There was to be a grand entertainment in the assembly room of the
'Crown and Sceptre' in aid of the County Hospital. Mrs Martin, widow
of one of the late partners in the bank, lived in a large house near
Fenmarket, and still had an interest in the business. She was
distinctly above anybody who lived in the town, and she knew how to
show her superiority by venturing sometimes to do what her urban
neighbours could not possibly do. She had been known to carry
through the street a quart bottle of horse physic although it was
wrapped up in nothing but brown paper. On her way she met the
brewer's wife, who was more aggrieved than she was when Mrs Martin's
carriage swept past her in the dusty, narrow lane which led to the
Hall. Mrs Martin could also afford to recognise in a measure the
claims of education and talent.
A gentleman came from London to lecture in the town, and showed astonished Fenmarket an orrery and a magic lantern with dissolving views of the Holy Land. The exhibition
had been provided in order to extinguish a debt incurred in repairing
the church, but the rector's wife, and the brewer's wife, after
consultation, decided that they must leave the lecturer to return to
his inn. Mrs Martin, however, invited him to supper. Of course she
knew Mr Hopgood well, and knew that he was no ordinary man. She knew
also something of Mrs Hopgood and the daughters, and that they were
no ordinary women. She had been heard to say that they were ladies,
and that Mr Hopgood was a gentleman; and she kept up a distant kind
of intimacy with them, always nodded to them whenever she met them,
and every now and then sent them grapes and flowers. She had
observed once or twice to Mrs Tubbs that Mr Hopgood was a remarkable
person, who was quite scientific and therefore did not associate with
the rest of the Fenmarket folk; and Mrs Tubbs was much annoyed,
particularly by a slight emphasis which she thought she detected in
the 'therefore,' for Mr Tubbs had told her that one of the smaller
London brewers, who had only about fifty public-houses, had refused
to meet at dinner a learned French chemist who had written books.
Mrs Martin could not make friends with the Hopgoods, nor enter the
cottage. It would have been a transgression of that infinitely fine
and tortuous line whose inexplicable convolutions mark off what is
forbidden to a society lady.
Clearly, however, the Hopgoods could be
requested to co-operate at the 'Crown and Sceptre;' in fact, it would
be impolitic not to put some of the townsfolk on the list of patrons.
So it came about that Mrs Hopgood was included, and that she was made
responsible for the provision of one song and one recitation. For
the song it was settled that Frank Palmer should be asked, as he
would be in Fenmarket. Usually he came but once every half year, but
he had not been able, so he said, to finish all his work the last
time. The recitation Madge undertook.