“Quite so, quite so. We all said so. I’ve said so myself; but it was always on the distinct understanding—”
“That it would never come to that. I’ve heard Babberly say so.”
“But—damn it all, Kilmore!—it doesn’t do to push things to these extremes. The whole business has been mismanaged. The people have got out of hand; and there’s Malcolmson, a man who’s dined at my table a score of times, actually egging them on. Now, what do you think we ought to do?”
“The Government is threatening you, I suppose?”
“It’s growling,” said Moyne. “Not that I care what the Government does to me. It can’t do much. But I do not want her ladyship mixed up in anything unpleasant. It won’t do, you know. People don’t like it. I don’t mind for myself, of course. But still it’s very unpleasant. Men I know keep writing to me. You know the sort of thing I mean.”
I did. The members of the English aristocracy still preserve a curious sentiment which they call “loyalty.” It is quite a different thing from the “loyalty” of Crossan, for instance, or McNeice. I fully understood that there were men in clubs in London who would look coldly at poor Moyne (men of such importance that their wives’ treatment of Lady Moyne would matter even to her) if he were discovered to be heading an actual rising of Ulster Protestants. I promised to do what I could to get Moyne out of his difficulty.
I found that Babberly and Lady Moyne had worked out a very feasible plan without any help from me.
“That fellow Malcolmson has rushed things,” said Babberly, “and there’s an abominable rag called The Loyalist—”
“By the way,” I said, “I hear that the Nationalists at their last meeting in Dublin joined in singing ‘God Save the King.’”
I wanted to hear what Babberly thought of this. I was disappointed. The fact did not seem to interest him.