“I’ll do nothing of the sort. These engineers and fellows are a gang I will not tolerate. They defile God’s country. They’ve already spoiled the hunting, and the racing’s following as fast as it can go. If you’d been a boy with any guts, instead of clockwork, you’d have been glad, I should have thought, to have been at home here, and borne a hand in the stable. Breeding is about the last thing this poor country’s got in these damned days. We’ve still got horses, thank God. We don’t depend on a traction-engine gang, doing a tenth of the work for double the money. Why don’t you take off your coat and come into the stable? It’s a needed job; a pleasant job; and a gentleman’s job, what’s more. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, sir; but I’m not very good at horses. Besides, you’ve got Bell in the stables. I should only be in the way.”
“Ashamed of working with your sister, are you?”
“No, sir; but Bell wouldn’t want me there, and you’d always be swearing at me.”
“Damme,” Bill said, “there are things in you boys that would make any father swear. You go to a prep. school for three years, then to a public school for five years, then you ask to be kept for another seven while you learn a profession, and by God, when you’ve learnt it, you can’t make a living at it. I’ve been talking to your mother about this, as well as to Rosa Piranha before she sailed. You’ll not go back to school, that I’m resolved on, after this last report. You’ll stay here a week or two to get some clothes, and then you’ll do what I did. You’ll go to Santa Barbara and see if you can keep your head above water by your own hands. If you can, well and good. You will have letters to people; a lot better people than I ever had; and you will have time given you to look about you. You ought to be able to make good; I don’t say in copper, that is over, but in a new land there are new things and new opportunities. There are always sugar, tobacco and ranching; there should be timber, cocoa, piacaba, countless things. As I said, you ought to be able to make good. If you can’t, it will be your own lookout. You’ve got to paddle your own canoe, like any other youngest son. Now I’m not going to have any argument about the superior beauties of cog-wheels. I’ve written to people and written about your ticket. Since you won’t work in the stable here and have no choice of your own, except a damned dirty falallery which I won’t have, you’ll go to Santa Barbara. You may count yourself more than lucky to have the chance. Very few youngest sons ever get into the sun at all, but stink in a rotten town, by God, where even the horses puke at the air they breathe.
“You turn up your nose, do you? I wish I was going to Santa Barbara to have my time again. You can turn up your nose as much as you like, but that’s what you’ll do, so make up your mind to it. When you’ve seen the place you’ll thank me for having sent you there. When you’ve been there a few days you’ll thank your stars for your luck.”
Hi did not answer his father, knowing that thumbs were down. His heart sank at the thought of the foreign country, yet leaped again at the thought of liberty from school and life beginning. He had still one little ray of hope, which his mother extinguished.
“Your father’s got his back up,” she said. “Between you and me, Hi, he has had a bad year. Newmarket was nearly a finisher. So be a good old sport and go; there’s a dear. There’s far more scope there than here; everybody says so. Besides, your Aunt Melloney’s money went into Hicks’s. I don’t know that you could get it out, even if your father agreed.”
* * * * * * *
There was a brief delay, in spite of Bill’s speed, because the first letter from Rosa Piranha brought the news that Santa Barbara politics were somewhat unsettled. Bill had to pause to make some enquiries, through his sons in the copper business and his friends in the United Sugar Company. “It’s probably nothing much,” he said, when he had heard the reports. “These Reds and Whites are always at each other, in the way these foreigners always are. It won’t concern the boy, if he’s got the sense to keep out of it. Let him go and learn sense in the only school for it.” After this, there was a second brief delay for farewell visits to relations. When Hi returned from these, his clothes, of drill and flannel, were ready in their ant-proof tin trunks. Towards the end of February, he sailed for Santa Barbara city in the Recalde.