Papa's own girl: A novel

The doctor used to say that “Trust in Providence and keep your powder dry” was a good injunction, but would be better reversed; and whatever he believed, Clara subscribed to as if by instinct. So when her mother, in the kitchen pantry, expressed her determination to trust to Providence, Clara received it with a little scowl of impatience.

Dinah came into the drawing-room a few minutes later, and Mrs. Forest and Clara followed her back to the kitchen. The wagon which had just driven away contained some grateful patient of the doctor. He had left with Dinah a half dozen nicely-dressed spring chickens, some golden balls of fragrant butter, and two boxes of fresh honey in the comb. Mrs. Forest looked silently at her daughter, every feature expressing, “You see I trusted in Providence.” Clara laughed pleasantly, repressing the temptation to remind her mother that the wagon must have been on its way with the welcome treasures long before that decision to trust in Providence was made; but she only said, “Now you can give Mrs. Buzzell a nice attack of indigestion. O mamma! your desire to give her something ‘savory,’ as you said, is only a deep-laid scheme to increase papa’s practice. I see it all now. Mrs. Buzzell is one of his few patients who pay promptly!”

“Why! what levity!” exclaimed Mrs. Forest, who, now that her anxiety about a respectable tea was removed, felt at peace with the world, and her sense of the fitness of things was answered.

Mrs. Buzzell came in good season. She was a prim lady of sixty or more, dressed in a neat black grenadine dress, open to a point from the throat. This open space was filled in with spotless illusion lace, fastened with a little jet brooch. Her white hair was beautifully rolled in three puffs on either side of her head, and surmounted by a white cap with a border or frill, and lavender-colored strings. She was a very active, industrious person, though a sufferer from her ailments. During the afternoon she spoke of her digestion several times. On these occasions Clara made a knowing, mischievous sign to her mother, who was dignifiedly oblivious, apparently, to what her saucy daughter was thinking.

Clara set the tea-table herself with her mother’s choice old china, which seemed to feel its rare importance only when arranged upon a snowy cloth. After all Mrs. Forest’s anxiety, the tea was as delightfully respectable as her heart could wish. The twins, however, set up in their high chairs, detracted a good deal from the solemnity of the occasion, for their behavior, always especially bad when “company” was present, was sufficient to make Mrs. Buzzell’s cap-border stand up in consternation. They kicked the under side of the table with the toes of their little shoes, setting the cups dancing in their saucers, whenever the supply of honey gave out and was not instantly renewed, or when reproved by their gentle mother for the quantity of cake they thought proper to discuss. Whenever their conduct became unbearable, a kind of semi-yell from Dan distracted their attention for a few moments, enabling the ladies to continue their mild comments upon the diseases incident to children, and the superior taste of the new milliner’s bonnets and caps.

Clara silently watched and anticipated the wants of the twins, wearing a weary, responsible look, for they weighed upon her young life like the world upon the shoulders of Atlas. Since they were babies, creeping about, putting everything animate or inanimate into their mouths, and calling every man papa who approached them, Clara had gradually assumed more and more the care of them, being stronger in mind and body than her mother. Her method of managing these irrepressibles, was very reprehensible in one respect, but she had been led into it by the necessity of some method, and the impossibility of moving the rebellious little tyrants by any reasonable means. She had taken advantage of their passion for doing anything they were forbidden to do, even though that in itself were disagreeable to them. For example, after tea the great desideratum was to get the twins upstairs to bed, for there was little possibility of quiet conversation where they were. The doctor had just come in, and was very contentedly sipping his rather insipid tea, and gathering up what remained of the eatables, to the accompaniment of a somewhat detailed account of Mrs. Buzzell’s “wretched digestion.”

“Now, Linnie,” said Clara, “you wish to stay down and play, don’t you? but Clara is going upstairs.” It was never necessary to address but one at a time, for whatever one decided to do was certain to be immediately repeated by the other. By the time she had reached the stairs, Linnie dropped her toys and started, Leila following closely, both determined to perish rather than stay down-stairs, as they supposed they were expected to do. Once arrived in the sleeping chamber, similar manœuvres inveigled the twins into bed, and when they were finally sleeping, Clara went down to the sitting-room. The doctor noticed her weary look, and said, “My child, you have too much responsibility. Papa must try to send you away to school. I have been thinking of your method in managing those children. Surely you do not think you are right in controlling them by such motives?”

“I suppose not, papa,” answered Clara, who had sat down on a stool at her father’s side, and was “resting,” as she used to call it, in the magnetic caresses of his hand upon her brown hair; “but it saves time.”

“Ah! my daughter. How many follies are committed under that plea! See what you do by this course. In the first place, you cultivate obstinacy in the little ones, which is bad enough, and then you dull the fine edge of your conscience by doing what your better sense condemns, I am sure.”

“She is not so much to be blamed,” said Mrs. Forest. “It is one of Dan’s tricks. She learned it from him.”

“What does papa’s girl think of that as an excuse?” he asked, studying her fine face.

“I don’t think it excuses me, papa. I know it does not.”

“You are right. Dan should learn of you, not you of him, in matters of conscience. I only wish he had your conscientiousness, and your love of books, too. I never see him reading. I wonder where the young rat is to-night.” Clara knew pretty well where Dan was, but for his sake she kept silent. She was always merciful to his delinquencies; probably from the fear that she did not love him as she believed a sister should love her brother. No two children could well be more unlike; and for years he had bullied her unmercifully, though he would not permit others to do so, and his tough little fist was ready to the head of any urchin in school or in the street, who dared to show the least disrespect for his sister. He monopolized that matter himself, and carried teazing to cruel extremes. She was easily irritated by him, especially in her earlier years, and whenever he saw her becoming angry, it was a constant practice of his to seize both her hands and hold them as in a vise, mocking her impotent rage until it grew to murder in her heart. This was a persecution so often repeated that it had completely destroyed all her natural tenderness for him, which the sensitive child reproached herself for, and sought to atone by treating him with great kindness.

Ah! what a nursery of crooked, abnormal motives the family often is! How many really deep wrongs are done to impressible children, to which the parents are utterly blind, because so ignorant of the laws of mental development. When Clara’s troubles with Dan were unendurable, she had sometimes gone to her mother. Once she did so, bursting out with, “I wish I could kill him.” The mother was horrified; but, alas! only at the language; not seeing beneath the surface what madness had been induced in the child’s heart, nor inferring a necessary and adequate cause. She only reproved Clara for such “dreadful words,” and sent for Dan. “My son, why do you teaze your sister so? Do you not know it is very wicked, and that if you are wicked you will never go to Heaven?” In truth, she was utterly incapable of comprehending the difficulty between the children, and as Dan was on his good behavior when his father was present, and as all the family tacitly agreed to never trouble the doctor unnecessarily, knowing that he ought to rest during the short time his practice left him free, he never knew of this peculiar trial of Clara’s until long after.

When Mrs. Forest would remind Dan of his danger of losing Heaven, she naturally thought that it should have great weight with him; though if she could have read his thoughts, she would have quickly seen her mistake. Heaven, to Dan, meant a country

and though he thought such a dull place might do for girls and for people like the widow Buzzell, he knew perfectly well that it was no place for a live boy, who liked fishing and setting snares in the woods much better than any congregation he could imagine.

But to go back to the family circle. When the doctor wondered where the “young rat” was, Clara kept silent. Mrs. Buzzell hazarded the suggestion that he might be off with those low Dykes—the Dykes being a family whom nobody visited, and who were generally set down as “no better than they should be.” This was precisely where Dan was at that moment, and the attraction was possibly Susie Dykes, though he took no particular notice of any one but Jim Dykes, who possessed a pair of old battered foils, and with them gave the delighted Dan several desultory lessons in the art of fencing. Jim being a great swaggerer, and a little older than Dan, was mighty in his eyes; especially when he discoursed on the “guards” and “passes,” his hat cocked over his left eye, his legs straddled, and an unmanageable end of tobacco in his mouth.

“It is strange,” said Mrs. Forest, “what Dan finds so agreeable in that family. I am sure I could not endure the house. Mrs. Dykes is a slattern, and her children have no sort of bringing up, as I am told.”

“Why,” said the doctor, “I don’t see but Susie is a very nice girl. She behaves very well indeed—totally unlike that uncouth brother of hers. I like the pretty way she does her hair.”

“For my part, I distrust girls or women who please only men,” said Mrs. Buzzell. “I’ve heard several men praise her looks.”

“I’m inclined to think that her charm is not so much in her looks as in her good nature. She always smiles as if she were happy. The signs of happiness rest one so;”—and the doctor sighed.

“Men,” said Mrs. Forest, who seldom generalized, “are unsatisfied unless women are always gay and smiling; but how can we be? Household cares so drag us down, and the care of children, especially two at a time, is too much for any one.”

“Yet children used to be considered a blessing,” remarked the doctor, and added humorously, “but I can see how any woman might be blest to death by a too frequent repetition of this doubling extravagance of your sex.”

Mrs. Forest was always annoyed at this suggestion, which the doctor often teazed his wife with, just to see the expression of impatient credulity on her face. She pretended not to notice it this time, but answered, a little spiritedly, “So they are a blessing, of course. I do not mean to deny that, but one may have many trials about them. I’m sure I have my share with Dan. He is almost sixteen, and yet I am quite sure he prefers to be ragged and dirty to looking like a gentleman’s son. It does annoy me so to think I have no influence over him in this matter.”

“I think, mamma,” said Clara, raising her head from her father’s knee, “that Susie Dykes will have more influence in that matter than you have. He made a famous toilet to-day before going out. You should see his room. It looks like an old cockatoo cage after the bird has been bathing—only cockatoos can’t leave their towels and stockings scattered over the floor.”

“Did he really change his stockings?” asked Mrs. Forest in amazement. “Then there’s something wrong. It must be the first time in his life he ever did such a thing of his own accord!”

When Mrs. Buzzell rose to go the doctor rose also, and, as usual, gallantly accompanied her. The conversation on the way was a little tiresome to the doctor, but his heart was far too kind to permit him to show it, for he knew that he was much esteemed by this patient, and he pitied her lonely life. In answer to her complaints about her digestion he said, “And you ate honey and hot bread to-night. You should have eaten only a crust of bread, and chewed it well.”

“Oh dear, no—that is, I am never troubled about what I eat at your house. I can digest anything perfectly well there; but everything disagrees with me at home. I have told you that often, doctor,” she added, as if pained that he should not remember.

“Pardon me, I did not forget; but I thought I must take that with a certain margin, as I am compelled to do much that my women patients tell me; but I see I must make you an exception, and the result is that my treatment can do you no good. You need more excitement—a larger life. While you live such a lonely way, medicines are of little use. You see the doctor is a humbug, more or less, and must be until he can prescribe changes in the social conditions as well as of diet and climate. Anyway considered, doctoring with drugs is more the business of the charlatan than of the true scientist. The longer I live the more I see the folly of patching up the stomach and the liver when the true disease is in the soul.”

“Soul! why, doctor, I was afraid you did not believe in the soul.”

“But I do, only you Christians and spiritualists, so called, have such a beastly material conception of soul that you can scarcely understand the scientific faith. Be sure that I believe in the immortality of soul, but I know that structure corresponds to function; that is the first law of nature. Now the soul, as you conceive it, is not a spiritual conception, but some kind of organization—a ghost, in short, having functions, but the Devil himself cannot define its structure.”

“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.