The Burden

by Agatha Christie

  "No, you're not."

  From the hall below, Laura called: "Shirley!"

  She kissed him. She ran down the stairs, happiness surging up in her, happiness and a kind of triumph.

  In the hall below, Laura said that nurse had started.

  "Oh, am I late? I'll run."

  She ran down the drive turning her head to call:

  "I've given Henry his sleeping-pills."

  But Laura had gone inside again, aud was closing the door.

  Part 3. Llewellyn- 1956

  Chapter One

  1

  Llewellyn Knox threw open the shutters of the hotel windows and let in the sweet-scented night air. Below him were the twinkling lights of the town, and beyond them the lights of the harbour.

  For the first time for some weeks, Llewellyn felt relaxed and at peace. Here, perhaps, in the island, he could pause and take stock of himself and of the future. The pattern of the future was clear in outline, but blurred as to detail. He had passed through the agony, the emptiness, the weariness. Soon, very soon now, he should be able to begin life anew. A simpler, more undemanding life, the life of a man like any other man-with this disadvantage only: he would be beginning it at the age of forty.

  He turned back into the room. It was austerely furnished but clean. He washed his face and hands, unpacked his few possessions, and then left his bedroom, and walked down two flights of stairs into the hotel lobby. A clerk was behind a desk there, writing. His eyes came up for a moment, viewed Llewellyn politely, but with no particular interest or curiosity, and dropped once more to his work.

  Llewellyn pushed through the revolving doors and went out into the street. The air was warm with a soft, fragrant dampness.

  It had none of the exotic languor of the tropics. Its warmth was just sufficient to relax tension. The accentuated tempo of civilisation was left behind here. It was as though in the island one went back to an earlier age, an age where the people went about their business slowly, with due thought, without hurry or stress, but where purpose was still purpose. There would be poverty here, and pain, and the various ills of the flesh, but not the jangled nerves, the feverish haste; the apprehensive thoughts of to-morrow, which are the constant goads of the higher civilisations of the world. The hard faces of the career women, the ruthless faces of mothers, ambitious for their young, the worn grey faces of business executives fighting incessantly so that they and theirs should not go down and perish, the anxious tired faces of multitudes fighting for a better existence to-morrow or even to retain the existence they had-all these were absent from the people who passed him by. Most of them glanced at him, a good-mannered glance that registered him as a foreigner, and then glanced away, resuming their own lives. They walked slowly, without haste. Perhaps they were just taking the air. Even if they were bent upon some particular course, there was no urgency. What was not done today could be done to-morrow; friends who awaited their arrival would always wait a little longer, without annoyance.

  A grave, polite people, Llewellyn thought, who smiled seldom, not because they were sad, but because to smile one must be amused. The smile here was not used as a social weapon.

  A woman with a baby in her arms came up to him and begged in a mechanical, lifeless whine. He did not understand what she said, but her outstretched hand, and the melancholy chant of her words conformed, he thought, to a very old pattern. He put a small coin in her palm and she thanked him in the same mechanical manner and turned away. The baby lay asleep against her shoulder. It was well nourished, and her own face, though worn, was not haggard or emaciated. Probably, he thought, she was not in want, it was simply that begging was her trade. She pursued it mechanically, courteously, and with sufficient success to provide food and shelter for herself and the child.

  He turned a corner and walked down a steep street towards the harbour. Two girls, walking together, came up and passed him. They were talking and laughing, and, without turning their heads, it was apparent that they were very conscious of a group of four young men who walked a little distance behind them.

  Llewellyn smiled to himself. This, he thought, was the courting pattern of the island. The girls were beautiful with a proud dark beauty that would probably not outlast youth. In ten years, perhaps less, they would look like this elderly woman who was waddling up the hill on her husband's arm, stout, good-humoured, and still dignified in spite of her shapelessness.

  Llewellyn went on down the steep, narrow street. It came out on the harbour front. Here there were caf?s with broad terraces where people sat and drank little glasses of brightly-coloured drinks. Quite a throng of people were walking up and down in front of the caf?s. Here again their gaze registered Llewellyn as a foreigner, but without any overwhelming interest. They were used to foreigners. Ships put in, and foreigners came ashore, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes to stay-though not usually for long, since the hotels were mediocre and not much given to refinements of plumbing. Foreigners, so the glances seemed to say, were not really their concern. Foreigners were extraneous and had nothing to do with the life of the island.

  Insensibly, the length of Llewellyn's stride shortened. He had been walking at his own brisk transatlantic pace, the pace of a man going to some definite place, and anxious to get there with as much speed as is consistent, with comfort.

  But there was, now, no definite place to which he was going. That was as true spiritually as physically. He was merely a man amongst his fellow kind.

  And with that thought there came over him that warm and happy consciousness of brotherhood which he had felt increasingly in the arid wastes of the last months. It was a thing almost impossible to describe-this sense of nearness to, of feeling with, his fellow-men. It had no purpose, no aim, it was as far removed from beneficence as anything could be. It was a consciousness of love and friendliness that gave nothing, and took nothing, that had no wish to confer a benefit or to receive one. One might describe it as a moment of love that embraced utter comprehension, that was endlessly satisfying, and that yet could not, by very reason of what it was, last.

  How often, Llewellyn thought, he had heard and said those words: "Thy loving kindness to us and to all men."

  Man himself could have that feeling, although he could not hold it long.

  And suddenly he saw that here was the compensation, the promise of the future, that he had not understood. For fifteen or more years he had been held apart from just that-the sense of brotherhood with other men. He bad been a man set apart, a man dedicated to service. But now, now that the glory and the agonising exhaustion were done with, he could become once more a man among men. He was no longer required to serve-only to live.

  Llewellyn turned aside and sat down at one of the tables in a caf?. He chose an inside table against the back wall where he could look over the other tables to the people walking in the street, and beyond them to the lights of the harbour, and the ships that were moored there.

  The waiter who brought his order asked in a gentle, musical voice:

  "You are American? Yes?"

  Yes, Llewellyn said, he was American.

  A gentle smile lit up the waiter's grave face.

  "We have American papers here. I bring them to you."

  Llewellyn checked his motion of negation.

  The waiter went away, and came back with a proud expression on his face, carrying two illustrated American magazines.

  "Thank you."

  "You are welcome, se?or."

  The periodicals were two years old, Llewelyn noted. That again pleased him. It emphasised the remoteness of the island from the up-to-date stream. Here at least, he thought, there would not be recognition.

  His eyes closed for a moment, as he remembered all the various incidents of the last months.

  "Aren't you-isn't it? I thought I recognised you…"

  "Oh, do tell me-you are Dr. Knox?"

  "You're Llewellyn Knox, aren't you? Oh, I do want to tell you how terribly grieved I was to hear-"

&nbs
p; "I knew it must be you! What are your plans, Dr. Knox? Your illness was so terrible. I've heard you're writing a book? I do hope so. Giving us a message?"

  And so on, and so on. On ships, in airports, in expensive hotels, in obscure hotels, in restaurants, on trains. Recognised, questioned, sympathised with, fawned upon-yes, that had been the hardest. Women… Women with eyes like spaniels. Women with that capacity for worship that women had.

  And then there had been, of course, the Press. For even now he was still news. (Mercifully, that would not last long.) So many crude brash questions: What are your plans? Would you say now that-? Can I quote you as believing-? Can you give us a message?

  A message, a message, always a message! To the readers of a particular journal, to the country, to men and women, to the worldBut he had never had a message to give. He had been a messenger, which was a very different thing. But no one was likely to understand that.

  Rest-that was what he had needed. Rest and time. Time to take in what he himself was, and what he should do. Time to take stock of himself. Time to start again, at forty, and live his own life. He must find out what had happened to him, to Llewellyn Knox, the man, during the fifteen years he had been employed as a messenger.

  Sipping his little glass of coloured liqueur, looking at the people, the lights, the harbour, he thought that this would be a good place to find out all that. It was not the solitude of a desert he wanted, he wanted his fellow kind. He was not by nature a recluse or an ascetic. He had no vocation for the monastic life. All he needed was to find out who and what was Llewellyn Knox. Once he knew that, he could go ahead and take up life once more.

  It all came back, perhaps, to Kant's three questions:

  What do I know?

  What can I hope?

  What ought I to do?

  Of these questions, he could answer only one, the second.

  The waiter came back and stood by his table.

  "They are good magazines?" he asked happily.

  Llewellyn smiled.

  "Yes."

  "They were not very new, I am afraid."

  "That does not matter."

  "No. What is good a year ago is good now."

  He spoke with calm certainty.

  Then he added:

  "You have come from the ship? The Santa Margherita? Out there?"

  He jerked his head towards the jetty.

  "Yes."

  "She goes out again to-morrow at twelve, that is right?"

  "Perhaps. I do not know. I am staying here."

  "Ah, you have come for a visit? It is beautiful here, so the visitors say. You will stay until the next ship comes in? On Thursday?"

  "Perhaps longer. I may stay here some time."

  "Ah, you have business here!"

  "No, I have no business."

  "People do not usually stay long here, unless they have business. They say the hotels are not good enough, and there is nothing to do."

  "Surely there is as much to do here as anywhere else?"

  "For us who live here, yes. We have our lives and our work. But for strangers, no. Although we have foreigners who have come here to live. There is Sir Wilding, an Englishman. He has a big estate here-it came to him from his grandfather. He lives here altogether now, and writes books. He is a very celebrated se?or, and much respected."

  "You mean Sir Richard Wilding?"

  The waiter nodded.

  "Yes, that is his name. We have known him here many, many years. In the war he could not come, but afterwards he came back. He also paints pictures. There are many painters here. There is a Frenchman who lives in a cottage up at Santa Dolmea. And there is an Englishman and his wife over on the other side of the island. They are very poor, and the pictures he paints are very odd. She carves figures out of stone as well-"

  He broke off and darted suddenly forward to a table in the corner at which a chair had been turned up, to indicate that it was reserved. Now he seized the chair and drew it back a little, bowing a welcome at the woman who came to occupy it.

  She smiled her thanks at him as she sat down. She did not appear to give him an order, but he went away at once. The woman put her elbows on the table and stared out over the harbour.

  Llewellyn watched her with a stirring of surprise.

  She wore an embroidered Spanish scarf of flowers on an emerald green background, like many of the women walking up and down the street, but she was, he was almost sure, either American or English. Her blonde fairness stood out amongst the other occupants of the caf?. The table at which she was sitting was half obliterated by a great hanging mass of coral-coloured bougainvillaea. To anyone sitting at it, it must have given the feeling of looking out from a cave smothered in vegetation on to the world, and more particularly over the lights of the ships, and their reflections in the harbour.

  The girl, for she was little more, sat quite still, in an attitude of passive waiting. Presently the waiter brought her her drink. She smiled her thanks without speaking. Then, her hands cupped round the glass, she continued to stare out over the harbour, occasionally sipping her drink.

  Llewellyn noticed the rings on her fingers, a solitaire emerald on one hand, and a cluster of diamonds on the other. Under the exotic shawl she was wearing a plain high-necked black dress.

  She neither looked at, nor paid any attention to, the people sitting round her, and noae of them did more than glance at her, and even so without any particular attention. It was clear that she was a well-known figure in the caf?.

  Llewellyn wondered who she was. It struck him as a little unusual that a young woman of her class should be sitting there alone, without any companion. Yet she was obviously perfectly at ease and had the air of someone performing a well-known routine. Perhaps a companion would shortly come and join her.

  But the time went on, and the girl still sat alone at her table. Occasionally she made a slight gesture with her head, and the waiter brought her another drink.

  It was almost an hour later when Llewellyn signalled for his check and prepared to leave. As he passed near her chair, he looked at her.

  She seemed oblivious both of him and of her immediate surroundings. She stared now into her glass, now out to sea, and her expression did not change. It was the expression of someone who is very far away.

  As Llewellyn left the cafe and started up the narrow street that led back to his hotel, he had a sudden impulse to go back, to speak to her, to warn her. Now why had that word 'warn' come into his head? Why did he have the idea that she was in danger?

  He shook his head. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment, but he was quite sure that he was right.

  2

  Two weeks later found Llewellyn Knox still on the island. His days had fallen into a pattern. He walked, rested, read, walked again, slept. In the evenings after dinner he went down to the harbour and sat in one of the caf?s. Soon he cut reading out of his daily routine. He had nothing more to read.

  He was living now with himself only, and that, he knew, was what it should be. But he was not alone. He was in the midst of others of his kind, he was at one with them, even if he never spoke to them. He neither sought nor avoided contact. He had conversations with many people, but none of them meant anything more than the courtesies of fellow human beings. They wished him well, he wished them well, but neither of them wanted to intrude into the other's life.

  Yet to this aloof and satisfying friendship there was an exception. He wondered constantly about the girl who came to the cafe and sat at the table under the bougainvillaea. Though he patronised several different establishments on the harbour front, he came most often to the first one of his choice. Here, on several occasions, he saw the English girl. She arrived always late in the evening and sat at the same table, and he had discovered that she stayed there until almost everyone else had left. Though she was a mystery to him, it was clear to him that she was a mystery to no one else.

  One day he spoke of her to the waiter.

  "The se?ora wh
o sits there, she is English?"

  "Yes, she is English."

  "She lives in the island?"

  "Yes."

  "She does not come here every evening?"

  The waiter said gravely:

  "She comes when she can."

  It was a curious answer, and Llewellyn thought about it afterwards.

  He did not ask her name. If the waiter had wanted him to know her name, he would have told it to him. The boy would have said: "She is the se?ora so and so, and she lives at such-and-such a place." Since he did not say that, Llewellyn deduced that there was a reason why her name should not be given to a stranger.

  Instead he asked:

  "What does she drink?"

  The boy replied briefly: "Brandy," and went away.

  Llewellyn paid for his drink and said good-night. He threaded his way through the tables and stood for a moment on the pavement before joining the evening throng of walkers.

  Then, suddenly, he wheeled round and marched with the firm decisive tread of his nationality to the table by the coral bougainvillaea.

  "Do you mind," he said, "if I sit down and talk to you for a moment or two?"

  Chapter Two

  1

  Her gaze came back very slowly from the harbour lights to his face. For a moment or two her eyes remained wide and unfocused. He could sense the effort she made. She had been, he saw, very far away.

  He saw, too, with a sudden quick pity, how very young she was. Not only young in years (she was, he judged, about twenty-three or four), but young in the sense of immaturity. It was as though a normally maturing rosebud had had its growth arrested by frost-it still presented the appearance of normality, but actually it would progress no further. It would not visibly wither. It would just, in the course of time, drop to the ground, unopened. She looked, he thought, like a lost child. He appreciated, too, her loveliness. She was very lovely. Men would always find her lovely, always yearn to help her, to protect her, to cherish her. The dice, one would have said, were loaded in.her favour. And yet she was sitting here, staring into unfathomable distance, and somewhere on her easy, assured happy path through life she had.got lost.