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176 SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Mm P Part Ii. Chapter Iii. To Doraarthur...
will , —the gold , frankincense , and myrrh , which mortality offers to immortality . "With this stanchless wound in my heart , I shall be
in the future and possess in the future far less than I once so confidently anticipated . To have looked into those eyes , to have
held that hand , -would have been a spur to all effort , a goal to every enterprise , a crown to all achievement ; without Dora I can
work , I can meditate , I can succeed , the same scope given the same aims may be reached , but my life ' s offering will be without gold .
And yet I had so trusted that she would overlook my infinite unworthiness for the sake of the vast deep love which was hers , alas !
which is hers , for time and for eternity ! How foolish I am , the value of love is in its acceptance . A cup of water will assuage a
thirst , to satisfy which the boundless but briny ocean is inadequate . Why do I complain ? There are uses for which I may still avail ,
for her , for all , in which I may find consolation if not compensation . " As he sat thus thinking , looking at the tawny orange-colored sky ,
which looked like burnished copper above him burnt through and through by the fiery passage of the sun in its day ' s journey from east to
west , his outward eye rivetted on the splendour , his mental eye seeing in a vision the soft low- arched grey sky of England , the
muezzin ' s voice from the neighbouring minnaret , the dome of which peeped through the palms of his little garden , called out the sunset
hour and roused him . sufficiently to make him conscious of some one knocking * at the door . It was his servant . The steamer had arrived
and brought him newspapers and letters . The letters had followed him from place to place , and were very old as to date , and of tliat
heterogeneous nature as to contents , which sometimes fall into Englishmen ' s hands abroad . One was directed in an unknown hand : he
_bpenedit , and there fell out two enclosures ; one was from his publisher , saying that the accompanying letter had been forwarded to him by
the late Mrs . Nugent ' s executors , that he had kept it upwards of twelve monthsbut as time passed and he had received no news , he
, was at a loss what to do with it as it might be important , until he had accidentally met a person who was acquainted with Wyridham and
had just returned to England , who reported having heard of Wyndham in Egypt . He had therefore sent it under cover to the
English consul at Cairo . He opened this long delayed communication , now almost two years old , with trembling hands . It ran thus : —
" My dearest Wyndham , " You are very dear to medear to me for your own sake ; still
, more for my beloved Dora ' s . Will you then , can you then , forgive me when I tell you that I , her mother , and who hoped to be yours ,
command you to break your engagement with her . The small independence I had saved for her is gone , when I die Dora is literally
penniless and homeless . Judge what I feel . , " Yet I know herbraveactive , energetic in herself , and I know
she is in the hands , of One , whose love is tenderer , more watcliful r
more faithful , than even a mother ' s . I trust in God for her , but
176 Success And Failure.
176 SUCCESS AND _FAILURE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1859, page 176, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051859/page/32/
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