“From the organ. If one wants to read the riddle of human nature let him listen to the organ for ten minutes. It lashes the soul—the emotional nature—up to its utmost possibilities. One knows instinctively—that is, if one is given to reasoning at all; for instincts are dead letters without analysis—that only one other force can cause a mightier tumult, a greater exaltation. Those that do not reason mistake it for a desire to spread their wings and fly to the throne of grace.”
Bourke set his lips and looked at the floor. “Of course you are right,” he said. “A man would never know that until he had felt it. It takes a woman to divine it. Perhaps it is as well he doesn’t know it—there is one disappointment the less in life if such moments never come to him; and I doubt if they come to many. Either the savage is too strong in most of us, or we never come within range of the responsive spark. I have held that if there is any meaning at all in the progress of man out of barbarism it is that he shall become a brain with a refinement and intensity of passion which shall give happiness without disgust. But you go beyond me.”
“Oh, we are both right,” said Patience, rising. “We are much better off than our ancestors. I like so much to talk to you. When I am free you must come to see me often.”
“I shall, indeed. How gracefully you fan yourself. I never saw any one use the fan in exactly the same way.”
“I learned how from the old Spanish women in Monterey. They hold the thumb outwards, you know. That makes all the difference in the world. Au revoir.”
XII
The trial began on the eighth of March. Patience slept ill the night before, and arose early. She looked forward to the day’s ordeal with mingled nervousness and curiosity. Her faith in Bourke was complete, and her mind was of the order that craves experience. She could not divest herself of the idea that she was about to play the part of heroine in a great human drama. And assuredly there has been no such theatre as the court room since the world began.
She dressed herself with extreme care, in a tailor frock and toque of black and white. The costume was becoming, but she shook her head at her reflection in the mirror: hers was not the type of beauty to appeal to the class of men in whose hands her life would be; rather they would resent its cold pride, its manifest of race and civilisation. She remembered her youthful satisfaction in the fact that “common men did not like her.” Rosita or Honora would carry a jury by storm, but she was too subtle to appeal to men outside of her own social sphere. Tarbox liked her because she was game and dependent on him for comfort: it was doubtful if he thought her pretty. He came up at ten minutes to ten. He wore a new suit of clothes, and looked excited and impatient.
“There’s a lot of swells come,” he said without preliminary; “some from New York and some from the county. We’ve got ’em up in the gallery, and they look fine in their new spring clothes, I tell you. First time I ever seen swells in this court house. I rather thought they didn’t go in for that kind of thing.”
“They go in for fads, and you can as easily tell where lightning will strike next as what will be the next fad to possess fashionable women. Where is Mr. Bourke?”