The Dazzling Miss Davison. 1910

CHAPTER I

A roomy, comfortable, old-fashioned house in Bayswater, with high windows, big rooms, and little balconies just big enough to hold a wealth of flowers in summer and a very pretty show of evergreens when the season for flowers was past.

On October a row of asters, backed up by a taller row of foliage plants, made the house look bright and pretty, and the young faces that appeared at the windows of the drawing-room made it prettier still.

Mr. and Mrs. Aldington, the occupiers of the house, thought that there was nothing pleasanter in life than the gayety of young people, and so, as they had only two children, a son and a daughter, both grown up, they gave a general invitation to the younger generation, of which, particularly on a Sunday afternoon and evening, the contemporaries of their son and daughter were not slow to avail themselves.

Especially was it the pleasure of these good-hearted

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 people to extend hospitality to those young folks whose lives were, for one reason or another, not so bright as those of their own children. And many a friendless young barrister waiting for a brief, young doctor struggling for a practice, and many a girl whose parents had a hard time of it in keeping up a fair position on an unfairly small income, found recreation and a warm welcome at the old-fashioned house in Bayswater.

Some of them found more than that. Gerard Buckland, for instance, a clever young barrister who was tired of hearing of the great things he was to do some day, since he was unable to get even small things to do to go on with, found at the Aldingtons something that he had stoutly resolved to do without until he had “got on.”

He found, in other words, his “ideal.”

It was on a bright Sunday afternoon, when the big drawing-room was full of lively people, mostly young, and all talking at once, that Gerard, having been introduced by Arthur Aldington two Sundays previously, took advantage for the third time of the general invitation given him by the host and hostess, and found himself surrounded by a dozen people among whom he knew no one except the Aldingtons themselves.

Whereupon Rose, the daughter of the house, made him sit by her, and, as he was shyly looking over a basketful of loose photographs which he had found

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 on a table beside him, undertook the task of showman, and told him all about the pictures as he looked at them one by one.

It chanced that the second picture he picked up after Rose’s arrival was the portrait of a girl which attracted him at once.

“What an interesting face!” said he, as he looked at the photograph.

“And she’s an interesting girl too!” said Rose, who was a plain, amiable young woman of six-and-twenty, whom everybody liked and nobody had as yet chosen. “She’s the daughter of a Colonel, who speculated, and then died and left his wife and two girls with scarcely anything to live upon. Papa says it’s one of the saddest stories he knows. They’ve gone to live in a cottage somewhere, after living in one of the most beautiful houses you ever saw in the country, and having a flat in town as well.”

Gerard Buckland was looking intently at the photograph, which was that of a quite young woman with an oval face, delicate features, and an expression which combined vivacity with intelligence.

“She looks very clever,” he said.

“Yes, so she is—and very pretty too.”

“Yes, very, very pretty.”

He was fascinated; and when he was compelled to look at other photographs, he placed that of the girl whose story he had just heard at the side of the basket, in such a position that he could glance at it

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 again from time to time, and amuse himself by speculating about this girl who was so handsome, so clever, and so unlucky.

Rose Aldington noticed his preoccupation with the picture, and said, with a smile—

“I see you admire her, just as everyone else does.”

“I was thinking the story a sad one,” said Gerard, rather confused at being discovered in his act of adoration.

“Oh, well, perhaps she’ll marry well, and her sister too, and then it will be all right. The sister is even better-looking than Ra—than she is, and just as nice. Only unluckily she hadn’t finished growing up when their father died, so she hasn’t had the benefit of such a good education as the elder.”

“It’s hard upon a girl, though, when she has to marry just for money,” observed Gerard.

“Oh, yes, of course. And I’m not sure that this particular girl would do it either. But that’s the usual thing to say, isn’t it, when a very pretty girl is left unexpectedly poor?”

“Yes.”

Gerard answered quite shortly, and looked at the photograph again. And at that moment the door opened, and an exclamation rose to his lips as he recognized in the new arrival the very girl whose picture he held in his hand.

He felt the blood rush to his face as he looked at

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 her. He saw at once that the absence of color from the photograph had given him an altogether wrong impression of what the girl herself would be like. She was of medium height, slender, pale, brown-haired, brown-eyed, and her dress was plain almost to dowdiness.

But she carried herself so well, her figure was so graceful, her expression so intelligent, and her smile so charming, that she attracted instinctive attention in greater measure than any of the other girls in the room.

“Rachel!” cried Mrs. Aldington.

“Miss Davison!” cried her son Arthur at the same moment.

And the new-comer was brought into the group near the fire and surrounded, while Gerard Buckland, at a little distance, listened to the tones of her voice, and approved of them as he had done of every detail concerning her.

Only one thing about her seemed amiss. Well as she wore her plain, almost shabby clothes, neat and graceful as she looked in them, Gerard felt that they were not the clothes which she ought to be wearing, that her beauty demanded a better setting than the plain serge skirt, the black jacket, the gray felt mushroom hat with its trimming of a quill and a big black rosette, which, though they became her, were not quite smart enough either for the occasion or for her own type of womanhood.

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Gerard saw the glance of Rose Aldington wander in his direction with a sly look, and he hoped she would not forget to find an opportunity to introduce him to the interesting guest.

He was not disappointed. Before tea was brought in, Rose had contrived the introduction, and Gerard found himself in conversation with the girl whom he felt to be the nearest he had yet met to the sort of floating ideal of what is most gracious in woman, which he, in common with most young men, carried about in his mind, ready to crystallize into the face and form of some human, breathing, living girl.

As she interested him, so did he, perhaps, interest her. The tall, shy, handsome fair man of five-and-twenty, who spoke so softly, but who looked as if his voice could be heard in other and stronger tones upon occasion, and of whom it had been whispered in her ear by Rose that he was “so clever, bound to make a name for himself at the bar,” was pleasant to look upon and to listen to, and the two young people, in that pleasant twilight which Mrs. Aldington loved, and which she would not too soon have broken in upon by gas and candles, soon began to find that they had many things to say to each other, as they sipped tea and nibbled cake, to the accompaniment of the other gay young voices, in the illumination of the leaping firelight.

Somebody had drawn the talk of the whole room

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 into the old channel of woman’s rights and position, and immediately the whole company had broken up into interested little couples and groups to discuss it with the same freshness of interest as if it had never been discussed before.

Rachel Davison was rather bitter about it.

“It’s all very well to talk,” she said, “about the right of woman to act for herself, and to make a position for herself, and the rest of it. But you want more than the right: you must have the power. And that is what we shall never get,” she added, with a sigh.

Gerard argued with her.

“Why shouldn’t they have the power?” he said. “When once the barriers of prejudice are pulled down, what’s to prevent a woman from entering any field where she feels her talents will be best employed?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“When once the barriers of prejudice are broken down!” echoed she. “But that will be never. You don’t recognize how strong they are! Why, look at my mother, for instance; she’s more particular about little things, prejudices and that sort of thing, than about important ones. And she’s not alone, she’s one of a type, the most common type. She would rather see her daughters dead, I’m quite sure, than engaged in any occupation which she’s been accustomed to think unwomanly.”

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“But she belongs to the last generation. We go on enlarging our ideas. You, for instance, don’t agree with her, I can see.”

“Not in everything, certainly; though I agree with her enough to sympathize with her, and to wish that the world were just as she sees it, with plenty of work for all, and work of the pleasantest kind—work that one could engage in without loss of dignity, and with credit to oneself.”

“There’s plenty of such work to be found now. What about the dignity of labor?”

“All very well in theory, but quite a mistake in practice. At any rate, there’s nothing dignified about any calling which I, for example, could find to follow. Now poor mamma thinks it’s all right, that one has only to look about to find ways of utilizing what she calls one’s talents, and to make heaps of money by them.”

“Perhaps she’s right after all. I’m sure you wouldn’t be long in finding an opening for yours, if you wanted one.”

“What makes you say that? At least I know. Of course, it’s the sort of thing a man must say to a woman. But, as a matter of stern fact, I haven’t any talents, and for a woman without to look for remunerative and dignified labor is just the most appalling waste of time imaginable.”

“I’m quite sure you have talents, only perhaps you don’t recognize them yourself yet.”

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“What makes you speak so certainly, when I tell you I have not?”

Gerard hesitated.

“I’m not quite sure whether I dare tell why. The thing I should have to say, if I were to tell the truth, is the sort of thing some ladies as young as you don’t care to hear.”

He looked at her with shy interest, and she, alert and inquisitive, insisted upon his explaining.

“Whether I like to hear it or not, I must know what you mean,” she said, with charming imperiousness.

“Well, then, Miss Davison, you look—may I say it?—‘brainy.’”

She nodded, smiling.

“I’ve been told that before, but the look is deceptive. I’m only just not quite an idiot. I can’t do anything—except one thing that I don’t think I’ll own to,” she added, with a laugh.

“Let me put you through a short catechism. Can’t you play?—the piano, I mean.”

“Not even well enough to get through the accompaniment of a song at sight, or to play an easy piece that I haven’t diligently practiced till the family is tired to death of it.”

“Can’t you paint?”

“Oh, yes, I can copy drawing-master’s pictures, which are like nothing in heaven or earth or the water under the earth.”

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“You can sing, I feel sure.”

“Yes, I can, but you have to sit very near the piano to hear me.”

“Then you have some other accomplishments which you have concealed from me,” said Gerard, affecting a judicial frown.

Miss Davison laughed merrily.

“Well, I have one, but wild horses shan’t drag from me what it is. And, if you knew, you would not advise me to use it.”

“Come, come, I must have complete confession. No half-way measures. Let me see if I can’t suggest a way of utilizing this mysterious accomplishment.”

She laughed, blushed crimson, and suddenly opening her hand, showed him, lying flat on the palm, a little silver pencil-case, at sight of which he uttered an exclamation.

“Why, that’s mine, isn’t it?” said he. “How did you—”

He stopped, she laughed, and Rose Aldington, who was sitting near, joined in her mirth, which was of rather a shame-faced kind.

“Showing off again, Rachel?” she said.

Miss Davison laughed, gave the pencil-case back to Gerard, and said, with a demure look—

“There! that’s my best accomplishment. I flatter myself I can pick pockets with any amateur living.

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 Now you wouldn’t recommend me to take to that as a livelihood, would you?”

He was amused, almost dismayed, but protested earnestly that there must be a hundred ways in which such exceeding dexterity could be profitably exercised without having recourse to the profession she suggested.

But, in the meantime, Rose Aldington having drawn the attention of the rest of the people in the room to Rachel’s accomplishment, she was called upon to give another exhibition of her skill, and this she did in various ways, transferring trifles from the mantelpiece to the table and back again so quickly and cleverly that the eye could not follow her movements, and performing other little feats requiring extreme delicacy of touch and quickness of eye, until they all told her she would make her fortune if she were to set up as a conjurer.

Gerard, however, was more deeply interested than the rest. He learned from her that she performed these various tricks without ever having been taught conjuring, and he argued from this that, if she were only to train her special faculties in some given direction, she could not fail to become exceedingly expert.

“I should have thought,” he said, “that you would make a very clever milliner, with your wonderfully light touch.”

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Miss Davison sighed………………….