Lord Loveland Discovers America

For a moment Loveland was more conceited than he had ever been in his life, – which is saying not a little. He told himself that the girl must have found out who he was, and that this was her artful way of scraping acquaintance. She had taken possession of his chair, with his name upon it, waiting for him to come and claim his property, and expecting the conversation which would be sure to follow.

He was conscious of a shock of disappointment. In spite of the witching, curled eyelashes, he had not fancied her that sort of obvious, flirting girl; and like other spoiled young men a conquest which fell to him easily was less worth making. Nevertheless, he still wanted to know her. No man, even a spoiled one, could help wanting to know a girl with eyes like those: and he intended to go through the whole programme which he believed that she had deliberately planned out for him; yet he wished that she had not made herself so cheap.

The chair next to his was unoccupied, though usurpers were warned off by the name of "Mr. James R. Smythe," boldly painted in black letters across the back. Stretching away to the left was a row of Smythe chairs, which Val did not trouble to count. He merely received the impression of a large family of impending Smythes, and was glad that they were not assembled. Their absence gave him a splendid chance to make the girl with the eyes a present of the flirtation she encouraged.

Val, risking the avalanche of Smythehood which might overwhelm him at any instant, sat down in the empty chair next to his own, expecting the girl to glance up and down, and flutter the coquettish lashes. To his bewilderment her tactics were more subtle. She did not look up at all, but calmly went on reading her book, a volume of disagreeably intellectual suggestion.

This development of the game was interesting, because surprising, but Val still regarded it as a game. He looked at the girl, while she, apparently unconscious of or indifferent to his nearness, slowly turned leaf after leaf. She turned so many that Loveland grew impatient. Besides, a man had begun to walk up and down in front of the line of Smythe chairs, fastening upon him so baleful an eye that he feared at any instant to be dispossessed of his borrowed resting-place.

At last he decided to be bold and wait no longer.

"What am I to do if Mr. James R. Smythe comes along and orders me out?" he asked pleasantly, in a low yet conversational tone.

The girl glanced up for the first time, suddenly and as if startled. She had the air of having been deeply absorbed in her book, and of not being sure that her neighbour had spoken to her. Also she looked extremely young and innocent.

"I said, what am I to do if Mr. James R. Smythe comes along and orders me out?" Val repeated.

"That's what I thought you said," replied the girl, meeting his admiring, quizzical eyes with a somewhat bewildered yet defensive gaze. "But – why should you say it to me?"

"Isn't that rather hard-hearted of you?" asked Loveland.

"I don't understand you at all," said the girl. "You look like a gentleman, so I suppose you can't mean to be rude or impertinent. But if not, you seem to be talking nonsense."

This was straightforward, to say the least, yet her voice was so sweet and girlish, with such a dainty little drawl in it, that the rebuke did not sound as severe as if spoken with sharper accents.

"Of course I don't mean to be rude or impertinent," Loveland defended himself, at a loss for the next move in the game. "But I thought – that is, I mean – you know, that is my chair. I'm delighted you should have it – "

"Your chair?" echoed the girl. "Oh, you are mistaken. No wonder, if you thought that I – but even then, you couldn't have dreamed I'd take it on purpose?"

"No – o, I – " began Loveland, looking guilty.

Her eyes were on him. "You did think so!" she exclaimed. "I see you did. That was why you – and yet I don't see how you could have fancied I should know who you were, unless – Are you a very famous person in the life to which it's pleased London to call you?"

Lord Loveland laughed rather foolishly. But he reddened a little, which made him look boyish, so that the foolishness was rather engaging.

"I think you've punished me enough," he said.

"Then you admit that you deserve to be punished?"

"Perhaps."

"Which means that you did believe I took your chair on purpose."

"I didn't stop to think," said Loveland, telling the truth as usual, but less truculently than usual.

"You are English, aren't you?" the girl asked, looking at him with her brown, bewildering eyes.

"Oh yes," replied Loveland, in a tone which added "Of course." But he would have realised now, if he had not been sure before, that the girl was genuinely ignorant of his important identity.

"I was sure you were. I suppose you don't understand American girls very well, or perhaps any girls yet. But then few men do, really. Except poets or novelists. And you're not a poet or a novelist?"

"Rather not!"

"You speak as though I'd asked if you were a pick-pocket. Do you despise writers?"

"I'd be sorry to be one. Wouldn't you?" He ventured this question, which, if answered, might after all send them on the way towards a more friendly understanding. But he seemed destined to put himself in the wrong – although the girl laughed.

"I am one," she said, "I write stories."

"You're chaffing."

"No, I'm not. Why should you think so?"

"Oh, well, because you don't look as if you wrote."

"Thank you. I suppose you mean that for a compliment. But women who write aren't scare-crows nowadays, if they ever were."

"Well, anyhow, you're too young."

"I've been writing stories – and getting them published, too, ever since I was sixteen. That's some years ago now. Please don't say you wouldn't have thought it! That would be too obvious even for an average American's idea of an average Englishman."

"Are you an average American?"

"Are you an average Englishman?"

"Is it fair to answer one question with another?"

"It's said to be American. Didn't you know that?"

"No," said Loveland. "As you thought, I don't know much about Americans yet. I'm going over to the States to learn."

"The States! How English that sounds! We think we're all of America – all that's worth talking about in ordinary conversation. But, by the way, this isn't ordinary conversation, is it? It began with – something to be punished for, on your part; and a wish to punish on mine. It's gone on – because, being a writing person, I suppose, I'm always trying for new points of view, at any cost. You thought I'd taken your chair – as if it were a point of view. I believe you really did think that."

"I did," admitted Val.

"I wonder why? My aunt's name is on it."

"Oh," said Loveland.

"See," went on the girl, leaning forward, and displaying the label in the deck-steward's handwriting.

"I do see," said Val. "But that happens to be my name."

"Loveland?"

"Yes."

The girl blushed brightly. And she was more attractive than ever when she blushed. "Oh, how very odd! Then perhaps this is your chair! How perfectly horrid." She began to unwind herself from the rug which was wrapped round her as a chrysalis round an incipient butterfly.