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 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.
