"Thank you. You're right, of course. I'm acting the part of beggar for the boy's sake. You are—forgive me, I don't mean it rudely—a sort of fashionable cult. You know a great many persons, and everybody likes you. Some one once said of you that if a man really wanted the key of the Foreign Office secrets he would hunt for it in your flat. And they said, too, that you were as straight as a die: it's a quality one doesn't invariably find in political women. I want it to be under your wing that Richard"—he was unconscious of the lapse—"meets people. I'd like him to go into the world as a friend of yours. Oh yes, Creagh can do a lot for him, I know; but Creagh's religion puts off many people. You're a Romanist, too; but, then, one lets a woman have her little failings. Now, in many ways I'm broad-minded; Farquharson's political opinions and mine are at opposite poles, for instance; but I want him to have a free hand. There'll be a change in the Ministry soon. I give our present Government six months. We've decimated the Army, and the Navy's at boiling-point; the Labour candidates and Irish members are aggrieved as usual. You know what all parties think about the Education Bill—one needn't go into that; and I hear hints of so-called Licensing reforms, which will set the country by the ears."
He waited.
"Yes?" said Evelyn.
"During the winter I want Farquharson to meet men who are likely to form the next Ministry," said Calvert deliberately, lowering his voice. "To meet them intimately and often—under convenient auspices. I should like them all to forgather at your house. You bring the right people together, and you make them talk."
"I only listen."
Calvert laughed again.
"The music of a man's voice is very sweet in his ears. You're a born diplomat, Mrs. Brand. You and Richard have a quality in common—you're both 'masters of the unspoken word and slaves of the word you have spoken.' I don't want a cheap success for Richard. He's a man of men; in my heart I believe him to be the one man who can save our country in its crisis." There was a little pause. "It sounds sentimental to say it, but I love England. So does he. His pulses beat to music which most men only hear once in a lifetime. Things must come to him in time. He mustn't eat his heart out wanting them. For the country's sake as well as his I'm in a hurry. He ought to have a place in the next Cabinet."
Music was seldom permitted at Creagh, the conversation was usually too good for it. But a French opera singer was amongst the guests that night, and the words of her song came to them, clear and pathetic, in the pause that followed—
"Cet espoir, hélas! d'un avenir doré
Ces apparitions, ces rêves ont duré,
Le temps d'une aube boréale,
Et mon esprit partit aux fabuleux
Ou l'on pense cueillir les camélias bleus
Et trouver l'amour idéale."
How long would Calvert's dream last?