The question appeared to annoy her: “I am glad he got home,” she said coldly. Then she got up and went out of the room.
CHAPTER XII.
TOWARD the close of the month, Sir Francis Bendibow, having seriously turned the matter over in his mind, wrote a note to his solicitor, Merton Fillmore, asking him whether he could spare time to come over to the bank that afternoon, and have a chat with him. This note he dispatched to Mr. Fillmore by a private messenger, who was instructed to wait for an answer. In half an hour, the messenger returned, and Sir Francis read the following:
“Dear Bendibow—I don’t see my way to come to you to-day. If you have anything particular to say, dine with me at my house this evening at seven o’clock.
“Yours truly,
“Merton Fillmore.”
“Well, perhaps that will answer better, after all,” murmured the baronet, folding the paper up again with sombre thoughtfulness. “He gives a decent dinner, too.” So, punctually at seven o’clock, Sir Francis’ carriage drove up to Mr. Fillmore’s door; the footman gave a loud double knock, and the baronet, in black tights and ruffled shirt, was ushered into his host’s presence.
Though a solicitor, Merton Fillmore was an English gentleman, of Scotch descent on his mother’s side, and more Scotch than English in personal appearance; being of good height and build, lean, bony and high-featured, with well-formed and powerful hands, carefully-groomed finger nails, short reddish whiskers, and bushy eyebrows. His eyes were dark blue, sometimes appearing black; clear and unflinching in their gaze. The head above was well balanced, the forehead very white, and hollowed at the temples. His movements were quiet and undemonstrative; when speaking at any length, he habitually pressed his clenched right hand into the palm of his left, and kept it there. At the end of a sentence he would make his handsome lips meet together with a grave decisiveness of expression. His voice had unexpected volume and depth; it could be resonant and ear-filling without any apparent effort on the speaker’s part; it could also sink until it was just above a whisper, yet always with a keen distinctness of enunciation that rendered it more audible than mere vociferousness. Soft or melodious it never was; but its masculine fibre and vibration were far from unpleasing to most ears, certainly to most feminine ones. Fillmore, however, was a bachelor; and though still a little on the hither side of forty, he did not seem likely to change his condition. He threw himself with unweariable energy into his profession; it almost monopolized his time and his thoughts. He saw a good deal of society; but he had never, so far as was known, seen any woman who, to his thinking, comprised in herself all the attractions and benefits that society had to offer. He might, indeed, have been considered cold, but that was probably not so much the case as it superficially appeared to be.
That he should have chosen the solicitor’s branch of the legal profession was a puzzle to most people. His social position (his father had been a gentleman, living upon his own income, and there was no economical reason why Merton should not have done the same) would naturally have called him to the Bar. It can only be said that the work of a solicitor, bringing him as it did into immediate contact with the humors, the ambitions, the disputes and the weaknesses of mankind, suited his peculiar genius better than the mere logical partisanship of the barrister. He cared more to investigate and arrange a case than to plead it before a jury. He liked to have people come to him and consult him; to question them, to weigh their statements against his own insight, to advise them, to take their measure; to disconcert them or to assist them. He by no means cared to bring all the suits on which he was consulted before the court; on the contrary, he uniformly advised his clients to arrange their disputes privately, furnishing them at the same time with such sound reasons for so doing, and with such equitable advice as to a basis of agreement, as to gain for himself the reputation of an arbitrator rather than of an advocate. Nevertheless, whenever it became necessary to push matters to an extremity, the side which Merton Fillmore was known to have espoused was considered to be already half victorious. No other solicitor in London, in fact, had anything like the reputation of Merton Fillmore; he was among his fellows what Mr. Adolphus or Mr. Serjeant Runnington were among barristers. But his acquaintance with the domestic secrets of London fashionable society was affirmed, doubtless with reason, to be more extensive than that of any physician, confidential clergyman or private detective in the metropolis. He held in his hand the reputation and prosperity of many a man and woman whom the world delighted to honor. Such a position is not attained by mere intellectual ability or natural ingenuity; it demands that rare combination of qualities which may be termed social statesmanship, prominent among which is the power of inspiring others with the conviction that their revelations will be at least as safe in the hearer’s possession as in their own; and that he is broadly and disinterestedly tolerant of human frailities. Most men, in order to achieve success and eminence, require the spur of necessity or of ambition; but it is doubtful whether Fillmore would have been so eminent as he was, had either ambition or necessity been his prompter. He loved what he did for its own sake, and not any ulterior object. From the social standpoint he had nothing to desire, and pecuniarily he was independent. What he made with one hand in his profession he frequently gave away with the other; but no one knew the details of his liberality except those who were its object. He seldom spoke cordially of any one; but few were more often guilty of kindly acts. He was a man with whom nobody ventured to take a liberty, yet who spoke his mind without ceremony to every one. No one could presume to call Merton Fillmore his friend, yet no honest man ever found him unfriendly. He was no conventional moralist, but he distinguished sharply between a bad heart and a good one. These antitheses might be produced indefinitely, but enough has been said.
Fillmore lived in a handsome house in the then fashionable district of London. It was one of the best furnished and appointed houses in the town; for Fillmore was a man whose naturally fine taste had been improved by cultivation. During his annual travels on the Continent he had collected a number of good pictures and other works of art, which were so disposed about his rooms as to show that their owner knew what they were. The machinery by which his domestic economy moved was so well ordered as to be invisible; you never remarked how good his servants were, because you never remarked them at all. Once a week he gave dinners, never inviting more than five guests at a time; and once a month this dinner was followed by a reception. People renowned in all walks of life were to be met with there. Lord Byron made his appearance there several times—a young man of splendid eyes and an appalling reputation, which his affable and rather reticent bearing scarcely seemed to justify; Lady Caroline Lamb, who was supposed to be very much in love with him, and to whom his lordship was occasionally rather impolite; William Godwin, a dark little creature, too ugly not to be clever, but rather troublesome to converse with; a tall black-haired man, superbly handsome, in clerical garb; a man whose great black eyes had seen more trouble than was wholesome for their owner—who, indeed, as Hazlitt once remarked to Fillmore, would probably have been a great deal better if he hadn’t been so damned good; an agreeable little Irish lady, the author of an irretrievably moral work for the young, entitled “Frank”; a small-chinned, lustrous-eyed, smiling, fervent gentleman, who had written a number of graceful essays and poems, and who also, oddly enough, was editor of a terrific Radical journal with a motto from Defoe; a short, rather stout, Italian-looking fellow, with flashing face and forcible gesticulation, the best actor of his day, and a great toper; another stoutish man of a very different complexion, with a countenance like a humanized codfish, thick parched lips that always hung open, pale blue prominent eyes, and an astonishing volubility of philosophical speculative dogmatism; a fastidious, elderly, elegant, womanish, sentimental poetaster named Samuel Rogers, who looked not unlike a diminished Sir Francis Bendibow with the spine taken out; and, in short, a number of persons who were of considerable importance in their own day, and have become more or less so since then. He would be hard to please who could not find some one to his mind in Merton Fillmore’s drawing-room.