This was his Lordship’s answer to every hospitable suggestion. He had come to Paramé for rest; and not for gadding about, or entertainments of any kind.
So the long summer days succeeded each other in a lazy monotony, and whatever gaiety there might be in the great white hotel, the English law-lord and his wife had no share in it. They occupied a suite of light, airy rooms in the west pavilion, and were served apart from the vulgar herd, after the fashion which befitted a person of Lord Cheriton’s distinction. They had only their body servants, man and maid, so they were waited upon by the servants of the hotel, and they drove about the dusty, level roads between St. Servans and Dol in a hired landau, driven by a Breton coachman. Lady Cheriton was dull, but contented. She had always submitted to her husband’s pleasure. He had been a very indulgent husband in essentials, and he had made her a peeress. Her married life had been eminently satisfactory; and she could afford to endure one summer month of monotony amidst pleasant surroundings. She dropped in at the Casino every evening, while Lord Cheriton read the papers in the seclusion of his salon—with the large French window wide open to the blue sea, and the blue moonlight—hearing the tramp of feet on the terrace, or the sea wall beyond, or now and again strains of lively music from the theatre, where the little opera company from Paris were singing Lecocq’s joyous music.
People used to turn round to look at Lady Cheriton as she walked gravely between the rows of seats to her place near the orchestra, his Lordship’s valet following with an extra shawl, an opera-glass, and a footstool. He established her in her chair, and then retired discreetly to the back of the theatre to await her departure, and to escort her safely back to the hotel. He was a large, serious-looking man, a French Swiss, who had lived ten years in Italy, and over fifteen years in Lord Cheriton’s service, and who spoke French, Italian, German, and English indifferently.
Lady Cheriton was handsome still, with a grand Spanish beauty which time had touched lightly. She was tall and dignified in carriage, though a shade stouter than she could have wished, and she dressed to perfection with sobriety of colouring and richness of material. Her life had been full of pleasantness, her only sorrow being the loss of her infant sons, which she had not taken to heart so deeply as the proud father who had pined for an heir to his newly won honours. She had her daughter, her first-born, the child for whom her heart had first throbbed with the strange new love of maternity. She shed some natural tears for the boy-babies, and then she let Juanita fill their place in her heart, and her life again seemed complete in its sum of happiness. And now in this sleepy summer holiday—cut off from most things that she cared for—Juanita’s letters had been her chief joy—those happy, innocent, girlish letters, overflowing with fond, foolish praise of the husband she loved, letters made up of nothings—of what he had said to her, and what she had said to him—and where they had taken afternoon tea—and of their morning ride, or their evening walk, and of those plans for the long future which they were always making, projecting their thoughts into the time to come, and laying out those after years as if they were a certainty.
There had been no fairer morning than that which followed the night of the murder. Lord Cheriton was an early riser at all seasons, most of all in the summer, when he was generally awake from five o’clock, and had to beguile an hour or so with one of the books on the table by his bed—a well-thumbed “Horace” or a duodecimo “Don Quixote,” in ten volumes, which went everywhere with him. By seven o’clock he was dressed, and ready to begin the day; and between that hour and breakfast it was his habit to attend to the correspondence which had accumulated during the previous day. This severe rule was suspended, however, at Paramé, and he gave himself up to restful vacuity, strolling up and down the sands, or walking round the walls of St. Malo, or sauntering into the cathedral in a casual way for an early mass, enjoying the atmosphere of the place, with its old-world flavour.
On this particular morning he went no further than the sands, where he paced slowly to and fro in front of the long white terrace, hotel, and casino, heedless alike of Parisian idlesse coquetting with the crisp wavelets on the edge of the sea, and of the mounted officer yonder drilling his men upon the sandy flat towards St. Malo. He was in a mood for idleness, but with him, idleness was only a synonym for deep thought. He was meditating upon his only child’s future, and telling himself that he had done well for her.
Sir Godfrey Carmichael would be made Baron Cheriton in the days to come, when he, the first Baron, should be laid in the newly built vault in the cemetery outside Dorchester. He was not going to sever himself from his kindred in that last sleep, albeit they were common folk. He would lie under the Egyptian sarcophagus which he had set up in honour of his father, the crockery dealer, and his mother, the busy, anxious house-wife. The sarcophagus was plain and unpretentious, hardly too good for the shopkeeper; yet with a certain solid dignity which was not unbefitting the law-lord, almost as massive as that mammoth cross which marks the resting-place of Henry Brougham in the fair southern land. He had chosen the monument with uttermost care, so that it might serve the double purpose. He had looked at the broad blank panel many a time, wondering how his own name would look upon it, and whether his daughter would have a laurel wreath sculptured above it. It might be that admiring friends would suggest his being laid in the Abbey, hard by those shabby disused courts where he had pleaded and sat in judgment through so many laborious years; and it might be that the suggestion would be accepted by Dean and Chapter, and that the panel on the Dorchester sarcophagus would remain blank. James Dalbrook knew that he had deserved well of posterity, and, above all, of the ruling powers. He had been staunch and unwavering in his adherence to his own party, and he knew that he had a strong claim upon any Conservative Ministry. He had sounded those in authority, and he had been assured that there would be very little difficulty in getting Sir Godfrey Carmichael a peerage by-and-by, when he, Lord Cheriton, should be no more. Sir Godfrey’s family was one of the oldest in the country, and he had but to deserve well of his party, when he had got his seat, to insure future favours. As the owner of the Cheriton and Milbrook estates, he would be a worthy candidate for one of those coronets which seem to be dealt round so freely by expiring Ministries, as it were a dying father dividing his treasures among his weeping children. So far as any man can think with satisfaction of the days when he shall be no more—and when this world will go on, badly, of course, but somehow, without him—Lord Cheriton thought of those far-off years when Godfrey Carmichael should be owner of Cheriton Chase. The young man had shown such fine qualities of heart and mind, and, above all, had given such unobtrusive evidence of his affection for Juanita’s father, that the elder man must needs give measure for measure; therefore Godfrey had been to Lord Cheriton almost as a son. The union of his humbly born daughter with one of the oldest families in the south of England gratified the pride of the self-made man. His own pedigree might be of the lowliest; but his grandson would be able to look back upon a long line of ancestors, glorified by many a patrician alliance. Strong and stern as was the fabric of James Dalbrook’s mind, he was not superior to the Englishman’s foible, and he loved rank and ancient lineage. He was a Tory to the core of his heart; and it was the earnestness and thoroughness of his convictions which had given him weight with his party. Wherever he spoke or whatever he wrote—and he had written much upon current politics in the Saturday Review, and the higher-class monthlies—bore the stamp of a Cromwellian vigour and a Cromwellian sincerity.
He had never felt more at ease than upon that balmy summer morning, pacing those golden sands in quiet meditation—brooding over Juanita’s last letter received overnight—with its girlish raptures, its girlish dreams; picturing her in the near future as happy a mother as she was a bride, with his grandson, the third Baron Cheriton of the future, in her lap. He smiled at his own foolishness in thinking of that first boy-baby by the title which was but one of the possibilities of a foreshadowed sequence of events; yet he found himself repeating the words idly, to the rhythm of the wavelets that curled and sparkled near his feet—third Baron Cheriton, Godfrey Dalbrook Carmichael, third Baron Cheriton.
The cathedral clock was striking nine as he went into the hotel. The light breakfast of coffee and rolls was laid on a small round table near the window. Lady Cheriton was sitting in a recess between the massive stone columns which supported the balcony above, reading yesterday’s Morning Post in her soft grey cashmere peignoir, whose flowing lines gave dignity to her figure. Her dark hair, as yet untouched by time, was arranged with an elegant simplicity. The fine old lace about her throat harmonized admirably with the pale olive of her complexion. She looked up at her husband with her placid smile, and gave him her hand in affectionate greeting.
“What a morning, James! One feels it a privilege to live. What a superb day it would be for Mont St. Michel!”