The Burden - Christie Agatha (читать книги TXT) 📗

Then, when the waiter finally left, setting coffee on the table, Laura said:

"You know about me-a good deal, anyway, but I know nothing about you. Tell me."

He told her, describing his youth, his parents and his upbringing.

"Are they still alive?"

"My father died ten years ago, my mother last year.."

"Were they-was she-very proud of you?" "My father, I think, disliked the form my mission took.

Emotional religion repelled him, but he accepted, I think, that there was no other way for me. My mother understood better. She was proud of my world fame-mothers are-but she was sad."

"Sad?"

"Because of the things-the human things-that I was missing. And because my lack of them separated me from other human beings; and, of course, from her."

"Yes. I see that."

She thought about it He went on, telling her his story, a fantastic story it seemed to her. The whole thing was outside her experience, and in some ways it revolted her. She said:

"It's terribly commercial."

"The machinery? Oh yes."

She said: "If only I could understand better. I want to understand. You feel-you felt-that it was really important, really worthwhile."

"To God?"

She was taken aback.

"No-no, I didn't mean that. I meant-to you."

He sighed.

"It's so hard to explain. I tried to explain to Richard Wilding. The question of whether it was worthwhile never arose. It was a thing I had to do."

"And suppose you'd just preached to an empty desert, would that have been the same?"

"In my sense, yes. But I shouldn't have preached so well, of course." He grinned. "An actor can't act well to an empty house. An author needs people to read his books. A painter needs to show his pictures."

"You sound-that's what I can't understand-as though the results didn't interest you."

"I have no means of knowing what the results were."

"But the figures, the statistics, the converts-all those things were listed and put down in black and white."

"Yes, yes, I know. But that's machinery again, human calculations. I don't know the results that God wanted, or what he got. But understand this, Laura: if, out of all the millions who came to hear me, God wanted one-just one-soul, and chose that means to reach that soul, it would be enough."

"It sounds like taking a steam-hammer to crack a nut."

"It does, doesn't it, by human standards? That's always our difficulty, of course; we have to apply human standards of values-or of justice and injustice-to God. We haven't, can't have, the faintest knowledge of what God really requires from man, except that it seems highly probable that God requires man to become something that he could be, but hasn't thought of being yet."

Laura said:

"And what about you? What does God require of you-now?"

"Oh-just to be an ordinary sort of guy. Earn my living, marry a wife, raise a family, love my neighbours."

"And you'll be satisfied-with that?"

"Satisfied? What else should I want? What more should any man want? I'm handicapped, perhaps. I've lost fifteen years-of ordinary life. That's where you'll have to help me, Laura."

"I?"

"You know that I want to marry you, don't you? You realise, you must realise, that I love you."

She sat, very white, looking at him. The unreality of their festive dinner was over. They were themselves now. Back in the now and here that they had made for themselves.

She said slowly: "It's impossible."

He answered her without due concern: "Is it? Why?"

"I can't marry you."

"I'll give you time to get used to the idea."

"Time will make no difference."

"Do you mean that you could never learn to love me? Forgive me, Laura, but I don't think that's true. I think that, already, you love me a little."

Emotion rose up in her like a flame.

"Yes, I could love you. I do love you…"

He said very softly: "That's wonderful, Laura… dearest Laura, my Laura."

She thrust out a hand, as though to hold him away from her.

"But I can't marry you. I can't marry anybody."

He stared at her hard.

"What's in your head? There's something."

"Yes. There's something."

"Vowed to good works? To celibacy?"

"No, no, no!"

"Sorry. I spoke like a fool. Tell me, my dearest."

"Yes. I must tell you. It's a thing I thought I should never tell anybody."

"Perhaps not. But you must certainly tell me."

She got up and went over to the fireplace. Without looking at him, she began to speak in a quiet matter-of-fact voice.

"Shirley's first husband died in my house."

"I know. She told me."

"Shirley was out that evening. I was alone in the house with Henry. He had sleeping-tablets, quite a heavy dose, every night. Shirley called back to me when she went out that she had given him his tablets, but I had gone back into the house. When I came, at ten o'clock, to see if he wanted anything, he told me that he hadn't had his evening dose of tablets. I fetched them and gave them to him. Actually, he had had his tablets-he'd got sleepy and confused, as people often do with that particular drug, and imagined that he hadn't had them. The double dose killed him."

"And you feel responsible?"

"I was responsible."

"Technically, yes."

"More than technically. I knew that he had taken his dose. I heard when Shirley called to me."

"Did you know that a double dose would kill him?"

"I knew that it might."

She added deliberately:

"I hoped that it would."

"I see." Llewellyn's manner was quiet, unemotional. "He was incurable, wasn't he? I mean, he would definitely have been a cripple for life."

"It was not a mercy killing, if that is what you mean."

"What happened about it?"

"I took full responsibility. I was not blamed. The question arose as to whether it might have been suicide-that is, whether Henry might have deliberately told me that he had not had his dose in order to get a second one. The tablets were never left within his reach, owing to his extravagant fits of despair and rage."

"What did you say to that suggestion?"

"I said that I did not think that it was likely. Henry would never have thought of such a thing. He would have gone on living for years-years, with Shirley waiting on him and enduring his selfishness and bad temper, sacrificing all her life to him. I wanted her to be happy, to have her life and live it. She'd met Richard Wilding not long before. They'd fallen in love with each other."

"Yes, she told me."

"She might have left Henry in the ordinary course of events. But a Henry ill, crippled, dependent upon her-that Henry she would never leave. Even if she no longer cared for him, she would never have left him. Shirley was loyal, she was the most loyal person I've ever known. Oh, can't you see? I couldn't bear her whole life to be wasted, ruined. I didn't care what they did to me."

"But actually they didn't do anything to you."

"No. Sometimes-I wish they had."

"Yes, I dare say you do feel like that. But there's nothing really they could do. Even if it wasn't a mistake, if the doctor suspected same merciful impulse in your heart, or even an unmerciful one, he would know that there was no case, and he wouldn't be anxious to make one. If there had been any suspicion of Shirley having done it, it would have been a different matter."

"There was never any question of that. A maid actually heard Henry say to me that he hadn't had his tablets and ask me to give them to him."

"Yes, it was all made easy for you-very easy." He looked up at her. "How do you feel about it now?"

"I wanted Shirley to be free to-"

"Leave Shirley out of it. This is between you and Henry. How do you feel about Henry? That it was all for the best?"

"No."

"Thank God for that."

"Henry didn't want to die. I killed him."