A Bachelor's Dream.

by Mrs. Hungerford.

CHAPTER I.

"Now what can be done?" said the Doctor. "That's the question. What on earth can I do about it?"

He put this question emphatically, with an energetic blow of his gloved hand upon his knee, and seemed very desirous of receiving an answer, although he was jogging along alone in his comfortable brougham. But the Doctor was perplexed, and wanted some one to help him out of his difficulty. He was a bachelor, and knew therefore that it was of no use letting Patrick drive him home in search of a confidant, for at home the ruling genius of his household was his housekeeper, Mrs. Jessop.

She was a most excellent creature, an invaluable manager of the house, the tradespeople, and the maid-servants, and a splendid cook; the Doctor appreciated her highly, but he was not disposed to ask her advice or to invite her consolation.

He beat his knee a little harder, frowned more severely; finally let down the window, put out his head, and called smartly:

"Patrick!"

"Sir." Patrick pulled up the slim, clean-limbed brown horse as quickly as he could in the midst of the hurrying vehicles and hucksters' stalls which are usually to be found in the Ess.e.x Road at about seven o'clock on Sat.u.r.day evening, and looked questioningly down at his master.

"Don't go home. Drive me to Petersham Villa," said Dr. Brudenell.

Patrick obeyed rather sulkily. He did not know what his master could possibly want at Petersham Villa--where he had already been once that day--and he did know that he himself was exceedingly hungry, and desirous of getting home. He gave the brown horse an undeserved cut over the ears with his whip; and when he pulled up he did so with a jerk which he might easily have avoided.

"I sha'n't be many minutes," said the Doctor, alighting in front of a comfortable-looking well-kept house, with red gleams of firelight shining from its parlor windows. "Walk the horse up and down to keep the cold off, but don't go far."

"It's cowld enough we'll both be, I'm thinkin'," muttered Patrick, gathering up the reins with a shiver; for it was really a very cold evening indeed, damp and gray, with a biting east wind.

If the Doctor heard this complaint, he did not heed it, his policy being, when his henchman was attacked with a fit of grumbling, to let him recover his good-temper at his leisure. He had hurried up the snow-white flight of steps, given a vigorous knock at the door, and, being admitted by a neat maid-servant, was asking if Mrs. Leslie were at home. Hearing that she was, he crossed the hall with an air of being perfectly at home, and, after tapping at the door, entered the parlor, causing a lady who was making tea to utter an exclamation of surprise, and a young lady who was making toast before the glowing fire to drop a deliciously-browned slice of bread into the cinders.

"Why, Doctor"--the tea-maker extended a plump hand good-naturedly--"you again? You are just in time for a cup of tea. I believe you came on purpose."

"Hardly that; but I shall be glad of one, if I may have it, Mrs.

Leslie," the Doctor returned, emulating her light tone as well as he could; and, after shaking hands with the younger lady, who got up from her knees to greet him, he took a seat near the round table, not in the well-worn, cozy arm-chair in the snuggest corner of the snug room, which, with its gorgeous dressing-gown thrown across it and slippers warming before the fire, wad evidently sacred to somebody else.

"Of course--although I fancy you rather despise it as a rule. Not a bit like my Tom!"

"Ah, you see I'm not like Tom in having some one to make it for me!"

"Well, that's your fault, I suppose," said the lively woman, vivaciously, as she deftly handled the shining copper kettle. "I told Kate it was your knock; but she wouldn't believe that you could honor us with two visits in one day."

"I thought Doctor Brudenell's time was too valuable," observed Kate, quietly, as she resumed her toasting.

She was not nearly so pretty as her sister, although Mrs. Leslie was the elder of the two by twelve years. Maria Leslie had taken life so easily, and turned such a bright face to all its ups and downs, that time had rewarded her at forty by making her look six or seven years younger. A downright pretty woman she was, bright-eyed, bright-cheeked, bright-haired, and so plump and merry that it was a pleasure to look at her. Kate Merritt was smaller, darker, more grave, and less attractive altogether. Doctor Brudenell liked them both, but he preferred the elder, as most people did. He enjoyed a visit to Petersham Villa--it was almost the only house with whose inhabitants he was upon really easy and familiar terms, for he was by nature a shy and retiring man.

He had got into the habit of confiding in cheerful Mrs. Leslie, but he seldom talked to Kate, who was too diffident to make him forget that he also was inclined to be shy. Indeed he thought so little about her that he had not even a suspicion that in her quiet, cool, self-controlled, persistent way, she had made up her mind to marry him. Mrs. Leslie did know it, and often rated her sister soundly on the subject, with even a touch of contempt sometimes.

"You are most absurd to keep that silly notion fixed in your head!" she would declare, impatiently. "He doesn't care a straw for you, child!

Haven't you wit enough to see that? If he only knew what a goose you were he'd pay you the compliment of thinking you crazy, I tell you.

He's a good fellow--the best fellow in the world after my Tom--but there's something odd about him in that way. Can't you see that he hardly knows one woman from another, you silly child? I don't, for my part, believe that the man has ever been in love in his life at all."

Mrs. Leslie was penetrative, but in this matter she was wrong; for, if George Brudenell had been asked, he would probably have confessed that he had been in love twice. True, his first pa.s.sion had been conceived at the age of eighteen, its object being the bosom-friend of his only sister, a young lady who owned to six-and-twenty, and who had laughed at him mercilessly when the most startling of valentines had made her aware of the state of things. Then, years after, when he was nearly thirty, he had become very fond of the daughter of his partner, a pretty, gentle, winning creature some half a dozen years younger than himself, who had girlishly adored him. He had been so fond of her and so used to her, he had grieved so sincerely when, a month before what was to have been their wedding-day, she died, that he did not realize in the least that he had reached his present age of forty-three without having been really in love at all.

He was not unhappy. A studious man, cold, taciturn, and self-contained as a rule, caring little for general society and devoted to his profession, the want in his life, the blank in his wifeless and childless home, was not to him what it would have been to a more impulsive, less self-reliant nature. If sometimes he inst.i.tuted an involuntary comparison between his contracted hoped and interests as contrasted with those of other men, books, his work, his studies, soon consoled him. He hardly knew there was a yearning in his breast--a vague, intangible felling, waiting for a mistress-hand to stir it into activity--the hand of a woman whom he had never seen.

"And what brings you here a second time, Doctor?" asked Mrs. Leslie, brightly, as she poured out a cup of tea and handed it to him. "Are you going to give us some advice gratis?"

"Hardly, Mrs. Leslie; in fact, I want yours."

"Mine?" exclaimed the lady, vivaciously. "It is yours, of course--but upon what subject?"

"This. You recollect that I told you my sister was coming home from India with her children?"

"To be sure--I remember. Well?"

"Well, I have a letter from her announcing that, as she has been out of health for the last month or two, her husband does not wish her to travel yet. But her children are coming to England--they are on their way, in fact, and coming to me."

Doctor Brudenell, in making this statement, did not feel comical, but he looked so, in spite of his grave, refined, scholarly face, and Mrs.

Leslie greeted his words with a burst of hearty laughter.

"My dear Doctor, don't look so tragic! The poor little creatures won't eat you. So they are coming to you? Well, what is your difficulty?"

"Merely, what am I to do with them?"

"Why, take care of them, of course!"

The Doctor stirred his tea with an air of helpless bewilderment. He felt that this was all very well as far as it went, and strictly what he meant to do, of course; but it did not go far enough--it was no solution of his difficulty. He felt a distinct sense of injury, too.

His sister had got married, which was all very well. She had had eight children, only three of whom were now alive; and it occurred to him that, having the children, it was clearly Laura's duty to look after them. There was en element of coolness in her sending them to him which he found rather disconcerting. It opened a prospect of unending domestic tribulation. Laura herself had been an altogether irrepressible child, loud in voice, restless of movement, tireless of tongue, insatiable in curiosity, unceasing in mischief. What would his quiet house be with three editions of Laura running rampant about it?

They would invade his study, disarrange his books, frolic in the drawing-room, make quiet and peace things of the past. What could he do with them? What would Mrs. Jessop say? The Doctor shuddered at the thought; the prospect appalled him.

"You had better get a governess for them," suggested Mrs. Leslie, briskly.

"A governess!" This was a ray of light, but he was not sure that he did not prefer darkness. "Oh--a governess?" he repeated, interrogatively.

"Of course! They will be tiresome, you may be sure--all children are, and Anglo-Indian ones particularly--at least so I should fancy--and you certainly will not want them disturbing you, while it will never do to have them running riot over the house. Get a good, sensible, responsible person, not too young, and you will find that you need hardly be troubled at all."

The Doctor felt that this counsel was good. It was plain, practical, feasible. But there remained a difficulty. How was he to become possessed of the sensible, responsible person who was not too young?

"Advertise," suggested his adviser, tersely.

Of course! How very foolish of him not to have thought of it! The plainest possible way out of the dilemma.

"Thank you, Mrs. Leslie," said the Doctor, rising and taking up his hat. "Thank you. I've no doubt that you're perfectly right. I will advertise."

He shook hands with the ladies--gratefully with the one, indifferently with the other--and bowed himself out, hurrying to the waiting Patrick, who had fulfilled his own prophecy in so far that he was by this time "cowld" in every limb, although his temper was exceedingly warm.

From the window Kate Merritt watched the brougham roll away and then turned to her sister angrily, tears in her eyes, a hot flush upon her face. Although she was by nature really obstinate, resolute, and persistent, she often exhibited upon the surface a childish pettishness with which her real self was almost absurdly at variance. She spoke now as a spoilt child might have done.

"How dreadfully disagreeable you are, Maria! It's too bad, I declare! I believe you do it on purpose--there!"

"Do what on purpose? What in the world do you mean?" cried Mrs. Leslie, pausing, sugar-tongs in hand.