Hawaii - James Michener [313]
But in other matters the boy needed substantial guidance. He was a wild-willed lad with only an average record at school, and his grandfather surprised him by insisting that he read long and difficult books like Pendennis and Jane Eyre, while the students at Punahou were struggling with Oliver Twist and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Captain Hoxworth also drilled his grandson on the necessity for showing a profit on anything one went into in the line of business, and his business principles were simple: "If you sell something, never give samples away. Make the bastards pay. And keep an eye on the help or they'll steal the company right out from under you."
There was one lesson, however, which the ramrod-straight old captain impressed upon his tough-minded grandson above all others: "Living seventy years is a tremendous adventure. You're thirteen now. You've probably only got fifty-seven Christmases left. Enjoy each as if you would never see another, for by God the day soon comes when you won't. You've only got about two and a half thousand more Saturday nights remaining. Get yourself a girl and enjoy her. Never take a girl lightly. You may never sleep with another. Or she may be the one you'll always remember as the best of the lot. But goddamnit, Whip, don't be a weak old man before your time. Don't be like your father and your uncles. God, Whip, you can't even imagine what Hawaii's going to be like in twenty years, or fifty. Maybe nobody'll be growing sugar. Maybe they won't need ships any more. Maybe this whole city and the hills behind will be part of China. But be courageous about guessing. Be on top of the wheel as it turns, not dragging along at the bottom."
At this moment in his grandfather's harangue young Whip made the old man extremely happy. The idea that Hawaii might one day be part of China did not entirely impress young Whip, but the mention of that country reminded him of Iwilei and he said, boldly, "I'd like to see that Chinese girl again."
"So would I!" the old man roared, and he hitched his horse and led his grandson down into Rat Alley, but when they got to the Macao man's place, the Chinese girl could not be found, so Whip smiled as before at the Irish lass, who was heavier than he was, but his grandfather roared, "No, by God! Noreen's' mine." And he rustled up Raquella from Valparaiso, and the Spanish girl was so pleased with the idea of being with a bright-eyed young boy that when she had him alone she tore at him like a tigress, and he fought with her, tearing a red welt across her back until with a tempestuous sigh of joy she pulled him onto the floor and taught him things no boy in Honolulu and few men knew.
And it was strange, but when he left Iwilei that day he was not thinking of women, but of strange ports, and the insatiable fighting of the world, and of ships--his ships--traveling to all parts of the globe to bring home strange people and stranger produce. "I don't want to go back to Punahou," he announced that evening at his grandfather's big table.
"What do you want to do?" asked his proper father, whose main job in life was hiding the fact that he was half-Hawaiian.
"I want to go to sea," young Whip replied.
"That you shall!" his grandfather promised, but this was a promise that was most difficult to keep, and for a while it seemed as if the stuffy uncles, who did not know the wild, free girls of Iwilei, would triumph.
"The boy has got to finish Punahou and go to Yale," Bromley Hoxworth insisted.