The Ten-foot Chain Part 17

But Gaspard signaled him to hold his place. "You'll be all right in a second or so," he told his wife. He spoke gently; although, as a matter of fact, he himself could find nothing about those magnificent animals to offend the most delicate sensibility. "You'll be all right. You can come into the forge and sit down while I shoe the big gray."

"That will be worse than ever," wailed Susette.

Joseph the carter was an outspoken man, gruff and honest.

"And there's a woman for you," he said, "to be not only wed but welded to a smith! _Nom d'un tonnerre!_ Say, then, Gaspard, I'm in a hurry.

Shall we start with the gray?"

"Yes," Gaspard answered softly, as he continued to support Susette.

"No, no, no!" cried Susette. "Not to-day! I'm too sick."

"_Mais, cherie_," Gaspard began.

"You love your work better than you do me," sobbed Susette.

"_Nom d'un pourceau!_" droned Joseph.

"But this work is important," Gaspard argued desperately. "The gray has not only cast a shoe, but the shoes on the others are loose. They've got to be attended to. It's work that will bring me in a whole _ecu_."

"I don't care," said Susette. "I can't stand the smell of those horses, and I could never, never bear the smell of the hot iron on their hoofs."

"But I'm a smith," argued Gaspard.

It was his ultimate appeal.

"I told you that you loved your work more than you did me," whimpered Susette, beginning to cry. "'_I'm a smith; I'm a smith_'--that's all you've talked about since you got me in your power."

Joseph the carter went away. He did so shaking his head, followed by his s.h.i.+ning Percherons, which were as majestic as elephants, but as gentle as sheep. There was a tugging at Gaspard's heart as he saw them go.

Such horses! And no one could shoe a horse as could he. He looked down at Susette's bowed head as she lay there cuddled in his arms. That despairing cry was again swelling in his chest: "But I'm a smith." He silenced it. He stroked the girl's head.

As he did so, he was mindful as never before of the clink and jangle of the chain.

V.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked that afternoon as they lay out in the shade of the poplars along the river bank.

"I want you to love me," she answered.

"I do love you. But we can't live on love--can we, Susette?--however pleasant that would be. I've got to work."

"Ah, your _sacre_ work!"

"Still, you'll admit that you can't pick up _ecus_ in the road."

"You're thinking still of that miserable carter."

"No; but I'm thinking of his horses. Somebody's got to shoe them. You can't let them go lame--or be lamed by a bungler. I could have done that job as it should have been done."

"But I tell you," declared Susette, p.r.o.nouncing each word with an individual stress, "I can't support the grime and the odors and the racket of your forge. You ought to find some work that I do like. We could collect wild salads together--pick wild-flowers and sell them--something like that."

Gaspard sighed.

"But a man's work is his work," he averred.

"There you go again," said Susette, and the accusation was all the more d.a.m.ning in that it was spoken not in anger, but in grief. "Now that I've given myself to you--done all that you wished--you want to get rid of me; you want me to die."

"Haven't I told you a thousand times," cried Gaspard softly and pa.s.sionately, "that I love you more than any man has ever loved any woman? Haven't I spent whole days and nights--yes, years--of my life desiring you? Haven't I proven it? Come into my arms, Susette. Ah, when I have you in my arms like this--"

"And it's only like this that I know happiness, my love," breathed the girl. "Yes; I'm jealous! Jealous of everything that can take you from me, body or spirit, if even for a moment. All women are like that. We live in jealousy. What's work? What's ambition, honor, duty, gold as compared with love?"

But late that night Gaspard the smith roused himself softly from his couch. He lay there leaning on his elbow and stared out of the window of his cottage. Susette stirred at his side, undisturbed by the metallic clinking. Otherwise the night was one of engulfing, mystical silence.

Just outside the cottage the great river Rhone flowed placid and free in the light of the young moon. Up from the river-bottoms ran the vine-clad slopes of Burgundy as fragrant as gardens. There was no wind. It was all swoon and mystery.

"Lord G.o.d!" cried Gaspard the smith in his heart.

It was a prayer as much as anything--an inspiration that he couldn't get otherwise into words.

He was of that race of artist-craftsmen whose forged iron and fretted steel would continue to stir all lovers of beauty for centuries to come.

"It's true," that inner voice of his spoke again, "that desire is the driving force of the world. 'Twas desire in the heart of G.o.d that led to creation. 'Tis so with us, His creatures--desire that makes us love and embellish. But when desire is satisfied, then desire is dead, and then--and then--"

And yet, as he lay there, buffeted by an emotion which he either would not or could not express, his eyes gradually focused on the castle of the great Duke of Burgundy up there on top of the hill--washed in moonlight, dim and vast; and it was as if he could see the Princess Gabrielle at her cas.e.m.e.nt, kneeling there, communing with the night as he was doing.

Did she weep?

He had caught that message in her eyes as she had looked at him up there in the castle hall--had seen the same message before.

But never had she looked so beautiful--or as she looked now in retrospect--skin so white, mouth so tender, shape so stately, yet so slim and graceful. Oddly enough, thought of her now filled him with a vibrancy, with a longing.

And brave! Hadn't she shown herself to be brave though--to stand up like that there before her grandfather, him whom all Europe called Louis the Terrible, and declare herself ready to be welded to the man of her choice! She wouldn't faint in the presence of horses! And where couldn't a man go if led by a guardian angel like that? Slaves had become emperors; blacksmiths had forged armies, become the architects of cathedrals.

His breathing went deep, then deeper yet. The sweat was on his brow. He sat up. He seized the chain in his powerful hands, made as if he were going to tear it asunder.

But after that moment of straining silence he again lifted his face.

"_Seigneur-Dieu_," he panted; "if--if I only had it to do over again!"

VI.

"It's Gaspard the smith," said the frightened page. "He craves the honor of an interview."

The duke looked up from his parchment.

"Gaspard the smith?"