The Californians.

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton.

BOOK I

I

"I won't study another word to-day!" Helena tipped the table, spilling the books to the floor. "I want to go out in the sun. Go home, Miss Phelps, that's a dear. Anyhow, it won't do you a bit of good to stay."

Miss Phelps, young herself, glanced angrily at her briery charge, longingly at the brilliant blue of sky and bay beyond the long window.

"I leave it to Miss Yorba." Her voice, fashioned to cut, vibrated a little with the vigour of its roots. "You seem to forget, Miss Belmont, that this is not your house."

"But you are just as much my teacher as hers. Besides, I always know what Magdalena wants, and I know that she has had enough United States history for one afternoon. When I go to England I'll get their version of it. We're brought up to love their literature and hate them! Such nonsense--"

"My dear Miss Belmont, I beg you to remember that you have but recently pa.s.sed your sixteenth birthday--"

"Oh, of course! If I'd been brought up in Boston, I'd be giving points to Socrates and wondering why there were so many old maids in the world.

However, that's not the question at present. 'Lena, do tell _dear_ Miss Phelps that she needs an afternoon off, and that if she doesn't take it--I'll walk downstairs on my head."

Helena, even at indeterminate sixteen, showed promise of great beauty, and her eyes sparkled with the insolence of the spoiled child who already knew the power of wealth. The girl she addressed had only a pair of dark intelligent eyes to reclaim an uncomely face. Her skin was swarthy, her nose crude, her mouth wide. The outline of her head was fine, and she wore her black hair parted and banded closely below her ears. Her forehead was large, her expression sad and thoughtful. Don Roberto Yorba was many times more a millionaire than "Jack" Belmont, but Magdalena was not a spoiled child.

"I don't know," she said, with a marked hesitation of speech; "I'd like to go out, but it doesn't seem right to take advantage of the fact that papa and mamma are away--"

"What they don't know won't hurt them. I'd like to have Don Roberto under my thumb for just one week. He'd get some of the tyranny knocked out of him. Jack is a model parent--"

Magdalena flushed a dark ugly red. "I wish you would not speak in that way of papa," she said. "I--I--well--I'm afraid he wouldn't let you come here to study with me if he knew it."

"Well, I won't." Helena flung her arms round her friend and kissed her warmly. "I wouldn't hurt his Spanish dignity for the world; only I do wish you happened to be my real own cousin, or--that would be much nicer--my sister."

Magdalena's troubled inner self echoed the wish; but few wishes, few words, indeed, pa.s.sed her lips.

"Well?" demanded Miss Phelps, coldly. "What is it to be? Do you girls intend to study any more to-day, or not? Because--"

"We don't," said Helena, emphatically. And Magdalena, who invariably gave way to her friend's imperious will, nodded deprecatingly. Miss Phelps immediately left the room.

"She's glad to get out," said Helena, wisely. "She hates me, and I know she's got a beau. Come! Come!" She pulled Magdalena from her chair, and the two girls ran to the balcony beyond the windows and leaned over the railing.

"There's nothing in all the world," announced Helena, "so beautiful as California--San Francisco included--in spite of whirlwinds of dust, and wooden houses, and cobblestone streets, and wooden sidewalks. One can always live on a hill, and then you don't see the ugly things below. For instance, from here you see nothing but that dark blue bay with the dark blue sky above it, and opposite the pink mountains with the patches of light blue, and on that side the hills of Sausalito covered with willows, and the breakers down below. And the ferry-boats are like great white swans, with long soft throats bending backwards. I don't express myself very well; but I shall some day. Just you wait; I'm going to be a scholar and a lot of other things too."

"What, Helena?" Magdalena drew closer. She thought Helena already the most eloquent person alive, and she envied her deeply, although without bitterness, loving her devotedly. The great gifts of expression and of personal magnetism had been denied her. She had no hope, and at that time little wish, that the last paucity could ever be made good by the power of will; but that articulate inner self had registered a vow that hard study and close attention to the methods of Helena and others as--or nearly as--brilliant should one day invest her brain and tongue with suppleness.

"What other things are you going to be, Helena?" she asked. "I know that you can be anything you like."

"Well, in the first place, I am going to New York to school,--now, don't look so sad: I've told you twenty times that _I know_ Don Roberto will let you go. Then I'm going to Europe. I'm going to study hard--but not hard enough to spoil my eyes. I'm going to finish off in Paris, and then I'm going to travel. Incidentally, I'm going to learn how to dress, so that when I come back here I'll astonish the natives and be the best-dressed woman in San Francisco; which won't be saying much, to be sure. Then, when I do come back, I'm going to just rule things, and, what is more, make all the old fogies let me. And--_and_--I am going to be the greatest belle this State has ever seen; and that _is_ saying something."

"Of course you will do all that, Helena. It will be so interesting to watch you. Ila and Tiny will never compare with you. Some people are made like that,--some one way and some another, I mean.

Shall--shall--you ever marry, Helena?"

"Yes. After I have been engaged a dozen times or so I shall marry a great man."

"A great man?"

"Yes; I don't know any, but they are charming in history and memoirs.

I'd have a simply gorgeous time in Washington, and ever after I'd have my picture in 'Famous Women' books."

"Shall you marry a president?" asked Magdalena, deferentially. She was convinced that Helena could marry a reigning sovereign if she wished.

"I haven't made up my mind about that yet. Presidents' wives are usually such dreary-looking frumps I'd hate to be in the same book with them.

Besides, most of the presidents don't amount to much. Truthful George must have been a deadly bore. I prefer Benjamin Franklin--although I never could stand that nose--or Clay or Calhoun or Patrick Henry or Webster. They're dead, but there must be lots more. I'll find one for you, too."

Again the dark flush mounted to Magdalena's hair, as with an alertness of motion unusual to her, she shook her head.

"Aha!" cried the astute Helena, "you've been thinking the matter over, too, have you? Who is he? Tell me."

Magdalena shook her head again, but slowly this time. Helena embraced and coaxed, but to no effect. Even with her chosen friend, Magdalena was reticent, not from choice, but necessity. But Helena, whose love was great and whose intuitions were diabolical, leaped to the secret. "I know!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "It's a caballero!"

This time Magdalena's face turned almost purple; but she had neither her s.e.x's quick instinct of self-protection nor its p.r.o.neness to dissemble, secretive as she was. She lifted her head haughtily and turned away. For a moment she looked very Spanish, not the unfortunate result of coupled races that she was. Helena, who was in her naughtiest humour, threw back her head and laughed scornfully. "A caballero!" she cried: "who will serenade you at two o'clock in the morning when you are dying with sleep, and lie in a hammock smoking cigaritos all day; who will roll out rhetoric by the yard, and look like an idiot when you talk common-sense to him; who is too lazy to walk across the plaza, and too proud to work, and too silly to keep the Americans from grabbing all he's got. I met a few dilapidated specimens when I was in Los Angeles last year. One beauty with long hair, a sombrero, and a head about as big as my fist, used to serenade me in intervals of gambling until I appealed to Jack, and he threatened to have him put in the calaboose if he didn't let me alone--"

Magdalena turned upon her. Her face was livid. Her eyes stared as if she had seen the dead walking. "Hush!" she said. "You--you cruel--you have everything--"

Helena, whose intuitions never failed her, when she chose to exercise them, knew what she had done, caught a flashing glimpse of the shattered dreams of the girl who said so little, whose only happiness was in the ideal world she had built in the jealously guarded depths of her soul.

"Oh, Magdalena, I'm so sorry," she stammered. "I was only joking. And my statesmen will probably be horrid old boors. I _know_ I'll never find one that comes up to my ideal." She burst into tears and flung her arms about Magdalena's neck: she was always miserable when those she loved were angry with her, much as she delighted to shock the misprized. "Say you forgive me," she sobbed, "or I sha'n't eat or sleep for a week." And Magdalena, who always took her mercurial friend literally, forgave her immediately and dried her tears.

II

Don Roberto Yorba had escaped the pecuniary extinction that had overtaken his race. Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before, had called the Californias their own: living a life of Arcadian magnificence, troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates clad in silk and lace, botas and sombrero, mounted upon steeds as gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part in splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of an occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid surface of their lives,--of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth and consequence to-day. But through no original virtue of his. He had been as princely in his hospitality, as reckless with his gold, as meagrely equipped to cope with the enterprising United Statesian who first conquered the Californian, then, nefariously, or righteously, appropriated his acres. When Commodore Sloat ran up the American flag on the Custom House of Monterey on July seventh, 1846, one of the midshipmen who went on sh.o.r.e to seal the victory with the strength of his lungs was a clever and restless youth named Polk. As his sharpness and fund of dry New England anecdote had made him a distinctive position on board ship, he was permitted to go to the ball given on the following night by Thomas O. Larkin, United States Consul, in honour of the Commodore and officers of the three warships then in the bay. Having little liking for girls, he quickly fraternised with Don Roberto Yorba, a young hidalgo who had recently lost his wife and had no heart for festivities, although curiosity had brought him to this ball which celebrated the downfall of his country. The two men left the ball-room,--where the handsome and resentful senoritas were preparing to avenge California with a battery of glance, a melody of tongue, and a witchery of grace that was to wreak havoc among these gallant officers,--and after exchanging amenities over a bowl of punch, went out into the high-walled garden to smoke the cigarito. The perfume of the sweet Castilian roses was about them, the old walls were a riot of pink and green; but the youths had no mind for either. The don was fascinated by the quick terse common-sense and the harsh nasal voice of the American, and the American's mind was full of a scheme which he was not long confiding to his friend. A shrewd Yankee, gifted with insight, and of no small experience, young as he was, Polk felt that the idle pleasure-loving young don was a man to be trusted and magnetic with potentialities of usefulness. He therefore confided his consuming desire to be a rich man, his hatred of the navy, and, finally, his determination to resign and make his way in the world.

"I haven't a red cent to bless myself with," he concluded. "But I've got what's more important as a starter,--brains. What's more, I feel the power in me to make money. It's the only thing on earth I care for; and when you put all your brains and energies to one thing you get it, unless you get paralysis or an ounce of cold lead first."

The Californian, who had a true grandee's contempt for gold, was nevertheless charmed with the engaging frankness and the unmistakable sincerity of the American.

"My house is yours," he exclaimed ardently. "You will living with me, no? until you find the moneys? I am--how you say it?--delighted. Always I like the Americanos--we having a few. All I have is yours, senor."

"Look here," exclaimed Polk. "I won't eat any man's bread for nothing, but I'll strike a bargain with you. If you'll stand by me, I'll stand by you. I mean to make money, and I don't much care how I do make it; this is a new place, anyhow. But there's one thing I never do, and that is to go back on a friend. You'll need me, and my Yankee sharpness may be the greatest G.o.dsend that ever came your way. I've seen more or less of this country. It's simply magnificent. Americans will be swarming over the place in less than no time. They've begun already. Then you'll be just nowhere. Is it a bargain?"

"It is!" exclaimed Don Roberto, with enthusiasm; and when Polk had explained his ominations more fully, he wrung the American's hand again.

Polk, after much difficulty, but through personal influence which he was fortunate enough to possess, obtained his discharge. He immediately became the guest of Don Roberto, who lived with his younger sister on a ranch covering three hundred thousand acres, and, his first intention being to take up land, was initiated into the mysteries of horse-raising, tanning hides, and making tallow; the two last-named industries being pursued for purposes of barter with the Boston skippers. But farming was not to Polk's taste; he hated waiting on the slow processes of Nature. He married Magdalena Yorba, and borrowed from Don Roberto enough money to open a store in Monterey stocked with such necessities and luxuries as could be imported from Boston. When the facile Californians had no ready money to pay for their wholesale purchases, he took a mortgage on the next hide yield, or on a small ranch. His rate of interest was twelve per cent; and as the Californians were never prepared to pay when the day of reckoning came, he foreclosed with a prompt.i.tude which both horrified Don Roberto and made imperious demands upon his admiration.

"My dear Don," Polk would say, "if it isn't I, it will be some one else.

I'm not the only one--and look at the squatters. I'm becoming a rich man, and if I were not, I'd be a fool. You had your day, but you were never made to last. Your boots are a comfortable fit, and I propose to wear them. I don't mean yours, by the way. I'm going to look after you.

Better think it over and come into partnership."