Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Fiction; English fiction; Xhosa (African people) -- Fiction
Day is well represented as scattering roses in her path, for she brings
much comfort to the wretched, whose wretchedness is not all of their own
making. Amid the multitude who wake to the sunlight, some kind hand may
be stretched out to those who suffer. Hope is ever moving among the
crowd, but her mirror, remember, turns its bright face only to the
repentant--the truly repentant--to those who lift up their hearts to an
offended God, and pray that they may sin no more. Those who suffer
remorse, and dread only the world's contempt, have no part in the bright
promises of Hope; and all the freshness and the fragrance that life
offers to the humbly sorrowful falls to dust and ashes before the breath
of pride, which trembles before man, but seeks to defy the very laws
divine.
Yes; Sir John Manvers repented him truly of his former sin, not because
he feared God, but because he dreaded man's scorn and pity.
Reader, do we not see this day by day?
Sir John Manvers's destruction of Sir Adrian Fairfax's letter was
perfectly characteristic of the man. It was a written record against
him, therefore it should perish; and could he have seen all those who
were initiated in his secret perish likewise, he would have gone forth
to the world apparently unmoved, or with satisfaction so predominant as
to smother all remorseful sentiments.
Still they did not know all.
The real secret lay dormant in a little dark nook in one of the remotest
corners of Cornwall, and was inscribed in letters, now somewhat browned
by time, in a huge old volume, a parish register, kept as securely as if
the clergyman's whole welfare depended on the safety of its contents, in
a dim oak-wainscoted Vestry-room of a dilapidated church.
In a leaf of that register might be read these words, among the
Marriages solemnised in the parish of G--, county of Cornwall.
"John Lyle and Mary L--, residing at G--.
"In the presence of us, etc, etc."
By this time, dear reader, you will have given up all hopes of learning
the early part of Sir John Manvers's history from himself. He was not
the man to indite a record of his sin, or "folly," as he would probably
have termed it, even to his friend Sir Adrian Fairfax. I shall
therefore relate as succinctly as possible those events connected with
his opening career which influenced him through life, and finally
brought him to the strait in which he stands so miserably before you.
His first prospects were uncheering. His father held a small curacy in
Devonshire, and the circumstance of this poor curate marrying the
daughter of a baronet, in whose household he held the appointment of
chaplain, instead of leading to prosperous results, was the means of
impeding his progress in the Church. The union was cursed with the deep
and undying resentment of the lady's father, and the poor curate
struggled on till the grave gave him that rest which earth had denied
the living.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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