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 shore 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 señoritas 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, señor."
"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 godsend 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 Magdaléna 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 promptitude 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."
To this Don Roberto would not hearken; but when the rush to the gold
mines began he was persuaded by Polk to take a trip into the San Joaquin
valley to "see the circus," as the Yankee phrased it. There, in
community with his brother-in-law, he staked off a claim, and there the
lust for gold entered his veins and never left it. He returned to
Monterey a rich man in something besides land. After that there was
little conversation between himself and Polk on any subject but money
and the manner of its multiplication; and, as the years passed, and
Polk's prophecy was fulfilled, he gave the devotion of a fanatic to the
retention of his vast inheritance and to the development of his grafted
financial faculty.
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.