The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  The blow of Ralph’s marriage had been one of the worst calamities of Maria’s life. But as she was an indomitable woman, she had neither cried out nor protested nor rejected Violette. There were matters one must accept. This catastrophe was one of them. Ralph was married and appeared much enchanted by his young wife, and Violette seemed to have an amused and sardonic affection for him, and a humorous tolerance. Too, she understood perfectly that if she were to prosper she must continue to seduce and ostensibly adore him, and defer to his comfort and complacency. She also comprehended art and artists, and her knowledge, in this respect, commanded even Maria’s admiration. Violette, who thought only of herself, could be trusted to encourage Ralph in anything which would react pleasantly in her behalf. She had, in addition, the intuitive Frenchwoman’s training in the art of pleasing men and making their lives agreeable. It could be much worse, thought Maria, sighing again as she picked up her pen to continue her letter to Margaret. Violette, though uneducated except in art, which she had picked up from her numerous affairs with artists, was a realist, and had much charm and an impertinent prettiness. Maria hoped that Margaret would accept Violette’s better attributes without searching further.

  “Ralph,” Maria wrote, “will be home with Violette for the wedding.” Maria turned the pen in her big fat fingers. “I wish at this time to extend to you, my dear Margaret, not only my affection but the affection of the family. Though we have not as yet had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you, we know that we shall love you. You have brought to my son Edward an air of lightness and contentment which I have never discerned in him before, and I know that your gift to him at your wedding will be a lifetime of happiness and fulfillment. He is inclined to be too serious, too much devoted to his work and his family. It is well that he is marrying.

  “Permit me, as your future mother, and the mother of your bridegroom, to urge that you come as soon as possible to our home, before the wedding. This will not be improper or indiscreet or without propriety! My daughter and I will act as your perfect chaperones. I am already preparing quarters for you and will wish to consult you as to the decorating of the suite which you and Edward will occupy.”

  But what should she, Maria, tell this young and inexperienced girl about Edward, her tragic son, absorbed in his desperate and secret misery, his unconscious insistence that his brothers and his sister give him a meaning in life? And what should she tell her about the exploitation of his youth, because he was strong and must be the hand that lifted the weak and supported them?

  How explain, so that her letter would be read in mercy and compassion? Could she tell Margaret of her own futile life, of the dreams that had died in a meager house in this city, of the renewed dreams when she had seen the strength and power of her second son, the frail gifts of her other children which must be cherished at any cost and be caused to bloom? Could she write, “He believes himself to be the victim of his family, and so he is vengeful and is determined to give his brothers and sister what they had insisted they wanted and which I am fraid they no longer want? In his deeper mind he understands they are now his prisoners, because they were weak, and he loathes the power he has over them because he is intrinsically a just man. He was deceived by his parents, but most of all by his father, who is good but very simple, and he was deceived by his brothers and sister. But now he will not let them go. He believes he is the victim, but in all truth, they are his victims”?

  No, this she could not write. A young girl would find it incomprehensible. Life, to such a girl, must be an uncomplex thing; there was too much candor in her photographed eyes, too much softness in her mouth. She did not as yet know the dark and sinister things in the hearts of men, and the things of tragedy and complexity, which were one and the same thing.

  To this girl things were either good or bad; it shone from her unblemished face, so tender, so frank. Maria sighed wearily. She finished her letter and thought, There are so many things that mere words cannot explain, but they are actual and terrible and real, even if imponderable. At the last, the imponderables are a man’s whole existence.

  Margaret Baumer, though still very young, was well acquainted with the brief, unlit agony of life, and for this short time before she married Edward Enger she was still possessed of a lucid eye. She could still look at people objectively, with private reservations undistorted by unquestioning love and the fierce loyalty which was part of her nature.

  And so she was troubled and thoughtful this golden June twenty-third, five days before she was to be married. Like Edward, she was of a solitary disposition. While his solitariness was invaded by cold and speechless resentments and colder anger, hers was contemplative, sometimes sad, and often an interlude which she used for summing-up. Her childhood had been drab and full of pain and hopelessness, until comparatively recently, and it was still too close to her not to be part of her life and to affect her thoughts. It had not left her bitter, only frequently depressed and mournful, and quite often compassionate. Though she loved Edward as she had never loved before, and would never love again, she understood that the years of his life had hardened and congealed him. He had given her his first full confidence, and she had listened for hours in mute consternation and pity, not for what he had endured and not for his struggles, but for what his life had done to him and what he had permitted life to do to him, even with his own abetting. Later she was to forget, in the very unfocusing of her devotion, the clarity with which she had first seen and understood.

  She had been in his house for almost a week now, and at sunset, while the rest of the family gathered in Maria’s and Heinrich’s suite to talk and to drink coffee discontentedly, and to fill the warm evening air with malicious remarks and sometimes bickerings, she would quietly leave the house and wander in the gardens. She had found a favorite and hidden spot a long distance away, which Edward had preserved in a state of semiwildness of crowding great trees, thick grass, and wild flowers. Here, on a weathered wooden bench, out of sight of the house, and in a golden silence filled with bees, she would sit, her hands folded in her lap, her thoughtful gaze unseeing and quiet.

  The bees hummed about her, catching little beams of light on their wings; the grass bent and changed color in the warm wind; the trees towered over her in heavy shade and their tops glittered and moved. Margaret was sad and uneasy. She was making up her mind how best to approach Edward on the subject of his family, not for the sake of the family but for his own salvation. Once or twice before she had attempted this tactfully, but he had looked at her with umbrage as if she had become a stranger who did not speak his language, and she had hurried to assure him that she understood, but … Once she had commented to herself, dryly, that if love overcame all things, it also blinded all things.

  The grass, the trees, the sunlit insects, all moved gently and serenely on this June late afternoon, but Margaret was still. No one could see her, for her green linen dress, so simply made, short-sleeved, rounded of neck, and just reaching to her slender ankles, blended her into her surroundings. Her bright waving hair curved about her beautiful and serious face; the sunlight made blue jewels of her eyes under her gilt lashes; her mouth was both tender and sorrowful; her white hands were like carved marble on her knees. She was thinking of the contempt and derision with which Edward spoke of his family, and she was thinking of that family with concentration. She knew them all now.

  She thought of Heinrich, so small, so rotund, so simple and childlike. She had sensed his misery from the first moment she had met him, when he had looked up at her with that eager and seeking expression in his round dark eyes. Here was not a father of a family, but a wounded child, bewildered by his own pain and as uncomplicated as a glass of milk. She had noticed that when Edward was in the room his father appeared to see no one else, and that he fixed his eyes imploringly on his son. She had also noticed that so far as the family was concerned he did not exist, except for Maria. He went unnoticed; no one spoke to him, and when he himself spoke, with that tentative and an
xious voice of his, no one seemed to hear. He was endured as a small and timid dog might be endured. However, Margaret had seen that occasionally Edward’s eyes had narrowed if they had encountered his father unexpectedly. Why that cold anger, that aversion, for one who was so harmless and so pathetic and asked for nothing? Except … what was he asking for, and what was it that he begged for silently and with all his heart? Margaret did not know, but she felt an urgency to reply. And so it was that she was kind to this little man. But whenever she spoke to him, and if Edward was present, Heinrich might answer her, though she became aware that he did not really see her and that all his being was concentrated on his son in a kind of desperate waiting for an answer.

  Margaret was not afraid of Maria, for she had long passed beyond fear in her own sufferings, but she was constrained with her. Maria was considerate, intellectual, and remote. She appeared to be completely detached from her family, not in coldness but in aristocratic reserve. She was much more complex, Margaret deduced, than any other member, and understood her own complexity and accepted it. Here was a woman capable of understanding everything, even forgiving everything, analyzing everything, yet remaining apart from everything. She was not easily moved nor disturbed. There was an indifferent majesty about her like a mountain, and this repelled Margaret. No tragedy would dishevel her spirit; it was impossible to think of her weeping untidily, with her soul exposed and visibly bleeding. She accepted life with her own inward comments, and Margaret felt certain that those comments would frighten her as a glacier would frighten her if it moved inexorably. Margaret was too wise to believe that Maria never had her hours of despair or regret or pain. It was Maria’s ability never to betray those hours in her voice or manner that made the girl uneasy. So much self-control, the girl thought, was inhuman. She could understand why Maria often infuriated Edward. The others in the family were merely afraid of the mother, alternately surly in her presence or silent, or placating with a resentment of their own placating.

  I can never become friendly with her, thought Margaret, today. I can, and do, respect her. She’s terribly formidable, not because she wants to be but because of what she is.

  The others were less complex, and all had aroused Margaret’s pity, if vexation, also. She knew at once that for some unknown reason Sylvia hated and secretly derided her. Sylvia never spoke to her without a cutting mockery, even after Margaret had made the simplest remark. Sylvia was excessively polite to her, and this was part of her taunting. Margaret would have liked to have been friendly with the older girl, but Sylvia’s manner, her sharp shrugs, her piercing eyes with their tilted stare, warned her off. Nevertheless, Margaret pitied her, pitied her illness, her air of silent anguish, her bitter frustration, her delicate ferocity, her subtle malice. Many things, Margaret concluded, had injured Sylvia, but all these things had emanated from herself. Margaret sighed, thinking. So intrinsically distinctive and pretty a young woman! But she was afraid and hated herself for her fear. Of what was she afraid?

  The others were afraid, too. Margaret had sensed that almost immediately. She had thought at first that they were solely afraid of Edward, who could certainly be as formidable as his mother. Margaret smiled lovingly. Then her smile vanished. Edward merely represented something to them that inspired their fear, but she did not know what it was.

  Margaret was still not quite sure that Edward’s explanation to her was correct—that his brothers and sister detested him because they were ungrateful. She was still able to suspect that their insulting way with him, and their fear, not open but to be easily discerned, rose from a secret detestation of themselves. She remembered David’s last words to her on that night in March. “He doesn’t despise me half as much as I despise myself.”

  Margaret folded a tuck in her green skirt and shook her head despondently.

  Gregory. Quick, mercurial, intelligent. Gregory, the potentially famous and distinguished writer. Gregory, the derisive and insufferable and egotistic and offensive. Margaret disliked him, and he had the smallest share of her pity. It annoyed her that he looked so much like Edward, without Edward’s crude power and decisiveness. She disliked his pretensions to elegance, and his mocking speech so like Sylvia’s. Yet he could be amusing and he could make even Edward laugh. He was not to be underestimated. There was an alert brain there, and a ruthless one. But he was without potency. He was like a sharp thin stick that could be easily broken in strong hands. That he hated Edward, and tried to despise him, was more evident in his manner than in any of the others. It was worse in Gregory, for he had the ability to understand himself. But what was there to understand? Margaret shook her head again.

  Now there was Ralph, tall, plump, ruddy, and handsome, with his curling auburn hair and big, bold black eyes, his cunning eyes so without illusion, so full of greed and so often morose and angry. Margaret felt an aversion for him. He was lustful and he was coarse. It was odd that he had such strong and intelligent hands, and that there was a latent power in them. They were not the hands of the artist he was alleged to be. He had a loud voice, sometimes furious with demands, except in Edward’s presence, and a total lack of consideration for anyone except his little wife, Violette, who could manage him with a word or a glance.

  Margaret still could not think of David without a sharp pain. She was glad he was not here. But inevitably he would return. She prayed that he would, by then, have forgotten he ever loved her.

  It had become alarmingly clear to her that not even the probable marriages of Sylvia, Gregory, and David would relieve her of their presence. Edward had said, “This is their home. Even when they’re married, I’ll expect them to be here often or always. They understand this.”

  Margaret had been incredulous. Why should Edward insist that his brothers and sister, who hated and feared him and whom he despised, be under his roof? It was beyond her comprehension.

  She, too, had come to love this vast and beautiful house. She had come to think of it as her home, filled with her children and with affection and peace. But it was not to be really her home. It would be forever echoing with the voices of surly strangers who did not like her, who would not accept her, who spoke to her with smothered jeering, who had their secret loyalties among themselves which excluded others. They made of the house a sort of prison. But who was the jailer?

  She turned her head and saw Edward approaching her across the tall thick grass, and, as always, her heart rose on a high crest of joy. He alone knew of this hiding place of hers. “The think-place,” he had teased her. “It’s mine, too.”

  She stood up and held out her hands to him with a low happy cry. He took them. It was then that she saw that his dark broad face looked sick and tense, and that his eyes were sunken and that his whole big body expressed despair.

  CHAPTER IX

  “Tell me, darling,” said Margaret as she and Edward sat side by side on the bench, their hands together. She was frightened. He seemed ill and shattered and yet full of rage. “You went to see Hans Bohn today and Congressman Sheftel. And Senator Bonwit.”

  And so he told her.

  He had gone to see his friend, the prosperous newspaperman and publisher of the Waterford Evening News, who also published a newspaper in Albany and one in Rochester. Hans Bohn was known for his somewhat austere integrity, his publishing ethics, and his taciturn nature which rebuked too enthusiastic attempts at friendship from others. His deep cold passion was freedom of the press, truth, and fair play; he had a hatred for sensationalism. He was a friend, a close friend, of Edward Enger’s, though Edward would have laughed at the idea. A middle-aged man, he was as lean as a fleshless stick, and gave a uniform impression of grayness, from his hair, his eyes and the color of his skin to his controlled cool manner. He never indulged in conversation for conversation’s sake, and so was rarely seen in gayer society.

  Edward had made an appointment with him a few days ago, and Hans received him in a large office as chill, gray and featureless as himself. He waited courteously until Edward had seate
d himself. On his smooth desk there was a pile of neat papers, and Edward saw that these were his own, which he had sent to the publisher. Hans put his long colorless hand on them as he saw Edward’s glance. “Smoke if you wish, Ed,” he said in his toneless voice, and Edward nervously lit a cigarette. “Well, Hans?” he demanded, and his strong voice sounded too loud in the quiet office.

  Hans went to a file and brought out a small old newspaper, so old that its edges were rusty and crackling. “I have here,” he said without expression, “a copy of the Buffalo Courier & Republic, published in May 4, 1869. A good, sound newspaper. I sent for it, for I remember my father speaking particularly of this newspaper item, which was also published in other newspapers. The Buffalo Courier & Republic was kind enough to send me this issue, and I received it this morning.”

  He paused. He found an immaculate tray for Edward’s cigarette. All his movements were controlled and quiet. “I will read it to you, Ed. ‘Commercially, as well as from a military point of view, Russia is soon to be our chief rival. We are both advancing toward the coveted regions of Asia, and the influence of our settlements along the Pacific coast will soon be powerfully felt on the opposite—to us the western—side of the ocean.’”

  He looked at Edward with his reserved eyes. “You see, now, that what you have given me I have known for some time. Socialism has already been adopted by Sweden. Bismarck brought much of it to Germany. It remains for Russia to give it—ah, eh—bloody impetus. There is something else you do not know. The bankers of Europe, the bankers of America, have long been dissatisfied with the Tsarist regime in Russia. It has repulsed the Amsterdam-Frankfort-Paris-London-Vienna cartel of those interlocked bankers. No foreign banks, said the Tsars, could carry on their business in Russia if managed outside of Russia. In 1893, the Russian Minister of Finance advised all bankers in Russia that if they assisted speculative operations in the Russian ruble, it would be ‘considered as incompatible with their privileges.’ Because of this policy, the Russian banks are not as volatile, for instance, as the German banks, which are involved with politics.”