A Changed Man and Other Tales | Page 7

Maumbry and
Mr. Sainway walking down the High Street in earnest conversation. On
his mentioning this fact to a caller he was assured that it was a matter
of common talk that they were always together.
The observer would soon have learnt this with his own eyes if he had
not been told. They began to pass together nearly every day. Hitherto
Mrs. Maumbry, in fashionable walking clothes, had usually been her
husband's companion; but this was less frequent now. The close and
singular friendship between the two men went on for nearly a year,
when Mr. Sainway was presented to a living in a densely- populated
town in the midland counties. He bade the parishioners of his old place
a reluctant farewell and departed, the touching sermon he preached on
the occasion being published by the local printer. Everybody was sorry
to lose him; and it was with genuine grief that his Casterbridge
congregation learnt later on that soon after his induction to his benefice,
during some bitter weather, he had fallen seriously ill of inflammation
of the lungs, of which he eventually died.
We now get below the surface of things. Of all who had known the
dead curate, none grieved for him like the man who on his first arrival
had called him a 'lath in a sheet.' Mrs. Maumbry had never greatly
sympathized with the impressive parson; indeed, she had been secretly

glad that he had gone away to better himself. He had considerably
diminished the pleasures of a woman by whom the joys of earth and
good company had been appreciated to the full. Sorry for her husband
in his loss of a friend who had been none of hers, she was yet quite
unprepared for the sequel.
'There is something that I have wanted to tell you lately, dear,' he said
one morning at breakfast with hesitation. 'Have you guessed what it is?'
She had guessed nothing.
'That I think of retiring from the army.'
'What!'
'I have thought more and more of Sainway since his death, and of what
he used to say to me so earnestly. And I feel certain I shall be right in
obeying a call within me to give up this fighting trade and enter the
Church.'
'What--be a parson?'
'Yes.'
'But what should I do?'
'Be a parson's wife.'
'Never!' she affirmed.
'But how can you help it?'
'I'll run away rather!' she said vehemently;
'No, you mustn't,' Maumbry replied, in the tone he used when his mind
was made up. 'You'll get accustomed to the idea, for I am constrained
to carry it out, though it is against my worldly interests. I am forced on
by a Hand outside me to tread in the steps of Sainway.'
'Jack,' she asked, with calm pallor and round eyes; 'do you mean to say
seriously that you are arranging to be a curate instead of a soldier?'
'I might say a curate IS a soldier--of the church militant; but I don't
want to offend you with doctrine. I distinctly say, yes.'
Late one evening, a little time onward, he caught her sitting by the dim
firelight in her room. She did not know he had entered; and he found
her weeping. 'What are you crying about, poor dearest?' he said.
She started. 'Because of what you have told me!' The Captain grew
very unhappy; but he was undeterred.
In due time the town learnt, to its intense surprise, that Captain
Maumbry had retired from the --th Hussars and gone to Fountall
Theological College to prepare for the ministry.

CHAPTER IV

'O, the pity of it! Such a dashing soldier--so popular--such an
acquisition to the town--the soul of social life here! And now! . . . One
should not speak ill of the dead, but that dreadful Mr. Sainway--it was
too cruel of him!'
This is a summary of what was said when Captain, now the Reverend,
John Maumbry was enabled by circumstances to indulge his heart's
desire of returning to the scene of his former exploits in the capacity of
a minister of the Gospel. A low-lying district of the town, which at that
date was crowded with impoverished cottagers, was crying for a curate,
and Mr. Maumbry generously offered himself as one willing to
undertake labours that were certain to produce little result, and no
thanks, credit, or emolument.
Let the truth be told about him as a clergyman; he proved to be
anything but a brilliant success. Painstaking, single-minded, deeply in
earnest as all could see, his delivery was laboured, his sermons were
dull to listen to, and alas, too, too long. Even the dispassionate judges
who sat by the hour in the bar-parlour of the White Hart--an inn
standing at the dividing line between the poor quarter aforesaid