The Burden

by Agatha Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott

  It was half a question.

  Llewellyn said soberly: ‘Yes, I was put over in a big way.’

  ‘No expense spared?’

  ‘No expense spared.’

  ‘That, you know, is what intrigues me. How you could stand it? That is, after I had seen and heard you.’

  He slung his painting things over his shoulder.

  ‘Will you come and dine with me one night? It would interest me enormously to talk to you. That’s my house down there on the point. The white villa with the green shutters. But just say so, if you don’t want to. Don’t bother to find an excuse.’

  Llewellyn considered for a moment before he replied:

  ‘I should like to come very much.’

  ‘Good. Tonight?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Nine o’clock. Don’t change.’

  He strode away down the hill-side. Llewellyn stood for a moment looking after him, then he resumed his own walk.

  3

  ‘So you go to the villa of the Señor Sir Wilding?’

  The driver of the ramshackle victoria was frankly interested. His dilapidated vehicle was gaily adorned with painted flowers, and his horse was decked with a necklace of blue beads. The horse, the carriage and the driver seemed equally cheerful and serene.

  ‘He is very sympathetic, the Señor Sir Wilding,’ he said. ‘He is not a stranger here. He is one of us. Don Estobal, who owned the villa and the land, he was old, very old. He let himself be cheated, all day long he read books, and more books came for him all the time. There are rooms in the villa lined with books to the ceiling. It is incredible that a man should want so many books. And then he dies, and we all wonder, will the villa be sold? But then Sir Wilding comes. He has been here as a boy, often, for Don Estobal’s sister married an Englishman, and her children and her children’s children would come here in the holidays from their schools. But after Don Estobal’s death the estate belongs to Sir Wilding, and he comes here to inherit, and he starts at once to put all in order, and he spends much money to do so. But then there comes the war, and he goes away for many years, but he says always that if he is not killed, he will return here – and so at last he has done so. Two years ago it is now since he returned here with his new wife, and has settled here to live.’

  ‘He has married twice then?’

  ‘Yes.’ The driver lowered his voice confidentially. ‘His first wife was a bad woman. She was beautiful, yes, but she deceived him much with other men – yes, even here in the island. He should not have married her. But where women are concerned, he is not clever – he believes too much.’

  He added, almost apologetically:

  ‘A man should know whom to trust, but Sir Wilding does not. He does not know about women. I do not think he will ever learn.’

  Chapter Four

  1

  His host received Llewellyn in a long, low room, lined to the ceiling with books. The windows were thrown open, and from some distance below there came the gentle murmur of the sea. Drinks were set on a low table near the window.

  Wilding greeted him with obvious pleasure, and apologized for his wife’s absence.

  ‘She suffers badly from migraine,’ he said. ‘I hoped that with the peace and quiet of her life out here it might improve, but it hasn’t done so noticeably. And doctors don’t really seem to have the answer for it.’

  Llewellyn expressed his sorrow politely.

  ‘She’s been through a lot of trouble,’ said Wilding. ‘More than any girl should be asked to bear. And she was so young – still is.’

  Reading his face, Llewellyn said gently:

  ‘You love her very much.’

  Wilding sighed:

  ‘Too much, perhaps, for my own happiness.’

  ‘And for hers?’

  ‘No love in the world could be too much to make up to her for all she has suffered.’

  He spoke vehemently.

  Between the two men there was already a curious sense of intimacy which had, indeed, existed from the first moment of their meeting. It was as though the fact that neither of them had anything in common with the other – nationality, upbringing, way of life, beliefs – made them therefore ready to accept each other without the usual barriers of reticence or conventionality. They were like men marooned together on a desert island, or afloat on a raft for an indefinite period. They could speak to each other frankly, almost with the simplicity of children.

  Presently they went into dinner. It was an excellent meal, beautifully served, of a very simple character. There was wine, which Llewellyn refused.

  ‘If you’d prefer whisky …’

  The other shook his head.

  ‘Thank you – just water.’

  ‘Is that – excuse me – a principle with you?’

  ‘No. Actually it is a way of life that I need no longer follow. There is no reason – now – why I should not drink wine. Simply I am not used to it.’

  As he uttered the word ‘now’, Wilding raised his head sharply. He looked intensely interested. He almost opened his mouth to speak, then rather obviously checked himself, and began to talk of extraneous matters. He was a good talker, with a wide range of subjects. Not only had he travelled extensively, and in many unknown parts of the globe, but he had the gift of making all he himself had seen and experienced equally real to the person who was listening to him.

  If you wanted to go to the Gobi Desert, or to the Fezzan, or to Samarkand, when you had talked of those places with Richard Wilding, you had been there.

  It was not that he lectured, or in any way held forth. His conversation was natural and spontaneous.

  Quite apart from his enjoyment of Wilding’s talk, Llewellyn found himself increasingly interested by the personality of the man himself. His charm and magnetism were undeniable, and they were also, so Llewellyn judged, entirely unself-conscious. Wilding was not exerting himself to radiate charm; it was natural to him. He was a man of parts, too, shrewd, intellectual without arrogance, a man with a vivid interest in ideas and people as well as in places. If he had chosen to specialize in some particular subject – but that, perhaps, was his secret: he never had so chosen, and never would. That left him human, warm, and essentially approachable.

  And yet, it seemed to Llewellyn, he had not quite answered his own question – a question as simple as that put by a child. ‘Why do I like this man so much?’

  The answer was not in Wilding’s gifts. It was something in the man himself.

  And suddenly, it seemed to Llewellyn, he got it. It was because, with all his gifts, the man himself was fallible. He was a man who could, who would, again and again prove himself mistaken. He had one of those warm, kindly emotional natures that invariably meet rebuffs because of their untrustworthiness in making judgments.

  Here was no clear, cool, logical appraisal of men and things; instead there were warm-hearted impulsive beliefs, mainly in people, which were doomed to disaster because they were based on kindliness always rather than on fact. Yes, the man was fallible, and being fallible, he was also lovable. Here, thought Llewellyn, is someone whom I should hate to hurt.

  They were back again now in the library, stretched out in two big arm-chairs. A wood fire had been lit, more to convey the sense of a hearth, than because it was needed. Outside the sea murmured, and the scent of some night-blooming flower stole into the room.

  Wilding was saying disarmingly:

  ‘I’m so interested, you see, in people. I always have been. In what makes them tick, if I might put it that way. Does that sound very cold-blooded and analytical?’

  ‘Not from you. You wonder about your fellow human beings because you care for them and are therefore interested in them.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’ He paused. Then he said: ‘If one can help a fellow human being, that seems to me the most worthwhile thing in the world.’

  ‘If,’ said Llewellyn.

  The other looked at him sharply.

  ‘That seems oddly sceptical,
coming from you.’

  ‘No, it’s only a recognition of the enormous difficulty of what you propose.’

  ‘Is it so difficult? Human beings want to be helped.’

  ‘Yes, we all tend to believe that in some magical manner others can attain for us what we can’t – or don’t want – to attain for ourselves.’

  ‘Sympathy – and belief,’ said Wilding earnestly. ‘To believe the best of someone is to call the best into being. People respond to one’s belief in them. I’ve found that again and again.’

  ‘For how long?’

  Wilding winced, as though something had touched a sore place in him.

  ‘You can guide a child’s hand on the paper, but when you take your hand away the child still has to learn to write himself. Your action may, indeed, have delayed the process.’

  ‘Are you trying to destroy my belief in human nature?’

  Llewellyn smiled as he said:

  ‘I think I’m asking you to have pity on human nature.’

  ‘To encourage people to give of their best –’

  ‘Is forcing them to live at a very high altitude; to keep up being what someone expects you to be is to live under a great strain. Too great a strain leads eventually to collapse.’

  ‘Must one then expect the worst of people?’ asked Wilding satirically.

  ‘One should recognize that probability.’

  ‘And you a man of religion!’

  Llewellyn smiled:

  ‘Christ told Peter that before the cock crew, he would have denied Him thrice. He knew Peter’s weakness of character better than Peter himself knew it, and loved him none the less for it.’

  ‘No,’ said Wilding, with vigour, ‘I can’t agree with you. In my own first marriage,’ – he paused, then went on – ‘my wife was – could have been – a really fine character. She’d got into a bad set; all she needed was love, trust, belief. If it hadn’t been for the war –’ He stopped. ‘Well, it was one of the lesser tragedies of war. I was away, she was alone, exposed to bad influences.’

  He paused again before saying abruptly: ‘I don’t blame her. I make allowances – she was the victim of circumstances. It broke me up at the time. I thought I’d never feel the same man again. But time heals …’

  He made a gesture.

  ‘Why I should tell you the history of my life I don’t know. I’d much rather hear about your life. You see, you’re something absolutely new to me. I want to know the “why” and “how” of you. I was impressed when I came to that meeting, deeply impressed. Not because you swayed your audience – that I can understand well enough. Hitler did it. Lloyd George did it. Politicians, religious leaders and actors, they can all do it in a greater or lesser degree. It’s a gift. No, I wasn’t interested in the effect you were having, I was interested in you. Why was this particular thing worthwhile to you?’

  Llewellyn shook his head slowly.

  ‘You are asking me something that I do not know myself.’

  ‘Of course, a strong religious conviction.’ Wilding spoke with slight embarrassment, which amused the other.

  ‘You mean, belief in God? That’s a simpler phrase, don’t you think? But it doesn’t answer your question. Belief in God might take me to my knees in a quiet room. It doesn’t explain what you are asking me to explain. Why the public platform?’

  Wilding said rather doubtfully:

  ‘I can imagine that you might feel that in that way you could do more good, reach more people.’

  Llewellyn looked at him in a speculative manner.

  ‘From the way you put things, I am to take it that you yourself are not a believer?’

  ‘I don’t know, I simply don’t know. Yes, I do believe in a way. I want to believe … I certainly believe in the positive virtues – kindness, helping those who are down, straight dealing, forgiveness.’

  Llewellyn looked at him for some moments.

  ‘The Good Life,’ he said. ‘The Good Man. Yes, that’s much easier than to attempt the recognition of God. That’s not easy, it’s very difficult, and very frightening. And what’s even more frightening is to stand up to God’s recognition of you.’

  ‘Frightening?’

  ‘It frightened Job.’ Llewellyn smiled suddenly: ‘He hadn’t an idea, you know, poor fellow, as to what it was all about. In a world of nice rules and regulations, rewards and punishments, doled out by Almighty God strictly according to merit, he was singled out. (Why? We don’t know. Some quality in him in advance of his generation? Some power of perception given him at birth?) Anyway, the others could go on being rewarded and punished, but Job had to step into what must have seemed to him a new dimension. After a meritorious life, he was not to be rewarded with flocks and herds. Instead, he was to pass through unendurable suffering, to lose his beliefs, and see his friends back away from him. He had to endure the whirlwind. And then, perhaps, having been groomed for stardom, as we say in Hollywood, he could hear the voice of God. And all for what? So that he could begin to recognize what God actually was. “Be still and know that I am God.” A terrifying experience. The highest pinnacle that man, so far, had reached. It didn’t, of course, last long. It couldn’t. And he probably made a fine mess trying to tell about it, because there wasn’t the vocabulary, and you can’t describe in terrestrial terms an experience that is spiritual. And whoever tied up the end of the Book of Job hadn’t an idea what it was all about either, but he made it have a good moral happy ending, according to the lights of the time, which was very sensible of him.’

  Llewellyn paused.

  ‘So you see,’ he said, ‘that when you say that perhaps I chose the public platform because I could do more good, and reach more people, that simply is miles off the course. There’s no numerical value in reaching people as such, and “doing good” is a term that really hasn’t any significance. What is doing good? Burning people at the stake to save their souls? Perhaps. Burning witches alive because they are evil personified? There’s a very good case for it. Raising the standard of living for the unfortunate? We think nowadays that that is important. Fighting against cruelty and injustice?’

  ‘Surely you agree with that?’

  ‘What I’m getting at is that these are all problems of human conduct. What is good to do? What is right to do? What is wrong to do? We are human beings, and we have to answer those questions to the best of our ability. We have our life to live in this world. But all that has nothing to do with spiritual experience.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Wilding. ‘I begin to understand. I think you yourself went through some such experience. How did it come about? What happened? Did you always know, even as a child –?’

  He did not finish the question.

  ‘Or had you,’ he said slowly, ‘no idea?’

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Llewellyn.

  Chapter Five

  1

  No idea … Wilding’s question had taken Llewellyn back into the past. A long way back.

  He himself as a child …

  The pure clear tang of the mountain air was in his nostrils. The cold winters, the hot, arid summers. The small closely-knit community. His father, that tall, gaunt Scot, austere, almost grim. A God-fearing, upright man, a man of intellect, despite the simplicity of his life and calling, a man who was just and inflexible, and whose affections, though deep and true, were not easily shown. His dark-haired Welsh mother, with the lilting voice which made her most ordinary speech sound like music … Sometimes, in the evenings, she would recite in Welsh the poem that her father had composed for the Eisteddfod long years ago. The language was only partly understood by her children, the meaning of the words remained obscure, but the music of the poetry stirred Llewellyn to vague longings for he knew not what. A strange intuitive knowledge his mother had, not intellectual like his father, but a natural innate wisdom of her own.

  Her dark eyes would pass slowly over her assembled children and would linger longest on Llewellyn, her first-born, and in them would be an appraisement, a doubt
, something that was almost fear.

  That look would make the boy himself restless. He would ask apprehensively: ‘What is it, Mother? What have I done?’

  Then she would smile, a warm, caressing smile, and say:

  ‘Nothing, bach. It’s my own good son you are.’

  And Angus Knox would turn his head sharply and look, first at his wife, and then at the boy.

  It had been a happy childhood, a normal boy’s childhood. Not luxurious, indeed spartan in many ways. Strict parents, a disciplined way of life. Plenty of home chores, responsibility for the four younger children, participation in the community activities. A godly but narrow way of life. And he fitted in, accepted it.

  But he had wanted education, and here his father had encouraged him. He had the Scot’s reverence for learning, and was ambitious for this eldest son of his to become something more than a mere tiller of the soil.

  ‘I’ll do what I can to help you, Llewellyn, but that will not be much. You’ll have to manage mostly for yourself.’

  And he had done so. Encouraged by his teacher, he had gone ahead and put himself through college. He had worked in vacations, waiting in hotels and camps, he had done evening work washing dishes.

  With his father he had discussed his future. Either a teacher or a doctor, he decided. He had had no particular sense of vocation, but both careers seemed to him congenial. He finally chose medicine.

  Through all these years, was there no hint of dedication, of special mission? He thought back, trying to remember.

  There had been something … yes, looking back from today’s viewpoint, there had been something. Something not understood by himself at the time. A kind of fear – that was the nearest he could get to it. Behind the normal façade of daily life, a fear, a dread of something that he himself did not understand. He was more conscious of this fear when he was alone, and he had, therefore, thrown himself eagerly into community life.