"Not invited, George," I said. "I'm left out of these pleasant little gatherings. What are they meeting about?"
"To hear a statement from Asquith. There'll be a vote of confidence, I suppose. He's still the leader of the Liberal Party!" he proclaimed with a note of challenge.
"This partisan enthusiasm is new to you," I commented.
Any hint of raillery was lost on him.
"I daresay it is!" he cried. "I was a candid friend in the old '06 parliament, I've voted against them a score of times, but, when I see how they held the country together in the first shock of the war, when I see what they did.... And now to be turned out by a low press conspiracy and a man who owes his political salvation to Asquith, a man who was pulled out of the gutter at the time of the Marconi scandal ... when the whole party nearly split. My God! talk about gratitude in politics!"
He hurried away still most unwontedly explosive, and I followed more slowly. At the corner of St. James' Square I found Beresford also watching the crowd. (It was our last meeting before he called on me in the afternoon of our tragic expedition.)
"They're broken! Their noses are in the dirt,—and thank God for it!" he cried, pointing excitedly across the road. "They were responsible! They dragged us into the war, it was their war, their diplomacy! Asquith, Haldane and Grey. And now they're in the gutter!"
I remember walking on to luncheon with both conceptions to digest as an appetiser.
O'Rane and I talked long of political futures. The Government had resigned without challenge or defeat; we may have felt that we ought to have been consulted, as a compliment to the unfailing support which we had given; we might even dislike the new ministry's mode of birth, but we agreed in thinking that we must give the new management a trial before reverting to those who had failed to keep order in their own home. Suddenly O'Rane interrupted me with a question which shewed that his thoughts had been for some time at a distance from domestic politics.
"Er—Stornaway," he said with noticeable nervousness. "You remember when you came to see me at Melton some weeks ago? You were going to set enquiries on foot to find out where Sonia had got to."