CHAPTER III.DR. FOREST AT HOME.
The doctor was about forty years old, but his hair was beginning to turn gray and his fine head was a little bald upon the top. He was about the medium height, muscular, with handsome broad shoulders, and very slightly inclined to stoutness. He had fine grey eyes, which he was in the habit of half closing when anything puzzled him. It was an exceedingly benevolent and expressive face, which won utter confidence at the first glance. He wore light, steel-bowed spectacles, which he never removed, apparently, from one year’s end to another. In repose, his mouth had an expression of severity; and when studying, he had a curious habit of protruding his under-lip; but the moment he spoke this mouth became handsome, expressing the large-heartedness and the ready humor that made him a favorite with all who knew him.
About the old house of the doctor, there was a quaint and dignified air, given by the books and numerous pictures, most of them quite old, and by the heavy antique furniture, relict of a former generation. It was not the air of wealth exactly, yet no one could suspect, from the general appearance of things, that there was a chronic scarcity of money in the family, and that the gentle Mrs. Forest had such sore difficulty in makingends meet. This, too, when the doctor was the best physician for miles around, and quantities of money were due him in all directions. The truth was, he could not collect what was due him. Unless absolutely driven to the wall, he could not ask any of his patients for money; and when they wished to return equivalents for his services, in the shape of corn, and apples, and potatoes, he said not a word until the cellar became so full that Dinah rebelled. In the spring, when seed potatoes gave out at planting time, every farmer knew where to make up his deficit; though in such cases he never thought of paying the good doctor money for them, but promised to return them at harvest time, not being particular at all to consider that a bushel now was worth five or ten in the autumn. Still, the doctor did not complain, being gentle to a fault, though he took note of all things. As to his children, he confessed frankly that he did not know how to bring them up, and when he was in doubt about any matter of discipline, he generally let them have their own way. An incident will illustrate his method: the large room where Mrs. Forest and the twins slept was directly beside the doctor’s, and as they did not like the darkness a lamp was always kept burning there. One night when the doctor, having been up all the previous night, had gone to bed early, he was prevented from sleeping by a tin-whistle in the mouth of Leila. He called out to her to stop, as he wished to go to sleep. Presently there came to the doctor’s ears a faint little “toot! toot!” from the whistle. Linnie tried hard to hush her sister, and reminded her of the voice from the next room. “Oh, its only papa!” said Leila impatiently; which, the doctor hearing, caused him to investigate the motive of the child’s remark, and philosophizingupon the subject, he went to sleep finally to the accompaniment of the “toot! toot! toot!” which Leila kept up until she was tired of it.
Mrs. Buzzell, Clara’s Sunday-school teacher, and an old friend of Mrs. Forest, had a very tender spot in her heart for the doctor, whom she regarded, and rightly too, as one of the best physicians in the world. No one understood her internal perturbations as he did, and she took all the medicines he prescribed with a faith that was somewhat remarkable, considering that she had been under his treatment for twelve years and more, and still required his services more than ever. Probably her sublime faith was based on the conviction of the awful things thatwouldhave happened but for his medicines. She lived a lonely life by herself, and was very fond of spending an afternoon at the doctor’s house, and having long conversations on nothing in particular with Mrs. Forest. Her visits were sometimes almost an infliction to Mrs. Forest, who had a strong housewifely pride in nice teas, which the chronic scarcity of money, before mentioned, rendered difficult to attain in many instances. To be sure there was always bacon and a barrel of fine hominy in the kitchen, which sufficed for Dinah’s southern tastes, and the family could always fall back upon these if necessary, and the latter at least was never absent from the family breakfast; but they could hardly serve a respectable tea-table where cake and creamy hot biscuits were asine qua nonaccording to all good housekeepers.
On one occasion, just before breakfast, Mrs. Buzzell sent a note to her friend expressing her intention to spend the afternoon with her, “if agreeable.” Now it just was not “agreeable,” for the commissariat was at alow ebb—lower, indeed, than it had ever been; but Mrs. Forest, of course, sent back a polite answer expressing delight at the prospect of the visit, not even dreaming, probably, of the conventional fib that her answer contained.
While she was writing the reply for the messenger to take back to Mrs. Buzzell, Dinah’s soul was being tried unusually in the kitchen by the conduct of the twins, which reached a climax when one of them actually threw a kitten into Aunt Dinah’s boiling hominy kettle. She was long-suffering, though her threats were severe and frequent; but this time her patience gave way entirely, and taking off a colossal carpet-slipper she spanked the offending twin right soundly. Mild Mrs. Forest hearing the uproar from the kitchen, sent Dan to bring the children to her room. Both were howling at the top of their voices, for one never cried without the other joining in on principle. Then she went down to the kitchen and reproved Dinah for taking the discipline of the children into her own hands. Dinah was too exasperated to be reasoned with. She burst out—
“I bars eberyting wid dem chil’en, missus; butI clar to God, I won’t hab dem kittens in de hominy pot!”
To the outside world, the Forest family was a model of domestic felicity, and not without cause as family life goes; but Mrs. Forest was very far from a happy woman. This was due partly to her delicate health, which gave her a disposition to “borrow trouble,” and to look too much beyond the grave for the happiness a stronger and more philosophical nature would have created out of her really fortunate environment. At times, she still suffered from the loss of the baby Arthur,though he had been dead some eight years. The doctor could hardly understand this as a normal expression, and she often accused him of a lack of sympathy. He himself submitted calmly always to the inevitable, learned the lesson that any misfortune afforded, applied it practically to his daily life, and in no other way remembered a suffering that was in the past. His wife, he said, had a passion for the “luxury of woe,” and this was a diseased condition. Dan gave her a world of trouble. She had made an idol of him from his birth, and it was indeed hard to feel that her deep love for him was not sufficient to cure him of a single one of his bad habits. Years of the most loving effort to make him take off his hat on entering the house, had been unavailing; and he still tramped through her tidy house with dirty shoes every day of his life, and though nearly fourteen years of age, it is questionable whether he had abandoned the charming habit of coming down stairs astride the baluster. He teased the twins, worried Clara whenever an opportunity offered, went and came without asking permission of his mother, and at table he was distressingly awkward. On this particular morning the doctor said to him, a little after sitting down to the breakfast-table and while he was serving the hominy—
“Now Dan, my boy, I’ve been cheated out of my morning sleep by the hubbub in the house, and my nerves are irritated; so you’ll save them a shock and much oblige me if you will give me warning when you are going to upset your glass, or wipe your knife off the table with your sleeve.”
Dan had more affection for his father than for any other being in the world. He hung his head, butanswered good-naturedly, “I’m not going to do either this morning, sir.” During this reply he was vigorously mixing a piece of very hard butter in the hominy which his father had just put into his plate, and the result was the landing of his plate, bottom upwards, on the floor by the way of his legs. Mrs. Forest uttered an exclamation of despair; but Clara quietly rose, removed thedebris, and brought Dan another plate. This time, Dan was really distressed, and his mortification was increased by the doctor’s laughing.
“Never mind, my son,” he said, putting his right hand kindly on Dan’s shoulder. “This time it was more my fault than yours. I made you nervous by my criticism.” The idea of Dan’s being nervous was an exquisite compliment from its perfect novelty. The doctor saw that the boy for once was greatly ashamed, and so he immediately changed the subject to Leila, who sat in her high chair on Dan’s right. “So Miss Mischief,” he said, “you set out to cook a kitten in the hominy this morning did you, eh? I’m very glad you failed, and I advise you to not try it again.”
“I sall took ee titten to-maw-yer, I sall.”
“You will cook the kitten to-morrow, will you?” he said, repressing a disposition to laugh. “Look here, Leila, if you try that again I hope you’ll get a much larger dose of Dinah’s slipper, and you shall not have a kiss from papa, nor come to the table with him for a whole week.”
“Poor kitty! her toes ache so,” said Linnie, who spoke quite plainly compared with her sister, and whose heart also was more tender. The doctor praised Linnie’s sympathy with the kitten, and while reading Leila a littlelecture on cruelty, the bell rang, and he was called off to see a patient.
During the day Mrs. Forest consulted Clara on the subject of the afternoon tea, for she was sorely perplexed and mortified, as she said, because there was nothing in the house.
“Why, mamma, I don’t see why you should bother yourself. We have nice, fresh, Graham bread, some delicious cheese, any quantity of fruit, and Dinah can make some hominy. Mrs. Buzzell don’t ever taste hominy, and she’ll be delighted with it, I know. Papa would find such food excellent; and I am sure what is good enough for papa is good enough for anybody in this world.”
“Yes, my child, it isgoodenough, no doubt; but it is such an odd jumble. Who ever heard of such a tea? You know Mrs. Buzzell’s appetite is fastidious, and I like to have something savory for her. Of course the doctor’s credit is good at the grocer’s, and everywhere, for that matter, but I have never used it, and never intended to; but I think I shall have to make an exception to-day. Wemusthave some butter and some sugar.”
“Now, mamma, you know Mrs. Buzzell is always complaining about her digestion. On principle, you should never give her anything but simple food—just like this tea we are going to have; and I wouldn’t put the cheese on the table either. It may destroy the effect of papa’s medicines,” added Clara, laughing.
Mrs. Forest descanted with much bitterness upon the laxity of the doctor in collecting the money due him. “Well, my child,” she said, after a pause, “I must trust to Providence.” This intention she always expressed after dwelling upon the doctor’s bad management andthe exhausted state of the larder; but she evidently thought there was great virtue in such trust, as if Providence ought to be highly complimented by her confidence. This consultation took place in the kitchen pantry, and was finally ended by the entrance of Dinah with a slop-pail from the upper regions, at the same time that a country wagon drove around to the kitchen door.