Sarah Bond had never forgotten the emotion of Mabel, caused by the mention of the curate's name when they quitted their old neighbourhood, and the very reserve Mabel showed proved to Sarah's searching and clear judgment, that the feeling was unchanged. Truly in that hour was her chastened heart joyful and grateful. "Mabel must wait," she said, "until the prospect of advancement became a reality; for it would be an ill return of disinterested love for a penniless orphan to become a burden instead of a blessing. Mabel would grow more worthy every day; they were doing well; ay, he might look round the white-washed walls and smile, but they were prosperous, healthful, happy, and respected; and if she could only live to see the odium cast upon her father's memory removed, she would not exchange her present poverty for her past pride." She frequently afterwards thought of the clergyman's rejoinder—"That riches, like mercy, were as blessed to the giver as to the receiver, and that they only created evil when hoarded, or bestowed by a heedless hand."
They certainly were a happy group in that lowly cottage room that evening. Mabel's proud bearing had given place, as if by magic, to a blushing shyness; which she tried to shield from observation by every possible attempt at ease. She talked to Mr. Goulding, and found a thousand uses for the old furniture she had once so heartily despised. "She would sit in the great high chair at the end of that table, with her feet on the stool, and the china vase in the midst, filled with humble cottage flowers—meadow-sweet and wild roses, and sweet-williams, sea-pinks, woodbine, and wild convolvulus! Did Mr. Goulding like cottage flowers best?" No; the clergyman said he did not, but he thought Mr. Lycight did, and the young man assured her that it was so; and then gazed on the only love his heart, his deep, unworn, earnest heart, had throbbed to, with an admiration which is always accompanied by fear, lest something should prevent the realization of the one great earthly hope. And Mabel was more fitful than her aunt had ever seen her. Fearful lest her secret, as she thought it, should be discovered, she made as many turns and windings as a hare; and yet, unskilled in disguising her feelings, after spending many words in arranging and re-arranging, she suddenly wished that the spinnet could be opened, "If," she exclaimed, "that could be opened, I should be able to teach Mary Godwin music; and her mother seemed to wish it so much: surely we can open the instrument?"
"It has not been opened for years," replied Miss Bond; "and I remember, once before, Mabel wished it opened, and I refused, lest forcing the lock might harm the marquetre, of which my poor mother was so fond. It has never been opened since her death." But Mabel's desire was of too much consequence, in her lover's eyes, to be passed over, although all seemed agreed that if it were opened it could not be played upon; so in a few minutes he procured a smith, who said he would remove the hinges, and then unscrew the lock from the inside, which would not injure the cover. This was done; but greatly to poor Mabel's dismay, the cavity, where strings once had been, was filled with old papers.
"Now, is not this provoking?" said Mabel, flinging out first one and then another bundle of letters. "Is not this provoking?"
"No, no," exclaimed Sarah Bond, grasping a lean, long, parchment, round which an abundance of tape was wound. "No. Who knows what may be found here?" At once the idea was caught, Mabel thought no more of the strings. "I cannot," said Sarah Bond to Mr. Goulding, "untie this; can you?" Her fingers trembled, and she sank on her knees by the clergyman's side. The eyes of the little group were fixed upon him; not a word was spoken; every breath was hushed; slowly he unfastened knot after knot; at last the parchment was unfolded; still, neither Sarah Bond nor Mabel spoke; the latter gasped for breath—her lips apart, her cheeks flushed; while Sarah's hands were clasped together, locked upon her bosom, and every vestige of colour had deserted her face.
"Be calm, my dear friend," he said, after glancing his eyes over the parchment; "be calm. You have experienced enough of the changes and chances of this world not to build too quickly upon any foundation but the one—the goodness of God; I do believe this is an especial proof of His Providence, for I do think this is Cornelius Bond Hobart's original will in your uncle's favour."
It would be useless to attempt a description of the scene that followed; but the joy at the reality of the discovery was a heartful temperate joy—the joy of chastened hearts. Sarah Bond, blessing God, above all things, that, go the law as it would, her father's memory would now be held as the memory of an honest man; that he had, as she had said, copied, not forged the will. Mr. Goulding declared he should find it difficult to forgive himself for having so long prevented the old furniture from being sent, assuring her, the dread that Mabel was unfit to contend with the privations to which the lives of humble men are doomed, made him tremble for the happiness of the young friend who had been consigned to his care by a dying mother; he feared to renew the intercourse, until her character was developed; while poor Mabel had little thought how closely she was watched along the humble and thorny paths she had to traverse.
Sarah Bond's spirit was so chastened, that she regretted nothing save the shadow cast upon her father's grave; and now that was removed, she was indeed happy. She assured the rector how useful adversity had been to them—how healthful it had rendered Mabel's mind—and how much better, if they recovered what had been lost, they should know how to employ their means of usefulness. Mr. Lycight's congratulations were not so hearty as Mr. Goulding's; he felt that now he was the curate and Mabel the heiress; and he heard the kind good night which Mabel spoke with a tingling ear. He, was proud in his own way; and pride, as well as his affection, had been gratified by the idea of elevating her he loved. Mabel saw this, and she wept during the sleepless night, that he should believe her so unworthy and so ungrateful.
There was much to think of and to do; the witnesses were to be found, and lawyers consulted, and proceedings taken, and much of the turmoil and bitterness of the law to be endured, which it pains every honest heart to think upon; and Mr. Cramp was seized with a sudden fit of virtuous indignation against Mr. Alfred Bond, after Sarah Bond's new "man of business" had succeeded in producing the only one of the witnesses in existence, who, he also discovered, had been purposely kept out of the way, on a former occasion, by some one or other. The delays were vexatious, and the quirks and turns, and foldings, and doubles innumerable; but they came to an end at last, and Mr. Alfred Bond was obliged in his turn to vacate the old mansion, in which he had revelled—a miser in selfish pleasures.
I have dwelt longer than was perhaps necessary on the minutiæ of this relation, the principal events of which are so strongly impressed upon my memory. But the more I have thought over the story, the more I have been struck with the phases and impulses of Sarah Bond's unobtrusive, but deep feeling mind; her self-sacrificing spirit, her devotion to her father's will, her dread, when first in possession of the property, that any one act of liberality on her part might be considered a reproach to his memory; her habits struggling with her feelings, leading me to the conclusion that she would never have become, even with the expanding love of her niece to enlarge her views, thoroughly unmanacled from the parsimonious habits of her father, but for her lesson in adversity, which, instead of teaching as it does a worldly mind, the value of money, taught her higher nature its proper uses.