

Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

                          [Picture: Book cover]





                              CLARA HOPGOOD


                                    BY
                             MARK RUTHERFORD

                           EDITED BY HIS FRIEND
                             REUBEN SHAPCOTT

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                            _THIRD IMPRESSION_

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                                  LONDON
                             T. FISHER UNWIN
                             ADELPHI TERRACE

_First Edition_          _March_ 1896
_Second Impression_       _June_ 1896
_Third Impression_        _July_ 1907

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                          _All rights reserved_

                                * * * * *




CHAPTER I


ABOUT ten miles north-east of Eastthorpe lies the town of Fenmarket, very
like Eastthorpe generally; and as we are already familiar with
Eastthorpe, a particular description of Fenmarket is unnecessary.  There
is, however, one marked difference between them.  Eastthorpe, it will be
remembered, is on the border between the low uplands and the Fens, and
has one side open to soft, swelling hills.  Fenmarket is entirely in the
Fens, and all the roads that lead out of it are alike level, monotonous,
straight, and flanked by deep and stagnant ditches.  The river, also,
here is broader and slower; more reluctant than it is even at Eastthorpe
to hasten its journey to the inevitable sea.  During the greater part of
the year the visitor to Fenmarket would perhaps find it dull and
depressing, and at times, under a grey, wintry sky, almost unendurable;
but nevertheless, for days and weeks it has a charm possessed by few
other landscapes in England, provided only that behind the eye which
looks there is something to which a landscape of that peculiar character
answers.  There is, for example, the wide, dome-like expanse of the sky,
there is the distance, there is the freedom and there are the stars on a
clear night.  The orderly, geometrical march of the constellations from
the extreme eastern horizon across the meridian and down to the west has
a solemn majesty, which is only partially discernible when their course
is interrupted by broken country.

On a dark afternoon in November 1844, two young women, Clara and Madge
Hopgood, were playing chess in the back parlour of their mother’s house
at Fenmarket, just before tea.  Clara, the elder, was about
five-and-twenty, fair, with rather light hair worn flat at the side of
her face, after the fashion of that time.  Her features were tolerably
regular.  It is true they were somewhat marred by an uneven nasal
outline, but this was redeemed by the curved lips of a mouth which was
small and rather compressed, and by a definite, symmetrical and graceful
figure.  Her eyes were grey, with a curious peculiarity in them.
Ordinarily they were steady, strong eyes, excellent and renowned optical
instruments.  Over and over again she had detected, along the stretch of
the Eastthorpe road, approaching visitors, and had named them when her
companions 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 be mere optical instruments and became
instruments of expression, transmissive of radiance to such a degree that
the light which was reflected from them seemed insufficient to account
for it.  It was also curious that this change, though it must have been
accompanied by some emotion, was just as often not attended by any other
sign of it.  Clara was, in fact, little given to any display of feeling.

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