A Changed Man and Other Tales | Page 6

was a little
backwardness in the bill-paying of the couple; but in justice to them it
must be added that sooner or later all owings were paid.

CHAPTER III

At the chapel-of-ease attended by the troops there arose above the edge
of the pulpit one Sunday an unknown face. This was the face of a new
curate. He placed upon the desk, not the familiar sermon book, but
merely a Bible. The person who tells these things was not present at
that service, but he soon learnt that the young curate was nothing less
than a great surprise to his congregation; a mixed one always, for
though the Hussars occupied the body of the building, its nooks and
corners were crammed with civilians, whom, up to the present, even the
least uncharitable would have described as being attracted thither less
by the services than by the soldiery.
Now there arose a second reason for squeezing into an already
overcrowded church. The persuasive and gentle eloquence of Mr.
Sainway operated like a charm upon those accustomed only to the
higher and dryer styles of preaching, and for a time the other churches
of the town were thinned of their sitters.
At this point in the nineteenth century the sermon was the sole reason
for churchgoing amongst a vast body of religious people. The liturgy
was a formal preliminary, which, like the Royal proclamation in a court
of assize, had to be got through before the real interest began; and on
reaching home the question was simply: Who preached, and how did he
handle his subject? Even had an archbishop officiated in the service

proper nobody would have cared much about what was said or sung.
People who had formerly attended in the morning only began to go in
the evening, and even to the special addresses in the afternoon.
One day when Captain Maumbry entered his wife's drawing-room,
filled with hired furniture, she thought he was somebody else, for he
had not come upstairs humming the most catching air afloat in musical
circles or in his usual careless way.
'What's the matter, Jack?' she said without looking up from a note she
was writing.
'Well--not much, that I know.'
'O, but there is,' she murmured as she wrote.
'Why--this cursed new lath in a sheet--I mean the new parson! He
wants us to stop the band-playing on Sunday afternoons.'
Laura looked up aghast.
'Why, it is the one thing that enables the few rational beings hereabouts
to keep alive from Saturday to Monday!'
'He says all the town flock to the music and don't come to the service,
and that the pieces played are profane, or mundane, or inane, or
something--not what ought to be played on Sunday. Of course 'tis
Lautmann who settles those things.'
Lautmann was the bandmaster.
The barrack-green on Sunday afternoons had, indeed, become the
promenade of a great many townspeople cheerfully inclined, many
even of those who attended in the morning at Mr. Sainway's service;
and little boys who ought to have been listening to the curate's
afternoon lecture were too often seen rolling upon the grass and making
faces behind the more dignified listeners.
Laura heard no more about the matter, however, for two or three weeks,
when suddenly remembering it she asked her husband if any further
objections had been raised.
'O--Mr. Sainway. I forgot to tell you. I've made his acquaintance. He is
not a bad sort of man.'
Laura asked if either Maumbry or some others of the officers did not
give the presumptuous curate a good setting down for his interference.
'O well--we've forgotten that. He's a stunning preacher, they tell me.'
The acquaintance developed apparently, for the Captain said to her a
little later on, 'There's a good deal in Sainway's argument about having

no band on Sunday afternoons. After all, it is close to his church. But
he doesn't press his objections unduly.'
'I am surprised to hear you defend him!'
'It was only a passing thought of mine. We naturally don't wish to
offend the inhabitants of the town if they don't like it.'
'But they do.'
The invalid in the oriel never clearly gathered the details of progress in
this conflict of lay and clerical opinion; but so it was that, to the
disappointment of musicians, the grief of out-walking lovers, and the
regret of the junior population of the town and country round, the
band-playing on Sunday afternoons ceased in Casterbridge
barrack-square.
By this time the Maumbrys had frequently listened to the preaching of
the gentle if narrow-minded curate; for these light-natured, hit-or- miss,
rackety people went to church like others for respectability's sake.
None so orthodox as your unmitigated worldling. A more remarkable
event was the sight to the man in the window of Captain