“Spoken with real gallantry; you will be a courtier yet, Hodge. But that was a proposal, wasnt it?”
“Yes,” I answered grimly; “if you will consider one from me. I can’t think of any good reason why you should.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “I don’t know what reason has to do with it. It is what I always intended; that was why I blushed so when Hiro Agati blurted out what everyone could see.”
Later I said, “Catty, can you ever forgive me for the wasted years? You say you werent jealous of Barbara, but surely if she and I—that is ... anyway, forgive me.” “Dear Hodge, there’s nothing to forgive. Love is not a business transaction, nor a case at law in which justice is sought, nor a reward for having good qualities. I understand you, Hodge, better I think than you understand yourself. You are not satisfied with what is readily obtained, otherwise you would have been content back in—what is the name?—Wappinger Falls. I have known this for a long time and I could, I think—you must excuse my vanity—have interested you at any moment by pretending fickleness. Just as I could have held you if I had given in that day. Besides, I think you will make a better husband for realizing you could not deal with Barbara.” I can’t say I entirely enjoyed this speech. I felt, in fact, rather humiliated, or at least healthily humbled. Which was no doubt what she intended, and as it should be. I never had the idea she was frail or insipid.
Nor did Catty’s explanation of a harem outlook satisfactorily account for the sudden friendliness of the two women after the engagement was announced. That Barbara should soften so toward a successful rival was incomprehensible and also disturbing.
Because both were fully occupied they actually spent little time together, but Catty visited the workshop, as they called the converted barn, whenever she had the chance and her real admiration for Barbara grew so that I heard too often of her genius, courage and imagination. I could hardly ask Catty to forego society I had so recently found enchanting nor establish a taboo against mention of a name I had lately whispered with ardor; still I felt a little foolish, and not quite as important as I might otherwise have thought myself.
Not that Catty didnt have proper respect and enthusiasm for my fortunes. I had completed my notes for Chancellorsville to the End—that is, I had a mass of clues, guideposts, keys, ideas, and emphases which would serve as skeleton for a work which might take years to write—and Catty was the audience to whom I explained and expounded and used as a prototype of the reader I might reach. Volume one was roughly drafted, and we were to be married as soon as it was finished, shortly after my thirtieth and Catty’s twenty-fourth birthday. There was little doubt the book would bring an offer from one of the great Confederate universities, but Catty was firm for a cottage like the Agatis’, and I could not conceive of being foolish enough to leave Haggershaven.
From Catty’s talk I knew Barbara was running into increasing difficulties now the workshop was complete and actual construction begun of what was referred to, with unnecessary crypticism I thought, as HX-1. The impending war created scarcities, particularly of such materials as steel and copper, of which latter metal HX-1 seemed inordinately greedy. I was not surprised when the fellows apologetically refused Barbara a new appropriation.
Next day Catty said, “Hodge, you know the haven wouldnt take my money.”
“And quite right too. Let the rest of us put in what we get; we owe it to the haven anyway. But the debt is the other way round in your case and you should keep your independence.”