Now, sir, evidently in your forthcoming analysis of Gettysburg you hold (as I presume most Yankees do) to the theory of fortuitousness. We Southrons naturally ascribe the victory to the supreme genius of General Lee, regarding the factors of time and space not as forces in themselves but as opportunities for the display of his talents.
Needless to say, I hardly expect you to change your opinions, rooted as they must be in national pride. I only ask that before you commit them, and the conclusions shaped by them, to print, you satisfy yourself as a historian of their validity in this particular case. In other words, sir, as one of your readers (and may I add, one who has enjoyed your work), I should like to be assured that you have studied this classic battle as carefully as you have the engagements described in volume I.
With earnest wishes for your success, I remain, sir,
Cordially yours,
Jefferson Davis Polk
This letter from Dr. Polk, the foremost historian of our day, author of the monumental biography, The Great Lee, produced a crisis in my life. Had the Confederate professor pointed out flaws in my work or even reproached me for undertaking it at all without adequate equipment I would, I trust, have acknowledged the reproof and continued to the best of my ability. But this letter was an accolade. Without condescension Dr. Polk admitted me to the ranks of serious historians, only asking me to consider the depth of my evaluation.
Truth is, I was not without increasing doubts of my own. Doubts I had not allowed to rise to the surface of my mind and disturb my plans. Polk's letter brought them into the open.
I had read everything available. I had been over the ground between the Maryland line, South Mountain, Carlisle, and the Haven until I could draw a detail map from memory. I had turned up diaries, letters, and accounts which had not only never been published, but which were not known to exist until I hunted them down. I had so steeped myself in the period I was writing about that sometimes the two worlds seemed interchangeable and I could live partly in one, partly in the other.
Yet with all this, I was not sure I had the whole story, even in the sense of wholeness that historians, knowing they can never collect every detail, accept. I was not sure I had the grand scene in perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility that I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking Chancellorsville to the End so soon. I knew the shadowy sign, the one which says in effect, You are ready, had not been given. My confidence was shaken.
Was the fault in me, in my temperament and character, rather than in my preparation and use of materials? Was I drawing back from committing myself, from acting, from doing? That I had written the first volume was no positive answer, for it was but the fraction of a whole deed; if I withdrew now I could still preserve my standing as an onlooker.
But not to act was itself an action and answered neither Dr. Polk nor myself. Besides, what could I do? The entire work was contracted for. The second volume was promised for delivery some eighteen months hence. My notes for it were complete; this was no question of revising, but of wholly reexamining, revaluing, and probably discarding them for an entirely new start. It was a job so much bigger than the original, one so discouraging I felt I couldn't face it. It would be corrupt to produce a work lacking absolute conviction and cowardly to produce none.
Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in away at once heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said, “you're changing and developing, and for the better, even though I loved you as you were. Don't be afraid to put the book aside for a year—ten years if you have to. You must do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the publishers or the public say. But, Hodge, you mustn't, in your anxiety, or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustn't try any shortcuts. Promise me that.”
“I don't know what you're talking about, Catty dear. There are no shortcuts in writing history.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “Remember that, Hodge. Oh, remember it.”
XVII. HX-1
I could not bring myself to follow the promptings of my conscience and Catty's advice, nor could I use my notes as though Dr. Polk's letter had never come to shatter my complacency. As a consequence—without deliberately committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. The tasks assigned by the fellows for the general welfare of the Haven were not designed to take a major part of my time, and though I produced all sorts of revolutions in the stables and barns, I still managed to wander about, fretful and irritable, keeping Catty from her work, interrupting the Agatis and Midbin—I could not bring myself to discuss my problems with him—and generally making myself a nuisance. Inevitably I found my way into Barbara's workshop.
She and Ace had done a thorough job on the old barn. I thought I recognized Kimi's touch in the structural changes of the walls, the strong beams, and the rows of slanted-in windows which admitted light and shut out glare, but the rest must have been shaped by Barbara's needs.
Iron beams held up a catwalk running in a circle about ten feet overhead. On the catwalk there were at intervals what appeared to be batteries of telescopes, all pointed inward and downward at the center of the floor. Just inside the columns was a continuous ring of clear glass, perhaps four inches in diameter, fastened to the beams with glass hooks. Closer inspection proved the ring not to be in one piece but in sections, ingeniously held together with glass couplings. Back from this circle, around the walls, were various engines, all enclosed except for dial faces and regulators and all dwarfed by a mammoth one towering in one corner. From the roof was suspended a large, polished reflector.
There was no one in the barn, and I wandered about, cautiously avoiding the mysterious apparatus. For a moment I meditated, basely perhaps, that all this had been paid for with my wife's money. Then I berated myself, for Catty owed all to the Haven, as I did. The money might have been put to better use, but there was no guarantee it would have been more productive allotted to astronomy or zoology. During eight years I'd seen many promising schemes come to nothing.
“Like it, Hodge?”
Barbara had come up, unheard, behind me. This was the first time we had been alone together since our break, two years before.
“It looks like a tremendous amount of work,” I evaded.
“It was a tremendous amount of work.” For the first time I noticed that her cheeks were flushed. She had lost weight, and there were deep hollows beneath her eyes. “This construction has been the least of it. Now it's done. Or has begun. Depending how you look at it.”
“All done?”
She nodded, triumph accenting the strained look on her face. “First test today.”
“Oh well… in that case—”
“Don't go, Hodge. Please. I meant to ask you and Catty to the more formal trial, but now you're here for the preliminary I'm glad. Ace and Father and Oliver will be along in a minute.”
“Midbin?”
The familiar arrogance showed briefly. “I insisted. It'll be nice to show him the mind can produce something besides fantasies and hysterical hallucinations.”
I started to speak, then swallowed my words. The dig at Catty was insignificant compared with the supreme confidence, the abnormal assurance prompting invitations to witness a test which could only reveal the impossibility of applying her cherished theories. I felt an overwhelming pity. “Surely,” I said at last, seeking to make some preparation for the disillusionment certain to come, “surely you don't expect it to work the first time?”