<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=118350" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Lawyer’s Second Tale: Christian</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A highland inn among the western hills,<br>A single parlour, single bed that fills<br>With fisher or with tourist, as may be;<br>A waiting-maid. as fair as you can see,<br>With hazel eyes, and frequent blushing face,<br>And ample brow, and with a rustic grace<br>In all her easy quiet motions seen,<br>Large of her age, which haply is nineteen,<br>Christian her name, in full a pleasant name,<br>Christian and Christie scarcely seem the same;<br>A college fellow, who has sent away<br>The pupils he has taught for many a day,<br>And comes for fishing and for solitude,<br>Perhaps a little pensive in his mood,<br>An aspiration and a thought have failed,<br>Where he had hoped, another has prevailed,<br>But to the joys of hill and stream alive,<br>And in his boyhood yet, at twenty-five.<br>A merry dance, that made young people meet,<br>And set them moving, both with hands and feet;<br>A dance in which he danced, and nearer knew<br>The soft brown eyes, and found them tender too.<br>A dance that lit in two young hearts the fire,<br>The low soft flame, of loving sweet desire,<br>And made him feel that he could feel again;<br>The preface this, what follows to explain.<br>That night he kissed, he held her in his arms,<br>And felt the subtle virtue of her charms;<br>Nor less bewildered on the following day,<br>He kissed, he found excuse near her to stay,<br>Was it not love? And yet the truth to speak,<br>Playing the fool for haply half a week,<br>He yet had fled, so strong within him dwelt<br>The horror of the sin, and such he felt<br>The miseries to the woman that ensue.<br>He wearied long his brain with reasonings fine,<br>But when at evening dusk he came to dine,<br>In linsey petticoat and jacket blue<br>She stood, so radiant and so modest too,<br>All into air his strong conclusions flew.<br>Now should he go. But dim and drizzling too,<br>For a night march, to-night will hardly do,<br>A march of sixteen weary miles of way.<br>No, by the chances which our lives obey,<br>No, by the Heavens and this sweet face, he’ll stay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A week he stayed, and still was loth to go,<br>But she grew anxious and would have it so.<br>Her time of service shortly would be o’er,<br>And she would leave; her mistress knew before.<br>Where would she go? To Glasgow, if she could;<br>Her father’s sister would be kind and good;<br>An only child she was, an orphan left,<br>Of all her kindred, save of this, bereft.<br>Said he, ‘Your guide to Glasgow let me be<br>You little know, you have not tried the sea,<br>Say, at the ferry when are we to meet?<br>Thither, I guess, you travel on your feet.’<br>She would ‘be there on Tuesday next at three;<br>‘O dear, how glad and thankful she would be;<br>But don’t,’ she said, ‘be troubled much for me.’<br>Punctual they met, a second class he took,<br>More naturally to her wants to look,<br>And from her side was seldom far away.<br>So quiet, so indifferent yet, were they,<br>As fellow-servants travelling south they seemed,<br>And no one of a love-relation dreamed.<br>At Oban, where the stormy darkness fell,<br>He got two chambers in a cheap hotel.<br>At Oban of discomfort one is sure,<br>Little the difference whether rich or poor.<br>Around the Mull the passage now to make,<br>They go aboard, and separate tickets take,<br>First-class for him, and second-class for her.<br>No other first-class passengers there were,<br>And with the captain walking soon alone,<br>This Highland girl, he said, to him was known.<br>He had engaged to take her to her kin;<br>Could she be put the ladies’ cabin in?<br>The difference gladly he himself would pay,<br>The weather seemed but menacing to-day.<br>She ne’er had travelled from her home before,<br>He wished to be at hand to hear about her more.<br>Curious it seemed, but he had such a tone,<br>And kept at first so carefully alone,<br>And she so quiet was, and so discreet,<br>So heedful ne’er to seek him or to meet,<br>The first small wonder quickly passed away.<br>And so from Oban’s little land-locked bay<br>Forth out to Jura Jura pictured high<br>With lofty peaks against the western sky,<br>Jura, that far o’erlooks the Atlantic seas,<br>The loftiest of the Southern Hebrides.<br>Through the main sea to Jura; when we reach<br>Jura, we turn to leftward to the breach,<br>And southward strain the narrow channel through,<br>And Colonsay we pass and Islay too;<br>Cantire is on the left, and all the day<br>A dull dead calm upon the waters lay.<br>Sitting below, after some length of while,<br>He sought her, and the tedium to beguile,<br>He ventured some experiments to make,<br>The measure of her intellect to take.<br>Upon the cabin table chanced to lie<br>A book of popular astronomy;<br>In this he tried her, and discoursed away<br>Of Winter, Summer, and of Night and Day.<br>Still to the task a reasoning power she brought,<br>And followed, slowly followed with the thought;<br>How beautiful it was to see the stir<br>Of natural wonder waking thus in her;<br>But loth was he to set on books to pore<br>An intellect so charming in the ore.<br>And she, perhaps, had comprehended soon<br>Even the nodes, so puzzling, of the moon;<br>But nearing now the Mull they met the gale<br>Right in their teeth: and should the fuel fail?<br>Thinking of her, he grew a little pale,<br>But bravely she the terrors, miseries, took:<br>And met him with a sweet courageous look:<br>Once, at the worst, unto his side she drew,<br>And said a little tremulously too,<br>‘If we must die, please let me come to you.’<br>I know not by what change of wind or tide,<br>Heading the Mull, they gained the eastern side,<br>But stiller now, and sunny e’en it grew;<br>Arran’s high peaks unmantled to the view;<br>While to the north, far seen from left to right,<br>The Highland range, extended snowy white.<br>Now in the Clyde, he asked, what would be thought,<br>In Glasgow, of the company she brought:<br>‘You know,’ he said, ‘how I desire to stay;<br>We’ve played at strangers for so long a day,<br>But for a while I yet would go away.’<br>She said, O no, indeed they must not part.<br>Her father’s sister had a kindly heart.<br>‘I’ll tell her all, and O, when you she sees,<br>I think she’ll not be difficult to please.’<br>Landed at Glasgow, quickly they espied<br>Macfarlane, grocer, by the river side:<br>To greet her niece the woman joyful ran,<br>But looked with wonder on the tall young man.<br>Into the house the women went and talked,<br>He with the grocer in the doorway walked.<br>He told him he was looking for a set<br>Of lodgings: had he any he could let?<br>The man was called to council with his wife;<br>They took the thing as what will be in life,<br>Half in a kind, half in a worldly way;<br>They said, the lassie might play out her play.<br>The gentleman should have the second floor,<br>At thirty shillings, for a week or more.<br>Some days in this obscurity he stayed,<br>Happy with her, and some inquiry made<br>(For friends he found) and did his best to see,<br>What hope of getting pupils there would be.<br>This must he do, ’twas evident, ’twas clear,<br>Marry and seek a humble maintenance here.<br>Himself he had a hundred pounds a year.<br>To this plain business he would bend his life,<br>And find his joy in children and in wife,<br>A wife so good, so tender, and so true,<br>Mother to be of glorious children too.<br>Half to excuse his present lawless way,<br>He to the grocer happened once to say<br>Marriage would cost him more than others dear;<br>Cost him, indeed, three hundred pounds a-year.<br>‘’Deed,’ said the man, ‘a heavy price, no doubt,<br>For a bit form that one can do without.’<br>And asked some questions, pertinent and plain,<br>Exacter information to obtain;<br>He took a little trouble to explain.<br>The College Audit now, to last at least<br>Three weeks, ere ending with the College Feast,<br>He must attend, a tedious, dull affair,<br>But he, as junior Bursar, must be there.<br>Three weeks, however, quickly would be fled,<br>And then he’d come, he didn’t say to wed.<br>With plans of which he nothing yet would say,<br>Preoccupied upon the parting day,<br>He seemed a little absent and distrait;<br>But she, as knowing nothing was amiss,<br>Gave him her fondest smile, her sweetest kiss.<br>A fortnight after, or a little more,<br>As at the Audit, weary of the bore,<br>He sat, and of his future prospects thought,<br>A letter in an unknown hand was brought.<br>’Twas from Macfarlane, and to let him know<br>To South Australia they proposed to go.<br>‘Rich friends we have, who have advised us thus,<br>Occasion offers suitable for us;<br>Christie we take; whate’er she find of new,<br>She’ll ne’er forget the joy she’s had with you;<br>’Tis an expensive pilgrimage to make<br>You’ll like to send a trifle for her sake.’<br>Nothing he said of when the ship would sail.<br>That very night, by swift-returning mail,<br>Ten pounds he sent, for what he did not know;<br>And ‘In no case,’ he said, ‘let Christian go.’<br>He in three days would come, and for his life<br>Would claim her and declare her as his wife.<br>Swift the night-mail conveyed his missive on;<br>He followed in three days, and found them gone.<br>All three had sailed: he looked as though he dreamed<br>The money-order had been cashed, it seemed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Clergyman, ‘This story is mere pain,’<br>Exclaimed, ‘for if the women don’t sustain<br>The moral standard, all we do is vain.’<br>‘But what we want,’ the Yankee said, ‘to know,<br>Is if the girl went willingly or no.<br>Sufficient motive though one does not see,<br>’Tis clear the grocer used some trickery.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He judged himself, so strong the clinging in<br>This kind of people is to kith and kin;<br>For if they went and she remained behind,<br>No one she had, if him she failed to find.<br>Alas, this lawless loving was the cause,<br>She did not dare to think how dear she was.<br>Justly his guilty tardiness he curst,<br>He should have owned her when he left her first.<br>And something added how upon the sea,<br>She perilled, too, a life that was to be;<br>A child that, born in far Australia, there<br>Would have no father and no father’s care.<br>So to the South a lonely man returned,<br>For other scenes and busier life he burned,<br>College he left and settled soon in town,<br>Wrote in the journals, gained a swift renown.<br>Soon into high society he came,<br>And still where’er he went outdid his fame.<br>All the more liked and more esteemed, the less<br>He seemed to make an object of success.<br>An active literary life he spent,<br>Towards lofty points of public practice bent,<br>Was never man so carefully who read,<br>Whose plans so well were fashioned in his head,<br>Nor one who truths so luminously said.<br>Some years in various labours thus he passed,<br>A spotless course maintaining to the last.<br>Twice upon Government Commissions served<br>With honour; place, which he declined, deserved.<br>He married then, a marriage fit and good,<br>That kept him where his worth was understood;<br>A widow, wealthy and of noble blood.<br>Mr. and Lady Mary are they styled,<br>One grief is theirs to be without a child.<br>I did not tell you how he went before<br>To South Australia, vainly to explore.<br>The ship had come to Adelaide, no doubt;<br>Watching the papers he had made it out,<br>But of themselves, in country or in town,<br>Nothing discovered, travelling up and down.<br>Only an entry of uncertain sound,<br>In an imperfect register he found.<br>His son, he thought, but could not prove it true;<br>The surname of the girl it chanced he never knew.<br>But this uneasy feeling gathered strength<br>As years advanced, and it became at length<br>His secret torture and his secret joy<br>To think about his lost Australian boy.<br>Somewhere in wild colonial lands has grown<br>A child that is his true and very own.<br>This strong parental passion fills his mind,<br>To all the dubious chances makes him blind.<br>Still he will seek, and still he hopes to find.<br>Again will go.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Said I, ‘O let him stay,<br>And in a London drawing-room some day<br>Rings on her fingers, brilliants in her hair,<br>The lady of the latest millionaire<br>She’ll come, and with a gathering slow surprise<br>On Lady Mary’s husband turn her eyes:<br>The soft brown eyes that in a former day<br>From his discretion lured him all astray.<br>At home, six bouncing girls, who more or less<br>Are learning English of a governess,<br>Six boisterous boys, as like as pear to pear;<br>Only the eldest has a different air.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘You jest,’ he said, ‘indeed it happened so.’<br>From a great party just about to go,<br>He saw, he knew, and ere she saw him, said<br>Swift to his wife, as for the door he made,<br>‘My Highland bride! to escape a scene I go,<br>Stay, find her out great God! and let me know.’<br>The Lady Mary turned to scrutinise<br>The lovely brow, the beautiful brown eyes,<br>One moment, then performed her perfect part,<br>And did her spiriting with simplest art,<br>Was introduced, her former friends had known,<br>Say, might she call to-morrow afternoon<br>At three? O yes! At three she made her call,<br>And told her who she was and told her all.<br>Her lady manners all she laid aside;<br>Like women the two women kissed and cried.<br>Half overwhelmed sat Christian by her side,<br>While she, ‘You know he never knew the day<br>When you would sail, but he believed you’d stay<br>Because he wrote you never knew, you say,<br>Wrote that in three days’ time, they need not fear,<br>He’d come and then would marry you, my dear.<br>You never knew? And he had planned to live<br>At Glasgow, lessons had arranged to give.<br>Alas, then to Australia he went out,<br>All through the land to find you sought about,<br>And found a trace, which though it left a doubt,<br>Sufficed to make it still his grief, his joy,<br>To think he had a child, a living boy,<br>Whom you, my love ’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘His child is six foot high,<br>I’ve kept him as the apple of my eye,’<br>Cried she, ‘he’s riding, or you’d see him here.<br>O joy, that he at last should see his father dear!<br>As soon as he comes in I’ll tell him all,<br>And on his father he shall go and call.’<br>‘And you,’ she said, ‘my husband will you see?’<br>‘O no, it is not possible for me.<br>The boy I’ll send this very afternoon.<br>O dear, I know he cannot go too soon;<br>And something I must write, to write will do.’<br>So they embraced and sadly bade adieu.<br>The boy came in, his father went and saw;<br>We will not wait this interview to draw;<br>Ere long returned, and to his mother ran:<br>His father was a wonderful fine man,<br>He said, and looked at her; the Lady, too,<br>Had done whatever it was kind to do.<br>He loved his mother more than he could say,<br>But if she wished, he’d with his father stay.<br>A little change she noticed in his face,<br>E’en now the father’s influence she could trace;<br>From her the slight, slight severance had begun,<br>But simply she rejoiced that it was done.<br>She smiled and kissed her boy, and ‘Long ago,<br>When I was young, I loved your father so.<br>Together now we had been living, too,<br>Only the ship went sooner than he knew.<br>In loving him you will be loving me:<br>Father and mother are as one you see.’<br>Her letter caught him on the following day<br>As to the club he started on his way.<br>From her he guessed, the hand indeed was new;<br>Back to his room he went and read it through.<br>‘I know not how to write and dare not see;<br>But it will take a load of grief from me<br>O! what a load that you at last should know<br>The way in which I was compelled to go.<br>Wretched, I know, and yet it seems ’twas more<br>Cruel and wretched than I knew before;<br>So many years to think how on your day<br>Joyful you’d come, and find me flown away.<br>What would you think of me, what would you say?<br>O love, this little let me call you so;<br>What other name to use I do not know.<br>O let me think that by your side I sit,<br>And tell it you, and weep a little bit,<br>And you too weep with me, for hearing it.<br>Alone so long I’ve borne this dreadful weight;<br>Such grief, at times it almost turned to hate.<br>O let me think you sit and listening long,<br>Comfort me still, and say I wasn’t wrong,<br>And pity me, and far, far hence again<br>Dismiss, if haply any yet remain,<br>Hard thoughts of me that in your heart have lain.<br>O love! to hear your voice I dare not go.<br>But let me trust that you will judge me so.<br>‘I think no sooner were you gone away,<br>My aunt began to tell me of some pay,<br>More than three hundred pounds a-year ’twould be,<br>Which you, she said, would lose by marrying me.<br>Was this a thing a man of sense would do?<br>Was I a fool, to look for it from you?<br>You were a handsome gentleman and kind,<br>And to do right were every way inclined,<br>But to this truth I must submit my mind,<br>You would not marry. “Speak, and tell me true,<br>Say, has he ever said one word to you<br>That meant as much?” O, love, I knew you would.<br>I’ve read it in your eyes so kind and good,<br>Although you did not speak, I understood.<br>Though for myself, indeed, I sought it not,<br>It seemed so high, so undeserved a lot,<br>But for the child, when it should come, I knew<br>O, I was certain what you meant to do.<br>She said, “We quit the land, will it be right<br>Or kind to leave you for a single night,<br>Just on the chance that he will come down here,<br>And sacrifice three hundred pounds a-year,<br>And all his hopes and prospects fling away,<br>And has already had his will, as one may say?<br>Go you with us, and find beyond the seas,<br>Men by the score to choose from, if you please.”<br>I said my will and duty was to stay,<br>Would they not help me to some decent way<br>To wait, and surely near was now the day?<br>Quite they refused; had they to let you know<br>Written, I asked, to say we were to go?<br>They told me yes; they showed a letter, too,<br>Post-office order that had come from you.<br>Alas, I could not read or write, they knew.<br>I think they meant me, though they did not say,<br>To think you wanted me to go away;<br>O, love, I’m thankful nothing of the kind<br>Ever so much as came into my mind.<br>‘To-morrow was the day that would not fail;<br>For Adelaide the vessel was to sail.<br>All night I hoped some dreadful wind would rise.<br>And lift the seas and rend the very skies.<br>All night I lay and listened hard for you.<br>Twice to the door I went, the bolt I drew,<br>And called to you; scarce what I did I knew.<br>‘Morning grew light, the house was emptied clear;<br>The ship would go, the boat was lying near.<br>They had my money, how was I to stay?<br>Who could I go to, when they went away?<br>Out in the streets I could not lie, you know.<br>O dear, but it was terrible to go.<br>Yet, yet I looked; I do not know what passed,<br>I think they took and carried me at last.<br>Twelve hours I lay, and sobbed in my distress;<br>But in the night, let be this idleness,<br>I said, I’ll bear it for my baby’s sake,<br>Lest of my going mischief it should take,<br>Advice will seek, and every caution use;<br>My love I’ve lost his child I must not lose.<br>‘How oft I thought, when sailing on the seas,<br>Of our dear journey through the Hebrides,<br>When you the kindest were and best of men:<br>O, love, I did not love you right till then.<br>O, and myself how willingly I blamed,<br>So simple who had been, and was ashamed,<br>So mindful only of the present joy,<br>When you had anxious cares your busy mind to employ.<br>Ah, well, I said, but now at least he’s free,<br>He will not have to lower himself for me.<br>He will not lose three hundred pounds a-year,<br>In many ways my love has cost him dear.<br>‘Upon the passage, great was my delight,<br>A lady taught me how to read and write.<br>She saw me much, and fond of me she grew,<br>Only I durst not talk to her of you.<br>‘We had a quiet time upon the seas,<br>And reached our port of Adelaide with ease.<br>At Adelaide my lovely baby came.<br>Philip, he took his father’s Christian name,<br>And my poor maiden surname, to my shame.<br>O, but I little cared, I loved him so,<br>’Twas such a joy to watch and see him grow.<br>At Adelaide we made no length of stay;<br>Our friends to Melbourne just had gone away.<br>We followed shortly where they led before,<br>To Melbourne went, and flourished more and more.<br>My aunt and uncle both are buried there;<br>I closed their eyes, and I was left their heir.<br>They meant me well, I loved them for their care.<br>‘Ten years ago I married Robert; dear<br>And well he loved, and waited many a year.<br>Selfish it seemed to turn from one so true,<br>And I of course was desperate of you.<br>I’ve borne him children six; we’ve left behind<br>Three little ones, whom soon I hope to find.<br>To my dear boy he ever has been kind.<br>‘Next week we sail, and I should be so glad<br>Only to leave my boy will make me sad.<br>But yours he is by right the grief I’ll bear,<br>And at his age, more easy he can spare,<br>Perhaps, a mother’s than a father’s care.<br>Indeed I think him like his father, too;<br>He will be happier, probably, with you.<br>’Tis best, I know, nor will he quite forget,<br>Some day he’ll come perhaps and see his mother yet.<br>O heaven! farewell perhaps I’ve been to blame<br>To write as if it all were still the same.<br>Farewell, write not. I will not seek to know<br>Whether you ever think of me or no.’<br>O love, love, love, too late! the tears fell down.<br>He dried them up and slowly walked to town.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To bed with busy thoughts; the following day<br>Bore us expectant into Boston Bay;<br>With dome and steeple on the yellow skies,<br>Upon the left we watched with curious eyes<br>The Puritan great Mother City rise.<br>Among the islets, winding in and round,<br>The great ship moved to her appointed ground.<br>We bade adieu, shook hands and went ashore:<br>I and my friend have seen our friends no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Arthur+Hugh+Clough">Arthur Hugh Clough</a> from <i>Mari Magno or Tales on Board</i><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=118350" data-title="The Lawyer’s Second Tale: Christian de Arthur Hugh Clough" data-description="A highland inn among the western hills,/A single parlour, single bed that fills/With fisher or with tourist, as may be;/A waiting-maid. as fair as you can see,/With hazel eyes, and frequent blushing face,/And ample brow, and with a rustic grace/In..."></div> </div> </div>

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