The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  Now that he had the priest’s promise, Edward stood up and restlessly prowled up and down the room. His bigness made it seem smaller and more confining than ever. Something is troubling him, thought the priest with anxiety. He remembered the young and buoyant Edward, who had been sure and hopeful and eager with sympathy. The priest, unlike others, did not believe that Edward’s basic personality had changed. He did feel certain that Edward’s burdens were too overpowering, that Edward was unknowingly ill in spite of his powerful physique, that Edward was full of chronic pain and frustration. His expression had hardened over the years; his eyes were no longer quick and interested, his voice lively. He looked somber now and almost brutal, and his gestures and voice had blunted and stiffened. Still, he has not changed in his soul, thought the priest. The world has just encrusted him with the stony calcium of responsibility and ingratitude and exigencies and unremitting work.

  “Father,” said Edward abruptly, stopping in front of the priest. “I’m going to be married four weeks from today. To a girl I’ve known since I was fourteen.”

  The priest brightened with pleasure. He seized Edward’s hand and pressed it. “God bless you both!” he said fervently. But Edward’s brooding expression did not change, and Father Jahle comprehended that Edward was only abstractedly thinking of his marriage and that he had come here today for some other reason than this announcement. “Do I know the young lady?” he asked.

  Edward shook his head impatiently. “No. But you will when I bring her home from Albany. That isn’t why I came today, though. Father Jahle, you know George Enreich and William MacFadden well. They’ve been telling me there is going to be a war soon and that it will involve America. What do you think?”

  Father Jahle dropped his eyes and poked at the bowl of his pipe with a match. He seemed distressed. “There is little in the papers,” he answered. “There is always some mention of the Balkans. But the Balkans are always seething.” He paused. Then he said, “I think there will be a war. I’ve been reading many books. There are the Secret Masters. But why should there be a war that will involve America?” he cried. “We’re too far away from Europe!” There was no conviction in his desperate cry.

  Edward nodded gloomily. “I did hope that you’d laugh at the idea,” he said. He took up his hat and cane. “Father Jahle, the Church must know something. The Pope must know something. Why aren’t they doing what they can about this?”

  “They are, Eddie. But if men overwhelmingly choose evil, what can the clergy do? Besides, there are always the liars, and the liars speak louder than God, and men prefer lies to truth. Eddie, if and when the grand assault comes, the Church will be the target of the sinister men, for so long as the Church endures, the spirit of men will endure, and a measure of virtue and faith and justice and a will to resist tyrants. That is why, in the conviction of the murderers, the Church must be destroyed.” He stood up, and his gaunt face glowed. “But the Church will never be destroyed! The destruction has been attempted before, and it never succeeded. Out of the ruins and the darkness the faithful men emerged with candles of everlasting love and confidence, and civilization rose again and the murderers were silenced. For a little while.”

  “This time may be the end,” said Edward.

  The priest shook his head. “No, it will never be the end. For God lives.”

  He seemed invigorated and trembling with life and exaltation. Edward regarded him with dull amazement. He could not understand that unshaken confidence, the light of supernatural glory which was leaping in the priest’s eyes. He himself preferred facts. The thought of America engaging in planned wars was horrifying and unacceptable to him. He said, “I’m thinking about my country, not about—God. I happen to love my country. I want to see her remain free.”

  “All countries belong to God,” said the priest. “Not only America. Not only the white men but the brown and the black and the yellow. It’s selfish to think only of America.”

  Edward said with hard simplicity, “The hell with the rest of the world.”

  The priest sighed. He put his hands on Edward’s shoulders. “It was Lincoln who said a country cannot endure half-slave, half-free. Neither can the world. All men must be free or all men will be slaves. It is of the freedom of the world that we must think, and it is the enemies of the world that all of us must fight. With every spiritual and just weapon at our command.”

  “So,” said Edward, pulling away, “we must get into wars to ‘free’ others, whoever they are?”

  “No,” said the priest. “If America becomes involved in a war, she will be following the blueprints of the murderers. She must keep herself in peace, to help a torn world to heal itself. Wars inevitably lead to slavery. There must not be a war for America.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re too ambiguous for me,” said Edward, and he smiled. “You talk about weapons in the same breath that you talk about peace.”

  “We use the same words,” said the priest, sadly, “but not the same meaning.”

  “I know, I know!” said Edward, irascibly. “I never ‘understand.’ I’ve heard that all my life and I’m tired of it. A man who opposes anything that everyone else accepts is stupid. I know, I know!”

  He went out of the parsonage quickly, and he was boiling with anger. The clear scarlet of the western skies had dimmed to a foreboding crimson, a lake of blood motionless in the heavens. The streets lay in dusky shadow, as if crouching before some imminent terror. And there was a profound silence in the air, like a caught breath. Edward said to himself, It’s funny how a man projects his own emotions on the rest of creation. These are just shabby, quiet little streets, and the houses are full of tired but contented people eating their dinners! The premonition is in me, not in them. I’m catching at nightmares.

  The hidden gramophone was whining a song popular eight years ago:

  “Everybody works but father, and he sits around all day,

  Feet in front of the fire, smoking his pipe of clay;

  Mother takes in washing, so does Sister Ann,

  Everybody works at our house but my old man!”

  Hah, thought Edward. Nobody works but the old man, me. And he thought again of his enormous debts and the profligacy of his brothers and sister. His ire began to grind in him. He tapped on the glass window and directed his chauffeur to the house of George Enreich. The limousine was driven rapidly now through the silent streets, and arc lamps began to splutter on the street corners and early moths flew toward them like winged snowflakes. The light was ugly and bluish there, throwing black and awkward shadows on the sidewalks, skeletonizing the trees.

  The streets became progressively more expensive and formal, set back on cultured lawns and among pruned bushes and evergreens. Once Edward could see the distant canal, quiet and dark as some Old World narrow river, with the last fire of the sun streaking its silence, its banks dusky and without movement. He thought of the few days of his boyhood when he had swum there, and he was again seized with bitter nostalgia for those days of uncomplex living and simple hope and peace.

  Then the limousine was moving over the winding gravel drive to George’s house, a huge and monstrous affair of purplish gray wood with many false towers, false balconies, false thin turrets and “candle-snuffers” and battlements, and wide verandas. Here the evergreens had been shaped into cones, squares, and balls, but there were no flowers. A green gloom hung over the house and darkened the brown roofs. It was, thought Edward, the ugliest mansion in Waterford, which was not distinguished for lovely architecture. He saw a distant light through one of the long thin windows and he knew that George was in his library, indulging himself in his usual brandy and soda before his dinner.

  But the library was breezy and cheerful, if ponderous with old-fashioned furniture. Rows of books mounted to the ceiling on all four walls, books which George had read through the years, and a small fire crackled cozily on the black marble hearth. George greeted Edward with his usual shrewd and expansive affection, invited him to a dri
nk, which Edward accepted. The older man saw at once that Edward was in a bad mood, and he wrinkled his reddish brows thoughtfully. The years had planted gray tufts in his bristling red hair, had fattened his bulky body and given him a paunch, but had not taken the keen light from his green eyes. When Edward had settled himself in a brown leather chair, George said, “It is a fine evening, hein? One to give pleasure to the soul after the long winter.”

  Edward replied in German, “I never noticed. I don’t have time to notice these things lately. I have been talking with William, who never convinced me before that he is a prophet of doom.”

  “So,” said George, and lit a fat cigar and leaned back in his chair. A big diamond glittered on one of his thick fingers. “Will you have a cigar? No? The cigarettes, they are for the youths, not the men. Nevertheless, smoke them. What is it that William wails of today?”

  So Edward told him, in brief harsh sentences, and George listened without a change of expression. Then when Edward had finished, he puffed contemplatively and stared at a wall. He said finally, “So? It will surprise you to learn that I am also convinced and that I know? But I have told you before, a little.”

  “Who would we fight?” asked Edward, angrily.

  George shrugged with eloquence. “Who? Ja, who. Perhaps England, perhaps Russia, perhaps Germany. It does not matter. We will fight. That was decided long ago. The President Wilson? He will have nothing to say. The Kaiser will have nothing to say, nor the King of England, nor the Tsar. No man will have a voice, except the sinister man whose plans were laid in the past. You have heard of one Nicolai Lenin? Of one Trotsky? Then you will hear more of them, not too far in the future. Lenin is the Russian aristocrat who hates mankind and has absorbed the evil of the plotters against the world. My Eddie, he is a man of intelligence, and men of intelligence who hate wisely and well and coldly are dangerous as fire. He has said, and written, that the capitalistic world must be destroyed, and it can only be destroyed through wars, through taxes, through the advance of Socialism. You will understand, now, that he is a Socialist. Who can resist such men, who are sleepless, who are not disturbed by human emotions, who are without soul, who are dedicated to death and hate and the lust for power? Their armies are everywhere in the world, secret armies armed even now with strength and determination and foul philosophies and awareness. They do not hide, for there is no need for them to hide. They are in the universities and the schools, in governments and in factories. They are teachers and students; they are masters and men. They are ready.”

  Edward looked at him with incredulous astonishment. “Russians? What has Russia to do with us?”

  “I did not say only Russians. I implied that out of Russia will come the hot red bursting of the despotism which will enslave the world. The old despotism. It will be the first open manifestation of the fire which smolders under every nation today. And when the fire flames up from Russia, the answering fires will crackle out in other nations. So it was planned long ago.”

  He stood up and removed a book from one of the shelves, and held it in his hand, balancing it, while he fixed his small, fiercely green eyes on Edward. “I have given you much to read of Bismarck. Now you will read of Socialism, of the Communist Manifesto of 1848, of Karl Marx. This is called Das Capital.” He gave the book to Edward, who looked at it, glanced through its German script, then closed it. The younger man frowned, lit another cigarette. Then he said, “I do not believe this will come to America. What have we to do with Europe?”

  But George, seating himself, only smiled wryly.

  “What can we do to stop it, in America?” Edward demanded, full of a solid if uncomprehending wrath.

  “Nothing, my Eddie. We have already lost the fight, in the darkness, in the silence, bloodlessly. There will be much talk of Washington, of foreign entanglements, of being neutral, of peace. But the talk will be only the frantic sounds of men who know they have already lost, of patriots who know they have already been disarmed.”

  “Then, we can only cut our throats? Is that what you are implying?” asked Edward irascibly.

  George shook his head. “Nein. That is a foolish question. We can make much money, and inevitably the men of evil compromise with men of wealth, and men of wealth inevitably compromise with evil. That is entitled expediency or common sense, in the name of what the French call le fait accompli.”

  Edward was silent, smoking. He stared at the book on the arm of his chair. His face slowly swelled and became suffused with dark color. He turned the glare of his light gray eyes on George, and it was inimical. “I came to tell you tonight that I want to sell you my munitions stocks, at the market price. I do not want any part of murder if there is going to be murder.”

  “So,” murmured George. He carefully deposited the ash of his cigar in a silver ashtray, and as he turned his body, he exuded compact potency. He said, “I did not think you a fool, my Eddie. What will it profit you to sell those stocks? Will it save the world, your selling? You are going to speak to me of principle? Who can afford principle, in the days to come, which are already reddening the eastern skies? If I buy your stocks, or you throw them on the market, you can wash your hands as did Pontius Pilate, who, I have heard, died a miserable and agonized death. He did not prevent the Crucifixion of Christ, and you will not prevent the crucifixion of man. It is a quixote gesture, this you contemplate.”

  “I am going to fight as William suggested, and I need money,” said Edward.

  George laughed softly. “Then you will need the munitions stocks, which will bring you the great, the very great, profit.” He smiled at Edward with irony. “More money than what you will amass with what, perhaps, you would call innocent investments.”

  Edward fumed to himself. Then George became grave. “It is a dangerous task you set yourself. You will conflict with your own government, when it has made its decision, which it did not truly make but was made for it long ago. You would speak of freedom? It has already begun to die in America, and there will be your government to confront, your strengthening central government. William was correct in saying that governments are the historical enemies of men. You will, in your work, finally face that enemy.”

  Edward stood up. “I should like to,” he said. “I intend to, if what you have said is true.”

  George shrugged and spread out his hands. “If a man is determined to destroy himself, how is it possible to interfere?”

  Edward picked up Das Capital and went to the door. George followed him. In spite of his casualness he was disturbed by the set grimness on Edward’s face, the pent fury in his eyes. He tried for lightness. “And the wedding?” he said. “You have said in four weeks? You have told the family?”

  “Not yet. But tonight,” said Edward shortly. “Margaret now insists that she will not marry me until I have told them first.”

  “Ah, the young lady has steel and honor. It is good.”

  Edward looked at him with directness and cold fixity. He was thinking, I’ve got to get you out. I need that twenty-five per cent you’re getting out of the shops. I have steel, too. George smiled, cocked his head as though he had heard Edward’s thoughts, and was amused.

  The Reverend Mr. Ernest Yaeger had prospered under the benign and generous power of the rich Engers. He was no longer bowed and shabby, and he had lost his elderly appearance. His new parish was prosperous. Security, under the Engers, had given him pompousness, a benevolent air, and ease of manner; it had also cost him much of his tender humanity and his compassion and his understanding of the devious background of sin. Security, while conferring unctuousness upon him, and a comfortable urbanity, had dulled his awareness of suffering and had made him intolerant of the self-wrought miseries of his people. He presided over many banquets now, with himself frequently the guest of honor or chairman, and his sermons, once sincere and simple and moving, now were very polished and obscure, which was just what his new parish wanted on a pleasant Sunday morning full of peace, and anticipations of good dinners waiting at hom
e and presided over by correct servants. He considered himself “advanced.” He had, in short, advanced to being a nonentity full of rounded phrases which meant nothing. His decay as a pastor had proceeded in precise ratio to his prosperity. “Not the first man to be ruined by mahogany furniture, good rugs, a maid in the kitchen, and lace curtains,” William had commented to Edward, who had snorted with contempt.

  The Reverend Mr. Yaeger now affected the finest black broadcloth summer and winter, and had ventured on a clerical collar and gold cuff links. He had also developed a rounded paunch which looked ludicrous on his lanky frame. From somewhere he had acquired an English accent, which pleased his parishioners. All this was unfortunate. He was intrinsically a simple and kindly man, full of a deep sympathy which he now suppressed with a vague idea that it was vulgar. One advised; one did not console.

  Edward cursed on this crimson and purple twilight when his limousine was driven up the graveled and circular drive before his impressive English-style house, for he saw that the Reverend Mr. Yaeger’s carriage was standing before the door, with a coachman yawning on the high seat. Mr. Yaeger was a frequent visitor to the Enger house to see Heinrich, who was “unwell,” and particularly to see Sylvia, whose health remained frail, according to her mother. Edward harshly suspected that he came because he owed so much to the Engers and expected still more.

  The vast house of stone and timber stood against a background of immense trees, through which a tarnished silver light gleamed from the east. The new grass was brilliantly green; the flower beds, formal in shape, broke up the smooth grass in rectangles, squares and circles and triangles, some filled with yellow pansies, some with purple or white pansies, and others with various flowers of various hues. It was a painted lawn with painted color, and though Edward admired it and was proud of it, he had an uneasy feeling that in some way it was artificial and had no connection with him at all. Even the mansion was progressively withdrawing from him, and this frightened him mysteriously, for all his ambitions were here, and all their culmination. He could feel pride and sometimes a sense of accomplishment, and even a quiet gloating. But he could not feel that he belonged here and that this was his home. He stepped out of his limousine and looked at the somber façade for a long moment, and let his eye wander over the grass and the flowers. The evening was warm, yet he felt curiously cold and remote. Perhaps, he told himself, as he always told himself, it’s because of my debts, and the mortgage prevents me from feeling the thing belongs to me.