I had no opportunity now to tell Douglas that I had found Zoe. Her own
injunctions to keep her whereabouts a secret appealed to me. Perhaps her
going away, the changing of her name, her determination to keep her life
free from mine, made for a real solution. Perhaps she could continue in
this way for years, taking from me what I might send her. Perhaps I
could marry Dorothy eventually. Perhaps all would be well. Perhaps!
When we were driving toward Springfield the next day I was on the point
several times of telling Douglas that I had found Zoe. I wanted to
discuss the possibilities with some one. Prudence, however, dictated
silence--and silence I kept.
Mr. Williams was a prospering lawyer and land speculator. He had been in
Chicago for two years. His household consisted of Mrs. Williams and two
children, and a Miss Walker from Connecticut, a sister of Mrs. Williams.
The house was new and of some architectural pretentions, of brick, in
the style of the houses I had seen in New York. It was well furnished.
There were two servants; altogether an air of elegance about the
establishment.
We had a gay hour at breakfast, for Douglas was in one of his most
engaging and talkative moods. Mr. Williams was a man in the middle
forties, and seemed colorless and unschooled in comparison with Douglas.
He shared Douglas' political opinions, looked upon him with a certain
awe; while Mrs. Williams and the children kept a reverential silence.
But Miss Walker! I saw that she was disposed to match wits with Douglas.
She was exceedingly fair of complexion, with lovely brown hair and
gray-blue eyes, which had a way of fixing themselves in an expression of
intense concentration. Like sudden spurts of flame they lighted quickly
upon the barely suggested point of a story or an argument. She laughed
freely in a musical voice that encouraged Douglas to multiply anecdotes.
Douglas enjoyed this admiration. But after all his attitude toward women
was wholly conventional. He did not use his gifts to win them. The idea
of making conquests, even through his growing celebrity, did not enter
into his speculations. He was a man's man. If he was ever to be
interested in a woman it would be in the practical way of making her his
wife. He could be a husband, never a lover. His genius, though fed by
passion and virility, entertained no visions of romantic ecstasy. His
instinct was for the laws.
Miss Walker was to Douglas only a delightful auditor, an apt
interlocutor. She looked Douglas through and through. She dropped words
of dissent. She expressed her abhorrence of slavery and the South. In
referring to South Carolina's attempted nullification of the tariff law,
she said that if they ever attempted to secede they should be pushed
out of the door and not held. I thought her critical of Douglas, in
spite of the amazement which her eyes betrayed for his conversational
gifts, his self-assurance and brilliancy. Once she said that there was a
right and wrong about everything. And when Douglas glanced up at her
quickly, her eyes fixed him steadily. Douglas took up this challenge by
saying: "Yes, but who is to decide what is right and what is wrong; or
what is to decide it? The progress of the country or the opinions of
fanatics?" "The minds of big men," retorted Miss Walker. "And since you
have spoken of a great territory for the United States let me bespeak
big men for it instead. Persia you know was a big country." "Why make
the two inconsistent?" asked Douglas. "You can have both." "No, not
where you make material progress the never-ending thought of every one."
Mr. Williams had many things on his mind, that was apparent. His haste
in eating, his self-absorption showed that. Yet after breakfast he
lingered for half an hour; and during this time Miss Walker, who had
noticed me no more up to now than as one of the persons at the table,
came to a seat near me in the living room. She was lovely to look at,
but in a way half prim. The whiteness of her forehead, the fineness of
her hands, her air of clear and quick intellectuality, made her a person
to inspire something of deference. And yet I felt myself captivated by
her. Surely in every thinking man's heart there is a biological groping
toward a woman of mind. Shadowy forms rise undistinguished before him.
They are the children that such a woman can bear. He does not know that
this is the urge; but nature knows. On Miss Walker's part, I saw her
appraising me. She had come west where life was luxuriant and the
accidents of fortune abundant and men were strong. She had now
overstayed her visit with Mrs. Williams. Was to-day her day of destiny?
Here before her were the rising statesman of Illinois and a man who had
increased a fortune.
She was coming to Springfield shortly to visit. Would I be there? Did I
know the Ridgeway family there, of which Edward Ridgeway, the founder,
had been prominent in the affairs of Illinois, now dead some five years?
If I came to Springfield she would be glad to have me call upon her.
Well, perhaps she liked me and did not like Douglas after all. Was I
drawn to her? I felt some definite interest in her, that was sure. But I
was not forgetting Dorothy. Dorothy could not be obscured by a light as
white as Miss Walker's. And yet I had to confess that I was thinking of
Miss Walker in a half serious way.