“Who’s to be put in Chamberlain’s place?,” I asked.
“No one knows yet. No one has the least idea how the meeting will turn out. If I were in the confidence of my party . . . Nowadays the unhappy accident of being a peer . . .”
Feeling that I should hear no more, I drifted to the Turf and Stage, where Frank Jellaby thickened the mist in which Crawleigh had enveloped the Carlton Club. After a denunciation of the coalition-liberals which reminded me of Cato’s punctual fulminations against Carthage, he explained that the new crisis had been engineered by ‘Blob’ Wister and that its outcome depended on Wister’s success in finding a leader:
“He had no difficulty in persuading people like Dean and Lingfield to come out for an all-tory government when his papers were marching ahead to cover their advance. If he can get Bonar Law to stampede the meeting . . .”
“I hear Lingfield and the rest of George’s tory ministers are swearing allegiance to him with one hand,” I said, “and writing him letters of resignation with the other.”
“They don’t know anything . . . except that some of them will be badly left.”
“But no one,” I encouraged him, “will be left quite so completely as your coalition-liberal friends.”
Jellaby’s face darkened:
“They sold the pass in ’16, they’ve had their reward; if there were another pass to sell, they’d sell it; and they mustn’t complain if they can’t find one.”
“You won’t join forces,” I asked, “to keep the tories out?”