The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  “But you married Ralph,” said Margaret with human curiosity.

  “Ah, Ralph! The child! It is the life he has, and a measure of élan. When,” added Violette thoughtfully, “he forgets to pretend he is the artist.”

  Margaret stirred; the green leaves overshadowing the girl made a pattern of quick light and shade on her face. “You don’t think he is an artist, after all?”

  Violette shrugged. “Certainment non. Not the great artist. The artisan. It is something else he wishes. But he must discover that himself; he must have the esprit. No man can say it to the other: ‘This shall you do and not this.’ A man must discover his own way.”

  She sounds like Father Jahle, thought Margaret with some resentment.

  “I think it is the wife’s business to help her husband discover, as you say, Violette.”

  Violette shook her head so strongly that her mound of rolls and coils of hair vibrated. “No, no, no! It is the wife’s business—business?—to amuse, comfort and be the coquette. What is this business? Always, it is the business with Americans! Then if the gentleman fails, he is not mortified, for it is his secret. If he succeeds, then he shall say, ‘It is my wife, or my petite amie, who inspired me.’ And it is the truth.”

  Margaret considered this thoughtfully. Violette watched her lovely face with inner compassion and some amusement. It is a child’s face, she thought, trusting, confiding, valorous but without understanding. She smoothed her very extreme but very chic frock over her tidy thighs and regarded her tiny feet, in their stilted shoes, with gratification. Her moods were like bubbles, but under them her nature was iron.

  Margaret sighed. “It’s hard to know what to do,” she murmured.

  “Then it is best to do nothing,” said Violette. Her pert face, her impudent eyes, smiled. She studied Margaret. “The trousseau, designed by Sylvia, is the delight. But reserved. It is the American style, with importance.”

  Margaret was youthfully pleased. Her simple rosy dress, a long sheath reaching to her ankles, was devoid of all ornament, except for tucks under the breast. It cast a rosy reflection below her chin and on her throat. “It is all that soap,” said Violette. “All the American soap. Et bien. Why is all the soap and the water?”

  “What? Oh, you mean our baths. We like to keep clean,” and Margaret smiled with a little malice.

  Violette made a wise moue. “Then, it is not clean in the soul? All this washing of hands and so?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Margaret. She was not feeling well and she was troubled. She had visited a doctor that morning, and he had given her some disquieting news. In her childhood, he had told her, she must have had rickets because of malnutrition. It had not affected her limbs or her long slender body’s outline. But it had affected her pelvis, narrowing it dangerously. She must tell her husband, he had warned her. She was over three months pregnant, in this warm and winey October; the doctor anticipated a great deal of difficulty at the birth, if, in fact, she ever carried her child to term. Then a Caesarean section should be considered, and the mortality in such operations was high.

  Margaret resolutely pulled her thoughts away from this subject. She was certainly not going to worry Edward until the time came. She turned again to the weary thought of the war.

  “Aren’t you glad, Violette, that you and Ralph came home just in time?” she asked. She was surprised when Violette’s small and lively face hardened, became older.

  “La guerre, the war? The vile Boche! Again and again and again! It is always the vile Boche! Ah, if I were a man! It is unfortunate that I have no brothers to inspire me, no brothers in France.”

  Margaret was offended. She said, “But the Enger family is German, and they’re certainly not vile! Mother and Father Enger were born in Germany; they’re not even American citizens, Ed tells me. And your own husband, though an American, is of German stock. You don’t know what’s behind this war or you wouldn’t talk like that. And coming down to it,” Margaret continued with heat, “I’m probably of German stock, too.”

  She was astonished to see that Violette was twinkling again.

  “One’s husband, and his family, though Germans, are never the Boche,” she said. But the hardness lay about her large dark eyes and red pouting mouth. “One must be realistic. If one is not, he is the poet or the fool.”

  She stretched out her dark little hand, with the quick, prehensile fingers, and took Margaret’s chin firmly in it. She studied the blue eyes, which seemed to fill their sockets with light, the delicate coral color, the long cleft chin, the gilded lashes and brows and the bright brown hair. “Non,” she said, thoughtfully. “It is not German. It is Swedish, perhaps, or English. Non, non! Not English, not Swedish! There is too much—what is it?—the vividness. The shine. There are Normans like this.” She nodded her head decisively. “It is definitely the Norman. And so we are sisters.”

  Margaret laughed. “What does it matter? All people are the same.”

  “That is wrong,” said Violette, and she was quite sober. “No people are the same, no men, no race, though the priests say we are all of God. I had the Chinese friend,” and she coughed delicately. “In Paris. At the Sorbonne. And this is what he said to me: ‘The Western man thinks of the world in relation to himself; he thinks of the family, the nation, the neighborhood, in relation to himself. But the Eastern man thinks of his relation to the family, the nation, the world. The Western man is the individual; the Eastern man is only part of the whole. The Western man wishes to discover what the world will mean to him; the Eastern man wishes to discover what he will mean to the world. The Western man stands alone before his God; the Eastern man comes to God only in the family.’” She made an expressive gesture. “Comprenez-vous? The Western man is individual; the Eastern man is a mass.”

  Margaret considered this intently.

  Violette continued, “And so it will be, as it has been said, that the East and the West will never know each other, and it is good, for then it is the variety, and the philosophies, and the interest. Bon Dieu! How most frightful if all men thought the same and lived the same and dressed the same! That is what alarms me about America.”

  “Oh, don’t talk to me about the old European cliché that Americans are standardized and faceless,” said Margaret, impatiently. “We do produce mass goods, but that makes them cheaper, and so almost everybody can enjoy them. Look at France. Good and stylish clothing is only for the wealthy; the other women must make their own, with miserable results most of the time. In America a fine style can be copied in cheaper fabric, and so all American women can look smart.”

  “And all the same,” said Violette. She stood up, and Margaret admired again the compact trimness and prettiness of her figure. Violette yawned, her small mouth opening to show a large expanse of very white and flaring teeth. Margaret disliked bold displays of dentistry. Women with big white teeth, and especially if their features were small, should not expose them so crudely.

  “I find you charming, my Margaret,” said Violette, closing her mouth and immediately becoming pretty again. She waved her hand lightly and moved away through the tall thick grass, which cast off the autumnal odor of ripeness and harvest. Margaret watched the provocative swaying of her small and dainty figure. She reflected on Violette. Here was a girl not even her own age, a girl only nineteen or twenty. And yet she was old and wise and knowing … and, yes, thought Margaret uneasily, decadent—decadent as Americans could not imagine decadence. It was a matter of soul, and not even of morals or the lack of them, or virtue, or the lack of it. Though Violette did not resemble the marble child in the fountain in the least, there was a certain affinity between the girl and the statue.

  Margaret sat alone and looked, troubled, about her. She was afraid of Violette as she was not afraid of the other members of the household, not even Maria. Edward’s brothers and sister could be disliked, but could be dealt with on their own ground, or so Margaret thought. They were rude, bad-tempered, grasping and
exploiting, and full of selfishness and petulance. They were children in the bodies of men and women, and she could still almost pity them for their mystifying retardation of character. She, though still angry at Father Jahle, had come to the conclusion that she must help them, for Edward’s sake. Gregory was taking postgraduate work in English at Yale, for his master’s degree. Ralph would certainly go to New York for further study, if he did not succeed in nagging Edward into sending him to Mexico or Central America “for the color.” David had not yet returned home, and his promises to do so were still vague. That would leave only Sylvia.

  Margaret decided to help Ralph persuade Edward to finance him far away from home. That would remove Violette also. I can stand open enemies, thought Margaret, but not smiling enemies who like me.

  The great trees murmured in the autumn wind, ruffling their high mantles of russet, scarlet, green, and gold. A few leaves drifted down, crackling faintly, at Margaret’s feet, and for a moment or two she was diverted by her endless wonder over the world. She saw the dry veins which only recently had swum with life; she studied the intricacies of form and pattern and color, and involuntarily she clasped her hands. How marvelous, how exact, how awe-inspiring, was God! No detail escaped His notice; His laws were fulfilled as much in the shape of a leaf, the curve of a blade of grass, the contour of a flower, the movement of an insect, as they were fulfilled in the thunderous blaze of constellations and in the beat of a man’s heart. She looked at the high bright sky with its mounting and radiant clouds, and she thought, Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.…

  She was suddenly no longer afraid or doubtful or anxious. Of what had man to be afraid? Only himself, his own passions, his own angers, his own vices, his own rejections, his own blindness. He needed only to stop for one moment and look about him to lose fear and hatred and depression, to be free from enemies, to be free from the hot ugliness of himself. If only I could hold to that thought, said Margaret inwardly. If I could only remember all the time! I’m not very good, I’m sure; I often forget to have faith, and to pray; I don’t try hard enough. It’s because I’m so frightened for Ed. He’s made me afraid of life, because I love him so much. I was never afraid before, not even in the orphanage, not even with the Baumers. Sad, yes, lost sometimes, yes. But never, never afraid! Not as I am now. I could be sorrowful about this war and pray for the poor boys who are dying in it—for what?—and for the mourning cities, and the terror of a whole world. But I wouldn’t be afraid if it weren’t for Ed.

  She looked at the leaves again as they floated slowly down about her, and all at once, as suddenly as she had seen, she could see no more. Sighing, she stood up and left the small hollow for the higher terraces that led to the gardens and the house. She stopped at the fountain and musingly dipped her forefinger in the sparkling and living water, and looked up at the marble child who stood in the midst of it. The child was beautiful, in its depraved way; the marble face and shoulders and legs and arms ran with brilliant drops of water, like liquid diamonds. The laughing face looked down with human eloquence and mischief. The fountain splashed, as if speaking to the statue in an unhuman language which they both understood; the scales of the marble fish in the arms of the child flashed through the water prismatically. The nakedness of the child was not innocent, Margaret thought with part of her mind. It is even a little evil. The cool wetness flowed over her finger but could not cool her disquiet.

  She turned her head and saw that Violette had paused beside Sylvia, who sat under the shade of a small clump of trees. Sylvia had a book on her thin knee; she was all delicate blackness and white shawl. Neither of the young women glanced at Margaret, poised at the fountain, but somehow she guessed that they were speaking of her and not with kindness. She could hear the murmurous sound of their voices but not the words. She wandered off through another section of the gardens, reluctant to return to the house, reluctant to remain outside, reluctant to speak to anyone.

  “He’ll leave the major part of his money to that woman,” said Sylvia, bitingly. “Especially if they have a child, as you say they are going to have. Then we’ll get practically nothing but the leavings from Ma and Pa.”

  “Then,” said Violette, in a gay voice, “we must busy ourselves, non? I shall have the child, too. And you must marry and have children.”

  Sylvia elaborately shuddered. “I shall never marry,” she answered, her white cheekbones coloring a little. “Don’t smile, Violette. This is serious. I never did like that woman! She’s cheap and—anonymous. She doesn’t even have a name she can rightly call her own, except what Ed’s given her.” She bit her lip and frowned intently. “He should begin to settle money on us right away. After all! Ma should make him see his duty toward us—”

  “After all!” Violette echoed, with a twinkle.

  Sylvia gave her a sharp glance and was annoyed. “You really don’t understand, Violette. Everything is a joke to you.”

  “It is so,” said Violette. “One must laugh or weep. It is a matter of temperament.”

  “But this is very serious!” said Sylvia, more and more annoyed. “If he refuses to settle money on all of us, then we should try to get as much as we can, whenever we can, and put it quietly away. He does give us big allowances, after all those years of parsimony when we were younger. He likes to play the grand seigneur now, just to humiliate us.” She thought of the five thousand dollars already paid to her by Mary Garrity, and smiled her chill smile. No one knew of that account, no one ever would. She was awaiting another check for her autumn designs for three hats. There were ways of investing cash. Sylvia, unknown to anyone but Maria, who pretended not to see, sedulously read Edward’s discarded financial journals and magazines. The market was rising, even in these days of temporary depression, since Wilson had been elected two years ago. Steel. Copper. A dozen things. She would write to Mary Garrity about it.

  “He provides the home, voilà—he is indeed the grand seigneur,” said Violette, refusing to be sober. “He provides the meat and the fish and the bread; he provides the servants. He provides the money. I am willing to be pleasant to the grand seigneur for these kindnesses.” But her merry eyes were thoughtful.

  “Maybe he’ll stop being kind very soon!” said Sylvia. “She’s probably whining at him all the time to throw us out. But she won’t get her way. Ma is with us.” She laughed grimly. “Did you ever see such an unintelligent face? All eyes and chin and hair. Like a cow-maid. She resents us.”

  “Certainment,” said the other girl. “And why not? Do we love her? Do we regard her as a sister? Yet I do not believe she is urging our Eddie to evict us. It is ‘evict,’ is it not? It would be the part of discretion to be pleasant to her, though she is not malicious.” She smiled down mischievously at the bright and febrile stare directed up at her from Sylvia’s tilted eyes. Ah, it was a naïve one, in spite of the cleverness with the clothes and the hats and the reading of many books!

  “I will not play up to her!” said Sylvia, vehemently. “I have my pride. I was born an Enger, and my mother was a Von Brunner. I would rather starve than pretend to like her!”

  Ah, you will never starve, my little one, thought Violette. You are naïve but you also know when you must stop. She waved her hand affectionately at Sylvia and went into the house, leaving the other girl wretched with uneasiness and apprehension.

  Margaret, in the meantime, was continuing her slow wandering about the vast grounds, and with increasing unhappiness. She walked over the grass, feeling the cool and fragrant wind against her face. She paused to study, in assumed nonchalance, a bed of mauve, yellow, pink, and white mums, then a bed of crimson callas. She then approached the long Italian terrace which stretched from the house under a symmetrical line of trees. Two of the chauffeur’s children were playing there slyly, knowing that this was forbidden territory and enjoying their trespassing. They stopped abruptly when they saw Margaret, eying her alertly, their eyes as bright and wild as animals’. With the prescience of chi
ldren, they well knew that Margaret was unwelcome in this grand house and in this family, for they had often seen her disturbed face, the snubs visited upon her, and her loneliness. They were very young, the boy about six, the girl but five, but they had heard their parents’ smothered comments and snickerings about Margaret, and they had understood.

  Margaret hardly knew them, but she was aware that they should not be here. Nevertheless, she remembered her own deprived childhood and humiliations. She approached the children, smiling at them, thinking of the child she was carrying. She was ready to be tender to all young things. “Hello,” she said gently.

  But the children’s eyes, bold and disingenuous as only children’s eyes can be, fixed themselves upon her with sparkling malice. They were not afraid of her as they were afraid of Sylvia and the others. She was nothing! Daddy and Mommy said so. They watched her approach, then backed away a little. The girl tittered evilly, and the boy made a face. Margaret stopped. Then the children, shrieking with meaningless mirth, ran off, looking back at the young woman over their shoulders.

  How could I have forgotten how children really are? Margaret asked herself miserably. They have no real innocence or kindness. They have no gentleness or consideration of understanding. These are the things they must learn or pretend to learn. I suppose my own child will be as bad … She was freshly depressed.

  She entered the house at its side and less formal door and passed the music room. Ralph was sitting at the pianola piano, gayly manipulating the mechanism, which mechanically rattled out the newest ragtime. Violette stood beside him, rapidly inclining her head from side to side in time with the blatant music and humming and snapping her fingers. Margaret slipped by the door rapidly, hoping that neither had noticed her. But Violette had. She closed the door, and Ralph stopped beating the pedals with his big feet. His wife ruffled his auburn hair, kissed his lips seductively, and said, “We must have an infant, mon petit. That Eddie is about to become a father. We must compete.” She made a distasteful moue.