The Burden - Christie Agatha - Страница 31

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"Are you trying to destroy my belief in human nature?"

Llewellyn smiled as he said:

"I think I'm asking you to have pity on human nature."

"To encourage people to give of their best-"

"Is forcing them to live at a very high altitude; to keep up being what someone expects you to be is to live under a great strain. Too great a strain leads eventually to collapse."

"Must one then expect the worst of people?" asked Wilding satirically.

"One should recognise that probability."

"And you a man of religion!"

Llewellyn smiled:

"Christ told Peter that before the cock crew, he would have denied Him thrice. He knew Peter's weakness of character better than Peter himself knew it, and loved him none the less for it."

"No," said Wilding, with vigour, "I can't agree with you. In my own first marriage"-he paused, then went on-"my wife was-could have been-a really fine character. She'd got into a bad set; all she needed was love, trust, belief. If it hadn't been for the war-" He stopped. "Well, it was one of the lesser tragedies of war. I was away, she was alone, exposed to bad influences."

He paused again before saying abruptly: "I don't blame her. I make allowances-she was the victim of circumstances. It broke me up at the time. I thought I'd never feel the same man again. But time heals…"

He made a gesture.

"Why I should tell you the history of my life I don't know. I'd much rather hear about your life. You see, you're something absolutely new to me. I want to know the 'why' and 'how' of you. I was impressed when I came to that meeting, deeply impressed. Not because you swayed your audience that I can understand well enough. Hitler did it. Lloyd George did it. Politicians, religious leaders and actors, they can all do it in a greater or lesser degree. It's a gift. No, I wasn't interested in the effect you were having, I was interested in you. Why was this particular thing worthwhile to you?"

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.

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.

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