‘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 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.’