Chilvers Coton, like Nuneaton, has no memories of its famous woman of letters. The only time we saw her name that afternoon was as we drove, two hours later, through a grimy colliery town where a row of posters flaunted the legend:
But in the Chilvers Coton church, familiar to readers of "Scenes from Clerical Life," is a window given by Mr. Isaac Evans in memory of his wife, not of his sister, with an inscription so like Tom Tulliver's way of admonishing Maggie over the shoulder that we came near resenting it:
But we would not flout the domestic virtues, and still less would we begrudge Tom's wife--not without her share of shadow, for no people are so hard to live with as those who are always right--her tribute of love and honour. So with closed lips we followed the sexton out into the churchyard, past the much visited grave of "Milly Barton," past the large recumbent monument that covers the honest ashes of Robert Evans of Griff, and past so many fresh mounds that we exclaimed in dismay. Our guide, however, viewed them with a certain decorous satisfaction, and intimated that for this branch of his craft times were good in Chilvers Coton, for an epidemic was rioting among the children. "I've had twelve graves this month already," he said, "and there"--pointing to where a spade stood upright in a heap of earth--"I've got another to-day." We demurred about detaining him, with such pressure of business on his hands, but he had already led us, over briars and sunken slabs, to a stone inscribed with the name of Isaac Pearson Evans of Griff and with the text:
As we stood there, with our attendant ghoul telling us, in rambling, gossipy fashion, what a respectable man Mr. Isaac Evans was, and how he never would have anything to do with "his sister for years, but after she married Mr. Cross he took her up again and went to her funeral,"--how could we force out of mind a passage that furnishes such strange commentary on that graven line?
"Tom, indeed, was of opinion that Maggie was a silly little thing. All girls were silly.... Still he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when she did wrong.... Tom, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage, having more than the usual share of boy's justice in him--the justice that desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts."