The Burden - Christie Agatha - Страница 30

3

"So you go to the villa of the Se?or Sir Wilding?"

The driver of the ramshackle victoria was frankly interested. His dilapidated vehicle was gaily adorned with painted flowers, and his horse was decked with a necklace of blue beads. The horse, the carriage and the driver seemed equally cheerful and serene.

"He is very sympathetic, the Sen~or Sir Wilding," he said. "He is not a stranger here. He is one of us. Don Estobal, who owned the villa and the land, he was old, very old. He let himself be cheated, all day long he read books, and more books came for him all the time. There are rooms in the villa lined with books to the ceiling. It is incredible that a man should want so many books. And then he dies, and we all wonder, will the villa be sold? But then Sir Wilding comes. He has been here as a boy, often, for Don Estobal's sister married an Englishman, and her children and her children's children would come here in the holidays from their schools. But after Don Estobal's death the estate belongs to Sir Wilding, and he comes here to inherit, and he starts at once to put all in order, and he spends much money to do so. But then there comes the war, and he goes away for many years, but he says always that if he is not killed, he will return here-and so at last he has done so. Two years ago it is now since he returned here with his new wife, and has settled here to live."

"He has married twice then?"

"Yes." The driver lowered his voice confidentially. "His first wife was a bad woman. She was beautiful, yes, but she deceived him much with other men-yes, even here in the island. He should not have married her. But where women are concerned, he is not clever-he believes too much."

He added, almost apologetically:

"A man should know whom to trust, but Sir Wilding does not. He does not know about women. I do not think he will ever learn."

Chapter Four

His host received Llewellyn in a long, low room, lined to the ceiling with books. The windows were thrown open, and from some distance below there came the gentle murmur of the sea. Drinks were set on a low table near the window.

Wilding greeted him with obvious pleasure, and apologised for his wife's absence.

"She suffers badly from migraine," he said. "I hoped that with the peace and quiet of her life out here it might improve, but it hasn't done so noticeably. And doctors don't really seem to have the answer for it."

Llewellyn expressed his sorrow politely.

"She's been through a lot of trouble," said Wilding. "More than any girl should be asked to bear. And she was so young-still is."

Reading his face, Llewellyn said gently:

"You love her very much."

Wilding sighed:

"Too much, perhaps, for my own happiness."

"And for hers?"

"No love in the world could be too much to make up to her for all she has suffered."

He spoke vehemently.

Between the two men there was already a curious sense of intimacy which had, indeed, existed from the first moment of their meeting. It was as though the fact that neither of them had anything in common with the other-nationality, upbringing, way of life, beliefs-made them therefore ready to accept each other without the usual barriers of reticence or conventionality. They were like men marooned together on a desert island, or afloat on a raft for an indefinite period. They could speak to each other frankly, almost with the simplicity of children.

Presently they went into dinner. It was an excellent meal, beautifully served, of a very simple character. There was wine which Llewellyn refused.

"If you'd prefer whisky…"

The other shook his head.

"Thank you-just water."

"Is that-excuse me-a principle with you?"

"No. Actually it is a way of life that I need no longer follow. There is no reason-now-why I should not drink wine. Simply I am not used to it."

As he uttered the word 'now', Wilding raised his bead sharply. He looked intensely interested. He almost opened his mouth to speak, then rather obviously checked himself, and began to talk of extraneous matters. He was a good talker, with a wide range of subjects. Not only had he travelled extensively, and in many unknown parts of the globe, but he had the gift of making all he himself had seen and experienced equally real to the person who was listening to him.

If you wanted to go to the Gobi Desert, or to the Fezzan, or to Samarkand, when you had talked of those places with Richard Wilding, you had been there.

It was not that he lectured, or in any way held forth. His conversation was natural and spontaneous.

Quite apart from his enjoyment of Wilding's talk, Llewellyn found himself increasingly interested by the personality of the man himself. His charm and magnetism were undeniable, and they were also, so Llewellyn judged, entirely unself-conscious. Wilding was.not exerting himself to radiate charm; it was natural to him. He was a man of parts, too, shrewd, intellectual without arrogance, a man with a vivid interest in ideas and people as well as in places. If he had chosen to specialise in some particular subject-but that, perhaps, was his secret: he never had so chosen, and never would. That left him human, warm, and essentially approachable.

And yet, it seemed to Llewellyn, he had not quite answered his own question-a question as simple as that put by a child. "Why do I like this man so much?"

The answer was not in Wilding's gifts. It was something in the man himself.

And suddenly, it seemed to Llewellyn, he got it. It was because, with all his gifts, the man himself was fallible. He was a man who could, who would, again and again prove himself mistaken. He had one of those warm, kindly emotional natures that invariably meet rebuffs because of their untrustworthiness in making judgments.

Here was no clear, cool, logical appraisal of men and things; instead there were warm-hearted impulsive beliefs, mainly in people, which were doomed to disaster because they were based on kindliness always rather than on fact. Yes, the man was fallible, and being fallible, he was also lovable. Here, thought Llewellyn, is someone whom I should hate to hurt.

They were back again now in the library, stretched out in two big arm-chairs. A wood fire had been lit, more to convey the sense, of a hearth, than because it was needed. Outside the sea murmured, and the scent of some nightblooming flower stole into the room.

Wilding was saying disarmingly:

"I'm so interested, you see, in people. I always have been. In what makes them tick, if I might put it that way. Does that sound very cold-blooded and analytical?"

"Not from you. You wonder about your fellow human beings because you care for them and are therefore interested in them."

"Yes, that's true." He paused. Then he said: "If one can help a fellow human being, that seems to me the most worthwhile thing in the world."

"If," said Llewellyn.

The other looked at him sharply.

"That seems oddly sceptical, coming from you."

"No, it's only a recognition of the enormous difficulty of what you propose."

"Is it so difficult? Human beings want to be helped."

"Yes, we all tend to believe that in some magical manner others can attain for us what we can't-or don't want to-attain for ourselves."

"Sympathy-and belief," said Wilding earnestly. "To believe the best of someone is to call the best into being. People respond to one's belief in them. I've found that again and again."

"For how long?"

Wilding winced, as though something had touched a sore place in him.

"You can guide a child's hand on the paper, but when you take your hand away the child still has to learn to write himself. Your action may, indeed, have delayed the process."