Madge, four years younger than her sister, was of a different type
altogether, and one more easily comprehended. She had very heavy
dark hair, and she had blue eyes, a combination which fascinated
Fenmarket. Fenmarket admired Madge more than it was admired by her
in return, and she kept herself very much to herself, notwithstanding
what it considered to be its temptations. If she went shopping she
nearly always went with her sister; she stood aloof from all the
small gaieties of the town; walked swiftly through its streets, and
repelled, frigidly and decisively, all offers, and they were not a
few, which had been made to her by the sons of the Fenmarket
tradesfolk. Fenmarket pronounced her 'stuck-up,' and having thus
labelled her, considered it had exhausted her. The very important
question, Whether there was anything which naturally stuck up?
Fenmarket never asked. It was a great relief to that provincial
little town in 1844, in this and in other cases, to find a word which
released it from further mental effort and put out of sight any
troublesome, straggling, indefinable qualities which it would
otherwise have been forced to examine and name. Madge was certainly
stuck-up, but the projection above those around her was not
artificial. Both she and her sister found the ways of Fenmarket were
not to their taste. The reason lay partly in their nature and partly
in their history.
Mrs Hopgood was the widow of the late manager in the Fenmarket branch
of the bank of Rumbold, Martin & Rumbold, and when her husband died
she had of course to leave the Bank Buildings. As her income was
somewhat straitened, she was obliged to take a small house, and she
was now living next door to the 'Crown and Sceptre,' the principal
inn in the town. There was then no fringe of villas to Fenmarket for
retired quality; the private houses and shops were all mixed
together, and Mrs Hopgood's cottage was squeezed in between the
ironmonger's and the inn. It was very much lower than either of its
big neighbours, but it had a brass knocker and a bell, and distinctly
asserted and maintained a kind of aristocratic superiority.
Mr Hopgood was not a Fenmarket man. He came straight from London to
be manager. He was in the bank of the London agents of Rumbold,
Martin & Rumbold, and had been strongly recommended by the city firm
as just the person to take charge of a branch which needed thorough
reorganisation. He succeeded, and nobody in Fenmarket was more
respected. He lived, however, a life apart from his neighbours,
excepting so far as business was concerned. He went to church once
on Sunday because the bank expected him to go, but only once, and had
nothing to do with any of its dependent institutions. He was a great
botanist, very fond of walking, and in the evening, when Fenmarket
generally gathered itself into groups for gossip, either in the
street or in back parlours, or in the 'Crown and Sceptre,' Mr
Hopgood, tall, lean and stately, might be seen wandering along the
solitary roads searching for flowers, which, in that part of the
world, were rather scarce. He was also a great reader of the best
books, English, German and French, and held high doctrine, very high
for those days, on the training of girls, maintaining that they need,
even more than boys, exact discipline and knowledge. Boys, he
thought, find health in an occupation; but an uncultivated, unmarried
girl dwells with her own untutored thoughts, which often breed
disease. His two daughters, therefore, received an education much
above that which was usual amongst people in their position, and each
of them--an unheard of wonder in Fenmarket--had spent some time in a
school in Weimar. Mr Hopgood was also peculiar in his way of dealing
with his children. He talked to them and made them talk to him, and
whatever they read was translated into speech; thought, in his house,
was vocal.