“Well, I am not a scientific person, doctor, so I will not pretend I know much; but I think I know that the only way to be happy is to keep as near to Christ as we can.” After quite a long pause, during which doctor and patient reached the little veranda porch of Mrs. Buzzell’s home, she added, “Shall I keep on taking that cardiac mixture, or would you recommend something else?”
“Nothing else,” he said, holding her hand a moment, “only a good-night kiss from your doctor.” This he added gravely, and then pressed his grizzly moustache lightly first upon one and then the other of his patient’s faded cheeks. The prescription was quite new, though the doctor had often kissed her forehead after sitting by her bed, talking to her while holding her hand.
“Is this a general treatment?” asked Mrs. Buzzell good-humoredly; “or am I an exception?”
“This is a special treatment, because specially indicated,” he said. “You are thoroughly womanly in your nature, and you really need the magnetism of affection. You suffer more from your secluded life than most people would. Good-night; I will call soon,” and with that he left her. To the ordinary observer Mrs. Buzzell passed as a formal prude, cold and unattractive, but in reality, there was in her heart, an under-current of refined sensibility. To be sure it would not have been safe or prudent, at least, for any other man to attempt to kiss her cheek as the doctor had done, but she knew there was no guile in his heart, and she justly held his kindness and his deep sympathy with her as a most precious treasure. Coarse men are wont to scoff at the attraction women find in ministers and physicians, especially women whose social conditions are unfortunate; but the solution is very simple: physicians, at least, generally know more of human nature than other men do. This is true, of course, only of those of the nobler moral type. No others win the confidence of refined women, though their vanity may blind them to the wide difference there is between ordinary and extraordinary confidence, for every physician, if not every priest, receives a certain amount of confidence from the nature of his office. The physician of the high type to which Dr. Forest belongs, knows to a certainty the amount of mutual sympathy existing between their women patients and their husbands, when, as is often the case, there is no verbal confession of grievances; and even when, if such grievances exist, there is special care taken to conceal them. The kind-hearted and high-minded physician, especially if he be a man of the world, as all great physicians have invariably been, is the priestly confessor among Protestants. He no more thinks of betraying the confidences of his patients than the Catholic priest does those of the confessional. He is not restrained from a feeling of honor—there is no restraint in the case, for there is not the slightest temptation to talk of such confidences. It is not in that way that the physician regards them. He has received them by the thousand, and they excite no wonder in his mind; besides, who could understand them as he does? He receives them seriously enough, for whatever the cause, suffering is positive and demands his sympathy, and the true physician accords it as by instinct. To the vulgar, causes seem often very amusing. To the physician, he who “dies of a rose in aromatic pain,” is none the less dead than if hit by a cannon-ball.
When you see two men walking in the street, and another in front of them trips and falls on the pavement, watch the effect of the accident on the two men. If one guffaws with amusement, and the other rushes to the victim, helps him up with grave ceremony and sympathetic words, you may draw this conclusion: the first is an ignoramus, and very likely an American; the other is a physician or a Frenchman; for as a rule the French are incapable of seeing anything comical in an incident fraught with danger to a fellow-mortal. Not that American men are less generous and kind-hearted than other people, but they are ashamed of the imputation of effeminacy, and consider it laudable to conceal the signs of delicate sensibility.
Mrs. Buzzell could not probably have explained exactly what it was in the character of Dr. Forest that made him seem so unlike all other men. She would have naturally called it religion, only the doctor was most unquestionably different, in his views of social morality and “saving grace,” from all the devout people she had ever known. She thought herself a very strict believer in orthodox dogmas, but in truth she would herself have rejected any “scheme of salvation” that was not some way capable of including him. Perhaps she could not see clearly how, so she prayed for him constantly, and believed that God would never suffer such purity of heart, and such devotion to everything good and true, to go unrewarded. It was clearly “unreasonable.” She could understand, she thought, how good works might not count much in themselves, but motives could never go for naught; and the doctor’s motives were so nobly superior that they must come by the grace of God. So on that rock she rested her fears for the doctor’s salvation.
CHAPTER V.
THE TATTOOING.
Two years are passed, and nothing that very specially affects the doctor’s family has happened. The twins go to school, quarrel with each other, as sisters generally do, but they give Aunt Dinah less trouble. They have grown far too considerate to attempt flavoring the hominy with live kitten, an event which, for a very long time, she constantly feared would be repeated. They are “as like as two peas,” according to most people outside of the family, though in fact, with the exception of their size and dress, they do not much resemble each other. Leila is a natural egotist, and has everything pretty much her own way, for Linnie has no rights which her more positive sister is inclined to respect. Linnie, who is much more generous and affectionate than Leila, protests loudly against the tyranny of her sister, “yells,” as Leila poetically calls weeping, but in the end invariably yields.
Dan is about seventeen, and with Clara attends the village high-school. His educational progress is of the same order as that which distinguished him in the old district-school spelling class, where the head was at the wrong end of the room! To his loving mother he is a vexation of spirit, though he is less awkward at table, and he has learned to take off his hat, and with great effort, and for a short time, to behave “like a gentleman’s son,” as she says. Still he finds Jim Dykes as irresistible as ever, for the two are now endeared by one or two desperate encounters, wherein the “science” acquired from his worthy teacher had enabled Dan to prove himself master. He was much prouder of this than he would have been of any honor at the disposal of the high-school, for the great bully, Jim Dykes, treated him with distinguished respect.
One evening, when Mrs. Forest was sitting up for him, as she always did, he came in very late. She reproved him for passing his time in low company, whereupon he stoutly defended the whole Dykes family on general principles. This he had never done before. She was seriously concerned, and when she spoke of Susie Dykes, he answered insolently and went upstairs in a huff. When the doctor entered, a little later, his wife appeared at the head of the stairs, and asked him to come up to Dan’s room, whither she had followed him, as she had often done, to offer silent prayers at his bedside, when distrusting all mortal power to guide him safely through the temptations of youth. He was sleeping, as she expected; but she had been diverted from her pious purpose by a sight that turned all her maternal solicitude into indignation and refined disgust. The doctor followed Mrs. Forest into the boy’s room, where he lay asleep, as stalwart and beautiful in form as any rustic Adonis could well be. He had thrown the covering partially off, for it was warm, and one of his incurable habits was to sleep entirely nude. This the doctor said he had inherited from his old Saxon ancestry, who always slept in that way.