John Moubray was an old bachelor without chick or child: so most people thought. In reality, he was not a bachelor at all; but his married life had lasted only a year, and that was nearly thirty years ago! The little world about might be excused for forgetting—or himself even—for what is one year out of fifty-four? Perhaps that one year had given him more insight into the life of men; perhaps it had made him softer, tenderer to the weak. That mild celibacy, which the Church of Rome has found so powerful an instrument, was touched perhaps to a more benignant outcome still in this Scotch minister, by the fact that he had loved like his fellows, and been as other men in his time, a triumphant bridegroom, a woman’s husband. But the experience itself was long past, and had left no trace behind; it was to him as a dream. Often he felt uncertain whether there had been any reality in it at all—whether it was not a golden vision such as is permitted to youth.
In these circumstances, it may be supposed that the closing upon him in any degree of the house which had been his sister’s, which belonged to the most intimate friend of everyday life, and which was the home of children who were almost his own children, was very serious to Uncle John.
Mrs. Ogilvie, to do her justice, was anxious to obviate any feeling of this kind. The very first time he dined there after her marriage, she took him aside into a corner of the drawing-room, and talked to him privately.
“I hope there will be no difference, Mr. Moubray,” she said; “I hope you will not let it make any difference that I am here.”
“Difference?” said John, startled a little. He had already felt the difference, but had made up his mind to it as a thing that must be.
“I know,” said the lady, “that I’m not clever enough to take your sister’s place; but so far as a good meaning goes, and a real desire to be a mother to the children, and a friend to you, if you will let me, nobody could be better disposed than I am, if you will just take me at my word.”
The minister was so unprepared for any such speech that he stammered a little over his reply.
“My sister,” he said, “had no pretensions to be clever. That was never the ground my poor Jeanie took up. She was a good woman, and very dear to——very dear to those she belonged to,” he said, with a huskiness in his voice.
“That’s just what I say. I come here in a way that is hard upon a woman, with one before me that I will always be compared to. But this one thing I must say, that I hope you will come about the house just as often as you used to do, and in the same way, coming in whenever it enters your head to do so, and believing that you are always welcome. Always welcome. I don’t say I will always be here, for I think it only right to keep up with society (if it were but for Effie’s sake) more than the last Mrs. Ogilvie did. But I will never be happy if you don’t come out and in just in your ordinary, Mr. Moubray, just as you’ve always been accustomed to do.”
John Moubray went home after this address with a mingled sense of humour and vexation and approval. It made him half angry to be invited to his brother-in-law’s house in this way, as if he required invitation. But, at the same time, he did not deny that she meant well.