The Burden

by Agatha Christie

  Then again he saw the corner of a room at a curious angle. Near it was a window, and through the window the outlines of a pine tree with snow on it. Between him and the window, a face obtruded, looking down on him-a round, pink-faced man with glasses, but before Llewellyn could see him really clearly, he, too, faded away.

  All these visions must, Llewellyn thought, be the figments of his own imagination. There seemed so little sense or meaning to them, and they were all faces and surroundings that he had never known.

  But soon there were no more pictorial images. The emptiness of which he was so conscious was no longer vast and all-encompassing. The emptiness drew together, it acquired meaning and purpose. He was no longer adrift in it. Instead, he held it within himself.

  Then he knew something more. He was waiting.

  4

  The dust-storm came suddenly-one of those unheralded storms that arose in this mountainous desert region. It came whirling and shrieking in clouds of red dust. It was like a live thing. It ended as suddenly as it had begun.

  After it, the silence was very noticeable.

  All Llewellyn's camping gear had been swept away by the wind, his tent carried flapping and whirling like a mad thing down the valley. He had nothing now. He was quite alone in a world suddenly peaceful and as though made anew.

  He knew now that something he had always known would happen was about to happen. He knew fear again, but not the fear he had felt before, that had been the fear of resistance. This time he was ready to accept-there was emptiness within him, swept and garnished, ready to receive a Presence. He was afraid only because in all humility he knew what a small and insignificant entity he was.

  It was not easy to explain to Wilding what came next.

  "Because, you see, there aren't any words for it. But I'm quite clear as to what it was. It was the recognition of God. I can express if best by saying that it was as though a blind man who believed in the sun from literary evidence, and who had felt its warmth on his hand, was suddenly to open his eyes and see it.

  "I had believed in God, but now I knew. It was direct personal knowledge, quite indescribable. And a most terrifying experience for any human being. I understood then why, in God's approach to man, He has to incarnate Himself in human flesh.

  "Afterwards-it only lasted a few seconds of time-I turned around and went home. It took me two or three days, and I was very weak and exhausted when I staggered in."

  He was silent for a moment or two.

  "My mother was dreadfully worried over me! She couldn't make it all out. My father, I think, had an inkling. He knew, at least, that I had had some vast experience. I told my mother that I had had curious visions that I couldn't explain, and she said: They have the "sight" in your father's family. His grandmother had it, and one of his sisters.

  "After a few days of rest and feeding up, I was strong again. When people talked of my future, I was silent. I knew that all that would be settled for me. I had only to accept-I had accepted-but what it was I had accepted, I didn't yet know.

  "A week later, there was a big prayer meeting held in the neighbourhood. A kind of Revivalist Mission is how I think you describe it. My mother wanted to go, and my father was willing, though not much interested. I went with them."

  Looking at Wilding, Llewellyn smiled.

  "It wasn't the sort of thing you would have cared for-crude, rather melodramatic. It didn't move me. I was a little disappointed that that was so. Various people got up to testify. Then the command came to me, clear and quite unmistakable.

  "I got up. I remember the faces turning to me."

  "I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't think-or expound my own beliefs. The words were there in my head. Sometimes they got ahead of me, I had to speak faster to catch up, to say them before I lost them. I can't describe to you what it was like-if I said it was like flame and like honey, would you understand at all? The flame seared me, but the sweetness of the honey was there too, the sweetness of obedience. It is both a terrible and a lovely thing to be the messenger of God."

  "Terrible as an army with banners," murmured Wilding.

  "Yes. The psalmist knew what he was talking about."

  "And-afterwards?"

  Llewellyn Knox spread out his hands.

  "Exhaustion, utter and complete exhaustion. I must have spoken, I suppose, for about three-quarters of an hour. When I got home, I sat by the fire shivering, too dead to lift a hand or to speak. My mother understood. She said: 'It is like my father was, after the Eisteddfod.' She gave me hot soup and put hot-water-bottles in my bed."

  Wilding murmured: "You had all the necessary heredity. The mystic from the Scottish side, and the poetic and creative from the Welsh-the voice, too. And it's a true creative picture-the fear, the frustration, the emptiness, and then the sudden up-rush of power, and after it, the weariness."

  He was silent for a moment, and then asked:

  "Won't you go on with the story?"

  "There's not so much more to tell. I went and saw Carol the next day. I told her I wasn't going to be a doctor after all, that I was going to be a preacher of some kind. I told her that I had hoped to marry her, but that now I had to give up that hope. She didn't understand. She said: 'A doctor can do just as much good as a preacher can do.' And I said it wasn't a question of doing good. It was a command, and I had to obey it. And she said it was nonsense saying I couldn't get married. I wasn't a Roman Catholic, was I? And I said: 'Everything I am, and have, has to be God's.' But of course she couldn't see that-how could she, poor child? It wasn't in her vocabulary. I went home and told my mother, and asked her to be good to Carol, and begged her to understand. She said: 'I understand well enough. You'll have nothing left over to give a woman,' and then she broke down and cried, and said: 'I knew-I always knew-there was something. You were different from the others. Ah, but it's hard on the wives and mothers.' "She said: 'If I lost you to a woman, that's the way of life, and there would have been your children for me to hold on my knee. But this way, you'll be gone from me entirely.' "I assured her that wasn't true, but all the time we both knew that it was in essence. Human ties-they all had to go."

  Wilding moved restlessly.

  "You must forgive me, but I can't subscribe to that, as a way of life. Human affection, human sympathy, service to humanity-"

  "But it isn't a way of life that I am talking about! I am talking of the man singled out, the man who is something more than his fellows, and who is also very much less-that is the thing he must never forget, how infinitely less than they he is, and must be."

  "There I can't follow you."

  Llewellyn spoke softly, more to himself than to his listener.

  "That, of course, is the danger-that one will forget. That, I see now, is where God showed mercy to me. I was saved in time."

  Chapter Six

  1

  Wilding looked faintly puzzled by Llewellyn's last words.

  He said with a faint trace of embarrassment: "It's good of you to have told me all you have. Please believe that it wasn't just vulgar curiosity on my part."

  "I know that. You have a real interest in your fellowman."

  "And you are an unusual specimen. I've read in various periodicals accounts of your career. But it wasn't those things that interested me. Those details are merely factual."

  Llewellyn nodded. His mind was still occupied with the past. He was remembering the day when the elevator had swept him up to the thirty-fifth floor of a high building. The reception-room, the tall, elegant blonde who had received him, the square-shouldered, thick-set young man, to whom she had handed him over, and the final sanctuary; the inner office of the magnate. The gleaming pale surface of the vast desk, and the man who rose from behind the desk to proffer a hand and utter a welcome. The big jowl, the small, piercing blue eyes. Just as he had seen them that day in the desert.

  "… certainly glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Knox. As I see it, the country is ripe for a great return to God… got to be
put over in a big way… to get results we've got to spend money… been to two of your meetings… I certainly was impressed… you'd got them right with you, eating up every word… it was great… great!"

  God and Big Business. Did they seem incongruous together? And yet, why should they? If business acumen was one of God's gifts to man, why should it not be used in his Service?

  He, Llewellyn, had had no doubts or qualms, for this room and this man had already been shown to him. It was part of the pattern, his pattern. Was there sincerity here, a simple sincerity that might seem as grotesque as the early carvings on a font? Or was it the mere grasping of a business opportunity? The realisation that God might be made to pay?

  Llewellyn had never known, had not, indeed, troubled himself even to wonder. It was part of his pattern. He was a messenger, nothing more, a man under obedience.

  Fifteen years… From the small open-air meetings of the beginning, to lecture-rooms, to halls, to vast stadiums.

  Faces, blurred gigantic masses of faces, receding into the distance, rising up in serried rows. Waiting, hungering…

  And his part? Always the same.

  The coldness, the recoil of fear, the emptiness, the waiting.

  And then Dr. Llewellyn Knox rises to his feet and… the words come, rushing through his mind, emerging through his lips… Not his words, never his words. But the glory, the ecstasy of speaking them, that was his. (That, of course, was where the danger had lain. Strange that he should not have realised that until now.) And then the aftermath, the fawning women, the hearty men, his own sense of semi-collapse, of deadly nausea, the hospitality, the adulation, the hysteria.

  And he himself, responding as best he could, no longer the messenger of God, but the inadequate human being, something far less than those who looked at him with their foolish worshipping gaze. For virtue had gone out of him, he was drained of all that gives a man human dignity, a sick exhausted creature, Sled with despair, black, empty, hollow despair.

  "Poor Dr. Knox," they said, "he looks so tired."

  Tired. More and more tired…

  He had been a strong man physically, but not strong enough to outlast fifteen years. Nausea, giddiness, a fluttering heart, a difficulty in drawing breath, black-outs, fainting spells-quite simply, a worn-out body.

  And so to the sanatorium in the mountains. Lying there motionless, staring out through the window at the dark shape of the pine tree cutting the line of the sky, and the round, pink face bending over him, the eyes behind the thick glasses, owlish in their solemnity.

  "It will be a long business; you'll have to be patient."

  "Yes, doctor?"

  "You've a strong constitution fortunately, but you've strained it unmercifully. Heart, lungs-every organ in your body has been affected."

  "Are you breaking it to me that I'm going to die?"

  He had asked the question with only mild curiosity.

  "Certainly not. We'll get you right again. As I say, it will be a long business, but you'll go out of here a fit man. Only-"

  The doctor hesitated.

  "Only what?"

  "You must understand this, Dr. Knox. You'll have to lead a quiet life in future. There must be no more public life. Your heart won't stand it. No platforms, no exertion, no speeches."

  "After a rest-"

  "No, Dr. Knox, however long you rest, my verdict will be the same."

  "I see." He thought about it. "I see. Worn out?"

  "Just that."

  Worn out. Used by God for His purpose, but the instrument, being human and frail, had not lasted long. His usefulness was over. Used, discarded, thrown away.

  And what next?

  That was the question? What next?

  Because, after all, who was he, Llewellyn Knox?

  He would have to find out.

  2

  Wilding's voice came in, pat upon his thoughts.

  "Is it in order for me to ask you what your future plans are?"

  "I have no plans."

  "Really? You hope, perhaps, to go back-"

  Llewellyn interrupted, a slight harshness in his voice.

  "There is no going back."

  "Some modified form of activity?"

  "No. It's a clean break-has to be."

  "They told you that?"

  "Not in so many words. Public life is out, was what they stressed. No more platform. That means finish."

  "A quiet living somewhere? Living is not your term, I know, but I mean minister to some church?"

  "I was an Evangelist, Sir Richard. That's a very different thing."

  "I'm sorry. I think I understand. You've got to start an entirely new life."

  "Yes, a private life, as a man."

  "And that confuses and alarms you?"

  Llewellyn shook his head.

  "Nothing like that. I see, I've seen it plainly in the weeks I've been here, that I've escaped a great danger."

  "What danger?"

  "Man cannot be trusted with power. It rots him-from within. How much longer could I have gone on without the taint creeping in? I suspect that already it had begun to work. Those moments when I spoke to those vast crowds of people-wasn't I beginning to assume that it was I who was speaking, I who was giving them a message, I who knew just what they should or should not do, I who was no longer just God's messenger, but God's representative? You see? Promoted to Vizier, exalted, a man set above other men!" He added quietly: "God in His goodness has seen fit to save me from that."

  "Then your faith has not been diminished by what has happened to you?"

  Llewellyn laughed.

  "Faith? That seems an odd word to me. Do we believe in the sun, the moon, the chair we sit in, the ground we walk upon? If one has knowledge, what need of belief? And do disabuse your mind of the idea that I've suffered some kind of tragedy. I haven't, I've pursued my appointed course-am still pursuing it. It was right for me to come here-to the island; it will be right for me to leave it when the time comes."

  "You mean you will get another-what did you call it?-command?"

  "Oh no, nothing so definite. But little by little a certain course of action will appear not only to be desirable, but inevitable. Then I shall go ahead and act. Things will clarify themselves in my mind. I shall know where I have to go and what I have to do."

  "As easy as that?"

  "I think so-yes. If I can explain it, it's a question of being in harmony. A wrong course of action-and by wrong I don't mean wrong in the sense of evil, but of being mistaken-is felt at once: it's like falling out of step if you're dancing, or singing a false note-it jars." Moved by a sudden memory, he said: "If I was a woman, I dare say it would feel like getting a stitch wrong when you were knitting."

  "What about women? Will you, perhaps, go back home? Find your early love?"

  "The sentimental ending? Hardly. Besides," he smiled, "Carol has been married for many years now. She has three children, and her husband is going ahead in real estate in a big way. Carol and I were never meant for each other. It was a boy and girl affair that never went deep."

  "Has there been no other woman in all these years?"

  "No, thank God. If there had been, if I had met her then-"

  He left the sentence unfinished, puzzling Wilding a little by so doing. Wilding could have no clue to the picture that sprang up before Llewellyn's mental vision-the wings of dark hair, the frail delicate temple-bones, the tragic eyes.

  Some day, Llewellyn knew, he would meet her. She was as real as the office desk and the sanatorium had been. She existed. If he had met her during the time of his dedication he would have been forced to give her up. It would have been required of him. Could he have done it? He doubted himself. His dark lady was no Carol, no light affair born of the spring-time and a young man's quickened senses. But that sacrifice had not been demanded of him. Now he was free. When they met… He had no doubt that they would meet. Under what circumstances, in what place, at what moment of time-all that was unknown. A stone font in a c
hurch, tongues of fire, those were the only indications he had. Yet he had the feeling that he was coming very near, that it would not be long now.

  The abruptness with which the door between the book-cases opened, startled him. Wilding turned his head, rose to his feet with a gesture of surprise.

  "Darling, I didn't expect-"

  She was not wearing the Spanish shawl, or the high-necked black dress. She had on something diaphanous and floating in pale mauve, and it was the colour, perhaps, that made Llewellyn feel that she brought with her the old-fashioned scent of lavender. She stopped when she saw him; her eyes, wide and slightly glazed, stared at him, expressing such a complete lack of emotion that it was almost shocking.

  "Dearest, is your head better? This is Dr. Knox. My wife."

  Llewellyn came forward, took her limp hand, said formally: "I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Wilding."

  The wide stare became human; it showed, very faintly, relief. She sat in the chair that Wilding pushed forward for her and began talking rapidly, with a staccato effect.

  "So you're Dr. Knox? I've read about you, of course. How odd that you should come here-to the island. Why did you? I mean, what made you? People don't usually, do they, Richard?" She half turned her head, hurried on, inconsequently:

  "I mean they don't stay in the island. They come in on boats, and go out again. Where? I've often wondered. They buy fruit and those silly little dolls and the straw hats they make here, and then they go back with them to the boat, and the boat sails away. Where do they go back to? Manchester? Liverpool? Chichester, perhaps, and wear a plaited straw hat to church in the cathedral. That would be funny. Things are funny. People say: 'I don't know whether I'm going or coming.' My old nurse used to say it. But it's true, isn't it? It's life. Is one going or comings I don't know."

  She shook her head and suddenly laughed. She swayed a little as she sat. Llewellyn thought: 'In a minute or two, she'll pass out. Does he know, I wonder?'

  But a quick sideways glance at Wilding decided that for him. Wilding, that experienced man of the world, had no idea. He was leaning over his wife, his face alight with love and anxiety.