A Wonderful Woman

by Richmal Crompton

A WONDERFUL WOMAN

By RICHMAL CROMPTON

IT 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.

I did not meet Mr. Arkland before the wedding, but I met him and Felicity quite by accident while they were on their honeymoon. He was tall and good-looking, with gentle brown eyes and a brown imperial. He was an intellectual man and well-known archæologist, but there was something simple, almost childish, about him. I have known him spend an entire afternoon in whole-hearted enjoyment of a kitten's antics. In his manner to Felicity there was a mixture of boyishness and protectiveness that I found charming. I liked, too, his whimsical smile. But I saw at once that it was not the face of a strong man, and that roused again the little feeling of apprehension that I had when first I heard of the engagement. But Felicity—Felicity seemed immersed in a sea of happiness. I had never seen her lovelier—never seen her delicate charm more adorable.

Then I went North to my home, and did not come down to London again for several months. As soon as I arrived in London I received a note from Felicity, asking me to call and see her. "Do come. We're in most evenings, always on Sundays." It was a note that told me nothing. I sent for Peter. I had not seen Peter since I first heard of Felicity's engagement.

Peter came, looking more gaunt than ever, with deeper lines on his thin face.

"Well," I said, "I want you to tell me about Felicity."

He gave me his twisted, cynical smile. "What do you want me to tell you?"

"Do you see her regularly?"

"Yes."

"Is she happy? "

"How do you tell whether people are happy?"

"Peter, don't tease. Is she happy?"

"Why don't you go and see her and judge for yourself?"

"I'm going to. You're hopeless. She says any evening—she mentions Sunday."

"Oh, go on Sunday," said Peter. "All the sons and their wives turn up on Sundays. I often go then myself. Sunday's the time to see it at its best."

"See what at its best?"

But he would not answer. I determined to go on Sunday evening. Peter's manner had mystified me. Yet Peter's manner might mean anything. It might mean that Felicity was very happy with her husband, and that the thought of that hurt him. It might simply be one of Peter's bad days, because though he could not bear anyone to mention it, there were days when every breath he drew was an agony. The explanation from which I shrank, even in my own mind, was that Felicity was unhappy.

*****

I went on to them the next Sunday evening with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension.

It was a large house with an air of solid prosperity about it. When I entered the drawing-room, the first thing I noticed was a large oil painting over the fireplace. It was of a middle-aged woman, and its likeness to Helen Arkland was amazing—the same curious green-blue eyes, coppery hair and wonderful neck. Like the younger woman, it dominated the room—the eyes seemed to follow you about as you moved. Then I noticed that a small table in a corner of the room was full of portraits of the same woman, portraits taken at different periods of her life, but all showing the same vivid beauty and compelling personality. In front of them was a vase of white flowers which seemed to give the table the nature of a shrine.

Then Felicity came forward to greet me. My first glance at her told me nothing. She was pale, her radiance slightly dimmed; but she had always been pale, and a honeymoon could not last for ever. She was more self-possessed than she had been. That might be either the effect of three months of married life or it might be a sort of protective armour. Her husband greeted me. He struck me as being more serious, less boyish than he had been on his honeymoon, which again was only natural. Then I turned to Helen. She looked magnificent. Felicity gave me a little proud smile when I looked from Helen to her. So she still adored Helen. … The room seemed to be full of people. Peter gave me a mocking bow and smile from a dark corner, and I was introduced to the four brothers and three sisters-in-law—Mr. and Mrs. Bob Arkland, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Arkland, Mr. and Mrs. Dick Arkland, and Rupert Arkland. Rupert's wife was not there. Except for Peter and myself, it was a family party. There was a little music, but the evening was spent chiefly in conversation. Helen Arkland was a wonderful conversationalist. I noticed that Felicity and the sisters-in-law were very silent, but it was some time before I discovered the reason. The conversation was apparently a general one, but Helen Arkland led it very cleverly and unobtrusively so as to keep Felicity and the sisters-in-law out of it. When a lately published book was being discussed, and Felicity made one of her quick, intuitive remarks, Helen said: "Exactly. Mother liked that book of Michael Grey—on pretty much the same subject—didn't she, Dad? We read it aloud in the evenings to her."

And Felicity's glow faded, and the dead woman over the mantelpiece dominated the room. Felicity again made a gallant attempt to fight it. Again and again she returned to the charge, only to be put, by some allusion to a past she had not shared, or a joke to which she did not hold the key, courteously but firmly outside the charmed circle. It was the same with the sisters-in-law. Mrs. Bob tried hard to enter.

"Helen, you ought to hear that new Russian pianist. Bob and I went last night."

"I've heard he's good. I'm glad you made Bob go. It seems ages since he went to a concert. You're growing lazy, Bob. I used to drag you to one about once a week, and you really enjoyed them, you know. Do you remember the first concert we went to with Aunt Anne—the time when you went fast asleep?"

Bob's wife begged for details, but Helen only smiled at Bob and changed the subject, and Bob's wife relapsed into silence.

As I watched and listened, the idea of a charmed circle seemed more and more apt. In the very centre was Helen Arkland, and round her her father and four brothers, and outside Felicity and their wives. It was the curious magnetism of Helen Arkland that kept her father and brothers near her, isolated within the circle. They had admired her all their lives. With their male imperceptiveness they did not even realise that the charmed circle existed. They realised that she gave them a devotion few sisters give their brothers, and they felt grateful to her. They were proud of her beauty and her charm. Her loyalty to their dead mother touched them deeply.

I watched the sisters-in-law, too. Bob's wife admired Helen, and tried all the evening without success to enter the charmed circle. Harold's wife was angry and resentful, watching Helen with smouldering eyes. Dick's wife was frankly bored, and anxious to go home. Rupert's wife, I learned afterwards, had taken a solemn oath never to enter the house again. "I'm not going all that way just to spend the evening being made to feel out of it." Rupert said it was "all imagination," and came without her. But it was only Felicity who really suffered. Again and again I caught the troubled look on her pale face. And Peter sat silent in his corner. I went home early. Felicity went up to her bedroom with me. She looked white and exhausted.

"Isn't Helen wonderful?" she said at once.

"How?" I parried.

"How can you ask?" she said. "In every way. You could hardly imagine all she does for those boys and Frank. Nothing's too much trouble. She's so selfless. And don't you think her loyalty to—to her mother is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? She's a perfect saint." Then the troubled look shadowed her dear face. "But I'm so little—so petty. I meant to feel so different about it."

I walked home with Peter.

"I can't quite understand it," I said. "Did she let Felicity marry her father because she knew she couldn't help it, or did she want to feel her power over Felicity, too? Does she enjoy hurting Felicity? What's the ruling passion? Love of power or craving for admiration, or something more subtle than either? I want to understand."

Peter answered curtly: "I'm afraid I'm not interested in it psychologically."

I saw his lips tight in the dusk: Then I knew how the sight of Felicity's unhappiness tortured him.

"Do you go often?" I said.

He laughed shortly. "Oh, yes. I go every Sunday evening. It's my weekly entertainment."

*****

I saw Felicity only once more that year, and then it was Peter who made me go.

"I don't want to, Peter," I pleaded. "I hate the woman, and I can't bear to watch it."

"You must," he said. "You must know how bad things are."

"What's the use? I can't do anything."

"Don't be a coward."

The next day, when Felicity rang me up and asked me to come to dinner, I went meekly with Peter, who called for me.

Helen Arkland was there, magnificent, beautiful, and dignified, with that air of self-abnegation and devotion that became her so well. She had not changed at all. It was Felicity who had changed. My heart seemed to stop beating when I saw Felicity. She was white and lustreless, as though all her vitality had been drained from her. Her wonderful radiance was gone. The light behind the alabaster of her was extinguished. She was beaten. She had given up the struggle.

We met in the drawing-room beneath the eyes of the terrible woman who was Helen Arkland's mother. It was Felicity's birthday, and she showed us her presents, among them a ring from her husband, a pendant from Helen, and a book from Peter.

Peter, who looked almost as white as Felicity herself, talked of old times and teased her into a shadow of her old self. Then it was as if, encouraged by our presence, she had determined to force some issue. She drew in her breath and then said: "I want to celebrate my birthday. Let's all go to a theatre to-night. Frank, ring up for seats."

It seemed a casual, insignificant suggestion, but in the silence that followed I became aware of a sudden tension.

"Darling," said Helen, "you know it's the anniversary of my mother's death. We always spend this evening at home."

Then I feared that Felicity would lose command of herself.

That was so long ago," she said breathlessly. "This is my birthday."

Her husband had started to the door to obey her suggestion. Now he stood looking at the two of them.

"Go, if you like," said Helen pleasantly. "Of course I won't. You and Dad and the others go. I dare say you'd enjoy it."

Her father looked at her. She stood, secure in the dominance of her personality, under her mother's portrait, her head turned just as her mother's head was turned. Felicity watched the two of them, her breath coming and going quickly. The man neither felt the tension nor realised the point at issue. His daughter's likeness to her dead mother and loyalty to her dead mother smote him suddenly with a pang of conscience as it so often did, and his tenderness of heart shrank from wounding her. On Felicity's side he saw only a birthday treat that might take place any time. He turned back into the room.

"We'll fix it up for some other night, then," he said.

Felicity had shot her last bolt and failed. Poor little Felicity! She was no match for the perfect saint, and she was too proud to plead. Her face was colourless.

"Perhaps it's as well," she said in a little choking voice. "I've got a terrible headache. If you'll excuse me, I won't stay up to dinner, after all. I'm so sorry."

"Darling," said Helen in a voice of concern, "you don't look well. No, do go and rest. I'll have something sent up to you later."

We went in to dinner soon after that. The husband was vaguely distressed.

"She hasn't looked well for some time," he said anxiously.

"Don't worry, dearest," said Helen; "she needs rest. I'm so glad we arranged not to go to-night. Don't go up and disturb her, will you? I'm sure she only wants absolute quiet."

"Perhaps she needs a change."

I was sorry for the man, though I despised his blindness and his weakness. He loved Felicity.

"We'll go away for a week or two as soon as we can arrange it," said Helen.

"We!" I could not resist a glance at Peter. His face was like a mask, his eyes blazing.

Helen carried off that dinner magnificently, in spite of Peter's silence and my unresponsiveness. She had enough tact and savoir faire to carry off any situation. However much one hated her, one could not help admiring her.

"It's killing Felicity," said Peter, as we went home. "Something will have to happen."

"Things don't happen," I replied. "You get a situation like this in real life and think it must come to a dénouement as it does in books, but it doesn't. It just drags on and on till——"

"It kills one or other of them. In this case Felicity," supplied Peter. "No. Something's got to happen."

"You can't interfere in other people's lives," I said.

Peter smiled, the mirthless smile that was just like a slit across his thin face.

"You can interfere in other people's lives. That's just that makes Life so interesting."

"Don't be silly, Peter. What can you do?"

Irrelevantly he replied: "The doctor gives me six months at most now."

*****

I was away then for several weeks, and it was a casual sentence in a friend's letter that showed me suddenly what Peter had meant.

"What do you think of Peter's engagement to Helen Arkland? I think it's ideal. She's such a saintly woman, and poor Peter has had such a hard time. It's wonderful to think that she took him knowing he's only got six months to live, and it's wonderful to think of his finding happiness at last."

I came down to London in panic. I went to Peter first.

"Peter, you mustn't! You're mad! It's wicked!"

But Peter was blandly, obstinately incomprehensive. "I don't know what you mean. If you're referring to my engagement, you should congratulate me and tell me that I'm a very lucky man. With regard to its being 'wicked,' I have told Miss Arkland quite frankly that I am a doomed man, and she accepts me in full knowledge of that fact."

His eyes mocked me as he spoke.

I went to Felicity, and she also was obstinately blind.

"I'm so glad for both of them," she said. Her eyes were bright. Fresh life seemed to have come to her. Her delicate elusive charm had returned to her. Helen was still there, but freedom lay before her. She could endure being put into the corner by Helen now—now that it was only a question of weeks.

"Helen——" I began.

"Helen is wonderful," she said quickly, "and Peter is a darling. And the doctors may be wrong."

I looked at her keenly. I was not sure whether she was as blind as she seemed to be, or whether she was deliberately accepting Peter's incredible sacrifice. I could not blame her if she was. She had never loved Peter, and she loved her husband.

I could not bear to go to Peter's wedding, so I went North again. Various friends sent accounts of it to me. Helen had looked, they all said, "too wonderful for words."

I saw Felicity once in the next month, but not Peter. The first thing I noticed in Felicity's house was that both the oil painting of her husband's first wife and the table full of photographs had been removed. The next thing I noticed was that Felicity was her old radiant, glowing self, and her husband had regained that quality of carefree boyishness that I had noticed and liked when first I met him. It was a Sunday evening, and the sons and their wives were there as usual, but it was a very different Sunday evening from the last one I had attended. There was more laughter, the conversation was lighter and more inconsequent than when Helen had been there. There was a happy, friendly family atmosphere. The sons chaffed Felicity in elder-brother fashion. There was a general sensation of relief, of some exhausting strain removed, that all of them felt, though not one would have owned to. One of the curious characteristics of Helen Arkland's personality was that you realised how she exhausted you only when she had gone, never when she was present. But something still troubled Felicity. She said to me before I went:

"Peter—Peter did marry Helen because he loved her, didn't he?"

"Of course he did," I lied reassuringly, and the last shadow seemed to drop from her brightness.

The weeks went by, and I did not hear from Peter. In my own mind I played with his story as though it had been the plot of a novel, inventing imaginary endings to it. There was one grim ending that haunted me. It was of Peter's finding the doctor's diagnosis wrong, and having to face a normal lifetime tied to Helen Arkland. At other times I imagined him falling in love with her.

But when at last I saw him I knew that neither of my endings was right. Peter would not live a normal lifetime, and he was not falling in love with his wife. Helen herself obviously enjoyed her position. She had sacrificed herself for a dying man, so public opinion ran. She was "wonderful," a "perfect saint." She enjoyed Peter's house and money. She had become very tired of her own home, and of Felicity, and of her father. She enjoyed her position as Peter's wife and the admiration of Peter's friends. She moved among them in the same atmosphere of self-sacrifice and saintliness in which she had moved at home. At home it had been her mother's memory, and here it was Peter. And she enjoyed Peter. Peter, incredibly thin and shrunken and lined, acted to perfection the rôle of devoted husband. Peter was a sportsman. He had made a bargain and was standing by it, not shirking its slightest obligation. Not one attention that his duty to his wife called for did he omit. Helen thought that in his own reserved way he adored her. But I had known Peter from his babyhood, and I knew that he neither forgot nor forgave her one slight, one unhappiness she had dealt Felicity. For Felicity's sake he acted a part that nauseated him. He still had his bad days, of course—the days when he stayed in bed, with the blinds of his bedroom drawn. Even Helen, by the doctor's orders, was not allowed to visit him then. I think he looked forward to his bad days.

When I paid my first visit after his wedding he said to me: "Have you seen Felicity?" Helen was there, so I only said "Yes," but I saw in his eyes that he, too, had seen Felicity, and, that the memory repaid him for the torture of his marriage, that his sufferings brought him a certain fanatical joy because he bore them for Felicity, and it was the only thing Fate had ever allowed him to do for Felicity. He never admitted to me the real motive of his marriage, yet once, when we were alone, I said: "Peter, it's all so terrible and so—useless. It's killing you, and then she'll only go back."

He looked at me with his twisted smile. "She won't," he said. "She'll have more scope here."

I did not understand then what he meant.

*****

He lived only three months of the six the doctor had given him. I stayed away from his funeral, as I had stayed away from his wedding. I could not bear to see Helen, and I could not pretend to be sorry. I knew that somehow, somewhere, he had found peace, and I was glad.

 

I did not see Helen again till a year after Peter's death, but Peter's sister urged me to call. "You know, she does like Peter's old friends to go to see her. She is so—wonderfully faithful."

So I called.

The first thing I noticed was an enormous enlargement of a photograph of Peter hanging over the mantelpiece. Peter had refused to have his portrait painted. Then I noticed that on the table in the corner of the room was a collection of photographs of Peter, and before them some white flowers in a white vase. Helen herself was in deep mourning. Peter's sister and Peter's mother and several of Peter's friends were there, and the shadow of Peter hung heavily over it all.

As usual Helen dominated the room and led the conversation, bringing it, by a hundred deft little turns, always back to Peter and herself as Peter's widow. I felt the depression of guilt that overspread Peter's mother and sister at the many little reminders of their neglect of him that Peter's widow seemed unconsciously to convey, and I felt, too, the old magnetism of Helen that drew them all to the house. Helen herself, in her widow's weeds beneath the enormous enlargement, was like the high priestess of some sacred rites, and with it all she was her suave, cultivated, charming, beautiful self. I hardly dared raise my eyes, for always, when I did, the eyes of Peter of the enlargement seemed to be looking down on us in cynical enjoyment. I knew now what he had meant by "scope."

Peter's sister came home with me.

"Helen is one in a thousand," she said. "Most other women would have forgotten poor old Peter altogether by now. I should. She never does a thing that Peter didn't like. She keeps things on in the house exactly as he liked them. She makes me feel a beast whenever I go, because I bothered so little about him, while she—well, she's a perfect saint."

Somewhere behind the darkness I seemed to catch Peter's mocking smile.