After that, Magdaléna had brain fever. It was a sharp but brief attack,
and when she was convalescent the doctor ordered her to go to the
country at once and let her school-books alone. As Mrs. Yorba never left
her husband for any consideration, Magdaléna was sent to Menlo Park with
Miss Phelps. The time came when Magdaléna hated the monotony of Menlo,
with its ceaseless calling and driving, its sameness of days and
conversation; but at that age she loved the country in any form.
Menlo Park, originally a large Spanish grant, had long since been cut up
into country places for what may be termed the "Old Families of San
Francisco." The eight or ten families who owned this haughty precinct
were as exclusive, as conservative, as any group of ancient county
families in Europe. Many of them had been established here for twenty
years, none for less than fifteen. That fact set the seal of gentle
blood upon them for all time in the annals of California,--a fact in
which there is nothing humourous if you look at it logically; there is
really no reason why a new country should not take itself seriously.
Don Roberto owned a square mile known as Fair Oaks, in honour of the
ancient and magnificent woods upon it. These woods were in three
sections, separated by meadows, and there was a broad road through each,
but not a twig of the riotous underbrush had been sacrificed to a
foot-path. A hundred acres about the house--which was a mile from the
entrance to the estate--had been cleared for extensive lawns, ornamental
trees, and a deer park.
Directly in front of the house, across the driveway and starting from a
narrow walk between two great lawns, was a solitary eucalyptus-tree, one
of the few in the State at the time of its planting. It was some two
hundred feet high and creaked alarmingly in heavy winds; but Don
Roberto, despite Mrs. Yorba's protestations, would not have it uprooted:
he had a particular fondness for it because it was so little like the
palms and magnolias of his youth.
To the left of the house at the end of an avenue of cherry-trees was an
immense orchard surrounded by an avenue of fig-trees, and English
walnut-trees.
The house was as unlike the adobe mansions of the old grandees as was
the eucalyptus the palms. It was large, square, two-storied, and
although of wood, of massive appearance. It was, indeed, the most
solid-looking structure in California at that time. A deep verandah
traversed three sides of the house, its roof making another beneath the
bedroom windows. Its pillars were hidden under rose vines and wistaria.
The thirty rooms were somewhat superfluous, as Don Roberto would have
none of house-parties, but he could not have breathed in a small house.
The rooms were very large and lofty, the floors covered with matting,
the furniture light and plain. Above, as from the town house, floated
the American flag.
Colonel Belmont's estate adjoined Fair Oaks on one side, the
Montgomerys' on the other; and the Brannans, Kearneys, Gearys,
Washingtons, and Folsoms all spent their summers in that sleepy valley
between the waters of the San Francisco and the redwood-covered
mountains; these and others who have nothing to do with this tale. Hiram
Polk had no home in Menlo, excepting in his brother-in-law's house. Some
of his wife's happiest memories were of the Rancho de los Pulgas, and
she refused to witness its possession by the hated American. So Polk had
bought her one of the old adobe houses in Santa Barbara, and each year
she extended the limit of her sojourn in a town where memories were
still sacred.