The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  Margo spoke over her shoulder at the door. “All right,” she said impatiently. “He’ll be down in a minute.” She smiled deeply at Gregory. “Now, honey, you just be sure of yourself. You’ll have to talk to him. Here, help me off with this damned robe.” She showed herself in her glistening silk slip. Her breasts thrust against the soft fabric. “I’m going down with you, darling. He’s not going to bully you. He’s not very bright; you said that yourself. You can explain it all away. Laugh. We’ll both laugh. And we can tell him that some of the trouble he’s been having lately with the government is because you’ve got friends in Washington. You can promise him more, if he won’t listen to reason. There, now; just pull that over my right shoulder.” She patted his face lovingly and gave him another big smile.

  What can I say to him? thought the gray-faced Gregory as he and Margo went out into the hall together. There’s nothing I can say now, nothing he can forgive or want to understand. “Look,” whispered Margo, pulling him back a little. “There’s Margaret going down the stairs. That’s good. She knows he’s home, too. She’ll help us calm him down. I think we’re just scaring ourselves to death.”

  They let Margaret go far ahead of them. They did not move until she had run down the stairs. She had not seen Gregory and Margo, and she was smiling almost happily. Edward had not called to her to come, but she had been waiting, and she had heard the car return. It was not surprising to her that he had gone directly to the library. He often stopped there first to put papers into the safe and glance at his mail before going upstairs. He was safe! He was at home! That priest, with his superstitious dreams! She clutched Gertrude’s and Robert’s new letters in her hand; they had arrived this morning. She would mix Ed a drink; she would sit near him while he read the letters, and, for a while, for just a little while, they would laugh together as they used to do, and discuss the children.

  She opened the library door. The room was full of lamplight. She still smiled. “Ed, darling,” she said. “I was waiting for you. I’m so glad you’re home! Here are—”

  And then she stopped. Edward was standing behind a table and his face was terrible and fixed and his color was ghastly. He looked at her and said in a very quiet voice, “Go away, Margaret. I’m going to be busy for a few minutes. Go upstairs. Stay there until I can come up.”

  She had never seen him like this, not even when business was at its worst, not even when he was most beset and distracted. She had never seen that expression on his face before, that frightful expression, that steady flare of the eyes. Her heart thumped; she was sick with fear. He was too still, too motionless.

  “Oh, what is it?” she cried, overcome with her fear. “What is it, Ed? Tell me. I have a right to know. I’m your wife.” She held out her hands pleadingly. She prayed inwardly, Dear God, what is the matter? What is wrong?

  “I said, go away, Margaret.” His voice did not change, did not become excitable or annoyed. “I don’t want you here.”

  She stood in the middle of the room, transfixed with her awful dread. He is dying, she said to herself. Ed is dying. Absolute horror and panic shook her heart. She advanced a little into the room, and he held up his hand. She could see his eyes more clearly now in the lamplight, and they were brilliant and immobile. Yet his voice was still quiet when he repeated, “Go away. I don’t want you here just now.”

  She swallowed dryly. Before she could move or speak again, the door opened and Gregory and Margo stood on the threshold. Margaret regarded them with wild confusion, but even in that confusion, and her fear, she saw with curious clarity that Gregory had a deathly look, that Margo, though smiling, was colorless, and that about them both was a disordered air of trepidation and shocked alarm and utter fright. They seemed to falter on the threshold rather than to stand on it. Margo’s arm was twined tightly around Gregory’s; she appeared to be holding him upright, and then she gave Edward a glance of fearful challenge, defiance, and fortitude.

  “Well?” she said, and her bold voice was almost shrill. “You wanted to see Greg?”

  Margaret moistened her lips; her eyes darted from the faces of Gregory and Margo to Edward, and her confusion made her head swim. She put her hand to her temple and frowned vaguely.

  But Edward looked only at his wife. “Do you want me to put you out?” he asked.

  Margo shouted, “Why? Why shouldn’t she stay? What do you mean, asking Greg to come down here like he was a servant or something? Why shouldn’t Margaret hear what you want to say? Are you afraid she wouldn’t love you any more?”

  Her big mouth, stained with scarlet that only pointed up her pallor, sneered. In a wheedling and lowered voice she said to Margaret, “Don’t go, darling. He—he came back—from somewhere—and then like a slave driver or something he told a maid to send Greg down here—Don’t go,” she pleaded.

  “Why, why?” muttered Margaret. “What is it?”

  Margo held out her hand to Margaret, and Margaret involuntarily recoiled. A sensation of unreality fell over her; objects in the room, and those three faces, began to blur.

  Margo, gathering passion again in her panic, and her anger against Edward, and her concern for Gregory, exclaimed, “What’s it all about? Greg, ask him. Don’t just stand here. He—he can’t kill you!” Still holding her husband by one arm, she reached across his chest and shook his shoulder with her left hand. “Oh, Jesus!” she exclaimed. “Be a man, honey, be a man!”

  Margaret, dazed and with increasing confusion, faltered, “What is it? What have you done to Ed?”

  Gregory came feebly to life. His voice croaked impotently once or twice before he could say in a very weak tone, “I don’t know. But just look at him! What is all this—a secret?” Something vital slipped inside of him, something that had never been very strong but which was completely demoralized now.

  “Not any longer,” Edward replied to him. “And I think you know.”

  Margaret said faintly, “I’m not going. There’s something wrong with my husband!” She took a blundering step toward Gregory. “What have you done to him? It’s something you’ve done! I can see it in your faces.” Her eyes shone on him, distraught.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Gregory, in that weak voice. It was too unbearable now to look at his brother. “We don’t know,” said Margo. “He—sent for Greg. And then we came in—and he’s like this. Maybe he’s lost his mind,” she added, her tone rising almost hysterically.

  Edward said to his wife, “I can’t throw you out bodily. And what I have to say won’t take but a minute.” He turned his eyes on his brother.

  “I’ve been to Washington. A friend asked me to come—to save me and my family from disgrace.” He spoke almost in an uninterested fashion. “I know all about you now, you vicious half-wit. I know what you’ve been doing; I know about the people you’ve been associating with; I know the kind of writing you’ve been doing for years. Don’t speak. It won’t do you any good.”

  He caught a sudden breath, harsh and loud in the quiet of the leathery library, and he quickly pressed a hand to his chest. Margaret, stunned, stared at Gregory and Margo. Edward looked at his watch. “It’s almost half past seven. I want you and your wife—your wife who I thought might put some sense and decency into that feeble brain of yours—out of this house before midnight. That’s nearly five hours.” He caught his breath again. He said, very simply, “And if you aren’t out of this house by then, I think I’ll kill you, not because you’ve been so important but because of the thing you are, and what you always were.”

  Gregory straightened up rigidly as if shot, and as if at any moment he would fall heavily to the floor.

  “How dare you talk to Greg like that!” Margo was shouting again in frenzy. “You’re all crazy, mixed up. You’re out of your mind! We’re not going out of this house like a pair of refugees, just because you’ve got a brainstorm. You’re not Hitler.” Her voice, in her panic, dropped to an incongruous note of threat, for she was shaking. “I think it’ll be more safe
for us to stay, Ed. You’ve been having trouble with Washington for some time, Ed. Do you want more? Do you really want trouble, trouble that’ll put you out of business forever? Greg can do that to you, you see.”

  There were blinding tears in her eyes. She had had to force Gregory against the doorjamb to hold him upright. What was the matter with him? Why didn’t he stand and talk and smile surely as he always did? He was always so brave—he could stand up to anybody—he could speak and make people just wilt.… Greg, Greg, she implored him silently, in her distracted mind. You know what to say!

  Then Edward smiled, a strange faint smile, almost of compassion, and Margo blinked as she saw it turned on her. “I ought to have known he’d get around to corrupting you, Margo. I shouldn’t have been such a fool that I’d have overlooked that. I should have told you to go home, Margo, where you belong, among your own kind of people and not among diseased brains. Don’t you understand? He’s my brother, who’s lived on me all his life. He’s never earned a really honorable cent all the years he’s lived. Nothing will stop his kind except a rope or a gun. I ought to have known what he was, from the very beginning.”

  Again and again that torn and ragged breath sounded harshly in the room, even against the sound of the wind.

  “Nothing but a rope or a gun,” he repeated.

  Margo’s eyes rounded and glared. “Really crazy!” she exclaimed. “I always said you were after what Greg told me about you. You’re nothing but a Hitler! Trying to scare people to death, trying to drive people out. Sometimes I thought maybe Greg was wrong; my dad never talked like Greg; my dad met Greg once and didn’t like him. But Dad’s an old reactionary fuddyduddy—” She swallowed visibly, and her tears overflowed her eyelids and fell over her firm round cheeks. “And now I see Greg’s right, and your kind don’t have the right to live, and I can say it to your face now!”

  Margaret listened, and it was all clear to her. She pressed her clasped hands deeply into her breast. She looked at Gregory, and the blue of her eyes was like lightning.

  Gregory, who gave the impression of groveling, whispered, “I’m not a Communist, Ed, if that’s what you mean. Margo, shut up, you and your idiotic bellowing. Don’t listen to her, Ed; listen to me.”

  “What?” whimpered Margo, and her arms dropped from him.

  “I’m a liberal, Ed,” Gregory went on, and his whine was louder. “I’m a progressive. I know your ideas and you know mine. We’ve argued with each other and have had some quarrels. But, as you’ve said, I’m your brother. Your brother, Ed. Do you think I would do anything to hurt you? What would that profit me?”

  “Why, what d’you mean!” Margo shrieked. “All you’ve told me—!”

  Edward closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were more terrible than ever. “Don’t lie any more, Greg,” he said. “You’ve lied all your life. Look at Margo and see what you’ve done. You parasite, you liar. And now you’re finished. I could let my friends in Washington do what they want to do. One call from me and you’ll wish you’d never been born. One call and that’s the end of you. I’m letting you go quietly. I don’t care where you go or how you’ll get there. But I warn you, if I hear anything more you’ve done—then I’ll find you, wherever you are.”

  Now Margo was sure she knew! This was what they all did, these reactionaries! Scared people out of their minds! Browbeat them and murdered them and robbed them and chased them away! Greg was right. He’d been right all the time, and she’d argued with him sometimes. Poor Greg, poor Greg. She clenched her fists and leaned toward Edward, and shouted hoarsely:

  “Don’t try to scare us, you Fascist! We don’t scare. Oh, we’ll go. But we want ten thousand dollars, right this minute, and an allowance, or you’ll be sorry all your life, and Greg’s going on with his work and you can’t stop him! Your friends? We got friends, too, and you’ll find out,” and she shook her head so passionately and vehemently at Edward that her smooth chignon loosened as if in a wind. “Look what you’ve done to him! Frustrating him and making him a prisoner, doling out money to him as if he was a beggar, scaring the pants off him all the time! I know! But you’re not going to do it any longer.” She caught her breath and began to cry furiously. “I’ll take care of Greg. He’s got a delicate, peaceful kind of temperament, but I’m here, and you’ll find out!”

  Edward said to his brother, “Get out.”

  And then they knew this was the end, even poor, betrayed Margo. She fell silent, moistening her lips, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, like a big child. She turned with sturdy and pitying tenderness to her husband. “Let’s go, Greg, honey. We don’t want to stay in a house where there’s an insane fellow. You’d never know what he’d do. He’s absolutely out of his mind.” She took Gregory’s arm again, then started violently. Margaret had uttered a great and wailing cry, a cry of the deepest despair. Margo jumped and looked at Edward.

  He was swaying behind his table. His eyes rolled up. He clutched blindly at papers, at wood, at a lamp, which tottered. His face became the color of clay. He made a strangling sound, fell against the table. And then he crashed to the floor.

  Margaret ran to him, knelt beside him, raised his head in her arms, and held it tightly against her breast. Gregory, coming to life, flew to join her, but he stopped when he saw her eyes. “You’ve killed my husband,” she whispered. “You’ve murdered my husband.”

  Wildly, Gregory looked about him. Margo uttered a high scream, and he ran at her and struck her across the mouth. “You did it!” he howled. “You killed my brother, you tramp!”

  CHAPTER XIII

  How long had he wallowed in that pain? Edward asked himself. A long time, a very long time, all the days of his life. But now it was over, and he was free and at peace, and he could breathe easily, and there was a lightness in him like the very essence of youth. He did not want to open his eyes; he lay in the soft darkness which seemed to strum with some gentle and triumphant music. If he opened his eyes, he would be assaulted by that pain again. The pain of living, he said to himself, the immeasurable pain of living. The endless, lightless, hopeless pain of being a man. He rested on billows of warmth and comfort, and sighed with pleasure that he had been delivered.

  A woman spoke, close to him, a soft and groaning voice. “You’ll be kind, won’t You, God?” she prayed. He turned his head in the darkness. Who was speaking?

  “Not Ed, God, not Ed—just anyone else in the world,” the voice prayed. “Me, for instance. Take my eyes, my life, give me an awful disease, strike me down, do anything to me, kill me now, give my strength to Ed.”

  “I must go,” he said. “You must let me go. Don’t hold me.” And then, “Margaret? You are dreaming, darling,” he said. “Wake up. I’m here. I’m not in pain any longer. I only dreamt I had pain.” And then he opened his eyes.

  The pain did not return. There was a dim light about him. It was like a gray shadow rather than a light. Very slowly, then, the shadow retreated like a wave and he could see, but it was as if he saw at a great distance. He was in the very smallest of rooms, almost like a coffin, and there stood Margaret at a window, but a Margaret as tiny as a doll near a window that was only the most minute of blurs. She resembled one of those diminutive Dresden figures his mother had brought from Germany.

  He thought, surprised, How little life is, how infinitesimal, how fragile, how unimportant. And how little it really has to do with us. He could hear that soft, prayerful groaning of the woman at the window, who stood with her back to him, and he said, “Margaret, my darling, it isn’t worth praying about or crying about. Look at me. I am bigger than life, all of us are bigger than life. Here I am. I haven’t gone away. Turn around and look at me.”

  But Margaret stood there, that most Lilliputian of figures, sharp and clear in color but still so very small. She could stand in the palm of his hand. Beyond her, he could see a faint slice of magenta in that minute blur of a window. He was in a doll’s house, breathing and seeing in a doll’s house
. Or he was standing at an immense distance, not on Margaret’s level, not on any earthly level at all. He was profoundly interested in that fact. He was certain he was not dreaming; he could move and feel and know. Suddenly he was filled with tenderness for Margaret, his wife, the deepest of loves, moved by a love he had never felt before, so universal and yet so particular it was. And he was joyful and free. He called to Margaret again, in a loud and sonorous voice, but she did not turn. Her litany of agony continued, in the frailest of voices. “Not Ed, God, please not Ed. My life. Everything I have. Take them. Kill me. Just spare Ed.”

  “But I have been spared,” he said. “I’m alive, dearest. Don’t suffer so. Look at me.” And he rose off his pillows, got out of bed, and stood up. He seemed to tower out of the doll’s house, to look down at Margaret’s tiny body. This confused him for a moment. Then he was impatient. Margaret had only to turn to see him, to see him strong and young and vital. To see him free. She would be happy then. He began to walk toward her. A voice called him, a man’s voice, and he turned sharply.

  But he could see no one. The door stood open. He hesitated. He had to go through that door; he wanted, first, for Margaret to see and know him before he went away. You see, he argued with her lovingly and reprovingly, I can’t stay here. Someone’s calling me. You’d understand if you’d just turn around and see. I’m not going far, not too far to hear your voice. I’ll be waiting, just outside the door. Or not too far.

  “Ed,” said the man’s voice, urgently and with a note of command in it. He could not, disobey. He walked across the floor; he was so light and so buoyant and he wanted to laugh with pleasure at his freedom of movement. At the door he paused, and for the last time he begged Margaret to look at him. But she would not. So he went through the door with the swiftness of a young child.