Accordingly, both the girls left, and both knew the reason for
leaving. The druggist's faith was sorely tried. If Miss Pratt's had
been a worldly seminary he would have thought nothing of such
behaviour, but he did not expect it from one of the faithful. The
next Sunday morning after he received the news, he stayed at home out
of his turn to make up any medicines which might be urgently
required, and sent his assistant to church.
As to Madge, she enjoyed her expulsion as a great joke, and her
Brighton experiences were the cause of much laughter. She had
learned a good deal while she was away from home, not precisely what
it was intended she should learn, and she came back with a strong,
insurgent tendency, which was even more noticeable when she returned
from Germany. Neither of the sisters lived at the school in Weimar,
but at the house of a lady who had been recommended to Mrs Hopgood,
and by this lady they were introduced to the great German classics.
She herself was an enthusiast for Goethe, whom she well remembered in
his old age, and Clara and Madge, each of them in turn, learned to
know the poet as they would never have known him in England. Even
the town taught them much about him, for in many ways it was
expressive of him and seemed as if it had shaped itself for him. It
was a delightful time for them. They enjoyed the society and
constant mental stimulus; they loved the beautiful park; not a
separate enclosure walled round like an English park, but suffering
the streets to end in it, and in summer time there were excursions
into the Thuringer Wald, generally to some point memorable in
history, or for some literary association. The drawback was the
contrast, when they went home, with Fenmarket, with its dulness and
its complete isolation from the intellectual world. At Weimar, in
the evening, they could see Egmont or hear Fidelio, or talk with
friends about the last utterance upon the Leben Jesu; but the
Fenmarket Egmont was a travelling wax-work show, its Fidelio psalm
tunes, or at best some of Bishop's glees, performed by a few of the
tradesfolk, who had never had an hour's instruction in music; and for
theological criticism there were the parish church and Ram Lane
Chapel. They did their best; they read their old favourites and
subscribed for a German as well as an English literary weekly
newspaper, but at times they were almost beaten. Madge more than
Clara was liable to depression.
No Fenmarket maiden, other than the Hopgoods, was supposed to have
any connection whatever, or to have any capacity for any connection
with anything outside the world in which 'young ladies' dwelt, and if
a Fenmarket girl read a book, a rare occurrence, for there were no
circulating libraries there in those days, she never permitted
herself to say anything more than that it was 'nice,' or it was 'not
nice,' or she 'liked it' or did 'not like it;' and if she had
ventured to say more, Fenmarket would have thought her odd, not to
say a little improper. The Hopgood young women were almost entirely
isolated, for the tradesfolk felt themselves uncomfortable and
inferior in every way in their presence, and they were ineligible for
rectory and brewery society, not only because their father was merely
a manager, but because of their strange ways. Mrs Tubbs, the
brewer's wife, thought they were due to Germany. From what she knew
of Germany she considered it most injudicious, and even morally
wrong, to send girls there. She once made the acquaintance of a
German lady at an hotel at Tunbridge Wells, and was quite shocked.
She could see quite plainly that the standard of female delicacy must
be much lower in that country than in England. Mr Tubbs was sure Mrs
Hopgood must have been French, and said to his daughters,
mysteriously, 'you never can tell who Frenchwomen are.'