Mrs. Ranney always looked nice, there could be no two opinions on that. She was a slight, very young woman, with a heart-shaped, childish face, that wore an expression of gentle, matronly dignity, repelling to familiarity. She had serious, flower-blue eyes, and quantities of waving, chestnut-brown hair coiled back so tightly from a broad, low forehead that you hardly realized at first that when it was let down it formed a beautiful, shimmering cloak around her that nearly touched the floor. Her whole personality was intensely feminine. In any demand of the day her simple gowns became her, yet were never too fine for the work her busy fingers found to do, for Mrs. Ranney was a housewife and a sewer of garments; she even helped vegetables as well as flowers to grow with a quiet inborn capability that showed in whatever she undertook. She was known to be tender-hearted; the suffering of others seemed to hurt her very flesh. When that little bruiser, Herbert Ranney, fell and bumped his head, Mrs. Ranney would fly white and breathless from the house, and clasp him to her breast in a wild effort to fight off this thing that was attacking her child. She couldn’t stand it that a child should suffer.
Yet she had, at unexpected moments, a roguish sense of humour that set her serious blue eyes dancing mischievously; when she got laughing, as had happened, half inaudibly, so that she was helpless to stop herself, she was as provocatively charming as a lovely child. Her husband had been once heard to state that he had never expected to marry, having lived until the age of thirty-six contentedly a bachelor, but that when he met “that rascal there,” she bowled him over on the spot. It certainly was a fact that, though she was so hard to get acquainted with, every man admired Mrs. Ranney.
Women, as a rule, did not care much for Mr. Ranney, perhaps, because he used towards them a gallant deference so evidently given them as a sex that it piqued by ignoring any personal claim to his attention. In appearance he was large and heavily built, smooth-shaven, with fine intellectual features, and hair and brows of blue black; his square chin was almost aggressively assertive. A man of semi-nautical tastes, he had at times almost a quarter-deck manner alike to barking dogs, poaching cows and trivial or unauthorized approach from his fellows. With the men who were his friends he was reputed to be a charming companion, witty, genial, and whole-hearted; the wives took the fact on hearsay, with some suspicion. Mrs. Laurence felt a distinct sense of resentment as, sitting on her piazza after dinner she saw him coming up the steps, natty and immaculate in his blue flannels, pipe in hand—he was actually going to leave his wife alone on the eve of her departure. He doffed the peaked, gold-banded cap of his boating club.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Laurence. Is Laurence anywhere around?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, he’s never far off when I’m here,” returned Mrs. Laurence incautiously, with what she felt was almost too much meaning for politeness; she saw Mr. Ranney’s left eyebrow go up a little with quizzical effect; it made her feel hot. “Your wife leaves to-morrow, I believe. How is she to-night after all her packing?”
“Mrs. Ranney is quite well, I think,” said Mr. Ranney in a tone that in spite of its apparent politeness placed a wedge between himself and his personal affairs, though Mrs. Laurence still persevered.
“You will miss her dreadfully after she goes.”
“Oh, Minda will look after me,” said Mr. Ranney coolly. Minda was a capable old coloured woman who worked for the neighbourhood. “Hello, Laurence!” His voice changed to one of good fellowship. “Want to walk down with me and take a look at Harker’s boat?”
“No, I think I’d better not,” said Mr. Laurence lingeringly, his long figure coming into view in the semi-darkness of the summer evening. He really did not care to go, “the boys” bored him; an uncut magazine, with his wife for audience had been pleasantly ahead of him after the work of the day; yet such is the power of attraction from man to man, so much greater than that from woman to woman, that he almost felt as if he wanted to be Ranney’s companion if Ranney wanted him. It was the Call of the Wild. Past experience warned him clear of those mistakenly jocular words, “my wife won’t let me”—he put his hand caressingly on the back of her chair as he said: “I don’t think I’ll leave Anna this evening, we’re finishing a serial together.”