Mr Gilfil's Love Story Read online

even 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

  scandalized 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 Rotheby, 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, does 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 fullness 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 had 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 sitting-room, 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

  taper-fingers 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 mantelpiece, 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 with his wife. I think I see him now, a-leading her up the aisle, an' her

  head not reachin' much ahove his elber: a little pale woman, with eyes as black

  as sloes, an' yet lookin' blank-like, as if she see'd nothing with 'em.' 'I

  warrant she had her weddin' clothes on?' said Mr Hackit.

  'Nothin' partikler 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 before 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 and

  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 with my

  lady in my time, an' seen enough 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 with 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.'

  'You never heared her again, I reckon?'

  'No: she was sickly then, and 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 dairy, 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 shadow,

  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 i' 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 2

  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 bodice of her blue dress, sets off the majestic form of her bust, and

  she treads the lawn as if she were one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' stately ladies,

  who had suddenly stepped from her frame to enjoy the evening cool.

  'Put the cushions lower, Caterina, that we may not have so much sun upon us,'

  she called out, in a tone of authority, when still at some distance.

  Caterina obeyed, and they sat down, making two bright patches of red and white

  and blue on the green background of the laurels and the lawn, which would look

  none the less pretty in a picture because one of the women's hearts was rather

  cold and the other rather sad.

  And a charming picture Cheverel Manor would have made that evening, if some

  English Watteau had been there to paint it: the castellated house of grey-tinted

  stone, with the flickering sunbeams sending dashes of golden light across the

  many-shaped panes in the mullioned windows, and a great beech leaning athwart

  one of the flanking towers, and breaking, with its dark flattened boughs, the

  too formal symmetry of the front; the broad gravel-walk winding on the right, by

  a row of tall pines, alongside the pool�on the left branching out among swelling

  grassy mounds, surmounted by clumps of trees, where the red trunk of the Scotch

  fir glows in the descending sunlight against the bright green of limes and

  acacias; the great pool, where a pair of swans are swimming lazily with one leg

  tucked under a wing, and where the open waterlilies lie calmly accepting the

  kisses of the fluttering light-sparkles; the lawn, with its smooth emerald

  greenness, sloping down to the rougher and browner herbage of the park, from

  which it is invisibly fenced by a little stream that winds away from the pool,

  and disappears under a wooden bridge in the distant pleasure-ground; and on this

  lawn our two ladies, whose part in the landscape the painter, standing at a

  favourable point of view in the park, would represent with a few little dabs of

  red and white and blue.

  Seen from the great Gothic windows of the dining-room, they had much more

  definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three gentlemen

  sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three had a personal

  interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering attentively; but any

  one entering that dining-room for the first time, would perhaps have had his

  attention even more strongly arrested by the room itself, which was so bare of

  furniture that it impressed one with its architectural beauty like a cathedral.

  A piece of matting stretched from door to door, a bit of worn carpet under the

  dining-table, and a sideboard in a deep recess, did not detain the eye for a

  moment from the lofty groined ceiling, with its richly-carved pendants, all of

  creamy white, relieved here and there by touches of gold. On one side, this

  lofty ceiling was supported by pillars and arches, beyond which a lower ceiling,

  a miniature copy of the higher one, covered the square projection which, with

  its three large pointed windows, formed the central feature of the building. The