A Changed Man and Other Tales | Page 8

and the
fashionable quarter of Maumbry's former triumphs, and hence
affording a position of strict impartiality-- agreed in substance with the
young ladies to the westward, though their views were somewhat more
tersely expressed: 'Surely, God A'mighty spwiled a good sojer to make
a bad pa'son when He shifted Cap'n Ma'mbry into a sarpless!'
The latter knew that such things were said, but he pursued his daily'
labours in and out of the hovels with serene unconcern.
It was about this time that the invalid in the oriel became more than a
mere bowing acquaintance of Mrs. Maumbry's. She had returned to the
town with her husband, and was living with him in a little house in the
centre of his circle of ministration, when by some means she became
one of the invalid's visitors. After a general conversation while sitting
in his room with a friend of both, an incident led up to the matter that
still rankled deeply in her soul. Her face was now paler and thinner

than it had been; even more attractive, her disappointments having
inscribed themselves as meek thoughtfulness on a look that was once a
little frivolous. The two ladies had called to be allowed to use the
window for observing the departure of the Hussars, who were leaving
for barracks much nearer to London.
The troopers turned the corner of Barrack Road into the top of High
Street, headed by their band playing 'The girl I left behind me' (which
was formerly always the tune for such times, though it is now nearly
disused). They came and passed the oriel, where an officer or two,
looking up and discovering Mrs. Maumbry, saluted her, whose eyes
filled with tears as the notes of the band waned away. Before the little
group had recovered from that sense of the romantic which such
spectacles impart, Mr. Maumbry came along the pavement. He
probably had bidden his former brethren-in-arms a farewell at the top
of the street, for he walked from that direction in his rather shabby
clerical clothes, and with a basket on his arm which seemed to hold
some purchases he had been making for his poorer parishioners. Unlike
the soldiers he went along quite unconscious of his appearance or of the
scene around.
The contrast was too much for Laura. With lips that now quivered, she
asked the invalid what he thought of the change that had come to her.
It was difficult to answer, and with a wilfulness that was too strong in
her she repeated the question.
'Do you think,' she added, 'that a woman's husband has a right to do
such a thing, even if he does feel a certain call to it?'
Her listener sympathized too largely with both of them to be anything
but unsatisfactory in his reply. Laura gazed longingly out of the
window towards the thin dusty line of Hussars, now smalling towards
the Mellstock Ridge. 'I,' she said, 'who should have been in their van on
the way to London, am doomed to fester in a hole in Durnover Lane!'
Many events had passed and many rumours had been current
concerning her before the invalid saw her again after her leave-taking
that day.

CHAPTER V

Casterbridge had known many military and civil episodes; many happy
times, and times less happy; and now came the time of her visitation.
The scourge of cholera had been laid on the suffering country, and the
low-lying purlieus of this ancient borough had more than their share of
the infliction. Mixen Lane, in the Durnover quarter, and in Maumbry's
parish, was where the blow fell most heavily. Yet there was a certain
mercy in its choice of a date, for Maumbry was the man for such an
hour.
The spread of the epidemic was so rapid that many left the town and
took lodgings in the villages and farms. Mr. Maumbry's house was
close to the most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn,
noon, and night in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in
alleviating the sufferings of the victims. So, as a matter of ordinary
precaution, he decided to isolate his wife somewhere away from him
for a while.
She suggested a village by the sea, near Budmouth Regis, and lodgings
were obtained for her at Creston, a spot divided from the Casterbridge
valley by a high ridge that gave it quite another atmosphere, though it
lay no more than six miles off.
Thither she went. While she was rusticating in this place of safety, and
her husband was slaving in the slums, she struck up an acquaintance
with a lieutenant in the -st Foot, a Mr. Vannicock, who was stationed
with his regiment at the Budmouth infantry barracks. As Laura
frequently sat on the shelving beach,