of Castile. He went to his room, and Magdaléna did not see him again until dinner was announced. She saw little of her parents. There is not much fireside life in California. There was none in the Yorba household. Mrs. Yorba was a martyr to neuralgia, and such time as was not passed in the seclusion of her chamber was devoted to the manifold cares of her household and to her small circle of friends. Don Roberto would not permit her to belong to charitable associations, nor to organisations of any kind, and although she regretted the prestige she might have enjoyed as president of such concerns, she had long since found herself indemnified: Don Roberto's social restrictions had unwittingly given her the position of the most exclusive woman in San Francisco. As time went on, it gave people a certain distinction to be on her visiting list. When Mrs. Yorba realised this, she looked it over carefully and cut it down to ninety names. After that, hostesses whose position was as secure as her own begged her personally to go to their balls. Her own yearly contribution to the season's socialities was looked forward to with deep anxiety. It was the stiffest and dullest affair of the year, but not to be there was to be written down as second of the first. So was greatness thrust upon Mrs. Yorba, who never returned to her native Boston, lest she might once more feel the pangs of nothingness. She loved her daughter from a sense of duty rather than from any animal instinct, but never petted nor made a companion of her. Nevertheless she watched over her studies, literary excursions, and associates with a vigilant eye.