第5章 The Wagon to Gillanwick

The wagon job was the first one that took two of them, and it was the one that turned the yard into a place where people went out. Kessin had written the card on the evening of the third day and walked it to the miller's house herself, because Mistress Tull was the woman who made the bread for the market in Gillanwick and had been making it for her mother and her mother's mother before that, and she had a wagon of butter that needed guarding and no one to guard it, because the road was two miles and the road was long and the road had gone dead in the winter. Mistress Tull had sat in her kitchen for forty years with a wagon and a cart and a wheel and a son who was ill and a husband who was dead, and she had come to the Hall at dusk with a card in her hand and a look on her face that said I have not asked anyone for anything in ten years. "Band," said Mistress Tull. "One band. To Gillanwick and back. My wagon. My butter. My fare." "Half a crown," said Kessin. "Half a crown," said Mistress Tull. "And supper." "And supper," said Kessin. Mistress Tull put the card on the board and looked at Kessin with the steady tired eyes of a woman who has been running a house for a long time and has just been paid one, and said, "You are new." "I am new." "The old woman did not take the butter. She did not take the bread. She did not take the wheel." "The old woman had a son," said Kessin. "I did not know that." "I did not know that either. I found it in the ledger." Mistress Tull looked at her for a long moment, then put her card on the board and took her hat and went out, and Kessin looked at the board and saw the card, and took it, and went in and sat at the table and thought about Brin and the boy and the donkey and the wheel and the road, and decided. She took Brin. She told him at the door of the hall in the morning, with the light coming in off the mist and the bread on the board and the lamp out, and she said, "The miller's wagon. To Gillanwick and back. Half a crown and supper. Tomorrow at five." Brin stood in the doorway with his coat and his hat and his hands in his pockets, and looked at her, and said, "The road is two miles." "It is two miles." "The butter will go bad if it stops." "It will go bad if it stops." "You will not know where to stop it." "No," said Kessin. "I will not." "Then I will go with you," said Brin. "Because if you stop it in the wrong place the butter will be gone and the miller will not have bread and the market will not have butter, and it will all have been for nothing." "That is why I asked," said Kessin. Brin looked at her, then at the door, and put his hat on and went out, and Kessin stood at the table and thought: he did not say yes. He said tomorrow, which was a yes. He had been in the yard for twenty years and had not been paid in ten of them. He had been a man who had left the Hall and come back and left again and come back again, and he had left the last time because the old woman had sent him away and he had not said a word to her, and he had come back because she had not sent him away a second time and he had not said a word to her a second time. Now he was going out through the gate with a hat and a coat and boots mended at the toe, and he had not said a word at all, and he was going. "Tomorrow," said Kessin. "Five." "Five," said Brin. The boy came in at the door with his case and his coat and his boots and his card, and said, "I'm ready." "You are not," said Kessin. "You'll go with me and you'll watch." "I can guard it." "Then you'll watch it." "And I'll watch it," said Peth. "And I'll learn." They went out at five: Kessin and Brin and Peth, and Clack behind them because the donkey had to be driven to the gate and the donkey would not go to Gillanwick, but the donkey would come as far as the wall and would wait at the wall and would be there when they came back, which was the whole arrangement of the day. The road was clear at six. The mist was going down off the grass, the light was coming up off the river, the wheel was turning on the iron, the donkey was pulling the cart, Peth was walking beside it with his case, Kessin was walking beside him with the ledger, and Brin was walking ahead with his hat and his coat and his hands in his pockets and his back to her. She walked beside him and did not speak and he did not speak and the road went on. At the end of the road, at Gillanwick, at the market, they stopped the wagon at the place Brin stopped it, and the butter was good, and the coin was small, and the supper was hot, and the boy was tired, and the donkey was at home. Kessin paid Brin the coin. Brin took the coin. He put it in his pocket. He did not say anything. He went out through the gate and did not look back. And Kessin stood in the yard with the board and the card and the boy and the donkey and the wheel, and the road behind her full of people who had not been there a day ago, and she thought: the Hall is a place where people go out. And the board was full. ---