Start: Litterly: _(Seeing Noeline and sp...

Start: Litterly: (Seeing Noeline and speaking to himself) My boy—my girl—my cousin! (He rustles the fallen leaves with his stick)

Noeline: (Without turning) Oh, do go! I promise to join you in five minutes.

Litterly: (Approaching her) Eh?

Noeline: (Rising, with a gasp, and facing him) Sir!

Litterly: You—you weren’t speaking to me?

Noeline: I—I—I don’t know you.

Litterly: My name is Litterly—Lord Litterly.

Noeline: (Staring at him wildly) You—Lord Litterly!

Litterly: You must be one of the Ladies Belturbet. Lady—?

Noeline: Noeline.

Litterly: I say, we’re related.

Noeline: (Nodding, still unable to remove her eyes from him) Yes.

Litterly: There’s no love lost between your branch of the family and mine. I suppose we don’t shake hands?

Noeline: Certainly not.

Litterly: No. I thought I’d raise the point.

Noeline: (Pulling herself together) I—I am sorry to have to tell you—you are trespassing here.

Litterly: Yes, I suppose I am. (Strolling up to the gate) I say, pretty park. Pardon me—my bootlace.

(He puts his foot on the bar of the gate and ties his bootlace)

Noeline: (To herself, checking her hands) How can he have found out I am the young fellow he carried home to his lodgings! The cad, to take advantage of it like this! My cousin, too! The cad! Oh! (Taking up her gun as if to go, then turning to Litterly, haughtily) I don’t assume that you are ignorant of the way in which my mother has trained her children.

Litterly: No, no, don’t assume I’m ignorant.

Noeline: Nor do I think it worth while to defend—and to you!—the lives we live here. I must say, however, that I can see only one possible disadvantage attached to our mode of existence.

Litterly: Tailor’s bills?

Noeline: (Going) I mean the necessity of regarding uninvited guests as unmannerly intruders.

Litterly: Lady Noeline! Do stay a moment. I fagged down here thinking I was perhaps going to render somebody a trifling service.

Noeline: A service?

Litterly: Just sit down a moment. Now do! (Looking about) Take a— (Point to the tree-stump) Take a stump. Do!

(After a moment’s irresolution, she returns and sits, defiantly nursing her gun)

Litterly: (Standing near her) Thanks. This is how it comes about—

Noeline: Do you mind going further off?

Litterly: Not a bit. (Looking round) Ah, the ottoman!

(He sits on the gate. During the scene that follows he watches her carefully but playfully, telling his story with great relish. She listens intently, with her back turned to him)

Noeline: (To herself, glancing at him) The—utter—cad!

Litterly: Lady Noeline, this is my little story. The night before last, as I was walking home from my club, a young gentleman, who had evidently gotten himself into some bother, ran straight into my arms and, having arrived there, stayed there. The poor young chap had fainted.

Noeline: Well—?

Litterly: I was puzzled what the dooce to do. He seemed a nice young fellow. I say, what would you have done?

Noeline: I—I really don’t know.

Litterly: I’ll tell you what I did in the end. There was no one about; I couldn’t drop him into the mud or hand him over to the police—could I?

Noeline: Oh, no, you couldn’t have done that!

Litterly: No. I hailed a cab and took him off to my lodgings. He did seem such a nice young fellow.

Noeline: (Writhing) Will you please go on with your story, if you must tell it me?

Litterly: Certainly. Where was I? Oh yes—he did seem such a nice young fellow.

Noeline: I don’t want to hear what sort of young fellow he appeared to be!

Litterly: No, no, it doesn’t really belong to the story. Well, I took him home and carefully deposited him on the sofa.

Noeline: (To herself) Cad!

Litterly: He was a good-looking Johnnie.

Noeline: Lord Litterly—!

Litterly: I beg pardon—that’s nothing to do with it. By-and-by he came round. But I didn’t succeed in making much of him. I fancied he was off his head, which reminded me that he’d lost his topper. So I offered to lend him a cap. I say, you should have seen the way he grabbed at it! Then he bolted down my stairs and, in point of fact, hooked it. (Getting off the gate) Now this is the story—it was a new cap. He hadn’t even said thanks for the loan of it, and that riled me. So down I went after him and followed his cab to a house in Chesham Street. Ha, ha! What d’ye think of that?

Noeline: I—I fail to see the smallest necessity for you to—to have followed this—person about.

Litterly: It was a brand-new cap.

Noeline: You might have known it would be returned— (To herself, recollecting) Oh!

Litterly: Well, I did follow him, and there it is. Now, notwithstanding his bad form, he still struck me as being a nice young fellow.

Noeline: (Rising) I cannot—

Litterly: Yes, now I think of it, that does belong to the story. (Looking at her fixedly) He seemed such a nice young fellow that, somehow, I couldn’t drive him out of my head, and next day I found myself hanging about that house in Chesham Street hesitating whether I’d go and bang away at his door.

Noeline: (With her eyes averted) What for?

Litterly: (Still watching her intently) What for? Well—there was the cap.

Noeline: A paltry cap!

Litterly: A new paltry cap. However, I didn’t knock—I’m such a slow man. But early this morning I was in Chesham Street again, and while I was lolling against a lamp-post, out you came with another lady, and got into a luggage-brougham. I say, it was an awful job, chasing that brougham to Paddington station—

Noeline: The idea of your doing such a thing! What an intolerable liberty! (She goes indignantly up to the gate, where she stands with her back to him) The mere idea of it! Oh!

Litterly: (To himself, watching her admiringly) I say, she’s glorious! And to think that I carried that up seven-and-twenty stairs! She hates me for it—but I’ve counted ‘em! (To her) Lady Noeline, there’s a look in your shoulders that tells me you’d like me to explain why I followed you. (She quickly changes her position, still averting her face) The fact is, I saw a strong likeness in you to that Johnnie, the sort of likeness a big sister might bear to a cub of a brother. And I felt an uncontrollable desire to have a jaw with you. (Leaning against the trunk of the tree) You know I didn’t find out till an hour ago that we’re cousins.

Noeline: (Eyeing him furtively) However marked the resemblance may be between me and the individual you picked up, you will find it difficult to justify your pursuing a woman in this way. Wanting “a jaw” doesn’t quite do it!

Litterly: (Seriously) Lady Noeline, I thought if I could get five minutes’ chat with the girl who bears such a strong resemblance to that nice young fellow, I could advise her to keep an eye on—shall we call him her brother?—in future. I thought I might, through her, save that nice young chap from someday falling into another difficulty when perhaps there would be no me to pick him up carefully and take him out of harm’s way. I thought perhaps I might convince him, through her, that the West End of London—the Worst End of London—at night-time is not a locality where even a self-respecting cat may trust himself. And this, Lady Noeline, is how I come to trespass in Overcote Park.

Noeline: (To herself, in a low voice) He’s not—such a cad. It’s positively delicate of him to avoid referring to me point-blank. He can’t be an out-and-out cad. (To Litterly, her tone slightly altered) I—I understand now the service you wished to render, and I—I—I quite appreciate your intentions.

Litterly: There’s one other small matter; (taking a ring from his waistcoat pocket) that Johnnie left his ring on my hearthrug.

Noeline: Eh? Oh!

Litterly: (Examining the ring) Rummy old thing it seems to be.

(They stand together for a time not speaking, he handling the ring, amused, she eagerly but irresolutely eyeing it. Then he offers it to her silently and she slips it hastily into her pocket)

Noeline: (Putting her gun under her arm) You—you have taken a great deal of trouble—

Litterly: Pooh! Not worth talking about.

Noeline: Er—er—good afternoon.

Pinero, Arthur Wing, The Amazons, William Heinemann, 1895, pp. 64-72.