Chapter 98 The Handing On

The handing on came the way all true handings on come, without ceremony and in the ordinary course of a morning, the way a lamp is passed from one pair of hands to the next because the first pair has grown tired and the second pair has grown ready, and nobody marks the moment because the moment is every morning, and the keeping is the morning, and the morning is the count, and the count goes on. Rosalind woke on the morning of the shortest day and found she could not light the tower lamp without help, and the girl, her granddaughter now, the keeper's daughter's daughter, was already at the stair with the taper in her hand, and she said, without being asked, that she would take the tower tonight, and Rosalind, who had taken the tower every shortest night since the year of open hours began, let her take it, and the letting was the whole of the keeping made plain, that a door kept open passes itself on, and the passing on is the only immortality a lamp has ever claimed. The valley gathered that night as it always gathered on the shortest night, with the lamps lit at every window and the count going round the coast, and the girl stood at the tower and counted the four-and-a-rest in a voice that was not Rosalind's and was not Ines's and was all of theirs, and the count went out through the tower window and along the chain and came back whole, and Rosalind, standing at the hall door with Julian's hand in hers, heard the count in the child's voice and understood that the covenant had been kept, not by her, not by the court, not by the deed or the settlement or the finding of the fifth station, but by the plain ordinary fact of a child who had learned to light a lamp, and the child was the keeping, and the keeping was the child, and the door was open, and the door would stay open, and that was the whole of it, and that was enough. Graves brought the register down from its shelf for the reading, and the second volume was already a quarter full, and the names were read aloud as they were read every shortest night, and the newest name was the name of a traveler from the far coast who had arrived that week with a lamp of his own trimming and a count of his own ornament, and the valley received him as it received everything, with bread and a seat and the open book, and the book held him, and the count held him, and the coast held him, and the sea, keeping what it is given, held them all, and the night went on, and the lamps went on, and the gate stood open, and the keeping was the keeping, and the child was at the tower, and the grandmother was at the door, and the door was open, and that was the whole of the saving, accomplished at last in the plain ordinary way all true savings are accomplished, by a child who has learned to light a lamp, and a grandmother who has learned to let her. Julian stayed through the winter and into the spring, and the house filled with the particular quiet of two people who have lived long enough to know that the hardest conversations are the ones that do not need to be spoken, and they walked the lane together in the mornings the way they had walked it in the year of open hours, and the valley saw them and did not remark, because a valley that has kept a lamp for a generation has learned to see its keepers the way the sea sees its tide, as a thing that comes and goes and comes again, and the coming and going is the whole of it. The girl took the tower every night after the shortest day, and Rosalind did not go up, and the not going up was the hardest keeping she had ever done, harder than the suit and the settlement and the finding of the fifth station, because the hardest thing a keeper can do is stop keeping, and the stopping is not a loss but a handing, and the handing is the proof the keeping was true, and Rosalind stood at the hall door on the nights the girl counted from the tower and heard the four-and-a-rest go out through the window in a voice that was not hers, and the hearing was the whole of the covenant, that a door kept open passes itself on, and the passing on is the only way a door stays open, and the door stayed open, and the girl was at the tower, and the grandmother was at the door, and the valley was at its windows, and the coast was at its lamps, and the whole bright chain ran from Blackmore's tower to the farthest shore and back, and the count went on, and the count would go on, and that was the whole of it, and that was enough, and that was the keeping, handed on at last, and the handing was the gate, and the gate was open, and the open was the law, and the law was the light, and the light was the child, and the child was the door. And on the night the girl took the tower alone for the first time, the whole valley stood at its lamps and the whole coast stood at its lamps, and the count went round from the tower through the chain to the far shore and back, and Rosalind, at the hall door, heard the four-and-a-rest in the child's voice and knew that the keeping had been handed on whole and would be handed on again, and that this was the entire purpose of the gate, and the gate was open, and the keeping went on.