The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  She thought of how silent they had been since their brother’s almost fatal illness, and of how quietly they had crept about his house, hardly speaking to each other, and how their eyes had avoided meeting each other’s eyes. The oak had been stricken; the birds that had perched so heedlessly in its branches, taking its shelter for granted, had been tremendously alarmed, terrified and distraught.

  “I am an old woman,” said Maria, and now her tone was formidable and commanding. “I am also your mother. I must ask that none of you interrupt me while I speak. Today I am the accuser and the judge; I am also the accused.”

  Her light blue eyes, veined and prominent, moved from one face to the other. Her children did not move, but they looked at their mother, and even Sylvia shrank a little in her chair before straightening herself again. Then Maria’s eyes touched Margaret. “Nor are you innocent, my child,” she said.

  Margaret flushed, opened her mouth, but Maria lifted her hand. “I must speak without interruption,” she said. She picked up her knitting.

  “My son lies upstairs,” she continued. “It is only three weeks ago that he was struck down, when we were told that he would probably die. Who struck him down? You? Or himself? His wife would say you and me. I would say all of us, and his dead father. And Edward himself. None of us is without guilt.

  “To each man his brother presents a different aspect. Brothers and sister do not see their brother as their mother sees him, nor does she see him as they see him. To his wife, he is a different person; to his children, he is still another man. To God, he is still another. Which, then, is the true aspect?”

  Maria paused. “I would say all of them are true, even the worst, even the most unflattering, even the most superb and selfless and kind. To all of us he presented a different face. And each face was his own. Nevertheless, we are not exonerated.”

  She laced her great fat fingers together and looked into the distance. “I must ask you a question, Margaret. Did you know that my son was a true artist? A true and authentic genius?”

  They all stirred. Margaret said, “I suspected it a long time ago.”

  Maria nodded. “It is so,” she said. “From the time he was a child I knew. Why, then, did I insist that he sacrifice what he was, what he could have been, to my other children, who were so weak and uncertain and gifted so feebly in what I at first believed was their genius? Because Edward was strong; he had the soul of a giant. And I had pride. It was not enough for me that one of my children achieve greatness. I wished all of them to have a measure of it. By sacrificing the greater I had him as my ally, who would help me develop the gifts of the lesser. Too, I saw he was the only one who could obtain the money necessary for that developing of his brothers and sister. And money was desperately needed.

  “I was not like your father, who believed that the strong should be ravished and even destroyed for the weak, and that they should be punished for their very strength, and be humbled. I did not believe, as he did, that men should be faceless, in a monotonous Eden, controlled by despots. He was never a very intelligent man, and I say this of him, who was his wife. It was a matter of politics to him, but he never, in his simplicity, understood reality. Edward was also a genius in the too little appreciated art of making money. I decided that this art would not only serve all of us but would also serve him. He had courage, as none of you had courage. He had power in himself, and there was no power or courage in any of you.”

  Margaret, who was closer to Maria than any of the others, saw that the old woman’s eyes had filled with, tears, and for a moment there was a softening in her, a pity, for she had never seen tears in Maria’s eyes before. But when Maria spoke again to her silent children, her voice was as strong as before.

  “I know this, that you disappointed your brother, when the gifts you had openly claimed you possessed did not materialize, or showed themselves as the mediocre ones they were. Nevertheless, he had no right to be so disappointed and show it so savagely. He had done a wrong thing; he had built his life on men, and when a man does this he builds his life on a bog which is without stability or fertility. True, he was working very hard, his youth devoured in that work. But who has not been disappointed and deceived? Edward looked at his work, his lost youth, and he could not reconcile himself that you were what you really were. He believed that you were deliberately frustrating him, that you could be greater than you are, and that out of cruelty and greed you would not be what he thought you should be. And so he revenged himself on you and took from you what small measure of strength and courage you possessed.”

  Margaret cried out in bitter anger. “How dare you say that of Ed, Ed who gave all his life to these—to these wretches? Ed, who sacrificed himself and wanted nothing for himself?” Her eyes were blue fire in the dusk.

  Maria held up her hand. “I have requested that no one interrupt, please.” She looked at her children, but none of them looked at her. They were very silent.

  “You were his meaning for living,” she said. “But no man should choose another mortal for his reason for existence. That is blasphemous. I am certain that in God’s sight you are not held responsible for my son’s blasphemy, though you are guilty of other things, such as weakness and lack of courage and honesty and pride.”

  They all looked up quickly at their mother then, startled, then hesitant and even ashamed.

  Maria went on as if she did not see their glances. “Edward turned away from God when he looked for his reason for being not in God, but in you. He turned away from God when he exerted his power over you. This, too, he understands. Yet you, too, are not guiltless. You submitted to his power, and that is a crime against God. There is nothing so depraved as a slave, for a man is not a slave without his willing.”

  She looked down at her clasped hands. “No, no man is ever enslaved without his will. There is always a moment when he can choose, even if the choice is death. In the sight of free men a slave is despicable, for a just reason.

  “And now I must tell you that I have known, for many years, why you submitted to your brother’s power. You had wronged your deepest spirit, because you had no courage. And, knowing this, you revenged yourselves on him by forcing him to exert even more power over you, by forcing him to support you. I have known for many years what you have been doing, without his knowledge.” She smiled at David, faintly. “You and I have known this, but not the others. My children, look at your brother, David. He is that modern composer, called, in a somewhat vulgar manner, Davey Jones.”

  Now everyone in the room moved and sat up in astonishment, and Gregory and Ralph smiled and even laughed. They stared at David. Ralph exclaimed, “Why, for God’s sake!” And Sylvia’s thin red mouth twisted with wry mirth.

  Margaret said, with a loathing look at David, “So you’re a rich man! And you never once tried to help Ed, who was dying of overwork and debts and worry!”

  Maria said sternly, “How little you know, Margaret. David has taken no money from his brother for many years. He did not tell Edward who he really was, because he did not wish to disappoint Edward, who surely would have been furious. Moreover, in 1929, David came to me and begged me to find a way to give his money to Edward. I knew it could not be done, for Edward hated his brother—for many reasons. But I must continue.

  “I have known for too long a time that Sylvia is a wealthy designer of ladies’ gowns and hats, that Ralph is the engineer who has designed many fine bridges and was paid impressively for them, that Gregory has written many flippant stories and articles, for which he was amply recompensed, besides the books which so enraged his brother. You seem amazed, my children. But though I am only your mother, and therefore apparently not very intelligent, there is little a mother does not know about her children. There was too much smirking satisfaction about all of you, too much slyness, too much knowingness. And so I looked for the reasons. I was also helped,” and she paused and smiled to herself, “by a very intelligent young man whom I will not name at present. He does not believe in the
surface; he looks for the secrets of others.”

  All at once her face changed, became condemning and cold, as her eyes again moved from one shamefaced man or woman to another.

  “Why did not all of you, when you became wealthy, have the courage to tell your brother, to face his anger and disappointment and humiliation and leave his house? Because you had betrayed yourselves in your lack of courage. You were also greedy. You wished to keep your money for yourselves. Yet you were self-betrayed and hated that betrayal, and blamed it all on your brother, to hide your guilt from your own eyes.”

  Her slow look of denunciation passed over them. “There is one thing I do not understand. You have been kind to each other and loyal to each other, with the exception of my son, my strong son, Edward. You must have known that in these past years he was despairing, that he needed help, that his home was mortgaged. He never talked to you of business, but you must have known. Yet none of you came to his help, none of you offered, none of you even lied and said, ‘I saved the money you gave me, and here it is.’ You permitted him to reach the point of dying, without a word.”

  Then Sylvia broke out in a faint cry. “We wanted him to fail, to be ruined!” she said. And she covered her face with her white and bony hands. She continued in a muffled and trembling voice. “We never really talked about it together. But that is what we meant, and may God forgive us.”

  “Be sure I won’t, and Ed never will,” said Margaret in a low tone of hatred.

  The medieval color against the windows drifted into gray and the room darkened. The fire alone lit the room and the figures themselves in it were like shadows, motionless and mute. Here a cheek was seen, without tint, or the outline of a head, or a fallen hand, or a still foot. Someone moved a heavy boot, as if in pain. A man muttered. Maria nodded to herself as she listened. “You are not evil, my children,” she said. “If you were, I should not have called you here today. Stupid and greedy and heartless, yes, blaming Edward when the blame was yours. Hiding yourselves from your own sight. Pettily vengeful, yes. But not evil.”

  David spoke gently but with his mother’s own sternness. “You knew all the time, Ma. Why didn’t you talk to us years before?”

  “A man’s salvation comes from God and from himself,” she replied. “Had I spoken before this extreme situation it would have been of no use.”

  She looked at them formidably. “The strong inevitably take their revenge. Yes. But still that is not the only reason for what my son did to you. Who can know the labyrinths of the human spirit, the devious passages of the mind, the diversification of the soul? We are not actors upon a stage, or puppets who are motivated by only one emotion which can be explained. For no man can explain another. A man is known in all his parts only to God.”

  She turned to Margaret, who was as still as stone and as obdurate. “Margaret,” she said, “you, too, failed your husband when he most needed you. I had hoped that your love for him would have saved and lifted him. It did not.”

  “Are you speaking of me?” cried Margaret, with outrage and anger. “I would have given my life for my husband!”

  “I do not doubt it,” said Maria, with sad patience. “But that was not enough. I know now, from my observation, that you never opposed him, except once. It was not you who rescued your children from Edward, after all. It was themselves. You would have sacrificed them to his delusion eventually, had the children not rebelled. Surely there were many times, in many years, when you could have said to my son, ‘You are wrong. Your brothers and your sister are not entirely fools and devils. Look at them.’ But perhaps you could not have said that, for you yourself did not see. You did not question; you did not doubt. Unquestioning love should be given only to God and not to any man, not even to a husband. There was no pity in you, because you loved unwisely and blindly. Instead of rescuing my son, you pushed him deeper into his illusions, you stimulated his indignation against his family, you cried injustice. Surely it was injustice, but there is never a complete injustice. There are occasions when even the deepest love must say, ‘Nay, nay,’ and not, ‘Aye, aye.’ For the sake of the loved one himself.”

  Margaret was breathing very hard, and loudly, in her rage. She stood up. And then, without warning, she suddenly was struck with the memory of that day in Father Jahle’s home, when he had begged her to help Edward. She remembered old Pierre, so long dead, who had spoken to her so oddly the eve of her wedding. And she was sick and dazed with the glare of her sudden understanding, and she hated herself. But not as much as she hated the others in this room.

  “Perhaps I was wrong!” she exclaimed brokenly. “Yes, I was wrong. But still I feel that if Ed was wrong, too, in lots of things, his family was so much more wrong that his faults were nothing at all.” She swung on Sylvia. “I think of them all, that you were the worst! You hated Ed—”

  Sylvia stood up as if dragged violently from her chair, and in that increasing dimness there was a wild denial in the shape of her thin body. “Do you think I saved your life, and the lives of your children, just for you and them? God help me, I didn’t know then! But I know now. I saved the three of you for Ed, and so did Dave. Look at our hands! You won’t see your blood on them now, but it was there twenty-two years ago, Margaret!”

  “What?” muttered Margaret, and put her hand to her cheek.

  “It is so,” said Maria. “The doctor could not come. I worked, but I could have done very little alone. Perhaps I could have saved you or one of the children. But not all of you. It was Sylvia who after assisting me cared for your children and watched them, while David and I continued to struggle to keep you from dying. It was David whose voice you heard and who kept you from death, and not Edward’s, though you believed it was. If Edward has his wife and children now, he owes them to God and to my children and to me.”

  “Oh!” cried Margaret, and her voice was a groan. “Why didn’t you tell us?” She began to shiver; she felt as if she had heard the most devastating news and had committed the most dreadful crime. “Why didn’t you tell Ed? It would have made such a difference.” She was shattered by the revelation, which still seemed to her unbelievable, and tears dashed down her face.

  Maria said, without a rise in her voice, “But your husband knew. I told him on the morning of his return from Cleveland, after you and your children were safe.”

  Margaret stared at her dumbly, trying to see her in the darkness, which flickered with the crimson of the fire. Then she whispered, “I can’t—I can’t—believe it. Ed would have—” Her forehead was icily wet, and she shivered again.

  Maria said inexorably, “He told me he would give his brother and sister extra money.”

  Margaret pressed her hands hard and suddenly against her cheeks. “Oh, no,” she murmured, appalled to her very heart. “Oh, no!” Her throat closed on a sick lump of nausea.

  Maria nodded. “Yes, it is so. And that is what you must understand now.”

  Margaret fell into her chair, and dropped her head to her shoulder and cried desperately. The sound of her weeping filled the room, a tearing and wretched and heartbroken sound of remorse and misery. She remembered the bright and horrible nightmares of her encounter with death. She remembered Edward’s voice—but it had been David’s—which had called to her valiantly and tenderly, and she remembered the hand which had withdrawn her from the abyss. She cried out in her extremity, “Oh, God forgive me! God forgive—us!”

  Sylvia stood uncertainly, all the bitter repressions of her life stiffening her body, holding her back. And then they were gone in the first warm flooding of her heart with absolute compassion. It was as if she had been released, made airy, strong and strongly tender, free of resentment, free of fear, free of a long grief. She went to Margaret with the swift movements of a young girl and knelt beside her and took her in her arms, as a sister, and said in a sister’s loving voice, “It doesn’t matter—darling. We’re all stupid, even Ed. Don’t cry, dear. I love your children too, remember? I think I love you; I’m sure of it.
We were friends for a while, weren’t we? We’ll be friends again. Don’t cry so. You’ll tear your heart out.” And then Sylvia, who had not wept since Padraig had married Maggie, was weeping with Margaret.

  Dave came to them, and he put his hand gently on Margaret’s forehead. “What does it matter?” he asked. “We understand now. I think, in spite of our greed and cowardice, in spite of the badness of our objective motives, that we all really love Ed. We loved him even when we hated and were afraid of him. I think, under it all, that we didn’t want to disappoint him or were ashamed of disappointing him.”

  His hand dropped to her shoulder, and Margaret turned her head to look at it mournfully. He had seen her as her husband had not seen her, in the dishevelment and abandon of approaching death. This hand had saved her. It had been spattered with her blood. It had smoothed her sweat-soaked hair. It had touched and soothed her body. And in return for his love—and she knew now it was utter love—she had snubbed and insulted him. Humbly she pressed her lips to his hand.

  Finally, as Margaret’s sobs slackened and she let herself collapse in Sylvia’s arms, and held David’s hand with the desperate clutch of a child, Maria said, “There is an old poem. ‘In tragic life, God wot, no villain need be. Passion spins the plot. We are betrayed by what is false within.’ And so it was. We were false to the instinctive nobility God instills in every man. We betrayed Him, and ourselves.”