When God Laughs | Page 6

If to kiss once were wise, was it not wiser to kiss not at all?
Thus could they keep Love alive. Fasting, he would knock forever at
their hearts.
"Perhaps it was out of their heredity that they achieved this unholy
concept. The breed will out and sometimes most fantastically. Thus in
them did cursed Albion array herself a scheming wanton, a bold, cold-
calculating, and artful hussy. After all, I do not know. But this I know:
it was out of their inordinate desire for joy that they forewent joy.
"As he said (I read it long afterward in one of his letters to her): 'To
hold you in my arms, close, and yet not close. To yearn for you, and
never to have you, and so always to have you.' And she: 'For you to be
always just beyond my reach. To be ever attaining you, and yet never
attaining you, and for this to last forever, always fresh and new, and

always with the first flush upon us.
"That is not the way they said it. On my lips their love-philosophy is
mangled. And who am I to delve into their soul-stuff? I am a frog, on
the dank edge of a great darkness, gazing goggle-eyed at the mystery
and wonder of their flaming souls.
"And they were right, as far as they went. Everything is good . . . as
long as it is unpossessed. Satiety and possession are Death's horses;
they run in span.
"'And time could only tutor us to eke Our rapture's warmth with
custom's afterglow.'
"They got that from a sonnet of Alfred Austin's. It was called 'Love's
Wisdom.' It was the one kiss of Madeline de Maupin. How did it run?
"'Kiss we and part; no further can we go; And better death than we
from high to low Should dwindle, or decline from strong to weak.'
"But they were wiser. They would not kiss and part. They would not
kiss at all, and thus they planned to stay at Love's topmost peak. They
married. You were in England at the time. And never was there such a
marriage. They kept their secret to themselves. I did not know, then.
Their rapture's warmth did not cool. Their love burned with increasing
brightness. Never was there anything like it. The time passed, the
months, the years, and ever the flame-winged lute-player grew more
resplendent.
"Everybody marvelled. They became the wonderful lovers, and they
were greatly envied. Sometimes women pitied her because she was
childless; it is the form the envy of such creatures takes.
"And I did not know their secret. I pondered and I marvelled. As first I
had expected, subconsciously I imagine, the passing of their love. Then
I became aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained.
Then I became curious. What was their secret? What were the magic
fetters with which they bound Love to them? How did they hold the

graceless elf? What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had
Tristram and Iseult of old time? And whose hand had brewed the fairy
drink?
"As I say, I was curious, and I watched them. They were love-mad.
They lived in an unending revel of Love. They made a pomp and
ceremonial of it. They saturated themselves in the art and poetry of
Love. No, they were not neurotics. They were sane and healthy, and
they were artists. But they had accomplished the impossible. They had
achieved deathless desire.
"And I? I saw much of them and their everlasting miracle of Love. I
puzzled and wondered, and then one day--"
Carquinez broke off abruptly and asked, "Have you ever read, 'Love's
Waiting Time'?"
I shook my head.
"Page wrote it--Curtis Hidden Page, I think. Well, it was that bit of
verse that gave me the clue. One day, in the window-seat near the big
piano--you remember how she could play? She used to laugh,
sometimes, and doubt whether it was for them I came, or for the music.
She called me a 'music-sot' once, a 'sound-debauchee.' What a voice he
had! When he sang I believed in immortality, my regard for the gods
grew almost patronizing and I devised ways and means whereby I
surely could outwit them and their tricks.
"It was a spectacle for God, that man and woman, years married, and
singing love-songs with a freshness virginal as new-born Love himself,
with a ripeness and wealth of ardour that young lovers can never know.
Young lovers were pale and anaemic beside that long-married pair. To
see them, all fire and flame and tenderness, at a trembling distance,
lavishing caresses of eye and voice with every action, through every
silence--their love driving them toward each other, and they
withholding like fluttering moths,