When God Laughs | Page 8

through the weeks and months.
"They longed and yearned, with all the fond pangs and sweet delicious
agonies, with an intensity never felt by lovers before nor since.
"And then one day the drowsy gods ceased nodding. They aroused and
looked at the man and woman who had made a mock of them. And the
man and woman looked into each other's eyes one morning and knew
that something was gone. It was the flame-winged one. He had fled,
silently, in the night, from their anchorites' board.
"They looked into each other's eyes and knew that they did not care.
Desire was dead. Do you understand? Desire was dead. And they had
never kissed. Not once had they kissed. Love was gone. They would
never yearn and burn again. For them there was nothing left--no more
tremblings and flutterings and delicious anguishes, no more throbbing
and pulsing, and sighing and song. Desire was dead. It had died in the
night, on a couch cold and unattended; nor had they witnessed its
passing. They learned it for the first time in each other's eyes.
"The gods may not be kind, but they are often merciful. They had
twirled the little ivory ball and swept the stakes from the table. All that
remained was the man and woman gazing into each other's cold eyes.
And then he died. That was the mercy. Within the week Marvin Fiske
was dead-- you remember the accident. And in her diary, written at this
time, I long afterward read Mitchell Kennerly's:--
"'There was not a single hour We might have kissed and did not kiss.'"
"Oh, the irony of it!" I cried out.
And Carquinez, in the firelight a veritable Mephistopheles in velvet
jacket, fixed me with his black eyes.
"And they won, you said? The world's judgment! I have told you, and I
know. They won as you are winning, here in your hills."

"But you," I demanded hotly; "you with your orgies of sound and sense,
with your mad cities and madder frolics--bethink you that you win?"
He shook his head slowly. "Because you with your sober bucolic
regime, lose, is no reason that I should win. We never win. Sometimes
we think we win. That is a little pleasantry of the gods."

THE APOSTATE
"Now I wake me up to work; I pray the Lord I may not shirk. If I
should die before the night, I pray the Lord my work's all right. Amen."
"If you don't git up, Johnny, I won't give you a bite to eat!"
The threat had no effect on the boy. He clung stubbornly to sleep,
fighting for its oblivion as the dreamer fights for his dream. The boy's
hands loosely clenched themselves, and he made feeble, spasmodic
blows at the air. These blows were intended for his mother, but she
betrayed practised familiarity in avoiding them as she shook him
roughly by the shoulder.
"Lemme 'lone!"
It was a cry that began, muffled, in the deeps of sleep, that swiftly
rushed upward, like a wail, into passionate belligerence, and that died
away and sank down into an inarticulate whine. It was a bestial cry, as
of a soul in torment, filled with infinite protest and pain.
But she did not mind. She was a sad-eyed, tired-faced woman, and she
had grown used to this task, which she repeated every day of her life.
She got a grip on the bedclothes and tried to strip them down; but the
boy, ceasing his punching, clung to them desperately. In a huddle, at
the foot of the bed, he still remained covered. Then she tried dragging
the bedding to the floor. The boy opposed her. She braced herself. Hers
was the superior weight, and the boy and bedding gave, the former
instinctively following the latter in order to shelter against the chill of
the room that bit into his body.

As he toppled on the edge of the bed it seemed that he must fall
head-first to the floor. But consciousness fluttered up in him. He
righted himself and for a moment perilously balanced. Then he struck
the floor on his feet. On the instant his mother seized him by the
shoulders and shook him. Again his fists struck out, this time with more
force and directness. At the same time his eyes opened. She released
him. He was awake.
"All right," he mumbled.
She caught up the lamp and hurried out, leaving him in darkness.
"You'll be docked," she warned back to him.
He did not mind the darkness. When he had got into his clothes, he
went out into the kitchen. His tread was very heavy for so thin and light
a boy. His legs dragged with their own weight, which seemed
unreasonable because they were such skinny