the drapes to complete his final mental preparations. He parted the drapes and strode across the podium to the sound of polite applause. Standing behind the lectern, he gazed out at the doubting, troubled faces of men searching for answers to questions they were afraid to ask. Caden smiled respectfully at Gabrielle and tipped his head in admiration.
Blushing in response, she adverted her eyes as she touched the lacy frilled collar of her peach, silk blouse.
So it is with each new suitor, even the most exquisite and charming. Emotion must be mastered by reason if the higher faculties were to prevail. Caden opened the first of two well-worn, leather bound books to his favorite passage. Although he could recite it word for word from memory, he preferred to glance at it quickly each time to glean a fresh abstract of meaning appropriate to a new audience.
He placed the tip of his index finger on the first word. Looking up he gazed out at the people before him. “Friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens of higher moral virtue, believe me when I say there is no storm with more fury than the one that rages in the soul of a race.”
Caden fixed his penetrating stare on the Gabrielle and her father. “Almost thirty years ago in The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote: ‘At some future period, not very distant . . . the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes will no doubt be exterminated . . .’”
He glanced over at a black haired, olive-skinned man sitting in the front row beside Arley. A young Mexican or Cuban no doubt, he kept glancing at Gabrielle in a most overly friendly way that irritated Caden and sparked an immediate pang of jealously. He cleared his throat. “‘The break between man and his nearest allies will be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state. We may hope that it will be the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now, between the Negro . . . and the gorilla.’”
The slight, young man with an uncommon pallor who had introduced himself as ‘Mr. Hadlee Sterne Foster’ and a friend of Arley’s earlier in the evening, held his hat in his hand and jabbed it toward the doctor. “All this talk lately about apes and monkeys. We’re civilized, Christian men—Texans, for God’s sake. It’s sacrilegious!”
Someone coughed at the back of the lecture hall. A well-dressed man rose to his feet and cleared his throat. His face was unfamiliar to Caden yet something about his presence demanded closer scrutiny.
The stranger held his hat in his hand and gestured toward Hadlee Foster. “My friend is right.” People twisted in their seats to watch him speak. “You speak as if we’re no better than the cannibal Indians that used to live around here. You talk of progress but from what I’ve read, sir, you believe that most of us are still no better than savages.”
Caden turned the page of his book and lowered his gaze upon the tall, well-built man with stern, pale features. “Excellent point, sir. I assure you and Mr. Foster, it is precisely because much of humanity is in the process of reverting to the ways of races like the Attacapa that men of the highest moral courage and character are needed for the difficult challenges that lay before us in the next century.”
He picked up his glass of water, sipped, and waited. Satisfied with the silence, he placed the glass down. “And my friend, we would not be debating the point if I thought you incapable of rising to the task.”
Caden paused and glimpsed Gabrielle raising a pink handkerchief to cover her smile. Her gaze seemed intensely focused on the stranger as though he was the only man in the room.
The stranger raised his head. “And who will lead us in the next century? Men like you or will men and women still have the freedom to choose the way God intended?”
Caden gripped both sides of the lectern and focused his concentration on the others. It was not often he engaged in a spirited debate with an audience member so early in a lecture but this intrusive gentleman had long enough turned their eyes and ears away from the podium. “Yes, but we cannot do this alone, gentlemen. Women will play the crucial role in obtaining our social