they might rather be called everblack. Here and there up the slope were statues
having all the cold monstrosity of such minor ornaments of the eighteenth
century; and a whole row of them ran as on a terrace along the last bank at the
bottom, opposite the back door. This detail fixed itself first in March's mind
merely because it figured in the first conversation he had with one of the
cabinet ministers.
The cabinet ministers were rather older than he had expected to find them.
The Prime Minister no longer looked like a boy, though he still looked a little
like a baby. But it was one of those old and venerable babies, and the baby had
soft gray hair. Everything about him was soft, to his speech and his way of
walking; but over and above that his chief function seemed to be sleep. People
left alone with him got so used to his eyes being closed that they were almost
startled when they realized in the stillness that the eyes were wide open, and
even watching. One thing at least would always make the old gentleman open
his eyes. The one thing he really cared for in this world was his hobby of
armored weapons, especially Eastern weapons, and he would talk for hours
about Damascus blades and Arab swordmanship. Lord James Herries, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a short, dark, sturdy man with a very sallow
face and a very sullen manner, which contrasted with the gorgeous flower in
his buttonhole and his festive trick of being always slightly overdressed. It was
something of a euphemism to call him a well-known man about town. There
was perhaps more mystery in the question of how a man who lived for
pleasure seemed to get so little pleasure out of it. Sir David Archer, the
Foreign Secretary, was the only one of them who was a self-made man, and
the only one of them who looked like an aristocrat. He was tall and thin and
very handsome, with a grizzled beard; his gray hair was very curly, and even
rose in front in two rebellious ringlets that seemed to the fanciful to tremble
like the antennae of some giant insect, or to stir sympathetically with the
restless tufted eyebrows over his rather haggard eyes. For the Foreign
Secretary made no secret of his somewhat nervous condition, whatever might
be the cause of it.
"Do you know that mood when one could scream because a mat is
crooked?" he said to March, as they walked up and down in the back garden
below the line of dingy statues. "Women get into it when they've worked too
hard; and I've been working pretty hard lately, of course. It drives me mad
when Herries will wear his hat a little crooked—habit of looking like a gay
dog. Sometime I swear I'll knock it off. That statue of Britannia over there isn't
quite straight; it sticks forward a bit as if the lady were going to topple over.
The damned thing is that it doesn't topple over and be done with it. See, it's
clamped with an iron prop. Don't be surprised if I get up in the middle of the
night to hike it down."