The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I’m sure you never had to worry about that,” Sylvia had said, coloring angrily. But Violette had laughed with high merriment and had not been insulted in the least. She liked Sylvia very much, but she thought her naïve and provincial.

  Sylvia did not attend the family dinner the night before the wedding. She was not only anguished and bereft; she was also exhausted from her work. She could not endure the thought of seeing Padraig in candlelight, at the very table where she had often gazed at him with secret and devouring love. She could not endure the thought of Maggie, his wife. The dinner was not a notable success, even with Maria indomitably serene at the foot of the table and Heinrich, for once, happy and excited. Edward somewhat rudely confined his conversation to William and Padraig, and the conversation was of business. Ralph had not yet convinced Edward that he should be allowed to study in South America, and so he was surly. Violette flirted disgustingly, Ralph thought, with Gregory, who was quite entranced. Heinrich frequently spoke, but no one heard him. The candles increased the heat of the dining room, and the scent of roses was oppressive. Margaret did not speak at all. She sat at Edward’s right hand but rarely saw his face, which was turned to his friends. For some reason she felt despondent and alone. It was only when the beautiful Maggie Devoe smiled at her across the table, with such affection and encouragement, that her spirits rose a little. After dinner Margaret went upstairs in accordance with custom. She would not see Edward until tomorrow.

  No one was on the second floor, not even a servant. Margaret went silently to the newly decorated suite which she and Edward would occupy. She had timidly asked for ivory walls, with touches of gilt, a pale Aubusson rug in tints of blue and rose and yellow, for the sitting room. This had been done. She had suggested the decorations, for this was one of the few rooms filled with Parisian furniture: small gilt chairs in blue and rose brocade, small marble tables and crystal lamps, and love seats in light gold silk. She had chosen the draperies of blue and gold and rose brocade, with their silken fringes. Her bedroom was similarly furnished. Even Sylvia had grudgingly conceded that it was all very beautiful and perfect. The casement windows overlooked the gardens, and a small white marble fireplace was filled with white roses.

  Edward’s bedroom was large and somewhat ponderously furnished, and all in heavy mahogany and dark rugs and draperies. A single lamp was lit, on a big table near the bed with its high and intricately carved mahogany headboard. Margaret entered the room and approached the bed. She touched the crimson velvet spread lovingly. She wandered to the chests of drawers, with their oval, wood-framed mirrors. Here were Edward’s leather cuff-link boxes, his silver brushes. She touched them shyly, and her heart trembled. No man had ever been born who could compare with dear Ed, she thought. Dear Ed, with his beset face, his tired gray eyes, his deep and gentle smile. She clasped her hands suddenly to her breast. She had almost nothing to give him, but her love and all her life and her devotion. So little to give!

  The lamplight shimmered on her hair, on the pure curve of her cheek and chin, and on her white shoulders which rose from her pearl-colored gown. She caught a glimpse of a shadow and turned swiftly and fearfully. It was only Pierre, who was entering to turn down Edward’s bed. She smiled at the aged and bent old man, and he returned her smile. His ancient eyes had watched her for a full minute before she had seen him. It is a lovely lady, he had thought, a very tender and innocent child, who has suffered. It is a lady worthy of my Edward, for she has known pain and loneliness and it has not made her harsh.

  “Good evening, Pierre,” said Margaret, blushing because he had found her here. “It’s lonely to be a bride on the night before the wedding.”

  “Yes, Miss Baumer,” the old man replied. He turned down the velvet bedspread with deft hands, mottled and tendoned. “You will permit me to bring you a glass of wine? It is good for the sleep on a troubled night.”

  Margaret accepted gratefully and went into the sitting room. The house was so hot and so very quiet. The clouded sky was streaked with dark veins, like vaulted marble. Margaret could hardly breathe. She sat in a chair near the casement and waited for the wine. It was brought to her soon, and she thanked Pierre. He hesitated.

  “Miss Baumer will permit me to speak? She will not think me presumptuous?”

  Margaret took the crystal glass from her lips. Her blue eyes widened kindly on the old man, but with some surprise. “I’d never think you presumptuous, Pierre,” she said. “Do say whatever you wish.”

  “It is about my Edward,” he said, in the low voice of one who is seriously deafened. He looked at her anxiously. “He is my friend. He is not only my employer. I was lost and abandoned, and he took me into his heart and into his house. I regard him as my son, my dear, beloved son. Miss Baumer understands?”

  “Yes,” she said, very moved. “I know how you love Ed, Pierre.”

  He sighed and clasped his hands listlessly before him. “It is not easy to speak, for all is elusive. For my Edward’s sake, I ask Miss Baumer not to look with unseeing eyes. All is not what it seems, and I say this, who love him. The loyalty of love can deceive, when one is young. The old can be loyal, but they are not blind. For Edward’s sake, it is necessary for Miss Baumer to see clearly. Most necessary, for his sake.”

  Margaret tried to understand. The old man was urgently trying to convey something very subtle but very important to her, and she was baffled. She said at last, while he waited, “I think I know what you mean, Pierre. He’s been exploited all his life. He’s given all his life to his family.” Her voice rose on a little crest of anger. “You want me to help stop the exploitation? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Pierre sighed again, as if his last hope had gone, and he half turned away. “He is destroying himself,” he murmured. “Because he is destroying others.”

  Margaret caught the murmur but not the words. She watched the old man go to the door. He paused there and looked at her desolately. “Perhaps,” he said, “it is enough to love. Perhaps love will finally see, and save.”

  How had he deceived himself that so young a woman, so innocent and unworldly a woman, so passionately loving a woman, could understand? “Good night, Miss Baumer,” he said mournfully and went away.

  Margaret spent a restless night. Occasionally, waking from a doze, she heard the growl of thunder, the sudden lashing of trees. Her nightgown was damp and clammy, and she turned her pillows frequently. Occasionally she thought, I should have been married as Edward wanted to be married, alone in Albany. This family is so unfriendly to me; they’ll never like me. And I’ll never like them! How cruel they are, how absolutely cruel and unfeeling. Oh, if we could only live alone and never see them again. Never, never. Her braided hair felt too heavy on her neck and shoulders. Her whole body, mind, and spirit felt heavy and foreboding.

  She was awake early in the morning and she saw the gloomy skies and felt the heat. Her foreboding was stronger and could not be shaken off. She ate alone in her room. Lassitude flowed through her, and a sense of unreality. The distant trees were cloudy and unreal, the grass too vivid in the dull light. She could see the waiting altar. For no reason that she knew, she cried a little.

  Edward waited at the altar for his bride. Damn all this ceremony. He felt ridiculous. “Quiet, quiet, boyo,” William murmured at his side. “It’s committed you are, and did I not warn you?” “Shut up,” muttered Edward, out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t lose that ring.” William chuckled under his breath.

  A portable organ had been set up nearby. It looked absurd to Edward, and so did the wife of the Sunday-school superintendent in her bunchy, apricot-colored dress. She sat on the bench, with a prim and reverent expression, and blinked her eyes behind her spectacles. Edward thought that the waiting minister, in his expensive black clerical garb, was too pompous, too grave, too important. It was enough to make a man laugh, Edward said to himself, to see him under that silly arch with all those roses. There was a strong scent in the air, like the scent of a coming storm, though
the misty trees were absolutely still. The fountain, to Edward, positively clattered.

  The wedding guests were waiting also, seated on little chairs in a semicircle facing the altar. Yes, Senator Bonwit was there, though Edward had hardly expected him, and Henry Sheftel and Hans Bohn, and all “the friends of the family.” His brothers hovered in the background, conducting late arrivals to seats. There sat his mother, regal and massive, in dark blue silk, and beside her was his father, round and plump and pale, and next to him, George Enreich with his square, cynical countenance and stiff red hair. There, too, was Padraig, kingly in his striped trousers and Prince Albert, his tragic face softened by the months of his marriage. When he caught Edward’s eye, he smiled slightly, the smile of an affectionate friend. The mayor of Waterford was there, with his wife. The waiting and expectant faces appalled Edward, whose body felt hot and uncomfortable and “foolish” in his formal clothing. There was no sound but the flutter of the ladies’ fans and the gush of the fountain. He visibly started when, at some unseen signal, the organ crashed into the wedding march and startled brooding birds out of the shadowy trees.

  Maggie appeared on the grass cloth carpet, carrying, not wearing, a pink rose. Edward saw a tall blue blur, which excited admiring murmurs from the ladies, but Padraig saw his heart’s darling, his Maggie, the mother of his child, who would be born in six months. Then, walking slowly, came the bridesmaids. Everyone stared at Violette, shining like a figure of fluid gold against the background of the motionless trees, her pert face falsely demure. That was the French girl, of a hinted noble family. Too much bosom, thought some of the ladies with disapproval, and too accentuated. Sylvia, pacing her, was tall, and thin almost to emaciation, her feverish eyes and white face fixed and sightless; she moved as if all her muscles were rigid. Nevertheless, she was admired. The girl certainly had taste and style; if the mauve gown was not quite her color, she so dark and without vividness, it was exquisite. She walked with her head slightly bent under her yellow hat. The two girls carried yellow roses floating in lavender tulle.

  All held their breath for the bride. And then she was there, a radiance in white lace, her lovely face half hidden by a veil. Maria still felt affronted. It was most improper for no one to give the bride away, but, for some peculiar and unexplained reason, Margaret had gently insisted that this must be so. She had refused Padraig’s kind offer, relayed through Edward. She had said to her groom, “I don’t know who my parents were or if I have relatives. I lived alone all my life, and I want to come to you, Ed, all alone. Maybe it isn’t just right. I can’t say what I mean. I want to walk to you, all by myself, giving what I am to you.”

  The minister had disapproved at the rehearsal. “A lady doesn’t give herself away,” he had politely pointed out. “This lady does,” Margaret had said, her face suffused with light and joy. She was a gift to Edward, her whole gift in her hands, and no one would present that gift in the conventional manner. She was all she had. Let everyone misunderstand. It was enough for Edward that he knew.

  The virginal veil showed only the color of her lips, the faint hint of her blue eyes. But the wedding gown was absolute artistry, and Sylvia, awakening from her trance of grief, felt a thrill of pride at the way the fabric outlined the tall and slender figure, the long slender waist, the girlish hips, the soft bosom. There was an air of eagerness about Margaret, an incandescence; she appeared to float, seeing only Edward. Her gloved hands held a mother-of-pearl Bible and nothing else. To some of the more romantic and easily affected ladies she looked like a vestal virgin, as untouched as a lily, as sweetly pure as a newly born child. To some of the elderly gentlemen who had classic tastes (so derided these days), she was a marble nymph come to life at the sound of a loved voice and hastening to answer it.

  Edward had hardly seen the bridal attendants. He remembered what Margaret had said. “I want to walk to you, all by myself, giving what I am to you.” Neither he nor Margaret heard the swell of hushed admiration, nor saw handkerchiefs touched to sentimental mouths and eyes. She came to him in her dignity and her girlhood and all her beauty, her hands, with their Bible, already lifted toward him. In spite of a restraining gesture from William, he advanced a few steps to meet her, and they clasped hands and stood still a moment, looking at each other as if they were alone in one breathless and poignant moment. Then he drew her before the altar and the ceremony began, against a background of murmurous music. And the two gazed at each other and not at the minister.

  He had had to dispense with the “Who gives this woman—” Pompously he asked the usual queries. He was startled at Margaret’s clearly heard “Yes!” and at Edward’s emphatic reply. They appeared not to be answering Mr. Yaeger’s questions; they were answering each other, in some secret dedication of their own, and some secret vows, something fervently promised forever.

  Their kiss was less a clinging than a profound consecration.

  Bemused, shaken, they were assailed by family and guests. But it was strange that no one demanded to kiss the bride. The guests had seen what had transpired between Margaret and Edward, and any boisterousness, they vaguely felt, would have been a violation. Those who had intimately questioned Margaret’s origins forgot their reservations against her. George Enreich and Padraig kissed her hand only, bowing over it as if in reverence. Even the ladies were content to touch her fingers. Not even Maria kissed her new daughter; she just approached her and gave her one of her inscrutable smiles and pressed her hand against the girl’s arm.

  But Margaret gave one kiss only, other than that to Edward. She kissed Heinrich, who cried silently and mopped his eyes.

  There was a gigantic cake at the bride’s table. The next few hours passed in a dream for Margaret and Edward. All the guests were only mouthing shadows. Their hands touched each other constantly. The veil thrown back, Margaret’s eyes were as blue and radiant as an effulgent sky. Edward’s face, usually so dark and blunt and cold, became the face of a young man, caught up in pulsing delight and rapture.

  They never forgot that day. It lived in their memories as fresh and as deep-felt as at the first moment, in spite of the spectral tragedies that were almost upon them, even in those hours. “We were man and wife from the very beginning, perhaps from the instant we met,” Margaret would say. “The wedding was only the culmination.” To Edward it was the one day when he was young again, hopeful again, and full of gentleness, as he had been as a child.

  After the bridal lunch they still clung together. The meal was excellent; they could not eat. They drank the champagne, and the sprightly liquid enhanced their enchantment and almost unbearable ecstasy. Hand in hand, they walked over the grass, speaking, smiling, accepting good wishes and congratulations, which they hardly heard. There was no dancing; it was Sunday, June twenty-eighth, and Mr. Yaeger had had to secure special permission from his superior to perform the ceremony then. “I will assent, if it is decorous,” the superior had said. “And no dancing, no hilarity, and, if possible, no spiritous refreshments.”

  Hours went by in a dream. There was no hurry. There would be no honeymoon until next week, when Edward had to go to New York. More food was brought out by servants, who glanced apprehensively at the crepuscular sky and listened to the wind which was beginning to torment the trees. Candles appeared, though it was now only six o’clock. Thunder boomed like a drum in the background; no one heard it. Everyone was caught up in the spirit of the lovely marriage and its mysterious meaning. Glimpses of Margaret had the quality of hypnotism. Her face had regained its usual charming color; she appeared to sparkle; there was an iridescence about her. Even Sylvia, who had been almost overcome at the sight of Padraig, reluctantly conceded that Margaret was beautiful. “But a common beauty,” she had murmured to Violette, who had squinted her eyes humorously.

  It was about seven o’clock when Hans Bohn was called to the telephone. The guests were still enjoying themselves at the table. He came back to Edward and said in a low voice, “Something has happened. I must go to the office.
I know you’ll excuse me, Ed.”

  Edward began to say something pleasant; his face was alive with his happiness. Then he saw the eyes of the publisher, and the hard cloven lines about his face, and the bitter significance of his manner. He stood up, dropping Margaret’s hand.

  “What is it, Hans?” he asked quietly, and moved away from the table. “You look like a corpse. It’s not your family; they’re here. Some—catastrophe?”

  Hans hesitated. He was resolved not to spoil this wedding day. And then he remembered that Edward was his friend, that Edward had a powerful right to know the news. He said, “Don’t say anything about this to anyone. Not that they’d care,” he added somberly. “Ed, it’s broken loose, at last. I didn’t expect it to come, not for a while, but it has.” He dropped his voice even lower.

  “There’s been a cable just a few minutes ago. The Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were murdered by an assassin in Slavic Bosnia. Today, at noon, in Europe. About dawn in America.”

  Edward stared at him uncomprehending for a few seconds. Then his face thickened and reddened, and then suddenly paled. He glanced about for Senator Bonwit at one of the tables. The Senator had left. Edward then remembered the Senator passing his table a few moments ago, murmuring how delightful the wedding had been but that he had been summoned urgently to his office.

  “So it’s begun,” said Edward, and his heart was a lump of hot iron.

  “And our friend the Senator is probably getting ready to leave for Washington at this very moment,” said Hans. He was as pallid as paper.

  Dazed, Edward looked at the peaceful gardens, sounding with laughter and lively voices. He saw the moving trees, smelled the rising passion of the disturbed earth. Margaret was looking at him from the bridal table, her lip caught between her teeth, her expression worried. Her veil floated in a gust, and her face was clear and pure in the ghostly light.