The Moon out of Reach Part 10

Nan laughed.

"You can't expect it to be always 'set fair'!"

"I'd like it to be," returned St. John simply.

A fugitive thought flashed through Nan's mind that he and Peter Mallory were merely young and old representatives of a similar type of man. She could imagine Mallory growing into the same gracious old manhood as her uncle.

"A propos," pursued Lord St. John, with a twinkle, "your handmaiden appears to me a quite just cause and impediment."

"Oh, our 'Adagio'?" exclaimed Nan. "We've long since ceased to expect much from her. Did she keep you waiting on the doorstep long?"

"Only about ten minutes," murmured St. John mildly. "But seriously, why don't you--er--give her warning?"

"My dear innocent uncle!" protested Nan amusedly. "Don't you know that that sort of thing isn't done nowadays--not in the best circles?"

"Besides," added Penelope practically, "we should probably be only out of the frying pan into the fire. The jewels in the domestic line are few and far between and certainly not to be purchased within our financial limits. And frankly, there are very few jewels left at any price. Most of the nice ones got married during the war--the servants you loved and regarded as part of the family--and nine-tenths of those that are left have no sense of even giving good work in return for their wages--let alone civility! The tradition of good service has gone."

"Have you been having much bother, then?" asked St. John concernedly.

"You never used to have trouble with maids."

"No. But everyone has now. You wouldn't believe what they're like! I don't think it's in the least surprising so many women have nervous break-downs through nothing more nor less than domestic worry. Why, the home-life of women these days is more like a daily battlefield than anything else!"

Penelope spoke strongly. She had suffered considerably at the hands of various inefficient maids and this, added to the strain of her own professional work, had brought her at one time to the verge of a break-down in health.

"I'd no idea you were so strong on domestic matters, Penelope," chaffed St. John, smiling across at her.

"I'm not. But I've got common sense, and I can see that if the small wheels of the machine refuse to turn, the big wheels are bound to stick."

"If only servants knew how much one liked and respected a really good maid!" murmured Nan with a recrudescence of idealism.

"Do wages make any difference?" ventured St. John somewhat timidly.

Penelope was rather forcible when the spirit moved her, and he was becoming conscious of the fact that he was a mere ignorant man.

"Of course they do--to a certain extent," she replied.

"Money makes a difference to most things, doesn't it?"

"There are one or two things it can't taint," he answered quietly, but now you've really brought me to the very object of my visit."

"I thought it was a desire to enquire after the health of your favourite niece," hazarded Nan impertinently.

"So it was. And as finance plays a most important part in that affair, the matter dovetails exactly!"

He smoked in silence for a moment. Then he resumed:

"I should like, Nan, with your permission, to double your allowance and make it six hundred a year."

Nan gasped.

"You see," he pursued, "though I'm only a mere man, I know the cost of living has soared sky-high, including"--with a sly glance at Penelope--"the cost of menservants and maidservants."

"Well, but really, Uncle, I could manage with less than that," protested Nan. "Four or five hundred, with what we earn, would be quite sufficient--quite."

St. John regarded her reflectively.

"It might be--for some people. But not for you, my child. I know your temperament too well! You've the Davenant love of beauty and the instinct to surround yourself with all that's worth having, and I hate to think of its being thwarted just for lack of money. After all, money is only of value for what it can procure--what it does for you. Well, being a Davenant, you want a lot of the things that money can procure--things which wouldn't mean anything at all to many people. They wouldn't even notice whether they were there or not. So six hundred a year it will be, my dear. On the same understanding as before--that you renounce the income should you marry."

Nan gripped his hand hard.

"Uncle," she began. "I can't thank you--"

"Don't, my dear. I merely want to give you a little freedom. You mayn't have it always. You won't if you marry"--with a twinkle. "Now, may I have my usual cup of coffee--_not_ from the hands of your Hebe!"

She nodded and slipped out of the room to make the coffee, while Penelope turned towards the visitor with an expression of dismay on her face.

"Do forgive me, Lord St. John," she said. "But is it wise? Aren't you taking from her all incentive to work?"

"I don't believe in pot-boiling," he replied promptly. "The best work of a talent like Nan's is not the work that's done to buy the dinner."

He lit another cigarette before he spoke again. Then he went on rather wistfully:

"I may be wrong, Penelope. But remember, my wife was a Davenant, nearer than Nan by one generation to Angele de Varincourt. And she was never happy! Though I loved her, I couldn't make her happy."

"I should have thought you would have made her happy if any man could,"

said Penelope gently.

"My dear, it's given to very few men to make a woman of temperament happy. And Nan is so like my dear, dead Annabel that, if for no other reason, I should always wish to give her what happiness I can." He paused, then went on thoughtfully: "Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. I can't do very much for her--only give her what money can buy. But even the harmony of material environment means a great deal to Nan--the difference between a pert, indifferent maid and a civil and experienced one; flowers in your rooms; a taxi instead of a scramble for a motor-'bus. Just small things in such a big thing as life, but they make an enormous difference."

"You of all men surely understand a temperamental woman!" exclaimed Penelope, surprised at his keen perception of the details which can fret a woman so sorely in proportion to their apparent unimportance.

St. John hardly seemed to hear her, for he continued:

"And I want to give her freedom--freedom from marriage if she wishes it.

That's why I stipulate that the income ceases If she marries. I'm trying to weight the balance against her marrying."

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 guardians.h.i.+p of women."