His black eyes had a glitter of fun in them. He carried his cassock over his arm, appearing to the world like any good bourgeois ready for an hour’s work in the garden.
“That’s the worst of it.”
Brent touched the pile of rubbish with the toe of a casual boot.
“So you have left me nothing to do?”
“There is plenty left, monsieur. I thought I would come down and move the heavy stuff for the old lady.”
“We are beginning very well in Beaucourt,” said Lefèbre, “very well indeed.”
These two good men stood for a few minutes and talked. They were friends from the first smile, equally simple and courageous in their outlook upon life, answering at once to a generous touch of the hand. Lefèbre had the soul of a peasant, with all its shrewdness, its grasp of the elemental facts that keep men strong and wholesome. This return of the people to their homes and to their soil was to him a veritable sacrament. He knew that it is good for man to suck the milk from the bosom of Mother Earth. In the towns souls are hand-fed, dissociated from the great miracle of nature. Lefèbre hated the great towns. They gave babes strong drink, false appetites, parched mouths, the lust after lust. Men walked restlessly in the streets, men who are envious and unhappy after the long dulness of the factory or the shop. They had turned no soil, nor gone to bed happily tired.
“What can one make of this little house?”
He was looking at the patch of brown tiles and the bare rafters. His face was eager, inquisitive. Brent felt the thrill of his humanity.
“It could be made quite strong again.”