Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by DavidPrice,
Clara Hopgood
BY
MARK RUTHERFORD
EDITED BYHIS FRIEND
REUBEN SHAPCOTT
THIRD IMPRESSION
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
ADELPHI TERRACE
First Edition | March 1896 |
Second Impression | June 1896 |
Third Impression | July 1907 |
All rights reserved
CHAPTER I
About ten miles north-east ofEastthorpe lies the town of Fenmarket, very like Eastthorpegenerally; and as we are already familiar with Eastthorpe, aparticular description of Fenmarket is unnecessary. Thereis, however, one marked difference between them. Eastthorpe, it will be remembered, is on the border between thelow uplands and the Fens, and has one side open to soft, swellinghills. Fenmarket is entirely in the Fens, and all the roadsthat lead out of it are alike level, monotonous, straight, andflanked by deep and stagnant ditches. The river, also, hereis broader and slower; more reluctant than it is even atEastthorpe to hasten its journey to the inevitable sea. During the greater part of the year the visitor to Fenmarketwould perhaps find it dull and depressing, and at times, under agrey, wintry sky, almost unendurable; but nevertheless, for daysand weeks it has a charm possessed by few other landscapes inEngland, provided only that behind the eye which looks there issomething to which a landscape of that peculiar characteranswers. There is, for example, the wide, dome-like expanseof the sky, there is the distance, there is the freedom and thereare the stars on a clear night. The orderly, geometricalmarch of the constellations from the extreme eastern horizonacross the meridian and down to the west has a solemn majesty,which is only partially discernible when their course isinterrupted by broken country.
On a dark afternoon in November 1844, two young women, Claraand Madge Hopgood, were playing chess in the back parlour oftheir mother’s house at Fenmarket, just before tea. Clara, the elder, was about five-and-twenty, fair, with ratherlight hair worn flat at the side of her face, after the fashionof that time. Her features were tolerably regular. Itis true they were somewhat marred by an uneven nasal outline, butthis was redeemed by the curved lips of a mouth which was smalland rather compressed, and by a definite, symmetrical andgraceful figure. Her eyes were grey, with a curiouspeculiarity in them. Ordinarily they were steady, strongeyes, excellent and renowned optical instruments. Over andover again she had detected, along the stretch of the Eastthorperoad, approaching visitors, and had named them when hercompanions could see nothing but specks. Occasionally,however, these steady, strong, grey eyes utterly changed. They were the same eyes, the same colour, but they ceased to bemere optical instruments and became instrument