T was Peter's sister who told me of Felicity's engagement, and my first feeling was one of disappointment that it should not be Peter to whom she was engaged. I am old enough to be their mother, and I have known and loved Peter and Felicity since they were children. There is something rare and exquisite about Felicity. The pale ivory of the cheeks, the deep blue of her eyes and dull gold of her hair have the elusive delicacy of a Japanese picture. And behind the pale beauty of her there is a radiance, like a light that glows behind alabaster. She is eager, wistful, shy, tremulously alive. I could not, at that time, have imagined her with the light extinguished, the radiance gone.
My feeling of disappointment was illogical. She could not have married Peter. Peter had received his death sentence two years ago, and, if the best specialists of Europe were right, he had only one more year to live. And Felicity had never loved Peter. I am an incurable romancist. I would have liked to think that it was Peter's illness that was the fatal barrier between them, but really I knew it was not so. Peter had loved Felicity since she was a schoolgirl, but to Felicity Peter had never been anything but the "big brother" friend.
So she was engaged, after all. …
Peter's sister lay back in my best armchair, nibbling petits fours. She visited me very rarely, and then only because I was an old friend of the family. She and Peter's mother belonged to a dancing, night-clubbing, cocktail-drinking set, and neglected Peter shamefully, shrinking from the shadow of doom that hung over him.
"Who is it?" I asked. .
"A Mr. Arkland," answered Peter's sister unconcernedly. "Made for Felicity. Heaps older, but don't you think Felicity's just the girl to marry an older man? He's a widower."
I didn't like that.
"Any children?"
"Four sons, all married, and a daughter unmarried."
I groaned. Peter's sister laughed at me.
"She's charming. Wait till you've seen her. Felicity adores her already."
A faint memory stirred in my mind. "What did you say the name was?"
"Arkland."
Then suddenly I remembered. I had stayed at an hotel in the south of England, and a Miss Arkland had been staying there with two brothers and a father. My memories of the father and brothers were very dim, but the girl—the wonderful green-blue eyes and coppery-golden hair, the white eyelids and regal neck—she had reminded me of Rossetti's Elizabeth Siddall. And she had a curious charm. When she entered a room everybody was immediately intensely conscious of her. Though she spoke to none of the other guests, there seemed, during her stay, to be something empty and colourless in the rooms when she was not in them. Everyone commented on her and watched her with interest. She was that sort of person. Her party kept themselves severely aloof. From the girl I received the impression of an almost fanatical devotion to her companions. I remembered that they had called her "Helen."
"Is her name Helen?" I said.
"Yes," said Peter's sister. "Do you know her?"
"No. You say she likes Felicity?"
"Rather. They're devoted, from all accounts. Felicity told me to give you her love and tell you she's going to bring Helen to see you."
Then Peter's sister rose, adjusted her outrageously fashionable little hat over her curled hair, blew me a kiss, said she'd had a darling tea, and went to meet one of her dancing partners.
Felicity brought Helen to see me the next week. I had forgotten how vivid the girl's beauty was and how compelling her personality. She talked well, but one knew that even if she had not said a word, the effect would have been the same. There was no gainsaying her charm, but there was something about her that baffled me, and I did not like to be baffled. As a novelist I liked to label people and put them into pigeon-holes, and I had no pigeon-hole that Helen Arkland would fit. Felicity and I found an opportunity for a quick confidential conversation.
"Isn't she lovely?"
"She's very beautiful," I agreed.
"She's—she's a saint," said Felicity. "Do you know, she adored her mother. She says she wants to remember her mother always, always—never to let herself forget one teeny thing about her. I love her for that. Yet she doesn't mind my marrying Frank."
I felt curiously apprehensive.
"You—you really love this Frank man? You know it would break my heart if you were unhappy—both mine and Peter's."
She glowed into her wonderful pale radiance—the lamp within her seemed to blaze with happiness.
"I love him—love him," she said.
I connected my sensation of utter exhaustion, after they had gone, with Helen Arkland's personality.