by George Eliot
turkey ready to send him with her "duty." And in the most gossiping colloquies
with Mr Gilfil, you might have observed that both men and women "minded their
words," and never became indifferent to his approbation.
The same respect attended him in his strictly clerical functions. The benefits
of baptism were supposed to be somehow bound up with Mr Gilfil's personality, so
metaphysical a distinction as that between a man and his office being, as yet,
quite foreign to the mind of a good Shepperton churchman, savouring, he would
have thought, of Dissent on the very face of it. Miss Selina Parrot put off her
marriage a whole month when Mr Gilfil had an attack of rheumatism, rather than
be married in a makeshift manner by the Milby curate.
"We've had a very good sermon this morning," was the frequent remark, after
hearing one of the old yellow series, heard with all the more satisfaction
because it had been heard for the twentieth time; for to minds on the Shepperton
level it is repetition, not novelty, that produces the strongest effect; and
phrases, like tunes, are a long time making themselves at home in the brain.
Mr Gilfil's sermons, as you may imagine, were not of a highly doctrinal, still
less of a polemical, cast. They perhaps did not search the conscience very
powerfully; for you remember that to Mrs Patten, who had listened to them thirty
years, the announcement that she was a sinner appeared an uncivil heresy; but,
on the other hand, they made no unreasonable demand on the Shepperton
intellect�amounting, indeed, to little more than an expansion of the concise
thesis, that those who do wrong will find it the worse for them, and those who
do well will find it the better for them; the nature of wrong-doing being
exposed in special sermons against lying, backbiting, anger, slothfulness, and
the like; and well-doing being interpreted as honesty, truthfulness, charity,
industry, and other common virtues, lying quite on the surface of life, and
having very little to do with deep spiritual doctrine. Mrs Patten understood
that if she turned out ill-crushed cheeses, a just retribution awaited her;
though, I fear, she made no particular application of the sermon on backbiting.
Mrs Hackit expressed herself greatly edified by the sermon on honesty, the
allusion to the unjust weight and deceitful balance having a peculiar lucidity
for her, owing to a recent dispute with her grocer; but I am not aware that she
ever appeared to be much struck by the sermon on anger.
As to any suspicion that Mr Gilfil did not dispense the pure Gospel, or any
strictures on his doctrine and mode of delivery, such thoughts never visited the
minds of the Shepperton parishioners �of those very parishioners who, ten or
fifteen years later, showed themselves extremely critical of Mr Barton's
discourses and demeanour. But in the interim they had tasted that dangerous
fruit of the tree of knowledge�innovation, which is well known to open the eyes,
often in an uncomfortable manner. At present, to find fault with the sermon was
regarded as almost equivalent to finding fault with religion itself. One Sunday,
Mr Hackit's nephew, Master Tom Stokes, a flippant town youth, greatly
scandalised his excellent relatives by declaring that he could write as good a
sermon as Mr Gilfil's; whereupon Mr Hackit sought to reduce the presumptuous
youth to utter confusion, by offering him a sovereign if he would fulfil his
vaunt. The sermon was written, however; and though it was not admitted to be
anywhere within reach of Mr Gilfil's, it was yet so astonishingly like a sermon,
having a text, three divisions, and a concluding exhortation beginning "and now,
my brethren," that the sovereign, though denied formally, was bestowed
informally, and the sermon was pronounced, when Master Stokes's back was turned,
to be "an uncommon cliver thing."
The Rev. Mr Pickard, indeed, of the Independent Meeting, had stated, in a sermon
preached at Rotherby, for the reduction of a debt on New Zion, built, with an
exuberance of faith and a deficiency of funds, by seceders from the original
Zion, that he lived in a parish where the Vicar was very "dark;" and in the
prayers he addressed to his own congregation, he was in the habit of
comprehensively alluding to the parishioners outside the chapel walls, as those
who, "Gallio-like, cared for none of these things." But I need hardly say that
no church-goer ever came within earshot of Mr Pickard.
It was not to the Shepperton farmers only that Mr Gilfil's society was
acceptable; he was a welcome guest at some of the best houses in that part of
the country. Old Sir Jasper Sitwell would have been glad to see him every week;
and if you had seen him conducting Lady Sitwell in to dinner, or had heard him
talking to her with quaint yet graceful gallantry, you would have inferred that
the earlier period of his life had been passed in more stately society than
could be found in Shepperton, and that his slipshod chat and homely manners were
but like weather-stains on a fine old block of marble, allowing you still to see
here and there the fineness of the grain, and the delicacy of the original tint.
But in his later years these visits became a little too troublesome to the old
gentleman, and he was rarely to be found anywhere of an evening beyond the
bounds of his own parish�most frequently, indeed, by the side of his own
sitting-room fire, smoking his pipe, and maintaining the pleasing antithesis of
dryness and moisture by an occasional sip of gin-and-water.
Here I am aware that I have run the risk of alienating all my refined lady
readers, and utterly annihilating any curiosity they may have felt to know the
details of Mr Gilfil's love-story. Gin-and-water! foh! you may as well ask us to
interest ourselves in the romance of a tallow-chandler, who mingles the image of
his beloved with short dips and moulds.
But in the first place, dear ladies, allow me to plead that gin-and-water, like
obesity, or baldness, or the gout, goes not exclude a vast amount of antecedent
romance, any more than the neatly executed "fronts" which you may some day wear,
will exclude your present possession of less expensive braids. Alas, alas! we
poor mortals are often little better than wood-ashes�there is small sign of the
sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but
wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fulness of life must
have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a wizened old
woman, but I see also, with my mind's eye, that Past of which they are the
shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes
seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared with that drama of
hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor
soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair
perspectives, overturned and thrust out of sight.
In the second place, let me assure you that Mr Gilfil's potations of
gin-and-water were quite moderate. His nose was not rubicund; on the contrary,
his white hair hung around a pale and
venerable face. He drank it chiefly, I
believe, because it was cheap; and here I find myself alighting on another of
the Vicar's weaknesses, which, if I cared to paint a flattering portrait rather
than a faithful one, I might have chosen to suppress. It is undeniable that, as
the years advanced, Mr Gilfil became, as Mr Hackit observed, more and more
"close-fisted," though the growing propensity showed itself rather in the
parsimony of his personal habits, than in withholding help from the needy. He
was saving� so he represented the matter to himself�for a nephew, the only son
of a sister who had been the dearest object, all but one, in his life. "The
lad," he thought, "will have a nice little fortune to begin life with, and will
bring his pretty young wife some day to see the spot where his old uncle lies.
It will perhaps be all the better for his hearth that mine was lonely."
Mr Gilfil was a bachelor, then?
That is the conclusion to which you would probably have come if you had entered
his sittingroom, where the bare tables, the large old-fashioned horse-hair
chairs, and the threadbare Turkey carpet perpetually fumigated with tobacco,
seemed to tell a story of wifeless existence that was contradicted by no
portrait, no piece of embroidery, no faded bit of pretty triviality, hinting of
taperfingers and small feminine ambitions. And it was here that Mr Gilfil passed
his evenings, seldom with other society than that of Ponto, his old brown
setter, who, stretched out at full length on the rug with his nose between his
fore-paws, would wrinkle his brows and lift up his eyelids every now and then,
to exchange a glance of mutual understanding with his master. But there was a
chamber in Shepperton Vicarage which told a different story from that bare and
cheerless dining-room �a chamber never entered by any one besides Mr Gilfil and
old Martha the housekeeper, who, with David her husband as groom and gardener,
formed the Vicar's entire establishment. The blinds of this chamber were always
down, except once a-quarter, when Martha entered that she might air and clean
it. She always asked Mr Gilfil for the key, which he kept locked up in his
bureau, and returned it to him when she had finished her task.
It was a touching sight that the daylight streamed in upon, as Martha drew aside
the blinds and thick curtains, and opened the Gothic casement of the oriel
window! On the little dressing-table there was a dainty looking-glass in a
carved and gilt frame; bits of wax-candle were still in the branched sockets at
the sides, and on one of these branches hung a little black lace kerchief; a
faded satin pin-cushion, with the pins rusted in it, a scent-bottle, and a large
green fan, lay on the table; and on a dressing-box by the side of the glass was
a work-basket, and an unfinished baby-cap, yellow with age, lying in it. Two
gowns, of a fashion long forgotten, were hanging on nails against the door, and
a pair of tiny red slippers, with a bit of tarnished silver embroidery on them,
were standing at the foot of the bed. Two or three water-colour drawings, views
of Naples, hung upon the walls; and over the mantel-piece, above some bits of
rare old china, two miniatures in oval frames. One of these miniatures
represented a young man about seven-and-twenty, with a sanguine complexion, full
lips, and clear candid grey eyes. The other was the likeness of a girl, probably
not more than eighteen, with small features, thin cheeks, a pale
southern-looking complexion, and large dark eyes. The gentleman wore powder; the
lady had her dark hair gathered away from her face, and a little cap, with a
cherry-coloured bow, set on the top of her head�a coquettish head-dress, but the
eyes spoke of sadness rather than of coquetry.
Such were the things that Martha had dusted and let the air upon, four times
a-year, ever since she was a blooming lass of twenty; and she was now, in this
last decade of Mr Gilfil's life, unquestionably on the wrong side of fifty. Such
was the locked-up chamber in Mr Gilfil's house: a sort of visible symbol of the
secret chamber in his heart, where he had long turned the key on early hopes and
early sorrows, shutting up for ever all the passion and the poetry of his life.
There were not many people in the parish, besides Martha, who had any very
distinct remembrance of Mr Gilfil's wife, or indeed who knew anything of her,
beyond the fact that there was a marble tablet, with a Latin inscription in
memory of her, over the vicarage pew. The parishioners who were old enough to
remember her arrival were not generally gifted with descriptive powers, and the
utmost you could gather from them was, that Mrs Gilfil looked like a "furriner,
wi' such eyes, you can't think, an' a voice as went through you when she sung at
church." The one exception was Mrs Patten, whose strong memory and taste for
personal narrative made her a great source of oral tradition in Shepperton. Mr
Hackit, who had not come into the parish until ten years after Mrs Gilfil's
death, would often put old questions to Mrs Patten for the sake of getting the
old answers, which pleased him in the same way as passages from a favourite
book, or the scenes of a familiar play, please more accomplished people.
"Ah, you remember well the Sunday as Mrs Gilfil first come to church, eh, Mrs
Patten?"
"To be sure I do. It was a fine bright Sunday as ever was seen, just at the
beginnin' o' hay harvest. Mr Tarbett preached that day, and Mr Gilfil sat i' the
pew wi' his wife. I think I see him now, a-leadin' her up th' aisle, an' her
head not reachin' much above his elber: a little pale woman, wi' eyes as black
as sloes, an' yet lookin' blank-like, as if she see'd nothin' wi' em."
"I warrant she had her weddin' clothes on?" said Mr Hackit.
"Nothin' partickler smart�on'y a white hat tied down under her chin, an' a white
Indy muslin gown. But you don't know what Mr Gilfil was in those times. He was
fine an' altered afore you come into the parish. He'd a fresh colour then, an' a
bright look wi' his eyes, as did your heart good to see. He looked rare an'
happy that Sunday, but somehow, I'd a feelin' as it wouldn't last long. I've no
opinion o' furriners, Mr Hackit, for I've travelled i' their country wi' my lady
in my time, an' seen anuff o' their victuals an' their nasty ways."
"Mrs Gilfil come from It'ly, didn't she?"
"I reckon she did, but I niver could rightly hear about that. Mr Gilfil was
niver to be spoke to about her, and nobody else hereabout knowed anythin'.
Howiver, she must ha' come over pretty young, for she spoke English as well as
you an' me. It's them Italians as has such fine voices, an Mrs Gilfil sung, you
never heared the like. He brought her here to have tea wi' me one afternoon, and
says he, in his jovial way, 'Now, Mrs Patten, I want Mrs Gilfil to see the
neatest house, and drink the best cup o' tea, in all Shepperton; you must show
her your dairy and your cheese-room, and then she shall sing you a song.' An' so
she did; an' her voice seemed sometimes to fill the room; an' then it went low
an' soft, as if it was whisperin' close to your heart like."<
br />
"You never heared her again, I reckon?"
"No; she was sickly then, an' she died in a few months after. She wasn't in the
parish much more nor half a year altogether. She didn't seem lively that
afternoon, an' I could see she didn't care about the diary, nor the cheeses,
on'y she pretended, to please him. As for him, I niver see'd a man so wrapt up
in a woman. He looked at her as if he was worshippin' her, an' as if he wanted
to lift her off the ground ivery minute, to save her the trouble o' walkin'.
Poor man, poor man! It had like to ha' killed him when she died, though he niver
gev way, but went on ridin' about and preachin'. But he was wore to a shadder,
an' his eyes used to look as dead�you wouldn't ha' knowed 'em.
"She brought him no fortin?"
"Not she. All Mr Gilfil's property come by his mother's side. There was blood
an' money too, there. It's a thousand pities as he married a' that way�a fine
man like him, as might ha' had the pick o' the county, an' had his grandchildren
about him now. An' him so fond o' children, too."
In this manner Mrs Patten usually wound up her reminiscences of the Vicar's
wife, of whom, you perceive, she knew but little. It was clear that the
communicative old lady had nothing to tell of Mrs Gilfil's history previous to
her arrival in Shepperton, and that she was unacquainted with Mr Gilfil's
love-story.
But I, dear reader, am quite as communicative as Mrs Patten, and much better
informed; so that if you care to know more about the Vicar's courtship and
marriage, you need only carry your imagination back to the latter end of the
last century, and your attention forward into the next chapter.
CHAPTER II.
It is the evening of the 21st of June 1788. The day has been bright and sultry,
and the sun will still be more than an hour above the horizon, but his rays,
broken by the leafy fretwork of the elms that border the park, no longer prevent
two ladies from carrying out their cushions and embroidery, and seating
themselves to work on the lawn in front of Cheverel Manor. The soft turf gives
way even under the fairy tread of the younger lady, whose small stature and slim
figure rest on the tiniest of full-grown feet. She trips along before the elder,
carrying the cushions, which she places in the favourite spot, just on the slope
by a clump of laurels, where they can see the sunbeams sparkling among the
water-lilies, and can be themselves seen from the dining-room windows. She has
deposited the cushions, and now turns round, so that you may have a full view of
her as she stands waiting the slower advance of the elder lady. You are at once
arrested by her large dark eyes, which, in their inexpressive unconscious
beauty, resemble the eyes of a fawn; and it is only by an effort of attention
that you notice the absence of bloom on her young cheek, and the southern
yellowish tint of her small neck and face, rising above the little black lace
kerchief which prevents the too immediate comparison of her skin with her white
muslin gown. Her large eyes seem all the more striking because the dark hair is
gathered away from her face, under a little cap set at the top of her head, with
a cherry-coloured bow on one side.
The elder lady, who is advancing towards the cushions, is cast in a very
different mould of womanhood. She is tall, and looks the taller because her
powdered hair is turned backward over a toupee, and surmounted by lace and
ribbons. She is nearly fifty, but her complexion is still fresh and beautiful,
with the beauty of an auburn blond; her proud pouting lips, and her head thrown
a little backward as she walks, give an expression of hauteur which is not
contradicted by the cold grey eye. The tucked-in kerchief, rising full over the
low tight boddice of her blue dress, sets off the majestic form of her bust, and
