The Moon out of Reach | Page 3

enabled her to accept human nature as she found it--without contempt, without censoriousness, and sometimes with a breathless admiration for its unexpectedly heroic qualities.
She it was who alone had some slight understanding of Nan Davenant's complexities--complexities of temperament which both baffled the unfortunate possessor of them and hopelessly misled the world at large.
The Davenant history showed a line of men and women gifted beyond the average, the artistic bias paramount, and the interpolation of a Frenchwoman four generations ago, in the person of Nan's great-grandmother, had only added to the temperamental burden of the race. She had been a strange, brilliant creature, with about her that mysterious touch of genius which by its destined suffering buys forgiveness for its destined sins.
And in Nan the soul of her French ancestress lived anew. The charm of the frail and fair Ang��le de Varincourt--baffling, elusive, but irresistible--was hers, and the soul of the artist, with its restless imagination, its craving for the beautiful, its sensitive response to all emotion--this, too, was her inheritance.
To Penelope, Nan's ultimate unfolding was a matter of absorbing interest. Her own small triumphs as a singer paled into insignificance beside the riot of her visions for Nan's future. Nevertheless, she was sometimes conscious of an undercurrent of foreboding. Something was lacking. Had the gods, giving so much, withheld the two best gifts of all--Success and Happiness?
While Penelope mused in the firelight, the clatter of china issuing from the kitchen premises indicated unusual domestic activity on Nan's part, and finally culminated in her entry into the sitting-room, bearing a laden tea-tray.
"Hot scones!" she announced joyfully. "I've made a burnt offering of myself, toasting them."
Penelope smiled.
"What an infant you are, Nan," she returned. "I sometimes wonder if you'll ever grow up?"
"I hope not"--with great promptitude. "I detest extremely grown-up people. But what are you brooding over so darkly? Cease those philosophical reflections in which you've been indulging--it's a positive vice with you, Penny--and give me some tea."
Penelope laughed and began to pour out tea.
"I half thought Maryon Rooke might be here by now," remarked Nan, selecting a scone from the golden-brown pyramid on the plate and carefully avoiding Penelope's eyes. "He said he might look in some time this afternoon."
Penelope held the teapot arrested in mid-air.
"How condescending of him!" she commented drily. "If he comes--then exit Penelope."
"You're an ideal chaperon, Penny," murmured Nan with approval.
"Chaperons are superfluous women nowadays. And you and Maryon are so nearly engaged that you wouldn't require one even if they weren't out of date."
"Are we?" A queer look of uncertainty showed in Nan's eyes. One might almost have said she was afraid.
"Aren't you?" Penelope's counter-question flashed back swiftly. "I thought there was a perfectly definite understanding between you?"
"So you trot tactfully away when he comes? Nice of you, Penny."
"It's not in the least 'nice' of me," retorted the other. "I happen to be giving a singing-lesson at half-past five, that's all." After a pause she added tentatively: "Nan, why don't you take some pupils? It means--hard cash."
"And endless patience!" commented Nan, "No, don't ask me that, Penny, as you love me! I couldn't watch their silly fingers lumbering over the piano."
"Well, why don't you take more concert work? You could get it if you chose! You're simply throwing away your chances! How long is it since you composed anything, I'd like to know?"
"Precisely five minutes--just now when I was in the kitchen. Listen, and I'll play it to you. It's a setting to those words of old Omar:
'Ah, Love! could you and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits--and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!'
I was burning my fingers in the performance of duty and the appropriateness of the words struck me," she added with a malicious little grin.
She seated, herself at the piano and her slim, nervous hands wandered soundlessly a moment above the keys. Then a wailing minor melody grew beneath them--unsatisfied, asking, with now and then an ecstasy of joyous chords that only died again into the querying despair of the original theme. She broke off abruptly, humming the words beneath her breath.
Penelope crossed the room and, laying her hands on the girl's shoulders, twisted her round so that she faced her.
"Nan, it's sheer madness! You've got this wonderful talent--a real gift of the gods--and you do nothing with it!"
Nan laughed uncertainly and bent her bead so that all Penelope could see was a cloud of dusky hair.
"I can't," she said.
"Why not?" Penelope's voice was urgent. "Why don't you work up that last composition, for instance, and get it published? Surely"--giving her a little wrathful shake--"surely you've some ambition?"
"Do you remember what that funny old Scotch clairvoyant said to me? . . . 'You have ambition--great ambition--but not the