IV.
"Gaspard! Gaspard!"
The smith sat up swiftly on his couch.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
All the same, in spite of certain disquieting dreams, it struck him as sweet and curious to be awakened like that by Susette. But he perceived that she was alarmed.
"Some one hammers at the door," she said.
Then he heard it himself, that thing he had already been hearing obscurely in his sleep.
"Coming!" he yelled. And he smilingly explained to Susette: It's my old friend, Joseph, the carter. He'd bring his work to me if he had to travel five leagues." And he was for jumping up and running to the door.
"Wait," cried Susette. "I'll have to go with you, and I can't be seen like this."
"That's right," said Gaspard. "That confounded chain! I'd forgotten all about it." So he called out again to his friend, and the two of them held quite a conversation while Susette tried to make herself presentable. But Gaspard turned to her as she shook her hair out for the third time, starting to rearrange it. "Quick!" he urged. "He's in a hurry. One of his horses has cast a shoe."
"You can't show yourself like that, either," cried Susette, playing for time.
"Me?" laughed Gaspard. "I'm a smith. I'd like to see a smith who couldn't show himself in singlet and apron!"
"You look like a brigand."
But he merely laughed: "Joseph won't mind."
And, indeed, Joseph the carter did appear to have but little thought for anything except the work in hand. For that matter, neither, apparently, did Gaspard. After the first few brief civilities and the inevitable jests about the chain, their attention was absorbed at once by the horses. There were four of these—Percherons, huge monsters with shaggy fetlocks and massive feet; yet Joseph and Gaspard went about lifting these colossal hoofs, and considering them as tenderly as if the two had been young mothers concerned with the feet of babes.
At last Susette let out a little cry, and both men turned to look at her.
"I faint," she said weakly.
And Gaspard sprang over and caught her in his arms. He was filled with pity. He was all gentleness.
"Are you sick?" he asked.
"It was the odor of the horses," Susette replied in her small voice.
Joseph the carter seemed to take this as some aspersion on himself. "Those horses don't smell," he asserted stoutly.
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, chérie," 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 écu."
"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 shining 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.