The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  The two ladies were tucked in beside Sylvia, after the introduction, and the two gentlemen sat on the unfolded seats in front of them. Sylvia had hoped to sit by her secret idol, Madame DelaFontaine, but Maggie sat in the middle. Her perfume was rich and subtle, and her profile, Sylvia thought disinterestedly and with reluctance, was the profile of a Roman goddess. Her only desire was to discover what gown Maggie was wearing. She had lost interest in her as an actress. Her answers to Maggie’s warm and generous questions were brief almost to the point of curtness. What a fascinating face, thought the kindhearted Maggie. Not beautiful, but distinguée, really extraordinary. And so young, too. But as Sylvia seemed not to wish to talk, Maggie gave her attention to the back of Padraig’s head and shoulders. She was sure now. She was truly in love, and, if she knew men at all, he was attracted to her. She giggled happily in herself. Just before their escorts had arrived, Mary Garrity had said with vexation, “If that damned astrologer of yours ever advised you to sleep with a particular man, you’d immediately jump into his bed, you idiot.” Maggie thrilled to the very tips of her fingers at this idea in connection with Padraig.

  Mary, who had no aversion for money, had been duly pleased by the big limousine, the fur rugs, and the chauffeur. She had expected to sleep tonight in Buffalo, and here she was in some out of the way little city which could boast of a man with enough money for one of the finest automobiles she had ever seen. She had been much impressed by Edward, a fact which would have astounded Sylvia. A man, she had thought, really a man! The forceful kind, not exactly homespun, and certainly not the yokel she had expected. There was a power in him, steadfast and exigent. Of course he’s at least ten years younger than I am, she thought wistfully. And tomorrow she and Maggie would be leaving. Ah, well, ships that pass in the night … She had glanced only briefly at Sylvia. She did not like these intense people, and the girl was not old enough for that intensity. Mary hoped that Sylvia was not going to be tiresome and cling to Maggie, in the hope of acquiring her influence on the stage. The world was full of these hopeful young people, yearning to leave the hinterland.

  “I’m not an actress,” said Sylvia, shortly, to Maggie, after another polite question. “I put on plays.”

  “Oh,” said Maggie, absently, wondering what she had asked the girl in an effort to make conversation.

  Mary gave Sylvia another glance, and waited for a street lamp. Then she was caught by that wonderfully original Tudor hat. Was it possible the girl sometimes went to Paris? A beautiful, a marvelous, a unique hat. She leaned across Maggie’s heroic bosom and said, “I’ve been admiring your hat, Miss Enger. Did you buy it in New York? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Her voice, to Edward, was “tough” and inelegant, with its masculine huskiness. But to Sylvia, it was alluring and delightful, because of the question. She said, with shy eagerness, “I made it myself. I design and make all my clothes, when I have time.” She paused, with a furtive glance at the back of Edward’s head. “And I design all the women’s clothes in my plays.”

  “That’s what makes them so infernally stark,” said Edward, ruthlessly.

  “I don’t think this luscious hat is stark,” said Mary, suddenly disliking him. “I’d like to look at it close at hand.” Then she was astonished. How was it possible for a backwoods girl to have this genius? She could scarcely wait to see the dress and the coat Sylvia wore, and the dresses of the amateur actresses. She sometimes had these intuitions that something exciting was about to happen. Now her sixth sense was quivering. Only once or twice before had she had this anticipatory awareness.

  Sylvia said, almost without volition, “Madame, if you’d like this hat—as a—as a—model, I’d be glad to—give—it to you.” Her voice trembled a little, humbly.

  “I’ll take it,” said Mary, promptly. “Tonight. And if I can make it go among my clientele, I’ll send you a royalty.” She did not see Sylvia clasping her gloved hands convulsively, but she felt it, and she smiled with sympathy.

  Both Maggie and Mary were struck by the good taste and impressiveness of the Little Theater, into which Edward had poured thousands of dollars. Small, yes, but perfect, thought Maggie, surprised. A crowd had already gathered in front, among them a number of newspaper photographers. Maggie lifted her head; she became the famous White Way actress again. She accepted Padraig’s hand, when alighting, like a queen condescending to a courtier, but the smile she gave him resembled noonday. The photographers lifted their sticks, filled with powder, and there was a flare of light while the cameras clicked. A small cheer went up from the spectators, who had hurriedly bought tickets. Edward marveled at the subtle and unseen power of publicity, which had brought out these people, without previous newspaper columns, despite the snow-filled streets and the tiger-toothed cold. The theater would be filled, no matter that damned silly play, which had been thoroughly assassinated by the two local newspaper critics.

  Moving grandly on Padraig’s arm, Maggie sailed into the theater, bowing and beaming at her admirers, who gazed at her with awe. The others in the party followed unnoticed. Maggie was surrounded in the lobby by reporters. “Yes, yes indeed,” she was saying, all charm. “Lady in Waiting was one of my earlier plays. Delightful. I simply had to stop off tonight to see it, in this delicious theater. It brings back lovely memories. Charming. Charming. Yes, indeed.” She stood there, with her sables thrown back and revealing her noble white shoulders and bosom, to the entrancement of the reporters. Mary, in the meantime, was not wasting time in cynicism. She was examining Sylvia’s coat and dress, and again she was quivering with excitement. “My dear,” she murmured to the bemused Sylvia, “you and I must have a little talk.” She lifted part of the velvet coat and sighed with deep pleasure. “Between the first and second acts? At intermission?”

  The Enger box was in a royal position and filled with plush chairs. The play began, but the eyes of the audience were fixed stolidly, and almost without blinking, on Maggie. In spite of her preoccupation with Padraig, Maggie was not insensible to this adoration. While she talked with him, she preened, turned her head so that the fullness of her white throat was revealed, drew deep breaths which enhanced her bosom, and smiled radiantly. The black silk lace on her breasts fluttered. She fanned herself occasionally so that her large white arm was displayed in all its famous perfection. She inclined her face and let the dim light play on her glossy curls and waves. The audience sighed at each fresh revelation. And Padraig gazed at her and thought, This is a dear child, as Norah was dear, and she is innocent and kind and warm as a fire, and her smile is Norah’s smile. In all these years since Norah’s death he had never reached for a woman’s hand, but now he did, and he held it so tightly that Maggie closed her eyes on a spasm of joy and peace. She did not move; she knew that the gesture had been instinctive, and not gallant or contrived, and she was moved to fresher paroxysms of love and desire and compassion.

  The play, thought Edward with anger and shame, was appalling. Or, rather, the actors and actresses were abominable. They moved perfectly, spoke perfectly, timed themselves perfectly, but they were wooden figures without accentuation or life. It was, though a slim play, filled with possibilities. But one wouldn’t know that from these people on the stage. Where was the vitality, the lightness, the sudden change of mood, the originality, the fire, the color, the sentiment? They had been washed from the words, the actions, so that all hues and nuances had faded into dull blacks and whites and uninspired lethargy. They were not even good etchings of what should have been chromatic. Edward had read the script; it had had a sort of youthful freshness. The youth and the freshness had been hopelessly vitiated to mechanism and rote, Sylvia, the dramatic genius, had diabolically contrived this parody of what should have been living, Edward thought, his shame becoming a heat in his face and neck. She had done this out of malice, in order to spite him and frustrate him.

  Come on! he silently shouted to the actors. Move faster there, speak louder, lift your hand like a man, or a woman, smil
e there, laugh so that the balcony can hear, damn you! You, with the tinny voice—put emphasis in it. You aren’t talking to yourself!

  No one in the box but himself was studying the play. That New York actress was “showing off.” Padraig looked fatuous, almost foolish; Edward, in his rage, did not deduce anything from this then. Sylvia, of course, was down in the wings. And that little woman with the disgusting masculine voice was looking at—what? She did not smile at the arch lines, did not show any gravity at the dramatic ones. She sat absolutely still. Edward did not know that she was scrutinizing the miraculously beautiful and original gowns the actresses were wearing, the subtle lines, the perfect sophistication of the neck designs and the chic draping of the sleeves. To Edward, the clothing was without lure or attractiveness. He thought of George Enreich’s female friends from the big cities, whom he had met in George’s house, and he had been pleased by the richness and lavishness of their dress, the plumes, the flowers, the extensive draperies, the jewels, the satins that glowed, the silks that sparkled, the slippers that had twinkled with gemmed buckles, the boas of fur and feathers, the big hats all ruchings and tucks and color.

  But Mary was thinking, What subdued worldliness, what ingenious understatement, what refinement, what aristocracy! She’s taken the best we have to offer and removed the flamboyance and the vulgarity. It’s royal, that’s what it is! I just can’t believe it! The girl’s an absolute genius, and I must have her at once.

  Edward was so bitterly engrossed with his fury and humiliation that he was not aware, for a few moments, that the curtain had fallen on the first act. When he turned about, to confront eyes he was sure would be derisive, he found that he was alone in the box. He was too mortified, for some time, to move. Then he went looking for his companions. He did not find them, to his relief. He did not even wonder where they were.

  Padraig and Maggie had discovered a little dim corridor off one of the exits, and they paced there together, undisturbed, Maggie’s arm closely entwined with Padraig’s. She was smoking one of her little gold-tipped cigarettes. There was no need for her to speak, she knew. It was enough to exchange serious glances and faint smiles.

  Then Maggie said softly, “I’ll be in Buffalo tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there,” replied Padraig.

  “And then Detroit, and Chicago.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Maggie squeezed her eyelids together, then looked at him with all the blueness of her eyes so vivid that, hypnotized, he could not glance away. “I know,” she whispered.

  They walked up and down slowly, the warmth of their bodies mingling.

  “I must go back to Ireland someday,” said Padraig. He paused. “I can never be an American citizen.”

  Maggie did not care. She was not even curious. The circumstances connected with Padraig were of no importance to her. If he had suddenly confessed to the darkest of dark pasts she would have smiled at him serenely.

  “But you are an American citizen—Maggie,” he said. “You may lose that citizenship.”

  Maggie, the proudest American patriot of them all, pressed her cheek to his tenderly. They had known each other only a few hours; marriage had not been mentioned. Yet it was understood that they had always known each other, that marriage was as inevitable as tomorrow. Padraig put his thin hands on her shoulders and regarded her gravely. “I know who you are, Maggie, my darling, but you don’t know who I am.”

  “You are my heart’s treasure,” murmured Maggie. “That’s enough for me.”

  He tried to smile. His angular face sank into melancholy. “You didn’t really hear me,” he said. “I must go back to Ireland someday. To County Mayo. You didn’t ask why. I have a duty, Mavourneen,” and now his voice strengthened, and his brogue slowed his words.

  “Yes,” said Maggie, dazed with happiness, and she nodded. “You’ll always have a duty, Padraig.”

  He sighed, released her. “A duty I’ll not be wanting, Maggie. You must listen; you mustn’t look at me while I tell you. My father—he is Sean Lord Devoe. I’m his only son, his only heir.”

  The buzzer, announcing the rise of the second-act curtain, was unheard by them. Maggie tried to understand; her winged eyebrows drew together in an obedient attempt. She said brightly, “Sean. That was my father’s name, may his soul rest in peace near the Blessed Mother. Sean Lord Devoe. I like it, Padraig.”

  He had to laugh his short and reluctant laugh. “Maggie. My father is a peer. A lord. An Irish lord. One of the few with money. He could sit in the British House of Lords, if he wished, which he does not and never will, himself hating the English more than the devils in hell. He’s almost seventy now. One day I will be Padraig Lord Devoe. And you, my darling, will be Lady Maggie.”

  Maggie’s black eyelashes trembled, and her fine color faded. “You—” she began, then swallowed. “And I—”

  He put his arms about her and pulled her to him. “You’ll not be saying it, Maggie, now or ever.” He put his mouth against the top of her head and closed his eyes on a spasm of pain. “I was tried for murder, Maggie.” He waited, but she did not stir in his arms. “It was my horse, and it was I riding the fiend, that killed the child I was to marry, Norah Bellamy. A cruel beast, a stallion, and himself had told me not to ride the animal, but I was willful, and I rode him, and Norah came running out of the paddock, hearing the commotion, and he wheeled and struck her down with his forelegs. It was her head, Maggie, her golden head, which he crushed, and the hair like sunlight, and the blood—I was twenty years old, Maggie.”

  She put her arms around his waist tightly and moaned.

  “Murder, the judge called it, though the jury would not convict me. And it was so, Maggie, because I had always been an arrogant lad, the only son, the spoiled and selfish son, who cared only for his pleasure. But I loved Norah, and for twenty years I’ve wandered the world trying to forget, not taking money from my father and doing penance. Maggie, and do you think I have repented enough?”

  She leaned back in his arms to look at him, and her eyes were crystalline with tears. “Oh, Padraig, and you could not go home, and that poor old lonely man, your father, and all the pain—”

  “Surely God has forgiven me,” he said. “If He had not, I should never have known you.”

  “But, my dear child, you haven’t a bit of feeling for the stage!” Mary Garrity repeated again and again in despair to Sylvia as they sat together in Sylvia’s private room near the dressing rooms. “You are a genius, though, in something just as important or even more so. And you’ve been telling me what it is that you’ve always wanted. Don’t cry. Just give me a reason why you refuse. Just one sensible damn reason that I can understand, why you won’t come with me in New York.”

  “I can’t, I can’t!” cried Sylvia, full of nameless terror and shrinking. “No, you can’t understand, Madame. My mother is a Von Brunner. It was always this way—it isn’t something I can explain.”

  “Is there a man?” asked Mary with cold flatness.

  “Yes, yes. But that isn’t the reason. Believe me. He—he wouldn’t mind my doing what you want me to do. He’d even like it, I think.” Sylvia sobbed dryly. “No, no, you can’t understand. You’ve seen my brother, Ed?”

  “Not a very agreeable character, though attractive,” conceded Mary. “What’s he got to do with all this?”

  Sylvia crouched on her chair in the raw electric light, and she wrung her slender fingers together. “I—I am afraid,” she stammered.

  “Of Ed?”

  “He has all the money. He has the house, our new house—Oh, I can’t explain!” She jumped to her feet distractedly.

  “You’re afraid of your brother, and you a woman?” said Mary, incredulous.

  Sylvia stared before her emptily. “I hate him,” she said.

  “Well, good,” responded Mary with vigor. “Then pull away from him, from this awful town, from your family, and assert yourself, be free, independent.”

  Sylvia swung to her, and her wh
ite face expressed such utter horror that Mary rose involuntarily. “You can’t run away and leave your whole life—” Sylvia groaned. “It isn’t that easy.”

  “Why not? I did,” said Mary, and now her eyes narrowed with a wondering contempt. “And I was only seventeen. Seven years younger than you. My girl, could it be you haven’t any guts?”

  She was sorry for Sylvia, who seemed to her much younger than her years. But all that genius, that wonderful, artistic genius, that find of a century! It was a sin against God to waste it.

  The vulgar last word brought a stain to Sylvia’s wide cheekbones. “You don’t understand! I can’t possibly make you understand.” Her small breast was fiercely agitated, and her eyes glittered at her visitor’s obtuseness.

  Mary picked up her gloves and purse. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that you yourself don’t understand, or are afraid to let yourself understand. Well.” She paused. Then she opened her purse, took out a card case, and removed a card. She put it on the table before the stark mirror. “There’s my address, my telephone number. One of these days, I hope to God, you’ll stiffen your backbone and you’ll come to New York and you’ll call me. I’m eleven years older than you, and the world isn’t as frightful—not quite as frightful—as I suspect you think it is.”