The Portal of Dreams

The doctor was so small and frail that his narrow face was rescued from inconsequence only by a trimly cropped Van-Dyck with a dignified sprinkling of gray. I always felt that, should I ever see him in a bathing suit, I would have to seek a new physician. I could never again think of him as sufficiently grown-up to practise an adult vocation. Yet when the doctor spoke his mentality issued out of its small habitation of flesh and expanded to commanding proportion.
The little doctor was in fine a very great doctor, and on this occasion he was bullying me with the large authority of a Bonaparte.
But, Doctor— I began protestingly.
He raised a small hand which suggested the claw of a delicate bird and fixed me with quizzical eyes that had the faculty of biting sharply through a man's unspoken thoughts.
Don't assume to say 'but' to me, he sternly enjoined; and since we had long known each other, not only as physician and patient, but also as men who breakfasted at the same hour and the same club table, I momentarily heeded.
Once upon a time, he continued, the German Kaiser presumed to question a pilot on his imperial yacht. Do you recall the result?
No, said I, I don't, but——
Again the doctor eyed me, basilisk fashion, across the bacon and eggs of our belated morning meal, as he continued:
He very properly reminded the Emperor that upon a vessel in the high seas, a pilot acknowledges no superior this side of Eternity. In matters of health I take the bridge. You obey.
But— I weakly insisted.
You presume to think because you house your nerves in a well-muscled body that they are infallible, he implacably continued. I've seen rotten motors in excellent garages. I've seen unhappy wives immured in palaces, and I've seen finer figures of men than you in lunatic asylums.