Classic Audiobook Collection - The Gardener and The Burden by Rudyard Kipling ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

The Gardener and The Burden by Rudyard Kipling audiobook. Genre: drama In this paired short story and poem by Rudyard Kipling, a respectable Englishwoman, Helen Turrell, tries to live quietly and honorably while carrying a private truth she cannot share. When she becomes guardian to a boy, Michael, she builds a life around duty, discretion, and a carefully managed story the village is willing to believe. citeturn0search0 Years later, the Great War reaches into that sheltered world, and Helen is drawn into the vast, impersonal landscape of military loss and remembrance, traveling among graves and records where individual lives risk becoming numbers and names on stone. citeturn0search2 Along the way she meets other women with their own versions of waiting, shame, fear, and devotion, each searching for something that can never be fully restored. citeturn0search4 Framing and echoing the story is Kipling's poem 'The Burden,' which invokes Mary Magdalene at the tomb and meditates on the daily weight of grief, secrecy, and dread, and on the possibility of mercy strong enough to lift what human help cannot. citeturn0search2turn0search5 Together, the pieces explore how love endures inside social rules, how war reshapes private lives, and how compassion can appear in the most unexpected places. citeturn0search1 For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gardner and the Burden by Rudyard Kipling. One grave to me was given, one watch till judgment day, and God looked down from heaven and rolled the stone away. One day in all the years, one hour in that one day, his angel saw my tears, and rolled the stone away. Everyone in the village knew that Helen Turrell did her duty by all her world, and by none more honourably than by her only brother's unfortunate child. The village knew, too, that George Turrell had tried his family severely since early youth,

and were not surprised to be told that, after many fresh starts given and thrown away, he, an inspector of Indian police, had entangled himself with the daughter of a retired non-commissioned officer and had died of a fall from a horse a few weeks before his child was born. Mercifully, George's father and mother were both dead, and though Helen, 35 and independent, might well have washed her hands of the whole disgraceful affair, she most nobly took charge, though she was, at the time, under threat of long trouble which had driven her to the south of France.

She arranged for the passage of the child and a nurse from Bombay, met them at Marseilles, nursed the baby through an attack of infantile dysentery due to the carelessness of the nurse, whom she had had to dismiss, and at last, thin and warm but triumphant, brought the boy late in the autumn, wholly restored, to her Hampshire home. All these details were public property, for her living. was as open as the day, and held that scandals are only increased by hushing them up. She admitted that George had always been rather a black sheep, but things might have been much worse if the mother had insisted on her right to keep the boy. Luckily, it seemed that people

of that class would do almost anything for money, and, as George had always turned to her in his scrapes, she felt herself justified, her friends agreed with her, in cutting the whole non-commissioned officer connection, and giving the child every advantage. A christening, by the rector, under the name of Michael, was the first step. So far as she knew herself, she was not, she said, a child lover, but, for all his faults, she had been very fond of George, and she pointed out that little Mark Michael had his father's mouth to align, which made something to build upon. As a matter of fact, it was the Turrell forehead, broad, low, and well-shaped, with the widely spaced eyes beneath it that Michael had most faithfully reproduced.

His mouth was somewhat better cut than the family type. But Helen, who would concede nothing good to his mother's side, vowed he was a toural all over, and, there being no one to contradict, the likeness was established. In a few years Michael took his place, as accepted as Helen had always been, fearless, philosophical, and fairly good-looking. At six, he wished to know why he could not call her mummy, as other boys called their mothers. She explained that she was only his auntie, and that aunties were not quite the same as mummies, but that, if it gave him pleasure,

he might call her mummy at bedtime for a pet name between themselves. Michael kept his secret most loyally, but Helen, as usual, explained the fact to her friends, which, when Michael heard, he raged. Why did you tell? Why did you tell? Came at the end of the storm.

"'Because it's always best to tell the truth,' Helen answered, "'her arm round him as he shook in his cot. "'All right, but when the truth's ugly, I don't think it's nice.' "'Don't you, dear?' "'No, I don't, and—' She felt the small body stiffen. "'Now you've told I won't call you mummy anymore, not even at bedtimes.' "'But isn't that rather unkind?'

said Helen softly. I don't care. You've hurted me in my insides and I'll hurt you back. I'll hurt you as long as I live. Don't, oh, don't talk like that, dear. You don't know what. I will, and when I'm dead, I'll hurt you worse. Thank goodness I shall be dead long before you, darling. Emma says, never know your luck. Michael had been talking to Helen's elderly, flat-faced maid. Lots of little boys die quite soon, so will I. Then you'll see.

Helen caught her breath and moved towards the door, but the wail of, Mommy, Mommy, drew her back again, and the two wept together. At ten years old, after two terms at a prep school, something or somebody gave him the idea that his civil status was not quite regular. He attacked Helen on the subject,

breaking down her stammered defences with the family directness. Don't believe a word of it, he said cheerily at the end. People wouldn't have talked like they did if my people had been married. But don't you bother, Auntie. I found out all about my sort in English history and the Shakespeare bits. There was William the Conqueror to begin with, and, oh, heaps more, and they all got on first row. it won't make any difference to you my being that will it as if anything could she began all right we won't talk about it any more if it makes you cry

he never mentioned the thing again of his own will but when two years later he skilfully managed to have measles in the holidays as his temperature went up to the appointed one hundred and four he muttered of nothing else till helen's voice piercing at last his delirium reached him with assurance that nothing on earth or beyond could make any difference between them the terms at his public school and the wonderful christmas easter and summer holidays followed each other variegated and glorious as jewels on a string and as jewels helen treasured them in due time michael developed his own interests which ran their courses and gave way to others But his interest in Helen was constant and increasing throughout. She repaid it with all that she had of affection or could command of counsel and money, and since Michael was no fool, the war took him just before what was like to have been a most promising career. He was to have gone up to Oxford, with a scholarship, in October. At the end of August he was on the edge of joining the first holocaust of public schoolboys

who threw themselves into the line, but the captain of his OTC, where he had been sergeant for nearly a year, headed him off and stood him directly to a commission in a battalion so new that half of it still wore the old army red, and the other half was breeding meningitis through living overcrowdedly in damp tents.

Helen had been shocked at the idea of direct enlistment. But it's in the family! Michael laughed. you don't mean to tell me that you believed that old story all this time said helen emma her maid had been dead now several years i gave you my word of honour and i give it again that that it's all right it is indeed oh that doesn't worry me it never did he replied valiantly what i meant was i should have got into the show earlier if i'd enlisted like my grandfather don't talk like that are you afraid of its ending so soon then no such luck you know what kay says yes but my banker told me last monday it couldn't possibly last beyond christmas for financial reasons hope he's right but our colonel and he's a regular says it's going to be a long job michael's battalion was fortunate in that by some chance which meant several leaves it was used for coast defence among shallow trenches on the north off at Coast, thence sent north to watch the mouth of a Scotch estuary, and, lastly, held for weeks

on a baseless rumour of distant service. But the very day that Michael was to have met Helen for four whole hours at a railway junction, up the line, it was hurled out, to help make good the wastage of Lois, and he had only just time to send her a wire of farewell. In France, luck again helped the battalion. It was put down near the salient, where it led a meritorious and unexacting life, while the Somme was being manufactured, and enjoyed the peace of the Armantier and Lavantees sectors when that battle began. Finding that it had sound views on protecting its own flanks and could dig, a prudent commander stole it out of its own division, under pretence of helping to lay telegraphs, and used it round Iper at large. A month

later, just after Michael had written Helen that there was nothing special doing, and therefore no need to worry, a shell splinter dropping out of a wet dawn killed him at once. The next shell uprooted and laid down over the body what had been the foundation of a barn wall, so neatly that none but an expert would have guessed that anything unpleasant had happened. By this time the village was old in experience of war, and, English fashion, had evolved a ritual to meet it. When the postmistress handed her seven-year-old daughter the official telegram to take to Miss Turrell,

she observed to the rector's gardener, it's Miss Helen's turn now. He replied, thinking of his own son, well, he's lasted longer than some. The child herself came to the front door weeping aloud, because Master Michael had often given her sweets. Helen, presently, found herself pulling down the house blinds one after one with great care and saying earnestly to each,

Missing always means dead. Then she took her place in the dreary procession that was impelled to go through an inevitable series of unprofitable emotions. The rector, of course, preached hope and prophesied word very soon, from a present camp. Several friends, too, told her perfectly truthful tales, but always about other women, to whom, after months and months of silence, their missing had been miraculously restored. Other people urged her to communicate with infallible secretaries of organizations who could communicate with benevolent neutrals, who could extract accurate information from the most secretive of Hun prison commandants.

Helen did and wrote and signed everything that was suggested or put before her. Once, on one of Michael's leaves, he had taken her over a munition factory, where she saw the progress of a shell from blank iron to the all but finished article. It struck her at the time that the wretched thing was never left alone for a single second, and, I'm being manufactured into a bereaved next of kin, she told herself, as she prepared her documents. In due course, when all the organisations had deeply or sincerely regretted their inability to trace, etc., something gave way within her, and all sensation, save of thankfulness for the release, came to an end in blessed passivity.

Michael had died, and her world had stood still, and she had been won with the full shock of that arrest. Now she was standing still, and the world was going forward, but it did not concern her. In no way or relation did it touch her. She knew this by the ease with which she could slip Michael's name into talk and incline her head to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy. In the blessed realization of that relief, the armistice with all its bells broke over her and passed unheeded. At the end of another year, she had almost overcome her physical loathing of the living and returned young,

so that she could take them by the hand and almost sincerely wish them well. She had no interest in any aftermath, national or personal, of the war, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on various relief committees and held strong views. She heard herself delivering them, about the sight of her. of the proposed village War Memorial. Then there came to her, as next of kin, an official intimation, backed by a page of a letter to her in indelible pencil,

a silver identity disc, and a watch, to the effect that the body of Lieutenant Michael Turrell had been found, identified, and reinterred in Hachéle III Military Cemetery, the letter of the row and the grave's number in that row, duly given. So Helen found herself moved on to another process of the manufacture, to a world full of exultant or broken relatives, now strong in the certainty that there was an altar upon earth where they might lay their love. These soon told her, and by means of

timetables made clear how easy it was, and how little it interfered with life's affairs to go and see one's grave. So different, as the rector's wife said, if he'd been killed in Mesopotamia, or even Gallipoli. The agony of being waked up to some sort of second life drove Helen across the channel, where, in a new world of abbreviated titles, she learned that Hachazela III could be comfortably reached by an afternoon train which fitted in with the morning boat, and that there was a comfortable little hotel, not three kilometres from Rochazela itself, where one could spend quite a comfortable night and see one's grave next morning. All this she had from a central authority who lived in a board and tar paper shed on the skirts of a raised city, full of whirling

lime dust and blown papers. "'By the way,' said he, "'you know your grave, of course.' "'Yes, thank you,' said Helen, and showed its row and number typed on Michael's own little typewriter. The officer would have checked it, out of one of his many books, but a large Lancashire woman thrust between them and bade him tell her where she might find her son, who had been corporal in the ASC. His proper name, she sobbed, was Anderson, but, coming of respectable folk, he had, of course, enlisted under the name of Smith, and he had been killed at Dickie Bush in early 15. She had not his number, nor did she know, which of his two Christian names he might have used with his alias, but her cook's tourist ticket

expired at the end of Easter week, and if by then she could not find her child, she should go mad. Whereupon she fell forward on Helen's breast, but the officer's wife came out quickly from a little bedroom behind the office, and the three of them lifted the woman onto the cot. They are often like this, said the officer's wife, loosening the tight bonnet strings. Yesterday she said he'd been killed at Hoja. Are you sure you know your grave? It makes such a difference. Yes, thank you, said Helen, and hurried out before the woman on the bed should begin to lament again. Tea in a crowded mauve and blue-striped wooden structure, with a false front, carried her still further into the nightmare. She paid her bill

beside a stolid, plain-featured Englishwoman, who, hearing her inquire about the train to Hachazela, volunteered to come with her. I'm going to Hachazela myself, she explained. Not to Hachasele Third, mine is sugar factory, but they call it La Rocierre now. It's just south of Hachazela third. Have you got your room at the hotel there? Oh, yes, thank you. I've wired.

That's better. sometimes the place is quite full and at others there's hardly a soul but they've put the bathrooms into the old leon d'ur that's the hotel on the west side of sugar factory and it draws off a lot of people luckily it's all new to me this is the first time i've been over indeed this is my ninth time since the armistice not on my own account i haven't lost anyone thank god but like everyone else i've a lot of friends at home who have coming over as often as often as I do, I find it helps them to have someone just look at the place and tell them about it afterwards, and one can take photos for them. Two, I get quite a list of commissions to execute. She laughed nervously and tapped her slung Kodak. There are two or three to see at Sugar Factory this time, and plenty of others in the cemetery's all about. My system is to save them up and arrange them, you know. And when I've got enough commissions for one area to make it worthwhile, I'm

I pop over and execute them. It does comfort people. I suppose so, Helen answered, shivering as they entered the little train. Of course it does. Isn't it lucky we've got window seats? It must do, or they wouldn't ask one to do it, would they? I have a list of quite twelve or fifteen commissions here. She tapped the Kodak again.

I must sort them out tonight. Oh, I forgot to ask you. What's your? yours? My nephew, said Helen, but I was very fond of him. Ah, yes, I sometimes wonder whether they know after death. What do you think? Oh, I don't, I haven't dared to think much about that sort of thing, said Helen, almost lifting her hands to keep her off. Perhaps that's better, the woman answered. Her sense of loss must be enough, I expect. Well, I won't worry you anymore.

Helen was grateful. But when they reached the hotel Mrs. Scarsworth, they had exchanged names, insisted on dining at the same table with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of low-voiced relatives, took Helen through her commissions with biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches of their next event. kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine ere she fled to her room. Almost at once there was a knock at her door, and Mrs. Scarsworth entered, her hands,

holding the dreadful list, clasped before her. Yes, yes, I know, she began. You're sick of me, but I want to tell you something. You aren't married, are you? Then perhaps you won't. But it doesn't matter. I've got to tell someone, I can't go on any longer like this. But please, Mrs. Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly. In a minute, she said.

You know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs. Just now, they really are commissions. At least, several of them are. Her eye wandered round the room. What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don't you think? Yes, I swear they are commissions, but there's one, do you see, and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand? Helen nodded.

more than anyone else, and of course he oughtn't to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me, but he was, he is. That's why I do the commissions, you see, that's all, but why do you tell me, Helen asked desperately, because I'm so tired of lying, tired of lying, always lying, you're in and you're out. When I don't tell lies, I've got to act and I've got to think I'm always. You don't know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn't to have been. The one real thing, the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life.

And I've had to pretend he wasn't. I've had to watch every word I said and think out what lie I'd tell next for years and years. How many years? Helen asked. Six years and four months before and two and three quarters after, I've gone to him eight times since tomorrow we'll make the ninth, and I can't, I can't go to him again with nobody in the world knowing I want to be honest with someone before I go.

Do you understand that it isn't worthy of him? So I had to tell you, I can't keep it up any longer. Oh, I can't. She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth and brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arm's length below her waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them, and murmured, Oh, my dear, my— Mrs. Scarsworth stepped back, her face all mottled. My God, said she.

Is that how you take it? Helen could not speak, and the woman went out, but it was a long while before Helen was able to sleep. Next morning, Mrs. Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions, and Helen walked alone to Hochazela Third. The place was still in the making, and stood some five or six feet above the metal road, which it flanked for hundreds of yards. Colverts across a deep ditch served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. she climbed a few wooden-faced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level of the thing in one held breath she did not know harkozel i counted twenty-one thousand dead already all she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces she could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass nothing but a waste-high wilderness as if we'd stricken dead rushing at her she went forward moved to the left and the right hopelessly wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own

a great distance away there was a line of whiteness it proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves whose headstones had already been set whose flowers planted out and and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rose, and, referring to her slip, realized that it was not here she must look. A man knelt behind a line of headstones, evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him, her paper in her hand.

He rose at her approach, and without prelude or salutation asked, Who are you looking for? Left tenant Michael Turrell, my nephew, said Helen slowly and word for word as she had many thousands of times in her life. The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion

before he turned from the fresh-sown grass toward the naked black crosses. Come with me, he said, and I will show you where your son lies. When Helen left the cemetery, she turned for a last look. In the distance, she saw the man bending over his young plants, and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener. One grief on me is laid, each day of every year,

wherein no soul can aid, whereof no soul can hear, where to no end is seen, except to grieve, breathe again, ah, Mary Magdalene, where is their greater pain? To dream on dear disgrace each hour of every day, to bring no honest face to what I do or say, to lie from morn till e'en, to know my lies are vain, ah, marry Magdalene, where can be greater pain? To watch my steadfast fear, attend my every every day. way, each day of every year, each hour of every day, to burn and chill between, to quake and

rage again. Ah, Mary Magdalene, where shall be greater pain? One grave to me was given, to God till judgment day, but God looked down from heaven and rolled the stone away. One day, of all my years, one hour of that one day. His angel saw my tears and rolled the stone away. End of The Gardner and the Burden by Rudyard Kipling. Thank you for listening.