The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  “So our Senator beams some more, though he blinks a little. And I says, ‘Your campaign manager whispers in my ear, and I nod, Senator.’”

  William pursed up his lips and assumed an expression of great distress and trouble and doubt. “‘And what would be the matter, dear William?’ asks the Senator, seeing my near tears. ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘and it’s delighted I’d be to support you. With cash. With a word here and there. But there is something. Debs.’

  “And he looks at me and clutches his chest, and almost strangles. Then he says, ‘I haven’t seen Debs—if I saw him at all—for years.’ And I shakes my head dolefully and says, ‘But if the word got around you’d be back on your ass, if you’ll pardon me, Senator, in your office in Albany, with nothing on but counting your dividends and attending pink teas. Now, Senator, what’re we to do?’ And me knowing, of course, and he knowing, that he’s still one of Them.”

  “I still don’t see what it’s all about,” said Edward, glancing at his watch, which showed eleven o’clock. “You weren’t thinking of a spot of blackmail, were you, as you’d say? What for?”

  “Now what would I be doing blackmailing that ham that walks like a man?” asked William, virtuously. “Not I. Let a man have a dozen skeletons in his closet and I’d respect them. A man’s skeletons are a private affair. No, laddie, not blackmail. Just a discussion between friends. Should I support a bloody Socialist?

  “And now the Senator is eager for my advice. So I change the subject. I talk about you, my mutton-headed friend. I tell the Senator about your shops. And he squints up his eyes. But never does he ask questions. He knows. And I say, ‘Bad it is that a fine young lad like that has hooligans destroying his property, his sacred property, for which he worked so hard. Sad it is that no one can help him.’ And I look him straight in the eye and he shakes his head sadly, and after we smoke a cigar together, we shake hands and we part with mutual felicitations. And when I open the door a bit, there he is at the telephone, as red as a tomato.”

  Edward glowered at him. William smiled gently. “And there’s a feeling in me that from this day on there’ll be no more clouting of your shops. All will be serene. Like a Sunday seen from Richmond Hill. Placid. Like aspic.”

  Edward jumped up excitedly. “Why can’t we expose him? Now? Call in the press and tell them what you know!”

  William lifted a mild hand. “And we’ll have the Senator on his buttocks in forty-eight hours; recalled. Sure, and that would help us. But what about the shops, eh? You wouldn’t have a penny left in a month. Perhaps not even a house. And that would suit you splendid, wouldn’t it?”

  “But he’s a menace, it’s our duty—!”

  “Never did I crave to be a martyr, lad. ‘’Twas a famous victory.’ And if we throw out the Senator, there’re twenty or more, rising up right in Washington, and it’s your blood they’d have very soon, one way or another. Duty? Now I’m a chap that loves duty, if you can do something with it. But not now. Too late. You should have started fifty years ago.”

  Edward considered, biting his lips, fuming. Then he burst out, “So we’re to let Bonwit go on doing his dirty work! I’m to stop fighting! What has a man when he stops fighting something? What purpose does he have in living?”

  William sighed patiently. “As for Bonwit, it’s too late, but you don’t listen. Washington’s full of them. Sure, and you can fight. You’ve got your Committee. That is your purpose. And you’ve got a bigger one. You can train up your children to respect America, and all her institutions. You can keep them uninfected from the red plague of Socialism. Cover them with armor. Teach them about America. Then, after the war, support the newspapers and magazines that call for peace. Shore up the ramparts; take an interest in politics. Shout your blasted head off, in the press, anywhere, about any blackguard who mouths Socialism, even in the wee way. There’ll be plenty of time, boyo, plenty of time, and plenty of work cut out for you. Did you think this fight was the beginning and the end?”

  Someone knocked at the door, and Edward cursed and ordered the knocker to come in. It was a boy with a telegram, and Edward took it and said grimly, “You and your blackmail. This is probably to tell me I’ve lost another shop or two.” He began to read aloud:

  “You have a son and daughter born last night, and Margaret is well and waiting for you.” It was signed by Maria.

  Edward was stunned. Speechlessly he handed the telegram to William, and while William read it and nodded, Edward leaped for his suitcase, forgetting everything, forgetting his press conference at twelve.

  The new generation, thought William. And what will we be doing with them? Teaching them law and order and the laws of God, or making scalawags and Socialists and traitors of them?

  “We must talk,” said Maria, firmly, to Edward, grasping his arm and preventing him from rushing upstairs to Margaret. “There is much to say.”

  She sat in the morning room but Edward stood and listened. “And so,” said Maria, “it is to your brother and your sister that we owe the lives of your wife and children, in great part. David has gone.” She paused. “But Sylvia is here.”

  Edward, whose face had darkened gloomily while his mother had been speaking, said in a cold, hard voice, and with a disagreeable smile, “I will give them extra money.”

  Maria looked down at her hands. “And you think money will repay them for their devotion?”

  “Why not? Isn’t that all they ever wanted?”

  “No,” said Maria.

  “Let’s not be sentimental,” said Edward. “I know them better than you do.”

  Maria raised her large light eyes and studied him. “There, I do not agree. I must ask you: do not insult David and Sylvia with money. Hatred, expressed through money, can never be forgiven.”

  She stood up. “Let us not forget. Margaret is still under sedatives; she is not yet completely awake and aware. She believes you returned last night and that you were with her. The doctor is certain she struggled for life because of that belief, and because your brother, whom you would insult, never left her.”

  They stared at each other fixedly. “It would be best,” said Maria, “for Margaret never to know it was David.”

  Edward looked aside.

  “Sylvia will never tell her,” Maria went on. “Nor will David. It will be our secret forever. You agree?”

  “What else can I do?” said Edward, harshly. “It’s agreed then.” He started away from his mother, who smiled faintly. She called after him, “The boy is Robert, the girl is Gertrude. That was planned between Margaret and me.”

  CHAPTER III

  “I know, I know, all about principles!” Edward exclaimed to Padraig a few weeks later. “I talk about principles with William—”

  “Then,” said Padraig with a gentle smile, “why do you object to my having them also?”

  I don’t want to lose you; I don’t want to lose a friend because I have so few, thought Edward. And you’ve been my conscience, in your grave and stately way. He said, “I can’t explain it.” He looked at Padraig with dark restlessness. “I just have a feeling I’ll never see you again if you go back to Ireland. You and Maggie.”

  They were sitting in Edward’s office, and Padraig gazed thoughtfully through the window at the cloud of snow blowing against the glass. “There’s the submarines, too,” said Edward. “What right do you have to expose Maggie and the child to the dangers of them?” His face changed. If he could persuade Padraig to leave Maggie and the boy in America, Padraig would return, or at least not expose himself to too much danger, or he might not even go at all. He said with indignation, “I see you haven’t considered the submarines.”

  “That I have,” said Padraig, quietly. “And Maggie, also. I must go. She would not remain here without me. She is brave, my Maggie, and she remembers her marriage vows. I must go, Eddie. This is the opportunity for my people to be free.”

  “Oh, damn,” said Edward. “The English aren’t oppressing the Irish now. Why—”

  �
��We must be free,” said Padraig, and his somber face became even more somber. “We remember Cromwell; it is not a thing my people are forgetting. The wicked man who in the name of God murdered the Irish women and children as well as the men, the wicked man who darkened England herself for many years. But he was an Englishman; he was their own, and a people deserve their despots. He was not Ireland’s own. The bloody stain he spread on Ireland can be hidden only under the flag of national freedom. Is it hard for you, who love freedom for America, to understand an Irishman who loves freedom for his country?”

  “I’m afraid for you,” said Edward, bluntly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “One never loses a true friend, even if that friend dies,” said Padraig with affection. “I do not intend to die, Eddie. I intend to fight. If it is God’s will that I die then nothing can prevent it.”

  Together, they thought of the long years they had worked together, Padraig first as a clerk in the shops, then as a manager, then his rise to his present position. The long hard years of all their work, with only the sprightly William to add comic relief during discouragement and debts and apprehension. They remembered the day they had first met, the first handclasp between the young Edward and the shabby and quiet Padraig with his tragic expression, the first sudden knowledge that they belonged together in work together, the first sure confidence and the relief of knowing they were friends at once. There had been no adjustment period; there had been faith from the beginning, and affection.

  “I’ll never forget the day you first worked for me,” said Edward, “and when you put on the long white apron. Aprons always looked funny on William, like a clown’s getup. Hanging to his ankles; it always made me laugh. But when you put on one it—well, it acquired dignity. It became part of you. Everything,” said Edward, trying to smile, “becomes part of you and you dignify it, Padraig. You dignified even the dirtiest, hardest work.”

  “Thank you,” said Padraig. “But I think you exaggerate.”

  “Without words, you made me understand that work, in itself, is prideful, outside of the money,” Edward went on. “All my life, you see, I was regarded as the drudge of the family, and though I had my ambitions and liked the shops and the money they brought, still I thought of it as—drudgery, and not as important as—genius.”

  “All work is important,” said Padraig, and he looked at Edward with compassion. “It is as important to men to lay bricks and mortar as it is to listen to a symphony or to read a book. To labor is to pray, no matter the labor. I am thinking that the Divine Lord in reality blessed men when He ‘condemned’ them to labor with the sweat of their brows. Does not He Himself labor endlessly, and His angels with Him? I do not believe that heaven is all tranquillity, containing nothing but light and song. It would not be heaven then.”

  “You gave me a feeling of importance, the first I’d ever had,” said Edward. “In my own right. And because of that I’ve been able to stand—a lot of things.” His face became sullen and heavy. “So how can I let you go?”

  “You will not lose your sense of importance if I am gone,” said Padraig. “If I did anything at all for you, Eddie, it was to bring to the surface of your good mind that thing you always knew instinctively: that you were important as a man, as a worker.”

  You did more than that for me, thought Edward. You halted my ruthlessness, because, as I see it now, I wanted revenge on the whole damn world.

  Then Padraig, who had never discussed theology with Edward before, said a strange and piercing thing. “I should like to have it in my heart, Eddie, when I have left America, that you have become reconciled with Our Divine Lord.”

  Edward stared at him blankly. Then, very slowly, a derisive smile curled up his big mouth. “Well, another priest! You and William are a pair. Do you know what I’ve been taught all my life, by my father? That God is an abstract; that He is a symbol of the good in men. In men, hear that? That men themselves are really God, all by their filthy, contemptible, treacherous, malicious, and cruel selves! I learned all about Rousseau from my father—”

  Padraig was silent.

  “I know you always had a soft spot for humanity in you,” said Edward, smiling more widely.

  “And you, also, Eddie,” said Padraig. “Why do you hide this from yourself?”

  “You’re wrong! I care only for justice and freedom—!”

  “‘Abstracts,’” murmured Padraig, with sad mockery.

  “What? Oh, abstracts. Well, perhaps I do think that, and it’s probably right.” Edward paused. Then he said suddenly and strongly, “Don’t leave me, Padraig!” He was unaware of the despairing emotion in his voice.

  Padraig regarded this beset and paradoxical man with sorrow. “There is an end to everything,” he said. “There must always be parting as well as meeting. It is inevitable. We have been together for a long time, and we have had that and we shall never forget. But now we must part, and you know I must do my duty as I see it, even when you protest that I must not do it.”

  He stood up with finality. Then he paused. “Eddie, there is another thing. Your quarrel with your good friend, George Enreich. He has been like a father to you. Wait, please. I know the circumstances; William has told me. But George was thinking of you. Just,” he added, with his sad smile, “as you have been thinking of me and all the danger.”

  Edward glared at him wrathfully. “You aren’t deserting me because of my principles, as he did. He threw me off with absolute cynicism. There wasn’t any question of principles on his part, believe me! He hasn’t any.”

  Padraig pulled on his gloves. “A friend is not made in a day, but one can lose a friend in one instant. Life is long, but it can be lost in the blink of an eye.”

  “I tell you, he threw me off! And demanded his money! Don’t be a sentimental fool, Padraig! Oh, you’re going, are you? All right, go.” Edward stood up, tight and shaken. “The hell with everything. I was alone for a long time. I can be alone again.”

  Padraig held out his hand but Edward would not take it. Padraig dropped his hand with a sigh. “I’ll be leaving in three days,” he said. “We shall not meet again until Ireland is free.”

  He walked to the door, tall and thin and stately, and Edward watched him go. He stopped on the threshold, and then, like a boy, Edward ran to him and caught him by the shoulders, tried to speak, and could not.

  And as they stood together hands on each other’s shoulders, Padraig prayed silently for Edward, prayed that his awful confusion would someday leave him, and all his weariness and despair, and that he would finally understand the meaning for which he had been born and not the false one which had been forced upon him when he had been too young and too helpless to resist.

  CHAPTER IV

  “You don’t look at the top of form,” said William. “It’s fifty Green and White Stores you have now. Are the Washington blighters after you again for restraint of trade or monopoly or whatever?”

  “No,” said Edward. “Not again. Not when they found we could kick out Bonwit and make Henry Sheftel Senator in his place. Just to show there’s no discrimination or pressure in it, they’ve turned their attention—again—to the Atlantic & Pacific. Just a small flurry, to clear themselves after Hans gave them a little exposure in his papers.” He laughed grimly. “Sometimes when I’m low in my mind I remember how they tried to get me by calling me in for the draft in late 1917, even though I had a wife and two children and other dependents. I still don’t know how I got out of that. A perfunctory examination by the doctors and I was out on the street. Another attempt to scare me, of course.”

  “Hmm,” said William, eying him with concern. “Seems there was more to it than that. Didn’t they tell you to see your own doctor?”

  “Probably. But they knew damn well I was in the best of health. My own doctor? What for? I haven’t had a doctor since I had pneumonia when I was a child, and those swollen joints that made me limp for a few weeks and kept me awake a few nights. Look at me. Ever see anyone in better cond
ition? I play eighteen holes of golf without an effort, since Margaret made me join the Waterford Country Club. Waste of time, but she insists. But to please her I waddle around in the pool, too.”

  William studied him. Edward was thirty-four yet he looked older; there were patches of random gray in his thick dark hair, and his broad face had a chronic expression of pent harassment and was lined with constant anger. It was only when with his wife and children that his face softened and became youthful, and the purplish tint in his wide mouth faded to a healthier color. His big body still moved with fast vitality, but there was a nervousness in him that betrayed itself in the trembling of his fingers when he struck a match or began to write.

  “I’d go to one of those bally medicine chaps just the same,” said William. Edward shrugged, lifted and studied some papers on his desk. He was never without a cigarette. One hung in the corner of his mouth now.

  “I haven’t time; don’t bother me,” said Edward, and then, as if without his volition, he struck his desk with a clenched fist. He threw aside his papers, and rested his chin in his palms. “I still can’t get over their killing Padraig in 1918. And hanging him with a silk rope because he was a peer! The only good thing about it was his father dying suddenly six months before that. A silk rope! What a concession!” He put his hands over his eyes. “And Maggie with two boys then, one just a baby. And it was all our ambassador could do to keep them from confiscating Padraig’s property because he was a ‘traitor’! Well, we gave them some publicity in the New York newspapers and got the Irish stirred up, and I suppose that’s the only reason Maggie still has the ancestral property or whatever they call it.”

  “It was a good thing that you did,” said William, and his merry face was grave with sorrow. “Do not think that Padraig was murdered uselessly. No good man dies violently without Our Lord taking note of it.”

  Edward uttered an obscene word in contempt. “And there weren’t good men dying in Europe for years, were there? Young men. And what was the result of it? The Bolshevik Revolution, and the active rise of Socialism all over Europe. How d’ye explain that, eh?”