The Burden

by Agatha Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott

  He added gently:

  ‘Is it happiness that you want?’

  ‘I don’t know. I ought to be happy. I have everything to make me happy.’

  ‘But you want something more?’

  ‘Less,’ she said quickly, ‘I want less out of life. It’s too much – it’s all too much.’

  She added, rather unexpectedly:

  ‘It’s all so heavy.’

  They sat for some time in silence.

  ‘If I knew,’ she said at last, ‘if I knew in the least what I really wanted, instead of just being so negative and idiotic.’

  ‘But you do know what you want; you want to escape. Why don’t you, then?’

  ‘Escape?’

  ‘Yes. What’s stopping you? Money?’

  ‘No, it’s not money. I have money – not a great deal, but sufficient.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘It’s so many things. You wouldn’t understand.’ Her lips twisted in a sudden, ruefully humorous smile. ‘It’s like Tchekov’s three sisters, always moaning about going to Moscow; they never go, and never will, although I suppose they could just have gone to the station and taken a train to Moscow any day of their lives! Just as I could buy a ticket and sail on that ship out there, that sails tonight.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  He was watching her.

  ‘You think you know the answer,’ she said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t know the answer. I’m trying to help you find it.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m like Tchekov’s three sisters. Perhaps I don’t really want to go.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps escape is just an idea that I play with.’

  ‘Possibly. We all have fantasies that help us to bear the lives we live.’

  ‘And escape is my fantasy?’

  ‘I don’t know. You know.’

  ‘I don’t know anything – anything at all. I had every chance, I did the wrong thing. And then, when one has done the wrong thing, one has to stick to it, hasn’t one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Must you go on saying that over and over?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re asking me to come to a conclusion on something I know nothing about.’

  ‘It was a general principle.’

  ‘There isn’t such a thing as a general principle.’

  ‘Do you mean’ – she stared at him – ‘that there isn’t such a thing as absolute right and wrong?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that. Of course there’s absolute right and wrong, but that’s a thing so far beyond our knowledge and comprehension, that we can only have the dimmest apprehension of it.’

  ‘But surely one knows what is right?’

  ‘You have been taught it by the accepted canons of the day. Or, going further, you can feel it of your own instinctive knowledge. But even that’s a long way off. People were burned at the stake, not by sadists or brutes, but by earnest and high-minded men, who believed that what they did was right. Read some of the law cases in ancient Greece, of a man who refused to let his slaves be tortured so as to get at the truth, as was the prevalent custom. He was looked upon as a man who deliberately obscured justice. There was an earnest God-fearing clergyman in the States who beat his three-year-old son, whom he loved, to death, because the child refused to say his prayers.’

  ‘That’s all horrible!’

  ‘Yes, because time has changed our ideas.’

  ‘Then, what can we do?’

  Her lovely bewildered face bent towards him.

  ‘Follow your pattern, in humility – and hope.’

  ‘Follow one’s pattern – yes, I see that, but my pattern – it’s wrong somehow.’ She laughed. ‘Like when you’re knitting a jumper and you’ve dropped a stitch a long way back.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I’ve never knitted.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you give me an opinion just now?’

  ‘It would only have been an opinion.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘And it might have influenced you … I should think you’re easily influenced.’

  Her face grew sombre again.

  ‘Yes. Perhaps that’s what was wrong.’

  He waited for a moment or two, then he said in a matter-of-fact voice:

  ‘What exactly is wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She looked at him despairingly. ‘Nothing. I’ve got everything any woman could want.’

  ‘You’re generalizing again. You’re not any woman. You’re you. Have you got everything you want?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes! Love and kindness and money and luxury, and beautiful surroundings and companionship – everything. All the things that I would have chosen for myself. No, it’s me. There’s something wrong with me.’

  She looked at him defiantly. Strangely enough, she was comforted when he answered matter-of-factly:

  ‘Oh yes. There’s something wrong with you – that’s very clear.’

  3

  She pushed her brandy-glass a little way away from her.

  She said: ‘Can I talk about myself?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Because if I did, I might just see where – it all went wrong. That would help, I think.’

  ‘Yes. It might help.’

  ‘It’s all been very nice and ordinary – my life, I mean. A happy childhood, a lovely home. I went to school and did all the ordinary things, and nobody was ever nasty to me; perhaps if they had been, it would have been better for me. Perhaps I was a spoiled brat – but no, I don’t really think so. And I came home from school and played tennis and danced, and met young men, and wondered what job to take up – all the usual things.’

  ‘Sounds straightforward enough.’

  ‘And then I fell in love and married.’ Her voice changed slightly.

  ‘And lived happily …

  ‘No.’ Her voice was thoughtful. ‘I loved him, but I was unhappy very often.’ She added: ‘That’s why I asked you if happiness really mattered.’

  She paused, and then went on:

  ‘It’s so hard to explain. I wasn’t very happy, but yet in a curious way it was all right – it was what I’d chosen, what I wanted. I didn’t – go into it with my eyes shut. Of course I idealized him – one does. But I remember now, waking up very early one morning – it was about five o’clock, just before dawn. That’s a cold, truthful time, don’t you think? And I knew then – saw, I mean – what the future would become. I knew I shouldn’t be really happy, I saw what he was like, selfish and ruthless in a gay kind of charming way, but I saw, too, that he was charming, and gay and light-hearted – and that I loved him, and that no one else would do, and that I would rather be unhappy, married to him, than smug and comfortable without him. And I thought I could, with luck, and if I wasn’t too stupid, make a go of it. I accepted the fact that I loved him more than he would ever love me, and that I mustn’t – ever – ask him for more than he wanted to give.’

  She stopped a moment, and then went on:

  ‘Of course I didn’t put it to myself as clearly as all that. I’m describing now what was then just a feeling. But it was real. I went back again to thinking him wonderful and inventing all sorts of noble things about him that weren’t in the least true. But I’d had my moment – the moment when you do see what lies ahead of you, and you can turn back or go on. I did think in those cold early morning minutes when you see how difficult and – yes – frightening things are – I did think of turning back. But instead I chose to go on.’

  He said very gently:

  ‘And you regret –?’

  ‘No, no!’ She was vehement. ‘I’ve never regretted. Every minute of it was worth while! There’s only one thing to regret – that he died.’

  The deadness was gone from her eyes now. It was no longer a woman drifting away from life towards fairyland, who leaned forward facing him across the table. It was a woman passionately alive.

&n
bsp; ‘He died too soon,’ she said. ‘What is it Macbeth says? “She should have died hereafter.” That’s what I feel about him. He should have died hereafter.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘We all feel that when people die.’

  ‘Do we? I wouldn’t know. I know he was ill. I realize he’d have been a cripple for life. I realize he bore it all badly and hated his life, and took it out on everybody and principally on me. But he didn’t want to die. In spite of everything he didn’t want to die. That’s why I resent it so passionately for him. He’d what amounts to a genius for living – even half a life, even a quarter, he would have enjoyed. Oh!’ She raised her arms passionately. ‘I hate God for making him die.’

  She stopped then, and looked at him doubtfully. ‘I shouldn’t have said that – that I hated God.’

  He said calmly: ‘It’s much better to hate God than to hate your fellow men. You can’t hurt God.’

  ‘No. But He can hurt you.’

  ‘Oh no, my dear. We hurt each other, and hurt ourselves.’

  ‘And make God our scapegoat?’

  ‘That is what He has always been. He bears our burdens – the burdens of our revolts, of our hates, yes, and of our love.’

  Chapter Three

  1

  In the afternoons, Llewellyn had formed the habit of going for long walks. He would start up from the town on a widely curving, zig-zagging road that led steadily upwards until the town and the bay lay beneath him, looking curiously unreal in the stillness of the afternoon. It was the hour of the siesta, and no gaily-coloured dots moved on the waterfront or on the occasionally glimpsed roads and streets. Up here on the hills the only human creatures Llewellyn met were goat-herds, little boys who wandered singing to themselves in the sunshine, or sat playing games of their own with little heaps of stones. These would give Llewellyn a grave good afternoon, without curiosity. They were accustomed to foreigners who strode energetically along, their shirts open at the neck, perspiring freely. Such foreigners were, they knew, either writers or painters. Though not numerous, they were, at least, no novelty. As Llewellyn had no apparatus of canvas or easel or even sketch-book with him, they put him down as a writer, and said to him politely: ‘Good afternoon.’

  Llewellyn returned their greetings and strode on.

  He had no particular purpose in his wandering. He observed the scenery, but it had for him no special significance. Significance was within him, not yet clear and recognized, but gradually gaining form and shape.

  A path led him through a grove of bananas. Once within its green spaces, he was struck by how immediately all sense of purpose or direction had to be abandoned. There was no knowing how far the bananas extended, and where or when he would emerge. It might be a tiny path, or it might extend for miles. One could only continue on one’s way. Eventually one would emerge at the point where the path had led one. That point was already in existence, fixed. He himself could not determine it. What he could determine was his own progression – his feet trod the path as a result of his own will and purpose. He could turn back or he could continue. He had the freedom of his own integrity. To travel hopefully …

  Presently, with almost disconcerting suddenness, he came out from the green stillness of the bananas on to a bare hill-side. A little below him, to one side of a path that zig-zagged down the side of a hill, a man sat painting at an easel.

  His back was to Llewellyn, who saw only the powerful line of shoulders outlined beneath the thin yellow shirt and a broad-brimmed battered felt hat stuck on the back of the painter’s head.

  Llewellyn descended the path. As he drew abreast, he slackened speed, looking with frank interest at the work proceeding on the canvas. After all, if a painter settled himself by what was evidently a well-trodden path, it was clear that he had no objection to being overlooked.

  It was a vigorous bit of work, painted in strong bands of colour, laid on with an eye to broad effect, rather than detail. It was a pleasing piece of craftsmanship, though without deep significance.

  The painter turned his head sideways and smiled.

  ‘Not my life work,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just a hobby.’

  He was a man of perhaps between forty and fifty, with dark hair just tinged with grey. He was handsome, but Llewellyn was conscious not so much of his good looks as of the charm and magnetism of his personality. There was a warmth to him, a kindly radiating vitality that made him a person who, if met only once, would not easily be forgotten.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said the painter meditatively, ‘the pleasure it gives one to squeeze out rich, luscious colours on to a palette and splash ’em all over a canvas! Sometimes one knows what one’s trying to do, and sometimes one doesn’t, but the pleasure is always there.’ He gave a quick upward glance. ‘You’re not a painter?’

  ‘No. I just happen to be staying here.’

  ‘I see.’ The other laid a streak of rose colour unexpectedly on the blue of his sea. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘That looks good. I thought it might. Inexplicable!’

  He dropped his brush on to the palette, sighed, pushed his dilapidated hat further back on his head, and turned slightly sideways to get a better view of his companion. His eyes narrowed in sudden interest.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but aren’t you Dr Llewellyn Knox?’

  2

  There was a moment’s swift recoil, not translated into physical motion, before Llewellyn said tonelessly:

  ‘That’s so.’

  He was aware a moment later of how quick the other man’s perceptions were.

  ‘Stupid of me,’ he said. ‘You had a breakdown in health, didn’t you? And I suppose you came here to get away from people. Well, you needn’t worry. Americans seldom come to the island, the local inhabitants aren’t interested in anybody but their own cousins and their cousins’ cousins, and the births, deaths and marriages of same, and I don’t count. I live here.’

  He shot a quick glance at the other.

  ‘That surprise you?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just to live – I should not have thought you would be contented with that.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. I didn’t come here originally to live. I was left a big estate here by a great-uncle of mine. It was in rather a bad way when I took it on. Gradually it’s beginning to prosper. Interesting.’ He added: ‘My name’s Richard Wilding.’

  Llewellyn knew the name; traveller, writer – a man of varied interests and widely diffused knowledge in many spheres, archaeology, anthropology, entomology. He had heard it said of Sir Richard Wilding that there was no subject of which he had not some knowledge, yet withal he never pretended to be a professional. The charm of modesty was added to his other gifts.

  ‘I have heard of you, of course,’ said Llewellyn. ‘Indeed, I have enjoyed several of your books very much indeed.’

  ‘And I, Dr Knox, have attended your meetings – one of them, that is to say; at Olympia a year and a half ago.’

  Llewellyn looked at him in some surprise.

  ‘That seems to surprise you,’ said Wilding, with a quizzical smile.

  ‘Frankly, it does. Why did you come, I wonder?’

  ‘To be frank, I came to scoff, I think.’

  ‘That does not surprise me.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to annoy you, either.’

  ‘Why should it?’

  ‘Well, you’re human, and you believe in your mission – or so I assume.’

  Llewellyn smiled a little.

  ‘Oh yes, you can assume that.’

  Wilding was silent for a moment. Then he said, speaking with a disarming eagerness:

  ‘You know, it’s extraordinarily interesting to me to meet you like this. After attending the meeting, the thing I desired most was actually to meet you.’

  ‘Surely there would have been no difficulty about doing that?’

  ‘In a certain sense, no. It would have been obligatory on you! But I wanted
to meet you on very different terms – on such terms that you could, if you wanted to, tell me to go to the devil.’

  Llewellyn smiled again.

  ‘Well, those conditions are fulfilled now. I have no longer any obligations.’

  Wilding eyed him keenly.

  ‘I wonder now, are you referring to health or to viewpoint?’

  ‘It’s a question, I should say, of function.’

  ‘Hm – that’s not very clear.’

  The other did not answer.

  Wilding began to pack up his painting things.

  ‘I’d like to explain to you just how I came to hear you at Olympia. I’ll be frank, because I don’t think you’re the type of man to be offended by the truth when it’s not offensively meant. I disliked very much – still do – all that that meeting at Olympia stood for. I dislike more than I can tell you the idea of mass religion relayed, as it were, by loud-speaker. It offends every instinct in me.’

  He noted the amusement that showed for a moment on Llewellyn’s face.

  ‘Does that seem to you very British and ridiculous?’

  ‘Oh, I accept it as a point of view.’

  ‘I came therefore, as I have told you, to scoff. I expected to have my finer susceptibilities outraged.’

  ‘And you remained to bless?’

  The question was more mocking than serious.

  ‘No. My views in the main are unchanged. I dislike seeing God put on a commercial basis.’

  ‘Even by a commercial people in a commercial age? Do we not always bring to God the fruits in season?’

  ‘That is a point, yes. No, what struck me very forcibly was something that I had not expected – your own very patent sincerity.’

  Llewellyn looked at him in genuine surprise.

  ‘I should have thought that might be taken for granted.’

  ‘Now that I have met you, yes. But it might have been a racket – a comfortable and well-paid racket. There are political rackets, so why not religious rackets? Granted you’ve got the gift of the gab, which you certainly have, I imagine it’s a thing you could do very well out of, if you put yourself over in a big way or could get someone to do that for you. The latter, I should imagine?’