Scenes of Clerical Life

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' company'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 absence of mind to which he was prone, Mr. Gilfil

would sometimes forget to take off his spurs before putting on his

surplice, and only become 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 bank-notes; and being 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 respective 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, 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 above 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 shadder, an' his eyes

used to look as dead--you wouldn't ha' knowed 'em.'

'She brought him no fortune?'

'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.