r there
was a certain consistency about the whole business. A card player
might in time adjust himself to a game played with cards which
possessed wills of their own. But poor Clithering had to play with a
pack in which one suit only, and it not even the trump suit, suddenly
insisted that the game was a reality. The other three suits, the
Liberals, the Conservatives, and the Irish Nationalists still behaved
in the normal way, falling pleasantly on top of each other, and
winning or losing tricks as the rules of the game demanded. The Ulster
party alone--Clubs, we may call them--would not play fairly. They
jumped out of the player's hand and obstinately declared that the
green cloth was a real battlefield. The higher court cards of the
suit--Lady Moyne for instance, and Babberly--Clithering felt himself
able to control. It was the knaves--I am sure he looked on McNeice as
a knave--the tens, the sevens and the humble twos which behaved
outrageously.

And Clithering was not the only player who was perplexed. I had been
to luncheon with the Moynes. Babberly was there of course. So was
Malcolmson. Clithering sat next but one to Lady Moyne. Malcolmson was
between them. It was a curious alliance. The emissary of the
Government, which had passed measures which all good aristocrats
disliked intensely, joined hands for the moment with the lady whose
skill as a political hostess had frequently been troublesome to
Clithering's friends. I do not suppose that such an alliance could
possibly last long. Those whom misfortune, according to the old
proverb, forces into bed together, always struggle out again at
opposite sides when the clouds cease to be threatening. But while it
lasted the alliance was firm enough. They were both bent on pressing
the advantages of moderation on Malcolmson. They produced very little
effect. Malcolmson is impervious to reason. He kept falling back, in
replying to their arguments, on his original objection to Home Rule.

"I shall never consent," he said, "to be governed by a pack of
blackguards in Dublin."

It was really a very good answer, for every time he made it he drove a
wedge into the coalition against him. Lady Moyne was bound to admit
that all Irishmen outside Ulster are blackguards, and that the
atmosphere of Dublin is poisonous. Clithering, on the other hand, was
officially committed to an unqualified admiration for everything south
of the Boyne. I do not think that Malcolmson appreciated his