The Moon out of Reach

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE SHINING SHIP

She was kneeling on the hearthrug, grasping the poker firmly in one hand. Now and again she gave the fire a truculent prod with it as though to emphasise her remarks.

"'Ask and ye shall receive'! . . . 'Tout vient à point à celui qui sait attendre'! Where on earth is there any foundation for such optimism, I'd like to know?"

A sleek brown head bent determinedly above some sewing lifted itself, and a pair of amused eyes rested on the speaker.

"Really, Nan, you mustn't confound French proverbs with quotations from the Scriptures. They're not at all the same thing."

"Those two run on parallel lines, anyway. When I was a kiddie I used to pray—I've prayed for hours, and it wasn't through any lack of faith that my prayers weren't answered. On the contrary, I was enormously astonished to find how entirely the Almighty had overlooked my request for a white pony like the one at the circus."

"Well, then, my dear, try to solace yourself with the fact that 'everything comes at last to him who knows how to wait.'"

"But it doesn't!"

Penelope Craig reflected a moment.

"Do you—know—how to wait?" she demanded, with a significant little accent on the word "know."

"I've waited in vain. No white pony has ever come, and if it trotted in now—why, I don't want one any longer. I tell you, Penny"—tapping an emphatic forefinger on the other's knee—"you never get your wishes until you've out-grown them."

"You've reached the mature age of three-and-twenty"—drily. "It's a trifle early to be so definite."

"Not a bit! I want my wishes now, while I'm young and can enjoy them—lots of money, and amusement, and happiness! They'll be no good to me when I'm seventy or so!"

"Even at seventy," remarked Penelope sagely, "wealth is better than poverty—much. And I can imagine amusement and happiness being quite desirable even at three score years and ten."

Nan Davenant grimaced.

"Philosophers," she observed, "are a highly irritating species."

"But what do you want, my dear? You're always kicking against the pricks.
What do you really want?"

The coals slipped with a grumble in the grate and a blue flame shot up the chimney. Nan stretched out her hand for the matches and lit a cigarette. Then she blew a cloud of speculative smoke into the air.

"I don't know," she said slowly. Adding whimsically: "I believe that's the root of the trouble."

Penelope regarded her critically.

"I'll tell you what's the matter," she returned. "During the war you lived on excitement—"

"I worked jolly hard," interpolated Nan indignantly.

The other's eyes softened.

"I know you worked," she said quickly. "Like a brick. But all the same you did live on excitement—narrow shaves of death during air-raids, dances galore, and beautiful boys in khaki, home on leave in convenient rotation, to take you anywhere and everywhere. You felt you were working for them and they knew they were fighting for you, and the whole four years was just one pulsing, throbbing rush. Oh, I know! You were caught up into it just the same as the rest of the world, and now that it's over and normal existence is feebly struggling up to the surface again, you're all to pieces, hugely dissatisfied, like everyone else."

"At least I'm in the fashion, then!"

Penelope smiled briefly....