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‘But I only gave you some papers and tobacco.’

‘What more does any citizen need? The Cullinan diamond wouldn’t have helped me as much then; an’–talking about South Africa, tell me–‘

We talked about South Africa till the car stopped at the Georgian lodge of a great park.

‘We’ll get out here. I want to show you a rather sightly view,’ said Zigler.

We walked, perhaps, half a mile, across timber-dotted turf, past a lake, entered a dark rhododendron-planted wood, ticking with the noise of pheasants’ feet, and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of turf, several acres in extent. Irish yews, of a size that I had never seen before, walled the sunless circle like cliffs of riven obsidian, except at the lower end, where it gave on to a stretch of undulating bare ground ending in a timbered slope half-a-mile away.

‘That’s where the old Marshalton race-course used to be,’ said Zigler. ‘That ice-house is called Flora’s Temple. Nell Gwynne and Mrs. Siddons an’ Taglioni an’ all that crowd used to act plays here for King George the Third. Wasn’t it? Well, George is the only king I play. Let it go at that. This circle was the stage, I guess. The kings an’ the nobility sat in Flora’s Temple. I forget who sculped these statues at the door. They’re the Comic and Tragic Muse. But it’s a sightly view, ain’t it?’

The sunlight was leaving the park. I caught a glint of silver to the southward beyond the wooded ridge.

‘That’s the ocean–the Channel, I mean,’ said Zigler. ‘It’s twenty-three miles as a man flies. A sightly view, ain’t it?’

I looked at the severe yews, the dumb yelling mouths of the two statues, at the blue-green shadows on the unsunned grass, and at the still bright plain in front where some deer were feeding.

‘It’s a most dramatic contrast, but I think it would be better on a summer’s day,’ I said, and we went on, up one of the noiseless rides, a quarter of a mile at least, till we came to the porticoed front of an enormous Georgian pile. Four footmen revealed themselves in a hall hung with pictures.

‘I hired this off of my Lord Marshalton,’ Zigler explained, while they helped us out of our coats under the severe eyes of ruffed and periwigged ancestors. ‘Ya-as. They always look at me too, as if I’d blown in from the gutter. Which, of course, I have. That’s Mary, Lady Marshalton. Old man Joshua painted her. Do you see any likeness to my Lord Marshalton? Why, haven’t you ever met up with him? He was Captain Mankeltow–my Royal British Artillery captain that blew up my gun in the war, an’ then tried to bury me against my religious principles[4]. Ya-as. His father died and he got the lordship. That was about all he got by the time that your British death-duties were through with him. So he said I’d oblige him by hiring his ranch. It’s a hell an’ a half of a proposition to handle, but Tommy–Mrs. Laughton–understands it. Come right in to the parlour and be very welcome.’

[Footnote 4: “The Captive”: Traffics and Discoveries.]

He guided me, hand on shoulder, into a babble of high-pitched talk and laughter that filled a vast drawing-room. He introduced me as the founder of the family fortunes to a little, lithe, dark-eyed woman whose speech and greeting were of the soft-lipped South. She in turn presented me to her mother, a black-browed snowy-haired old lady with a cap of priceless Venetian point, hands that must have held many hearts in their time, and a dignity as unquestioned and unquestioning as an empress. She was, indeed, a Burton of Savannah, who, on their own ground, out-rank the Lees of Virginia. The rest of the company came from Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago, with here and there a softening southern strain. A party of young folk popped corn beneath a mantelpiece surmounted by a Gainsborough. Two portly men, half hidden by a cased harp, discussed, over sheaves of typewritten documents, the terms of some contract. A knot of matrons talked servants–Irish versus German–across the grand piano. A youth ravaged an old bookcase, while beside him a tall girl stared at the portrait of a woman of many loves, dead three hundred years, but now leaping to life and warning under the shaded frame-light. In a corner half-a-dozen girls examined the glazed tables that held the decorations–English and foreign–of the late Lord Marshalton.