The Burden - Christie Agatha - Страница 33

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"I don't know really-anything about myself."

Back at college, he filled up every moment, either with work or in the company of friends. Fear faded away from him. He felt self-assured once more. He read abstruse dissertations on adolescent sex manifestations, and explained himself to himself satisfactorily.

He graduated with distinction, and that, too, encouraged him to have confidence in himself. He returned home with his mind made up, and his future clear ahead. He would ask Carol to marry him, and discuss with her the various possibilities open to him now that he was qualified. He felt an enormous relief now that his life unfolded before him in so clear a sequence. Work that was congenial and which he felt himself competent to do well, and a girl he loved with whom to make a home and have children.

Arrived at home, he threw himself into all the local festivities. He went about in a crowd, but within that crowd he and Carol paired off and were accepted as a pair. He was seldom, if ever, alone, and when he went to bed at night he slept and dreamed of Carol. They were erotic dreams and he welcomed them as such. Everything was normal, everything was fine, everything was as it should be.

Confident in this belief, he was startled when his father said to him one day:

"What's wrong, lad?"

"Wrong?" He stared.

"You're not yourself."

"But I am! I've never felt so fit!"

"You're well enough physically, maybe."

Llewellyn stared at his father. The gaunt, aloof old man, with his deep-set burning eyes, nodded his head slowly.

"There are times," he said, "when a man needs to be alone."

He said no more, turning away, as Llewellyn felt once more that swift illogical fear spring up. He didn't want to be alone-it was the last thing he wanted. He couldn't, he mustn't be alone.

Three days later he came to his father and said:

"I'm going camping in the mountains. By myself."

Angus nodded. "Ay."

His eyes, the eyes of a mystic, looked at his son with comprehension.

Llewellyn thought: 'I've inherited something from him-something that he knows about, and I don't know about yet.'

He had been alone here, in the desert, far nearly three weeks. Curious things had been happening to him. From the very first, however, he had found solitude quite acceptable. He wondered why he had fought against the idea of it so long.

To begin with, he had thought a great deal about himself and his future and Carol. It had all unrolled itself quite clearly and logically, and it was not for some time that he realised that he was looking at his life from outside, as a spectator and not a participator. That was because none of that mapped-out planned existence was real. It was logical and coherent, but in fact it did not exist. He loved Carol, he desired her, but he would not marry her. He had something else to do. As.yet he did not know what. After he had acknowledged that fact, there came another phase-a phase he could only describe as one of emptiness, great echoing emptiness. He was nothing, and contained nothing. There was no longer any fear. By accepting emptiness, he had cast out fear.

During this phase, he ate and drank hardly anything.

Sometimes he was, he thought, slightly light-headed.

Like a mirage in front of him, scenes and people appeared.

Once or twice he saw a face very clearly. It was a woman's face, and it roused in him an extraordinary excitement. It had fragile, very beautiful bones, with hollowed temples, and dark hair springing back from the temples, and deep, almost tragic eyes. Behind her he saw, once, a background of flames, and another time the shadowy outline of what looked like a church. This time, he saw suddenly that she was only a child. Each time he was conscious of suffering. He thought: 'If I could only help…' But at the same time he knew that there was no help possible, and that the very idea was wrong and false.

Another vision was of a gigantic oflice desk,in pale shining wood, and behind it a man with a heavy jowl and small, alert, blue eyes. The man leant forward as though about to speak, and to do so emphasised what he was about to say by picking up a small ruler and gesticulating with it.

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.

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.

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