As I gaze at the delicate profile before me, the coils of golden hair, the complexion like the inside of a sea-shell, the slender milk-white throat, and the long dark eyelashes, which droop modestly over the glorious gray eyes, shall I own that I steal a glance of disapproval at Mary Anne, my Mary Anne, the partner of my joys and sorrows for twenty years, and the mother of my six children? Mary Anne’s figure is somewhat overblown, her hair is tinged with gray, and the complexion of her good-humoured face is slightly rubicund. But she has been a good wife to me; and I feel, with a twinge of compunction, that I have no right to be critical, as I think of a shining spot on the top of my own head, and of a little box I received from the dentist only a month ago, carefully secured from observation. But as we emerge from church I draw myself up and try to look my best as we pass the trailing mauve robes. Jack, one of our six, stumbles over the train; which gives me an opportunity of raising my hat and apologising for the brat’s awkwardness; and I am rewarded with a sweet smile and an upward glance out of the great gray eyes which is simply intoxicating.
‘We must call on Mrs Ogilvie at once,’ I observe to Mary Anne as we proceed across the fields on our homeward walk. ‘It is my duty as her landlord to find out if she is comfortable. She is a ladylike person,’ I continue, diplomatically forbearing to allude to the obvious beauty; ‘and I daresay, my dear, you will find her an agreeable neighbour.’
‘Ladylike!’ cries my wife, with a ring of indignation in her voice. ‘I don’t call it ladylike to come to a quiet country church dressed as if she were going to a flower-show. Besides, she is painted. A colour like that can’t be natural. But you men are all alike—always taken with a little outside show and glitter.’
‘But my dear,’ I remonstrate, ‘perhaps she did not know how very countrified and bucolic our congregation is; and I really do think it will be very unneighbourly if we don’t call. It must be very dull for her to know no one.’ I ignore the remark about the paint, but in my heart I give the assertion an emphatic contradiction.
Mrs Ogilvie has rented a small cottage which I own in the west-country village in which I am the principal doctor. She is the wife of a naval officer who is away in the Flying Squadron, and has settled in our sleepy little hamlet to live quietly during his absence. All her references have been quite unexceptionable, and indeed she is slightly known to our Squire, as is also her absent husband. ‘A splendid fellow he is,’ Mr Dillon tells me, ‘stands six feet in his stockings, and is as handsome as Apollo; indeed I don’t believe that for good looks you could find such another couple in England.’
The following day Mary Anne, with but little persuasion, agrees to accompany me to the cottage to call on Mrs Ogilvie. The door is opened by a neat maid-servant. She is at home; and we are ushered into the drawing-room, which we almost fail to recognise, so changed is it. Bright fresh hangings are in the windows, a handsome piano stands open, books and periodicals lie on the tables in profusion, and flowers are everywhere. ‘Evidently a woman of refinement and cultivated tastes,’ I think to myself; ‘the beauty is more than skin deep.’
Presently Mrs Ogilvie comes in, looking if possible even lovelier than she did the day before. She is in a simple white dress, with here and there a knot of blue ribbon about it; and she has a bit of blue also in her golden hair. Her manner is as charming as her looks, and as she thanks my wife with pleasant cordial words for being the first of her neighbours to take compassion on her loneliness, I can see that my Mary Anne, whose heart is as large as her figure, basely deserts the female faction and goes over to the enemy. Mrs Ogilvie is very young, still quite a girl, though she has been married three years she tells us.
‘It is dreadful that Frank should have to go away,’ she says, and the tears well up in her large gray eyes; ‘that is the worst of the service. But I suppose no woman ought to interfere with her husband’s career. I am going to live here as quietly as possible until he returns. See; here is his photograph,’ she continues, lifting a case from the table and handing it to Mary Anne. ‘Is he not handsome?’
He is most undeniably so, if the likeness speaks truth, and we both say so; Mary Anne, with the privilege of her sex and age, adding a word as to the beauty of the pair.
‘O yes,’ replies Mrs Ogilvie without the smallest embarrassment: ‘we are always called the “handsome couple.”’