A Changed Man
I
The person who, next to the
actors themselves, chanced to know most of their story, lived just below 'Top
o' Town' (as the spot was called) in an old substantially built house,
distinguished among its neighbours by having an oriel window on the first
floor, whence could be obtained a raking view of the
To the barracks aforesaid had
recently arrived the —th Hussars, a regiment new to
the locality. Almost before any acquaintance with its members had been made by
the townspeople, a report spread that they were a 'crack' body of men, and had
brought a splendid band. For some reason or other the town had not been used as
the headquarters of cavalry for many years, the various troops stationed there
having consisted of casual detachments only; so that it was with a sense of
honour that everybody—even the small furniture-broker from whom the married
troopers hired tables and chairs—received the news of their crack quality.
In those days the Hussar
regiments still wore over the left shoulder that attractive attachment, or
frilled half-coat, hanging loosely behind like the wounded wing of a bird,
which was called the pelisse, though it was known among the troopers themselves
as a 'slingjacket.' It added amazingly to their picturesqueness in women's
eyes, and, indeed, in the eyes of men also.
The burgher who lived in the
house with the oriel window sat during a great many hours of the day in that
projection, for he was an invalid, and time hung heavily on his hands unless he
maintained a constant interest in proceedings without. Not more than a week
after the arrival of the Hussars his ears were assailed by the shout of one
schoolboy to another in the street below.
'Have 'ee heard this about
the Hussars? They are haunted! Yes—a ghost troubles 'em; he has followed 'em
about the world for years.'
A haunted regiment: that was
a new idea for either invalid or stalwart. The listener in the oriel came to
the conclusion that there were some lively characters among the —th Hussars.
He made Captain Maumbry's
acquaintance in an informal manner at an afternoon tea to which he went in a
wheeled chair—one of the very rare outings that the state of his health
permitted. Maumbry showed himself to be a handsome man of twenty-eight or
thirty, with an attractive hint of wickedness in his manner that was sure to
make him adorable with good young women. The large dark eyes that lit his pale
face expressed this wickedness strongly, though such was the adaptability of
their rays that one could think they might have expressed sadness or
seriousness just as readily, if he had had a mind for such.
An old and deaf lady who was
present asked Captain Maumbry bluntly: 'What's this we hear about you? They say
your regiment is haunted.'
The Captain's face assumed an
aspect of grave, even sad, concern. 'Yes,' he replied, 'it is too true.' Some
younger ladies smiled till they saw how serious he looked, when they looked
serious likewise.
'Really?' said the old
lady.
'Yes. We naturally don't wish
to say much about it.'
'No, no; of
course not. But—how haunted?'
'Well; the—thing, as I'll
call it, follows us. In country quarters or town, abroad or at home, it's just
the same.'
'How do you account for it?'
'H'm.' Maumbry lowered his
voice. 'Some crime committed by certain of our regiment in past years, we
suppose.'
'Dear
me...How very horrid, and singular!'
'But, as I said, we don't
speak of it much.'
'No . . .
no.'
When the Hussar was gone, a
young lady, disclosing a long-suppressed interest, asked if the ghost had been
seen by any of the town.
The lawyer's son, who always
had the latest borough news, said that, though it was seldom seen by any one
but the Hussars themselves, more than one townsman and woman had already set
eyes on it, to his or her terror. The phantom mostly appeared very late at
night, under the dense trees of the town-avenue nearest the barracks. It was
about ten feet high; its teeth chattered with a dry naked sound, as if they
were those of a skeleton; and its hip-bones could be heard grating in their
sockets.
During the darkest weeks of
winter several timid persons were seriously frightened by the object answering
to this cheerful description, and the police began to look into the matter.
Whereupon the appearances grew less frequent, and some of the Boys of the
regiment thankfully stated that they had not been so free from ghostly
visitation for years as they had become since their arrival in
Casterbridge.
This playing at ghosts was
the most innocent of the amusements indulged in by the choice young spirits who
inhabited the lichened, red-brick building at the top of the town bearing 'W.
D.' and a broad arrow on its quoins. Far more serious escapades—levities
relating to love, wine, cards, betting—were talked of, with no doubt more or
less of exaggeration. That the Hussars, Captain Maumbry included, were the
cause of bitter tears to several young women of the town and country is
unquestionably true, despite the fact that the gaieties of the young men wore a
more staring colour in this old-fashioned place than they would have done in a
large and modern city.
II
Regularly once a week they
rode out in marching order.
Returning up the town on one
of these occasions, the romantic pelisse flapping behind each horseman's
shoulder in the soft southwest wind, Captain Maumbry glanced up at the oriel. A
mutual nod was exchanged between him and the person who sat there reading. The
reader and a friend in the room with him followed the troop with their eyes all
the way up the street, till, when the soldiers were opposite the house in which
Laura lived, that young lady became discernible in the balcony.
'They are engaged to be married,
I hear,' said the friend.
'Who—Maumbry
and Laura? Never—so
soon?'
'Yes.'
'He'll never marry. Several
girls have been mentioned in connection with his name. I am sorry for
Laura.'
'Oh, but you needn't be. They
are excellently matched.'
'She's only one more.'
'She's one more,
and more still. She has regularly caught him. She is a born player of the game
of hearts and she knew how to beat him in his own practices. If there is one
woman in the town who has any chance of holding her
own and marrying him, she is that woman.'
This was true, as it turned
out. By natural proclivity Laura had from the first entered heart and soul into
military romance as exhibited in the plots and characters of those living
exponents of it who came under her notice. From her earliest young womanhood
civilians, however promising, had no chance of winning
her interest if the meanest warrior were within the horizon. It may be that the
position of her uncle's house(which was her home) at
the corner of West Street nearest the barracks, the daily passing of the
troops, the constant blowing of trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows,
coupled with the fact that she knew nothing of the inner realities of military
life, and hence idealized it, had also helped her mind's original bias for
thinking men-at-arms the only ones worthy of a woman's heart.
Captain Maumbry was a typical
prize; one whom all surrounding maidens had coveted, ached for, angled for,
wept for, had by her judicious management become subdued to her purpose; and in
addition to the pleasure of marrying the man she loved, Laura had the joy of
feeling herself hated by the mothers of all the marriageable girls o the
neighbourhood.
The man in the oriel went to
the wedding; not as a guest, for at this time he was but slightly acquainted
with the parties; but mainly because the church was close to his house; partly,
too, for a reason which moved many others to be spectators of the ceremony; a
subconsciousness that, though the couple might be happy in their experiences,
there was sufficient possibility of their being otherwise to colour the musings
of an onlooker with a pleasing pathos of conjecture. He could on occasion do a
pretty stroke of rhyming in those days, and he beguiled the time of waiting by
pencilling on a blank page of his prayer-book a few lines which, though kept
private then, may be given here:—
AT A HASTY WEDDING
(Triolet)
If hours be years the twain
are blest,
For now they solace swift
desire
By lifelong ties that tether
zest
If hours be years. The twain
are blest
Do eastern suns slope never west,
Nor pallid ashes follow fire.
If hours be years the twain
are blest
For now they solace swift
desire.
As if, however, to falsify
all prophecies, the couple seemed to find in marriage the secret of
perpetuating the intoxication of a courtship which, on Maumbry's side at least,
had opened without serious intent. During the winter
following they were the most popular pair in and about Casterbridge—nay in
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 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 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.
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.
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, watching each thin
wave slide up to her, and hearing, without heeding, its gnaw at the pebbles in
its retreat, he often took a walk that way.
The acquaintance grew and
ripened. Her situation, her history, her beauty, her age—a year or two above
his own—all tended to make an impression on the young man's heart, and a
reckless flirtation was soon in blithe progress upon that lonely shore.
It was said by her detractors
afterwards that she had chosen her lodging to be near this gentleman, but there
is reason to believe that she had never seen him till her arrival there. Just
now Casterbridge was so deeply occupied with its own sad affairs—a daily
burying of the dead and destruction of contaminated clothes and bedding—that it
had little inclination to promulgate such gossip as may have reached its ears
on the pair. Nobody long considered Laura in the tragic cloud which overhung
all.
Meanwhile, on the Budmouth
side of the hill the very mood of men was in contrast. The visitation there had
been slight and much earlier, and normal occupations and pastimes had been
resumed. Mr. Maumbry had arranged to see Laura twice a week in the open air,
that she might run no risk from him; and, having heard nothing of the faint
rumour, he met her as usual one dry and windy afternoon on the summit of the
dividing hill, near where the high road from town to town crosses the old
Ridge-way at right angles.
He waved his hand, and smiled
as she approached, shouting to her: 'We will keep this wall between us, dear.'
(Walls formed the field-fences here.) 'You mustn't be endangered. It won't be
for long, with God's help!'
'I will do as you tell me,
Jack. But you are running too much risk yourself, aren't you? I get little news
of you; but I fancy you are.'
'Not more than others.'
Thus somewhat formally they
talked, an insulating wind beating the wall between them like a mill-weir.
'But you wanted to ask me
something?’ he added.
'Yes. You know we are trying
in Budmouth to raise some money for your sufferers; and the way we have thought
of is by a dramatic performance. They want me to take a part.'
His face saddened. 'I have
known so much of that sort of thing, and all that accompanies it! I wish you
had thought of some other way.'
She said lightly that she was
afraid it was all settled. 'You object to my taking a part, then? Of
course—'
He told her that he did not
like to say he positively objected. He wished they had chosen an oratorio, or
lecture, or anything more in keeping with the necessity it was to relieve.
'But,' said she impatiently,
'people won't come to oratorios or lectures! They will crowd to comedies and
farces.'
'Well, I cannot dictate to
Budmouth how it shall earn the money it is going to give us. Who is getting up
this performance?'
'The boys of the —st.'
'Ah, yes; our old game!'
replied Mr. Maumbry. 'The grief of Casterbridge is the excuse for their
frivolity. Candidly, dear Laura, I wish you wouldn't play in it. But I don't
forbid you to. I leave the whole to your judgment.'
The interview ended, and they
went their ways northward and southward. Time disclosed to all concerned that
Mrs. Maumbry played in the comedy as the heroine, the lover's part being taken
by Mr. Vannicock.
VI
Thus was helped on an event
which the conduct of the mutually-attracted ones had been generating for some
time.
It is unnecessary to give
details. The —st Foot left for Bristol, and this precipitated their action.
After a week of hesitation she agreed to leave her home at Creston and meet
Vannicock on the ridge hard by, and to accompany him to Bath, where he had
secured lodgings for her, so that she would be only about a dozen miles from
his quarters.
Accordingly, on the evening
chosen, she laid on her dressing-table a note for her husband, running thus:—
DEAR JACK—I am unable to
endure this life any longer, and I have resolved to put an end to it. I told
you I should run away if you persisted in being a clergyman, and now I am doing
it. One cannot help one's nature. I have resolved to throw in my lot with Mr.
Vannicock, and I hope rather than expect you will forgive me. — L.
Then, with hardly a scrap of
luggage, she went, ascending to the ridge in the dusk of early evening. Almost
on the very spot where her husband had stood at their last tryst she beheld the
outline of Vannicock, who had come all the way from Bristol to fetch her.
'I don't like meeting here—it
is so unlucky!' she cried to him. 'For God's sake let us have a place of our
own. Go back to the milestone, and I'll come on.'
He went back to the milestone
that stands on the north slope of the ridge, where the old and new roads
diverge, and she joined him there.
She was taciturn and
sorrowful when he asked her why she would not meet him on the top. At last she
inquired how they were going to travel.
He explained that he proposed
to walk to Mellstock Hill, on the other side of Casterbridge, where a fly was
waiting to take them by a cross-cut into the Ivell Road, and onward to that
town. The Bristol railway was open to Ivell.
This plan they followed, and
walked briskly through the dull gloom till they neared Casterbridge, which
place they avoided by turning to the right at the Roman Amphitheatre and
bearing round to Durnover Cross. Thence the way was solitary and open across
the moor to the hill whereon the Ivell fly awaited them.
'I have noticed for some
time,' she said, 'a lurid glare over the Durnover end of the town. It seems to
come from somewhere about Mixen Lane.'
'The lamps,' he suggested.
'There's not a lamp as big as
a rushlight in the whole lane. It is where the cholera is worst.'
By Standfast Corner, a little
beyond the Cross, they suddenly obtained an endview of the lane. Large bonfires
were burning in the middle of the way, with a view to purifying the air; and
from the wretched tenements with which the lane was lined in those days persons
were bringing out bedding and clothing. Some was thrown into the fires, the
rest placed in wheelbarrows and wheeled into the moor directly in the track of
the fugitives.
They followed on, and came up
to where a vast copper was set in the open air. Here the linen was boiled and
disinfected. By the light of the lanterns Laura discovered that her husband was
standing by the copper, and that it was he who unloaded the barrow and immersed
its contents. The night was so calm and muggy that the conversation by the
copper reached her ears.
'Are there many more loads
to-night?'
'There's the clothes o’ they
that died this afternoon, sir. But that might bide till to-morrow, for you must
be tired out.'
'We'll do it at once, for I
can't ask anybody else to undertake it. Overturn that road on the grass and
fetch the rest.'
The man did so and went off
with the barrow. Maumbry paused for a moment to wipe his face, and resumed his
homely drudgery amid this squalid and reeking scene, pressing down and stirring
the contents of the copper with what looked like an old rolling-pin. The steam
therefrom, laden with death, travelled in a low trail across the meadow.
Laura spoke suddenly: 'I
won't go to-night after all. He is so tired, and I must help him. I didn't know
things were so bad as this!'
Vannicock's arm dropped from her
waist, where it had been resting as they walked. 'Will you leave?' she asked.
'I will if you say I must.
But I'd rather help too.' There was no expostulation in his tone.
Laura had gone forward.
'Jack,' she said, 'I am come to help!'
The weary curate turned and
held up the lantern. 'O—what, is it you, Laura?' he asked in surprise. 'Why did
you come into this? You had better go back—the risk is great.'
'But I want to help you,
Jack. Please let me help! I didn't come by myself—Mr. Vannicock kept me
company. He will make himself useful too, if he's not gone on.
Mr.Vannicock!'
The young lieutenant came
forward reluctantly. Mr. Maumbry spoke formally to him, adding as he resumed
his labour, 'I thought the —st Foot had gone to Bristol.'
'We have. But I have run down
again for a few things.'
The two newcomers began to
assist, Vannicock placing on the ground the small bag containing Laura's toilet
articles that he had been carrying. The barrowman soon returned with another load,
and all continued work for nearly a half-hour, when a coachman came out from
the shadows to the north.
'Beg pardon, sir,' he
whispered to Vannicock, 'but I've waited so long on Mellstockhill that at last
I drove down to the turnpike; and seeing the light here, I ran on to find out
what had happened.'
Lieutenant Vannicock told him
to wait a few minutes, and the last barrow-load was got through. Mr. Maumbry
stretched himself and breathed heavily saying, 'There; we can do no more.'
As if from the relaxation of
effort he seemed to be seized with violent pain. He pressed his hands to his
sides and bent forward.
'Ah! I think it has got hold
of me at last,' he said with difficulty. 'I must try to get home. Let Mr.
Vannicock take you back, Laura.'
He walked a few steps, they
helping him, but was obliged to sink down on the grass.
'I am—afraid—you'll have to
send for a hurdle, or shutter, or something,' he went on feebly, 'or try to get
me into the barrow.'
But Vannicock had called to
the driver of the fly, and they waited until it was brought on from the
turnpike hard by. Mr. Maumbry was placed therein. Laura entered with him, and
they drove to his humble residence near the Cross, where he was got upstairs.
Vannicock stood outside by
the empty fly awhile, but Laura did not reappear. He thereupon entered the fly
and told the driver to take him back to Ivell.
VII
Mr. Maumbry had over-exerted
himself in the relief of the suffering poor, and fell a victim—one of the
last—to the pestilence which had carried off so many. Two days later he lay in
his coffin.
Laura was in the room below.
A servant brought in some letters, and she glanced them over. One was the note
from herself to Maumbry, informing him that she was unable to endure life with
him any longer and was about to elope with Vannicock. Having read the letter
she took it upstairs to where the dead man was, and slipped it into his coffin.
The next day she buried him.
She was now free.
She shut up his house at
Durnover Cross and returned to her lodgings at Creston. Soon she had a letter
from Vannicock, and six weeks after her husband's death her lover came to see
her.
'I forgot to give you back
this—that night,’ he said presently, handing her the little bag she had taken
as her whole luggage when leaving.
Laura received it and
absently shook it out. There fell upon the carpet her brush, comb, slippers,
night-dress, and other simple necessaries for a journey. They had an
intolerably ghastly look now, and she tried to cover them.
'I can now,' he said, 'ask
you to belong to me legally—when a proper interval has gone—instead of as we
meant.'
There was languor in his
utterance, hinting at a possibility that it was perfunctorily made. Laura
picked up her articles, answering that he certainly could so ask her—she was
free. Yet not her expression either could be called an ardent response. Then
she blinked more and more quickly and put her handkerchief to her face. She was
weeping violently.
He did not move or try to
comfort her in any way. What had come between them? No living person. They had
been lovers. There was now no material obstacle whatever to their union. But
there was the insistent shadow of that unconscious one; the thin figure of him,
moving to and fro in front of the ghastly furnace in the gloom of Durnover
Moor.
Yet Vannicock called upon
Laura when he was in the neighbourhood, which was not often; but in two years,
as if on purpose to further the marriage which everybody was expecting, the —st
Foot returned to Budmouth Regis.
Thereupon the two could not
help encountering each other at times. But whether because the obstacle had
been the source of the love, or from a sense of error, and because Mrs. Maumbry
bore a less attractive look as a widow than before, their feelings seemed to
decline from their former incandescence to a mere tepid civility. What domestic
issues supervened in Vannicock's further story the man in the oriel never knew;
but Mrs. Maumbry lived and died a widow.
1900.