Chương Chương 23 · THE HILL DIFFICULTY

. THE HILL DIFFICULTY

THE HILL DIFFICULTY

The first happy year at Wareham, with its widened sky-line, its larger

vision, its greater opportunity, was over and gone. Rebecca had studied

during the summer vacation, and had passed, on her return in the

autumn, certain examinations which would enable her, if she carried out

the same programme the next season, to complete the course in three

instead of four years. She came off with no flying colors,--that would

have been impossible in consideration of her inadequate training; but

she did wonderfully well in some of the required subjects, and so

brilliantly in others that the average was respectable. She would never

have been a remarkable scholar under any circumstances, perhaps, and

she was easily out-stripped in mathematics and the natural sciences by

a dozen girls, but in some inexplicable way she became, as the months

went on, the foremost figure in the school. When she had entirely

forgotten the facts which would enable her to answer a question fully

and conclusively, she commonly had some original theory to expound; it

was not always correct, but it was generally unique and sometimes

amusing. She was only fair in Latin or French grammar, but when it came

to translation, her freedom, her choice of words, and her sympathetic

understanding of the spirit of the text made her the delight of her

teachers and the despair of her rivals.

"She can be perfectly ignorant of a subject," said Miss Maxwell to Adam

Ladd, "but entirely intelligent the moment she has a clue. Most of the

other girls are full of information and as stupid as sheep."

Rebecca's gifts had not been discovered save by the few, during the

first year, when she was adjusting herself quietly to the situation.

She was distinctly one of the poorer girls; she had no fine dresses to

attract attention, no visitors, no friends in the town. She had more

study hours, and less time, therefore, for the companionship of other

girls, gladly as she would have welcomed the gayety of that side of

school life. Still, water will find its own level in some way, and by

the spring of the second year she had naturally settled into the same

sort of leadership which had been hers in the smaller community of

Riverboro. She was unanimously elected assistant editor of the Wareham

School Pilot, being the first girl to assume that enviable, though

somewhat arduous and thankless position, and when her maiden number

went to the Cobbs, uncle Jerry and aunt Sarah could hardly eat or sleep

for pride.

"She'll always get votes," said Huldah Meserve, when discussing the

election, "for whether she knows anything or not, she looks as if she

did, and whether she's capable of filling an office or not, she looks

as if she was. I only wish I was tall and dark and had the gift of

making people believe I was great things, like Rebecca Randall. There's

one thing: though the boys call her handsome, you notice they don't

trouble her with much attention."

It was a fact that Rebecca's attitude towards the opposite sex was

still somewhat indifferent and oblivious, even for fifteen and a half!

No one could look at her and doubt that she had potentialities of

attraction latent within her somewhere, but that side of her nature was

happily biding its time. A human being is capable only of a certain

amount of activity at a given moment, and it will inevitably satisfy

first its most pressing needs, its most ardent desires, its chief

ambitions. Rebecca was full of small anxieties and fears, for matters

were not going well at the brick house and were anything but hopeful at

the home farm. She was overbusy and overtaxed, and her thoughts were

naturally drawn towards the difficult problems of daily living.

It had seemed to her during the autumn and winter of that year as if

her aunt Miranda had never been, save at the very first, so censorious

and so fault-finding. One Saturday Rebecca ran upstairs and, bursting

into a flood of tears, exclaimed, "Aunt Jane, it seems as if I never

could stand her continual scoldings. Nothing I can do suits aunt

Miranda; she's just said it will take me my whole life to get the

Randall out of me, and I'm not convinced that I want it all out, so

there we are!"

Aunt Jane, never demonstrative, cried with Rebecca as she attempted to

soothe her.

"You must be patient," she said, wiping first her own eyes and then

Rebecca's. "I haven't told you, for it isn't fair you should be

troubled when you're studying so hard, but your aunt Miranda isn't

well. One Monday morning about a month ago, she had a kind of faint

spell; it wasn't bad, but the doctor is afraid it was a shock, and if

so, it's the beginning of the end. Seems to me she's failing right

along, and that's what makes her so fretful and easy vexed. She has

other troubles too, that you don't know anything about, and if you're

not kind to your aunt Miranda now, child, you'll be dreadful sorry some

time."

All the temper faded from Rebecca's face, and she stopped crying to say

penitently, "Oh! the poor dear thing! I won't mind a bit what she says

now. She's just asked me for some milk toast and I was dreading to take

it to her, but this will make everything different. Don't worry yet,

aunt Jane, for perhaps it won't be as bad as you think."

So when she carried the toast to her aunt a little later, it was in the

best gilt-edged china bowl, with a fringed napkin on the tray and a

sprig of geranium lying across the salt cellar.

"Now, aunt Miranda," she said cheerily, "I expect you to smack your

lips and say this is good; it's not Randall, but Sawyer milk toast."

"You've tried all kinds on me, one time an' another," Miranda answered.

"This tastes real kind o' good; but I wish you hadn't wasted that nice

geranium."

"You can't tell what's wasted," said Rebecca philosophically; "perhaps

that geranium has been hoping this long time it could brighten

somebody's supper, so don't disappoint it by making believe you don't

like it. I've seen geraniums cry,--in the very early morning!"

The mysterious trouble to which Jane had alluded was a very real one,

but it was held in profound secrecy. Twenty-five hundred dollars of the

small Sawyer property had been invested in the business of a friend of

their father's, and had returned them a regular annual income of a

hundred dollars. The family friend had been dead for some five years,

but his son had succeeded to his interests and all went on as formerly.

Suddenly there came a letter saying that the firm had gone into

bankruptcy, that the business had been completely wrecked, and that the

Sawyer money had been swept away with everything else.

The loss of one hundred dollars a year is a very trifling matter, but

it made all the difference between comfort and self-denial to the two

old spinsters Their manner of life had been so rigid and careful that

it was difficult to economize any further, and the blow had fallen just

when it was most inconvenient, for Rebecca's school and boarding

expenses, small as they were, had to be paid promptly and in cash.

"Can we possibly go on doing it? Shan't we have to give up and tell her

why?" asked Jane tearfully of the elder sister.

"We have put our hand to the plough, and we can't turn back," answered

Miranda in her grimmest tone; "we've taken her away from her mother and

offered her an education, and we've got to keep our word. She's

Aurelia's only hope for years to come, to my way o' thinkin'. Hannah's

beau takes all her time 'n' thought, and when she gits a husband her

mother'll be out o' sight and out o' mind. John, instead of farmin',

thinks he must be a doctor,--as if folks wasn't gettin' unhealthy

enough these days, without turnin' out more young doctors to help 'em

into their graves. No, Jane; we'll skimp 'n' do without, 'n' plan to

git along on our interest money somehow, but we won't break into our

principal, whatever happens."

"Breaking into the principal" was, in the minds of most thrifty New

England women, a sin only second to arson, theft, or murder; and,

though the rule was occasionally carried too far for common sense,--as

in this case, where two elderly women of sixty might reasonably have

drawn something from their little hoard in time of special need,--it

doubtless wrought more of good than evil in the community.

Rebecca, who knew nothing of their business affairs, merely saw her

aunts grow more and more saving, pinching here and there, cutting off

this and that relentlessly. Less meat and fish were bought; the woman

who had lately been coming two days a week for washing, ironing, and

scrubbing was dismissed; the old bonnets of the season before were

brushed up and retrimmed; there were no drives to Moderation or trips

to Portland. Economy was carried to its very extreme; but though

Miranda was well-nigh as gloomy and uncompromising in her manner and

conversation as a woman could well be, she at least never twitted her

niece of being a burden; so Rebecca's share of the Sawyers' misfortunes

consisted only in wearing her old dresses, hats, and jackets, without

any apparent hope of a change.

There was, however, no concealing the state of things at Sunnybrook,

where chapters of accidents had unfolded themselves in a sort of serial

story that had run through the year. The potato crop had failed; there

were no apples to speak of; the hay had been poor; Aurelia had turns of

dizziness in her head; Mark had broken his ankle. As this was his

fourth offense, Miranda inquired how many bones there were in the human

body, "so 't they'd know when Mark got through breakin' 'em." The time

for paying the interest on the mortgage, that incubus that had crushed

all the joy out of the Randall household, had come and gone, and there

was no possibility, for the first time in fourteen years, of paying the

required forty-eight dollars. The only bright spot in the horizon was

Hannah's engagement to Will Melville,--a young farmer whose land joined

Sunnybrook, who had a good house, was alone in the world, and his own

master. Hannah was so satisfied with her own unexpectedly radiant

prospects that she hardly realized her mother's anxieties; for there

are natures which flourish, in adversity, and deteriorate when exposed

to sudden prosperity. She had made a visit of a week at the brick

house; and Miranda's impression, conveyed in privacy to Jane, was that

Hannah was close as the bark of a tree, and consid'able selfish too;

that when she'd clim' as fur as she could in the world, she'd kick the

ladder out from under her, everlastin' quick; that, on being sounded as

to her ability to be of use to the younger children in the future, she

said she guessed she'd done her share a'ready, and she wan't goin' to

burden Will with her poor relations. "She's Susan Randall through and

through!" ejaculated Miranda. "I was glad to see her face turned

towards Temperance. If that mortgage is ever cleared from the farm, 't

won't be Hannah that'll do it; it'll be Rebecca or me!"