CLAUDE TYACK'S ORDEAL

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 7, 10 June 1887, Page 5

CLAUDE TYACK'S ORDEAL

(By Grant Allen in Longman's Journal.") Claude Ttack was the tallest and handsomest man of my time at Harvard. And when I saw him walking one day with Elsie Marple through the college avenue, I felt really and truly jealous about Elsie. Those were the dear old days before the war, and Professor Marple then taught Greek to Freshmen and Sophomores in Cambridge, lecture halls and I was Elsie's favoured admirer. But that afternoon, when I met Elsie a little later, alone, by the old law school, near the Agassis Museum, I was half angry with her for talking to Tyack. She blushed as I came up, and I put the wrong interpretation on her blushes, " Elsie," I said, for I called her even then by her Christian name, " that fellow Claude's been here walking with you."

She looked me fall in the face with her big brown eyes, and answered softly : " He has, Walter, and I'm very sorry for him." " Sorry for him I " I cried, somewhat hot in the face. " Why sorry T what's he been doing or saying that you should be sorry for f " I spoke ronghly, I suppose. I was young and I wa9 angry. Elsie turned her big browD eyes upon me once more, and said only, " I'm very sorry for him. Poor, poor fellow I I'm very sorry !" " Elsie," I answered, " You've no right to speak so about any other fellow. Tyack's been making love to you. I'm sure of that. Why did you let him ? You're mine now, and I claim the whole of you." To my great surprise, Elsie suddenly burst into tears, and walked away without answering me anything. I was hot and uncomfortable, but I let her go. I didn't even try in any way to stop her or ask her why she should cry so strangely. I only knew, like a foolish boy as I was, that my heart was ftil of wrath and resentment against Tyack. That evening I met him again in the dining-hall— the old ball on Ihe college square that preceded the big memorial building we of of the Harvard brigade set up long afterward in honour of the boys who fell in the great struggle. I looked at him angrily and spoke angrily. After all we went out together into the cool air. Tyack was flushed and still angrier than I. "You want to triumph over me," he said in a fierce way, as we reached the door. " That is mean and ungenerous. You might do better. In your place I would have more magnanimity." I didn't know what on earth he meant, but my hot French blood boiled up at once, and I answered hastily, " No man calls me mean for nothing. Blow follows word with men of my sort, Tyack. Insult me again, and you know what you'll get for it." " You are a fool and a coward," he cried through his clenched teeth. "No gentleman would so treat a conquered rival. Isn't it enough that you have beaten me and crushed me ? Need you dance upon me and kick my corpse afterward ? " I don't know what I answered back. I failed to understand him still, but I saw he was furious, and I only felt the angrier for that ; but I struck him in the face, and I told him that if he wished it to be open war, war it should be with no quarter. I could hardly believe my eyes when In drew himself up to his full height and without uttering a word stalked haughtily off, his face purple with suppressed wrath, and his lips quivering, but Beltcontrolled and outwardly calm in his gait and movement. I thought he must be going to challenge me — in those days duelling was not yet utterly dead, even ia the North — and I waited for his note with some eagerness ; but no challenge ever came. I never saw Claude Tyack again till 1 met him in the Second Connecticut Regiment, just before the battle of Chattawauga. Late that night I went round to the Harpies', trembling with excitement, and, after our easy American fashion, asked at the door to see Miss Elsie, Elsie came down tome alone in the dining-room ; her ayes were still a little swollen with crying, but she looked even lovelier and gentler than ever. I ask-_d her what had passed between her and Tyack and she told me, in simple words, a story that angry as I was, lent a thrill of regret and remorse through my inmost being. Tyack hai come up to her tbat af ternooa in the elm avenue, she said, and after gently leading up to it by i.alf hii.ts, whose meaning she never perceived till afterward, had surprised her at last by asking her outright to be his wife and make him happy for ever and ever. Elsie was so breathless at this unexpected declaration that she had not even presence of mind to tell him at once of our virtual engagement ; and Tyack, seeing her hesitate and temporise, went on begging her in the profoundest terms of love and affection, till her woman's heart was touched with pity. "He said he could never know another happy moment," she whispered, " unless I would have him, Walter ; and as he said it I knew by his eyes that he really meant it." " And what did you answer ?" 1 asked in an agony of doubt, my heart misgiving me for my anger that evening. " I said to him, ' Oh, Mr. Tyack, 1 know you mean it, and if it weren't that I love Walter Ponsard with all my soul, I think out of pity I should have to marry you.' " " You said that," I cried, the devil within me getting the better of me for a moment. " Ye«, Walter, I said that. And Mr. Tyack gave a sort of low, suppressed, sobbing cry, like a man whose heart is thrust through, I Bhould think, and pressed his two hands hard upon his bosom and staggered away as if I had shot him. " Elsie," 1 said, taking her white hand in mine in a fit of remorse. " I understand it all now. I hope to heaven we haven't, between us, Bent that man Tyack to blow his brains out, or jump into the river." When I got back to my rooms, at a little past midnight, I found a note lying on my table. I took in up and read it eagerly. This is what it said : Walter Ponsard,— You have treated me brutally. No honourable man would act as you have done. Yet, for her sake, I refrain from returning the blow you gave me. But whenever my own turn comes, without hurting her, trust me. you will find you have provoked a dangerous enemy. Claude Tyack . I breathed freer. Then he would not kill himself. I didn't mind his threat of vengeance, but I should hare been sorry to bear the guilt of his blood upon me. Next morning Tyack had gone from Cambridge, and nobody knew where he had betaken himself. Before Chattawauga I was passing through camp in my uniform as a sergeant in the Harvard battalion of the Third Massachusetts when I saw an orderly coming from Holditch's regiment, with a note for the General from Colonel Holditch. He wore the gray stuff, with blue facing, of the Second Connecticut. We recognised each other at the first glance. It was Claude Tyack. Everybody in the North volunteered in those days, and some of us who volunteered roie fast to be field officers, while others of us,

equally well born and bred, remained in the ranks for months together. Tyack and I were among the residuum. He glanced at me curtly and passed on. I somehow felt, I don't know why, that the hour of his revenge could not be far distant. I sat down in my tent that night and wrote to Elsie. It was Elsie who had wished me to volunteer. I wrote to her whenever an occasion offered. A mail was going that evening from the field. I told her all about the expected battle, but I said never a word about poor Tyack. Just as we were turning in for the night, a United States mail was distributed to the detachment. I opened my letter from Elsie with trembling fingers. She wrote, as ever, full of fears and hopes. A little postscript ended the letter. " I hear," she said, " tnat poor Claude Tyack is with you in Rurnside's division. I shall never cease to be sorry for him. If possible, try and make jour quarrel up before the battle. I couldn't bear to think he might be killed, and you unforgiven." I spt long with the letter in my hand. A battle is a very serious thing. If Tysack had been there in the tent that evening, I think I should have taken Elsie's advice and made it all up with him. And then things would have been very different. As I sat there musing with the letter still in my fingers, the drum beat suddenly, and we heard the signal for forming battalion. It waa the night surprise : Wheelock and Bonsejour were upon us suddenly. Everybody knows what Chattawauga was like. We fought hard but the circumstances were against the Harvard battalion, Though Burnside held his own in the centre, to be sure, the right wing had a bad time of it, and seventy-two of us Harvard boys were taken prisoners. I am not writing a history of the war, so I shall only say, without attempting to explain it, that we were marched off at once to Bonsejour's rear, and sent by train next day to Richmond. There we remained for five months, alose prisoners, without one word from home, and, what to me was ten thousand times worse, without possibility of communicating with Eldie. Elsie, no doubt, would think I was dead. That thought alone was a perpetual torture to me. Wonld Tyack take advantage of my absence ? Elsie was mine ; I knew I could trust her. At the end of five months the other men were released on parole, They offered me the same terms, but I refused to accept them. I seemed to me a question of principle. I had pledged myself already to fight to the death for my country, and I couldn't forswear myself by making terms with rebels. We of the old New England stock took a serious view of the war and its meaning ; we didn't look upon it as a vast national armed picnic party. Even for Elsie's sake I would not consent to purchase a useless freedom by what I regarded as a public treachery. I could not have loved Elsie so much " loved I not honour more," as the poet of our common country phrases it. I was left thp only prisoner in the old barracks in Clay street, Richmond, and of course was accordingly but little guarded. A few weeks later an opportunity occurred for me to get away. A wounded soldier from the front, straggling in by himself from the iDtrenchments, fainted opposite the Clay street barracks, and was hastily brought in and put to bed there, the hospital accomodation in the city being already more than overcrowded. Ii the dusk of the evening I conveyed his clothes to my own room, and next day I put them on— a tattared and blood-stained Confederate uniform. Then, having shaved off my beard wtih a piece of hoop iron, well sharpened against a bone, I passed out boldly before the very eyes of the lounging sentry, and made my way across the streets of the half-beleaguer-ed city. I waited till nightfall in the rotunda of the Exchange Hotell in Franklin street, where men sat and smoked and discussed the news ; and when the lamps began to be lighted around the State Capitol. I slunk off along the river side, so as to avoid being hailed, and challeuged by the sentries, who held all the approaches from the direction of Washington. In those days, I need hardly say, strong lines of earthworks were drawn around Richmond City on the north, east, and weit where Lee was defending it; and it was only along the river southward that any road was left fairly open into the country. I went by the river bank, therefore, onward and onward, till the city lights faded slowly one by one into the darknes9 behind me. I passed a few soldiers here and there on the road, but my Confederate uniform sufficiently protected me from any unfavourable notice. If any of them hailed me with a " Hullo, stranger I where are you off this time of evening t" my answer was easy. " Straight from the front. Sick leav«: Just discharged from hospital in Lee's division." Southern chivalry nodded and then passed on without further parley. I was going, in fact, in the wrong direction for many questions to be asked me in passing. Everybody from the Soutu was hurrying up to the front : a wounded soldier straggling homeward attracted then but little attention. {To be ctntinued.)