Brent was up with the dawn. He heard a bird singing somewhere as he went down to the well to fill the bucket, and he stood in the street and looked at the sky with the eyes of a child. In the east and reaching to the zenith great ridges of tawny white cloud broke the intense blue of the sky. A mysterious golden light enveloped everything, the broken walls, the spire of the church, the grey-green hills, the murk of the woods, the tangled, unpruned orchards. Even the cobble-stones had a bloom of gold upon them. The brown blackness of Manon’s house loomed up against the dawn.
Brent’s face was a thing of delight. His beard had a more tawny richness, his eyes a deeper blue.
“By God—life’s good!”
He felt good, good to the core. When he had filled the bucket and drawn it up, the splashing water itself seemed to laugh in the early sunlight. Brent stood in the street and washed, stripped to the waist, dipping his head into the cold water and letting it run over his chest and shoulders. A little spiral of blue smoke had begun to climb like some magic plant up the wall of Manon’s house, and Brent could hear the crackling of wood in the stove. Manon was busy before her ten-mile walk to Ste. Claire.
An hour later she was standing at the top of the flight of steps leading to the street, her bag in her hand, her face upturned to Brent’s. It was a happy face with gentle eyes, the flicker of a smile playing about the mouth.
“Au revoir.”
He held her hand for a moment.
“I will look after everything.”
“And take care of yourself, Paul. I will not forget the tobacco.”
She turned and went down the steps, turned again at the corner by the stone house, and looked back at him with a kind of smiling solemnity. The morning sunlight was on her face, and her plain black dress showed up against the white stonework.