"Well, I do--now," retorted his colleague bitterly. "His five million are the five million biggest users of domestic coal in the country. They use more than all the rest put together. And they all fill their cellars in the summer or autumn."

"Then?" suggested Mr Strummery.

"Then they won't now," replied Mr Tubes. "That's all. The next ten weeks are the busiest in the year, from the deepest working to the suburban coal-shoot. Go and take a look round if you want to see. Every waggon, every coal-yard, every railway siding, every pit-bank is chock-full, ready. Only the cellars are empty. If the cellars are going to remain empty, what happens?" He threw out his left hand pa.s.sionately, with a vigorous gesture. It suggested laden coal carts, crowded yards, over-burdened railways, all flung a stage back on to the already congested pit-heads, and banking up coal like the waters of the divided Red Sea into a scene of indescribable confusion.

The Prime Minister sat thinking moodily, while his visitor paced the room and bit his lips with unpleasant vehemence. In the blades of morning sun, as he crossed and recrossed the room, one saw that Mr Tubes, neither tall nor stout but large, loosely boned, loosely dressed and loosely groomed, had light blue eyes, strong yellow teeth which came prominently into view as he talked, and a spotted sallow complexion, which conveyed the unfortunate, and unjust, impression of being dirty.

"We shall have to do something to carry them on till the winter, that's all," declared Mr Strummery at length. "There's no doubt that the Leaguers will have to use coal then."

"It's no good thinking that we can settle it off-hand with a few thousand pounds of strike pay, Strummery," said the Home Secretary impatiently, "because we can't. You have to know the conditions to see how that is. If there's a strike, the article has to be supplied from somewhere else at more money, and every one except those who _want_ to strike keep on very much as before. But here, by G.o.d, they have us all along the line! Anything from fifty to a hundred thousand miners less required at one end, and anything from five to ten thousand coal carters at the other. And between? And dependent on each lot all through?" His ever-ready arm emphasised the situation by a comprehensive sweep.

"You've heard say that coal is the life-blood of the country, happen?"

he added. "Well, we're the heart."

"What do you suggest, then?"

"It's all a matter of money. If it can be done we must make up the difference; buy it, pay for it, and store it. There are the dockyards, the barracks, and we could open depots here and in all the big towns. In that way we could spread it over as long a period as we liked. Then there's export. I think that has touched its limit for the time, but we might find it cheaper in the end to stimulate it more."

"Yes; but what about this French business? Are you allowing for that in your estimate?"

"What French business?"

"The French tax," said the Premier impatiently, pointing to the open _Scythe_. "You've seen about it, haven't you?"

He had not. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the paper, muttering as he read the first few lines that he had glanced through _The Tocsin_ before he came out, and that had been all. His voice became inaudible as he read on. When he had finished he was very pale. He flung the paper down and walked to the window, and stood there looking out without a word. The declaration of the coal war had filled him with smouldering rage; the Paris telegram had effectually chilled it. Before, he had felt anger; now he felt something that, expressed in words, was undistinguishable from fear.

The men whom he had asked to meet him there were beginning to arrive.

They had already heard Vossit and Chadwing pa.s.s upstairs talking. There was a step in the hall outside that could only belong to Tirrel. He had not been summoned, but, as Mr Tubes had antic.i.p.ated, a few others were beginning to drop in. Guppling and two men whom he had met on the doorstep came in as Mr Tubes was finishing the Paris news.

"It's not much good talking about it now," he said, turning from the window, "but if I had known of _this_, or even that the other would be out, I should have come here myself without bringing all these chaps down too. Not but what they'd have come, though. But when I wrote to them I'd just got the information, you understand, and it was thought that Hampden wouldn't be doing anything for a week at least."

"He was too clever for you again?" said Strummery vindictively, as he rose to go upstairs.

"So it seems," admitted Mr Tubes indifferently.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST CHANCE AND THE COUNSEL OF EXPEDIENCE

In the salon, where a month before they had drafted the outline of the Personal Property Bill, under the impression that government was a parlour game and Society a heap of spelicans, eight or nine men were already a.s.sembled. One or two sat apart, with ugly looks upon their faces. Mr Vossit was dividing his time between gazing up to the ceiling and making notes in a memorandum book as the points occurred to him. Sir Causter Kerr, Baronet of the United Kingdom, and Chevalier of the Order of the Golden Eagle, who in return for a thousand pounds a year permitted himself to be called First Lord of the Admiralty in a Socialist Government, was standing before a steel engraving with the t.i.tle in German, "Defeat of the British at Majuba Hill, 27th February 1881," but, judging from the slight sardonic grin on his thin features, he was thinking of something else. Sir Causter Kerr had a.s.suredly not been invited to the meeting. The rest of the company stood together in one group, where they talked and laughed and looked towards the door from time to time, in expectation of their host's arrival.

The talk and laughter dropped to a whisper and a smile as Mr Strummery entered and Mr Tubes followed, and with short greetings pa.s.sed to their places at the table. The Prime Minister was popular, or he would not have held that position, but Mr Tubes was not. He was Home Secretary by virtue of the voice of the coal interest, so much the largest labour organisation in the country that if its wishes were ignored it could, like another body of miners in the past, very effectively demand to "know the reason why."

"Well, Jim, owd lad," said Cecil Brown hilariously, taking advantage of the fact that formal proceedings had not yet commenced, "hast geete howd o' onny more cipher pappers, schuzheou?" Cecil Brown, it may be explained, held that he had the privilege of saying offensive things to his friends without being considered offensive, and as no one ever thought of calling him anything else but "Cecil Brown," he was probably right. Of the Colonial Office, he was in some elation at the moment that his usually despised Department was quite out of this imbroglio.

"Ah, that was a very red, red herring, I'm more than thinking now," said Mr Guppling reflectively.

"Certainly a salt fish, eh, Tirrel?" said Cecil Brown.

Mr Strummery rapped sharply on the table with his knuckles, to indicate that the proceedings had better begin. A hard-working, conscientious man, he entirely missed the lighter side of life. He sometimes laughed, but in conversation his face never lit up with the ready, spontaneous smile; not because he was sad, but because he failed to see, not only the utility of a jest, but its point also. That conversational sauce which among friends who understand one another frequently takes the outer form of personal abuse, was to him merely flagrant insult.

Mr Tubes leaned across and spoke to his chief; and looking down the table the Premier allowed his gaze to rest enquiringly on Sir Causter Kerr.

A man who _had_ been invited jumped up. "I called on Comrade Kerr on my way here and took the liberty of asking him to come, because I thought that we might like to know something of the condition of the navy," he explained.

"For what purpose?" enquired Mr Strummery smoothly.

"Because," he replied, flaring up suddenly with anger, "because I regard this d.a.m.ned French tax, without a word of notice to us or our representative, as nothing more or less than a _casus belli_."

The proceedings had begun.

"Case of tinned rabbits!" contemptuously retorted a Mr Bilch, sitting opposite. "What d'yer think you're going to do if it is? Why, my infant, the French fleet would knock you and your _belli_ into a packing _casus_ in about ten minutes if you tried it on. You'll have to stomach that _casus belli_, and as many more as they care to send you."

Mr Bilch was a new man, and was spoken of as a great acquisition to his party, though confessedly uncertain in his views and frequently illogical in his ground. His strength lay in the "happy turns" with which his speech was redolent, and his splendid invulnerability to argument, reason, or fact. He had formerly been a rag-sorter, and would doubtless have remained inarticulate and unknown had he not one day smoothed out a sheet of _The Tocsin_ from the bin before him as he ate his dinner. A fully reported speech was therein described as perhaps the greatest oratorical masterpiece ever delivered outside Hyde Park. Mr Bilch read the speech, and modestly fancied that he could do as well himself. From that moment he never looked back, and although he was still a plain member he had forced his way by sheer merit into the circle of the Council Chamber.

"It is against our principles to consider that contingency," interposed the Premier; "and in any case it is premature to talk of war when the courts of arbitration----"

"That's right enough," interrupted the man who had first spoken of war, "and when it was a matter of fighting to grab someone else's land to fatten up a gang of Stock Exchange Hebrews, I was with you through thick and thin, but this is different. The very livelihood of our people is aimed at. I've nothing to say against the Hague in theory, but when you remember that we've never had a single decision given in our favour it's too important to risk to that. But why France should have done this, in this way and just at this moment, is beyond me."

Yet it was not difficult to imagine. When many English manufactories were closed down altogether, or removed abroad because the conditions at home were too exacting for them, less coal was required in England. Less coal meant fewer colliers employed, and this touched the Government most keenly. The same amount of coal _must_ be dug, especially as the operation of the Eight Hours Act had largely increased the number of those dependent on the mines; therefore more must be exported. The coal tax had long since gone; a substantial bounty was now offered on every ton shipped out of the country. It made a brave show. Never were such piping times known from Kirkcaldy to Cardiff. English coal could be shot down in Rouen, Nantes, or Bordeaux, even in Lille and Limoges, at a price that defied home compet.i.tion. Prices fell; French colliery proprietors reduced wages; French miners came out on strike--a general strike--and for the time being French collieries ceased to have any practical existence. But France was requiring a million tons of coal a week, and having done the mischief, England could only, at the moment, let her have a quarter of a million a week, while German and Belgian coal had been knocked out of the compet.i.tion and diverted elsewhere. The great industries had to cease working; chaos, civil war and anarchy began to reign....

"Why France should have done this is beyond me."

There was another reason, deeper. It was a commonplace that England had been cordially hated in turn by every nation in and out of Europe, but with all that there was no responsible nation in or out of Europe that dare contemplate a weak, a dying, England. France looked at the map of Europe, and the thought of the German Eagle flying over Dover Castle and German navies patrolling the seas from Land's End to The Skawe haunted her dreams. Russia wanted nothing in the world so much as another Thirty Years' Peace. Spain had more to lose than to gain; Italy had much to lose and nothing at all to gain. All the little independent states and nations remembered the Treaties of Vienna and Berlin, and trembled at the thought of what might happen now. Germany alone might have had visions, but Germany had a nightmare too, and when the man who ruled her councils with a strong if tortuous policy saw wave after wave of the infectious triumph of Socialism reach his own sh.o.r.es, he recognised that England's weakness was more hostile to his ambitions than England's strength.

No one wanted two Turkeys in Europe.

"I don't see why we shouldn't make a naval demonstration, at all events," some one suggested hopefully. "That used to be enough, and the French Government must have plenty to look after at home."

"Naval demonstration be boiled!" exclaimed Mr Bilch forcibly. "Send your little Willie to Hamley's for a tin steamer, and let him push it off Ramsgate sands if you want a naval demonstration, comrade. But don't show the Union Jack inside the three-mile limit on the other side of the Channel, or you'll have something so hot drop on your hands that you won't be able to lick it off fast enough."

"I fail to see that," said Mr Vossit. "Heaven forbid that I should raise my voice in favour of bloodshed, but if it were necessary for self-preservation our navy is at least equal to that of any other power."

"Is it?" retorted Mr Bilch, with so heavily-laden an expression of contemptuous derision on his face that it seemed as though he might be able to take it off, like a mask, and hang it on some one else. "Is it?

Oh, it is, is it? Well, ask that man there. Ask him, is all I say.

Simply ask _him_." His contorted face was thrust half-way across the table towards Mr Vossit, while his rigid arm with extended forefinger was understood to indicate Sir Causter Kerr.

"As the subject has been raised, perhaps the First Lord of the Admiralty will rea.s.sure us on that point," said the Premier.

"Dear, dear, no," replied Causter Kerr blandly. "We couldn't carry it through, Premier. You must not think of going to extremes."

There was a moody silence in which men looked angrily at Kerr and at one another.

"Are we to understand that the navy is _not_ equal to that of any other power?" demanded Mr Vossit.

"On paper, yes, comrade," replied Kerr, with a pitying little smile, "but on deep water, where battles are usually fought, no. It is a curious paradox that in order to be equal to any other single power England must be really very much stronger. I should also explain that from motives of economy no battleships have been launched or laid down during the last three years, and only four cruisers of questionable armament. Then as regards gunnery. From motives of economy actual practice is never carried out now, but the championship, dating from last year, lies at present with the armoured cruiser _Radium_:--stationary regulation target, 1-1/2 miles distant, speed 4 knots, quarter charges, 3 hits out of 27 shots. As regards effective range----"