The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  Gertrude thought of André’s parents, who were still in Paris and still traveling on the Continent at Edward’s expense. Ralph had become a very close friend of Picasso’s and was imitating the famous artist shamefully, and was selling a surprising number of his canvases, though at a cheap price. Poor André, thought Gertrude naïvely, with his foolish parents. At least my own parents didn’t abandon me when I was a child, as André was abandoned. For a moment or two André seemed very piteous to her, and then she laughed out loud at herself.

  Gertrude thought of Gregory’s wife with her bold, coarsely beautiful face, expertly enhanced by cosmetics, and her laughing, lustful mouth, handsome nose and sensually smiling blue eyes. Margo had a fine figure, tall and marvelously curved, and though Sylvia spitefully and openly doubted it, the color of her heavy blonde hair was natural. In spite of herself, Gertrude liked Margo, for the latter had a tremendous animal magnetism, a high if lewd wit, and was extremely entertaining, and laughed always. She deceived no one, and never tried to deceive anyone, that she was not greedy and ambitious, and held mankind in very low esteem. Perhaps I like her, thought Gertrude, annoyed with herself, because she is absolutely honest about possessing no moral values and is honestly convinced that no one else has them, either.

  “Did you know that Uncle Ellis had another slight heart attack last week? Just bad enough so he could lie cozily in bed attended by three nurses and Aunt Sylvia, who devotes all her time to him since Daddy had to sell ‘her’ theater because she had lost all interest in it. Why are you so indifferent to the family, darling, and why are you refusing to go there for your spring vacation? After all, I’ll be home, but it would seem I’m not much of an attraction, after all.”

  She put the ring to her lips and kissed it again. She reread the section of André’s letter in which he had suggested that she meet him in New York rather than return to Waterford for the two weeks’ holiday. She believed she had refused very tactfully in the letter she was writing. After all, it was a somewhat shocking and unconventional thing he had suggested, even though it would be very innocent. She yearned, however, to see him again, and very soon; sometimes her whole body ached with that artless yearning. She shook her head with smiling negation at his letter.

  Then she was no longer smiling. She thought of the letter her mother had written her and which she had received today with a substantial check for her birthday. Poor Mother, Gertrude thought, so pretty, so sweet, so tender, so loving, and so brave. Her young heart warmed with love as she thought of Margaret, who would never escape the miasma of that house which might have been a place of joy and contentment instead of a place of peril and misery.

  The corridor outside the small snug room was alive with the laughter and voices of girls preparing for dinner and exchanging confidences. Gertrude felt a pang of loneliness. She was too proud and reticent to make friends easily, and though she was respected and admired and envied, she was rarely included in the warmth of room parties and other gatherings. True, she had been elected to the most desirable sorority, because of her brilliance and scholarship. But the girls made nothing more than the most casual advances to her. She had no words to express her longing to be included as one of them.

  Someone knocked smartly on her door, and she started. A girl called out gaily that she was wanted on the telephone downstairs. Gertrude, with a twist of misgiving, ran down and snatched up the receiver, while happy girls milled about her talking excitedly to one another and shrilling with youthful mirth.

  It was André, and at the sound of his voice her heart rose on a crest of joy and delight and trembling relief.

  “Did you think I’d forget it was your birthday, dear little child?” he asked, and her eyes filled with tears. “Your twenty-first birthday! And now you are a woman. I hope.”

  “Oh, André,” she murmured. “Oh, André!”

  “I suppose your phone has been ringing all day with charming messages from home,” he said.

  But no one ever called her from home. Even her twin had not called, though it was his birthday also. “Of course they called,” she said. “A girl isn’t twenty-one every day. André—”

  “Yes, sweetness?”

  But she could only say, out of her loneliness, and again, “Oh, André.”

  Never had a winter seemed so dogged, so eternal, to Margaret Enger, nor the house so somber, nor herself so lonely, nor her life so hopeless and without meaning. She had believed, three years ago, that she would not miss her children too much, nor would she have missed them with this deep longing had Edward remained the grimly optimistic and vital man of their first period of marriage. She was annoyed with herself that she had to depend on letters from Gertrude and Robert for any comfort and brightening. A woman should find all she needs in her husband, she would say to herself with depression. It is a sad day for a woman when she must revert to her children, no matter how beloved, for engrossment with children is not too far akin from engrossment with strangers who must inevitably go when they come. In an effort not to become too involved with these strangers and travelers of her flesh, she did not write them more than once a week, nor, in spite of a desperate inner urging, did she call them on the telephone, not even on their birthdays. “I should be a more loving mother and more demonstrative,” she said to Maria on a colorless March day, “and without fear of attaching myself to them like an old woman of the sea, if I knew what to do with and about Ed.”

  “But I have told you,” said Maria, gently, “that no one can do anything about my son except God and himself. It is presumptuous of any of us to believe we truly and permanently can influence others. Each soul has its way and its cross, and only its own feet can carry it, and only its own shoulders can bear that load.”

  “Then, it’s a lonely road we travel,” said Margaret, despondently. “With no one at all.”

  Maria shook her head. “No, we are never alone. But how often do we look up to see Who travels with us, and Whose Hand is ready to ease the weight of the Cross? Few of us speak to Him, Who can tell us of joy and the glory at the end of the journey, and few of us say to Him, ‘My burden is too heavy. Lift it from me for a moment.’”

  Tears smarted Margaret’s eyes. She said humbly, “I always keep forgetting. Or I’m so afraid for Ed these days that I can’t look at God or speak to Him.” She put her hand out impulsively and laid it on the large, knotted hand of her mother-in-law. “What a fool and a wastrel I’ve been! I could have had you all these years!”

  Maria wanted to say, But we have no one but God, and I had to learn that myself, and it was not an easy thing to learn. However, she could not speak this truth to Margaret, whose anxiety was daily lining her pretty face more deeply and who was so baffled and alone. She said, instead, and very quietly, “You have always had me. My daughter.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Margaret, in a low voice. “I was just stupid. I thought you were in the conspiracy to rob and ruin and exploit Ed.”

  And so I was, long ago, and may God forgive me, thought Maria. I overestimated my son’s strength until it was too late.

  Robert’s letters, sunny and enthusiastic, if not very imaginative, never failed to make Edward smile, and never failed to arouse the old buoyant note in his voice when he discussed the letters with Margaret. My son isn’t stupid, Margaret would think. He’s what they call an extrovert these days—one who expects life to be kind and pleasant and objective, and so he finds it. But it still puzzled her that the intellectual Edward could be pleased and made a little happy by her son’s letters. Robert was everything Edward was not. Gertrude’s letters, introspective, serious, and thoughtful, had a dismaying way of arriving on the days when her brother’s letters arrived, and their tone subtly annoyed and disturbed Edward. Had he expected more of his daughter than of his son? Or did she echo himself? Sometimes he would say gloomily, “What a waste! And she had an authentic genius, too.” Then he would add in all naïveté, “I knew from the start that Robert was really a businessman at heart, and so I’m no
t disappointed.”

  Between Margaret and the rest of the family at home there was now only bitterness and hatred and coldness. At least three nights a week she would have a dinner tray alone in her room, to Edward’s anger and accusations of asocial tendencies. But his own relations with his family had deteriorated to the point where the dining-room silence was rarely broken by an amiable voice or laughter. Sometimes, from upstairs, Margaret could hear Edward’s quick and violent words of disgust or disagreement or contempt. Afterwards he would go into the library and slam the door behind him, there to read far into the morning. Often he had but two or three hours of sleep. And more and more he went to New York and other cities on business.

  To such a pass was Margaret arriving that she looked forward to Violette’s return from France tomorrow, Violette who was wickedly wise and humorous and who liked her. And there were even times when Margaret desperately longed for David and his gentle sympathy and his understanding and affection. It did not matter to her now that even a mention of David’s name could make Edward become almost savage in look and speech. Of course David’s concert engagements were few, and his notices brief, and his appearances only in the smaller towns and cities. He had disappointed Edward; but who had not? There was just no explanation.

  One day in March Edward said to his wife, “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. Once you were gracious and friendly to everybody. Once you used to talk to me, and laugh, and wanted to spend time with me when I had it. Now you shut yourself away from everyone in the family and especially from me.”

  Margaret did not reply, but she thought, It’s true I can’t stand your family any longer, and every time I see them I get sick. For what they’ve done to you and what they’re still doing. But it isn’t true that I’ve shut myself away from you, my darling. You yourself have turned from me, though I know how much you really love me. I just can’t stand seeing you getting more broken, grayer, more desperate, every day. It tears the heart out of me. Oh, my God, what can I do to help you?

  She knew that business was extremely bad. Edward could have helped himself a little there, but he would not do it. His Green and White Stores were not permitted to undercut and undersell independent dealers in their vicinity. If an independent dealer had a sale in these dark and terrible days of depression, Edward would not allow a competing sale in that particular item. His stores would feature a different sale entirely. “This is not realistic,” William had protested. But Edward remembered the Goeltz family and would only become irritable. “I offer what the independents can’t offer, poor devils,” he would say. “Bigger, brighter stores, the better local help, and quicker access to goods. That’s fair competition. Murderous undercutting isn’t in my line. And don’t talk to me about bankruptcy!”

  But he was close to it now, in March, 1936. He did not often think of this, however. He had a more frightful problem. It was clear to him, as it was to a few other thinking men, that Hitler was becoming an ominous power in Europe and that evil and plotting men in America were not halting him with threats of economic boycotts and moral quarantine, and were not heartening the German people with calls for resistance and freedom. Nor were these men in Washington denouncing Stalin. There was a curious silence in the Capitol about Russia, except when a newsman or a politician or a labor leader returned from a visit to Russia bubbling with eulogies and enthusiasm about the Soviet system. Then there was a general congratulation for Stalin, prophecies that Communism was turning into “a true democracy,” and hints that America “could well adopt some of the more dynamic aspects of Communism to overcome this depression.”

  Nevertheless, it was becoming obvious that the atmosphere in Washington, in these appalling days, was definitely friendly to Communists and “liberals” and other fellow travelers. The depression had only precipitated the long plot of sinister men against the world, and now they were dominating the very spirit of America. Some newspapers even pointed out the “fact” that Communism was an enemy of Fascism, and the few newsmen who insisted that they were, in all truth, one and the same thing, and were inspired by the same people, were either ignored or found themselves without employment. When Senator Taft had courageously spoken of this, he was derided and attacked and denounced as a reactionary.

  It was becoming clear, to a few men and some honorable Senators, that a war was developing in Europe. And now Edward had a more personal terror to haunt his days and nights. Robert was twenty-one. He might have to fight, not to “save the world for democracy,” if there had ever been such a war, but to save the world for approaching totalitarianism. He might have to die to consolidate the growing power of ancient despotism and the true reactionaries. America might have to die in order that her people could become slaves.

  So Edward drew on his dwindling resources to finance men of wisdom and freedom to bring their views to the public means of communication. He financed two radio speakers, helped to support a number of newspapers and magazines who were fighting the losing battle of liberty in America. He backed Senators and Congressmen who endlessly warned the people against entangling themselves in any war in Europe, and it did not matter to Edward to what political party they belonged. It was enough for him to fight with them to save America from her enemies.

  All this was profoundly exhausting to this beset and almost dying man. It seemed to him that life had degenerated into a most awful nightmare, where he struggled against unseen terrors with leaden arms and paralyzed legs. He could not talk of these things to Margaret. Once George Enreich had said to him, “There is an old couplet: ‘Things unspoken—spirit unbroken.’” Despite the claims of psychiatrists that a man was relieved of much of his pain when he talked of his troubles and fears, Edward instinctively knew that such discussions could plunge the soul into unrelieved and hopeless despair. The throwing open of a closet that contained a skeleton did not ameliorate instinctive dread, but increased it by displaying the terror in all its inexorable threat to life, all its inexorable promise that the living would one day be reduced to this. Silence frequently permitted the spirit to delude itself that all was not lost. The face of a confidant too often mirrored one’s own hopelessness.

  There were times when his exhaustion numbed him, prevented him from thinking, and he lived for a while in a black and stony quietude where his own voice, in speaking, seemed to echo hollowly in his ears like the voice of someone else. And there were more times when he was assaulted by that passionate urge to die; there was scarcely a week when he did not suffer these agonizing urges.

  When Margaret looked back to March eighteenth, 1937, she wondered why no guardian angel, no hovering spirit, gave her any warning on awakening of what she was about to suffer and endure on that day. It had begun as bleakly as any of the other winter days, motionless, half thawing, half snowing, with a sky the color of parchment. No sign of spring made tender the stiff, stark trees; the snow lay in heaps on the grounds like the swell of new graves. She felt especially dull and had a weary headache. It was one of her days to serve at the Clinic, but she decided that she would shop in order to lift her heavy spirits. Surely spring would come. Surely with the spring some hope would return to this hopeless world. A new hat, perhaps, or a new coat would act as an inspiration, she told her disbelieving heart.

  She was about to go out when a maid informed her that “an old priest” wished to see her, and was waiting downstairs at that very moment. Margaret frowned. She knew no priests, old or young. Father Jahle had been transferred to Detroit and was now a monsignor there. “Are you sure he isn’t Mr. Hellar, our new minister?” she asked the maid. (Mr. Yaeger had died three years ago.) The maid was positive that the caller was a priest. So Margaret, sighing, picked up her checkbook, certain that this was a charity affair.

  A tall old man with very white hair rose from his seat in the hall as she came downstairs, a man with a serene and gentle face and large and brilliant brown eyes. He was very thin in his clerical black, but his smile was radiant. “Is it Father Jahle?” she ask
ed in surprise and uncertainty, hardly recognizing him. “I mean, Monsignor Jahle?” She gave him her hand and he shook it, and something warm and comforting enveloped her heart.