The Drake Difficulty [pp. 357-361]

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served to hear it too, but, oh misery! to hear him say it-he would, some
day, pay father back every dollar he paid for them, so I might make myself easy about the money they were having."
Poor child, it was easy to see that she had shed many bitter tears
over her recollection of that interview.
"You must think no more about this," I said. "When Handel
comes down again bring him in here and we will have some music-and
we will try to find Julius, and then it will seem quite like old times.
You must keep up Handel's courage. I am glad he and you have said
these things to each other, for now they are all out, and you will not be
so foolish as to say them again, or think of them even, for they will
only make you unhappy."
"And he says that we must all be together again," she answered,
looking at me and smiling through her tears. "It will come right for
us if we only do our duty —yes, that is what he said."
So I could see that the heavens had opened, and that a perpendicular path had been revealed to these children by which they might climb
out from the pit into which they had been plunged.
The test to which Handel's character was subjected was indeed a
severe one. But he bore it nobly. It seemed to him that if the discordant elements of this circle were to be reconciled it could only be by
him, and he ever kept this aim steadily in view. Thus the one member of the family who was incapable of producing a musical sound, for
Handel had no power of music except in his soul, seemed to have the
clearest perception of its nature and substance.
When his grandfather succeeded in securing a place for him in the
naval school the boy rejoiced in hope. He said good-by to Felicia with
prophecies which warmed her heart and made her serious young face
bright. His mother went with him to Annapolis. She had but to express a wish that she might remain with her boy while he pursued his
studies, and her father made it easy for her to do so. There was nothing he would not do for his daughter now that she had acknowledged
the error of her life by returning to him-and I think it very probable
also, that he was quite willing she should go away from Bath. There
never could have been room ait one time in any house for many women
besides Mrs. Liscombe Drake.
Felicia's experience after Handel's departure was one that has been
lived over again and again. She gave her life up to duty and counted
not the surrender among sacrifices. Other girls danced in the sun, she
toiled meantime under a cloud. She must often have said to herself,
whom she never attempted to impose upon, "This is joyless business,
this living; " but as often, I am sure, she reminded herself that she
had chosen her position, and, "joyless" though it might be, there was
no other which, under the circumstances, she would have accepted or
preferred. Often, also, I knew she was reminding herself of Handel's
prediction, and that event which he had promised should come to pass,
the one thing he was living for, a reconciliation.
All the while, with what fuel was her honest musical enthusiasm
being fed and nourished! "Why," said Julius, "with such persistence,
and such perception, it will be a miracle of the worst kind if she doesn't
become one of the best of performers and best of composers too.-Just
hear that." We were sitting in our parlor when he spoke, and he
threw down his pen that he might listen to the music proceeding from
next door. In a few minutes he rushed out of the house bare-headed,
and then I heard a little break in the music, and after that a procedure-and songs that were songs, I assure you. It seemed to me that
Julius was never quite his old self after that night-at least so far as
next door was concerned. But I may well ask myself whether he
had ever been entirely himself since he began to talk with her about
music? No-they were parts of a whole —and they interpreted music
for each other.
Felicia told me one day that she had ventured to tell her father of
Handel's prophecy. She had done this, she said, to cheer him, he was
so desponding, and she had reason ever after to rejoice that she had
dared thus far. Such an expression of gladness came into his eyes,
when he said, "I am thankful that I have you, my dear child. But it
is an unspeakable satisfaction that my children can see that, while we
liv~e in- this way, l e are all wrong, and nothing can go wrell with us."
She thought that she could perceive the signs of renewed interest in his
work, and in all joy-giving things, from the day when he was permitted
to share this expectation of his children.
She told him none too soon. He rejoiced none too long in the
knowledge that this strong bond of sympathy and of purpose united
his daughter and his son. For a danger long impending, of which he
had no apprehension, came upon him as a thief in the night, and by a
stroke disabled him from shoulder to heel.
The misfortune, great though it was, illustrated yet again the truth
of the old saying, "The worst thing never happens." It came in the
summer, at a time when the greater part of the congregation were scattered. One of Felicia's first thoughts was, "How fortunate!" Even
in the midst of her tribulation this thought came. Long before autumn
she would be able to master the organ sufficiently at least to fill her
father's place. And so, from asking herself why she had been sent
into the world to bear disgrace and poverty, she began to ask nothing further than that she might be preserved in life as long as her
father should have need of her.
For some time she continued to expect the return of her mother.
She daily looked for it. Though in her letters to Handel she merely
mentioned that their father was not well, it seemed to her impossible
that from some other direction her mother should not hear the extent
of the calamity. To do her justice, Mrs. Drake knew nothing of it.
The satisfaction she daily derived from the progress her young cadet
was making was not disturbed by her knowledge of what was going on
far away in the hutmble house, which she had not entered since the day
of her abdication.
In the winter Handel returned to Bath, ostensibly to wish his grandfather a happy New Year-as he had come for only a few days' visit,
his mother did not accompany him.
My opinion was that he came mainly to ascertain how things were
really going with Felicia. The handsome quarters in which his mother
was established, the society she had, his own gay associates, the very
zest with which -he was pursuing his studies, made him think, I doubt
not, with more and more apprehension of Felicia, made him shrink from
temptations to self'indulgence with more and more repugnance. Though
his grandfather had made ample provision for his mother's support, and
for his owni likewise, he derived no satisfaction from the thought that
all this had been secured at so great a cost.
When he learned his father's real condition, and Felicia told him all
when she found that she must, and that she could no longer bear the
burden alone, he cried aloud, "What are you doing? what have you
done? what can you do, Felicia?"
"I shall do what I have been doing,'' she answered. "What else
can I? Everybody has been very kind to us."
"You hadn't confidence enough in me to tell me the truth!" lihe
exclaimed. " What right has any body to be more kind than I?"
"Dear Handel," she answered, "what could you have done?"
"I could have shared all this with you: A brother is born for adversity."
"So is a sister. Don't accuse me. I can't bear that," said Felicia.
"You know what it would have been to have had you here with me.
But it couldn't be. And so I did what I thought was best. How could
I let you lose a whole year?"
"Grandfather shall help you! I shall go tell him," he exclaimed.
"Not one word to him," said Felicia-and I know how it pained her
that she must say to him, instead of to the chief of sinners, "we have
no need of his help."
"And you sent that money to us just the same as if nothing had
happened?"
I know how she must have looked when he said that —how her gray
eyes gleamed. But it could only have been a momentary satisfaction
that her proud soul felt, and this was succeeded by a sense of shame
that she should have allowed her feeling to flare up in Handel's sightand of shame, too, that she had been capable of entertaining it. "It
was father's debt," she said. "He thinks of every thing. He asked
me about the money, and whee I told him it was ready, he said, send it."
"Very well. You have mother's receipt for it," he answered.
"But do you suppose that I am going back to Annapolis? I shall ask
grandfather to find some work for me that will pay at once."
"Can you think how I felt when he said that, aunty," said Felicia to
me. "I told him that was the last drop, and that it would kill me,
and that I had known all along that his lot had been hardest, and how
afraid I had been that he wouldn't be able to be0 true to himlself. At
last I made him see it all as I saw it, and we understood each other.
Really, at last, we did understand each other. But oh. aunty, what a
work I am making of it, all the time trying to do my duty. I never say
the right thing. I never feel the right thing. I shall hav e to be made
all over neu.n
Thank heaven, I thought, there is material enough to make a dozen
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