The Burden

by Agatha Christie

  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 recognise 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 tidied 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 to-day'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 fac,ade 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.

  It was about that time he became conscious of Carol.

  He had known Carol all his life. They had gone to school together. She was two years younger than he was, a gawky, sweet-tempered child, with a brace on her teeth and a shy manner. Their parents were friends, and Carol spent a lot of time in the Knox household.

  In the year of taking his finals, Llewellyn came home and saw Carol with new eyes. The brace was gone, and so was the gawkiness. Instead there was a pretty coquettish young girl, whom all the boys were anxious to date up.

  Girls had so far not impinged much on Llewellyn's life. He had worked too hard, and was, moreover, emotionally undeveloped. But now the manhood in him suddenly came to life. He started taking trouble with his appearance, spent money he could ill afford on new ties, and bought boxes of candy to present to Carol. His mother smiled and sighed, as mothers do, at the signs that her son had entered on maturity! The time had come when she must lose him to another woman. Too early to think of marriage as yet, but if it had to come, Carol would be a satisfactory choice. Good stock, carefully brought up, a s
weet-tempered girl, and healthy-better than some strange girl from the city whom she did not know. 'But not good enough for my son,' said her mother's heart, and then she smiled at herself, guessing that that was what all mothers had felt since time immemorial! She spoke hesitantly to Angus of the matter.

  "Early days yet," said Angus. "The lad has his way to make. But he might do worse. She's a good lass, though maybe not overloaded with brains."

  Carol was both pretty and popular, and enjoyed her popularity. She had plenty of dates, but she made it fairly clear that Llewellyn was the favourite. She talked to him sometimes in a serious way about his future. Though she did not show it, she was slightly disconcerted by his vagueness and what seemed to her his lack of ambition.

  "Why, Lew, surely you've got some definite plans for when you've qualified?"

  "Oh! I shall get a job all right. Plenty of openings."

  "But don't you have to specialise nowadays?"

  "If one has any particular bent. I haven't."

  "But, Llewellyn Knox, you want to get on, don't you?"

  "Get on-where?" His smile was slightly teasing.

  "Well-get somewhere."

  "But that is life, isn't it, Carol? From here to here." His finger traced a line on the sand. "Birth, growth, school, career, marriage, children, home, hard work, retirement, old age, death. From the frontier of this country to the frontier of the next."

  "That's not what I mean at all, Lew, and you know it. I mean getting somewhere, making a name for yourself, making good, getting right to the top, so that everyone's proud of you."

  "I wonder if all that makes any difference," he said abstractedly.

  "I'll say it makes a difference!"

  "It's how you go through your journey that matters, I think, not where it takes you."

  "I never heard such nonsense. Don't you want to be a success?"

  "I don't know. I don't think so."

  Carol was a long way away from him suddenly. He was alone, quite alone, and he was conscious of fear. A shrinking, a terrible shrinking. "Not me-someone else." He almost said the words aloud.

  "Lew! Llewellyn!" Carol's voice came thinly to him from a long way away, coming towards him through the wilderness. "What's the matter? You look downright queer."

  He was back again, back with Carol, who was staring at him with a perplexed, frightened expression. He was conscious of a rush of tenderness towards her. She had saved him, called him back from that barren place. He took her hand.

  "You're so sweet." He drew her towards him, kissed her gently, almost shyly. Her lips responded to his.

  He thought: 'I can tell her now… that I love her… that when I'm qualified we can get engaged. I'll ask her to wait for me. Once I've got Carol, I'll be safe.'

  But the words remained unspoken. He felt something that was almost like a physical hand on his breast, pushing him back, a hand that forbade. The reality of it alarmed him. He got up.

  "Some day, Carol," he said, "some day I-I've got to talk to you."

  She looked up at him and laughed, satisfied. She was not particularly anxious for him to come to the point. Things were best left as they were. She enjoyed in an innocent happy fashion her own young girl's hour of triumph, courted by the young males. Some day she and Llewellyn would marry. She had felt the emotion behind his kiss. She was quite sure of him.

  As for his queer lack of ambition, that did not really worry her. Women in this country were confident of their power over men. It was women who planned and urged on their men to achieve; women, and the children that were their principal weapons. She and Llewellyn would want the best for their children, and that would be a spur to urge Llewellyn on.

  As for Llewellyn, he walked home in a serious state of perturbation. What a very odd experience that had been. Full of recent lectures on psychology, he analysed himself with misgiving. A resistance to sex perhaps? Why had he set up this resistance? He ate his supper staring at his mother, and wondering uneasily if he had an Oedipus Complex.

  Nevertheless, it was to her he came far reassurance before he went back to college.

  He said abruptly:

  "You like Carol, don't you?"

  Here it comes, she thought with a pang, but she said steadfastly:

  "She's a sweet girl. Both your father and I like her well."

  "I wanted to tell her-the other day-"

  "That you loved her?"

  "Yes. I wanted to ask her to wait for me."

  "No need of that, if she loves you, bach."

  "But I couldn't say it, the words wouldn't come."

  She smiled. "Don't let that worry you. Men are mostly tongue-tied at these times. There was your father sitting and glowering at me, day after day, more as though he hated me than loved me, and not able to get a word out but 'How are you?' and 'It's a fine day.' "

  Llewellyn said sombrely: "It was more than that. It was like a hand shoving me back. It was as though I was-forbidden."

  She felt then the urgency and force of his trouble. She said slowly:

  "It may be that she's not the real girl for you. Oh-" she stifled his protest. "It's hard to tell when you're young and the blood rises. But there's something in you-the true self, maybe-that knows what should and shouldn't be, and that saves you from yourself, and the impulse that isn't the true one."

  "Something in oneself…" He dwelt on that.

  He looked at her with sudden desperate eyes.

  "I don't know really-anything about myself."

  2

  Back at college, he filled up every moment, either with work or in the company of friends. Fear faded away from him. He felt self-assured once more. He read abstruse dissertations on adolescent sex manifestations, and explained himself to himself satisfactorily.

  He graduated with distinction, and that, too, encouraged him to have confidence in himself. He returned home with his mind made up, and his future clear ahead. He would ask Carol to marry him, and discuss with her the various possibilities open to him now that he was qualified. He felt an enormous relief now that his life unfolded before him in so clear a sequence. Work that was congenial and which he felt himself competent to do well, and a girl he loved with whom to make a home and have children.

  Arrived at home, he threw himself into all the local festivities. He went about in a crowd, but within that crowd he and Carol paired off and were accepted as a pair. He was seldom, if ever, alone, and when he went to bed at night he slept and dreamed of Carol. They were erotic dreams and he welcomed them as such. Everything was normal, everything was fine, everything was as it should be.

  Confident in this belief, he was startled when his father said to him one day:

  "What's wrong, lad?"

  "Wrong?" He stared.

  "You're not yourself."

  "But I am! I've never felt so fit!"

  "You're well enough physically, maybe."

  Llewellyn stared at his father. The gaunt, aloof old man, with his deep-set burning eyes, nodded his head slowly.

  "There are times," he said, "when a man needs to be alone."

  He said no more, turning away, as Llewellyn felt once more that swift illogical fear spring up. He didn't want to be alone-it was the last thing he wanted. He couldn't, he mustn't be alone.

  Three days later he came to his father and said:

  "I'm going camping in the mountains. By myself."

  Angus nodded. "Ay."

  His eyes, the eyes of a mystic, looked at his son with comprehension.

  Llewellyn thought: 'I've inherited something from him-something that he knows about, and I don't know about yet.'

  3

  He had been alone here, in the desert, far nearly three weeks. Curious things had been happening to him. From the very first, however, he had found solitude quite acceptable. He wondered why he had fought against the idea of it so long.

  To begin with, he had thought a great deal about himself and his future and Carol. It had all unrolled itself quite clearly and logically, and i
t was not for some time that he realised that he was looking at his life from outside, as a spectator and not a participator. That was because none of that mapped-out planned existence was real. It was logical and coherent, but in fact it did not exist. He loved Carol, he desired her, but he would not marry her. He had something else to do. As.yet he did not know what. After he had acknowledged that fact, there came another phase-a phase he could only describe as one of emptiness, great echoing emptiness. He was nothing, and contained nothing. There was no longer any fear. By accepting emptiness, he had cast out fear.

  During this phase, he ate and drank hardly anything.

  Sometimes he was, he thought, slightly light-headed.

  Like a mirage in front of him, scenes and people appeared.

  Once or twice he saw a face very clearly. It was a woman's face, and it roused in him an extraordinary excitement. It had fragile, very beautiful bones, with hollowed temples, and dark hair springing back from the temples, and deep, almost tragic eyes. Behind her he saw, once, a background of flames, and another time the shadowy outline of what looked like a church. This time, he saw suddenly that she was only a child. Each time he was conscious of suffering. He thought: 'If I could only help…' But at the same time he knew that there was no help possible, and that the very idea was wrong and false.

  Another vision was of a gigantic oflice desk,in pale shining wood, and behind it a man with a heavy jowl and small, alert, blue eyes. The man leant forward as though about to speak, and to do so emphasised what he was about to say by picking up a small ruler and gesticulating with it.