Mr Gilfil's Love Story Read online

  Mr. Gilfil's Love Story

  George Eliot

  Chapter 1

  WHEN old Mr Gilfil died, thirty years ago, there was general sorrow in

  Shepperton; and if black cloth had not been hung round the pulpit and

  reading-desk, by order of his nephew and principal legatee, the parishioners

  would certainly have subscribed the necessary sum out of their own pockets,

  rather than allow such a tribute of respect to be wanting. All the farmers'

  wives brought out their black bombasines; and Mrs Jennings, at the Wharf, by

  appearing the first Sunday after Mr Gilfil's death in her salmon-coloured

  ribbons and green shawl, excited the severest remark. To be sure, Mrs Jennings

  was a new-comer, and town-bred, so that she could hardly be expected to have

  very clear notions of what was proper; but, as Mrs Higgins observed in an

  undertone to Mrs Parrot when they were coming out of church, 'Her husband, who'd

  been born i' the parish, might ha' told her better.' An unreadiness to put on

  black on all available occasions, or too great an alacrity in putting it off,

  argued, in Mrs Higgins's opinion, a dangerous levity of character, and an

  unnatural insensibility to the essential fitness of things.

  'Some folks can't a-bear to put off their colours,' she remarked; 'but that was

  never the way i' my family. Why, Mrs Parrot, from the time I was married, till

  Mr Higgins died, nine years ago come Candlemas, I niver was out o' black two

  year together! '

  'Ah,' said Mrs Parrot, who was conscious of inferiority in this respect, 'there

  isn't many families as have had so many deaths as yours, Mrs Higgins.'

  Mrs Higgins, who was an elderly widow, 'well left', reflected with complacency

  that Mrs Parrot's observation was no more than just, and that Mrs Jennings very

  likely belonged to a family which had had no funerals to speak of.

  Even dirty Dame Fripp, who was a very rare church-goer, had been to Mrs Hackit

  to beg a bit of old crape, and with this sign of grief pinned on her little

  coal-scuttle bonnet, was seen dropping her curtsy opposite the reading-desk.

  This manifestation of respect towards Mr Gilfil's memory on the part of Dame

  Fripp had no theological bearing whatever. It was due to an event which had

  occurred some years back, and which, I am sorry to say, had left that grimy old

  lady as indifferent to the means of grace as ever. Dame Fripp kept leeches, and

  was understood to have such remarkable influence over those wilful animals in

  inducing them to bite under the most unpromising circumstances, that though her

  own leeches were usually rejected, from a suspicion that they had lost their

  appetite, she herself was constantly called in to apply the more lively

  individuals furnished from Mr Pilgrim's surgery, when, as was very often the

  case, one of that clever man's paying patients was attacked with inflammation.

  Thus Dame Fripp, in addition to 'property' supposed to yield her no less than

  half-a-crown a-week, was in the receipt of professional fees, the gross amount

  of which was vaguely estimated by her neighbours as 'pouns an' pouns'. Moreover,

  she drove a brisk trade in lollipop with epicurean urchins, who recklessly

  purchased that luxury at the rate of two hundred per cent. Nevertheless, with

  all these notorious sources of income, the shameless old woman constantly

  pleaded poverty, and begged for scraps at Mrs Hackit's, who, though she always

  said Mrs Fripp was 'as false as two folks', and no better than a miser and a

  heathen, had yet a leaning towards her as an old neighbour.

  'There's that case-hardened old Judy a-coming after the tea-leaves again,' Mrs

  Hackit would say; 'an' I'm fool enough to give 'em her, though Sally wants 'em

  all the while to sweep the floors with! '

  Such was Dame Fripp, whom Mr Gilfil, riding leisurely in top-boots and spurs

  from doing duty at Knebley one warm Sunday afternoon, observed sitting in the

  dry ditch near her cottage, and by her side a large pig, who, with that ease and

  confidence belonging to perfect friendship, was lying with his head in her lap,

  and making no effort to play the agreeable beyond an occasional grunt.

  'Why, Mrs Fripp,' said the Vicar, 'I didn't know you had such a fine pig. You'll

  have some rare flitches at Christmas!'

  'Eh, God forbid! My son gev him me two 'ear ago, an' he's been company to me

  iver sin'. I couldn't find i' my heart to part wi'm, if I niver knowed the taste

  o' bacon-fat again.'

  'Why, he'll eat his head off, and yours too. How can you go on keeping a pig,

  and making nothing by him?'

  'O, he picks a bit hisself wi' rootin', and I dooant mind doing wi'out to gi'

  him summat. A bit o' coompany's meat an' drink too, an' he follers me about, and

  grunts when I spake to'm, just like a Christian.'

  Mr Gilfil laughed, and I am obliged to admit that he said good-bye to Dame Fripp

  without asking her why she had not been to church, or making the slightest

  effort for her spiritual edification. But the next day he ordered his man David

  to take her a great piece of bacon, with a message, saying, the parson wanted to

  make sure that Mrs Fripp would know the taste of bacon-fat again. So, when Mr

  Gilfil died, Dame Fripp manifested her gratitude and reverence in the simply

  dingy fashion I have mentioned.

  You already suspect that the Vicar did not shine in the more spiritual functions

  of his office; and indeed, the utmost I can say for him in this respect is, that

  he performed those functions with undeviating attention to brevity and despatch.

  He had a large heap of short sermons, rather yellow and worn at the edges, from

  which he took two every Sunday, securing perfect impartiality in the selection

  by taking them as they came, without reference to topics; and having preached

  one of these sermons at Shepperton in the morning, he mounted his horse and rode

  hastily with the other in his pocket to Knebley, where he officiated in a

  wonderful little church, with a checkered pavement which had once rung to the

  iron tread of military monks, with coats of arms in clusters on the lofty roof,

  marble warriors and their wives without noses occupying a large proportion of

  the area, and the twelve apostles, with their heads very much on one side,

  holding didactic ribbons, painted in fresco on the walls. Here, in an ahsence of

  mind to which he was prone, Mr Gilfil would sometimes forget to take off his

  spurs before putting on his surplice, and only hecome aware of the omission by

  feeling something mysteriously tugging at the skirts of that garment as he

  stepped into the reading-desk. But the Knebley farmers would as soon have

  thought of criticizing the moon as their pastor. He belonged to the course of

  nature, like markets and toll-gates and dirty hank-notes; and heing a vicar, his

  claim on their veneration had never been counteracted by an exasperating claim

  on their pockets. Some of them, who did not indulge in the
superfluity of a

  covered cart without springs, had dined half an hour earlier than usual �that is

  to say, at twelve o'clock�in order to have time for their long walk through miry

  lanes, and present themselves duly in their places at two o'clock, when Mr

  Oldinport and Lady Felicia, to whom Knebley Church was a sort of family temple,

  made their way among the bows and curtsies of their dependants to a carved and

  canopied pew in the chancel, diffusing as they went a delicate odour of Indian

  roses on the unsusceptible nostrils of the congregation.

  The farmers' wives and children sat on the dark oaken benches, but the husbands

  usually chose the distinctive dignity of a stall under one of the twelve

  apostles, where, when the alternation of prayers and responses had given place

  to the agreeable monotony of the sermon, Paterfamilias might be seen or heard

  sinking into a pleasant doze, from which he infallibly woke up at the sound of

  the concluding doxology. And then they made their way back again through the

  miry lanes, perhaps almost as much the better for this simple weekly tribute to

  what they knew of good and right, as many a more wakeful and critical

  congregation of the present day.

  Mr Gilfil, too, used to make his way home in the later years of his life, for he

  had given up the habit of dining at Knebley Abbey on a Sunday, having, I am

  sorry to say, had a very bitter quarrel with Mr Oldinport, the cousin and

  predecessor of the Mr Oldinport who flourished in the Rev. Amos Barton's time.

  That quarrel was a sad pity, for the two had had many a good day's hunting

  together when they were younger, and in those friendly times not a few members

  of the hunt envied Mr Oldinport the excellent terms he was on with his vicar;

  for, as Sir Jasper Sitwell observed, 'next to a man's wife, there's nobody can

  be such an infernal plague to you as a parson, always under your nose on your

  own estate.'

  I fancy the original difference which led to the rupture was very slight; but Mr

  Gilfil was of an extremely caustic turn, his satire having a flavour of

  originality which was quite wanting in his sermons; and as Mr Oldinport's armour

  of conscious virtue presented some considerable and conspicuous gaps, the

  Vicar's keen-edged retorts probably made a few incisions too deep to be

  forgiven. Such, at least, was the view of the case presented by Mr Hackit, who

  knew as much of the matter as any third person. For, the very week after the

  quarrel, when presiding at the annual dinner of the Association for the

  Prosecution of Felons, held at the Oldinport Arms, he contributed an additional

  zest to the conviviality on that occasion by informing the company that 'the

  parson had given the squire a lick with the rough side of his tongue.' The

  detection of the person or persons who had driven off Mr Parrot's heifer, could

  hardly have been more welcome news to the Shepperton tenantry, with whom Mr

  Oldinport was in the worst odour as a landlord, having kept up his rents in

  spite of falling prices, and not being in the least stung to emulation by

  paragraphs in the provincial newspapers, stating that the Honourable Augustus

  Purwell, or Viscount Blethers, had made a return of ten per cent on their last

  rent-day. The fact was, Mr Oldinport had not the slightest intention of standing

  for Parliament, whereas he had the strongest intention of adding to his

  unentailed estate. Hence, to the Shepperton farmers it was as good as lemon with

  their grog to know that the Vicar had thrown out sarcasms against the Squire's

  charities, as little better than those of the man who stole a goose, and gave

  away the giblets in alms. For Shepperton, you observe, was in a state of Attic

  culture compared with Knebley; it had turnpike roads and a public opinion,

  whereas, in the Boeotian Knebley, men's minds and waggons alike moved in the

  deepest of ruts, and the landlord was only grumbled at as a necessary and

  unalterable evil, like the weather, the weevils, and the turnip-fly.

  Thus in Shepperton this breach with Mr Oldinport tended only to heighten that

  good understanding which the Vicar had always enjoyed with the rest of his

  parishioners, from the generation whose children he had christened a quarter of

  a century before, down to that hopeful generation represented by little Tommy

  Bond, who had recently quitted frocks and trousers for the severe simplicity of

  a tight suit of corduroys, relieved by numerous brass buttons. Tommy was a saucy

  boy, impervious to all impressions of reverence, and excessively addicted to

  humming-tops and marbles, with which recreative resources he was in the habit of

  immoderately distending the pockets of his corduroys. One day, spinning his top

  on the garden-walk, and seeing the Vicar advance directly towards it, at that

  exciting moment when it was beginning to 'sleep' magnificently, he shouted out

  with all the force of his lungs�'Stop! don't knock my top down, now! ' From that

  day 'little Corduroys' had been an especial favourite with Mr Gilfil, who

  delighted to provoke his ready scorn and wonder by putting questions which gave

  Tommy the meanest opinion of his intellect. 'Well, little Corduroys, have they

  milked the geese today?' 'Milked the geese! why, they don't milk the geese, you

  silly! ' 'No! dear heart! why, how do the goslings live, then?'

  The nutriment of goslings rather transcending Tommy's observations in natural

  history, he feigned to understand this question in an exclamatory rather than an

  interrogatory sense, and became absorbed in winding up his top.

  'Ah, I see you don't know how the goslings live! But did you notice how it

  rained sugar-plums yesterday?' (Here Tommy became attentive.) 'Why, they fell

  into my pocket as I rode along. You look in my pocket and see if they didn't.'

  Tommy, without waiting to discuss the alleged antecedent, lost no time in

  ascertaining the presence of the agreeable consequent, for he had a well-founded

  belief in the advantages of diving into the Vicar's pocket. Mr Gilfil called it

  his wonderful pocket, because, as he delighted to tell the 'young shavers' and

  'two-shoes'�so he called all little boys and girls� whenever he put pennies into

  it, they turned into sugar-plums or gingerbread, or some other nice thing.

  Indeed, little Bessie Parrot, a flaxen-headed 'two-shoes', very white and fat as

  to her neck, always had the admirable directness and sincerity to salute him

  with the question�'What zoo dot in zoo pottet?'

  You can imagine, then, that the christening dinners were none the less merry for

  the presence of the parson. The farmers relished his society particularly, for

  he could not only smoke his pipe, and season the details of parish affairs with

  abundance of caustic jokes and proverbs, but, as Mr Bond often said, no man knew

  more than the Vicar about the breed of cows and horses. He had grazing-land of

  his own about five miles off, which a bailiff, ostensibly a tenant, farmed under

  his direction; and to ride backwards and forwards, and look after the buying and

  selling of stock, was the old gentleman's chief relaxation, now his hunting-days

  were over. To hear him discussing the resp
ective merits of the Devonshire breed

  and the short-horns, or the last foolish decision of the magistrates about a

  pauper, a superficial observer might have seen little difference, beyond his

  superior shrewdness, between the Vicar and his bucolic parishioners; for it was

  his habit to approximate his accent and mode of speech to theirs, doubtless

  because he thought it a mere frustration of the purposes of language to talk of

  'shear-hogs' and 'ewes' to men who habitually said 'sharrags' and 'yowes'.

  Nevertheless the farmers themselves were perfectly aware of the distinction

  between them and the parson, and had not at all the less belief in him as a

  gentleman and a clergyman for his easy speech and familiar manners. Mrs Parrot

  smoothed her apron and set her cap right with the utmost solicitude when she saw

  the Vicar coming, made him her deepest curtsy, and every Christmas had a fat

  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,