When God Laughs | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset from the 1911
Mills and Boon edition.

WHEN GOD LAUGHS, AND OTHER STORIES

CONTENTS
WHEN GOD LAUGHS THE APOSTATE A WICKED WOMAN
JUST MEAT CREATED HE THEM THE CHINAGO MAKE
WESTING SEMPER IDEM A NOSE FOR THE KING THE
"FRANCIS SPAIGHT" A CURIOUS FRAGMENT A PIECE OF
STEAK

WHEN GOD LAUGHS (with compliments to Harry Cowell)
"The gods, the gods are stronger; time Falls down before them, all

men's knees Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb Like incense
toward them; yea, for these Are gods, Felise."
Carquinez had relaxed finally. He stole a glance at the rattling windows,
looked upward at the beamed roof, and listened for a moment to the
savage roar of the south-easter as it caught the bungalow in its
bellowing jaws. Then he held his glass between him and the fire and
laughed for joy through the golden wine.
"It is beautiful," he said. "It is sweetly sweet. It is a woman's wine, and
it was made for gray-robed saints to drink."
"We grow it on our own warm hills," I said, with pardonable California
pride. "You rode up yesterday through the vines from which it was
made."
It was worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever
really himself until he felt the mellow warmth of the vine singing in his
blood. He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, sober,
the high pitch and lilt went out of his thought-processes and he was
prone to be as deadly dull as a British Sunday--not dull as other men
are dull, but dull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte
Carquinez was when he was really himself.
From all this it must not be inferred that Carquinez, who is my dear
friend and dearer comrade, was a sot. Far from it. He rarely erred. As I
have said, he was an artist. He knew when he had enough, and enough,
with him, was equilibrium--the equilibrium that is yours and mine
when we are sober.
His was a wise and instinctive temperateness that savoured of the
Greek. Yet he was far from Greek. "I am Aztec, I am Inca, I am
Spaniard," I have heard him say. And in truth he looked it, a compound
of strange and ancient races, what with his swarthy skin and the
asymmetry and primitiveness of his features.