"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, pronouncing 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
damning 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
passionately, "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 God!" 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 God 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 casement, 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!"