Margaret Pedler - The Moon out of Reach

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Penelope looked at him questioningly.

"But why? Surely love is the best thing of all?"

"Love and marriage, my dear, are two very different things," commented
St. John, with an unwonted touch of cynicism. After a moment he went on:
"Annabel and I--we loved. But I couldn't make her happy. Our
temperaments were unsuited, we looked out on life from different windows.
I'm not at all sure"--reflectively--"that the union of sympathetic
temperaments, even where less love is, does not result in a much larger
degree of happiness than the union of opposites, where there is great
love. The jar and fret is there, despite the attraction, and love
starves in an atmosphere of discord. For the race, probably the
mysterious attraction of opposites will produce the best results. But
for individual happiness the sympathetic temperament is the first
necessity."

There was a silence, Penelope feeling that Lord St. John had crystallised
in words, thoughts and theories that she sensed as being the foundation
of her own opinions, hitherto unrecognised and nebulous.

Presently he spoke again.

"And I don't really think men are at all suited to have the care and
guardianship of women."

"Unfortunately they're all that Providence has seen fit to provide,"
replied Penelope, with her usual bluntly philosophical acceptance of
facts.

"And yet--we men don't understand women. We're constantly hurting them
with our clumsy misconceptions--with our failure to respond to their
complexities."

Penelope's eyes grew kind.

"I don't think you would," she said.

"Ah, my dear, I'm an old man now and perhaps I understand. But there was
a time when I understood no better than the average youngster who gaily
asks some nice woman to trust her future in his hands--without a second
thought as to whether he's fit for such a trust. And that was just the
time when a little understanding would have given happiness to the woman
I loved best on earth."

He spoke rather wearily, but contrived a smile as Nan entered, carrying a
cup of coffee in her hand.

"My compliments, Nan. Your coffee equals that of any Frenchwoman."

"A reversion to type. Don't forget that Angele de Varincourt is always
at the back of me."

St. John laughed and drank his coffee appreciatively, and after a little
further desultory conversation took his departure, leaving the two girls
alone together.

"Isn't he a perfect old dear?" said Nan.

"Yes," agreed Penelope. "He is. And he absolutely spoils you."

Nan gave a little grin.

"I really think he does--a bit. Imagine it, Penny, after our strenuous
economies! Six hundred a year in addition to our hard-earned pence!
Within limits it really does mean pretty frocks, and theatres, and taxis
when we want them."

Penelope smiled at her riotous satisfaction. Nan lived tremendously in
the present--her capacity for enjoyment and for suffering was so intense
that every little pleasure magnified itself and each small fret and jar
became a minor tragedy.

But Penelope was acutely conscious that beneath all the surface tears and
laughter there lay a hurt which had not healed, the ultimate effect and
consequence of which she was afraid to contemplate.

CHAPTER IV

THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD

"Nan, may I introduce Mr. Mallory?"

It was the evening of Kitty's little dinner--a cosy gathering of
sympathetic souls, the majority of whom were more or less intimately
known to each other.

"As you both have French blood in your veins, you can chant the
Marseillaise in unison." And with a nod and smile Kitty passed on to
where her husband was chatting with Ralph Fenton, the well-known
baritone, and a couple of members of Parliament. Each of them had cut
a niche of his own in the world, for Kitty was discriminating in her
taste, and the receptions at her house in Green Street were always duly
seasoned with the spice of brains and talent.

As Nan looked up into the face of the man whose acquaintance she had
already made in such curious fashion, the thought flashed through her
mind that here, in his partly French blood was the explanation of his
unusual colouring--black brows and lashes contrasting so oddly with the
kinky fair hair which, despite the barber's periodical shearing and the
fervent use of a stiff-bristled hair-brush, still insisted on springing
into crisp waves over his head and refused to lie flat.

"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "I must be in the Fates' good
books to-night. What virtuous deed can I have done to deserve it?"

"Playing the part of Good Samaritan might have counted," suggested Nan,
smiling. "Unless you can recall any particularly good action which
you've performed in the interval."

"I don't think I've been guilty of a solitary one," he replied
seriously. "May I?" He offered his arm as the guests began trooping
in to dinner--Penelope appropriately paired off with Fenton, whom she
had come to know fairly well in the course of her professional work.
Although, as she was wont to remark, "Ralph Fenton's a big fish and I'm
only a little one." They were chattering happily together of songs and
singers.

"So France has a partial claim, on you, too?" remarked Mallory,
unfolding his napkin.

"Yes--a great-grandmother. I let her take the burden of all my sins."

"Not a very heavy one, I imagine," he returned, smiling.

"I don't know. Sometimes"--Nan's eyes grew suddenly
pensive--"sometimes I feel that one day I shall do something which will
make the burden too heavy to be shunted on to great-grandmamma! Then
I'll have to bear it myself, I suppose."

"There'll be a pal or two around, to give you a hand with it, I
expect," answered Mallory.

"I don't know if there will even be that," she answered dreamily. "Do
you know, I've always had the idea that sometime or other I shall get
myself into an awful hole and that there won't be a single soul in the
world to get me out of it."

She spoke with an odd note of prescience in her voice. It was so
pronounced that the sense of foreboding communicated itself to Mallory.

"Don't talk like that. If you think it, you'll be carried forward to
just such disaster on the current of the thought. Be sure--quite,
quite sure--that there will be someone at hand, even if it's only
me"--quaintly.

"The Good Samaritan again? But you mightn't know I was in a
difficulty," she protested.

"I think I should always know if you were in trouble," he said quietly.

There was a new quality in the familiar lazy drawl--something that was
very strong and steady. Although he had laid no stress on the word
"you," yet Nan was conscious in every nerve of her that there was an
emphatic individual significance in the brief words he had just
uttered. She shied away from it like a frightened colt.

"Still you mightn't come to the rescue, even if I were struggling in
the quicksands," she answered.

"I should come," he said deliberately, "whether you wanted me to come
or not."

Followed a brief pause, charged with a curious emotional tensity. Then
Mallory remarked lightly:

"I enjoyed the Charity Concert at Exeter."

"Were you there?" exclaimed Nan in surprise.

"Certainly I was there. When I was as near as Abbencombe, you don't
suppose I was going to miss the chance of hearing you play, do you?"

"I never thought of your being there," she answered.

"And now that I know you've French blood in your veins, I can
understand what always puzzled me in your playing."

"What was that?"

"The un-English element in it."

Nan smiled.

"Am I too unreserved then?" she shot at him.

His grey-blue eyes smiled back at her.

"One doesn't ask reserve of a musician. He must give himself--as you
do."

She flushed a little. The man's perception was unerring.

"As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't
dramatic--it's bad form, you know."

"'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?"

"My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned
quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to
my mother."

Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.

"Oh, surely not?" she dissented.

"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his
half-French nationality. "But yes--I'm too English to please her.
It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother
loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she
desires her son to be a good Frenchman! . . . She is delightful, my
mother."

Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very
little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the
inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly
conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief
reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his
voice presently recalled her.

"I hope you're going to play to us this evening?"

"I expect so--if Kitty wishes it."

"That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the
privilege of friendship, isn't it?"

There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty,
and Nan's heart warmed towards him.

"Yes," she assented eagerly. "One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't
care for it--playing in a drawing-room after dinner."

"No." Again that quick comprehension of his. "The chosen few and the
chosen moment are what you like."

"How do you know?" she asked impulsively.

"Because I think the 'how' and the 'where' of things influence you
enormously."

"Don't they influence you, too?" she demanded.

"Oh, they count--decidedly. But I'm not a woman, nor an artiste, so
I'm not so much at the mercy of my temperament."

The man's insight was extraordinarily keen, but touched with a little
insouciant tenderness that preserved it from being critical in any
hostile sense. Nan heaved a small sigh of contentment at finding
herself in such an atmosphere.

"How well you understand women," she commented with a smile.

"It's very nice of you to say so, though I haven't got the temerity to
agree with you."

Then, looking down at her intently, he added:

"I'm not likely, however, to forget that you've said it. . . . Perhaps
I may remind you of it some day."

The abrupt intensity of his manner startled her. For the second time
that evening the vivid personal note had been struck, suddenly and
unforgettably.

The presidential uprising of the women at the end of dinner saved her
from the necessity of a reply. Mallory drew her chair aside and, as he
handed her the cambric web of a handkerchief she had let fall, she
found him regarding her with a gently humorous expression in his eyes.

"This quaint English custom!" he said lightly. "All you women go into
another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one
another! I'm afraid even I'm not British enough to appreciate such a
droll arrangement. Especially this evening."

Nan passed out in the wake of the other women to while away in
desultory small talk that awkward after-dinner interval which splits
the evening into halves and involves a picking up of the threads--not
always successfully accomplished--when the men at last rejoin the
feminine portion of the party. And what is it, after all, but a
barbarous relic of those times when a man must needs drink so much wine
as to render himself unfit for the company of his womenkind?

"Well," demanded Kitty, "how do you like my lion?"

"Mr. Mallory? I didn't know he was a lion," responded Nan.

"Of course you didn't. You musicians never realise that the human Zoo
boasts any other lions but yourselves."

Nan laughed.

"He didn't roar," she said apologetically, "so how could I know? You
never told me about him."

"Well, he's just written what everyone says will be the book of the
year--_Lindley's Wife_. It's made a tremendous hit."

"I thought that was by G. A. Petersen?"

"But Peter is G. A. Petersen. Only his intimate friends know it,
though, as he detests publicity. So go don't give the fact away."

"I won't. You've read this new book, I suppose?"

"Yes. And you must. It's the finest study of a woman's temperament
I've ever come across. . . . Goodness knows he's had opportunity
enough to study the subject!"

Nan froze a little.

"Oh, is he a gay Lothario sort of person?" she asked coldly. "He
didn't strike me in that light."

"No. He's not in the least like that. He's an ideal husband wasted."

Nan's eyes twinkled.

"Don't poach on preserved ground, Kitty. Marriages are made in heaven."

As she spoke the door opened to admit the men, and somebody claiming
Kitty's attention at the moment she turned away without reply. For a
few minutes the conversation became more general until, after a brief
hum and stir, congenial spirits sought and found each other and settled
down into little groups of twos and threes. Somewhat to Nan's
surprise--and, although she would not have acknowledged it, to her
annoyance--Peter Mallory ensconced himself next to Penelope, and Ralph
Fenton, the singer, thus driven from the haven where he would be, came
to anchor beside Nan.

"I've not seen you for a long time, Miss Davenant. How's the world
been treating you?"

"Rather better than usual," she replied gaily. "More ha'pence than
kicks for once in a way."

"You're booking up pretty deep for the winter, then, I suppose?"

Nan winced at the professional jargon. There was certain aspects of a
musician's life which repelled her, more particularly the commercial
side of it.

She responded indifferently.

"No. I haven't booked a single further engagement. The ha'pence are
due to an avuncular relative who has a quite inexplicable penchant for
an idle niece."

"My congratulations. Still, I hope this unexpected windfall isn't
going to keep you off the concert platform altogether?"

"Not more than my own distaste for playing in public," she answered.
"I'd much rather write music than perform."

"I can hardly believe you really dislike the publicity? The
fascination of it grows on most of us."

"I know it does. I suppose that accounts for the endless farewell
concerts a declining singer generally treats us to."

There was an unwonted touch of sharpness in her voice, and Fenton
glanced at her in some surprise. It was unlike her to give vent to
such an acid little speech. He could not know, of course, that Kitty's
light-hearted remark concerning Peter Mallory's facilities for studying
the feminine temperament was still rankling somewhere at the back of
her mind.

"There's a big element of pathos in those farewell concerts," he
submitted gently. "You pianists have a great advantage over the
singer, whose instrument must inevitably deteriorate with the passing
years."

Nan's quick sympathies responded instantly.

"I think I must be getting soured in my old age," she answered
remorsefully. "What you say is dreadfully true. It's the saddest part
of a singer's career. And I always clap my hardest at a farewell
concert. I do, really!"

Fenton smiled down at her.

"I shall count on you, then, when I give mine."

Nan laughed.

"It's a solemn pledge--provided I'm still cumbering the ground. And
now, tell me, are you singing here this evening?"

"I promised Mrs. Seymour. Would you be good enough to accompany?"

"I should love it. What are you going to sing?"

"Miss Craig and I proposed to give a duet."

"And here comes Kitty--to claim your promise, I guess."

A few minutes later the two singers' voices were blending delightfully
together, while Nan's slight, musician's fingers threaded their way
through intricacies of the involved accompaniment.

She was a wonderful accompanist--rarest of gifts--and when, at the end
of the song, the restrained, well-bred applause broke out, Peter
Mallory's share of it was offered as much to the accompanist as to the
singers themselves.

"Stay where you are, Nan," cried Kitty, as the girl half rose from the
music-seat. "Stay where you are and play us something."

Knowing Nan's odd liking for a dim light, she switched off most of the
burners as she spoke, leaving only one or two heavily shaded lights
still glowing. Mallory crossed the room so that, as he stood leaning
with one elbow on the chimney-piece, he faced the player, on whose
aureole of dusky hair one of the lights still burning cast a glimmer.
While he waited for her to begin, he was aware of a little unaccustomed
thrill of excitement, as though he were on the verge of some discovery.

Hesitatingly Nan touched a chord or two. Then without further preamble
she broke into the strange, suggestive music which Penelope had
described as representing the murder of a soul. It opened joyously,
the calm beginnings of a happy spirit; then came a note of warning, the
first low muttering of impending woe. Gradually the simple melody
began to lose itself in a chaos of calamity, bent and swayed by wailing
minor cadences through whose torrent of hurrying sound it could be
heard vainly and fitfully trying to assert itself again, only to be at
last weighed down, crushed out, by a cataclysm of despairing chords.
Then, after a long, pregnant pause--the culminating silence of
defeat--the original melody stole out once more, repeated in a minor
key, hollow and denuded.

As the music ceased the lights sprang up again and Nan, looking across
the room, met Mallory's gaze intently bent upon her. In his expression
she could discern that by a queer gift of intuition he had comprehended
the whole inner meaning of what she had been playing. Most people
would have thought that it was a magnificent bit of composition,
particularly for so young a musician, but Mallory went deeper and knew
it to be a wonderful piece of self-revelation--the fruit of a spirit
sorely buffeted.

Almost instantaneously Nan realised that he had understood, and she was
conscious of a fierce resentment. She felt as though an unwarrantable
intrusion had been made upon her privacy, and her annoyance showed
itself in the quick compression of her mouth. She was about to slip
away under cover of the applause when Mallory laid a detaining hand
upon her arm.

"Don't go," he said. "And forgive me for understanding!"

Nan, sorely against her will, looked, up and met his eyes--eyes that
were irresistibly kind and friendly. She hesitated, still anxious to
escape.

"Please," he begged. "Don't leave me"--his lips endeavouring not to
smile--"in high dudgeon. It's always seemed such an awful thing to be
left in--like boiling oil."

Suddenly she yielded to the man's whimsical charm and sank down again
into her chair.

"That's better." He smiled and seated himself beside her. "I couldn't
help it, you know," he said quaintly. "It was you yourself who told
me."

"Told you what?"

"That the world hadn't been quite kind."

Nan felt a sudden reckless instinct to tempt fate. There was already a
breach in her privacy; for this one evening she did not care if the
wall were wholly battered down.

"Tell me," she queried with averted head, "how--how much did you
understand?"

Mallory scrutinised her reflectively.

"You really wish it?"

"Yes, really."

He was silent a moment. Then he spoke slowly, as though choosing his
words.

"Fate has given you one of her back-handers, I think, and you want the
thing you can't have--want it rather badly. And just now--nothing
seems quite worth while."

"Go on," she said very low.

He hesitated. Then, as if suddenly making up his mind to hit hard, as
a surgeon might decide to use the knife, he spoke incisively:

"The man wasn't worth it."

Nan gave a faint, irrepressible start. Recovering herself quickly, she
contrived a short laugh.

"You don't know him--" she began.

"But I know you."

"This is only our second meeting."

"What of that? I know you well enough to be sure--quite sure--that you
wouldn't give unasked. You're too proud, too analytical, and--at
present--too little passionate."

Nan's face whitened. It was true; she had not given unasked, for
although Maryon Rooke had never actually asked her to marry him, his
whole attitude had been that of the demanding lover.

"You're rather an uncanny person," she said at last, slowly. "You
understand--too much."

"_Tout comprendre--c'est tout pardonner_," quoted Mallory gently.

Nan fenced.

"And do I need pardon?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered simply, "You're not the woman God meant you to be.
You're too critical, too cold--without passion."

"And I a musician?"--incredulously.

"Oh, it's in your music right enough. The artist in you has it. But
the woman--so far, no. You're too introspective to surrender blindly.
Artiste, analyst, critic first--only _woman_ when those other three are
satisfied."

Nan nodded.

"Yes," she said slowly. "I believe that's true."

"I think it is," he affirmed quietly. "And because men are what they
are, and you are you, it's quite probable you'll fail to achieve the
triumph of your womanhood." He paused, then added: "You're not one of
those who would count the world well lost for love, you know--except on
the impulse of an imaginative moment."

"No, I'm not," she answered reflectively. "I wonder why?"

"Why? Oh, you're a product of the times--the primeval instincts almost
civilised out of you."

Nan sprang to her feet with a laugh.

"I won't stay here to be vivisected one moment longer!" she declared.
"People like you ought to be blindfolded."

"Anything you like--so long as I'm forgiven."

"I think you'll have to be forgiven--in remembrance of the day when you
took up a passenger in Hyde Park!"--smiling.

Soon afterwards people began to take their departure, Nan and Penelope
alone making no move to go, since Kitty had offered to send them home
in her car "at any old time." Mallory paused as he was making his
farewells to the two girls.

"And am I permitted--may I have the privilege of calling?" he asked
with one of his odd lapses into a quaintly elaborate manner that was
wholly un-English.

"Yes, do. We shall be delighted."

"My thanks." And with a slight bow he left them.

Later on, when everyone else had gone, the Seymours, together with
Penelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a final few minutes' yarn.

"Well, how do you like Kitty's latest lion?" asked Barry, lighting a
cigarette.

"I think he's a dear," declared Penelope warmly. "I liked him
immensely--what I saw of him."

"He's such an extraordinary faculty for reading people," chimed in
Kitty, puffing luxuriously at a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.

"Part of a writer's stock in trade, of course," replied Barry. "But
he's a clever chap."

"Too clever, I think," said Nan. "He fills one with a desire to have
one's soul carefully fitted up with frosted glass windows."

Penelope laughed.

"What nonsense! I think he's a delightful person."

"Possibly. But, all the same, I think I'm frightened of people who
make me feel as if I'd no clothes on."

"Nan!"

"It's quite true. Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of
difference to his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why,
one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking
to a man like that! It's sheer waste of good material."

"Well, he's rather likely to want to get at the real 'you' of anybody
he meets," interpolated Barry. "He was badly taken in once. His wife
was one of the prettiest women I've ever struck--and she was an
absolute devil."

"He's a widower, then!" exclaimed Penelope.

Barry shook his head regretfully.

"No such luck! That's the skeleton in poor old Peter's cupboard.
Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can
squeeze out of India."

"They live apart," explained Kitty. "She's one of those restless,
excitable women, always craving to be right in the limelight, and she
simply couldn't stand Peter's literary work. She was frantically
jealous of it--wanted him to be dancing attendance on her all day long.
And when his work interfered with the process, as of course it was
bound to do, she made endless rows. She has money of her own, and
finally informed Peter that she was going to India, where she has
relatives. Her uncle's a judge, and she's several Army cousins married
out there."

"Do you mean she has never come back?" gasped Penelope.

"No. And I don't think she intends to if she can help it. She's the
most thoroughly selfish little beast of a woman I know, and cares for
nothing on earth except enjoyment. She's spoiled Peter's life for
him"--Kitty's voice shook a little--"and through it all he's been as
patient as one of God's saints."

"Still, they're better apart," commented Barry. "While she was living
with him she made a bigger hash of his life than she can do when she's
away. She was spoiling his work as well as his life. And old Peter's
work means a lot to him. He's still got that left out of the wreckage."

"Yes," agreed Kitty, "and of course he's writing better than ever now.
Everyone says _Lindley's Wife_ is a masterpiece."

Nan had been very silent during this revelation of Mallory's
unfortunate domestic affairs. The discovery that he was already
married came upon her as a shock. She felt stunned. Above all, she
was conscious of a curious sense of loss, as though the Peter she had
just began to know had suddenly receded a long way off from her and
would never again be able to draw nearer.

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