The Lovels of Arden | Page 9

this autumn season,
Clarissa perceived traces of care and order that were strange to her. The
carriage road was newly gravelled, the chaos of underwood among the
old trees had disappeared, the broad sweeps of grass were smooth and
level as a lawn, and there were men at work in the early morning,
planting rare specimens of the fir tribe in a new enclosure, which filled
a space that had been bared twenty years before by Mr. Lovel's
depredations upon the timber.
All this bewildered Clarissa; but she was still more puzzled, when,
instead of approaching the Court the fly turned sharply into a road
leading across a thickly wooded portion of the park, through which
there was a public right of way leading to the village of Arden.
"The man is going wrong, uncle!" she exclaimed.

"No, no, my dear; the man is right enough."
"But indeed, uncle Oliver, he is driving to the village."
"And he has been told to drive to the village."
"Not to the Court?"
"To the Court! Why, of course not. What should we have to do at the
Court at half-past seven in the morning?"
"But I am going straight home to papa, am I not?"
"Certainly."
And then, after staring at his niece's bewildered countenance for a few
moments, Mr. Oliver exclaimed,----
"Why, surely, Clary, your father told you----"
"Told me what, uncle?"
"That he had sold Arden."
"Sold Arden! O, uncle, uncle!"
She burst into tears. Of all things upon this earth she had loved the
grand old mansion where her childhood had been spent. She had so
little else to love, poor lonely child, that it was scarcely strange she
should attach herself to lifeless things. How fondly she had
remembered the old place in all those dreary years of exile, dreaming of
it as we dream of some lost friend. And it was gone from her for ever!
Her father had bartered away that most precious birthright.
"O, how could he do it! how could he do it!" she cried piteously.
"Why, my dear Clary, you can't suppose it was a matter of choice with
him. 'Needs must when'--I daresay you know the vulgar proverb.
Necessity has no law. Come, come, my dear, don't cry; your father

won't like to see you with red eyes. It was very wrong of him not to tell
you about the sale of Arden--excessively wrong. But that's just like
Marmaduke Lovel; always ready to shirk anything unpleasant, even to
the writing of a disagreeable letter."
"Poor dear papa! I don't wonder he found it hard to write about such a
thing; but it would have been better for me to have known. It is such a
bitter disappointment to come home and find the dear old place gone
from us. Has it been sold very long?"
"About two years. A rich manufacturer bought it--something in the
cloth way, I believe. He has retired from business, however, and is said
to be overwhelmingly rich. He has spent a great deal of money upon
the Court already, and means to spend more I hear."
"Has he spoiled it--modernised it, or anything of that kind?"
"No; I am glad to say that he--or his architect perhaps--has had the
good taste to preserve the mediaeval character of the place. He has
restored the stonework, renewing all the delicate external tracery where
it was lost or decayed, and has treated the interior in the same manner. I
have dined with Mr. Granger once or twice since the work was finished,
and I must say the place is now one of the finest in Yorkshire--perhaps
the finest, in its peculiar way. I doubt if there is so perfect a specimen
of gothic domestic architecture in the county."
"And it is gone from us for ever!" said Clarissa, with a profound sigh.
"Well, my dear Clary, it is a blow, certainly; I don't deny that. But there
is a bright side to everything; and really your father could not afford to
live in the place. It was going to decay in the most disgraceful manner.
He is better out of it; upon my word he is."
Clarissa could not see this. To lose Arden Court seemed to her
unmitigated woe. She would rather have lived the dreariest, loneliest
life in one corner of the grand old house, than have occupied a modern
palace. It was as if all the pleasant memories of her childhood had been
swept away from her with the loss of her early home. This was indeed

beginning the world; and a blank dismal world it appeared to Clarissa
Lovel, on this melancholy October morning.
They stopped presently before a low wooden gate, and looking out of
the window of the fly, Miss Lovel saw a cottage which she remembered