The Sound of Thunder

  “I’d like to think it wasn’t,” said Edward.

  “It was a vision perhaps. But you were dying; so the doctor told me. He would permit no one in your room but your wife.” She paused. “Who knows of the vastness of the human spirit? Is it confined only to flesh; is it concerned only with mundane things? No. Your dream was a vision, and it had a purpose, as you have seen. You have said that perhaps it was only the lucidity of approaching death which gave you an inner glimpse of yourself, of your motives. That is words without meaning. There can be no lucidity without a soul. There can be no soul without God.”

  A nurse came briskly into the room with a glass of hot milk, and Edward drank it slowly and thought. He had lain in his bed like this for nearly three weeks. For five days he had been semiconscious, a life in death filled with nightmares. He said, “I’m fairly well now. I’ve been wondering why the family hasn’t at least come to the door to see me.”

  Maria compressed her lips and took up her knitting again. She said, “The doctor advised against it for a few days more. You must not be disturbed too much.” She did not tell Edward that Margaret had passionately insisted that Edward must be told this, for she had declared that she would not permit her husband’s brothers and sister to see him without her express permission. She had flung this command into their silent faces, and they had obeyed.

  “I have a lot to say to them,” said Edward.

  “And they will have a lot to say to you,” replied his mother, ambiguously.

  “I’m glad that Greg didn’t go away after all,” said Edward. But his face grew taut. “I want to talk to him.”

  Maria said, “I think you will be interested in what he’ll have to say. He was a fool; he has explained. He has sent his wife away. That must say much to you, that he has driven her away.”

  Margaret came into the room and stared at Maria coldly. “I think it’s time for Ed to rest, Mother Enger,” she said. She walked quickly across the floor and took one of Edward’s hands and kissed it with unashamed emotion, and she stood beside the bed as if to protect him. Maria rose ponderously, and she gave Margaret a kind but curious look, long and thoughtful. “Certainly,” she said.

  “I’m not such an invalid,” Edward remarked with a smile. He moved his head to rest it against Margaret’s arm. He tried not to show concern for her, for that would worry her. But she was appallingly thin, almost gaunt. The coral had gone from her lips and cheeks, and the brightness of her hair only emphasized her pale and emaciated face, the tense cords in her throat. There was a quiet air of pentness about her, a stiff rigidity, born of the long anguish she had suffered and the terror that still haunted her nights. She had not been out of this house since the night of Edward’s heart attack. “You should have a little faith,” he had said to her. “You gave me what faith I had, yet you don’t have it now yourself.”

  “I remember that you almost left me,” she had said, in that intense voice she had acquired lately. “And, according to what you call your dream, you didn’t care.” It was useless to explain to this poor and quietly frantic creature. Fear was still her twin, breathing with her when she breathed, lying with her when she lay. She did not entirely believe his doctors, that he would live. When she did sleep, under sedatives, it was with her door wide open and her lamp lighted beside her bed, and several times during the night, when he tossed uneasily and woke, it was to see not only the white and nodding cap of his nurse, but Margaret standing beside him in her nightgown.

  Maria went to the door and then stopped there. “I should like you to join me in the living room in an hour—my daughter,” she said. Margaret stared at her harshly and unforgivingly. “I will see,” she answered.

  Margaret sat beside the bed. There was a constant tic in the fine skin under her cheekbones, and this concerned Edward. “I’m not such an invalid, darling,” he repeated. He held her hand; his was warm, hers cold and dry. “Only this morning Dr. Bullitt said I could get out of bed for a little while next week, and probably you and I can go abroad in the summer. You mustn’t pamper me.”

  Her pale lips quivered tightly. Edward knew as well as she that his condition was an old and chronic one, and that it had culminated, under stress, in a coronary thrombosis. He would never again be able to drive himself, to work without surcease, to excite and worry himself. Yet there were all those debts, and the never-ending depression, and the need for work, and more even than work—money. Margaret pondered on this. She tried to make up her distracted mind whether it would be more a shock for him to hear the news that had come three days ago than to let him suffer the anxiety she knew he suffered in spite of the new peace which was strengthening in him each day.

  “I wish you wouldn’t see William so much,” she began cautiously, watching him. “He wears you out, and he comes without the doctor’s permission.”

  “He’s only here for half an hour a day,” said Edward. “Besides, business must go on. Poor old William. I think I’ve robbed him of ten years of his life.” He patted Margaret’s hand and laughed feebly. “He’s running big telephone bills up, always in communication with New York. Dear, do you think it would be better for me to think and wonder what’s happening, and exciting myself, than to hear the truth about my affairs, daily?”

  So she could tell him, and her throat swelled with a deep breath. “You don’t have to worry any longer about money,” she said rapidly. “Not ever again. And we’ll go abroad, as you said, and you’ll be able to keep your Green and White Stores out of the hands of that big chain which has been pressing you and trying to gobble you up.”

  He half raised himself on his pillows in order to see her better. He wondered if she had finally broken. But she was looking at him with brilliant eyes, though her softened mouth was sad. “I think you can hear the news,” she said, and two tears slipped down her cheeks. “It’s bad and good news at the same time. But first, I’m going to give you one of your pills.”

  “Damn the pill,” he said. Alarm colored his protruding cheekbones. “Come on. Tell me.”

  So she said, “Now you’ve got to promise me to be calm and sensible.” She was really crying now. “In a way even the bad news is good. You remember how poor old George Enreich was suffering; he couldn’t get any relief—”

  He interrupted quickly. “So that’s it. George is dead.” He lay back on his pillows, and Margaret snatched up his wrist and felt his pulse. It was somewhat rapid.

  “Listen, listen!” she cried. (Had she done wrong? What if something happened to him?) “I wouldn’t have told you now, but his lawyers have been pestering me and your doctors! They’ve got to have your signature or something. I promised them to tell you when I could.”

  He was caught up in grief. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I suppose he wondered why I didn’t come.” So George was gone; one of the fixtures of his life was gone forever.

  Margaret knelt beside him, her face quivering with fright. “Darling, he knew. He knew right the next day. I sent him word, because his man had called about something. I forget why he called! It didn’t matter. Look, you must take your pill. I won’t say another word until you swallow it. Here’s your glass of water, too.”

  He took the pill with listless abstraction. “Poor old George,” he murmured. “I hadn’t seen him for a month. There never seemed to be much time for anything, for anybody. Dear,” he said, looking at her and seeing the pallid fear on her face. “I’m all right. Don’t worry. Do you know you’re the chief cause of my worry these days?”

  “Oh, don’t bother about me, Ed! What does it matter about me? You’ve got to listen. George was an old man. He was not far from eighty; you forget. And he had a long and very nice life, for many years. He was never sick a day until he got that arthritis. Do you think people can live forever?”

  He tried to calm her. “Margaret, you must stop tearing yourself to pieces over me. I’m going to get well. Do you hear me? I’m going to get well.” But he himself knew that he would never have his old strength again, th
at never again would he be able to work as he had done, and what would happen then? This mortgaged house, the depression that never lifted, the debts, the waiting faces of those who wanted his Green and White Stores.

  “You’re right about George, poor old man,” he said, putting a soothing note into his voice. “I remember the last time I saw him. He said if he had to wait much longer to die he’d just open his liquor cabinet and drink twenty bottles of whisky and get it over with. He was in awful pain all the time. Father Jahle was with him some of the time, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Margaret. She put her head on his pillow. “The priest wouldn’t go away until the doctors said you were out of danger. Such a wonderful person. You don’t know, Ed, what a help he was to me. He had a premonition about you; he came the very day you got—sick.” A spasm ran over her body, and he felt it and put his hand strongly on the head beside his.

  He kept his voice calm. “I suppose Father Jahle—buried—George?”

  “Yes. He did. I should have gone to the funeral, but I couldn’t. Father Jahle asked me. But I couldn’t! I was too afraid to leave you. But I did send flowers,” she added, lifting her head and speaking like an earnest child. “In both our names.”

  He smoothed her fingers, noting again, with sadness, how thin and transparent they were. “That’s good,” he murmured. He was suddenly very tired. He could not let Margaret see how charged with sorrow he was for George Enreich, in spite of George’s deliverance from pain. He thought of the years he had kept himself from his old friend, and he thought, What a waste not to forgive, not to try to understand. Do we think we’ll all live forever?

  Then he remembered his experience on the night he was dying. His dream—had it been a dream after all? In what he called logical moments he tried to persuade himself that it had been a dream. But then he remembered things. He had not known that his family was in the living room, with the lights lit, yet he had heard them, he had seen the lamps. A small verification, but still it was a verification.

  If it were true, and he was inclined to believe it was, then George was not dead, but living. Padraig’s voice came faintly to him from spaces not to be dreamed of: “For there is nothing but God.” So he said now, and was not so tired, “I’m sure George is all right, though he’s probably trying to organize heaven, if he’s there.” He laughed, for Margaret’s sake.

  The pill began to act; he felt drowsy and content, and his grief became more bearable. Margaret was watching him with that new intenseness of hers, breathing as he breathed, relaxing as he relaxed. “Is Father Jahle coming later?” he asked.

  “Yes, if you’re a good boy and won’t get excited again.” Margaret kissed his cheek passionately. “You don’t know how you worry me! And now I’ve got to tell you the rest. Hold my hand tight. Tight. You are stronger! George Enreich left over ten million dollars. And, Ed, darling, he left you five of them and the rest to the Church!”

  The sedative was a warmth and a heaviness in Edward’s shrunken body. He felt only a faint surprise, a faint gratitude, a faint—after a moment—disbelieving jubilation. His drowsing eyes fixed themselves incredulously on Margaret, who was crying and nodding and smiling all at the same time.

  “Five million dollars,” she stammered. “He had no relatives; you were all he had. The will was made out ten years ago, the last one. Five million dollars, Ed! And now we can pay off the mortgage, and you can rest and have no more worries. Oh, Ed!”

  Edward closed his eyes. No more debts, no more despair, no more … Thanks, George, he said in his deepening drowse. Thanks, and God bless you.… He slept.

  The nurse came in, with a smile for Margaret. Poor, pretty lady. She would have an attack one of these days soon if she didn’t relax. She bent over Edward. “Why,” she said happily, “we’ve got quite a nice color for the first time.” She felt Edward’s pulse while Margaret rigidly watched her. “And our pulse is doing fine,” said the nurse. “We’re going to be well before we know it.”

  As Margaret reluctantly went downstairs to join Maria, tears still ran down her face. She had not cried since the night that Edward had been stricken; there had been an ice barrier in her, a barrier of fear, behind which she had crouched, tearless and mute. She did not know that she was weeping now, for the tears slid down her cheeks even though her expression had lost its rigidity and tightness, and her mouth was trembling. She met Monsignor Jahle on the stairs and did not see him for a moment. He put his hand on her arm, and she started and looked at him blankly before recognizing him. Then she gave a great, wordless sob and smiled at him. “It’s all right, Father,” she said. “He’s so much better. And I told him about George. You were right; he had to know.”

  He regarded her with deep and paternal tenderness. It was possible that she had forgotten how he had sat with her for hours every day, in her speechless terror and agony. She had certainly not known or heard what he had said to her, over and over, as one speaks to a child. But she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “I’ll never forget how much you helped me, Father. Never. I was afraid to listen, but I did. You did not tell me to ‘resign’ myself to whatever God had willed; you told me that Ed would live. You said that, all the time. If it hadn’t been for you I think I would have lost my mind.”

  The, staircase and lower hall were in shadow and silence. Only the voice of the big clock below strode through the quiet, relentless and unhurried, unconcerned with human agony. Margaret still smiled tremulously at the priest, unaware of her steadily falling tears. He took out his own handkerchief and gently dabbed them away, and she was surprised. “Am I crying?” she asked, and took a tear from her cheek and looked at it, startled. “I didn’t know. I haven’t cried for a long time.”

  The ice barrier was melting in the sun of her release. She leaned against the balustrade and her breath was half sobbing, half laughing. “I am being such a fool,” she stammered. “But it wasn’t until today that I knew, for sure, that Ed wasn’t going to die.”

  “I knew it all the time,” he said. She nodded soberly, then was embarrassed. “It’s strange that all my life, from the very time I could remember,” said Margaret, “I had the deepest faith and trust in God, even in the orphanage, even with the Baumers.”

  Her wet eyes looked into his with shy earnestness. “And that’s why I don’t understand. When Ed became—sick—I didn’t trust God any longer. I lost my faith in Him. I—I even hated Him. I was frightened almost to death. He seemed—monstrous—to me. An enemy.”

  “That is an old story,” said the priest, with sadness but with no reproach. “Even Our Lord cried to the Father, asking him why He had forsaken His Son. That was His human nature, calling out in sorrow and pain. Do you think He does not forgive you, dear child? He understands where no mortal could understand. In return, He asks us to understand others as best we can.” He hesitated. “Mrs. Enger spoke to me a moment or two ago. She and her children are waiting for you downstairs.”

  Margaret lifted her head and her eyes flashed; then she saw the priest’s grave and tender and admonishing expression. “I’ll try to—understand,” she said, but her voice had hardened slightly. He sighed, smiled. “You must,” he said.

  He started up the stairs. Margaret said, “Ed’s asleep, Father. He’ll probably sleep for about an hour; I gave him his sedative. I’d like to think you’ll be there when he wakes up. You can tell him about George, too.”

  He nodded and continued up the stairs. She saw how old and weary he was; his hand clung to the balustrade, helping him climb. I’ll try, I’ll try, Father, she said to him silently. But you mustn’t expect too much from me.

  As Margaret went slowly downstairs she began to remember, as if in a faint, dark nightmare, filled with one far and echoing voice, the hours Monsignor Jahle had spent with her. She remembered crouching in a chair, but in what room she could not recall. The calm and loving voice had gone on and on, and it had been like a steady hand holding her and preventing her from plunging into some black pit in which
she would have been forever lost. Her children had come to her, Gertrude white and voiceless with grief, and Robert silent and pale, no longer sunny and smiling. They had meant nothing to her then. She could only sit and listen to the priest, without knowing what he said yet desperately holding to his voice. “He will live, he will live. I have heard God’s promise,” the priest had murmured endlessly.

  Her steps became slower. Then she stood in the hall, thinking. The hardness did not completely go from her face, but the pale fixity of her mouth relaxed a little. She would, at least, listen to Mother Enger, though she would not be able to look at the others. They had brought Ed to the very edge of death; they were responsible for all his suffering and despair, the loss of his youth, his debts, the burden that had lain on him.

  She entered the living room. Edward’s brothers and sister were there. And David, so worn and thin. It was David who came to her, smiling a little. But, you, too, exploited and deprived him for years, her accusing eyes told him. She brushed by his hand and stood before Maria and said in an emotionless voice, “Well, I’m here. What is it?”

  Did she always knit? Margaret thought hysterically. She’s like those old women who knitted below the guillotine! Suddenly she hated Maria, and her hands clenched at her sides.

  “Please sit down, Margaret,” said Maria, calmly. David had drawn a chair for Margaret, and without glancing at him she sat down. She resolutely would not look at him or his brothers and sister. There was silence in the huge room, only the splutter of the fire broke it. David, Ralph, and Gregory sat without speaking, scattered over the room; Sylvia was there, stiff and straight. The firelight caught a gleam of silver, a glow of amber glass, a side of a prism hanging from a lamp. The blue spring evening stood at the windows like colored medieval panels.

  Then Maria let her knitting fall into her immense black lap. She regarded her children steadfastly, each in turn. They were no longer young. There was no peace in them, in their middle-age. Perhaps it was because of this that she thought of them as children, strengthless and rootless. And frightened. David, forty-eight, lean and elegant and polished, with the patches of white on his narrow temples. Sylvia, so very thin and unfruitful, her painted mouth a magenta slash in her stark and whitely gleaming face, her black straight hair without gray, though she was forty-six. Gregory, his restlessness stilled at last, his body diminished, looking like a weaker and smaller and blurred image of the sick man upstairs. And Ralph, not so ruddy now, not so lusty and assured now, staring down at his knees. Her children.