But his round million of money satisfied him after all. He had no near kith or kin to work for, and, patriotic as a man may be at heart, impersonal ties seldom stir his blood so deeply as do those of family. Evelyn was right, he had learned by now to look upon Farquharson almost as his son. He had recognized him from the first as being a man of power, and the incident of their meeting was dramatic. A big ecclesiastical procession was marching one Easter down the Rambla at Barcelona; Calvert, standing at a street corner, was watching it with immense disapprobation. The crowd surged onward, sweeping all before it like a mighty flood; a child, running suddenly across the path of the procession, slipped, and was trampled out of sight almost without a cry, lost in the religious exaltation that is so often blind to human claims. From the opposite side of the road a man dashed forward; so sudden was his movement that it arrested even the half-dazed crowd. The child was saved. He had borne it away before more than the first ranks of the spectators knew what had happened.
The promptness, the surety of the action, appealed to a man to whom swift decisions came naturally. The rescuer was neat, but shabby. Calvert invited him to his hotel.
Farquharson made no claim on Calvert's pity or patronage. But, after a few judicious questions, the older man discovered that the stranger was of some social significance, and had been out of employment for about three weeks. The secretary for whom he had last worked in an office had absconded with the contents of the till. Calvert had important business letters to send to England that evening. He hired Farquharson's services then and there for the night, and presently gave him a place in his office.
And now, fifteen years later, he looked back upon this act of impulse as being the wisest of his life. From a commercial point of view, Farquharson had paid his way. More than that, he had healed an old sore in Calvert's heart; he had renewed the man's lost faith and hope. And Calvert was old enough to realize that in life the things we can touch and lay hold of are not always or even often the most valuable.
The dinner hour, usually a propitious moment in which to discuss claims and urge the need of benefactions, was almost always a cause of annoyance to Calvert. He hated ostentation; the very men who were anxious to gain his favour frequently lost it by offering him out-of-season delicacies on gold plate. Once, at a small dinner party in New York, where over a thousand dollars had been spent on table decorations alone, Calvert rose at the fourth course and struck the table with a blow which shook the gay, luxurious crowd from its apathy.
"You have got starving men outside," he said. "Every dish you have set before me, to my mind, is wholesale murder. You and your ways remind me of Babylon; beware lest her fate overtakes you."
But the startled guests broke in here with hilarious shrieks of laughter. The episode was supposed to have been got up by the host as a new form of entertainment to pique their jaded palates.
Conforming to custom in his own house, Calvert always offered his guests champagne at dinner, but he himself invariably drank ale. Democrat as he was, he could complain of nothing in the meal that had just been served at Creagh. It was characteristic of his host; good and simple without display. And the talk through the dinner was genial and unaffected; something in the atmosphere of a room which has grown warm with human kindness calls for a like response from those of its occupants who are sensitive to influences.
Calvert felt his own mind expand. He had talked openly, as he seldom talked, and Farquharson was at his best. The elder man took a pride in watching this child of his deliberate choice, who never failed him. Farquharson was a man who had from the first seen two moves ahead in the game of life, and Calvert, himself a skilled player, gladly acknowledged himself beaten by a pupil to whom he had taught the rudiments of hazard.
The drawing-room at Creagh was essentially a pleasant room. Innumerable flowers, books and reviews, Lady Ennly's spinning-wheel and lace pillow, kept in constant use, gave it a homely, old-fashioned appearance. Calvert, aware of comfort, although unable to analyze its cause, crossed the room to Mrs. Brand, who withdrew to a distant corner as the men entered the room.