"Done!" was the quick rejoinder. They grasped hands.
"Show this gentleman to a four-wheeler," said the ex-Premier.
So they parted. But as the Grand Old Politician turned towards the supper-room there was a fine triumphant lustre beaming in his eye, for he knew, that if he had possibly betrayed his country, he had at least squared the Railway Company. He had made the compact!
VOL. II.—Paid in Full.
The country was about to face a great crisis in its history. Yet, as the year 1894 opened, there were little evidences of the approaching storm. It is true that the Gladstone Cabinet were still in power, and were passing exasperating measures. But this was nothing new. Last year they had abolished Compulsory Vaccination, and had passed the Country Estates Popular Appropriation Act. They had inaugurated the first Session of the present one by suppressing the Volunteer Movement, and cutting down the Naval and Military votes respectively to the modest figure of £2,000,000 a year; and they pointed to the Channel Tunnel, now opened about sixteen months, for a triumphant vindication of these Imperial economies. They argued that a country that could pour a perpetual stream of Cook's Tourists night and day over to the Continent, had given a guarantee for preserving International peace such as would warrant it in reducing the expense for its defences to a pecuniary minimum; and, though they met with some opposition from the Permanent Departments, and were hotly criticised by an angry mob of naval and military men, who found themselves, at a moment's notice, both thrown out of work, and deprived of their pay, they, nevertheless, carried their point, and effected the proposed reductions. But a thunder-clap was about to fall upon the unsuspecting country from a blue sky, and the Channel Tunnel, which had inspired its misguided leaders with a baseless confidence, was destined to inflict the shock.
It became known in London suddenly on the morning of the Tuesday in the Easter Recess that the approaches to the Tunnel had been suddenly seized by a hostile French force that had landed by the night-mail disguised as tourists, and that the key of the apparatus destined to flood it in any case of emergency, was not forthcoming, the Chairman of the Company, who had charge of it, having suddenly disappeared without leaving his address. It was also further rumoured that the guns commanding the shore-exit had been spiked by active Shareholders anxious to protect their property from destruction at all hazards, and were useless. When, therefore at eleven o'clock, the second edition of the morning papers announced that a French army was pouring through the Tunnel, and occupying the neighbouring heights, at the rate of ten thousand men an hour, the panic became indescribable. Nor did it diminish when it was further known that the French Ambassador, leaving a threatening ultimatum behind him, had that afternoon taken his departure for Paris. The country flew to arms. Sir Archibald Harrison hastily collected the available force at Aldershot, and took up his position on the Hog's Back, and awaited the approach of the enemy with 213 men, all told, and three guns. They took no notice of him. At twelve the following day it was known that the Duke of Cambridge, falling back on Sydenham, in command of a handful of Volunteers and a squadron of the Household Cavalry hurriedly got together, had capitulated in the Refreshment Department.
The details of the disaster spread like wildfire. The consternation was terrific. The Lord Mayor went into hysterics, and was, by common consent, removed to Colney Hatch, while an angry mob invaded the War Office, and seizing any members of the Ordnance Committee they could lay hold of, forthwith dragged them out, and lynched them in Pall Mall. That same evening a French army, 350,000 strong, entered London in triumph.
A few outrages marked this occupation. The Nelson Column was thrown down, Waterloo Bridge blown up, Piccadilly re-christened the Rue Boulanger, and the whole of Madame Tussaud's Collection seized as National property.
So matters stood, but the cutting off of the food supply, thirty shillings being charged at a West-End Club for a plate of indifferent tinned-rabbit, soon brought matters to a crisis. The Cabinet that at the first approach of the enemy, had instantly retired to the Island of Lewis, came cautiously up to town and opening negotiations for peace with the French Government, finally signed the Tottenham Court Road treaty, and provided for the evacuation of the country by the invader. The terms were stringent and somewhat severe. In addition to agreeing to the cession of India, Australia, the Cape, Canada and all her Mediterranean possessions, together with the division of her Fleet among the Navies of Europe, England undertook to pay an indemnity in ready money at the Bank of England of five-hundred millions sterling.