“It jolly well looks like a field of battle,” replied the politician gloomily. “I don’t suppose they’d actually come and kill people but they’re pretty well ready for anything short of that. And that’s just the worst of it. If they’d only actually rebel, they could be put down easily enough. But what the devil are you to do with rebels who don’t rebel? I don’t believe Machiavelli ever gave any advice on the problem.”
Lord Seawood put his long thin fingers together and cleared his throat.
“I do not profess to be Machiavelli,” he said with marked modesty, “but I hope I am not wrong in supposing that, in a certain sense, you are asking my advice. Well, the conditions are such, I admit, as to call for rather special knowledge, and I have given some attention to this problem, and especially to parallel problems in Australia and Alaska. To begin with, the conditions of the production of all the derivatives of coal involves considerations that are commonly understood–.”
“My God!” cried Lord Eden and ducked suddenly as if a blow had been aimed at his head. His exclamation was natural enough; though, such was the incredible self-absorption of the other man that he saw the cause at least a second later.
What Lord Seawood saw was a long feathered arrow that stood still quivering in the timber of the summer-house, immediately above Lord Eden’s head. But what Lord Eden had seen was the same singular missile come singing through the air out of some remote part of the garden and passing above him with a noise like that of some gigantic insect. Both the noblemen rose to their feet and regarded this object for a moment in silence; before the more practical politician observed that the shaft had fastened to it a flapping fragment of paper, on which something seemed to be written.
CHAPTER XIII
THE VICTORIAN AND THE ARROW
The arrow that had entered the summer-house with a sound like song awakened the worthy proprietor of the place to a world without which had been entirely transformed. Why it had been transformed, and what was the nature of the transformation, he found it sufficiently bewildering to discover; but it is almost equally bewildering to describe. It began, in a sense, with the isolated insanity of one man; yet it was almost equally due, by a not uncommon paradox, to the equally isolated sanity of one woman.
Mr. Herne, the librarian, had positively and finally refused to change his clothes.
“Well I can’t,” he cried in despair. “I simply can’t. I should feel like a fool, just as if–.”