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Gilfil's love-story, which lay far back from the time when he sat, worn and grey, by his lonely fireside in Shepperton Vicarage.
And Maynard Gilfil's love was of a kind to make him prefer being tormented by Caterina to any pleasure, apart from her, which the most benevolent magician could have devised for him. It is the way with those tall large-limbed men, from Samson downwards.
But where a greater variation than that between one midland dialect and another is required, "George Eliot's" conscientiousness is very curiously shown. There is in "Mr. Gilfil's Story" a gardener of the name of Bates, who is described as a Yorkshireman, and in "Adam Bede" there is another gardener, Mr. Craig, whose name would naturally indicate a Scotchman.
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 face; he set his teeth and clenched his hands in the effort to repress a burst of indignation. Sir Christopher noticed the flush, but thought it indicated the fluctuation of hope and fear about Caterina. He went on: 'You're too modest by half, Maynard. A fellow who can take a five-barred gate as you can, ought not to be so faint-hearted.
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.
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.
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.
Unselfish tears began to flow, and sorrowful gratitude to Sir Christopher helped to awaken her sensibility to Mr. Gilfil's tenderness and generosity. 'Dear, good Maynard! what a poor return I make him! If I could but have loved him instead but I can never love or care for anything again. My heart is broken. The next morning the dreaded moment came.
Gilfil's Love Story' is perhaps the most finished and artistic; while 'Amos Barton' has qualities of humour and tenderness that have not often been equalled. 'Janet's Repentance, strong though it is, and containing the remarkable sketch of Mr. Tryan, is perhaps less surely attractive.
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