Chapter 7 The Four Corners

They walked the lane in the river fog at five in the morning, the two of them, with the donkey behind, because the lane went along the river and the river went under the mist and the mist came up off the water in low cold sheets. The boy had his case, his card, a piece of chalk, and the knife sharpened by Hobb's hands. Kessin had her ledger, her card, a piece of chalk of her own, and a pair of boots that had not been mended at the toe. They walked, and they did not speak, because that was the arrangement. The lane was two miles. It went from the hall gate to the bridge at Gillanwick, along the river, under the hawthorn hedge, past the mill and the old farm and the croft where the smith's wife kept her son and did not want a boy in the yard. It had four corners. At each corner stood a stone, and on each stone was a notch cut by a hand that had been steady for a long time, and the notches had gone white with the weather and the chalk had gone with the rain, and the stones were there and the marks were not. Kessin put her finger on the first notch and felt it. "Here," she said. "Here," said Peth. She moved on. The second stone. The third. The fourth, at the bridge, where the road crossed the river and the fog was thickest and the water was dark under the mist. Here, she said. And here. And here. Then she took the chalk from her pocket and put a mark in the bottom of each notch, in the place where the old woman had put them, and the marks were small and the chalk was white and the stones were grey and the river moved under the mist and the hedge was green and the mill stood and the farm stood and the croft stood and the road was the road. She put the chalk in her pocket and looked at the boy. The boy put his finger on the mark she had made on the fourth stone, and held it there for a moment, and said, "I will keep them." "You will keep them," said Kessin. "Then I will walk the lane every month." "You will walk the lane every month." "Then I will mark them every month." "Then you will mark them every month," said Kessin. "And the hall will pay you a crown, and you will give the hall the stones, and the stones will be the fare." He nodded and took the chalk from her hand, and put a mark on the fourth stone beside her own, small and white on grey, and the river moved under it. They walked back to the yard at eight. The mist was going down. The donkey was at the gate. At the foot of the yard wall stood a man with a hat and a coat mended at the elbow and a pair of boots mended at the toe, and he was watching the road, and he had been watching it, Kessin thought, for a while. Brin did not look at her. He put his hat off and set it on the wheel and said, "The marks are gone." "They are not gone," said Kessin. "I have not seen them." "Then you will know they are there." "I will know they are there," said Brin. "Because you put them there, and because the boy put them there, and because the boy will put them there next month and the month after, and because I will put them there if the boy does not." He put his hat back on. "I have kept the lane because the road is two miles and the road is long and the road goes dead in the winter and the road is the only thing in Cawthorn that is not owed. I have kept it for the old woman and the man who came before her. I have not been paid for it. I will not ask to be paid for it." Kessin stood at the wheel with her card in her hand and the chalk still white on her thumb, and the boy stood behind her with his case, and Brin stood at the gate with his hat on, and the donkey stood between them and ate a piece of straw, and the mist went down off the grass in slow sheets. "Then I will not ask you to be paid for it," said Kessin. "I have not asked," said Brin. "Then I will write it down," said Kessin. "The lane. Four corners. Kept. Fare: one crown at the end of the month." Brin's mouth moved a little at one corner, in the direction of a smile, and he looked at the card in her hand and said, "You are writing it down." "I am writing it down." "The old woman did not write it down." "No," said Kessin. "She did not." "Then the old woman did not pay for it." "No," said Kessin. "She did not." "Then the lane was kept for nothing," said Brin. "And the lane was kept because it was the lane. And you are writing it down, and you will pay for it, and the lane will be kept because you paid for it. Those two things are the same thing, and those two things are not the same thing, and I have walked it for twenty years and I have never been able to say which one it is." He took off his hat and put it on the wheel. "You are going to be the one who says which one it is. If you say it wrong the lane goes. If you say it right the lane goes on. I will walk the lane until you do." Kessin put the card on the board, and wrote the line on the ledger, and wrote the boy's line under it, and stood there with the pen in her hand. "Say it," she said. "Say it wrong." Brin looked at her. "I have said it right," he said. "I have kept the lane. The lane goes on. That is all I have ever said. If that is wrong, the lane is wrong, and the road is wrong, and the market is wrong, and Gillanwick is wrong, and the smith is wrong, and Hobb's knife is wrong, and the hall is wrong, and you are wrong, and I have not said which one of those is wrong, and you are going to have to say it yourself, and I will walk the lane until you do, and if you say it right I will walk it with you, and if you say it wrong I will walk it without you, and either way the lane goes on, because the lane goes on, because the lane is the lane." He took his hat off the wheel and put it on his head, and looked at the board, and looked at the line she had written, and looked at the boy, and said, "The boy walks the fourth corner every month." "Yes," said Kessin. "Then the boy is the fourth corner," said Brin. "No," said Kessin. "The boy is the stones." "Then the boy is the stones," said Brin. "And the stones are the lane, and the lane is the road, and the road is the hall." He went out through the gate and did not look back. Kessin stood at the board with the chalk on her thumb and the ledger on the table, and the boy stood behind her, and the donkey ate, and the mist was gone, and the yard was clean, and the board had four cards on it, and the hall had taken in its first month of work. ---