Part 5

In the two days past they had exhausted every theme of conversation, had wearied of every kind of amusement they could devise, and had pumped their hearts dry of language to proclaim and protest their affection for each other to lubricate the machinery of existence amid the friction of their disposition and temperament.

The day before Plaster had made a hit with a song, so he decided to fill every moment of that day until the sun sank below the horizon with vocal music, for song banishes conversation and song is not provocative of difference of opinion and argument--so he thought. While he and his wife were dressing, Plaster began:

"Does you know dat I am dyin' Fer a little bit of love? Everywhar dey hears me sighin' Fer a little bit of love. Fer dat love dat grows mo' strong, Fills de heart wid hope and song, I has waited--oh, so long-- Fer a little bit of love."

"Whut makes you sing so dang loud, Plaster?" Pearline asked wearily, as she rested her head upon her hands. "You sounds like a brayin' jackace mournin' because he done tumbled down a open well."

"One time you said you liked my singin'," Plaster retorted.

"I couldn't tell you whut I really thought about it in dem sad days," Pearline remarked.

They ate their noon meal in silence because neither could think of anything to say. Plaster had got the hook at the very beginning of his musical career, and the things he thought of to say were not fit for utterance or publication.

As they rose from the table, they looked with surprise out of the window.

A long procession of negroes approached the cabin. All were dressed in their best clothes and the Rev. Vinegar Atts was in the lead.

The bridal pair suddenly remembered something, and they stepped out on the porch to receive them as they filled the space in front of the house.

Vinegar took his famous preaching attitude in front of the porch, inflated his lungs and began:

"Brudder an' Sister Sickety, us is all rejoiced dat you two honey-loves is got mighty nigh through wid yo' honey-tower widout no fuss or fight. We welcomes you back to our sawsiety wid glad arms. We hopes dat you will love each yuther mo' or less an' off an' on ferever! We knows dat you has well earnt dis house an' lot dat Marse John Flournoy has gib you an' we cullud folks wants to make you a present of a few change so you kin buy some nice house-furnicher an' start out fresh an' new."

Thereupon Vinegar laid his stove-pipe hat upside down upon the floor of the porch, turned and surveyed the assembly while he mopped his bald head with a yellow bandana handkerchief.

"Walk right up, brudders an' sisters, an' drap yo' few change in dis stove-pipe preachin'-hat!"

They came up one by one, laughingly depositing their money, and pausing to shake hands with the bride and groom.

When the ceremony ended, Vinegar emptied his hat upon the floor of the porch, placed it upon his head with a farewell flourish, and led the negroes out of the yard.

"Dis money is de fambly secret dem three nigger womens whispered to me, honey," Pearline giggled.

"Dat's de myst'ry dem three committee fellers tole me," Plaster chuckled.

The two sat down and counted the money--twenty-five dollars and thirty cents!

"Dat thuty cents is yourn to spend foolish, Pearline," Plaster said generously as he pushed three dimes toward her and clutched with both hands at the rest.

"Hol' on nigger!" Pearline snapped. "I ain't no bayou minnow to git jes' a little nibble of dat money--half of dat cash spondulix is mine."

"Yes'm, but I is de man of de fambly an' I oughter keep it an' han' it out to you as you needs it."

"I needs my half right now," Pearline snapped, placing both her hands upon the clutching paws of Plaster Sickety.

"Whut you gwine do wid twelve dollars an' fo' bits?" Plaster demanded in irate tones.

"Buy me a hat!" Pearline told him.

"You's a fool!" Plaster informed her. "Female hats ain't furnicher."

"Dis money furnishes me wid a hat," she announced positively.

Then they sat for a few minutes in silence, both keeping their hands spread out over the money.

"Whut you gwine do wid yo' twelve dollars an' fo' bits?" Pearline demanded at last.

"I figgers on buyin' a fiddle," Plaster told her. "Plenty money kin be made playin' fiddles, an' I b'lieves I could learn to fiddle ef I had a good chance."

"I ain't gwine hab no fiddlin' nigger in my house," Pearline snorted. "I's druther be married to a phoneygraft."

"You ain't gwine be married to nothin' very long ef you don't leggo dis money, nigger!" Plaster snarled.

"I is."

"You ain't."

"Don't gimme no sass."

"You sassed me fust."

The woman raised one hand from the money and made an unexpected sideswipe at Plaster's jaw with her open palm. The blow landed with a smack that jarred the very marrow of his bones and keeled him over the edge of the porch to the ground. As he fell sprawling, the chain tightened and jerked Pearline off her perch and she fell to the ground with a squall. Then for ten minutes there was a Kilkenny cat scrap on the front lawn.

Pearline bit and scratched and pulled hair and tore clothes. She had decidedly the best of the rookus until her unusual activities caused her to get a twist of the chain around her neck. Plaster thanked the Lord and choked her into inaction and submission by the simple process of pretending to escape from her and thus tightening the chain.

When she was choked almost to suffocation, he edged her to the porch, lifted the twenty-five dollars and thirty cents into his own pockets, and released the chain.

When Pearline recovered her breath she dropped flat upon the ground at her feet and howled like a Comanche until the going down of the sun.

Plaster did not attempt to console or quiet her. When he spoke again, he reached out and touched the bawling woman with his foot.

"Git up idjit!" he exclaimed. "Marse John expecks us to come an' repote to him an' git dese here handcuffs tuck off."

Sheriff John Flournoy was waiting for them as they came across his lawn to the porch where he sat.

Then for half an hour he listened to a tirade of crimination and recrimination which crackled with profane expletives like thorns under a pot. When Plaster paused to breathe, Pearline took up the complaint. When Pearline stopped from exhaustion, Plaster resumed his lamentations.

When the storm of vituperation subsided, Flournoy sat in his chair like a man who had been pounded over the head with a brick. It was some time before he could formulate his ideas. Then he spoke with difficulty.

"I judge from what I have heard that your three days' experience together has convinced you that your tastes are entirely dissimilar and your natures incompatible."

"Yes, suh, dat's c'reck."

"The information you offer conveys to me the impression that a woman loves shadows, but a man loves sunshine and glare; a woman loves dress, but a man loves tobacco; a woman desires daintiness and neatness attended with any degree of discomfort, but a man prefers comfort with no matter how much litter and mess; a woman loves indoor sports, like sewing, and a man loves outdoor sports, like whittling sticks and making the acquaintance of a hound-dog with fleas on his body and mud on his feet; a man loves to sing and hear himself sing, and the woman prefers to hear some other man sing; a woman wants her female companions with their confidences and their secrets, and a man desires his male companions and their secrets, but neither party to the matrimonial alliance is willing that the partner should keep a secret. Am I right as far as I've gone?"

"Dat's right!" they said in positive tones.

"But de fuss part, Marse John, is de money!" the woman shrieked.

"Certainly," Flournoy agreed softly. "Matrimony is always a matter of money."

Then Flournoy took a key from his pocket and opened the bracelets on their wrists. The chain fell at their feet. The bride and bridegroom looked away, each ignoring the presence of the other.

Plaster Sickety thrust both hands into his pockets, brought out twenty-five dollars and thirty cents and laid it into the open palm of the sheriff.

"Fer Gawd's sake, git me a deevo'ce!" he pleaded.

"Make it two, Marse John," the girl urged. "I's plum' nauseated wid dat nigger man."

The bride and bridegroom turned and walked away, choosing different paths and going in opposite directions. They did not look back.

The sheriff stooped and picked up the rattling chain.

Then he went into the house and slammed the door.

The evening and the morning were the third day, and--

FOURTH TALE

PRINCESS OR PERCHERON

BY PERLEY POORE SHEEHAN

I.

Some queer things had taken place in this same hall--some very queer things; but there were indications that this present affair was going to be queerer yet.

The old duke always had been a worthy descendant of his ancestors; like them, a little mad, with flashes of genius, very fine, very brutal, a murderer at heart, with a love for poetry and philosophic speculation.

The guests were already in a smiling tremor of curiosity when they arrived. Some of them whispered among themselves:

"It's on account of the Princess Gabrielle."

"They say the duke is furious."

"Not astonishing. But--a marriage! How can there be a marriage?"

Yet it looked as if a marriage there would be. Manifestly, the hall had been prepared for some such event.

It was a chamber long, lofty and broad, walled and floored with the native Burgundy rock, richly carpeted, hung with tapestry. And down a portion of the length of this ran a wide table already spread with the viands of a wedding-feast--huge cold pasties, hams and boarheads beautifully jellied, fresh and candied fruits from Spain and Sicily, flagons and goblets of crystal, silver, and gold.

What aroused curiosity and conjecture to the highest point, however, was the discovery that the immense fireplace of the hall had been transformed into a forge. It was a forge complete--bellows and hearth, anvil and tub, hammers and tongs. There was even a smutty-faced imp there to tend the forge fire, which already hissed and glowed as he worked the bellows.

"Aha! So there _was_ a smith mixed up in the affair, after all!"

"_Mais oui!_ Gaspard, the smith, whose forge is down there on the banks of the Rhone."

"But what does the duke intend to do?"

It was a question which more than one was asking. There was never any forecasting what a whim of the duke might lead him to do even in ordinary circumstances--declare war on France, call a new Crusade. And now, with this menace of scandal in his family!

There in front of the fireplace where the forge had been set up, the valets had placed the ducal chair. All the same, the arrangements had something sinister about them. There fell a period of silence touched with panic. But not for long. Curiosity was too acute and powerful to be long suppressed. The whispering resumed:

"The duke surprised them together--the princess and her smith."

"It looks like the torture for one or both."

"They say the fellow's an Apollo, a Hercules."

"You wait until the duke--"

"Silence! He comes."

One of the large doors toward the farther end of the hall was thrown open, and through this there came a surge of music--hautboys, viols, and flutes. Two guardsmen came in, helmeted, swords drawn, and took up their stations at either side of the door.

There entered the duke.

He looked the philosopher, perhaps, if not the student--tall, bent, bony; a brush of white hair bristling over the top of his high and narrow head; a fleshless face, sardonic and humorous. The guests were pleased to see that his mood was amiable. He came forward smiling, waved his musicians into retreat; and half a dozen valets were assisting him into his chair as he greeted his guests. They all bent the knee to him. Some kissed his hand--and some he kissed, especially those who were fair and of the opposite sex.

If Princess Gabrielle had shown herself fragile in the matter of her affections, well, she had come by her failing honestly.

Seated in his chair, the duke delivered himself of a little pun which convulsed his audience--something about "court and courtship": "_Je fais--la cour._"

And with no other preliminary he spoke to a page:

"Summon _mademoiselle_."

Then to another:

"Fetch in the smith."

There was a bitter smile on his face as he sank back into his chair and studied the forge set up in the fireplace. The imp went white under his smudge and worked the bellows until the fire on the hearth was spouting like a miniature Vesuvius.

The wait was brief.

Once more the musicians struck into the royal march of Burgundy, and there was the Princess Gabrielle.

Every one who looked at her must have experienced some thrill of the heart--envy, desire, pure admiration. It was impossible to look at her without some emotion; for she was eighteen, slender, white and passionate; with dusky, copper-colored hair hanging in two heavy curls forward over her brilliantly tender shoulders; and she had a broad, red mouth, and slightly dilated nostrils; dark eyes, liquid and heavily fringed, with disquieting shadows under them.

She came forward with a number of maidens in her train, but she so dominated them that she appeared to be alone. She took her time. She was a trifle rebellious, perhaps. But she was brave, not to say bold. She tossed her head slightly. She smiled. She and her maidens, familiar with the duke's intentions, grouped themselves at one side of the improvised forge. Every one present was still looking at her when there came a rough command:

"Stand aside!"

A good many of the guests were not in the habit of hearing orders except from the duke himself; but the command came again:

"Stand aside! Let me pass--me and my people!"

At that there was a rapid shifting of the crowd and a whispered cry:

"The smith! It's Gaspard the smith!"

And he attracted even more attention than the princess had done; for, manifestly, here was not only a man who could play the game of love, but could play the game of life and death as well--to shout out like this, and come striding like this into the presence of his ruler.

But he looked the part.

He was all of six feet tall, blond and supple and beautifully fleshed. He was wearing his blacksmith's outfit of doeskin and leather, but he was scoured and shaven to the pink. His great arms were bare; and the exquisitely sculptured muscles of these slipped and played under a skin as white as a woman's.

He stood there with his shoulders back, his arms folded, feet apart. But, curiously, there was no insolence in the posture. Insolence is a quality of the little heart, the little soul, and shows itself in the eyes. Gaspard the smith had gentle blue eyes, large, dark, fearless, and with a certain brooding pride in them. There may have been even a hint of virgin bashfulness in them as well, during that moment he glanced at the Princess Gabrielle. Then he had looked at the duke, and all his courage had come back to him, perhaps also a suggestion of challenge.

But neither had the smith come into the ducal presence alone.

There were two old people--a man and a woman, peasants, both of them very poor, very humble, so frightened that they could breathe only with their mouths open; and so soon as they were inside the circle of guests, they had dropped to their knees. The other member of the smith's party would have done the same had he permitted. This was a girl of twenty or so, likewise a peasant, healthy, painfully abashed, but otherwise not notable. To her the smith had given a nudge and a word of encouragement, so that now she stood close to him and back of him.

"Our friends," said the duke, with studied nonchalance, "we are about to present to you the initial operation of scientific experiment. Like all scientific research, this also should be judged solely by its possible contribution to the advancement of human happiness. Ourself, we feel that this contribution will be great. God knows it is concerned with a problem that is both elusive and poignant."

All this was rather above Gaspard's head. He turned to the imp at the bellows.

"Stop blowing that fire so hard," he whispered. "You're wasting charcoal."

The duke smiled grimly.

"The problem," he continued, "is this: Can any man and woman, however devoted, continue to love each other if they are too closely held together?"

There was a slight movement among some of the younger gentlemen and ladies present--a few knowing smiles.

"There have always been those who answered _No_; there have always been those who answered _Yes_," the duke went on. "Which were right?" No answer. "My granddaughter here, while having her horse shod some weeks ago, became enamored of this worthy subject of mine." He nodded toward the smith. "She would have him. She would have no one else. We knew how hopeless would be any attempt to impose our will--in an affair of the heart." He smiled gallantly. "We are familiar with the breed."

"Long live the House of Burgundy," cried the chivalrous young Vicomte de Mâcon. But the duke silenced him with a look.

"And now," said the duke, "we wish to test this so great passion of hers--test it under conditions that while apparently extraordinary are none the less classical and scientific. Our experiment is this--"

For the first time since he began to speak the duke now leaned forward, and both his face and his voice took on that quality which made his name a source of trembling from Spain to Denmark.

"Our experiment is this:

"_To have the princess and her smith, whom she is so sure she loves, handcuffed and linked together by a ten-foot chain._"

II.

There was a gasp from the audience. Every one stared at the princess. Even the duke himself. Without turning his head he took her in with his furtive eyes.

"_Mlle. la Princess_," he said icily, "was good enough to insist upon the sacrifice."

At this, a stain of richer color slowly crept up the throat of the Princess Gabrielle; there came a touch of extra fire to her eyes. Perhaps she would have spoken. But the duke hadn't finished yet.

"We'll see whether she loves him so much or not," said the duke. "We'll give them three days of it--three days to go and come as they wish--and to do as they wish--together--always together--bound to each other by their ten-foot chain."

But while the excitement caused by the duke's announcement was still crisping the nerves of every one present, the smith had cast one more glance in the direction of the Princess Gabrielle. And this time their eyes met. There were those who saw a glint of terror--of delicious terror--in the eyes of the princess; and in the eyes of Gaspard a look intended to be reassuring.

Then the smith had unfolded his arms, thrust them forward.

"Wait," he cried.

At that there was a fresh sensation.

For it was seen that one of his wrists--his left--was already encircled by a bracelet of shining steel, forged there of a single piece, and that to the bracelet itself there was forged a link, fine but powerful, and that other links ran back over his shoulder.

"Ha!" snarled the duke. "So you've come prepared!"

"By the grace of God!" replied Gaspard the smith, unafraid. He cast a look about him, brought his eyes back to the duke. "_Moi_, Gaspard," he said, "I forge my own chains--always! I'm a smith, I am."

The two old people kneeling just back of him began to sob and to groan. Gaspard turned and looked down at them.

"Shut up," he ordered; "I'm talking."

He smiled at the duke. He explained.

"You see, they're frightened," he said. "When I found out what your highness and your highness's lady-granddaughter were planning up here in the castle, why, I went to these old folks and told them that I wanted their daughter Susette."

"I suppose you loved her," the duke put in with ironical intent.

But the smith saw no reason for irony.

"Eh, _bon Dieu_!" he ejaculated. "And save your highness's respect, we've loved each other ever since we were out of the cradle, we have. So I made the old folks consent. I'm a smith, I am. I forge my own chains. Stand around, Susette! His highness won't hurt you. Look!"

He stepped aside. He gave a gentle thrust to the girl who had been sheltering back of him. The chain rattled.

And there was another cry of surprise.

One of the girl's wrist's also was ornamented with a steel handcuff tightly welded. Not only that, but to this also was attached a chain. The smith threw up his arm. It was the same chain that was welded to his own handcuff--ten feet of it, glistening steel, unbreakable.

"There's your ten-foot chain, highness," cried Gaspard. "And it's no trick-chain, either," he added. "It's a chain that will hold. You bet it will. I forged it myself, and I know. It's a chain you couldn't buy. Why? Because--because the iron of it's mixed with love. Nor can it be cut, nor filed, nor broken. I'm a smith, I am. And each link of it I tempered myself--with sweat and blood."

There for a time it was a question--possibly a question in the mind of the duke himself--just how many minutes the smith still had to live. Many a valet had been executed for less. During a period of about thirty seconds the duke's face went black. Then the blackness dispersed. He slowly smiled.

After all, he wasn't to be cheated of his experiment.

But he answered the question that was in his own mind and the minds of all the others there as he looked at the smith and said:

"Fool, you'll be sufficiently punished--by your own device."

He let his eyes drift again to the Princess Gabrielle.

"And thou," he said, "art sufficiently punished already."

III.

It happened to be a day of late spring; and as Gaspard and this strangely wedded bride of his and her parents came out of the castle, both fed and forgiven, it must have seemed to all of them that this was the most auspicious moment of their lives. The old folks, who had partaken freely of the generous wines pressed upon them, had now passed from their trembling terror to a spirit of frolic. Arm in arm, their sabots clogging, they did a rigadoon down the winding road. It was a spirit of tender elation, though, that dominated Gaspard and Susette. They were like two beings distilled complete from the mild and fragrant air, the sweet mistiness of the verdant valley, the purpling solemnity of the Juras.

"What did he mean, his highness?" asked Susette as she pressed the smith's arm closer to her side. "What did he mean that you'd be punished by your own device?"

Gaspard looked down at her, pressed her manacled wrist to his lips, took thought.

"I don't know," he answered gently. "He must be crazy. It's like calling it punishment when a true believer receives the reward of paradise."

"You love me so much as that?"

"_Pardi!_" he ejaculated. "And thou?"

"So much," she palpitated, "so much that when you looked at the princess like that--I wished you were blind!"

At the bottom of the hill, the old folks, Burgundians to the souls of them, happily bade the young couple to be off about their own affairs. They knew how it was with young married people. The old were obstacles--so they themselves well recalled--albeit that was more than twenty years ago.

Said Gaspard fondly: "This business has put me back in my work; but we'll call this a holiday. Shall we go to my cottage or into the forest? I know of a secret place--"

"Into the forest," whispered Susette. "I don't like the forge. It makes me think--think of that cursed princess--and of the work that almost lost you to me." Her blue eyes filmed as she looked up at him. "Oh, Gaspard, I also have dreamed so much--of love--a life of love with thee!"