The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California

“God of my soul!  Do not speak of hope to me.  Hope?  For what are those three frigates, swarming with a horde of foreign bandits, creeping about our bay?  For what have the persons of General Vallejo and Judge Leese been seized and imprisoned?  Why does a strip of cotton, painted with a gaping bear, flaunt itself above Sonoma?  Oh, abomination!  Oh, execrable profanation!  Mother of God, open thine ocean and suck them down!  Smite them with pestilence if they put foot in our capital!  Shrivel their fingers to the bone if they dethrone our Aztec Eagle and flourish their stars and stripes above our fort!  O California!  That thy sons and thy daughters should live to see thee plucked like a rose by the usurper!  And why?  Why?  Not because these piratical Americans have the right to one league of our land; but because, Holy Evangelists! they want it!  Our lands are rich, our harbours are fine, gold veins our valleys, therefore we must be plucked.  The United States of America are mightier than Mexico, therefore they sweep down upon us with mouths wide open.  Holy God!  That I could choke but one with my own strong fingers.  Oh!” Doña Eustaquia paused abruptly and smote her hands together,—­“O that I were a man!  That the women of California were men!”

On this pregnant morning of July seventh, eighteen hundred and forty-six, all aristocratic Monterey was gathered in the sala of Doña Modeste Castro.  The hostess smiled sadly.  “That is the wish of my husband,” she said, “for the men of our country want the Americans.”

“And why?” asked one of the young men, flicking a particle of dust from his silken riding jacket.  “We shall then have freedom from the constant war of opposing factions.  If General Castro and Governor Pico are not calling Juntas in which to denounce each other, a Carillo is pitting his ambition against an Alvarado.  The Gringos will rule us lightly and bring us peace.  They will not disturb our grants, and will give us rich prices for our lands—­”

“Oh, fool!” interrupted Doña Eustaquia.  “Thrice fool!  A hundred years from now, Fernando Altimira, and our names will be forgotten in California.  Fifty years from now and our walls will tumble upon us whilst we cook our beans in the rags that charity—­American charity—­has flung us!  I tell you that the hour the American flag waves above the fort of Monterey is the hour of the Californians’ doom.  We have lived in Arcadia—­ingrates that you are to complain—­they will run over us like ants and sting us to death!”

“That is the prediction of my husband,” said Doña Modeste.  “Liberty, Independence, Decency, Honour, how long will they be his watch-words?”

“Not a day longer!” cried Doña Eustaquia, “for the men of California are cowards.”

“Cowards!  We?  No man should say that to us!” The caballeros were on their feet, their eyes flashing, as if they faced in uniform the navy of the United States, rather than confronted, in lace ruffles and silken smallclothes, an angry scornful woman.

“Cowards!” continued Fernando Altimira.  “Are not men flocking about General Castro at San Juan Bautista, willing to die in a cause already lost?  If our towns were sacked or our women outraged would not the weakest of us fight until we died in our blood?  But what is coming is for the best, Doña Eustaquia, despite your prophecy; and as we cannot help it—­we, a few thousand men against a great nation—­we resign ourselves because we are governed by reason instead of by passion.  No one reverences our General more than Fernando Altimira.  No grander man ever wore a uniform!  But he is fighting in a hopeless cause, and the fewer who uphold him the less blood will flow, the sooner the struggle will finish.”

Doña Modeste covered her beautiful face and wept.  Many of the women sobbed in sympathy.  Bright eyes, from beneath gay rebosas or delicate mantillas, glanced approvingly at the speaker.  Brown old men and women stared gloomily at the floor.  But the greater number followed every motion of their master-spirit, Doña Eustaquia Ortega.

She walked rapidly up and down the long room, too excited to sit down, flinging the mantilla back as it brushed her hot cheek.  She was a woman not yet forty, and very handsome, although the peachness of youth had left her face.  Her features were small but sharply cut; the square chin and firm mouth had the lines of courage and violent emotions, her piercing intelligent eyes interpreted a terrible power of love and hate.  But if her face was so strong as to be almost unfeminine, it was frank and kind.

Doña Eustaquia might watch with joy her bay open and engulf the hated Americans, but she would nurse back to life the undrowned bodies flung upon the shore.  If she had been born a queen she would have slain in anger, but she would not have tortured.  General Castro had flung his hat at her feet many times, and told her that she was born to command.  Even the nervous irregularity of her step to-day could not affect the extreme elegance of her carriage, and she carried her small head with the imperious pride of a sovereign.  She did not speak again for a moment, but as she passed the group of young men at the end of the room her eyes flashed from one languid face to another.  She hated their rich breeches and embroidered jackets buttoned with silver and gold, the lace handkerchiefs knotted about their shapely throats.  No man was a man who did not wear a uniform.

Don Fernando regarded her with a mischievous smile as she approached him a second time.

“I predict, also,” he said, “I predict that our charming Doña Eustaquia will yet wed an American—­”

“What!” she turned upon him with the fury of a lioness.  “Hold thy prating tongue!  I marry an American?  God!  I would give every league of my ranchos for a necklace made from the ears of twenty Americans.  I would throw my jewels to the pigs, if I could feel here upon my neck the proof that twenty American heads looked ready to be fired from the cannon on the hill!”

Everybody in the room laughed, and the atmosphere felt lighter.  Muslin gowns began to flutter, and the seal of disquiet sat less heavily upon careworn or beautiful faces.  But before the respite was a moment old a young man entered hastily from the street, and throwing his hat on the floor burst into tears.

“What is it?” The words came mechanically from every one in the room.

The herald put his hand to his throat to control the swelling muscles.  “Two hours ago,” he said, “Commander Sloat sent one Captain William Mervine on shore to demand of our Commandante the surrender of the town.  Don Mariano walked the floor, wringing his hands, until a quarter of an hour ago, when he sent word to the insolent servant of a pirate-republic that he had no authority to deliver up the capital, and bade him go to San Juan Bautista and confer with General Castro.  Whereupon the American thief ordered two hundred and fifty of his men to embark in boats—­do not you hear?”

A mighty cheer shook the air amidst the thunder of cannon; then another, and another.

Every lip in the room was white.

“What is that?” asked Doña Eustaquia.  Her voice was hardly audible.

“They have raised the American flag upon the Custom-house,” said the herald.

For a moment no one moved; then as by one impulse, and without a word, Doña Modeste Castro and her guests rose and ran through the streets to the Custom-house on the edge of the town.

In the bay were three frigates of twenty guns each.  On the rocks, in the street by the Custom-house and on its corridors, was a small army of men in the naval uniform of the United States, respectful but determined.  About them and the little man who read aloud from a long roll of paper, the aristocrats joined the rabble of the town.  Men with sunken eyes who had gambled all night, leaving even serape and sombrero on the gaming table; girls with painted faces staring above cheap and gaudy satins, who had danced at fandangos in the booths until dawn, then wandered about the beach, too curious over the movements of the American squadron to go to bed; shopkeepers, black and rusty of face, smoking big pipes with the air of philosophers; Indians clad in a single garment of calico, falling in a straight line from the neck; eagle-beaked old crones with black shawls over their heads; children wearing only a smock twisted about their little waists and tied in a knot behind; a few American residents, glancing triumphantly at each other; caballeros, gay in the silken attire of summer, sitting in angry disdain upon their plunging, superbly trapped horses; last of all, the elegant women in their lace mantillas and flowered rebosas, weeping and clinging to each other.  Few gave ear to the reading of Sloat’s proclamation.

Benicia, the daughter of Doña Eustaquia, raised her clasped hands, the tears streaming from her eyes.  “Oh, these Americans!  How I hate them!” she cried, a reflection of her mother’s violent spirit on her sweet face.

Doña Eustaquia caught the girl’s hands and flung herself upon her neck.  “Ay!  California!  California!” she cried wildly.  “My country is flung to its knees in the dirt.”

A rose from the upper corridor of the Custom-house struck her daughter full in the face.