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+THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
+
+To Frank O’Connor
+
+Copyright (c) 1943 The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+Copyright (c) renewed 1971 by Ayn Rand.
+All rights reserved. For information address The Bobbs-Merrill Company, a
+division of Macmillan, Inc., 866 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.
+
+Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition
+
+Many people have asked me how I feel about the fact that The Fountainhead has
+been in print for twenty-five years. I cannot say that I feel anything in
+particular, except a kind of quiet satisfaction. In this respect, my attitude
+toward my writing is best expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: "If a writer
+wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away."
+Certain writers, of whom I am one, do not live, think or write on the range of
+the moment. Novels, in the proper sense of the word, are not written to vanish
+in a month or a year. That most of them do, today, that they are written and
+published as if they were magazines, to fade as rapidly, is one of the sorriest
+aspects of today’s literature, and one of the clearest indictments of its
+dominant esthetic philosophy: concrete-bound, journalistic Naturalism which has
+now reached its dead end in the inarticulate sounds of panic.
+Longevity-predominantly, though not exclusively-is the prerogative of a literary
+school which is virtually non-existent today: Romanticism. This is not the place
+for a dissertation on the nature of Romantic fiction, so let me state--for the
+record and for the benefit of those college students who have never been allowed
+to discover it--only that Romanticism is the conceptual school of art. It deals,
+not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental,
+universal problems and values of human existence. It does not record or
+photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned--in the words of
+Aristotle--not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and
+ought to be.
+And for the benefit of those who consider relevance to one’s own time as of
+crucial importance, I will add, in regard to our age, that never has there been
+a time when men have so desperately needed a projection of things as they ought
+to be.
+I do not mean to imply that I knew, when I wrote it, that The Fountainhead would
+remain in print for twenty-five years. I did not think of any specific time
+period. I knew only that it was a book that ought to live. It did.
+But that I knew it over twenty-five years ago--that I knew it while The
+1
+
+Fountainhead was being rejected by twelve publishers, some of whom declared that
+it was "too intellectual,"
+"too controversial" and would not sell because no audience existed for it--that
+was the difficult part of its history; difficult for me to bear. I mention it
+here for the sake of any other writer of my kind who might have to face the same
+battle--as a reminder of the fact that it can be done.
+It would be impossible for me to discuss The Fountainhead or any part of its
+history without mentioning the man who made it possible for me to write it: my
+husband, Frank O’Connor.
+In a play I wrote in my early thirties, Ideal, the heroine, a screen star,
+speaks for me when she says: "I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of
+my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know
+that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of
+seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit,
+too, needs fuel. It can run dry."
+Frank was the fuel. He gave me, in the hours of my own days, the reality of that
+sense of life, which created The Fountainhead--and he helped me to maintain it
+over a long span of years when there was nothing around us but a gray desert of
+people and events that evoked nothing but contempt and revulsion. The essence of
+the bond between us is the fact that neither of us has ever wanted or been
+tempted to settle for anything less than the world presented in The
+Fountainhead. We never will.
+If there is in me any touch of the Naturalistic writer who records "real-life"
+dialogue for use in a novel, it has been exercised only in regard to Frank. For
+instance, one of the most effective lines in The Fountainhead comes at the end
+of Part II, when, in reply to Toohey’s question: "Why don’t you tell me what you
+think of me?" Roark answers: "But I don’t think of you." That line was Frank’s
+answer to a different type of person, in a somewhat similar context. "You’re
+casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return," was said by Frank to
+me, in regard to my professional position. I gave that line to Dominique at
+Roark’s trial.
+I did not feel discouragement very often, and when I did, it did not last longer
+than overnight. But there was one evening, during the writing of The
+Fountainhead, when I felt so profound an indignation at the state of "things as
+they are" that it seemed as if I would never regain the energy to move one step
+farther toward "things as they ought to be." Frank talked to me for hours, that
+night. He convinced me of why one cannot give up the world to those one
+despises. By the time he finished, my discouragement was gone; it never came
+back in so intense a form.
+I had been opposed to the practice of dedicating books; I had held that a book
+is addressed to any reader who proves worthy of it. But, that night, I told
+Frank that I would dedicate The Fountainhead to him because he had saved it. And
+one of my happiest moments, about two years later, was given to me by the look
+on his face when he came home, one day, and saw the page-proofs of the book,
+headed by the page that stated in cold, clear, objective print: To Frank
+O’Connor.
+I have been asked whether I have changed in these past twenty-five years. No, I
+am the same--only more so. Have my ideas changed? No, my fundamental
+convictions, my view of life and of man, have never changed, from as far back as
+I can remember, but my knowledge of their applications has grown, in scope and
+in precision. What is my present evaluation of The Fountainhead? I am as proud
+2
+
+of it as I was on the day when I finished writing it.
+Was The Fountainhead written for the purpose of presenting my philosophy? Here,
+I shall quote from The Goal of My Writing, an address I gave at Lewis and Clark
+College, on October 1, 1963: "This is the motive and purpose of my writing; the
+projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate
+literary goal, as an end in itself--to which any didactic, intellectual or
+philosophical values contained in a novel are only the means.
+"Let me stress this: my purpose is not the philosophical enlightenment of my
+readers...My purpose, first cause and prime mover is the portrayal of Howard
+Roark [or the heroes of Atlas Shrugged} as an end in himself...
+"I write--and read--for the sake of the story...My basic test for any story is:
+’Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is
+this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure
+of contemplating these characters an end in itself?’...
+"Since my purpose is the presentation of an ideal man, I had to define and
+present the conditions which make him possible and which his existence requires.
+Since man’s character is the product of his premises, I had to define and
+present the kinds of premises and values that create the character of an ideal
+man and motivate his actions; which means that I had to define and present a
+rational code of ethics. Since man acts among and deals with other men, I had to
+present the kind of social system that makes it possible for ideal men to exist
+and to function--a free, productive, rational system which demands and rewards
+the best in every man, and which is, obviously, laissez-faire capitalism.
+"But neither politics nor ethics nor philosophy is an end in itself, neither in
+life nor in literature. Only Man is an end in himself."
+Are there any substantial changes I would want to make in The Fountainhead?
+No--and, therefore, I have left its text untouched. I want it to stand as it was
+written. But there is one minor error and one possibly misleading sentence which
+I should like to clarify, so I shall mention them here.
+The error is semantic: the use of the word "egotist" in Roark’s courtroom
+speech, while actually the word should have been "egoist." The error was caused
+by my reliance on a dictionary which gave such misleading definitions of these
+two words that "egotist" seemed closer to the meaning I intended (Webster’s
+Daily Use Dictionary, 1933). (Modern philosophers, however, are guiltier than
+lexicographers in regard to these two terms.)
+The possibly misleading sentence is in Roark’s speech: "From this simplest
+necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the
+skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single
+attribute of man--the function of his reasoning mind."
+This could be misinterpreted to mean an endorsement of religion or religious
+ideas. I remember hesitating over that sentence, when I wrote it, and deciding
+that Roark’s and my atheism, as well as the overall spirit of the book, were so
+clearly established that no one would misunderstand it, particularly since I
+said that religious abstractions are the product of man’s mind, not of
+supernatural revelation.
+But an issue of this sort should not be left to implications. What I was
+referring to was not religion as such, but a special category of abstractions,
+the most exalted one, which, for centuries, had been the near-monopoly of
+religion: ethics--not the particular content of religious ethics, but the
+3
+
+abstraction "ethics," the realm of values, man’s code of good and evil, with the
+emotional connotations of height, uplift, nobility, reverence, grandeur, which
+pertain to the realm of man’s values, but which religion has arrogated to
+itself.
+The same meaning and considerations were intended and are applicable to another
+passage of the book, a brief dialogue between Roark and Hopton Stoddard, which
+may be misunderstood if taken out of context:
+"’You’re a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark--in your own way. I can see that
+in your buildings.’
+"’That’s true,’ said Roark."
+In the context of that scene, however, the meaning is clear: it is Roark’s
+profound dedication to values, to the highest and best, to the ideal, that
+Stoddard is referring to (see his explanation of the nature of the proposed
+temple). The erection of the Stoddard Temple and the subsequent trial state the
+issue explicitly.
+This leads me to a wider issue which is involved in every line of The
+Fountainhead and which has to be understood if one wants to understand the
+causes of its lasting appeal.
+Religion’s monopoly in the field of ethics has made it extremely difficult to
+communicate the emotional meaning and connotations of a rational view of life.
+Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against
+man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them
+outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. "Exaltation" is usually taken to mean
+an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. "Worship" means the
+emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man.
+"Reverence" means the emotion of a sacred respect, to be experienced on one’s
+knees. "Sacred" means superior to and not-to-be-touched-by any concerns of man
+or of this earth. Etc.
+But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension
+exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without
+the self-abasement required by religious definitions. What, then, is their
+source or referent in reality? It is the entire emotional realm of man’s
+dedication to a moral ideal. Yet apart from the man-degrading aspects introduced
+by religion, that emotional realm is left unidentified, without concepts, words
+or recognition.
+It is this highest level of man’s emotions that has to be redeemed from the murk
+of mysticism and redirected at its proper object: man.
+It is in this sense, with this meaning and intention, that I would identify the
+sense of life dramatized in The Fountainhead as man-worship.
+It is an emotion that a few--a very few--men experience consistently; some men
+experience it in rare, single sparks that flash and die without consequences;
+some do not know what I am talking about; some do and spend their lives as
+frantically virulent spark-extinguishers.
+Do not confuse "man-worship" with the many attempts, not to emancipate morality
+from religion and bring it into the realm of reason, but to substitute a secular
+meaning for the worst, the most profoundly irrational elements of religion. For
+instance, there are all the variants of modern collectivism (communist, fascist,
+Nazi, etc.), which preserve the religious-altruist ethics in full and merely
+4
+
+substitute "society" for God as the beneficiary of man’s self-immolation. There
+are the various schools of modern philosophy which, rejecting the law of
+identity, proclaim that reality is an indeterminate flux ruled by miracles and
+shaped by whims--not God’s whims, but man’s or "society’s." These neo-mystics
+are not man-worshipers; they are merely the secularizers of as profound a hatred
+for man as that of their avowedly mystic predecessors.
+A cruder variant of the same hatred is represented by those concrete-bound,
+"statistical" mentalities who--unable to grasp the meaning of man’s
+volition--declare that man cannot be an object of worship, since they have never
+encountered any specimens of humanity who deserved it.
+The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man’s highest
+potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as
+a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature--and struggle never to let him
+discover otherwise. It is important here to remember that the only direct,
+introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself.
+More specifically, the essential division between these two camps is: those
+dedicated to the exaltation of man’s self-esteem and the sacredness of his
+happiness on earth--and those determined not to allow either to become possible.
+The majority of mankind spend their lives and psychological energy in the
+middle, swinging between these two, struggling not to allow the issue to be
+named. This does not change the nature of the issue.
+Perhaps the best way to communicate The Fountainhead’s sense of life is by means
+of the quotation which had stood at the head of my manuscript, but which I
+removed from the final, published book. With this opportunity to explain it, I
+am glad to bring it back.
+I removed it, because of my profound disagreement with the philosophy of its
+author, Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophically, Nietzsche is a mystic and an
+irrationalist. His metaphysics consists of a somewhat "Byronic" and mystically
+"malevolent" universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to "will," or
+feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character. But, as a poet, he
+projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man’s greatness,
+expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms.
+This is especially true of the quotation I had chosen. I could not endorse its
+literal meaning: it proclaims an indefensible tenet--psychological determinism.
+But if one takes it as a poetic projection of an emotional experience (and if,
+intellectually, one substitutes the concept of an acquired "basic premise" for
+the concept of an innate "fundamental certainty"), then that quotation
+communicates the inner state of an exalted self-esteem--and sums up the
+emotional consequences for which The Fountainhead provides the rational,
+philosophical base:
+"It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the
+order of rank--to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and
+deeper meaning,--it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about
+itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps,
+also, is not to be lost.--The noble soul has reverence for itself.--" (Friedrich
+Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)
+This view of man has rarely been expressed in human history. Today, it is
+virtually non-existent. Yet this is the view with which--in various degrees of
+longing, wistfulness, passion and agonized confusion--the best of mankind’s
+youth start out in life. It is not even a view, for most of them, but a foggy,
+groping, undefined sense made of raw pain and incommunicable happiness. It is a
+5
+
+sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one’s life is important, that
+great achievements are within one’s capacity, and that great things lie ahead.
+It is not in the nature of man--nor of any living entity--to start out by giving
+up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence; that requires a process
+of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first
+touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and
+lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these
+vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that
+maturity consists of abandoning one’s mind; security, of abandoning one’s
+values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on,
+knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape,
+purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men
+seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.
+There are very few guideposts to find. The Fountainhead is one of them.
+This is one of the cardinal reasons of The Fountainhead’s lasting appeal: it is
+a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man’s glory, showing how much
+is possible.
+It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the
+full reality of man’s proper stature--and that the rest will betray it. It is
+those few that move the world and give life its meaning--and it is those few
+that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not
+me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.
+AYN RAND New York, May 1968
+
+CONTENTS
+PART ONE
+Peter Keating
+PART TWO
+Ellsworth M. Toohey
+PART THREE
+Gail Wynand
+PART FOUR
+Howard Roark
+
+I offer my profound gratitude to the great profession of architecture and its
+heroes who have given us some of the highest expressions of man’s genius, yet
+have remained unknown, undiscovered by the majority of men. And to the
+architects who gave me their generous assistance in the technical matters of
+this book.
+No person or event in this story is intended as a reference to any real person
+or event. The titles of the newspaper columns were invented and used by me in
+6
+
+the first draft of this novel five years ago. They were not taken from and have
+no reference to any actual newspaper columns or features.
+--AYN RAND March 10, 1943
+
+Part One: PETER KEATING
+
+1.
+HOWARD ROARK laughed.
+He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen
+explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water
+seemed immovable, the stone--flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief
+moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause
+more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays.
+The lake below was only a thin steel ring that cut the rocks in half. The rocks
+went on into the depth, unchanged. They began and ended in the sky. So that the
+world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the
+feet of the man on the cliff.
+His body leaned back against the sky. It was a body of long straight lines and
+angles, each curve broken into planes. He stood, rigid, his hands hanging at his
+sides, palms out. He felt his shoulder blades drawn tight together, the curve of
+his neck, and the weight of the blood in his hands. He felt the wind behind him,
+in the hollow of his spine. The wind waved his hair against the sky. His hair
+was neither blond nor red, but the exact color of ripe orange rind.
+He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things
+which now lay ahead.
+He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced
+and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He
+knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already,
+because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh.
+He tried to consider it. But he forgot. He was looking at the granite.
+He did not laugh as his eyes stopped in awareness of the earth around him. His
+face was like a law of nature--a thing one could not question, alter or
+implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and
+steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a
+saint.
+He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked
+at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on
+the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge
+as girders against the sky.
+These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite
+and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the
+shape my hands will give them.
+Then he shook his head, because he remembered that morning and that there were
+7
+
+many things to be done. He stepped to the edge, raised his arms, and dived down
+into the sky below.
+He cut straight across the lake to the shore ahead. He reached the rocks where
+he had left his clothes. He looked regretfully about him. For three years, ever
+since he had lived in Stanton, he had come here for his only relaxation, to
+swim, to rest, to think, to be alone and alive, whenever he could find one hour
+to spare, which had not been often. In his new freedom the first thing he had
+wanted to do was to come here, because he knew that he was coming for the last
+time. That morning he had been expelled from the Architectural School of the
+Stanton Institute of Technology. He pulled his clothes on: old denim trousers,
+sandals, a shirt with short sleeves and most of its buttons missing. He swung
+down a narrow trail among the boulders, to a path running through a green slope,
+to the road below.
+He walked swiftly, with a loose, lazy expertness of motion. He walked down the
+long road, in the sun. Far ahead Stanton lay sprawled on the coast of
+Massachusetts, a little town as a setting for the gem of its existence--the
+great institute rising on a hill beyond.
+The township of Stanton began with a dump. A gray mound of refuse rose in the
+grass. It smoked faintly. Tin cans glittered in the sun. The road led past the
+first houses to a church. The church was a Gothic monument of shingles painted
+pigeon blue. It had stout wooden buttresses supporting nothing. It had
+stained-glass windows with heavy traceries of imitation stone. It opened the way
+into long streets edged by tight, exhibitionist lawns. Behind the lawns stood
+wooden piles tortured out of all shape: twisted into gables, turrets, dormers;
+bulging with porches; crushed under huge, sloping roofs. White curtains floated
+at the windows. A garbage can stood at a side door, flowing over. An old
+Pekinese sat upon a cushion on a door step, its mouth drooling. A line of
+diapers fluttered in the wind between the columns of a porch.
+People turned to look at Howard Roark as he passed. Some remained staring after
+him with sudden resentment. They could give no reason for it: it was an instinct
+his presence awakened in most people. Howard Roark saw no one. For him, the
+streets were empty. He could have walked there naked without concern. He crossed
+the heart of Stanton, a broad green edged by shop windows. The windows displayed
+new placards announcing:
+WELCOME TO THE CLASS OF ’22! GOOD LUCK, CLASS OF ’22! The Class of ’22 of
+the Stanton Institute of Technology was holding its commencement exercises that
+afternoon.
+Roark swung into a side street, where at the end of a long row, on a knoll over
+a green ravine, stood the house of Mrs. Keating. He had boarded at that house
+for three years.
+Mrs. Keating was out on the porch. She was feeding a couple of canaries in a
+cage suspended over the railing. Her pudgy little hand stopped in mid-air when
+she saw him. She watched him with curiosity. She tried to pull her mouth into a
+proper expression of sympathy; she succeeded only in betraying that the process
+was an effort.
+He was crossing the porch without noticing her. She stopped him.
+"Mr. Roark!"
+"Yes?"
+8
+
+"Mr. Roark, I’m so sorry about--" she hesitated demurely, "--about what happened
+this morning."
+"What?" he asked.
+"Your being expelled from the Institute. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I only
+want you to know that I feel for you."
+He stood looking at her. She knew that he did not see her. No, she thought, it
+was not that exactly. He always looked straight at people and his damnable eyes
+never missed a thing, it was only that he made people feel as if they did not
+exist. He just stood looking. He would not answer.
+"But what I say," she continued, "is that if one suffers in this world, it’s on
+account of error. Of course, you’ll have to give up the architect profession
+now, won’t you? But then a young man can always earn a decent living clerking or
+selling or something."
+He turned to go.
+"Oh, Mr. Roark!" she called.
+"Yes?"
+"The Dean phoned for you while you were out."
+For once, she expected some emotion from him; and an emotion would be the
+equivalent of seeing him broken. She did not know what it was about him that had
+always made her want to see him broken.
+"Yes?" he asked.
+"The Dean," she repeated uncertainly, trying to recapture her effect. "The Dean
+himself through his secretary."
+"Well?"
+"She said to tell you that the Dean wanted to see you immediately the moment you
+got back."
+"Thank you."
+"What do you suppose he can want now?"
+"I don’t know."
+He had said: "I don’t know." She had heard distinctly: "I don’t give a damn."
+She stared at him incredulously.
+"By the way," she said, "Petey is graduating today." She said it without
+apparent relevance.
+"Today? Oh, yes."
+"It’s a great day for me. When I think of how I skimped and slaved to put my boy
+through school. Not that I’m complaining. I’m not one to complain. Petey’s a
+brilliant boy."
+She stood drawn up. Her stout little body was corseted so tightly under the
+9
+
+starched folds of her cotton dress that it seemed to squeeze the fat out to her
+wrists and ankles.
+"But of course," she went on rapidly, with the eagerness of her favorite
+subject, "I’m not one to boast. Some mothers are lucky and others just aren’t.
+We’re all in our rightful place. You just watch Petey from now on. I’m not one
+to want my boy to kill himself with work and I’ll thank the Lord for any small
+success that comes his way. But if that boy isn’t the greatest architect of this
+U.S.A., his mother will want to know the reason why!"
+He moved to go.
+"But what am I doing, gabbing with you like that!" she said brightly. "You’ve
+got to hurry and change and run along. The Dean’s waiting for you."
+She stood looking after him through the screen door, watching his gaunt figure
+move across the rigid neatness of her parlor. He always made her uncomfortable
+in the house, with a vague feeling of apprehension, as if she were waiting to
+see him swing out suddenly and smash her coffee tables, her Chinese vases, her
+framed photographs. He had never shown any inclination to do so. She kept
+expecting it, without knowing why.
+Roark went up the stairs to his room. It was a large, bare room, made luminous
+by the clean glow of whitewash. Mrs. Keating had never had the feeling that
+Roark really lived there. He had not added a single object to the bare
+necessities of furniture which she had provided; no pictures, no pennants, no
+cheering human touch. He had brought nothing to the room but his clothes and his
+drawings; there were few clothes and too many drawings; they were stacked high
+in one comer; sometimes she thought that the drawings lived there, not the man.
+Roark walked now to these drawings; they were the first things to be packed. He
+lifted one of them, then the next, then another. He stood looking at the broad
+sheets.
+They were sketches of buildings such as had never stood on the face of the
+earth. They were as the first houses built by the first man born, who had never
+heard of others building before him. There was nothing to be said of them,
+except that each structure was inevitably what it had to be. It was not as if
+the draftsman had sat over them, pondering laboriously, piecing together doors,
+windows and columns, as his whim dictated and as the books prescribed. It was as
+if the buildings had sprung from the earth and from some living force, complete,
+unalterably right. The hand that had made the sharp pencil lines still had much
+to learn. But not a line seemed superfluous, not a needed plane was missing. The
+structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realized what
+work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the
+simplicity. No laws had dictated a single detail. The buildings were not
+Classical, they were not Gothic, they were not Renaissance. They were only
+Howard Roark.
+He stopped, looking at a sketch. It was one that had never satisfied him. He had
+designed it as an exercise he had given himself, apart from his schoolwork; he
+did that often when he found some particular site and stopped before it to think
+of what building it should bear. He had spent nights staring at this sketch,
+wondering what he had missed. Glancing at it now, unprepared, he saw the mistake
+he had made.
+He flung the sketch down on the table, he bent over it, he slashed lines
+straight through his neat drawing. He stopped once in a while and stood looking
+at it, his fingertips pressed to the paper; as if his hands held the building.
+10
+
+His hands had long fingers, hard veins, prominent joints and wristbones.
+An hour later he heard a knock at his door.
+"Come in!" he snapped, without stopping.
+"Mr. Roark!" gasped Mrs. Keating, staring at him from the threshold. "What on
+earth are you doing?"
+He turned and looked at her, trying to remember who she was.
+"How about the Dean?" she moaned. "The Dean that’s waiting for you?"
+"Oh," said Roark. "Oh, yes. I forgot."
+"You...forgot?"
+"Yes." There was a note of wonder in his voice, astonished by her astonishment.
+"Well, all I can say," she choked, "is that it serves you right! It just serves
+you right. And with the commencement beginning at four-thirty, how do you expect
+him to have time to see you?"
+"I’ll go at once, Mrs. Keating."
+It was not her curiosity alone that prompted her to action; it was a secret fear
+that the sentence of the Board might be revoked. He went to the bathroom at the
+end of the hall; she watched him washing his hands, throwing his loose, straight
+hair back into a semblance of order. He came out again, he was on his way to the
+stairs before she realized that he was leaving.
+"Mr. Roark!" she gasped, pointing at his clothes. "You’re not going like this?"
+"Why not?"
+"But it’s your Dean!"
+"Not any more, Mrs. Keating."
+She thought, aghast, that he said it as if he were actually happy.
+The Stanton Institute of Technology stood on a hill, its crenelated walls raised
+as a crown over the city stretched below. It looked like a medieval fortress,
+with a Gothic cathedral grafted to its belly. The fortress was eminently suited
+to its purpose, with stout, brick walls, a few slits wide enough for sentries,
+ramparts behind which defending archers could hide, and corner turrets from
+which boiling oil could be poured upon the attacker--should such an emergency
+arise in an institute of learning. The cathedral rose over it in lace splendor,
+a fragile defense against two great enemies: light and air.
+The Dean’s office looked like a chapel, a pool of dreamy twilight fed by one
+tall window of stained glass. The twilight flowed in through the garments of
+stiff saints, their arms contorted at the elbows. A red spot of light and a
+purple one rested respectively upon two genuine gargoyles squatting at the
+corners of a fireplace that had never been used. A green spot stood in the
+center of a picture of the Parthenon, suspended over the fireplace.
+When Roark entered the office, the outlines of the Dean’s figure swam dimly
+behind his desk, which was carved like a confessional. He was a short, plumpish
+11
+
+gentleman whose spreading flesh was held in check by an indomitable dignity.
+"Ah, yes, Roark," he smiled. "Do sit down, please."
+Roark sat down. The Dean entwined his fingers on his stomach and waited for the
+plea he expected. No plea came. The Dean cleared his throat.
+"It will be unnecessary for me to express my regret at the unfortunate event of
+this morning," he began, "since I take it for granted that you have always known
+my sincere interest in your welfare."
+"Quite unnecessary," said Roark.
+The Dean looked at him dubiously, but continued:
+"Needless to say, I did not vote against you. I abstained entirely. But you may
+be glad to know that you had quite a determined little group of defenders at the
+meeting. Small, but determined. Your professor of structural engineering acted
+quite the crusader on your behalf. So did your professor of mathematics.
+Unfortunately, those who felt it their duty to vote for your expulsion quite
+outnumbered the others. Professor Peterkin, your critic of design, made an issue
+of the matter. He went so far as to threaten us with his resignation unless you
+were expelled. You must realize that you have given Professor Peterkin great
+provocation."
+"I do," said Roark.
+"That, you see, was the trouble. I am speaking of your attitude towards the
+subject of architectural design. You have never given it the attention it
+deserves. And yet, you have been excellent in all the engineering sciences. Of
+course, no one denies the importance of structural engineering to a future
+architect, but why go to extremes? Why neglect what may be termed the artistic
+and inspirational side of your profession and concentrate on all those dry,
+technical, mathematical subjects? You intended to become an architect, not a
+civil engineer."
+"Isn’t this superfluous?" Roark asked. "It’s past. There’s no point in
+discussing my choice of subjects now."
+"I am endeavoring to be helpful, Roark. You must be fair about this. You cannot
+say that you were not given many warnings before this happened."
+"I was."
+The Dean moved in his chair. Roark made him uncomfortable. Roark’s eyes were
+fixed on him politely. The Dean thought, there’s nothing wrong with the way he’s
+looking at me, in fact it’s quite correct, most properly attentive; only, it’s
+as if I were not here.
+"Every problem you were given," the Dean went on, "every project you had to
+design--what did you do with it? Every one of them done in that--well, I cannot
+call it a style--in that incredible manner of yours. It is contrary to every
+principle we have tried to teach you, contrary to all established precedents and
+traditions of Art. You may think you are what is called a modernist, but it
+isn’t even that. It is...it is sheer insanity, if you don’t mind."
+"I don’t mind."
+"When you were given projects that left the choice of style up to you and you
+12
+
+turned in one of your wild stunts--well, frankly, your teachers passed you
+because they did not know what to make of it. But, when you were given an
+exercise in the historical styles, a Tudor chapel or a French opera house to
+design--and you turned in something that looked like a lot of boxes piled
+together without rhyme or reason--would you say it was an answer to an
+assignment or plain insubordination?"
+"It was insubordination," said Roark.
+"We wanted to give you a chance--in view of your brilliant record in all other
+subjects. But when you turn in this--" the Dean slammed his fist down on a sheet
+spread before him--"this as a Renaissance villa for your final project of the
+year--really, my boy, it was too much!"
+The sheet bore a drawing--a house of glass and concrete. In the comer there was
+a sharp, angular signature: Howard Roark.
+"How do you expect us to pass you after this?"
+"I don’t."
+"You left us no choice in the matter. Naturally, you would feel bitterness
+toward us at this moment, but..."
+"I feel nothing of the kind," said Roark quietly. "I owe you an apology. I don’t
+usually let things happen to me. I made a mistake this time. I shouldn’t have
+waited for you to throw me out. I should have left long ago."
+"Now, now, don’t get discouraged. This is not the right attitude to take.
+Particularly in view of what I am going to tell you."
+The Dean smiled and leaned forward confidentially, enjoying the overture to a
+good deed.
+"Here is the real purpose of our interview. I was anxious to let you know as
+soon as possible. I did not wish to leave you disheartened. Oh, I did,
+personally, take a chance with the President’s temper when I mentioned this to
+him, but...Mind you, he did not commit himself, but...Here is how things stand:
+now that you realize how serious it is, if you take a year off, to rest, to
+think it over--shall we say to grow up?--there might be a chance of our taking
+you back. Mind you, I cannot promise anything--this is strictly unofficial--it
+would be most unusual, but in view of the circumstances and of your brilliant
+record, there might be a very good chance."
+Roark smiled. It was not a happy smile, it was not a grateful one. It was a
+simple, easy smile and it was amused.
+"I don’t think you understood me," said Roark. "What made you suppose that I
+want to come back?"
+"Eh?"
+"I won’t be back. I have nothing further to learn here."
+"I don’t understand you," said the Dean stiffly.
+"Is there any point in explaining? It’s of no interest to you any longer."
+"You will kindly explain yourself."
+13
+
+"If you wish. I want to be an architect, not an archeologist. I see no purpose
+in doing Renaissance villas. Why learn to design them, when I’ll never build
+them?"
+"My dear boy, the great style of the Renaissance is far from dead. Houses of
+that style are being erected every day."
+"They are. And they will be. But not by me."
+"Come, come, now, this is childish."
+"I came here to learn about building. When I was given a project, its only value
+to me was to learn to solve it as I would solve I a real one in the future. I
+did them the way I’ll build them. I’ve | learned all I could learn here--in
+the structural sciences of which you don’t approve. One more year of drawing
+Italian post cards would give me nothing." ’
+An hour ago the Dean had wished that this interview would proceed as calmly as
+possible. Now he wished that Roark would display some emotion; it seemed
+unnatural for him to be so quietly natural in the circumstances.
+"Do you mean to tell me that you’re thinking seriously of building that way,
+when and if you are an architect?"
+"Yes."
+"My dear fellow, who will let you?"
+"That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?"
+"Look here, this is serious. I am sorry that I haven’t had a long, earnest talk
+with you much earlier...I know, I know, I know, don’t interrupt me, you’ve seen
+a modernistic building or two, and it gave you ideas. But do you realize what a
+passing fancy that whole so-called modern movement is? You must learn to
+understand--and it has been proved by all authorities--that everything beautiful
+in architecture has been done already. There is a treasure mine in every style
+of the past. We can only choose from the great masters. Who are we to improve
+upon them? We can only attempt, respectfully, to repeat."
+"Why?" asked Howard Roark.
+No, thought the Dean, no, he hasn’t said anything else; it’s a perfectly
+innocent word; he’s not threatening me.
+"But it’s self-evident!" said the Dean.
+"Look," said Roark evenly, and pointed at the window. "Can you see the campus
+and the town? Do you see how many men are walking and living down there? Well, I
+don’t give a damn what any or all of them think about architecture--or about
+anything else, for that matter. Why should I consider what their grandfathers
+thought of it?"
+"That is our sacred tradition."
+"Why?"
+"For heaven’s sake, can’t you stop being so naive about it?"
+14
+
+"But I don’t understand. Why do you want me to think that this is great
+architecture?" He pointed to the picture of the Parthenon.
+"That," said the Dean, "is the Parthenon."
+"So it is."
+"I haven’t the time to waste on silly questions."
+"All right, then." Roark got up, he took a long ruler from the desk, he walked
+to the picture. "Shall I tell you what’s rotten about it?"
+"It’s the Parthenon!" said the Dean.
+"Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!"
+The ruler struck the glass over the picture.
+"Look," said Roark. "The famous flutings on the famous columns--what are they
+there for? To hide the joints in wood--when columns were made of wood, only
+these aren’t, they’re marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams,
+the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your
+Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it,
+because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came
+along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here
+we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in
+marble of copies in wood. Why?"
+The Dean sat watching him curiously. Something puzzled him, not in the words,
+but in Roark’s manner of saying them.
+"Rules?" said Roark. "Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance
+must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on
+earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site,
+the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless
+it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is
+alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single
+theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn’t borrow pieces of his
+body. A building doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul
+and every wall, window and stairway to express it."
+"But all the proper forms of expression have been discovered long ago."
+"Expression--of what? The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden
+ancestor. An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon.
+Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal.
+Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the
+mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as
+it’s not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth?
+Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic--and only of addition at that? Why
+is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be
+some reason. I don’t know. I’ve never known it. I’d like to understand."
+"For heaven’s sake," said the Dean. "Sit down....That’s better....Would you mind
+very much putting that ruler down?...Thank you....Now listen to me. No one has
+ever denied the importance of modern technique to an architect. We must learn to
+adapt the beauty of the past to the needs of the present. The voice of the past
+is the voice of the people. Nothing has ever been invented by one man in
+architecture. The proper creative process is a slow, gradual, anonymous,
+15
+
+collective one, in which each man collaborates with all the others and
+subordinates himself to the standards of the majority."
+"But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most
+of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find
+no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I
+can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the
+best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I
+stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of
+one."
+"How old are you?" asked the Dean.
+"Twenty-two," said Roark.
+"Quite excusable," said the Dean; he seemed relieved. "You’ll outgrow all that."
+He smiled. "The old standards have lived for thousands of years and nobody has
+been able to improve upon them. What are your modernists? A transient mode,
+exhibitionists trying to attract attention. Have you observed the course of
+their careers? Can you name one who has achieved any permanent distinction? Look
+at Henry Cameron. A great man, a leading architect twenty years ago. What is he
+today? Lucky if he gets--once a year--a garage to remodel. A bum and a drunkard,
+who..."
+"We won’t discuss Henry Cameron."
+"Oh? Is he a friend of yours?"
+"No. But I’ve seen his buildings."
+"And you found them..."
+"I said we won’t discuss Henry Cameron."
+"Very well. You must realize that I am allowing you a great deal of...shall we
+say, latitude? I am not accustomed to hold a discussion with a student who
+behaves in your manner. However, I am anxious to forestall, if possible, what
+appears to be a tragedy, the spectacle of a young man of your obvious mental
+gifts setting out deliberately to make a mess of his life."
+The Dean wondered why he had promised the professor of mathematics to do all he
+could for this boy. Merely because the professor had said: "This," and pointed
+to Roark’s project, "is a great man." A great man, thought the Dean, or a
+criminal. The Dean winced. He did not approve of either.
+He thought of what he had heard about Roark’s past. Roark’s father had been a
+steel puddler somewhere in Ohio and had died long ago. The boy’s entrance papers
+showed no record of nearest relatives. When asked about it, Roark had said
+indifferently: "I don’t think I have any relatives. I may have. I don’t know."
+He had seemed astonished that he should be expected to have any interest in the
+matter. He had not made or sought a single friend on the campus. He had refused
+to join a fraternity. He had worked his way through high school and through the
+three years here at the Institute. He had worked as a common laborer in the
+building trades since childhood. He had done plastering, plumbing, steel work,
+anything he could get, going from one small town to another, working his way
+east, to the great cities. The Dean had seen him, last summer, on his vacation,
+catching rivets on a skyscraper in construction in Boston; his long body relaxed
+under greasy overalls, only his eyes intent, and his right arm swinging forward,
+once in a while, expertly, without effort, to catch the flying ball of fire at
+16
+
+the last moment, when it seemed that the hot rivet would miss the bucket and
+strike him in the face.
+"Look here, Roark," said the Dean gently. "You have worked hard for your
+education. You had only one year left to go. There is something important to
+consider, particularly for a boy in your position. There’s the practical side of
+an architect’s career to think about. An architect is not an end in himself. He
+is only a small part of a great social whole. Co-operation is the key word to
+our modern world and to the profession of architecture in particular. Have you
+thought of your potential clients?"
+"Yes," said Roark.
+"The Client," said the Dean. "The Client. Think of that above all. He’s the one
+to live in the house you build. Your only purpose is to serve him. You must
+aspire to give the proper artistic expression to his wishes. Isn’t that all one
+can say on the subject?"
+"Well, I could say that I must aspire to build for my client the most
+comfortable, the most logical, the most beautiful house that can be built. I
+could say that I must try to sell him the best I have and also teach him to know
+the best. I could say it, but I won’t. Because I don’t intend to build in order
+to serve or help anyone. I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I
+intend to have clients in order to build."
+"How do you propose to force your ideas on them?"
+"I don’t propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me."
+Then the Dean understood what had puzzled him in Roark’s manner.
+"You know," he said, "you would sound much more convincing if you spoke as if
+you cared whether I agreed with you or not."
+"That’s true," said Roark. "I don’t care whether you agree with me or not." He
+said it so simply that it did not sound offensive, it sounded like the statement
+of a fact which he noticed, puzzled, for the first time.
+"You don’t care what others think--which might be understandable. But you don’t
+care even to make them think as you do?"
+"No."
+"But that’s...that’s monstrous."
+"Is it? Probably. I couldn’t say."
+"I’m glad of this interview," said the Dean, suddenly, too loudly. "It has
+relieved my conscience. I believe, as others stated at the meeting, that the
+profession of architecture is not for you. I have tried to help you. Now I agree
+with the Board. You are a man not to be encouraged. You are dangerous."
+"To whom?" asked Roark.
+But the Dean rose, indicating that the interview was over.
+Roark left the room. He walked slowly through the long halls, down the stairs,
+out to the lawn below. He had met many men such as the Dean; he had never
+understood them. He knew only that there was some important difference between
+17
+
+his actions and theirs. It had ceased to disturb him long ago. But he always
+looked for a central theme in buildings and he looked for a central impulse in
+men. He knew the source of his actions; he could not discover theirs. He did not
+care. He had never learned the process of thinking about other people. But he
+wondered, at times, what made them such as they were. He wondered again,
+thinking of the Dean. There was an important secret involved somewhere in that
+question, he thought. There was a principle which he must discover.
+But he stopped. He saw the sunlight of late afternoon, held still in the moment
+before it was to fade, on the gray limestone of a stringcourse running along the
+brick wall of the Institute building. He forgot men, the Dean and the principle
+behind the Dean, which he wanted to discover. He thought only of how lovely the
+stone looked in the fragile light and of what he could have done with that
+stone.
+He thought of a broad sheet of paper, and he saw, rising on the paper, bare
+walls of gray limestone with long bands of glass, admitting the glow of the sky
+into the classrooms. In the comer of the sheet stood a sharp, angular
+signature--HOWARD ROARK.
+
+2.
+"...ARCHITECTURE, my friends, is a great Art based on two cosmic principles:
+Beauty and Utility. In a broader sense, these are but part of the three eternal
+entities: Truth, Love and Beauty. Truth--to the traditions of our Art, Love--for
+our fellow men whom we are to serve, Beauty--ah, Beauty is a compelling goddess
+to all artists, be it in the shape of a lovely woman or a
+building....Hm....Yes....In conclusion, I should like to say to you, who are
+about to embark upon your careers in architecture, that you are now the
+custodians of a sacred heritage....Hm....Yes....So, go forth into the world,
+armed with the three eternal entities--armed with courage and vision, loyal to
+the standards this great school has represented for many years. May you all
+serve faithfully, neither as slaves to the past nor as those parvenus who preach
+originality for its own sake, which attitude is only ignorant vanity. May you
+all have many rich, active years before you and leave, as you depart from this
+world, your mark on the sands of time!"
+Guy Francon ended with a flourish, raising his right arm in a sweeping salute;
+informal, but with an air, that gay, swaggering air which Guy Francon could
+always permit himself. The huge hall before him came to life in applause and
+approval.
+A sea of faces, young, perspiring and eager, had been raised solemnly--for
+forty-five minutes--to the platform where Guy Francon had held forth as the
+speaker at the commencement exercises of the Stanton Institute of Technology,
+Guy Francon who had brought his own person from New York for the occasion; Guy
+Francon, of the illustrious firm of Francon & Heyer, vice-president of the
+Architects’ Guild of America, member of the American Academy of Arts and
+Letters, member of the National Fine Arts Commission, Secretary of the Arts and
+Crafts League of New York, chairman of the Society for Architectural
+Enlightenment of the U.S.A.; Guy Francon, knight of the Legion of Honor of
+France, decorated by the governments of Great Britain, Belgium, Monaco and Siam;
+Guy Francon, Stanton’s greatest alumnus, who had designed the famous Frink
+National Bank Building of New York City, on the top of which, twenty-five floors
+above the pavements, there burned in a miniature replica of the Hadrian
+Mausoleum a wind-blown torch made of glass and the best General Electric bulbs.
+18
+
+Guy Francon descended from the platform, fully conscious of his timing and
+movements. He was of medium height and not too heavy, with just an unfortunate
+tendency to stoutness. Nobody, he knew, would give him his real age, which was
+fifty-one. His face bore not a wrinkle nor a single straight line; it was an
+artful composition in globes, circles, arcs and ellipses, with bright little
+eyes twinkling wittily. His clothes displayed an artist’s infinite attention to
+details. He wished, as he descended the steps, that this were a co-educational
+school.
+The hall before him, he thought, was a splendid specimen of architecture, made a
+bit stuffy today by the crowd and by the neglected problem of ventilation. But
+it boasted green marble dadoes, Corinthian columns of cast iron painted gold,
+and garlands of gilded fruit on the walls; the pineapples particularly, thought
+Guy Francon, had stood the test of years very well. It is, thought Guy Francon,
+touching; it was I who built this annex and this very hall, twenty years ago;
+and here I am.
+The hall was packed with bodies and faces, so tightly that one could not
+distinguish at a glance which faces belonged to which bodies. It was like a
+soft, shivering aspic made of mixed arms, shoulders, chests and stomachs. One of
+the heads, pale, dark haired and beautiful, belonged to Peter Keating.
+He sat, well in front, trying to keep his eyes on the platform, because he knew
+that many people were looking at him and would look at him later. He did not
+glance back, but the consciousness of those centered glances never left him. His
+eyes were dark, alert, intelligent. His mouth, a small upturned crescent
+faultlessly traced, was gentle and generous, and warm with the faint promise of
+a smile. His head had a certain classical perfection in the shape of the skull,
+in the natural wave of black ringlets about finely hollowed temples. He held his
+head in the manner of one who takes his beauty for granted, but knows that
+others do not. He was Peter Keating, star student of Stanton, president of the
+student body, captain of the track team, member of the most important
+fraternity, voted the most popular man on the campus.
+The crowd was there, thought Peter Keating, to see him graduate, and he tried to
+estimate the capacity of the hall. They knew of his scholastic record and no one
+would beat his record today. Oh, well, there was Shlinker. Shlinker had given
+him stiff competition, but he had beaten Shlinker this last year. He had worked
+like a dog, because he had wanted to beat Shlinker. He had no rivals
+today....Then he felt suddenly as if something had fallen down, inside his
+throat, to his stomach, something cold and empty, a blank hole rolling down and
+leaving that feeling on its way: not a thought, just the hint of a question
+asking him whether he was really as great as this day would proclaim him to be.
+He looked for Shlinker in the crowd; he saw his yellow face and gold-rimmed
+glasses. He stared at Shlinker warmly, in relief, in reassurance, in gratitude.
+It was obvious that Shlinker could never hope to equal his own appearance or
+ability; he had nothing to doubt; he would always beat Shlinker and all the
+Shlinkers of the world; he would let no one achieve what he could not achieve.
+Let them all watch him. He would give them good reason to stare. He felt the hot
+breaths about him and the expectation, like a tonic. It was wonderful, thought
+Peter Keating, to be alive.
+His head was beginning to reel a little. It was a pleasant feeling. The feeling
+carried him, unresisting and unremembering, to the platform in front of all
+those faces. He stood--slender, trim, athletic--and let the deluge break upon
+his head. He gathered from its roar that he had graduated with honors, that the
+Architects’ Guild of America had presented him with a gold medal and that he had
+been awarded the Prix de Paris by the Society for Architectural Enlightenment of
+the U.S.A.--a four-year scholarship at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris.
+19
+
+Then he was shaking hands, scratching the perspiration off his face with the end
+of a rolled parchment, nodding, smiling, suffocating in his black gown and
+hoping that people would not notice his mother sobbing with her arms about him.
+The President of the Institute shook his hand, booming: "Stanton will be proud
+of you, my boy." The Dean shook his hand, repeating: "...a glorious future...a
+glorious future...a glorious future..." Professor Peterkin shook his hand, and
+patted his shoulder, saying: "...and you’ll find it absolutely essential; for
+example, I had the experience when I built the Peabody Post Office..." Keating
+did not listen to the rest, because he had heard the story of the Peabody Post
+Office many times. It was the only structure anyone had ever known Professor
+Peterkin to have erected, before he sacrificed his practice to the
+responsibilities of teaching. A great deal was said about Keating’s final
+project--a Palace of Fine Arts. For the life of him, Keating could not remember
+at the moment what that project was.
+Through all this, his eyes held the vision of Guy Francon shaking his hand, and
+his ears held the sounds of Francon’s mellow voice: "...as I have told you, it
+is still open, my boy. Of course, now that you have this scholarship...you will
+have to decide...a Beaux-Arts diploma is very important to a young man...but I
+should be delighted to have you in our office...."
+The banquet of the Class of ’22 was long and solemn. Keating listened to the
+speeches with interest; when he heard the endless sentences about "young men as
+the hope of American Architecture" and "the future opening its golden gates," he
+knew that he was the hope and his was the future, and it was pleasant to hear
+this confirmation from so many eminent lips. He looked at the gray-haired
+orators and thought of how much younger he would be when he reached their
+positions, theirs and beyond them.
+Then he thought suddenly of Howard Roark. He was surprised to find that the
+flash of that name in his memory gave him a sharp little twinge of pleasure,
+before he could know why. Then he remembered: Howard Roark had been expelled
+this morning. He reproached himself silently; he made a determined effort to
+feel sorry. But the secret glow came back, whenever he thought of that
+expulsion. The event proved conclusively that he had been a fool to imagine
+Roark a dangerous rival; at one time, he had worried about Roark more than about
+Shlinker, even though Roark was two years younger and one class below him. If he
+had ever entertained any doubts on their respective gifts, hadn’t this day
+settled it all? And, he remembered, Roark had been very nice to him, helping him
+whenever he was stuck on a problem...not stuck, really, just did not have the
+time to think it out, a plan or something. Christ! how Roark could untangle a
+plan, like pulling a string and it was open...well, what if he could? What did
+it get him? He was done for now. And knowing this, Peter Keating experienced at
+last a satisfying pang of sympathy for Howard Roark.
+When Keating was called upon to speak, he rose confidently. He could not show
+that he was terrified. He had nothing to say about architecture. But he spoke,
+his head high, as an equal among equals, just subtly diffident, so that no great
+name present could take offense. He remembered saying: "Architecture is a great
+art...with our eyes to the future and the reverence of the past in our
+hearts...of all the crafts, the most important one sociologically...and, as the
+man who is an inspiration to us all has said today, the three eternal entities
+are: Truth, Love and Beauty...."
+Then, in the corridors outside, in the noisy confusion of leave-taking, a boy
+had thrown an arm about Keating’s shoulders and whispered: "Run on home and get
+out of the soup-and-fish, Pete, and it’s Boston for us tonight, just our own
+gang; I’ll pick you up in an hour." Ted Shlinker had urged: "Of course you’re
+20
+
+coming, Pete. No fun without you. And, by the way, congratulations and all that
+sort of thing. No hard feelings. May the best man win." Keating had thrown his
+arm about Shlinker’s shoulders; Keating’s eyes had glowed with an insistent kind
+of warmth, as if Shlinker were his most precious friend; Keating’s eyes glowed
+like that on everybody. He had said: "Thanks, Ted, old man. I really do feel
+awful about the A.G.A. medal--I think you were the one for it, but you never can
+tell what possesses those old fogies." And now Keating was on his way home
+through the soft darkness, wondering how to get away from his mother for the
+night.
+His mother, he thought, had done a great deal for him. As she pointed out
+frequently, she was a lady and had graduated from high school; yet she had
+worked hard, had taken boarders into their home, a concession unprecedented in
+her family.
+His father had owned a stationery store in Stanton. Changing times had ended the
+business and a hernia had ended Peter Keating, Sr., twelve years ago. Louisa
+Keating had been left with the home that stood at the end of a respectable
+street, an annuity from an insurance kept up accurately--she had seen to
+that--and her son. The annuity was a modest one, but with the help of the
+boarders and of a tenacious purpose Mrs. Keating had managed. In the summers her
+son helped, clerking in hotels or posing for hat advertisements. Her son, Mrs.
+Keating had decided, would assume his rightful place in the world, and she had
+clung to this as softly, as inexorably as a leech....It’s funny, Keating
+remembered, at one time he had wanted to be an artist. It was his mother who had
+chosen a better field in which to exercise his talent for drawing.
+"Architecture," she had said, "is such a respectable profession. Besides, you
+meet the best people in it." She had pushed him into his career, he had never
+known when or how. It’s funny, thought Keating, he had not remembered that
+youthful ambition of his for years. It’s funny that it should hurt him now--to
+remember. Well, this was the night to remember it--and to forget it forever.
+Architects, he thought, always made brilliant careers. And once on top, did they
+ever fail? Suddenly, he recalled Henry Cameron; builder of skyscrapers twenty
+years ago; old drunkard with offices on some waterfront today. Keating shuddered
+and walked faster.
+He wondered, as he walked, whether people were looking at him. He watched the
+rectangles of lighted windows; when a curtain fluttered and a head leaned out,
+he tried to guess whether it had leaned to watch his passing; if it hadn’t, some
+day it would; some day, they all would.
+Howard Roark was sitting on the porch steps when Keating approached the house.
+He was leaning back against the steps, propped up on his elbows, his long legs
+stretched out. A morning-glory climbed over the porch pillars, as a curtain
+between the house and the light of a lamppost on the corner.
+It was strange to see an electric globe in the air of a spring night. It made
+the street darker and softer; it hung alone, like a gap, and left nothing to be
+seen but a few branches heavy with leaves, standing still at the gap’s edges.
+The small hint became immense, as if the darkness held nothing but a flood of
+leaves. The mechanical ball of glass made the leaves seem more living; it took
+away their color and gave the promise that in daylight they would be a brighter
+green than had ever existed; it took away one’s sight and left a new sense
+instead, neither smell nor touch, yet both, a sense of spring and space.
+Keating stopped when he recognized the preposterous orange hair in the darkness
+of the porch. It was the one person whom he had wanted to see tonight. He was
+glad to find Roark alone, and a little afraid of it.
+21
+
+"Congratulations, Peter," said Roark.
+"Oh...Oh, thanks...." Keating was surprised to find that he felt more pleasure
+than from any other compliment he had received today. He was timidly glad that
+Roark approved, and he called himself inwardly a fool for it. "...I mean...do
+you know or..." He added sharply: "Has mother been telling you?"
+"She has."
+"She shouldn’t have!"
+"Why not?"
+"Look, Howard, you know that I’m terribly sorry about your being..."
+Roark threw his head back and looked up at him.
+"Forget it," said Roark.
+"I...there’s something I want to speak to you about, Howard, to ask your advice.
+Mind if I sit down?"
+"What is it?"
+Keating sat down on the steps beside him. There was no part that he could ever
+play in Roark’s presence. Besides, he did not feel like playing a part now. He
+heard a leaf rustling in its fall to the earth; it was a thin, glassy, spring
+sound.
+He knew, for the moment, that he felt affection for Roark; an affection that
+held pain, astonishment and helplessness.
+"You won’t think," said Keating gently, in complete sincerity, "that it’s awful
+of me to be asking about my business, when you’ve just been...?"
+"I said forget about that. What is it?"
+"You know," said Keating honestly and unexpectedly even to himself, "I’ve often
+thought that you’re crazy. But I know that you know many things about
+it--architecture, I mean--which those fools never knew. And I know that you love
+it as they never will."
+"Well?"
+"Well, I don’t know why I should come to you, but--Howard, I’ve never said it
+before, but you see, I’d rather have your opinion on things than the Dean’s--I’d
+probably follow the Dean’s, but it’s just that yours means more to me myself, I
+don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m saying this, either."
+Roark turned over on his side, looked at him, and laughed. It was a young, kind,
+friendly laughter, a thing so rare to hear from Roark that Keating felt as if
+someone had taken his hand in reassurance; and he forgot that he had a party in
+Boston waiting for him.
+"Come on," said Roark, "you’re not being afraid of me, are you? What do you want
+to ask about?"
+"It’s about my scholarship. The Paris prize I got."
+22
+
+"Yes?"
+"It’s for four years. But, on the other hand, Guy Francon offered me a job with
+him some time ago. Today he said it’s still open. And I don’t know which to
+take."
+Roark looked at him; Roark’s fingers moved in slow rotation, beating against the
+steps.
+"If you want my advice, Peter," he said at last, "you’ve made a mistake already.
+By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you
+know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?"
+"You see, that’s what I admire about you, Howard. You always know."
+"Drop the compliments."
+"But I mean it. How do you always manage to decide?"
+"How can you let others decide for you?"
+"But you see, I’m not sure, Howard. I’m never sure of myself. I don’t know
+whether I’m as good as they all tell me I am. I wouldn’t admit that to anyone
+but you. I think it’s because you’re always so sure that I..."
+"Petey!" Mrs. Keating’s voice exploded behind them. "Petey, sweetheart! What are
+you doing there?"
+She stood in the doorway, in her best dress of burgundy taffeta, happy and
+angry.
+"And here I’ve been sitting all alone, waiting for you! What on earth are you
+doing on those filthy steps in your dress suit? Get up this minute! Come on in
+the house, boys. I’ve got hot chocolate and cookies ready for you."
+"But, Mother. I wanted to speak to Howard about something important," said
+Keating. But he rose to his feet.
+She seemed not to have heard. She walked into the house. Keating followed.
+Roark looked after them, shrugged, rose and went in also.
+Mrs. Keating settled down in an armchair, her stiff skirt crackling.
+"Well?" she asked. "What were you two discussing out there?"
+Keating fingered an ash tray, picked up a matchbox and dropped it, then,
+ignoring her, turned to Roark.
+"Look, Howard, drop the pose," he said, his voice high. "Shall I junk the
+scholarship and go to work, or let Francon wait and grab the Beaux-Arts to
+impress the yokels? What do you think?"
+Something was gone. The one moment was lost.
+"Now, Petey, let me get this straight..." began Mrs. Keating.
+"Oh, wait a minute, Mother!...Howard, I’ve got to weigh it carefully. It isn’t
+23
+
+everyone who can get a scholarship like that. You’re pretty good when you rate
+that. A course at the Beaux-Arts--you know how important that is."
+"I don’t," said Roark.
+"Oh, hell, I know your crazy ideas, but I’m speaking practically, for a man in
+my position. Ideals aside for a moment, it certainly is..."
+"You don’t want my advice," said Roark.
+"Of course I do! I’m asking you!"
+But Keating could never be the same when he had an audience, any audience.
+Something was gone. He did not know it, but he felt that Roark knew; Roark’s
+eyes made him uncomfortable and that made him angry.
+"I want to practice architecture," snapped Keating, "not talk about it! Gives
+you a great prestige--the old École. Puts you above the rank and file of the
+ex-plumbers who think they can build. On the other hand, an opening with
+Francon--Guy Francon himself offering it!"
+Roark turned away.
+"How many boys will match that?" Keating went on blindly. "A year from now
+they’ll be boasting they’re working for Smith or Jones if they find work at all.
+While I’ll be with Francon & Heyer!"
+"You’re quite right, Peter," said Mrs. Keating, rising. "On a question like that
+you don’t want to consult your mother. It’s too important. I’ll leave you to
+settle it with Mr. Roark."
+He looked at his mother. He did not want to hear what she thought of this; he
+knew that his only chance to decide was to make the decision before he heard
+her; she had stopped, looking at him, ready to turn and leave the room; he knew
+it was not a pose--she would leave if he wished it; he wanted her to go; he
+wanted it desperately. He said:
+"Why, Mother, how can you say that? Of course I want your opinion. What...what
+do you think?"
+She ignored the raw irritation in his voice. She smiled.
+"Petey, I never think anything. It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you."
+"Well..." he began hesitantly, watching her, "if I go to the Beaux-Arts..."
+"Fine," said Mrs. Keating, "go to the Beaux-Arts. It’s a grand place. A whole
+ocean away from your home. Of course, if you go, Mr. Francon will take somebody
+else. People will talk about that. Everybody knows that Mr. Francon picks out
+the best boy from Stanton every year for his office. I wonder how it’ll look if
+some other boy gets the job? But I guess that doesn’t matter."
+"What...what will people say?"
+"Nothing much, I guess. Only that the other boy was the best man of his class. I
+guess he’ll take Shlinker."
+"No!" he gulped furiously. "Not Shlinker!"
+24
+
+"Yes," she said sweetly. "Shlinker."
+"But..."
+"But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please
+yourself."
+"And you think that Francon..."
+"Why should I think of Mr. Francon? It’s nothing to me."
+"Mother, you want me to take the job with Francon?"
+"I don’t want anything, Petey. You’re the boss."
+He wondered whether he really liked his mother. But she was his mother and this
+fact was recognized by everybody as meaning automatically that he loved her, and
+so he took for granted mat whatever he felt for her was love. He did not know
+whether there was any reason why he should respect her judgment. She was his
+mother; this was supposed to take the place of reasons.
+"Yes, of course, Mother....But...Yes, I know, but.. Howard?"
+It was a plea for help. Roark was there, on a davenport in the corner, half
+lying, sprawled limply like a kitten. It had often astonished Keating; he had
+seen Roark moving with the soundless tension, the control, the precision of a
+cat; he had seen him relaxed, like a cat, in shapeless ease, as if his body held
+no single solid bone. Roark glanced up at him. He said:
+"Peter, you know how I feel about either one of your opportunities. Take your
+choice of the lesser evil. What will you learn at the Beaux-Arts? Only more
+Renaissance palaces and operetta settings. They’ll kill everything you might
+have in you. You do good work, once in a while, when somebody lets you. If you
+really want to learn, go to work. Francon is a bastard and a fool, but you will
+be building. It will prepare you for going on your own that much sooner."
+"Even Mr. Roark can talk sense sometimes," said Mrs. Keating, "even if he does
+talk like a truck driver."
+"Do you really think that I do good work?" Keating looked at him, as if his eyes
+still held the reflection of that one sentence--and nothing else mattered.
+"Occasionally," said Roark. "Not often."
+"Now that it’s all settled..." began Mrs. Keating.
+"I...I’ll have to think it over, Mother."
+"Now that it’s all settled, how about the hot chocolate? I’ll have it out to you
+in a jiffy!"
+She smiled at her son, an innocent smile that declared her obedience and
+gratitude, and she rustled out of the room.
+Keating paced nervously, stopped, lighted a cigarette, stood spitting the smoke
+out in short jerks, then looked at Roark.
+"What are you going to do now, Howard?"
+25
+
+"I?"
+"Very thoughtless of me, I know, going on like that about myself. Mother means
+well, but she drives me crazy....Well, to hell with that. What are you going to
+do?"
+"I’m going to New York."
+"Oh, swell. To get a job?"
+"To get a job."
+"In...in architecture?"
+"In architecture, Peter."
+"That’s grand. I’m glad. Got any definite prospects?
+"I’m going to work for Henry Cameron."
+"Oh, no, Howard!"
+Roark smiled slowly, the corners of his mouth sharp, and said nothing.
+"Oh, no, Howard!"
+"Yes "
+"But he’s nothing, nobody any more! Oh, I know he has a name but he’s done for!
+He never gets any important buildings, hasn’t had any for years! They say he’s
+got a dump for an office. What kind of future will you get out of him? What will
+you learn?"
+"Not much. Only how to build."
+"For God’s sake, you can’t go on like that, deliberately ruining yourself! I
+thought...well, yes, I thought you’d learned something today!"
+"I have."
+"Look, Howard, if it’s because you think that no one else will have you now, no
+one better, why, I’ll help you. I’ll work old Francon and I’ll get connections
+and..."
+"Thank you, Peter. But it won’t be necessary. It’s settled.
+"What did he say?"
+"Who?"
+"Cameron."
+"I’ve never met him."
+Then a horn screamed outside. Keating remembered, started off to change his
+clothes, collided with his mother at the door and knocked a cup off her loaded
+tray.
+"Petey!"
+26
+
+"Never mind, Mother!" He seized her elbows. "I’m in a hurry, sweetheart. A
+little party with the boys--now, now, don’t say anything--I won’t be late
+and--look! We’ll celebrate my going with Francon & Heyer!"
+He kissed her impulsively, with the gay exuberance that made him irresistible at
+times, and flew out of the room, up the stairs. Mrs. Keating shook her head,
+flustered, reproving and happy.
+In his room, while flinging his clothes in all directions, Keating thought
+suddenly of a wire he would send to New York. That particular subject had not
+been in his mind all day, but it came to him with a sense of desperate urgency;
+he wanted to send that wire now, at once. He scribbled it down on a piece of
+paper:
+"Katie dearest coming New York job Francon love ever
+"Peter"
+That night Keating raced toward Boston, wedged in between two boys, the wind and
+the road whistling past him. And he thought that the world was opening to him
+now, like the darkness fleeing before the bobbing headlights. He was free. He
+was ready. In a few years--so very soon, for time did not exist in the speed of
+that car--his name would ring like a horn, ripping people out of sleep. He was
+ready to do great things, magnificent things, things unsurpassed in...in...oh,
+hell...in architecture.
+
+3.
+PETER KEATING looked at the streets of New York. The people, he observed, were
+extremely well dressed.
+He had stopped for a moment before the building on Fifth Avenue, where the
+office of Francon & Heyer and his first day of work awaited him. He looked at
+the men who hurried past. Smart, he thought, smart as hell. He glanced
+regretfully at his own clothes. He had a great deal to learn in New York.
+When he could delay it no longer, he turned to the door. It was a miniature
+Doric portico, every inch of it scaled down to the exact proportions decreed by
+the artists who had worn flowing Grecian tunics; between the marble perfection
+of the columns a revolving door sparkled with nickel plate, reflecting the
+streaks of automobiles flying past. Keating walked through the revolving door,
+through the lustrous marble lobby, to an elevator of gilt and red lacquer that
+brought him, thirty floors later, to a mahogany door. He saw a slender brass
+plate with delicate letters:
+FRANCON & HEYER, ARCHITECTS.
+The reception room of the office of Francon & Heyer, Architects, looked like a
+cool, intimate ballroom in a Colonial mansion. The silver white walls were
+paneled with flat pilasters; the pilasters were fluted and curved into Ionic
+snails; they supported little pediments broken in the middle to make room for
+half a Grecian urn plastered against the wall. Etchings of Greek temples adorned
+the panels, too small to be distinguished, but presenting the unmistakable
+columns, pediments and crumbling stone.
+Quite incongruously, Keating felt as if a conveyor belt was under his feet, from
+27
+
+the moment he crossed the threshold. It carried him to the reception clerk who
+sat at a telephone switchboard behind the white balustrade of a Florentine
+balcony. It transferred him to the threshold of a huge drafting room. He saw
+long, flat tables, a forest of twisted rods descending from the ceiling to end
+in green-shaded lamps, enormous blueprint files, towers of yellow drawers,
+papers, tin boxes, sample bricks, pots of glue and calendars from construction
+companies, most of them bearing pictures of naked women. The chief draftsman
+snapped at Keating, without quite seeing him. He was bored and crackling with
+purpose simultaneously. He jerked his thumb in the direction of a locker room,
+thrust his chin out toward the door of a locker, and stood, rocking from heels
+to toes, while Keating pulled a pearl-gray smock over his stiff, uncertain body.
+Francon had insisted on that smock. The conveyor belt stopped at a table in a
+corner of the drafting room, where Keating found himself with a set of plans to
+expand, the scaggy back of the chief draftsman retreating from him in the
+unmistakable manner of having forgotten his existence.
+Keating bent over his task at once, his eyes fixed, his throat rigid. He saw
+nothing but the pearly shimmer of the paper before him. The steady lines he drew
+surprised him, for he felt certain that his hand was jerking an inch back and
+forth across the sheet. He followed the lines, not knowing where they led or
+why. He knew only that the plan was someone’s tremendous achievement which he
+could neither question nor equal. He wondered why he had ever thought of himself
+as a potential architect.
+Much later, he noticed the wrinkles of a gray smock sticking to a pair of
+shoulder blades over the next table. He glanced about him, cautiously at first,
+then with curiosity, then with pleasure, then with contempt. When he reached
+this last, Peter Keating became himself again and felt love for mankind. He
+noticed sallow cheeks, a funny nose, a wart on a receding chin, a stomach
+squashed against the edge of a table. He loved these sights. What these could
+do, he could do better. He smiled. Peter Keating needed his fellow men.
+When he glanced at his plans again, he noticed the flaws glaring at him from the
+masterpiece. It was the floor of a private residence, and he noted the twisted
+hallways that sliced great hunks of space for no apparent reason, the long,
+rectangular sausages of rooms doomed to darkness. Jesus, he thought, they’d have
+flunked me for this in the first term. After which, he proceeded with his work
+swiftly, easily, expertly--and happily.
+Before lunchtime. Keating had made friends in the room, not any definite
+friends, but a vague soil spread and ready from which friendship would spring.
+He had smiled at his neighbors and winked in understanding over nothing at all.
+He had used each trip to the water cooler to caress those he passed with the
+soft, cheering glow of his eyes, the brilliant eyes that seemed to pick each man
+in turn out of the room, out of the universe, as the most important specimen of
+humanity and as Keating’s dearest friend. There goes--there seemed to be left in
+his wake--a smart boy and a hell of a good fellow.
+Keating noticed that a tall blond youth at the next table was doing the
+elevation of an office building. Keating leaned with chummy respect against the
+boy’s shoulder and looked at the laurel garlands entwined about fluted columns
+three floors high.
+"Pretty good for the old man," said Keating with admiration.
+"Who?" asked the boy.
+"Why, Francon," said Keating.
+28
+
+"Francon hell," said the boy placidly. "He hasn’t designed a doghouse in eight
+years." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, at a glass door behind them.
+"Him."
+"What?" asked Keating, turning.
+"Him," said the boy. "Stengel. He does all these things."
+Behind the glass door Keating saw a pair of bony shoulders above the edge of a
+desk, a small, triangular head bent intently, and two blank pools of light in
+the round frames of glasses.
+It was late in the afternoon when a presence seemed to have passed beyond the
+closed door, and Keating learned from the rustle of whispers around him that Guy
+Francon had arrived and had risen to his office on the floor above. Half an hour
+later the glass door opened and Stengel came out, a huge piece of cardboard
+dangling between his fingers.
+"Hey, you," he said, his glasses stopping on Keating’s face. "You doing the
+plans for this?" He swung the cardboard forward. "Take this up to the boss for
+the okay. Try to listen to what he’ll say and try to look intelligent. Neither
+of which matters anyway."
+He was short and his arms seemed to hang down to his ankles; arms swinging like
+ropes in the long sleeves, with big, efficient hands. Keating’s eyes froze,
+darkening, for one-tenth of a second, gathered in a tight stare at the blank
+lenses. Then Keating smiled and said pleasantly:
+"Yes, sir."
+He carried the cardboard on the tips of his ten fingers, up the crimson-plushed
+stairway to Guy Francon’s office. The cardboard displayed a water-color
+perspective of a gray granite mansion with three tiers of dormers, five
+balconies, four bays, twelve columns, one flagpole and two lions at the
+entrance. In the corner, neatly printed by hand, stood: "Residence of Mr. and
+Mrs. James S. Whattles. Francon & Heyer, Architects." Keating whistled softly:
+James S. Whattles was the multimillionaire manufacturer of shaving lotions.
+Guy Francon’s office was polished. No, thought Keating, not polished, but
+shellacked; no, not shellacked, but liquid with mirrors melted and poured over
+every object. He saw splinters of his own reflection let loose like a swarm of
+butterflies, following him across the room, on the Chippendale cabinets, on the
+Jacobean chairs, on the Louis XV mantelpiece. He had time to note a genuine
+Roman statue in a corner, sepia photographs of the Parthenon, of Rheims
+Cathedral, of Versailles and of the Frink National Bank Building with the
+eternal torch.
+He saw his own legs approaching him in the side of the massive mahogany desk.
+Guy Francon sat behind the desk. Guy Francon’s face was yellow and his cheeks
+sagged. He looked at Keating for an instant as if he had never seen him before,
+then remembered and smiled expansively.
+"Well, well, well, Kittredge, my boy, here we are, all set and at home! So glad
+to see you. Sit down, boy, sit down, what have you got there? Well, there’s no
+hurry, no hurry at all. Sit down. How do you like it here?"
+"I’m afraid, sir, that I’m a little too happy," said Keating, with an expression
+of frank, boyish helplessness. "I thought I could be businesslike on my first
+job, but starting in a place like this...I guess it knocked me out a
+29
+
+little....I’ll get over it, sir," he promised.
+"Of course," said Guy Francon. "It might be a bit overwhelming for a boy, just a
+bit. But don’t you worry. I’m sure you’ll make good."
+"I’ll do my best, sir."
+"Of course you will. What’s this they sent me?" Francon extended his hand to the
+drawing, but his fingers came to rest limply on his forehead instead. "It’s so
+annoying, this headache....No, no, nothing serious--" he smiled at Keating’s
+prompt concern--"just a little mal de tête. One works so hard."
+"Is there anything I can get for you, sir?"
+"No, no, thank you. It’s not anything you can get for me, it’s if only you could
+take something away from me." He winked. "The champagne. Entre nous, that
+champagne of theirs wasn’t worth a damn last night. I’ve never cared for
+champagne anyway. Let me tell you, Kittredge, it’s very important to know about
+wines, for instance when you’ll take a client out to dinner and will want to be
+sure of the proper thing to order. Now I’ll tell you a professional secret. Take
+quail, for instance. Now most people would order Burgundy with it. What do you
+do? You call for Clos Vougeot 1904. See? Adds that certain touch. Correct, but
+original. One must always be original....Who sent you up, by the way?"
+"Mr. Stengel, sir."
+"Oh, Stengel." The tone in which he pronounced the name clicked like a shutter
+in Keating’s mind: it was a permission to be stored away for future use. "Too
+grand to bring his own stuff up, eh? Mind you, he’s a great designer, the best
+designer in New York City, but he’s just getting to be a bit too grand lately.
+He thinks he’s the only one doing any work around here, just because he smudges
+at a board all day long. You’ll learn, my boy, when you’ve been in the business
+longer, that the real work of an office is done beyond its walls. Take last
+night, for instance. Banquet of the Clarion Real Estate Association. Two hundred
+guests--dinner and champagne--oh, yes, champagne!" He wrinkled his nose
+fastidiously, in self-mockery. "A few words to say informally in a little
+after-dinner speech--you know, nothing blatant, no vulgar sales talk--only a few
+well-chosen thoughts on the responsibility of realtors to society, on the
+importance of selecting architects who are competent, respected and well
+established. You know, a few bright little slogans that will stick in the mind."
+"Yes, sir, like ’Choose the builder of your home as carefully as you choose the
+bride to inhabit it.’"
+"Not bad. Not bad at all, Kittredge. Mind if I jot it down?"
+"My name is Keating, sir," said Keating firmly. "You are very welcome to the
+idea. I’m happy if it appeals to you."
+"Keating, of course! Why, of course, Keating," said Francon with a disarming
+smile. "Dear me, one meets so many people. How did you say it? Choose the
+builder...it was very well put."
+He made Keating repeat it and wrote it down on a pad, picking a pencil from an
+array before him, new, many-colored pencils, sharpened to a professional needle
+point, ready, unused.
+Then he pushed he pad aside, sighed, patted the smooth waves of his hair and
+said wearily:
+30
+
+"Well, all right, I suppose I’ll have to look at the thing."
+Keating extended the drawing respectfully. Francon leaned back, held the
+cardboard out at arm’s length and looked at it. He closed his left eye, then his
+right eye, then moved the cardboard an inch farther. Keating expected wildly to
+see him turn the drawing upside down. But Francon just held it and Keating knew
+suddenly that he had long since stopped seeing it. Francon was studying it for
+his, Keating’s, benefit; and then Keating felt light, light as air, and he saw
+the road to his future, clear and open.
+"Hm...yes," Francon was saying, rubbing his chin with the tips of two soft
+fingers. "Hm...yes..."
+He turned to Keating.
+"Not bad," said Francon. "Not bad at all....Well...perhaps...it would have been
+more distinguished, you know, but...well, the drawing is done so neatly....What
+do you think, Keating?"
+Keating thought that four of the windows faced four mammoth granite columns. But
+he looked at Francon’s fingers playing with a petunia-mauve necktie, and decided
+not to mention it. He said instead:
+"If I may make a suggestion, sir, it seems to me that the cartouches between the
+fourth and fifth floors are somewhat too modest for so imposing a building. It
+would appear that an ornamented stringcourse would be so much more appropriate."
+"That’s it. I was just going to say it. An ornamented stringcourse....But...but
+look, it would mean diminishing the fenestration, wouldn’t it?"
+"Yes," said Keating, a faint coating of diffidence over the tone he had used in
+discussions with his classmates, "but windows are less important than the
+dignity of a building’s facade."
+"That’s right. Dignity. We must give our clients dignity above all. Yes,
+definitely, an ornamented stringcourse....Only...look, I’ve approved the
+preliminary drawings, and Stengel has had this done up so neatly."
+"Mr. Stengel will be delighted to change it if you advise him to."
+Francon’s eyes held Keating’s for a moment. Then Francon’s lashes dropped and he
+picked a piece of lint off his sleeve.
+"Of course, of course..." he said vaguely. "But...do you think the stringcourse
+is really important?"
+"I think," said Keating slowly, "it is more important to make changes you find
+necessary than to okay every drawing just as Mr. Stengel designed it."
+Because Francon said nothing, but only looked straight at him, because Francon’s
+eyes were focused and his hands limp, Keating knew that he had taken a terrible
+chance and won; he became frightened by the chance after he knew he had won.
+They looked silently across the desk, and both saw that they were two men who
+could understand each other.
+"We’ll have an ornamented stringcourse," said Francon with calm, genuine
+authority. "Leave this here. Tell Stengel that I want to see him."
+31
+
+He had turned to go. Francon stopped him. Francon’s voice was gay and warm:
+"Oh, Keating, by the way, may I make a suggestion? Just between us, no offense
+intended, but a burgundy necktie would be so much better than blue with your
+gray smock, don’t you think so?"
+"Yes, sir," said Keating easily. "Thank you. You’ll see it tomorrow."
+He walked out and closed the door softly.
+On his way back through the reception room, Keating saw a distinguished,
+gray-haired gentleman escorting a lady to the door. The gentleman wore no hat
+and obviously belonged to the office; the lady wore a mink cape, and was
+obviously a client.
+The gentleman was not bowing to the ground, he was not unrolling a carpet, he
+was not waving a fan over her head; he was only holding the door for her. It
+merely seemed to Keating that the gentleman was doing all of that.
+The Frink National Bank Building rose over Lower Manhattan, and its long shadow
+moved, as the sun traveled over the sky, like a huge clock hand across grimy
+tenements, from the Aquarium to Manhattan Bridge. When the sun was gone, the
+torch of Hadrian’s Mausoleum flared up in its stead, and made glowing red smears
+on the glass of windows for miles around, on the top stories of buildings high
+enough to reflect it. The Frink National Bank Building displayed the entire
+history of Roman art in well-chosen specimens; for a long time it had been
+considered the best building of the city, because no other structure could boast
+a single Classical item which it did not possess. It offered so many columns,
+pediments, friezes, tripods, gladiators, urns and volutes that it looked as if
+it had not been built of white marble, but squeezed out of a pastry tube. It
+was, however, built of white marble. No one knew that but the owners who had
+paid for it. It was now of a streaked, blotched, leprous color, neither brown
+nor green but the worst tones of both, the color of slow rot, the color of
+smoke, gas fumes and acids eating into a delicate stone intended for clean air
+and open country. The Frink National Bank Building, however, was a great
+success. It had been so great a success that it was the last structure Guy
+Francon ever designed; its prestige spared him the bother from then on.
+Three blocks east of the Frink National Bank stood the Dana Building. It was
+some stories lower and without any prestige whatever. Its lines were hard and
+simple, revealing, emphasizing the harmony of the steel skeleton within, as a
+body reveals the perfection of its bones. It had no other ornament to offer. It
+displayed nothing but the precision of its sharp angles, the modeling of its
+planes, the long streaks of its windows like streams of ice running down from
+the roof to the pavements. New Yorkers seldom looked at the Dana Building.
+Sometimes, a rare country visitor would come upon it unexpectedly in the
+moonlight and stop and wonder from what dream that vision had come. But such
+visitors were rare. The tenants of the Dana Building said that they would not
+exchange it for any structure on earth; they appreciated the light, the air, the
+beautiful logic of the plan in their halls and offices. But the tenants of the
+Dana Building were not numerous; no prominent man wished his business to be
+located in a building that looked "like a warehouse."
+The Dana Building had been designed by Henry Cameron.
+In the eighteen-eighties, the architects of New York fought one another for
+second place in their profession. No one aspired to the first. The first was
+held by Henry Cameron. Henry Cameron was hard to get in those days. He had a
+32
+
+waiting list two years in advance; he designed personally every structure that
+left his office. He chose what he wished to build. When he built, a client kept
+his mouth shut. He demanded of all people the one thing he had never granted
+anybody: obedience. He went through the years of his fame like a projectile
+flying to a goal no one could guess. People called him crazy. But they took what
+he gave them, whether they understood it or not, because it was a building "by
+Henry Cameron."
+At first, his buildings were merely a little different, not enough to frighten
+anyone. He made startling experiments, once in a while, but people expected it
+and one did not argue with Henry Cameron. Something was growing in him with each
+new building, struggling, taking shape, rising dangerously to an explosion. The
+explosion came with the birth of the skyscraper. When structures began to rise
+not in tier on ponderous tier of masonry, but as arrows of steel shooting upward
+without weight or limit, Henry Cameron was among the first to understand this
+new miracle and to give it form. He was among the first and the few who accepted
+the truth that a tall building must look tall. While architects cursed,
+wondering how to make a twenty-story building look like an old brick mansion,
+while they used every horizontal device available in order to cheat it of its
+height, shrink it down to tradition, hide the shame of its steel, make it small,
+safe and ancient--Henry Cameron designed skyscrapers in straight, vertical
+lines, flaunting their steel and height. While architects drew friezes and
+pediments, Henry Cameron decided that the skyscraper must not copy the Greeks.
+Henry Cameron decided that no building must copy any other.
+He was thirty-nine years old then, short, stocky, unkempt; he worked like a dog,
+missed his sleep and meals, drank seldom but then brutally, called his clients
+unprintable names, laughed at hatred and fanned it deliberately, behaved like a
+feudal lord and a longshoreman, and lived in a passionate tension that stung men
+in any room he entered, a fire neither they nor he could endure much longer. It
+was the year 1892.
+The Columbian Exposition of Chicago opened in the year 1893.
+The Rome of two thousand years ago rose on the shores of Lake Michigan, a Rome
+improved by pieces of France, Spain, Athens and every style that followed it. It
+was a "Dream City" of columns, triumphal arches, blue lagoons, crystal fountains
+and popcorn. Its architects competed on who could steal best, from the oldest
+source and from the most sources at once. It spread before the eyes of a new
+country every structural crime ever committed in all the old ones. It was white
+as a plague, and it spread as such.
+People came, looked, were astounded, and carried away with them, to the cities
+of America, the seeds of what they had seen. The seeds sprouted into weeds; into
+shingled post offices with Doric porticos, brick mansions with iron pediments,
+lofts made of twelve Parthenons piled on top of one another. The weeds grew and
+choked everything else.
+Henry Cameron had refused to work for the Columbian Exposition, and had called
+it names that were unprintable, but repeatable, though not in mixed company.
+They were repeated. It was repeated also that he had thrown an inkstand at the
+face of a distinguished banker who had asked him to design a railroad station in
+the shape of the temple of Diana at Ephesus. The banker never came back. There
+were others who never came back.
+Just as he reached the goal of long, struggling years, just as he gave shape to
+the truth he had sought--the last barrier fell closed before him. A young
+country had watched him on his way, had wondered, had begun to accept the new
+grandeur of his work. A country flung two thousand years back in an orgy of
+33
+
+Classicism could find no place for him and no use.
+It was not necessary to design buildings any longer, only to photograph them;
+the architect with the best library was the best architect Imitators copied
+imitations. To sanction it there was Culture; there were twenty centuries
+unrolling in moldering ruins; there was the great Exposition; there was every
+European post card in every family album.
+Henry Cameron had nothing to offer against this; nothing but a faith he held
+merely because it was his own. He had nobody to quote and nothing of importance
+to say. He said only that the form of a building must follow its function; that
+the structure of a building is the key to its beauty; that new methods of
+construction demand new forms; that he wished to build as he wished and for that
+reason only. But people could not listen to him when they were discussing
+Vitruvius, Michelangelo and Sir Christopher Wren.
+Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his
+work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.
+People said he never knew that he had lost. If he did, he never let them see it.
+As his clients became rarer, his manner to them grew more overbearing. The less
+the prestige of his name, the more arrogant the sound of his voice pronouncing
+it. He had had an astute business manager, a mild, self-effacing little man of
+iron who, in the days of his glory, faced quietly the storms of Cameron’s temper
+and brought him clients; Cameron insulted the clients, but the little man made
+them accept it and come back. The little man died.
+Cameron had never known how to face people. They did not matter to him, as his
+own life did not matter, as nothing mattered but buildings. He had never learned
+to give explanations, only orders. He had never been liked. He had been feared.
+No one feared him any longer.
+He was allowed to live. He lived to loathe the streets of the city he had
+dreamed of rebuilding. He lived to sit at the desk in his empty office,
+motionless, idle, waiting. He lived to read in a well-meaning newspaper account
+a reference to "the late Henry Cameron." He lived to begin drinking, quietly,
+steadily, terribly, for days and nights at a time; and to hear those who had
+driven him to it say, when his name was mentioned for a commission: "Cameron? I
+should say not. He drinks like a fish. That’s why he never gets any work." He
+lived to move from the offices that occupied three floors of a famous building
+to one floor on a less expensive street, then to a suite farther downtown, then
+to three rooms facing an air shaft, near the Battery. He chose these rooms
+because, by pressing his face to the window of his office, he could see, over a
+brick wall, the top of the Dana Building.
+Howard Roark looked at the Dana Building beyond the windows, stopping at each
+landing, as he mounted the six flights of stairs to Henry Cameron’s office; the
+elevator was out of order. The stairs had been painted a dirty file-green a long
+time ago; a little of the paint remained to grate under shoe soles in crumbling
+patches. Roark went up swiftly, as if he had an appointment, a folder of his
+drawings under his arm, his eyes on the Dana Building. He collided once with a
+man descending the stairs; this had happened to him often in the last two days;
+he had walked through the streets of the city, his head thrown back, noticing
+nothing but the buildings of New York.
+In the dark cubbyhole of Cameron’s anteroom stood a desk with a telephone and a
+typewriter. A gray-haired skeleton of a man sat at the desk, in his shirt
+sleeves, with a pair of limp suspenders over his shoulders. He was typing
+specifications intently, with two fingers and incredible speed. The light from a
+34
+
+feeble bulb made a pool of yellow on his back, where the damp shirt stuck to his
+shoulder blades.
+The man raised his head slowly, when Roark entered. He looked at Roark, said
+nothing and waited, his old eyes weary, unquestioning, incurious.
+"I should like to see Mr. Cameron," said Roark.
+"Yeah?" said the man, without challenge, offense or meaning. "About what?"
+"About a job."
+"What job?"
+"Drafting."
+The man sat looking at him blankly. It was a request that had not confronted him
+for a long time. He rose at last, without a word, shuffled to a door behind him
+and went in.
+He left the door half open. Roark heard him drawling:
+"Mr. Cameron, there’s a fellow outside says he’s looking for a job here."
+Then a voice answered, a strong, clear voice that held no tones of age:
+"Why, the damn fool! Throw him out...Wait! Send him in!"
+The old man returned, held the door open and jerked his head at it silently.
+Roark went in. The door closed behind him.
+Henry Cameron sat at his desk at the end of a long, bare room. He sat bent
+forward, his forearms on the desk, his two hands closed before him. His hair and
+his beard were coal black, with coarse threads of white. The muscles of his
+short, thick neck bulged like ropes. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves
+rolled above the elbows; the bare arms were hard, heavy and brown. The flesh of
+his broad face was rigid, as if it had aged by compression. The eyes were dark,
+young, living.
+Roark stood on the threshold and they looked at each other across the long room.
+The light from the air shaft was gray, and the dust on the drafting table, on
+the few green files, looked like fuzzy crystals deposited by the light. But on
+the wall, between the windows, Roark saw a picture. It was the only picture in
+the room. It was the drawing of a skyscraper that had never been erected.
+Roark’s eyes moved first and they moved to the drawing. He walked across the
+office, stopped before it and stood looking at it. Cameron’s eyes followed him,
+a heavy glance, like a long, thin needle held fast at one end, describing a slow
+circle, its point piercing Roark’s body, keeping it pinned firmly. Cameron
+looked at the orange hair, at the hand hanging by his side, its palm to the
+drawing, the fingers bent slightly, forgotten not in a gesture but in the
+overture to a gesture of asking or seizing something.
+"Well?" said Cameron at last. "Did you come to see me or did you come to look at
+pictures?"
+Roark turned to him.
+35
+
+"Both," said Roark.
+He walked to the desk. People had always lost their sense of existence in
+Roark’s presence; but Cameron felt suddenly that he had never been as real as in
+the awareness of the eyes now looking at him.
+"What do you want?" snapped Cameron. "I should like to work for you," said Roark
+quietly. The voice said: "I should like to work for you." The tone of the voice
+said: "I’m going to work for you."
+"Are you?" said Cameron, not realizing that he answered the unpronounced
+sentence. "What’s the matter? None of the bigger and better fellows will have
+you?"
+"I have not applied to anyone else."
+"Why not? Do you think this is the easiest place to begin? Think anybody can
+walk in here without trouble? Do you know who I am?"
+"Yes. That’s why I’m here."
+"Who sent you?"
+"No one."
+"Why the hell should you pick me?"
+"I think you know that."
+"What infernal impudence made you presume that I’d want you? Have you decided
+that I’m so hard up that I’d throw the gates open for any punk who’d do me the
+honor? ’Old Cameron,’ you’ve said to yourself, ’is a has-been, a drunken..."
+come on, you’ve said it!...’a drunken failure who can’t be particular!’ Is that
+it?...Come on, answer me! Answer me, damn you! What are you staring at? Is that
+it? Go on! Deny it!"
+"It’s not necessary."
+"Where have you worked before?"
+"I’m just beginning."
+"What have you done?"
+"I’ve had three years at Stanton."
+"Oh? The gentleman was too lazy to finish?"
+"I have been expelled."
+"Great!" Cameron slapped the desk with his fist and laughed. "Splendid! You’re
+not good enough for the lice nest at Stanton, but you’ll work for Henry Cameron!
+You’ve decided this is the place for refuse! What did they kick you out for?
+Drink? Women? What?"
+"These," said Roark, and extended his drawings. Cameron looked at the first one,
+then at the next, then at every one of them to the bottom. Roark heard the paper
+rustling as Cameron slipped one sheet behind another. Then Cameron raised his
+head. "Sit down."
+36
+
+Roark obeyed. Cameron stared at him, his thick fingers drumming against the pile
+of drawings.
+"So you think they’re good?’ said Cameron. "Well, they’re awful. It’s
+unspeakable. It’s a crime. Look," he shoved a drawing at Roark’s face, "look at
+that. What in Christ’s name was your idea? What possessed you to indent that
+plan here? Did you just want to make it pretty, because you had to patch
+something together? Who do you think you are? Guy Francon, God help you?...Look
+at this building, you fool! You get an idea like this and you don’t know what to
+do with it! You stumble on a magnificent thing and you have to ruin it! Do you
+know how much you’ve got to learn?"
+"Yes. That’s why I’m here."
+"And look at that one! I wish I’d done that at your age! But why did you have to
+botch it? Do you know what I’d do with that? Look, to hell with your stairways
+and to hell with your furnace room! When you lay the foundations..."
+He spoke furiously for a long time. He cursed. He did not find one sketch to
+satisfy him. But Roark noticed that he spoke as of buildings that were in
+construction.
+He broke off abruptly, pushed the drawings aside, and put his fist over them. He
+asked:
+"When did you decide to become an architect?"
+"When I was ten years old."
+"Men don’t know what they want so early in life, if ever. You’re lying."
+"Am I?"
+"Don’t stare at me like that! Can’t you look at something else? Why did you
+decide to be an architect?"
+"I didn’t know it then. But it’s because I’ve never believed in God."
+"Come on, talk sense."
+"Because I love this earth. That’s all I love. I don’t like the shape of things
+on this earth. I want to change them."
+"For whom?"
+"For myself."
+"How old are you?"
+"Twenty-two."
+"When did you hear all that?"
+"I didn’t."
+"Men don’t talk like that at twenty-two. You’re abnormal."
+"Probably."
+37
+
+"I didn’t mean it as a compliment."
+"I didn’t either."
+"Got any family?"
+"No."
+"Worked through school?"
+"Yes."
+"At what?"
+"In the building trades."
+"How much money have you got left?"
+"Seventeen dollars and thirty cents."
+"When did you come to New York?"
+"Yesterday."
+Cameron looked at the white pile under his fist.
+"God damn you," said Cameron softly.
+"God damn you!" roared Cameron suddenly, leaning forward. "I didn’t ask you to
+come here! I don’t need any draftsmen! There’s nothing here to draft! I don’t
+have enough work to keep myself and my men out of the Bowery Mission! I don’t
+want any fool visionaries starving around here! I don’t want the responsibility.
+I didn’t ask for it. I never thought I’d see it again. I’m through with it. I
+was through with that many years ago. I’m perfectly happy with the drooling
+dolts I’ve got here, who never had anything and never will have and it makes no
+difference what becomes of them. That’s all I want Why did you have to come
+here? You’re setting out to ruin yourself, you know that, don’t you? And I’ll
+help you to do it. I don’t want to see you. I don’t like you. I don’t like your
+face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You’re impertinent. You’re too sure
+of yourself. Twenty years ago I’d have punched your face with the greatest of
+pleasure. You’re coming to work here tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp."
+"Yes," said Roark, rising.
+"Fifteen dollars a week. That’s all I can pay you."
+"Yes."
+"You’re a damn fool. You should have gone to someone else. I’ll kill you if you
+go to anyone else. What’s your name?"
+"Howard Roark."
+"If you’re late, I’ll fire you."
+"Yes."
+Roark extended his hand for the drawings.
+38
+
+"Leave these here!" bellowed Cameron. "Now get out!"
+
+4.
+"TOOHEY," said Guy Francon, "Ellsworth Toohey. Pretty decent of him, don’t you
+think? Read it, Peter."
+Francon leaned jovially across his desk and handed to Keating the August issue
+of New Frontiers. New Frontiers had a white cover with a black emblem that
+combined a palette, a lyre, a hammer, a screw driver and a rising sun; it had a
+circulation of thirty thousand and a following that described itself as the
+intellectual vanguard of the country; no one had ever risen to challenge the
+description. Keating read from an article entitled "Marble and Mortar," by
+Ellsworth M. Toohey:
+"...And now we come to another notable achievement of the metropolitan skyline.
+We call the attention of the discriminating to the new Melton Building by
+Francon & Heyer. It stands in white serenity as an eloquent witness to the
+triumph of Classical purity and common sense. The discipline of an immortal
+tradition has served here as a cohesive factor in evolving a structure whose
+beauty can reach, simply and lucidly, the heart of every man in the street.
+There is no freak exhibitionism here, no perverted striving for novelty, no orgy
+of unbridled egotism. Guy Francon, its designer, has known how to subordinate
+himself to the mandatory canons which generations of craftsmen behind him have
+proved inviolate, and at the same time how to display his own creative
+originality, not in spite of, but precisely because of the Classical dogma he
+has accepted with the humility of a true artist. It may be worth mentioning, in
+passing, that dogmatic discipline is the only thing which makes true originality
+possible....
+"More important, however, is the symbolic significance of a building such as
+this rising in our imperial city. As one stands before its southern facade, one
+is stricken with the realization that the stringcourses, repeated with
+deliberate and gracious monotony from the third to the eighteenth story, these
+long, straight, horizontal lines are the moderating, leveling principle, the
+lines of equality. They seem to bring the towering structure down to the humble
+level of the observer. They are the lines of the earth, of the people, of the
+great masses. They seem to tell us that none may rise too high above the
+restraint of the common human level, that all is held and shall be checked, even
+as this proud edifice, by the stringcourses of men’s brotherhood...."
+There was more. Keating read it all, then raised his head. "Gee!" he said, awed.
+Francon smiled happily.
+"Pretty good, eh? And from Toohey, no less. Not many people might have heard the
+name, but they will, mark my word, they will. I know the signs....So he doesn’t
+think I’m so bad? And he’s got a tongue like an icepick, when he feels like
+using it. You should see what he says about others, more often than not. You
+know Durkin’s latest mousetrap? Well, I was at a party where Toohey said--"
+Francon chuckled--"he said: ’If Mr. Durkin suffers under the delusion that he is
+an architect, someone should mention to him the broad opportunities offered by
+the shortage of skilled plumbers.’ That’s what he said, imagine, in public!"
+"I wonder," said Keating wistfully, "what he’ll say about me, when the times
+comes."
+39
+
+"What on earth does he mean by the symbolic significance stuff and the
+stringcourses of men’s brotherhood?...Oh, well, if that’s what he praises us
+for, we should worry!"
+"It’s the critic’s job to interpret the artist, Mr. Francon, even to the artist
+himself. Mr. Toohey has merely stated the hidden significance that was
+subconsciously in your own mind."
+"Oh," said Francon vaguely. "Oh, do you think so?" he added brightly. "Quite
+possible....Yes, quite possible....You’re a smart boy, Peter."
+"Thank you, Mr. Francon." Keating made a movement to rise.
+"Wait. Don’t go. One more cigarette and then we’ll both return to the drudgery."
+Francon was smiling over the article, reading it again. Keating had never seen
+him so pleased; no drawing in the office, no work accomplished had ever made him
+as happy as these words from another man on a printed page to be read by other
+eyes.
+Keating sat easily in a comfortable chair. His month with the firm had been well
+spent. He had said nothing and done nothing, but the impression had spread
+through the office that Guy Francon liked to see this particular boy sent to him
+whenever anyone had to be sent. Hardly a day passed without the pleasant
+interlude of sitting across the desk from Guy Francon, in a respectful, growing
+intimacy, listening to Francon’s sighs about the necessity of being surrounded
+by men who understood him.
+Keating had learned all he could team about Guy Francon, from his fellow
+draftsmen. He had teamed that Guy Francon ate moderately and exquisitely, and
+prided himself on the title of gourmet; that he had graduated with distinction
+from the École des Beaux-Arts; that he had married a great deal of money and
+that the marriage had not been a happy one; that he matched meticulously his
+socks with his handkerchiefs, but never with his neckties; that he had a great
+preference for designing buildings of gray granite; that he owned a quarry of
+gray granite in Connecticut, which did a thriving business; that he maintained a
+magnificent bachelor apartment done in plum-colored Louis XV; that his wife, of
+a distinguished old name, had died, leaving her fortune to their only daughter,
+that the daughter, now nineteen, was away at college.
+These last facts interested Keating a great deal. He mentioned to Francon,
+tentatively in passing, the subject of his daughter. "Oh, yes..." Francon said
+thinly. "Yes, indeed..." Keating abandoned all further research into the matter,
+for the time being; Francon’s face had declared mat the thought of his daughter
+was painfully annoying to him, for some reason which Keating could not discover.
+Keating had met Lucius N. Heyer, Francon’s partner, and had seen him come to the
+office twice in three weeks, but had been unable to learn what service Heyer
+rendered to the firm. Heyer did not have haemophilia, but looked as though he
+should have it He was a withered aristocrat, with a long, thin neck, pate,
+bulging eyes and a manner of frightened sweetness toward everyone. He was the
+relic of an ancient family, and it was suspected mat Francon had taken him into
+partnership for the sake of his social connections. People felt sorry for poor
+dear Lucius, admired him for the effort of undertaking a professional career,
+and thought it would be nice to let him build their homes. Francon built them
+and required no further service from Lucius. This satisfied everybody.
+The men in the drafting rooms loved Peter Keating. He made them feel as if he
+had been there for a long time; he had always known how to become part of any
+40
+
+place he entered; he came soft and bright as a sponge to be filled, unresisting,
+with the air and the mood of the place. His warm smile, his gay voice, the easy
+shrug of his shoulders seemed to say that nothing weighed too much within his
+soul and so he was not one to blame, to demand, to accuse anything.
+As he sat now, watching Francon read the article, Francon raised his head to
+glance at him. Francon saw two eyes looking at him with immense approval--and
+two bright little points of contempt in the corners of Keating’s mouth, like two
+musical notes of laughter visible the second before they were to be heard.
+Francon felt a great wave of comfort. The comfort came from the contempt. The
+approval, together with that wise half-smile, granted him a grandeur he did not
+have to earn; a blind admiration would have been precarious; a deserved
+admiration would have been a responsibility; an undeserved admiration was
+precious.
+"When you go, Peter, give this to Miss Jeffers to put in my scrapbook."
+On his way down the stairs, Keating flung the magazine high in the air and
+caught it smartly, his lips pursed to whistle without sound.
+In the drafting room he found Tim Davis, his best friend, slouched despondently
+over a drawing. Tim Davis was the tall, blond boy at the next table, whom
+Keating had noticed long ago, because he had known, with no tangible evidence,
+but with certainty, as Keating always knew such things, that this was the
+favored draftsman of the office. Keating managed to be assigned, as frequently
+as possible, to do parts of the projects on which Davis worked. Soon they were
+going out to lunch together, and to a quiet little speak-easy after the day’s
+work, and Keating was listening with breathless attention to Davis’ talk about
+his love for one Elaine Duffy, not a word of which Keating ever remembered
+afterward.
+He found Davis now in black gloom, his mouth chewing furiously a cigarette and a
+pencil at once. Keating did not have to question him. He merely bent his
+friendly face over Davis’ shoulder. Davis spit out the cigarette and exploded.
+He had just been told that he would have to work overtime tonight, for the third
+time this week.
+"Got to stay late, God knows how late! Gotta finish this damn tripe tonight!" He
+slammed the sheets spread before him. "Look at it! Hours and hours and hours to
+finish it! What am I going to do?"
+"Well, it’s because you’re the best man here, Tim, and they need you."
+"To hell with that! I’ve got a date with Elaine tonight! How’m I going to break
+it? Third time! She won’t believe me! She told me so last time! That’s the end!
+I’m going up to Guy the Mighty and tell him where he can put his plans and his
+job! I’m through!"
+"Wait," said Keating, and leaned closer to him. "Wait! There’s another way. I’ll
+finish them for you."
+"Huh?"
+"I’ll stay. I’ll do them. Don’t be afraid. No one’ll tell the difference."
+"Pete! Would you?"
+"Sure. I’ve nothing to do tonight. You just stay till they all go home, then
+skip."
+41
+
+"Oh, gee, Pete!" Davis sighed, tempted. "But look, if they find out, they’ll can
+me. You’re too new for this kind of job."
+"They won’t find out."
+"I can’t lose my job, Pete. You know I can’t. Elaine and I are going to be
+married soon. If anything happens..."
+"Nothing will happen."
+Shortly after six, Davis departed furtively from the empty drafting room,
+leaving Keating at his table.
+Bending under a solitary green lamp. Keating glanced at the desolate expanse of
+three long rooms, oddly silent after the day’s rush, and he felt that he owned
+them, that he would own them, as surely as the pencil moved in his hand.
+It was half past nine when he finished the plans, stacked them neatly on Davis’
+table, and left the office. He walked down the street, glowing with a
+comfortable, undignified feeling, as though after a good meal. Then the
+realization of his loneliness struck him suddenly. He had to share this with
+someone tonight. He had no one. For the first time he wished his mother were in
+New York. But she had remained in Stanton, awaiting the day when he would be
+able to send for her. He had nowhere to go tonight, save to the respectable
+little boardinghouse on West Twenty-Eighth Street, where he could climb three
+flights of stairs to his clean, airless little room. He had met people in New
+York, many people, many girls, with one of whom he remembered spending a
+pleasant night, though he could not remember her last name; but he wished to see
+none of them. And then he thought of Catherine Halsey.
+He had sent her a wire on the night of his graduation and forgotten her ever
+since. Now he wanted to see her; the desire was intense and immediate with the
+first sound of her name in his memory. He leaped into a bus for the long ride to
+Greenwich Village, climbed to the deserted top and, sitting alone on the front
+bench, cursed the traffic lights whenever they turned to red. It had always been
+like this where Catherine was concerned; and he wondered dimly what was the
+matter with him.
+He had met her a year ago in Boston, where she had lived with her widowed
+mother. He had found Catherine homely and dull, on that first meeting, with
+nothing to her credit but her lovely smile, not a sufficient reason ever to see
+her again. He had telephoned her the next evening. Of the countless girls he had
+known in his student years she was the only one with whom he had never
+progressed beyond a few kisses. He could have any girl he met and he knew it; he
+knew that he could have Catherine; he wanted her; she loved him and had admitted
+it simply, openly, without fear or shyness, asking nothing of him, expecting
+nothing; somehow, he had never taken advantage of it. He had felt proud of the
+girls whom he escorted in those days, the most beautiful girls, the most
+popular, the best dressed, and he had delighted in the envy of his schoolmates.
+He had been ashamed of Catherine’s thoughtless sloppiness and of the fact that
+no other boy would look at her twice. But he had never been as happy as when he
+took her to fraternity dances. He had had many violent loves, when he swore he
+could not live without this girl or that; he forgot Catherine for weeks at a
+time and she never reminded him. He had always come back to her, suddenly,
+inexplicably, as he did tonight.
+Her mother, a gentle little schoolteacher, had died last winter. Catherine had
+gone to live with an uncle in New York. Keating had answered some of her letters
+42
+
+immediately, others--months later. She had always replied at once, and never
+written during his long silences, waiting patiently. He had felt, when he
+thought of her, that nothing would ever replace her. Then, in New York, within
+reach of a bus or a telephone, he had forgotten her again for a month.
+He never thought, as he hurried to her now, that he should have announced his
+visit. He never wondered whether he would find her at home. He had always come
+back like this and she had always been there. She was there again tonight.
+She opened the door for him, on the top floor of a shabby, pretentious
+brownstone house. "Hello, Peter," she said, as if she had seen him yesterday.
+She stood before him, too small, too thin for her clothes. The short black skirt
+flared out from the slim band of her waist; the boyish shirt collar hung
+loosely, pulled to one side, revealing the knob of a thin collarbone; the
+sleeves were too long over the fragile hands. She looked at him, her head bent
+to one side; her chestnut hair was gathered carelessly at the back of her neck,
+but it looked as though it were bobbed, standing, light and fuzzy, as a
+shapeless halo about her face. Her eyes were gray, wide and nearsighted; her
+mouth smiled slowly, delicately, enchantingly, her lips glistening. "Hello,
+Katie," he said.
+He felt at peace. He felt he had nothing to fear, in this house or anywhere
+outside. He had prepared himself to explain how busy he’d been in New York; but
+explanations seemed irrelevant now.
+"Give me your hat," she said, "be careful of that chair, it’s not very steady,
+we have better ones in the living room, come in." The living room, he noticed,
+was modest but somehow distinguished, and in surprisingly good taste. He noticed
+the books; cheap shelves rising to the ceiling, loaded with precious volumes;
+the volumes stacked carelessly, actually being used. He noticed, over a neat,
+shabby desk, a Rembrandt etching, stained and yellow, found, perhaps, in some
+junk shop by the eyes of a connoisseur who had never parted with it, though its
+price would have obviously been of help to him. He wondered what business her
+uncle could be in; he had never asked.
+He stood looking vaguely at the room, feeling her presence behind him, enjoying
+that sense of certainty which he found so rarely. Then he turned and took her in
+his arms and kissed her; her lips met his softly, eagerly; but she was neither
+frightened nor excited, too happy to accept this in any way save by taking it
+for granted.
+"God, I’ve missed you!" he said, and knew that he had, every day since he’d seen
+her last and most of all, perhaps, on the days when he had not thought of her.
+"You haven’t changed much," she said. "You look a little thinner. It’s becoming.
+You’ll be very attractive when you’re fifty, Peter."
+"That’s not very complimentary--by implication."
+"Why? Oh, you mean I think you’re not attractive now? Oh, but you are."
+"You shouldn’t say that right out to me like that."
+"Why not? You know you are. But I’ve been thinking of what you’ll look like at
+fifty. You’ll have gray temples and you’ll wear a gray suit--I saw one in a
+window last week and I thought that would be the one--and you’ll be a very great
+architect."
+43
+
+"You really think so?"
+"Why, yes." She was not flattering him. She did not seem to realize that it
+could be flattery. She was merely stating a fact, too certain to need emphasis.
+He waited for the inevitable questions. But instead, they were talking suddenly
+of their old Stanton days together, and he was laughing, holding her across his
+knees, her thin shoulders leaning against the circle of his arm, her eyes soft,
+contented. He was speaking of their old bathing suits, of the runs in her
+stockings, of their favorite ice-cream parlor in Stanton, where they had spent
+so many summer evenings together--and he was thinking dimly that it made no
+sense at all; he had more pertinent things to tell and to ask her; people did
+not talk like that when they hadn’t seen each other for months. But it seemed
+quite normal to her; she did not appear to know that they had been parted.
+He was first to ask finally:
+"Did you get my wire?"
+"Oh, yes. Thanks."
+"Don’t you want to know how I’m getting along in the city?"
+"Sure. How are you getting along in the city?"
+"Look here, you’re not terribly interested."
+"Oh, but I am! I want to know everything about you."
+"Why don’t you ask?"
+"You’ll tell me when you want to."
+"It doesn’t matter much to you, does it?"
+"What?"
+"What I’ve been doing."
+"Oh...Yes, it does, Peter. No, not too much."
+"That’s sweet of you!"
+"But, you see, it’s not what you do that matters really. It’s only you."
+"Me what?"
+"Just you here. Or you in the city. Or you somewhere in the world. I don’t know.
+Just that."
+"You know, you’re a fool, Katie. Your technique is something awful."
+"My what?"
+"Your technique. You can’t tell a man so shamelessly, like that, that you’re
+practically crazy about him."
+"But I am."
+44
+
+"But you can’t say so. Men won’t care for you."
+"But I don’t want men to care for me."
+"You want me to, don’t you?"
+"But you do, don’t you?"
+"I do," he said, his arms tightening about her. "Damnably. I’m a bigger fool
+than you are."
+"Well, then it’s perfectly all right," she said, her fingers in his hair, "isn’t
+it?"
+"It’s always been perfectly all right, that’s the strangest part about it....But
+look, I want to tell you about what’s happened to me, because it’s important."
+"I’m really very interested, Peter."
+"Well, you know I’m working for Francon & Heyer and...Oh, hell, you don’t even
+know what that means!"
+"Yes, I do. I’ve looked them up in Who’s Who in Architecture. It said some very
+nice things about them. And I asked Uncle. He said they were tops in the
+business."
+"You bet they are. Francon--he’s the greatest designer in New York, in the whole
+country, in the world maybe. He’s put up seventeen skyscrapers, eight
+cathedrals, six railroad terminals and God knows what else....Of course, you
+know, he’s an old fool and a pompous fraud who oils his way into everything
+and..." He stopped, his mouth open, staring at her. He had not intended to say
+that. He had never allowed himself to think that before.
+She was looking at him serenely. "Yes?" she asked. "And...?"
+"Well...and..." he stammered, and he knew that he could not speak differently,
+not to her, "and that’s what I really think of him. And I have no respect for
+him at all. And I’m delighted to be working for him. See?"
+"Sure," she said quietly. "You’re ambitious, Peter."
+"Don’t you despise me for it?"
+"No. That’s what you wanted."
+"Sure, that’s what I wanted. Well, actually, it’s not as bad as that. It’s a
+tremendous firm, the best in the city. I’m really doing good work, and Francon
+is very pleased with me. I’m getting ahead. I think I can have any job I want in
+the place eventually....Why, only tonight I took over a man’s work and he
+doesn’t know that he’ll be useless soon, because...Katie! What am I saying?"
+"It’s all right, dear. I understand."
+"If you did, you’d call me the names I deserve and make me stop it."
+"No, Peter. I don’t want to change you. I love you, Peter."
+"God help you!"
+45
+
+"I know that."
+"You know that? And you say it like this? Like you’d say, ’Hello, it’s a
+beautiful evening’?"
+"Well, why not? Why worry about it? I love you."
+"No, don’t worry about it! Don’t ever worry about it!...Katie....I’ll never love
+anyone else...."
+"I know that too."
+He held her close, anxiously, afraid that her weightless little body would
+vanish. He did not know why her presence made him confess things unconfessed in
+his own mind. He did not know why the victory he came here to share had faded.
+But it did not matter. He had a peculiar sense of freedom--her presence always
+lifted from him a pressure he could not define--he was alone--he was himself.
+All that mattered to him now was the feeling of her coarse cotton blouse against
+his wrist.
+Then he was asking her about her own life in New York and she was speaking
+happily about her uncle.
+"He’s wonderful, Peter. He’s really wonderful. He’s quite poor, but he took me
+in and he was so gracious about it he gave up his study to make a room for me
+and now he has to work here, in the living room. You must meet him, Peter. He’s
+away now, on a lecture tour, but you must meet him when he comes back."
+"Sure, I’d love to."
+"You know, I wanted to go to work, and be on my own, but he wouldn’t let me. ’My
+dear child,’ he said, ’not at seventeen. You don’t want me to be ashamed of
+myself, do you? I don’t believe in child labor.’ That was kind of a funny idea,
+don’t you think? He has so many funny ideas--I don’t understand them all, but
+they say he’s a brilliant man. So he made it look as if I were doing him a favor
+by letting him keep me, and I think that was really very decent of him."
+"What do you do with yourself all day long?"
+"Nothing much of anything now. I read books. On architecture. Uncle has tons of
+books on architecture. But when he’s here I type his lectures for him. I really
+don’t think he likes me to do it, he prefers the typist he had, but I love it
+and he lets me. And he pays me her salary. I didn’t want to take it, but he made
+me."
+"What does he do for a living?"
+"Oh, so many things, I don’t know, I can’t keep track of them. He teaches art
+history, for one, he’s a kind of professor."
+"And when are you going to college, by the way?"
+"Oh...Well...well, you see, I don’t think Uncle approves of the idea. I told him
+how I’d always planned to go and that I’d work my own way through, but he seems
+to think it’s not for me. He doesn’t say much, only: ’God made the elephant for
+toil and the mosquito for flitting about, and it’s not advisable, as a rule, to
+experiment with the laws of nature, however, if you want to try it, my dear
+child...’ But he’s not objecting really, it’s up to me, only..."
+46
+
+"Well, don’t let him stop you."
+"Oh, he wouldn’t want to stop me. Only, I was thinking, I was never any great
+shakes in high school, and, darling, I’m really quite utterly lousy at
+mathematics, and so I wonder...but then, there’s no hurry, I’ve got plenty of
+time to decide."
+"Listen, Katie, I don’t like that. You’ve always planned on college. If that
+uncle of yours..."
+"You shouldn’t say it like this. You don’t know him. He’s the most amazing man.
+I’ve never met anyone quite like him. He’s so kind, so understanding. And he’s
+such fun, always joking, he’s so clever at it, nothing that you thought was
+serious ever seems to be when he’s around, and yet he’s a very serious man. You
+know, he spends hours talking to me, he’s never too tired and he’s not bored
+with my stupidity, he tells me all about strikes, and conditions in the slums,
+and the poor people in the sweatshops, always about others, never about himself.
+A friend of his told me that Uncle could be a very rich man if he tried, he’s so
+clever, but he won’t, he just isn’t interested in money."
+"That’s not human."
+"Wait till you see him. Oh, he wants to meet you, too. I’ve told him about you.
+He calls you ’the T-square Romeo.’"
+"Oh, he does, does he?"
+"But you don’t understand. He means it kindly. It’s the way he says things.
+You’ll have a lot in common. Maybe he could help you. He knows something about
+architecture, too. You’ll love Uncle Ellsworth."
+"Who?" said Keating.
+"My uncle."
+"Say," Keating asked, his voice a little husky, "what’s your
+uncle’s name?"
+"Ellsworth Toohey. Why?" His hands fell limply. He sat staring at her. "What’s
+the matter, Peter?"
+He swallowed. She saw the jerking motion of his throat. Then he said, his voice
+hard:
+"Listen, Katie, I don’t want to meet your uncle."
+"But why?"
+"I don’t want to meet him. Not through you....You see, Katie, you don’t know me.
+I’m the kind that uses people. I don’t want to use you. Ever. Don’t let me. Not
+you."
+"Use me how? What’s the matter? Why?"
+"It’s just this: I’d give my eyeteeth to meet Ellsworth Toohey, that’s all." He
+laughed harshly. "So he knows something about architecture, does he? You little
+fool! He’s the most important man in architecture. Not yet, maybe, but that’s
+what he’ll be in a couple of years--ask Francon, that old weasel knows. He’s on
+47
+
+his way to becoming the Napoleon of all architectural critics, your Uncle
+Ellsworth is, just watch him. In the first place, there aren’t many to bother
+writing about our profession, so he’s the smart boy who’s going to comer the
+market. You should see the big shots in our office lapping up every comma he
+puts out in print! So you think maybe he could help me? Well, he could make me,
+and he will, and I’m going to meet him some day, when I’m ready for him, as I
+met Francon, but not here, not through you. Understand? Not from you!"
+"But, Peter, why not?"
+"Because I don’t want it that way! Because it’s filthy and I hate it, all of it,
+ray work and my profession, and what I’m doing and what I’m going to do! It’s
+something I want to keep you out of. You’re all I really have. Just keep out of
+it, Katie!"
+"Out of what?"
+"I don’t know!"
+She rose and stood in the circle of his arms, his face hidden against her hip;
+she stroked his hair, looking down at him.
+"All right, Peter. I think I know. You don’t have to meet him until you want to.
+Just tell me when you want it. You can use me if you have to. It’s all right. It
+won’t change anything."
+When he raised his head, she was laughing softly.
+"You’ve worked too hard, Peter. You’re a little unstrung. Suppose I make you
+some tea?"
+"Oh, I’d forgotten all about it, but I’ve had no dinner today. Had no time."
+"Well, of all things! Well, how perfectly disgusting! Come on to the kitchen,
+this minute, I’ll see what I can fix up for you!"
+He left her two hours later, and he walked away feeling light, clean, happy, his
+fears forgotten, Toohey and Francon forgotten. He thought only that he had
+promised to come again tomorrow and that it was an unbearably long time to wait.
+She stood at the door, after he had gone, her hand on the knob he had touched,
+and she thought that he might come tomorrow--or three months later.
+#
+"When you finish tonight," said Henry Cameron, "I want to see you in my office."
+"Yes," said Roark.
+Cameron veered sharply on his heels and walked out of the drafting room. It had
+been the longest sentence he had addressed to Roark in a month.
+Roark had come to this room every morning, had done his task, and had heard no
+word of comment. Cameron would enter the drafting room and stand behind Roark
+for a long time, looking over his shoulder. It was as if his eyes concentrated
+deliberately on trying to throw the steady hand off its course on the paper. The
+two other draftsmen botched their work from the mere thought of such an
+apparition standing behind them. Roark did not seem to notice it. He went on,
+his hand unhurried, he took his time about discarding a blunted pencil and
+picking out another. "Uh-huh," Cameron would grunt suddenly. Roark would turn
+his head then, politely attentive. "What is it?" he would ask. Cameron would
+48
+
+turn away without a word, his narrowed eyes underscoring contemptuously the fact
+that he considered an answer unnecessary, and would leave the drafting room.
+Roark would go on with his drawing.
+"Looks bad," Loomis, the young draftsman, confided to Simpson, his ancient
+colleague. "The old man doesn’t like this guy. Can’t say that I blame him,
+either. Here’s one that won’t last long."
+Simpson was old and helpless; he had survived from Cameron’s three-floor office,
+had stuck and had never understood it Loomis was young, with the face of a
+drugstore-corner lout; he was here because he had been fired from too many other
+places.
+Both men disliked Roark. He was usually disliked, from the first sight of his
+face, anywhere he went His face was closed like the door of a safety vault;
+things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He
+was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange
+quality: it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or
+perhaps that he was and they weren’t.
+After work he walked the long distance to his home, a tenement near the East
+River. He had chosen that tenement because he had been able to get, for
+two-fifty a week, its entire top floor, a huge room that had been used for
+storage: it had no ceiling and the roof leaked between its naked beams. But it
+had a long row of windows, along two of its walls, some panes filled with glass,
+others with cardboard, and the windows opened high over the river on one side
+and the city on the other.
+A week ago Cameron had come into the drafting room and had thrown down on
+Roark’s table a violent sketch of a country residence. "See if you can make a
+house out of this!" he had snapped and gone without further explanation. He had
+not approached Roark’s table during the days that followed. Roark had finished
+the drawings last night and left them on Cameron’s desk. This morning, Cameron
+had come in, thrown some sketches of steel joints to Roark, ordered him to
+appear in his office later and had not entered the drafting room again for the
+rest of the day. The others were gone. Roark pulled an old piece of oilcloth
+over his table and went to Cameron’s office. His drawings of the country house
+were spread on the desk. The light of the lamp fell on Cameron’s cheek, on his
+beard, the white threads glistening, on his fist, on a corner of the drawing,
+its black lines bright and hard as if embossed on the paper. "You’re fired,"
+said Cameron.
+Roark stood, halfway across the long room, his weight on one leg, his arms
+hanging by his sides, one shoulder raised. "Am I?" he asked quietly, without
+moving. "Come here," said Cameron. "Sit down." Roark obeyed.
+"You’re too good," said Cameron. "You’re too good for what you want to do with
+yourself. It’s no use, Roark. Better now than later."
+"What do you mean?’
+"It’s no use wasting what you’ve got on an ideal that you’ll never reach, that
+they’ll never let you reach. It’s no use, taking that marvelous thing you have
+and making a torture rack for yourself out of it. Sell it, Roark. Sell it now.
+It won’t be the same, but you’ve got enough in you. You’ve got what they’ll pay
+you for, and pay plenty, if you use it their way. Accept them, Roark.
+Compromise. Compromise now, because you’ll have to later, anyway, only then
+you’ll have gone through things you’ll wish you hadn’t. You don’t know. I do.
+Save yourself from that. Leave me. Go to someone else."
+49
+
+"Did you do that?"
+"You presumptuous bastard! How good do you think I said you were? Did I tell you
+to compare yourself to..." He stopped because he saw that Roark was smiling.
+He looked at Roark, and suddenly smiled in answer, and it was the most painful
+thing that Roark had ever seen.
+"No," said Cameron softly, "that won’t work, huh? No, it won’t...Well, you’re
+right. You’re as good as you think you are. But I want to speak to you. I don’t
+know exactly how to go about it. I’ve lost the habit of speaking to men like
+you. Lost it? Maybe I’ve never had it. Maybe that’s what frightens me now. Will
+you try to understand?"
+"I understand. I think you’re wasting your time."
+"Don’t be rude. Because I can’t be rude to you now. I want you to listen. Will
+you listen and not answer me?"
+"Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend it as rudeness."
+"You see, of all men, I’m the last one to whom you should have come. I’ll be
+committing a crime if I keep you here. Somebody should have warned you against
+me. I won’t help you at all. I won’t discourage you. I won’t teach you any
+common sense. Instead, I’ll push you on. I’ll drive you the way you’re going
+now. I’ll beat you into remaining what you are, and I’ll make you worse....Don’t
+you see? In another month I won’t be able to let you go. I’m not sure I can now.
+So don’t argue with me and go. Get out while you can."
+"But can I? Don’t you think it’s too late for both of us? It was too late for me
+twelve years ago."
+"Try it, Roark. Try to be reasonable for once. There’s plenty of big fellows
+who’ll take you, expulsion or no expulsion, if I say so. They may laugh at me in
+their luncheon speeches, but they steal from me when it suits them, and they
+know that I know a good draftsman when I see one. I’ll give you a letter to Guy
+Francon. He worked for me once, long ago. I think I fired him, but that wouldn’t
+matter. Go to him. You won’t like it at first, but you’ll get used to it. And
+you’ll thank me for it many years from now."
+"Why are you saying all this to me? That’s not what you want to say. That’s not
+what you did."
+"That’s why I’m saying it! Because that’s not what I did!...Look, Roark, there’s
+one thing about you, the thing I’m afraid of. It’s not just the kind of work you
+do; I wouldn’t care, if you were an exhibitionist who’s being different as a
+stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It’s a smart racket, to
+oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did
+that, I wouldn’t worry. But it’s not that. You love your work. God help you, you
+love it! And that’s the curse. That’s the brand on your forehead for all of them
+to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever
+look at the people in the street? Aren’t you afraid of them? I am. They move
+past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that’s not the substance
+of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That’s
+the only kind they fear. I don’t know why. You’re opening yourself up, Roark,
+for each and every one of them."
+"But I never notice the people in the streets."
+50
+
+"Do you notice what they’ve done to me?"
+"I notice only that you weren’t afraid of them. Why do you ask me to be?"
+"That’s just why I’m asking it!" He leaned forward, his fists closing on the
+desk before him. "Roark, do you want me to say it? You’re cruel, aren’t you? All
+right, I’ll say it: do you want to end up like this? Do you want to be what I
+am?" Roark got up and stood against the edge of light on the desk. "If," said
+Roark, "at the end of my life, I’ll be what you are today here, in this office,
+I shall consider it an honor that I could not have deserved."
+"Sit down!" roared Cameron. "I don’t like demonstrations!" Roark looked down at
+himself, at the desk, astonished to find himself standing. He said: "I’m sorry.
+I didn’t know I got up."
+"Well, sit down. Listen. I understand. And it’s very nice of you. But you don’t
+know. I thought a few days here would be enough to take the hero worship out of
+you. I see it wasn’t. Here you are, saying to yourself how grand old Cameron is,
+a noble fighter, a martyr to a lost cause, and you’d just love to die on the
+barricades with me and to eat in dime lunch-wagons with me for the rest of your
+life. I know, it looks pure and beautiful to you now, at your great old age of
+twenty-two. But do you know what it means? Thirty years of a lost cause, that
+sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? But do you know how many days there are in thirty
+years? Do you know what happens in those days? Roark! Do you know what happens?"
+"You don’t want to speak of that."
+"No! I don’t want to speak of that! But I’m going to. I want you to hear. I want
+you to know what’s in store for you. There will be days when you’ll look at your
+hands and you’ll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because
+they’ll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them
+to do it, and you can’t find that chance, and you can’t bear your living body
+because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus
+driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he’ll be only asking for a dime,
+but that won’t be what you’ll hear; you’ll hear that you’re nothing, that he’s
+laughing at you, that it’s written on your forehead, that thing they hate you
+for. There will be days when you’ll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to
+a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you
+love, and the things he’ll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack
+him open between two thumbnails; and then you’ll hear the people applauding him,
+and you’ll want to scream, because you won’t know whether they’re real or you
+are, whether you’re in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just
+emptied your own head, and you’ll say nothing, because the sounds you could
+make--they’re not a language in that room any longer; but if you’d want to
+speak, you won’t anyway, because you’ll be brushed aside, you who have nothing
+to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?"
+Roark sat still, the shadows sharp on his face, a black wedge on a sunken cheek,
+a long triangle of black cutting across his chin, his eyes on Cameron.
+"Not enough?" asked Cameron. "All right. Then, one day, you’ll see on a piece of
+paper before you a building that will make you want to kneel; you won’t believe
+that you’ve done it, but you will have done it; then you’ll think that the earth
+is beautiful and the air smells of spring and you love your fellow men, because
+there is no evil in the world. And you’ll set out from your house with this
+drawing, to have it erected, because you won’t have any doubt that it will be
+erected by the first man to see it. But you won’t get very far from your house.
+Because you’ll be stopped at the door by the man who’s come to turn off the gas.
+51
+
+You hadn’t had much food, because you saved money to finish your drawing, but
+still you had to cook something and you hadn’t paid for it....All right, that’s
+nothing, you can laugh at that. But finally you’ll get into a man’s office with
+your drawing, and you’ll curse yourself for taking so much space of his air with
+your body, and you’ll try to squeeze yourself out of his sight, so that he won’t
+see you, but only hear your voice begging him, pleading, your voice licking his
+knees; you’ll loathe yourself for it, but you won’t care, if only he’d let you
+put up that building, you won’t care, you’ll want to rip your insides open to
+show him, because if he saw what’s there he’d have to let you put it up. But
+he’ll say that he’s very sorry, only the commission has just been given to Guy
+Francon. And you’ll go home, and do you know what you’ll do there? You’ll cry.
+You’ll cry like a woman, like a drunkard, like an animal. That’s your future,
+Howard Roark. Now, do you want it?"
+"Yes," said Roark.
+Cameron’s eyes dropped; then his head moved down a little, then a little
+farther; his head went on dropping slowly, in long, single jerks, then stopped;
+he sat still, his shoulders hunched, his arms huddled together in his lap.
+"Howard," whispered Cameron, "I’ve never told it to anyone...."
+"Thank you...." said Roark.
+After a long time, Cameron raised his head.
+"Go home now," said Cameron, his voice flat. "You’ve worked too much lately. And
+you have a hard day ahead." He
+pointed to the drawings of the country house. "This is all very well, and I
+wanted to see what you’d do, but it’s not good enough to build. You’ll have to
+do it over. I’ll show you what I want tomorrow."
+
+5.
+A YEAR with the firm of Francon & Heyer had given Keating the whispered title of
+crown prince without portfolio. Still only a draftsman, he was Francon’s
+reigning favorite. Francon took him out to lunch--an unprecedented honor for an
+employee. Francon called him to be present at interviews with clients. The
+clients seemed to like seeing so decorative a young man in an architect’s
+office.
+Lucius N. Heyer had the annoying habit of asking Francon suddenly: "When did you
+get the new man?" and pointing to an employee who had been there for three
+years. But Heyer surprised everybody by remembering Keating’s name and by
+greeting him, whenever they met, with a smile of positive recognition. Keating
+had had a long conversation with him, one dreary November afternoon, on the
+subject of old porcelain. It was Heyer’s hobby; he owned a famous collection,
+passionately gathered. Keating displayed an earnest knowledge of the subject,
+though he had never heard of old porcelain till the night before, which he had
+spent at the public library. Heyer was delighted; nobody in the office cared
+about his hobby, few ever noticed his presence. Heyer remarked to his partner:
+"You’re certainly good at picking your men, Guy. There’s one boy I wish we
+wouldn’t lose, what’s his name?--Keating."
+"Yes, indeed," Francon answered, smiling, "yes, indeed."
+52
+
+In the drafting room, Keating concentrated on Tim Davis. Work and drawings were
+only unavoidable details on the surface of his days; Tim Davis was the substance
+and the shape of the first step in his career.
+Davis let him do most of his own work; only night work, at first, then parts of
+his daily assignments as well; secretly, at first, then openly. Davis had not
+wanted it to be known. Keating made it known, with an air of naive confidence
+which implied that he was only a tool, no more than Tim’s pencil or T-square,
+that his help enhanced Tim’s importance rather than diminished it and,
+therefore, he did not wish to conceal it.
+At first, Davis relayed instructions to Keating; then the chief draftsman took
+the arrangement for granted and began coming to Keating with orders intended for
+Davis. Keating was always there, smiling, saying: "I’ll do it; don’t bother Tim
+with those little things, I’ll take care of it." Davis relaxed and let himself
+be carried along; he smoked a great deal, he lolled about, his legs twisted
+loosely over the rungs of a stool, his eyes closed, dreaming of Elaine; he
+uttered once in a while: "Is the stuff ready, Pete?"
+Davis had married Elaine that spring. He was frequently late for work. He had
+whispered to Keating: "You’re in with the old man, Pete, slip a good word for
+me, once in a while, will you?--so they’ll overlook a few things. God, do I hate
+to have to be working right now!" Keating would say to Francon: "I’m sorry, Mr.
+Francon, that the Murray job sub-basement plans were so late, but Tim Davis had
+a quarrel with his wife last night, and you know how newlyweds are, you don’t
+want to be too hard on them," or "It’s Tim Davis again, Mr. Francon, do forgive
+him, he can’t help it, he hasn’t got his mind on his work at all!"
+When Francon glanced at the list of his employees’ salaries, he noticed that his
+most expensive draftsman was the man least needed in the office.
+When Tim Davis lost his job, no one in the drafting room was surprised but Tim
+Davis. He could not understand it. He set his lips defiantly in bitterness
+against a world he would hate forever. He felt he had no friend on earth save
+Peter Keating.
+Keating consoled him, cursed Francon, cursed the injustice of humanity, spent
+six dollars in a speak-easy, entertaining the secretary of an obscure architect
+of his acquaintance and arranged a new job for Tim Davis.
+Whenever he thought of Davis afterward, Keating felt a warm pleasure; he had
+influenced the course of a human being, had thrown him off one path and pushed
+him into another; a human being--it was not Tim Davis to him any longer, it was
+a living frame and a mind, a conscious mind--why had he always feared that
+mysterious entity of consciousness within others?--and he had twisted that frame
+and that mind to his own will. By a unanimous decision of Francon, Heyer and the
+chief draftsman, Tim’s table, position and salary were given to Peter Keating.
+But this was only part of his satisfaction; there was another sense of it,
+warmer and less real--and more dangerous. He said brightly and often: ’Tim
+Davis? Oh yes, I got him his present job."
+He wrote to his mother about it. She said to her friends: "Petey is such an
+unselfish boy."
+He wrote to her dutifully each week; his letters were short and respectful;
+hers, long, detailed and full of advice which he seldom finished reading.
+He saw Catherine Halsey occasionally. He had not gone to her on that following
+evening, as he had promised. He had awakened in the morning and remembered the
+53
+
+things he had said to her, and hated her for his having said them. But he had
+gone to her again, a week later; she had not reproached him and they had not
+mentioned her uncle. He saw her after that every month or two; he was happy when
+he saw her, but he never spoke to her of his career.
+He tried to speak of it to Howard Roark; the attempt failed. He called on Roark
+twice; he climbed, indignantly, the five flights of stairs to Roark’s room. He
+greeted Roark eagerly; he waited for reassurance, not knowing what sort of
+reassurance he needed nor why it could come only from Roark. He spoke of his job
+and he questioned Roark, with sincere concern, about Cameron’s office. Roark
+listened to him, answered all his questions willingly, but Keating felt that he
+was knocking against a sheet of iron in Roark’s unmoving eyes, and that they
+were not speaking about the same things at all. Before the visit was over,
+Keating was taking notice of Roark’s frayed cuffs, of his shoes, of the patch on
+the knee of his trousers, and he felt satisfied. He went away chuckling, but he
+went away miserably uneasy, and wondered why, and swore never to see Roark
+again, and wondered why he knew that he would have to see him.
+#
+"Well," said Keating, "I couldn’t quite work it to ask her to lunch, but she’s
+coming to Mawson’s exhibition with me day after tomorrow. Now what?"
+He sat on the floor, his head resting against the edge of a couch, his bare feet
+stretched out, a pair of Guy Francon’s chartreuse pyjamas floating loosely about
+his limbs.
+Through the open door of the bathroom he saw Francon standing at the washstand,
+his stomach pressed to its shining edge, brushing his teeth.
+"That’s splendid," said Francon, munching through a thick foam of toothpaste.
+"That’ll do just as well. Don’t you see?"
+"No."
+"Lord, Pete, I explained it to you yesterday before we started. Mrs. Dunlop’s
+husband’s planning to build a home for her."
+"Oh, yeah," said Keating weakly, brushing the matted black curls off his face.
+"Oh, yeah...I remember now...Jesus, Guy, I got a head on me!..."
+He remembered vaguely the party to which Francon had taken him the night before,
+he remembered the caviar in a hollow iceberg, the black net evening gown and the
+pretty face of Mrs. Dunlop, but he could not remember how he had come to end up
+in Francon’s apartment. He shrugged; he had attended many parties with Francon
+in the past year and had often been brought here like this.
+"It’s not a very large house," Francon was saying, holding the toothbrush in his
+mouth; it made a lump on his cheek and its green handle stuck out. "Fifty
+thousand or so, I understand. They’re small fry anyway. But Mrs. Dunlop’s
+brother-in-law is Quimby--you know, the big real estate fellow. Won’t hurt to
+get a little wedge into that family, won’t hurt at all. You’re to see where that
+commission ends up, Pete. Can I count on you, Pete?"
+"Sure," said Keating, his head drooping. "You can always count on me, Guy...."
+He sat still, watching his bare toes and thinking of Stengel, Francon’s
+designer. He did not want to think, but his mind leaped to Stengel
+automatically, as it always did, because Stengel represented his next step.
+54
+
+Stengel was impregnable to friendship. For two years, Keating’s attempts had
+broken against the ice of Stengel’s glasses. What Stengel thought of him was
+whispered in the drafting rooms, but few dared to repeat it save in quotes;
+Stengel said it aloud, even though he knew that the corrections his sketches
+bore, when they returned to him from Francon’s office, were made by Keating’s
+hand. But Stengel had a vulnerable point: he had been planning for some time to
+leave Francon and open an office of his own. He had selected a partner, a young
+architect of no talent but of great inherited wealth. Stengel was waiting only
+for a chance. Keating had thought about this a great deal He could think of
+nothing else. He thought of it again, sitting there on the floor of Francon’s
+bedroom.
+Two days later, when he escorted Mrs. Dunlop through the gallery exhibiting the
+paintings of one Frederic Mawson, his course of action was set. He piloted her
+through the sparse crowd, his fingers closing over her elbow once in a while,
+letting her catch his eyes directed at her young face more often than at the
+paintings.
+"Yes," he said as she stared obediently at a landscape featuring an auto dump
+and tried to compose her face into the look of admiration expected of her;
+"magnificent work. Note the colors, Mrs. Dunlop....They say this fellow Mawson
+had a terribly hard time. It’s an old story--trying to get recognition. Old and
+heartbreaking. It’s the same in all the arts. My own profession included."
+"Oh, indeed?" said Mrs. Dunlop, who quite seemed to prefer architecture at the
+moment.
+"Now this," said Keating, stopping before the depiction of an old hag picking at
+her bare toes on a street curb, "this is art as a social document. It takes a
+person of courage to appreciate this."
+"It’s simply wonderful," said Mrs. Dunlop.
+"Ah, yes, courage. It’s a rare quality....They say Mawson was starving in a
+garret when Mrs. Stuyvesant discovered him. It’s glorious to be able to help
+young talent on its way."
+"It must be wonderful," agreed Mrs. Dunlop.
+"If I were rich," said Keating wistfully, "I’d make it my hobby: to arrange an
+exhibition for a new artist, to finance the concert of a new pianist, to have a
+house built by a new architect...."
+"Do you know, Mr. Keating?--my husband and I are planning to build a little home
+on Long Island."
+"Oh, are you? How very charming of you, Mrs. Dunlop, to confess such a thing to
+me. You’re so young, if you’ll forgive my saying this. Don’t you know that you
+run the danger of my becoming a nuisance and trying to interest you in my firm?
+Or are you safe and have chosen an architect already?"
+"No, I’m not safe at all," said Mrs. Dunlop prettily, "and I wouldn’t mind the
+danger really. I’ve thought a great deal about the firm of Francon & Heyer in
+these last few days. And I’ve heard they are so terribly good."
+"Why, thank you, Mrs. Dunlop."
+"Mr. Francon is a great architect."
+55
+
+"Oh, yes."
+"What’s the matter?"
+"Nothing. Nothing really."
+"No, what’s the matter?"
+"Do you really want me to tell you?"
+"Why, certainly."
+"Well, you see, Guy Francon--it’s only a name. He would have nothing to do with
+your house. It’s one of those professional secrets that I shouldn’t divulge, but
+I don’t know what it is about you that makes me want to be honest. All the best
+buildings in our office are designed by Mr. Stengel."
+"Who?"
+"Claude Stengel. You’ve never heard the name, but you will, when someone has the
+courage to discover him. You see, he does all the work, he’s the real genius
+behind the scenes, but Francon puts his signature on it and gets all the credit.
+That’s the way it’s done everywhere."
+"But why does Mr. Stengel stand for it?"
+"What can he do? No one will give him a start. You know how most people are,
+they stick to the beaten path, they pay three times the price for the same
+thing, just to have the trademark. Courage, Mrs. Dunlop, they lack courage.
+Stengel is a great artist, but there are so few discerning people to see it.
+He’s ready to go on his own, if only he could find some outstanding person like
+Mrs. Stuyvesant to give him a chance."
+"Really?" said Mrs. Dunlop. "How very interesting! Tell me more about it."
+He told her a great deal more about it. By the time they had finished the
+inspection of the works of Frederic Mawson, Mrs. Dunlop was shaking Keating’s
+hand and saying:
+"It’s so kind, so very unusually kind of you. Are you sure that it won’t
+embarrass you with your office if you arrange for me to meet Mr. Stengel? I
+didn’t quite dare to suggest it and it was so kind of you not to be angry at me.
+It’s so unselfish of you and more than anyone else would have done in your
+position."
+When Keating approached Stengel with the suggestion of a proposed luncheon, the
+man listened to him without a word. Then he jerked his head and snapped:
+"What’s in it for you?"
+Before Keating could answer, Stengel threw his head back suddenly.
+"Oh," said Stengel. "Oh, I see."
+Then he leaned forward, his mouth drawn thin in contempt:
+"Okay. I’ll go to that lunch."
+When Stengel left the firm of Francon & Heyer to open his own office and proceed
+56
+
+with the construction of the Dunlop house, his first commission, Guy Francon
+smashed a ruler against the edge of his desk and roared to Keating:
+"The bastard! The abysmal bastard! After all I’ve done for him."
+"What did you expect?" said Keating, sprawled in a low armchair before him.
+"Such is life."
+"But what beats me is how did that little skunk ever hear of it? To snatch it
+right from under our nose!"
+"Well, I’ve never trusted him anyway." Keating shrugged. "Human nature..."
+The bitterness in his voice was sincere. He had received no gratitude from
+Stengel. Stengel’s parting remark to him had been only: "You’re a worse bastard
+than I thought you were. Good luck. You’ll be a great architect some day."
+Thus Keating achieved the position of chief designer for Francon & Heyer.
+Francon celebrated the occasion with a modest little orgy at one of the quieter
+and costlier restaurants. "In a coupla years," he kept repeating, "in a coupla
+years you’ll see things happenin’. Pete....You’re a good boy and I like you and
+I’ll do things for you....Haven’t I done things for you?...You’re going places,
+Pete...in a coupla years...."
+"Your tie’s crooked, Guy," said Keating dryly, "and you’re spilling brandy all
+over your vest...."
+Facing his first task of designing, Keating thought of Tim Davis, of Stengel, of
+many others who had wanted it, had struggled for it, had tried, had been
+beaten--by him. It was a triumphant feeling. It was a tangible affirmation of
+his greatness. Then he found himself suddenly in his glass-enclosed office,
+looking down at a blank sheet of paper--alone. Something rolled in his throat
+down to his stomach, cold and empty, his old feeling of the dropping hole. He
+leaned against the table, closing his eyes. It had never been quite real to him
+before that this was the thing actually expected of him--to fill a sheet of
+paper, to create something on a sheet of paper.
+It was only a small residence. But instead of seeing it rise before him, he saw
+it sinking; he saw its shape as a pit in the ground; and as a pit within him; as
+emptiness, with only Davis and Stengel rattling uselessly within it. Francon had
+said to him about the building: "It must have dignity, you know,
+dignity...nothing freaky...a structure of elegance...and stay within the
+budget," which was Francon’s conception of giving his designer ideas and letting
+him work them out. Through a cold stupor, Keating thought of the clients
+laughing in his face; he heard the thin, omnipotent voice of Ellsworth Toohey
+calling his attention to the opportunities open to him in the field of plumbing.
+He hated every piece of stone on the face of the earth. He hated himself for
+having chosen to be an architect.
+When he began to draw, he tried not to think of the job he was doing; he thought
+only that Francon had done it, and Stengel, even Heyer, and all the others, and
+that he could do it, if they could.
+He spent many days on his preliminary sketches. He spent long hours in the
+library of Francon & Heyer, selecting from Classic photographs the appearance of
+his house. He felt the tension melting in his mind. It was right and it was
+good, that house growing under his hand, because men were still worshipping the
+masters who had done it before him. He did not have to wonder, to fear or to
+57
+
+take chances; it had been done for him.
+When the drawings were ready, he stood looking at them uncertainly. Were he to
+be told that this was the best or the ugliest house in the world, he would agree
+with either. He was not sure. He had to be sure. He thought of Stanton and of
+what he had relied upon when working on his assignments there. He telephoned
+Cameron’s office and asked for Howard Roark.
+He came to Roark’s room, that night, and spread before him the plans, the
+elevations, the perspective of his first building. Roark stood over it, his arms
+spread wide, his hands holding the edge of the table, and he said nothing for a
+long time.
+Keating waited anxiously; he felt anger growing with his anxiety--because he
+could see no reason for being so anxious. When he couldn’t stand it, he spoke:
+"You know, Howard, everybody says Stengel’s the best designer in town, and I
+don’t think he was really ready to quit, but I made him and I took his place. I
+had to do some pretty fine thinking to work that, I..."
+He stopped. It did not sound bright and proud, as it would have sounded anywhere
+else. It sounded like begging.
+Roark turned and looked at him. Roark’s eyes were not contemptuous; only a
+little wider than usual, attentive and puzzled. He said nothing and turned back
+to the drawings.
+Keating felt naked. Davis, Stengel, Francon meant nothing here. People were his
+protection against people. Roark had no sense of people. Others gave Keating a
+feeling of his own value. Roark gave him nothing. He thought that he should
+seize his drawings and run. The danger was not Roark. The danger was that he,
+Keating, remained. Roark turned to him.
+"Do you enjoy doing this sort of thing, Peter?" he asked. "Oh, I know," said
+Keating, his voice shrill, "I know you don’t approve of it, but this is
+business, I just want to know what you think of this practically, not
+philosophically, not..."
+"No, I’m not going to preach to you. I was only wondering."
+"If you could help me, Howard, if you could just help me with it a little. It’s
+my first house, and it means so much to me at the office, and I’m not sure. What
+do you think? Will you help me, Howard?"
+"All right."
+Roark threw aside the sketch of the graceful facade with the fluted pilasters,
+the broken pediments, the Roman fasces over the windows and the two eagles of
+Empire by the entrance. He picked up the plans. He took a sheet of tracing
+paper, threw it over the plan and began to draw. Keating stood watching the
+pencil in Roark’s hand. He saw his imposing entrance foyer disappearing, his
+twisted corridors, his lightless corners; he saw an immense living room growing
+in the space he had thought too limited; a wall of giant windows facing the
+garden, a spacious kitchen. He watched for a long time. "And the facade?" he
+asked, when Roark threw the pencil down. "I can’t help you with that. If you
+must have it Classic, have it good Classic at least. You don’t need three
+pilasters where one will do. And take those ducks off the door, it’s too much."
+Keating smiled at him gratefully, when he was leaving, his drawings under his
+58
+
+arm; he descended the stairs, hurt and angry; he worked for three days making
+new plans from Roark’s sketches, and a new, simpler elevation; and he presented
+his house to Francon with a proud gesture that looked like a flourish. "Well,"
+said Francon, studying it, "well, I declare!...What an imagination you have,
+Peter...I wonder...It’s a bit daring, but I wonder..." He coughed and added:
+"It’s just what I had in mind."
+"Of course," said Keating. "I studied your buildings, and I tried to think of
+what you’d do, and if it’s good, it’s because I think I know how to catch your
+ideas."
+Francon smiled. And Keating thought suddenly that Francon did not really believe
+it and knew that Keating did not believe it, and yet they were both contented,
+bound tighter together by a common method and a common guilt.
+#
+The letter on Cameron’s desk informed him regretfully that after earnest
+consideration, the board of directors of the Security Trust Company had not been
+able to accept his plans for the building to house the new Astoria branch of the
+Company and that the commission had been awarded to the firm of Gould &
+Pettingill. A check was attached to the letter, in payment for his preliminary
+drawings, as agreed; the amount was not enough to cover the expense of making
+those drawings.
+The letter lay spread out on the desk. Cameron sat before it, drawn back, not
+touching the desk, his hands gathered in his lap, the back of one in the palm of
+the other, the fingers tight. It was only a small piece of paper, but he sat
+huddled and still, because it seemed to be a supernatural thing, like radium,
+sending forth rays that would hurt him if he moved and exposed his skin to them.
+For three months, he had awaited the commission of the Security Trust Company.
+One after another, the chances that had loomed before him at rare intervals, in
+the last two years, had vanished, looming in vague promises, vanishing in firm
+refusals. One of his draftsmen had had to be discharged long ago. The landlord
+had asked questions, politely at first, then dryly, then rudely and openly. But
+no one in the office had minded that nor the usual arrears in salaries: there
+had been the commission of the Security Trust Company. The vice-president, who
+had asked Cameron to submit drawings, had said: "I know, some of the directors
+won’t see it as I do. But go ahead, Mr. Cameron. Take the chance with me and
+I’ll fight for you."
+Cameron had taken the chance. He and Roark had worked savagely--to have the
+plans ready on time, before time, before Gould & Pettingill could submit theirs.
+Pettingill was a cousin of the Bank president’s wife and a famous authority on
+the ruins of Pompeii; the Bank president was an ardent admirer of Julius Caesar
+and had once, while in Rome, spent an hour and a quarter in reverent inspection
+of the Coliseum.
+Cameron and Roark and a pot of black coffee had lived in the office from dawn
+till frozen dawn for many days, and Cameron had thought involuntarily of the
+electric bill, but made himself forget it. The lights still burned in the
+drafting room in the early hours when he sent Roark out for sandwiches, and
+Roark found gray morning in the streets while it was still night in the office,
+in the windows facing a high brick wall. On the last day, it was Roark who had
+ordered Cameron home after midnight, because Cameron’s hands were jerking and
+his knees kept seeking the tall drafting stool for support, leaning against it
+with a slow, cautious, sickening precision. Roark had taken him down to a taxi
+and in the light of a street lamp Cameron had seen Roark’s face, drawn, the eyes
+kept wide artificially, the lips dry. The next morning Cameron had entered the
+59
+
+drafting room, and found the coffee pot on the floor, on its side over a black
+puddle, and Roark’s hand in the puddle, palm up, fingers half closed, Roark’s
+body stretched out on the floor, his head thrown back, fast asleep. On the
+table, Cameron had found the plans, finished....
+He sat looking at the letter on his desk. The degradation was that he could not
+think of those nights behind him, he could not think of the building that should
+have risen in Astoria and of the building that would now take its place; it was
+that he thought only of the bill unpaid to the electric company....
+In these last two years Cameron had disappeared from his office for weeks at a
+time, and Roark had not found him at home, and had known what was happening, but
+could only wait, hoping for Cameron’s safe return. Then, Cameron had lost even
+the shame of his agony, and had come to his office reeling, recognizing no one,
+openly drunk and flaunting it before the walls of the only place on earth he had
+respected.
+Roark learned to face his own landlord with the quiet statement that he could
+not pay him for another week; the landlord was afraid of him and did not insist.
+Peter Keating heard of it somehow, as he always heard everything he wanted to
+know. He came to Roark’s unheated room, one evening, and sat down, keeping his
+overcoat on. He produced a wallet, pulled out five ten-dollar bills, and handed
+them to Roark. "You need it, Howard. I know you need it. Don’t start protesting
+now. You can pay me back any time." Roark looked at him, astonished, took the
+money, saying: "Yes, I need it. Thank you, Peter." Then Keating said: "What in
+hell are you doing, wasting yourself on old Cameron? What do you want to live
+like this for? Chuck it, Howard, and come with us. All I have to do is say so.
+Francon’ll be delighted. We’ll start you at sixty a week." Roark took the money
+out of his pocket and handed it back to him. "Oh, for God’s sake, Howard! I...I
+didn’t mean to offend you."
+"I didn’t either."
+"But please, Howard, keep it anyway."
+"Good night, Peter."
+Roark was thinking of that when Cameron entered the drafting room, the letter
+from the Security Trust Company in his hand. He gave the letter to Roark, said
+nothing, turned and walked back to his office. Roark read the letter and
+followed him. Whenever they lost another commission Roark knew that Cameron
+wanted to see him in the office, but not to speak of it; just to see him there,
+to talk of other things, to lean upon the reassurance of his presence.
+On Cameron’s desk Roark saw a copy of the New York Banner.
+It was the leading newspaper of the great Wynand chain. It was a paper he would
+have expected to find in a kitchen, in a barbershop, in a third-rate drawing
+room, in the subway; anywhere but in Cameron’s office. Cameron saw him looking
+at it and grinned.
+"Picked it up this morning, on my way here. Funny, isn’t it? I didn’t know
+we’d...get that letter today. And yet it seems appropriate together--this paper
+and that letter. Don’t know what made me buy it. A sense of symbolism, I
+suppose. Look at it, Howard. It’s interesting."
+Roark glanced through the paper. The front page carried the picture of an unwed
+mother with thick glistening lips, who had shot her lover; the picture headed
+the first installment of her autobiography and a detailed account of her trial.
+60
+
+The other pages ran a crusade against utility companies; a daily horoscope;
+extracts from church sermons; recipes for young brides; pictures of girls with
+beautiful legs; advice on how to hold a husband; a baby contest; a poem
+proclaiming that to wash dishes was nobler than to write a symphony; an article
+proving that a woman who had borne a child was automatically a saint.
+"That’s our answer, Howard. That’s the answer given to you and to me. This
+paper. That it exists and that it’s liked. Can you fight that? Have you any
+words to be heard and understood by that? They shouldn’t have sent us the
+letter. They should have sent a copy of Wynand’s Banner. It would be simpler and
+clearer. Do you know that in a few years that incredible bastard, Gail Wynand,
+will rule the world? It will be a beautiful world. And perhaps he’s right."
+Cameron held the paper outstretched, weighing it on the palm of his hand.
+"To give them what they want, Howard, and to let them worship you for it, for
+licking their feet--or...or what? What’s the use?...Only it doesn’t matter,
+nothing matters, not even that it doesn’t matter to me any more...." Then he
+looked at Roark. He added:
+"If only I could hold on until I’ve started you on your own, Howard...."
+"Don’t speak of that."
+"I want to speak of that.... It’s funny, Howard, next spring it will be three
+years that you’ve been here. Seems so much longer, doesn’t it? Well, have I
+taught you anything? I’ll tell you: I’ve taught you a great deal and nothing. No
+one can teach you anything, not at the core, at the source of it. What you’re
+doing--it’s yours, not mine, I can only teach you to do it better. I can give
+you the means, but the aim--the aim’s your own. You won’t be a little disciple
+putting up anemic little things in early Jacobean or late Cameron. What you’ll
+be...if only I could live to see it!"
+"You’ll live to see it. And you know it now." Cameron stood looking at the bare
+walls of his office, at the white piles of bills on his desk, at the sooty rain
+trickling slowly down the windowpanes.
+"I have no answer to give them, Howard. I’m leaving you to face them. You’ll
+answer them. All of them, the Wynand papers and what makes the Wynand papers
+possible and what lies behind that. It’s a strange mission to give you. I don’t
+know what our answer is to be. I know only that there is an answer and that
+you’re holding it, that you’re the answer, Howard, and some day you’ll find the
+words for it."
+
+6.
+SERMONS IN STONE by Ellsworth M. Toohey was published in January of the year
+1925.
+It had a fastidious jacket of midnight blue with plain silver letters and a
+silver pyramid in one corner. It was subtitled "Architecture for Everybody" and
+its success was sensational. It presented the entire history of architecture,
+from mud hut to skyscraper, in the terms of the man in the street, but it made
+these terms appear scientific. Its author stated in his preface that it was an
+attempt "to bring architecture where it belongs--to the people." He stated
+further that he wished to see the average man "think and speak of architecture
+as he speaks of baseball." He did not bore his readers with the technicalities
+61
+
+of the Five Orders, the post and lintel, the flying buttress or reinforced
+concrete. He filled his pages with homey accounts of the daily life of the
+Egyptian housekeeper, the Roman shoe-cobbler, the mistress of Louis XIV, what
+they ate, how they washed, where they shopped and what effect their buildings
+had upon their existence. But he gave his readers the impression that they were
+learning all they had to know about the Five Orders and the reinforced concrete.
+He gave his readers the impression that there were no problems, no achievements,
+no reaches of thought beyond the common daily routine of people nameless in the
+past as they were in the present; that science had no goal and no expression
+beyond its influence on this routine; that merely by living through their own
+obscure days his readers were representing and achieving all the highest
+objectives of any civilization. His scientific precision was impeccable and his
+erudition astounding; no one could refute him on the cooking utensils of Babylon
+or the doormats of Byzantium. He wrote with the flash and the color of a
+first-hand observer. He did not plod laboriously through the centuries; he
+danced, said the critics, down the road of the ages, as a jester, a friend and a
+prophet.
+He said that architecture was truly the greatest of the arts, because it was
+anonymous, as all greatness. He said that the world had many famous buildings,
+but few renowned builders, which was as it should be, since no one man had ever
+created anything of importance in architecture, or elsewhere, for that matter.
+The few whose names had lived were really impostors, expropriating the glory of
+the people as others expropriated its wealth. "When we gaze at the magnificence
+of an ancient monument and ascribe its achievement to one man, we are guilty of
+spiritual embezzlement. We forget the army of craftsmen, unknown and unsung, who
+preceded him in the darkness of the ages, who toiled humbly--all heroism is
+humble--each contributing his small share to the common treasure of his time. A
+great building is not the private invention of some genius or other. It is
+merely a condensation of the spirit of a people."
+He explained that the decadence of architecture had come when private property
+replaced the communal spirit of the Middle Ages, and that the selfishness of
+individual owners--who built for no purpose save to satisfy their own bad taste,
+"all claim to an individual taste is bad taste"--had ruined the planned effect
+of cities. He demonstrated that there was no such thing as free will, since
+men’s creative impulses were determined, as all else, by the economic structure
+of the epoch in which they lived. He expressed admiration for all the great
+historical styles, but admonished against their wanton mixture. He dismissed
+modern architecture, stating that: "So far, it has represented nothing but the
+whim of isolated individuals, has borne no relation to any great, spontaneous
+mass movement, and as such is of no consequence." He predicted a better world to
+come, where all men would be brothers and their buildings would become
+harmonious and all alike, in the great tradition of Greece, "the Mother of
+Democracy." When he wrote this, he managed to convey--with no tangible break in
+the detached calm of his style--that the words now seen in ordered print had
+been blurred in manuscript by a hand unsteady with emotion. He called upon
+architects to abandon their selfish quest for individual glory and dedicate
+themselves to the embodiment of the mood of their people. "Architects are
+servants, not leaders. They are not to assert their little egos, but to express
+the soul of their country and the rhythm of their time. They are not to follow
+the delusions of their personal fancy, but to seek the common denominator, which
+will bring their work close to the heart of the masses. Architects--ah, my
+friends, theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is not to command, but to be
+commanded."
+The advertisements for Sermons in Stone carried quotations from critics:
+"Magnificent!"
+62
+
+"A stupendous achievement!"
+"Unequaled in all art history!"
+"Your chance to get acquainted with a charming man and a profound thinker."
+"Mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to the title of intellectual."
+There seemed to be a great many aspiring to that title. Readers acquired
+erudition without study, authority without cost, judgment without effort. It was
+pleasant to look at buildings and criticize them with a professional manner and
+with the memory of page 439; to hold artistic discussions and exchange the same
+sentences from the same paragraphs. In distinguished drawing rooms one could
+soon hear it said: "Architecture? Oh, yes, Ellsworth Toohey."
+According to his principles, Ellsworth M. Toohey listed no architect by name in
+the text of his book--"the myth-building, hero-worshipping method of historical
+research has always been obnoxious to me." The names appeared only in footnotes.
+Several of these referred to Guy Francon, "who has a tendency to the overornate,
+but must be commended for his loyalty to the strict tradition of Classicism."
+One note referred to Henry Cameron, "prominent once as one of the fathers of the
+so-called modern school of architecture and relegated since to a well-deserved
+oblivion. Vox populi vox dei."
+In February of 1925 Henry Cameron retired from practice.
+For a year, he had known that the day would come. He had not spoken of it to
+Roark, but they both knew and went on, expecting nothing save to go on as long
+as it was still possible. A few commissions had dribbled into their office in
+the past year, country cottages, garages, remodeling of old buildings. They took
+anything. But the drops stopped. The pipes were dry. The water had been turned
+off by a society to whom Cameron had never paid his bill.
+Simpson and the old man in the reception room had been dismissed long ago. Only
+Roark remained, to sit still through the winter evenings and look at Cameron’s
+body slumped over his desk, arms flung out, head on arms, a bottle glistening
+under the lamp.
+Then, one day in February, when Cameron had touched no alcohol for weeks, he
+reached for a book on a shelf and collapsed at Roark’s feet, suddenly, simply,
+finally. Roark took him home and the doctor stated that an attempt to leave his
+bed would be all the death sentence Cameron needed. Cameron knew it. He lay
+still on his pillow, his hands dropped obediently one at each side of his body,
+his eyes unblinking and empty. Then he said:
+"You’ll close the office for me, Howard, will you?"
+"Yes," said Roark.
+Cameron closed his eyes, and would say nothing else, and Roark sat all night by
+his bed, not knowing whether the old man slept or not.
+A sister of Cameron’s appeared from somewhere in New Jersey. She was a meek
+little old lady with white hair, trembling hands and a face one could never
+remember, quiet, resigned and gently hopeless. She had a meager little income
+and she assumed the responsibility of taking her brother to her home in New
+Jersey; she had never been married and had no one else in the world; she was
+neither glad nor sorry of the burden; she had lost all capacity for emotion many
+years ago.
+63
+
+On the day of his departure Cameron handed to Roark a letter he had written in
+the night, written painfully, an old drawing board on his knees, a pillow
+propping his back. The letter was addressed to a prominent architect; it was
+Roark’s introduction to a job. Roark read it and, looking at Cameron, not at his
+own hands, tore the letter across, folded the pieces and tore it again. "No,"
+said Roark. "You’re not going to ask them for anything. Don’t worry about me."
+Cameron nodded and kept silent for a long time. Then he said:
+"You’ll close up the office, Howard. You’ll let them keep the furniture for
+their rent. But you’ll take the drawing that’s on the wall in my room there and
+you’ll ship it to me. Only that. You’ll burn everything else. All the papers,
+the files, the drawings, the contracts, everything."
+"Yes," said Roark.
+Miss Cameron came with the orderlies and the stretcher, and they rode in an
+ambulance to the ferry. At the entrance to the ferry, Cameron said to Roark:
+"You’re going back now." He added: "You’ll come to see me, Howard....Not too
+often..."
+Roark turned and walked away, while they were carrying Cameron to the pier. It
+was a gray morning and there was the cold, rotting smell of the sea in the air.
+A gull dipped low over the street, gray like a floating piece of newspaper,
+against a corner of damp, streaked stone.
+That evening, Roark went to Cameron’s closed office. He did not turn on the
+lights. He made a fire in the Franklin heater in Cameron’s room, and emptied
+drawer after drawer into the fire, not looking down at them. The papers rustled
+dryly in the silence, a thin odor of mold rose through the dark room, and the
+fire hissed, crackling, leaping in bright streaks. At times a white flake with
+charred edges would flutter out of the flames. He pushed it back with the end of
+a steel ruler.
+There were drawings of Cameron’s famous buildings and of buildings unbuilt;
+there were blueprints with the thin white lines that were girders still standing
+somewhere; there were contracts with famous signatures; and at times, from out
+of the red glow, there flashed a sum of seven figures written on yellowed paper,
+flashed and went down, in a thin burst of sparks.
+From among the letters in an old folder, a newspaper clipping fluttered to the
+floor. Roark picked it up. It was dry, brittle and yellow, and it broke at the
+folds, in his fingers. It was an interview given by Henry Cameron, dated May 7,
+1892. It said: "Architecture is not a business, not a career, but a crusade and
+a consecration to a joy that justifies the existence of the earth." He dropped
+the clipping into the fire and reached for another folder.
+He gathered every stub of pencil from Cameron’s desk and threw them in also.
+He stood over the heater. He did not move, he did not look down; he felt the
+movement of the glow, a faint shudder at the edge of his vision. He looked at
+the drawing of the skyscraper that had never been built, hanging on the wall
+before him.
+#
+It was Peter Keating’s third year with the firm of Francon & Heyer. He carried
+his head high, his body erect with studied uprightness; he looked like the
+64
+
+picture of a successful young man in advertisements for high-priced razors or
+medium-priced cars.
+He dressed well and watched people noticing it. He had an apartment off Park
+Avenue, modest but fashionable, and he bought three valuable etchings as well as
+a first edition of a classic he had never read nor opened since. Occasionally,
+he escorted clients to the Metropolitan Opera. He appeared, once, at a
+fancy-dress Arts Ball and created a sensation by his costume of a medieval
+stonecutter, scarlet velvet and tights; he was mentioned in a society-page
+account of the event--the first mention of his name in print--and he saved the
+clipping.
+He had forgotten his first building, and the fear and doubt of its birth. He had
+learned that it was so simple. His clients would accept anything, so long as he
+gave them an imposing facade, a majestic entrance and a regal drawing room, with
+which to astound their guests. It worked out to everyone’s satisfaction: Keating
+did not care so long as his clients were impressed, the clients did not care so
+long as their guests were impressed, and the guests did not care anyway.
+Mrs. Keating rented her house in Stanton and came to live with him in New York.
+He did not want her; he could not refuse--because she was his mother and he was
+not expected to refuse. He met her with some eagerness; he could at least
+impress her by his rise in the world. She was not impressed; she inspected his
+rooms, his clothes, his bank books and said only: "It’ll do, Petey--for the time
+being."
+She made one visit to his office and departed within a half-hour. That evening
+he had to sit still, squeezing and cracking his knuckles, for an hour and a
+half, while she gave him advice. "That fellow Whithers had a much more expensive
+suit than yours, Petey. That won’t do. You’ve got to watch your prestige before
+those boys. The little one who brought in those blueprints--I didn’t like the
+way he spoke to you....Oh, nothing, nothing, only I’d keep my eye on him....The
+one with the long nose is no friend of yours....Never mind, I just know....Watch
+out for the one they called Bennett. I’d get rid of him if I were you. He’s
+ambitious. I know the signs...."
+Then she asked:
+"Guy Francon...has he any children?"
+"One daughter."
+"Oh..." said Mrs. Keating. "What is she like?"
+"I’ve never met her."
+"Really, Peter," she said, "it’s downright rude to Mr. Francon if you’ve made no
+effort to meet his family."
+"She’s been away at college, Mother. I’ll meet her some day. It’s getting late,
+Mother, and I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow...."
+But he thought of it that night and the following day. He had thought of it
+before and often. He knew that Francon’s daughter had graduated from college
+long ago and was now working on the Banner, where she wrote a small column on
+home decoration. He had been able to learn nothing else about her. No one in the
+office seemed to know her. Francon never spoke of her.
+On that following day, at luncheon, Keating decided to face the subject.
+65
+
+"I hear such nice things about your daughter," he said to
+Francon. "Where did you hear nice things about her?" Francon asked ominously.
+"Oh, well, you know how it is, one hears things. And she writes brilliantly."
+"Yes, she writes brilliantly." Francon’s mouth snapped shut.
+"Really, Guy, I’d love to meet her."
+Francon looked at him and sighed wearily.
+"You know she’s not living with me," said Francon. "She has an apartment of her
+own--I’m not sure that I even remember the address....Oh, I suppose you’ll meet
+her some day. You won’t like her, Peter."
+"Now, why do you say that?"
+"It’s one of those things, Peter. As a father I’m afraid I’m a total
+failure....Say, Peter, what did Mrs. Mannering say about that new stairway
+arrangement?"
+Keating felt angry, disappointed--and relieved. He looked at Francon’s squat
+figure and wondered what appearance his daughter must have inherited to earn her
+father’s so obvious disfavor. Rich and ugly as sin--like most of them, he
+decided. He thought that this need not stop him--some day. He was glad only that
+the day was postponed. He thought, with new eagerness, that he would go to see
+Catherine tonight.
+Mrs. Keating had met Catherine in Stanton. She had hoped that Peter would
+forget. Now she knew that he had not forgotten, even though he seldom spoke of
+Catherine and never brought her to his home. Mrs. Keating did not mention
+Catherine by name. But she chatted about penniless girls who hooked brilliant
+young men, about promising boys whose careers had been wrecked by marriage to
+the wrong woman; and she read to him every newspaper account of a celebrity
+divorcing his plebeian wife who could not live up to his eminent position.
+Keating thought, as he walked toward Catherine’s house that night, of the few
+times he had seen her; they had been such unimportant occasions, but they were
+the only days he remembered of his whole life in New York.
+He found, in the middle of her uncle’s living room, when she let him in, a mess
+of letters spread all over the carpet, a portable typewriter, newspapers,
+scissors, boxes and a pot of glue.
+"Oh dear!" said Catherine, flopping limply down on her knees in the midst of the
+litter. "Oh dear!"
+She looked up at him, smiling disarmingly, her hands raised and spread over the
+crinkling white piles. She was almost twenty now and looked no older than she
+had looked at seventeen.
+"Sit down, Peter. I thought I’d be through before you came, but I guess I’m not.
+It’s Uncle’s fan mail and his press clippings. I’ve got to sort it out, and
+answer it and file it and write notes of thanks and...Oh, you should see some of
+the things people write to him! It’s wonderful. Don’t stand there. Sit down,
+will you? I’ll be through in a minute."
+66
+
+"You’re through right now," he said, picking her up in his arms, carrying her to
+a chair.
+He held her and kissed her and she laughed happily, her head buried on his
+shoulder. He said:
+"Katie, you’re an impossible little fool and your hair smells so nice!"
+She said: "Don’t move, Peter. I’m comfortable."
+"Katie, I want to tell you, I had a wonderful time today. They opened the
+Bordman Building officially this afternoon. You know, down on Broadway,
+twenty-two floors and a Gothic spire. Francon had indigestion, so I went there
+as his representative. I designed that building anyway and...Oh, well, you know
+nothing about it."
+"But I do, Peter. I’ve seen all your buildings. I have pictures of them. I cut
+them out of the papers. And I’m making a scrap-book, just like Uncle’s. Oh,
+Peter, it’s so wonderful!"
+"What?"
+"Uncle’s scrapbooks, and his letters...all this..." She stretched her hands out
+over the papers on the floor, as if she wanted to embrace them. "Think of it,
+all these letters coming from all over the country, perfect strangers and yet he
+means so much to them. And here I am, helping him, me, just nobody, and look
+what a responsibility I have! It’s so touching and so big, what do they
+matter--all the little things that can happen to us?--when this concerns a whole
+nation!"
+"Yeah? Did he tell you that?"
+"He told me nothing at all. But you can’t live with him for years without
+getting some of that...that wonderful selflessness of his." He wanted to be
+angry, but he saw her twinkling smile, her new kind of fire, and he had to smile
+in answer.
+"I’ll say this, Katie: it’s becoming to you, becoming as hell. You know, you
+could look stunning if you learned something about clothes. One of these days,
+I’ll take you bodily and drag you down to a good dressmaker. I want you to meet
+Guy Francon some day. You’ll like him."
+"Oh? I thought you said once that I wouldn’t."
+"Did I say that? Well, I didn’t really know him. He’s a grand fellow. I want you
+to meet them all. You’d be...hey, where are you going?" She had noticed the
+watch on his wrist and was edging away from him.
+"I...It’s almost nine o’clock, Peter, and I’ve got to have this finished before
+Uncle Ellsworth gets home. He’ll be back by eleven, he’s making a speech at a
+labor meeting tonight. I can work while we’re talking, do you mind?"
+"I certainly do! To hell with your dear uncle’s fans! Let him untangle it all
+himself. You stay just where you are."
+She sighed, but put her head on his shoulder obediently. "You mustn’t talk like
+that about Uncle Ellsworth. You don’t understand him at all. Have you read his
+book?"
+67
+
+"Yes! I’ve read his book and it’s grand, it’s stupendous, but I’ve heard nothing
+but talk of his damn book everywhere I go, so do you mind if we change the
+subject?"
+"You still don’t want to meet Uncle Ellsworth?"
+"Why? What makes you say that? I’d love to meet him."
+"Oh..."
+"What’s the matter?"
+"You said once that you didn’t want to meet him through me."
+"Did I? How do you always remember all the nonsense I happen to say?"
+"Peter, I don’t want you to meet Uncle Ellsworth."
+"Why not?"
+"I don’t know. It’s kind of silly of me. But now I just don’t
+want you to. I don’t know why."
+"Well, forget it then. I’ll meet him when the time comes. Katie, listen,
+yesterday I was standing at the window in my room, and I thought of you, and I
+wanted so much to have you with me, I almost called you, only it was too late. I
+get so terribly lonely for you like that, I..."
+She listened, her arms about his neck. And then he saw her looking suddenly past
+him, her mouth opened in consternation; she jumped up, dashed across the room,
+and crawled on her hands and knees to reach a lavender envelope lying under a
+desk.
+"Now what on earth?" he demanded angrily.
+"It’s a very important letter," she said, still kneeling, the envelope held
+tightly in her little fist, "it’s a very important letter and there it was,
+practically in the wastebasket, I might have swept it out without noticing. It’s
+from a poor widow who has five children and her eldest son wants to be an
+architect and Uncle Ellsworth is going to arrange a scholarship for him."
+"Well," said Keating, rising, "I’ve had just about enough of this. Let’s get out
+of here, Katie. Let’s go for a walk. It’s beautiful out tonight. You don’t seem
+to belong to yourself in here."
+"Oh, fine! Let’s go for a walk."
+Outside, there was a mist of snow, a dry, fine, weightless snow that hung still
+in the air, filling the narrow tanks of streets. They walked together,
+Catherine’s arm pressed to his, their feet leaving long brown smears on the
+white sidewalks.
+They sat down on a bench in Washington Square. The snow enclosed the Square,
+cutting them off from the houses, from the city beyond. Through the shadow of
+the arch, little dots of light rolled past them, steel-white, green and smeared
+red.
+She sat huddled close to him. He looked at the city. He had always been afraid
+68
+
+of it and he was afraid of it now; but he had two fragile protections: the snow
+and the girl beside him. "Katie," he whispered, "Katie..."
+"I love you, Peter...."
+"Katie," he said, without hesitation, without emphasis, because the certainty of
+his words allowed no excitement, "we’re engaged, aren’t we?"
+He saw her chin move faintly as it dropped and rose to form one word.
+"Yes," she said calmly, so solemnly that the word sounded indifferent.
+She had never allowed herself to question the future, for a question would have
+been an admission of doubt. But she knew, when she pronounced the "yes," that
+she had waited for this and that she would shatter it if she were too happy.
+"In a year or two," he said holding her hand tightly, "we’ll be married. Just as
+soon as I’m on my feet and set with the firm for good. I have mother to take
+care of, but in another year it will be all right." He tried to speak as coldly,
+as practically as he could, not to spoil the wonder of what he felt. "I’ll wait,
+Peter," she whispered. "We don’t have to hurry."
+"We won’t tell anyone, Katie....It’s our secret, just ours until..." And
+suddenly a thought came to him, and he realized, aghast, that he could not prove
+it had never occurred to him before; yet he knew, in complete honesty, even
+though it did astonish him, that he had never thought of this before. He pushed
+her aside. He said angrily: "Katie! You won’t think that it’s because of that
+great, damnable uncle of yours?"
+She laughed; the sound was light and unconcerned, and he knew that he was
+vindicated.
+"Lord, no, Peter! He won’t like it, of course, but what do we care?"
+"He won’t like it? Why?"
+"Oh, I don’t think he approves of marriage. Not that he preaches anything
+immoral, but he’s always told me marriage is old-fashioned, an economic device
+to perpetuate the institution of private property, or something like that or
+anyway that he doesn’t like it."
+"Well, that’s wonderful! We’ll show him."
+In all sincerity, he was glad of it. It removed, not from his mind which he knew
+to be innocent, but from all other minds where it could occur, the suspicion
+that there had been in his feeling for her any hint of such considerations as
+applied to...to Francon’s daughter, for instance. He thought it was strange that
+this should seem so important; that he should wish so desperately to keep his
+feeling for her free from ties to all other people.
+He let his head fall back, he felt the bite of snowflakes on his lips. Then he
+turned and kissed her. The touch of her mouth was soft and cold with the snow.
+Her hat had slipped to one side, her lips were half open, her eyes round,
+helpless, her lashes glistening. He held her hand, palm up, and looked at it:
+she wore a black woolen glove and her fingers were spread out clumsily like a
+child’s; he saw beads of melted snow in the fuzz of the glove; they sparkled
+radiantly once in the light of a car flashing past.
+69
+
+7.
+THE BULLETIN of the Architects’ Guild of America carried, in its Miscellaneous
+Department, a short item announcing Henry Cameron’s retirement. Six lines
+summarized his achievements in architecture and misspelled the names of his two
+best buildings.
+Peter Keating walked into Francon’s office and interrupted Francon’s well-bred
+bargaining with an antique dealer over a snuffbox that had belonged to Madame
+Pompadour. Francon was precipitated into paying nine dollars and twenty-five
+cents more than he had intended to pay. He turned to Keating testily, after the
+dealer had left, and asked:
+"Well, what is it, Peter, what is it?"
+Keating threw the bulletin down on Francon’s desk, his thumbnail underscoring
+the paragraph about Cameron.
+"I’ve got to have that man," said Keating.
+"What man?"
+"Howard Roark."
+"Who the hell," asked Francon, "is Howard Roark?"
+"I’ve told you about him. Cameron’s designer."
+"Oh...oh, yes, I believe you did. Well, go and get him."
+"Do you give me a free hand on how I hire him?"
+"What the hell? What is there about hiring another draftsman? Incidentally, did
+you have to interrupt me for that?"
+"He might be difficult. And I want to get him before he decides on anyone else."
+"Really? He’s going to be difficult about it, is he? Do you intend to beg him to
+come here after Cameron’s? Which is not great recommendation for a young man
+anyway."
+"Come on, Guy. Isn’t it?"
+"Oh well...well, speaking structurally, not esthetically, Cameron does give them
+a thorough grounding and...Of course, Cameron was pretty important in his day.
+As a matter of fact, I was one of his best draftsmen myself once, long ago.
+There’s something to be said for old Cameron when you need that sort of thing.
+Go ahead. Get your Roark if you think you need him."
+"It’s not that I really need him. But he’s an old friend of mine, and out of a
+job, and I thought it would be a nice thing to do for him."
+"Well, do anything you wish. Only don’t bother me about it....Say, Peter, don’t
+you think this is as lovely a snuffbox as you’ve ever seen?"
+That evening, Keating climbed, unannounced, to Roark’s room and knocked,
+70
+
+nervously, and entered cheerfully. He found Roark sitting on the window sill,
+smoking.
+"Just passing by," said Keating, "with an evening to kill and happened to think
+that that’s where you live, Howard, and thought I’d drop in to say hello,
+haven’t seen you for such a long time."
+"I know what you want," said Roark. "All right. How much?"
+"What do you mean, Howard?"
+"You know what I mean."
+"Sixty-five a week," Keating blurted out. This was not the elaborate approach he
+had prepared, but he had not expected to find that no approach would be
+necessary. "Sixty-five to start with. If you think it’s not enough, I could
+maybe..."
+"Sixty-five will do."
+"You...you’ll come with us, Howard?"
+"When do you want me to start?"
+"Why...as soon as you can! Monday?"
+"ALL right."
+"Thanks, Howard!"
+"On one condition," said Roark. "I’m not going to do any designing. Not any. No
+details. No Louis XV skyscrapers. Just keep me off esthetics if you want to keep
+me at all. Put me in the engineering department. Send me on inspections, out in
+the field. Now, do you still want me?"
+"Certainly. Anything you say. You’ll like the place, just wait and see. You’ll
+like Francon. He’s one of Cameron’s men himself."
+"He shouldn’t boast about it."
+"Well..."
+"No. Don’t worry. I won’t say it to his face. I won’t say anything to anyone. Is
+that what you wanted to know?"
+"Why, no, I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t even thinking of that."
+"Then it’s settled. Good night. See you Monday."
+"Well, yes...but I’m in no special hurry, really I came to see you and..."
+"What’s the matter, Peter? Something bothering you?"
+"No...I..."
+"You want to know why I’m doing it?" Roark smiled, without resentment or
+interest. "Is that it? I’ll tell you, if you want to know. I don’t give a damn
+where I work next. There’s no architect in town that I’d want to work for. But I
+have to work somewhere, so it might as well be your Francon--if I can get what I
+71
+
+want from you. I’m selling myself, and I’ll play the game that way--for the time
+being."
+"Really, Howard, you don’t have to look at it like that. There’s no limit to how
+far you can go with us, once you get used to it. You’ll see, for a change, what
+a real office looks like. After Cameron’s dump..."
+"We’ll shut up about that, Peter, and we’ll do it damn fast."
+"I didn’t mean to criticize or...I didn’t mean anything." He did not know what
+to say nor what he should feel. It was a victory, but it seemed hollow. Still,
+it was a victory and he felt that he wanted to feel affection for Roark.
+"Howard, let’s go out and have a drink, just sort of to celebrate the occasion."
+"Sorry, Peter. That’s not part of the job."
+Keating had come here prepared to exercise caution and tact to the limit of his
+ability; he had achieved a purpose he had not expected to achieve; he knew he
+should take no chances, say nothing else and leave. But something inexplicable,
+beyond all practical considerations, was pushing him on. He said unheedingly:
+"Can’t you be human for once in your life?"
+"What?"
+"Human! Simple. Natural."
+"But I am."
+"Can’t you ever relax?"
+Roark smiled, because he was sitting on the window sill, leaning sloppily
+against the wall, his long legs hanging loosely, the cigarette held without
+pressure between limp fingers.
+"That’s not what I mean!" said Keating. "Why can’t you go out for a drink with
+me?"
+"What for?"
+"Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious?
+Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You’re so
+serious, so old. Everything’s important with you, everything’s great,
+significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can’t you ever
+be comfortable--and unimportant?"
+"No."
+"Don’t you get tired of the heroic?"
+"What’s heroic about me?"
+"Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. It’s not what you do. It’s what you make
+people feel around you."
+"What?"
+"The un-normal. The strain. When I’m with you--it’s always like a choice.
+72
+
+Between you--and the rest of the world. I don’t want that kind of a choice. I
+don’t want to be an outsider. I want to belong. There’s so much in the world
+that’s simple and pleasant. It’s not all fighting and renunciation. It is--with
+you."
+"What have I ever renounced?"
+"Oh, you’ll never renounce anything! You’d walk over corpses for what you want.
+But it’s what you’ve renounced by never wanting it."
+"That’s because you can’t want both."
+"Both what?"
+"Look, Peter. I’ve never told you any of those things about me. What makes you
+see them? I’ve never asked you to make a choice between me and anything else.
+What makes you feel that there is a choice involved? What makes you
+uncomfortable when you feel that--since you’re so sure I’m wrong?"
+"I...I don’t know." He added: "I don’t know what you’re talking about." And then
+he asked suddenly:
+"Howard, why do you hate me?"
+"I don’t hate you."
+"Well, that’s it! Why don’t you hate me at least?"
+"Why should I?"
+"Just to give me something. I know you can’t like me. You can’t like anybody. So
+it would be kinder to acknowledge people’s existence by hating them."
+"I’m not kind, Peter."
+And as Keating found nothing to say, Roark added:
+"Go home, Peter. You got what you wanted. Let it go at that. See you Monday."
+#
+Roark stood at a table in the drafting room of Francon & Heyer, a pencil in his
+hand, a strand of orange hair hanging down over his face, the prescribed
+pearl-gray smock like a prison uniform on his body.
+He had learned to accept his new job. The lines he drew were to be the clean
+lines of steel beams, and he tried not to think of what these beams would carry.
+It was difficult, at times. Between him and the plan of the building on which he
+was working stood the plan of that building as it should have been. He saw what
+he could make of it, how to change the lines he drew, where to lead them in
+order to achieve a thing of splendor. He had to choke the knowledge. He had to
+kill the vision. He had to obey and draw the lines as instructed. It hurt him so
+much that he shrugged at himself in cold anger. He thought: difficult?--well,
+learn it.
+But the pain remained--and a helpless wonder. The thing he saw was so much more
+real than the reality of paper, office and commission. He could not understand
+what made others blind to it, and what made their indifference possible. He
+looked at the paper before him. He wondered why ineptitude should exist and have
+its say. He had never known that. And the reality which permitted it could never
+73
+
+become quite real to him.
+But he knew that this would not last--he had to wait--it was his only
+assignment, to wait--what he felt didn’t matter--it had to be done--he had to
+wait.
+"Mr. Roark, are you ready with the steel cage for the Gothic lantern for the
+American Radio Corporation Building?"
+He had no friends in the drafting room. He was there like a piece of furniture,
+as useful, as impersonal and as silent. Only the chief of the engineering
+department, to which Roark was assigned, had said to Keating after the first two
+weeks: "You’ve got more sense than I gave you credit for, Keating. Thanks."
+"For what?" asked Keating. "For nothing that was intentional, I’m sure," said
+the chief.
+Once in a while, Keating stopped by Roark’s table to say softly: "Will you drop
+in at my office when you’re through tonight, Howard? Nothing important."
+When Roark came, Keating began by saying: "Well, how do you like it here,
+Howard? If there’s anything you want, just say so and I’ll..." Roark interrupted
+to ask: "Where is it, this time?" Keating produced sketches from a drawer and
+said: "I know it’s perfectly right, just as it is, but what do you think of it,
+generally speaking?" Roark looked at the sketches, and even though he wanted to
+throw them at Keating’s face and resign, one thought stopped him: the thought
+that it was a building and that he had to save it, as others could not pass a
+drowning man without leaping in to the rescue.
+Then he worked for hours, sometimes all night, while Keating sat and watched. He
+forgot Keating’s presence. He saw only a building and his chance to shape it. He
+knew that the shape would be changed, torn, distorted. Still, some order and
+reason would remain in its plan. It would be a better building than it would
+have been if he refused.
+Sometimes, looking at the sketch of a structure simpler, cleaner, more honest
+than the others, Roark would say: "That’s not so bad, Peter. You’re improving."
+And Keating would feel an odd little jolt inside, something quiet, private and
+precious, such as he never felt from the compliments of Guy Francon, of his
+clients, of all others. Then he would forget it and feel much more substantially
+pleased when a wealthy lady murmured over a teacup: "You’re the coming architect
+of America, Mr. Keating," though she had never seen his buildings.
+He found compensations for his submission to Roark. He would enter the drafting
+room in the morning, throw a tracing boy’s assignment down on Roark’s table and
+say: "Howard, do this up for me, will you?--and make it fast." In the middle of
+the day, he would send a boy to Roark’s table to say loudly: "Mr. Keating wishes
+to see you in his office at once." He would come out of the office and walk in
+Roark’s direction and say to the room at large: "Where the hell are those
+Twelfth Street plumbing specifications? Oh, Howard, will you look through the
+files and dig them up for me?"
+At first, he was afraid of Roark’s reaction. When he saw no reaction, only a
+silent obedience, he could restrain himself no longer. He felt a sensual
+pleasure in giving orders to Roark; and he felt also a fury of resentment at
+Roark’s passive compliance. He continued, knowing that he could continue only so
+long as Roark exhibited no anger, yet wishing desperately to break him down to
+an explosion. No explosion came.
+74
+
+Roark liked the days when he was sent out to inspect buildings in construction.
+He walked through the steel hulks of buildings more naturally than on pavements.
+The workers observed with curiosity that he walked on narrow planks, on naked
+beams hanging over empty space, as easily as the best of them.
+It was a day in March, and the sky was a faint green with the first hint of
+spring. In Central Park, five hundred feet below, the earth caught the tone of
+the sky in a shade of brown that promised to become green, and the lakes lay
+like splinters of glass under the cobwebs of bare branches. Roark walked through
+the shell of what was to be a gigantic apartment hotel, and stopped before an
+electrician at work.
+The man was toiling assiduously, bending conduits around a beam. It was a task
+for hours of strain and patience, in a space overfilled against all
+calculations. Roark stood, his hands in his pockets, watching the man’s slow,
+painful progress.
+The man raised his head and turned to him abruptly. He had a big head and a face
+so ugly that it became fascinating; it was neither old nor flabby, but it was
+creased in deep gashes and the powerful jowls drooped like a bulldog’s; the eyes
+were startling--wide, round and china-blue.
+"Well?" the man asked angrily, "what’s the matter, Brick-top?"
+"You’re wasting your time," said Roark.
+"Yeah?"
+"Yeah."
+"You don’t say!"
+"It will take you hours to get your pipes around that beam."
+"Know a better way to do it?"
+"Sure."
+"Run along, punk. We don’t like college smarties around here."
+"Cut a hole in that beam and put your pipes through."
+"What?"
+"Cut a hole through the beam."
+"The hell I will!"
+"The hell you won’t."
+"It ain’t done that way."
+"I’ve done it."
+"You?"
+"It’s done everywhere."
+"It ain’t gonna be done here. Not by me."
+75
+
+"Then I’ll do it for you."
+The man roared. "That’s rich! When did office boys learn to do a man’s work?"
+"Give me your torch."
+"Look out, boy! It’ll burn your pretty pink toes!"
+Roark took the man’s gloves and goggles, took the acetylene torch, knelt, and
+sent a thin jet of blue fire at the center of the beam. The man stood watching
+him. Roark’s arm was steady, holding the tense, hissing streak of flame in
+leash, shuddering faintly with its violence, but holding it aimed straight.
+There was no strain, no effort in the easy posture of his body, only in his arm.
+And it seemed as if the blue tension eating slowly through metal came not from
+the flame but from the hand holding it.
+He finished, put the torch down, and rose.
+"Jesus!" said the electrician. "Do you know how to handle a torch!"
+"Looks like it, doesn’t it?" He removed the gloves, the goggles, and handed them
+back. "Do it that way from now on. Tell the foreman I said so."
+The electrician was staring reverently at the neat hole cut through the beam. He
+muttered: "Where did you learn to handle it like that, Red?"
+Roark’s slow, amused smile acknowledged this concession of victory. "Oh, I’ve
+been an electrician, and a plumber, and a rivet catcher, and many other things."
+"And went to school besides?"
+"Well, in a way."
+"Gonna be an architect?"
+"Yes."
+"Well, you’ll be the first one that knows something besides pretty pictures and
+tea parties. You should see the teacher’s pets they send us down from the
+office."
+"If you’re apologizing, don’t. I don’t like them either. Go back to the pipes.
+So long."
+"So long, Red."
+The next time Roark appeared on that job, the blue-eyed electrician waved to him
+from afar, and called him over, and asked advice about his work which he did not
+need; he stated that his name was Mike and that he had missed Roark for several
+days. On the next visit the day shift was just leaving, and Mike waited outside
+for Roark to finish the inspection. "How about a glass of beer, Red?" he
+invited, when Roark came out. "Sure," said Roark, "thanks."
+They sat together at a table in the corner of a basement speakeasy, and they
+drank beer, and Mike related his favorite tale of how he had fallen five stories
+when a scaffolding gave way under him, how he had broken three ribs but lived to
+tell it, and Roark spoke of his days in the building trades. Mike did have a
+real name, which was Sean Xavier Donnigan, but everyone had forgotten it long
+76
+
+ago; he owned a set of tools and an ancient Ford, and existed for the sole
+purpose of traveling around the country from one big construction job to
+another. People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal.
+He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no
+tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in
+his own field and he felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world
+was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not
+concerned with the latter. He loved buildings. He despised, however, all
+architects.
+"There was one, Red," he said earnestly, over his fifth beer, "one only and
+you’d be too young to know about him, but that was the only man that knew
+building. I worked for him when I was your age."
+"Who was that?"
+"Henry Cameron was his name. He’s dead, I guess, these many years."
+Roark looked at him for a long time, then said: "He’s not dead, Mike," and
+added: "I’ve worked for him."
+"You did?"
+"For almost three years."
+They looked at each other silently, and that was the final seal on their
+friendship.
+Weeks later, Mike stopped Roark, one day, at the building, his ugly face
+puzzled, and asked:
+"Say, Red, I heard the super tell a guy from the contractor’s that you’re
+stuck-up and stubborn and the lousiest bastard he’s ever been up against. What
+did you do to him?"
+"Nothing."
+"What the hell did he mean?"
+"I don’t know," said Roark. "Do you?"
+Mike looked at him, shrugged and grinned.
+"No," said Mike.
+
+8.
+EARLY IN May, Peter Keating departed for Washington, to supervise the
+construction of a museum donated to the city by a great philanthropist easing
+his conscience. The museum building, Keating pointed out proudly, was to be
+decidedly different: it was not a reproduction of the Parthenon, but of the
+Maison Carrée at Nîmes.
+Keating had been away for some time when an office boy approached Roark’s table
+and informed him that Mr. Francon wished to see him in his office. When Roark
+entered the sanctuary, Francon smiled from behind the desk and said cheerfully:
+"Sit down, my friend. Sit down...." but something in Roark’s eyes, which he had
+77
+
+never seen at close range before, made Francon’s voice shrink and stop, and he
+added dryly: "Sit down." Roark obeyed. Francon studied him for a second, but
+could reach no conclusion beyond deciding that the man had a most unpleasant
+face, yet looked quite correctly attentive.
+"You’re the one who’s worked for Cameron, aren’t you?" Francon asked. "Yes,"
+said Roark.
+"Mr. Keating has been telling me very nice things about you," Francon tried
+pleasantly and stopped. It was wasted courtesy; Roark just sat looking at him,
+waiting. "Listen...what’s your name?"
+"Roark."
+"Listen, Roark. We have a client who is a little...odd, but he’s an important
+man, a very important man, and we have to satisfy him. He’s given us a
+commission for an eight-million-dollar office building, but the trouble is that
+he has very definite ideas on what he wants it to look like. He wants it--"
+Francon shrugged apologetically, disclaiming all blame for the preposterous
+suggestion--"he wants it to look like this." He handed Roark a photograph. It
+was a photograph of the Dana Building.
+Roark sat quite still, the photograph hanging between his fingers. "Do you know
+that building?" asked Francon.
+"Yes."
+"Well, that’s what he wants. And Mr. Keating’s away. I’ve had Bennett and Cooper
+and Williams make sketches, but he’s turned them down. So I thought I’d give you
+a chance."
+Francon looked at him, impressed by the magnanimity of his own offer. There was
+no reaction. There was only a man who still looked as if he’d been struck on the
+head.
+"Of course," said Francon, "it’s quite a jump for you, quite an assignment, but
+I thought I’d let you try. Don’t be afraid. Mr. Keating and I will go over it
+afterward. Just draw up the plans and a good sketch of it. You must have an idea
+of what the man wants. You know Cameron’s tricks. But of course, we can’t let a
+crude thing like this come out of our office. We must please him, but we must
+also preserve our reputation and not frighten all our other clients away. The
+point is to make it simple and in the general mood of this, but also artistic.
+You know, the more severe kind of Greek. You don’t have to use the Ionic order,
+use the Doric. Plain pediments and simple moldings, or something like that. Get
+the idea? Now take this along and show me what you can do. Bennett will give you
+all the particulars and...What’s the mat--"
+Francon’s voice cut itself off.
+"Mr. Francon, please let me design it the way the Dana Building was designed."
+"Huh?"
+"Let me do it. Not copy the Dana Building, but design it as Henry Cameron would
+have wanted it done, as I will."
+"You mean modernistic?"
+"I...well, call it that."
+78
+
+"Are you crazy?"
+"Mr. Francon, please listen to me." Roark’s words were like the steps of a man
+walking a tightwire, slow, strained, groping for the only right spot, quivering
+over an abyss, but precise. "I don’t blame you for the things you’re doing. I’m
+Working for you, I’m taking your money, I have no right to express objections.
+But this time...this time the client is asking for it. You’re risking nothing.
+He wants it. Think of it, there’s a man, one man who sees and understands and
+wants it and has the power to build it. Are you going to fight a client for the
+first time in your life--and fight for what? To cheat him and to give him the
+same old trash, when you have so many others asking for it, and one, only one,
+who comes with a request like this?"
+"Aren’t you forgetting yourself?" asked Francon, coldly. "What difference would
+it make to you? Just let me do it my way and show it to him. Only show it to
+him. He’s already turned down three sketches, what if he turns down a fourth?
+But if he doesn’t...if he doesn’t..." Roark had never known how to entreat and
+he was not doing it well; his voice was hard, toneless, revealing the effort, so
+that the plea became an insult to the man who was making him plead. Keating
+would have given a great deal to see Roark in that moment. But Francon could not
+appreciate the triumph he was the first ever to achieve; he recognized only the
+insult.
+"Am I correct in gathering," Francon asked, "that you are criticizing me and
+teaching me something about architecture?"
+"I’m begging you," said Roark, closing his eyes. "If you weren’t a protégé of
+Mr. Keating’s, I wouldn’t bother to discuss the matter with you any further. But
+since you are quite obviously naive and inexperienced, I shall point out to you
+that I am not in the habit of asking for the esthetic opinions of my draftsmen.
+You will kindly take this photograph--and I do not wish any building as Cameron
+might have designed it, I wish the scheme of this adapted to our site--and you
+will follow my instructions as to the Classic treatment of the facade."
+"I can’t do it," said Roark, very quietly. "What? Are you speaking to me? Are
+you actually saying: ’Sorry, I can’t do it’?"
+"I haven’t said ’sorry,’ Mr. Francon."
+"What did you say?"
+"That I can’t do it."
+"Why?"
+"You don’t want to know why. Don’t ask me to do any designing. I’ll do any other
+kind of job you wish. But not that. And not to Cameron’s work."
+"What do you mean, no designing? You expect to be an architect some day--or do
+you?"
+"Not like this."
+"Oh...I see...So you can’t do it? You mean you won’t?"
+"If you prefer."
+"Listen, you impertinent fool, this is incredible!" Roark got up. "May I go, Mr.
+79
+
+Francon?"
+"In all my life," roared Francon, "in all my experience, I’ve never seen
+anything like it! Are you here to tell me what you’ll do and what you won’t do?
+Are you here to give me lessons and criticize my taste and pass judgment?"
+"I’m not criticizing anything," said Roark quietly. "I’m not passing judgment.
+There are some things that I can’t do. Let it go at that. May I leave now?"
+"You may leave this room and this firm now and from now on! You may go straight
+to the devil! Go and find yourself another employer! Try and find him! Go get
+your check and get out!"
+"Yes, Mr. Francon."
+That evening Roark walked to the basement speak-easy where he could always find
+Mike after the day’s work. Mike was now employed on the construction of a
+factory by the same contractor who was awarded most of Francon’s biggest jobs.
+Mike had expected to see Roark on an inspection visit to the factory that
+afternoon, and greeted him angrily:
+"What’s the matter, Red? Lying down on the job?"
+When he heard the news, Mike sat still and looked like a bulldog baring its
+teeth. Then he swore savagely.
+"The bastards," he gulped between stronger names, "the bastards..."
+"Keep still, Mike."
+"Well...what now, Red?"
+"Someone else of the same kind, until the same thing happens again."
+#
+When Keating returned from Washington he went straight up to Francon’s office.
+He had not stopped in the drafting room and had heard no news. Francon greeted
+him expansively:
+"Boy, it’s great to see you back! What’ll you have? A whisky-and-soda or a
+little brandy?"
+"No, thanks. Just give me a cigarette."
+"Here....Boy, you look fine! Better than ever. How do you do it, you lucky
+bastard? I have so many things to tell you! How did it go down in Washington?
+Everything all right?" And before Keating could answer, Francon rushed on:
+"Something dreadful’s happened to me. Most disappointing. Do you remember Lili
+Landau? I thought I was all set with her, but last time I saw her, did I get the
+cold shoulder! Do you know who’s got her? You’ll be surprised. Gail Wynand, no
+less! The girl’s flying high. You should see her pictures and her legs all over
+his newspapers. Will it help her show or won’t it! What can I offer against
+that? And do you know what he’s done? Remember how she always said that nobody
+could give her what she wanted most--her childhood home, the dear little
+Austrian village where she was born? Well, Wynand bought it, long ago, the whole
+damn village, and had it shipped here--every bit of it!--and had it assembled
+again down on the Hudson, and there it stands now, cobbles, church, apple trees,
+pigsties and all! Then he springs it on Lili, two weeks ago. Wouldn’t you just
+know it? If the King of Babylon could get hanging gardens for his homesick lady,
+80
+
+why not Gail Wynand? Lili’s all smiles and gratitude--but the poor girl was
+really miserable. She’d have much preferred a mink coat. She never wanted the
+damn village. And Wynand knew it, too. But there it stands, on the Hudson. Last
+week, he gave a party for her, right there, in that village--a costume party,
+with Mr. Wynand dressed as Cesare Borgia--wouldn’t he, though?--and what a
+party!--if you can believe what you hear, but you know how it is, you can never
+prove anything on Wynand. Then what does he do the next day but pose up there
+himself with little schoolchildren who’d never seen an Austrian village--the
+philanthropist!--and plasters the photos all over his papers with plenty of sob
+stuff about educational values, and gets mush notes from women’s clubs! I’d like
+to know what he’ll do with the village when he gets rid of Lili! He will, you
+know, they never last long with him. Do you think I’ll have a chance with her
+then?"
+"Sure," said Keating. "Sure, you will. How’s everything here in the office?"
+"Oh, fine. Same as usual. Lucius had a cold and drank up all of my best Bas
+Armagnac. It’s bad for his heart, and a hundred dollars a case!...Besides,
+Lucius got himself caught in a nasty little mess. It’s that phobia of his, his
+damn porcelain. Seems he went and bought a teapot from a fence. He knew it was
+stolen goods, too. Took me quite a bit of bother to save us from a
+scandal....Oh, by the way, I fired that friend of yours, what’s his
+name?--Roark."
+"Oh," said Keating, and let a moment pass, then asked:
+"Why?"
+"The insolent bastard! Where did you ever pick him up?"
+"What happened?"
+"I thought I’d be nice to him, give him a real break. I asked him to make a
+sketch for the Farrell Building--you know, the one Brent finally managed to
+design and we got Farrell to accept, you know, the simplified Doric--and your
+friend just up and refused to do it. It seems he has ideals or something. So I
+showed him the gate....What’s the matter? What are you smiling at?"
+"Nothing. I can just see it."
+"Now don’t you ask me to take him back!"
+"No, of course not."
+For several days, Keating thought that he should call on Roark. He did not know
+what he would say, but felt dimly that he should say something. He kept
+postponing it. He was gaining assurance in his work. He felt that he did not
+need Roark, after all. The days went by, and he did not call on Roark, and he
+felt relief in being free to forget him.
+Beyond the windows of his room Roark saw the roofs, the water tanks, the
+chimneys, the cars speeding far below. There was a threat in the silence of his
+room, in the empty days, in his hands hanging idly by his sides. And he felt
+another threat rising from the city below, as if each window, each strip of
+pavement, had set itself closed grimly, in wordless resistance. It did not
+disturb him. He had known and accepted it long ago.
+He made a list of the architects whose work he resented least, in the order of
+their lesser evil, and he set out upon the search for a job, coldly,
+81
+
+systematically, without anger or hope. He never knew whether these days hurt
+him; he knew only that it was a thing which had to be done.
+The architects he saw differed from one another. Some looked at him across the
+desk, kindly and vaguely, and their manner seemed to say that it was touching,
+his ambition to be an architect, touching and laudable and strange and
+attractively sad as all the delusions of youth. Some smiled at him with thin,
+drawn lips and seemed to enjoy his presence in the room, because it made them
+conscious of their own accomplishment. Some spoke coldly, as if his ambition
+were a personal insult. Some were brusque, and the sharpness of their voices
+seemed to say that they needed good draftsmen, they always needed good
+draftsmen, but this qualification could not possibly apply to him, and would he
+please refrain from being rude enough to force them to express it more plainly.
+It was not malice. It was not a judgment passed upon his merit. They did not
+think he was worthless. They simply did not care to find out whether he was
+good. Sometimes, he was asked to show his sketches; he extended them across a
+desk, feeling a contraction of shame in the muscles of his hand; it was like
+having the clothes torn off his body, and the shame was not, that his body was
+exposed, but that it was exposed to indifferent eyes. Once in a while he made a
+trip to New Jersey, to see Cameron. They sat together on the porch of a house on
+a hill, Cameron in a wheel chair, his hands on an old blanket spread over his
+knees. "How is it, Howard? Pretty hard?"
+"No."
+"Want me to give you a letter to one of the bastards?"
+"No."
+Then Cameron would not speak of it any more, he did not want to speak of it, he
+did not want the thought of Roark rejected by their city to become real. When
+Roark came to him, Cameron spoke of architecture with the simple confidence of a
+private possession. They sat together, looking at he city in the distance, on
+the edge of the sky, beyond the river. The sky was growing dark and luminous as
+blue-green glass; the buildings looked like clouds condensed on the glass,
+gray-blue clouds frozen for an instant in straight angles and vertical shafts,
+with the sunset caught in the spires....
+As the summer months passed, as his list was exhausted and he returned again to
+the places that had refused him once, Roark found that a few things were known
+about him and he heard the same words--spoken bluntly or timidly or angrily or
+apologetically--"You were kicked out of Stanton. You were kicked out of
+Francon’s office." All the different voices saying it had one note in common: a
+note of relief in the certainty that the decision had been made for them.
+He sat on the window sill, in the evening, smoking, his hand spread on the pane,
+the city under his fingers, the glass cold against his skin.
+In September, he read an article entitled "Make Way For Tomorrow" by Gordon L.
+Prescott, A.G.A. in the Architectural Tribune. The article stated that the
+tragedy of the profession was the hardships placed in the way of its talented
+beginners; that great gifts had been lost in the struggle, unnoticed; that
+architecture was perishing from a lack of new blood and new thought, a lack of
+originality, vision and courage; that the author of the article made it his aim
+to search for promising beginners, to encourage them, develop them and give them
+the chance they deserved. Roark had never heard of Gordon L. Prescott, but there
+was a tone of honest conviction in the article. He allowed himself to start for
+Prescott’s office with the first hint of hope.
+82
+
+The reception room of Gordon L. Prescott’s office was done in gray, black and
+scarlet; it was correct, restrained and daring all at once. A young and very
+pretty secretary informed Roark that one could not see Mr. Prescott without an
+appointment, but that she would be very glad to make an appointment for next
+Wednesday at two-fifteen. On Wednesday at two-fifteen, the secretary smiled at
+Roark and asked him please to be seated for just a moment. At four forty-five he
+was admitted into Gordon L. Prescott’s office. Gordon L. Prescott wore a brown
+checkered tweed jacket and a white turtle-neck sweater of angora wool. He was
+tall, athletic and thirty-five, but his face combined a crisp air of
+sophisticated wisdom with the soft skin, the button nose, the small, puffed
+mouth of a college hero. His face was sun-scorched, his blond hair clipped
+short, in a military Prussian haircut. He was frankly masculine, frankly
+unconcerned about elegance and frankly conscious of the effect.
+He listened to Roark silently, and his eyes were like a stop watch registering
+each separate second consumed by each separate word of Roark’s. He let the first
+sentence go by; on the second he interrupted to say curtly: "Let me see your
+drawings," as if to make it clear that anything Roark might say was quite well
+known to him already.
+He held the drawings in his bronzed hands. Before he looked down at them, he
+said: "Ah, yes, so many young men come to me for advice, so many." He glanced at
+the first sketch, but raised his head before he had seen it. "Of course, it’s
+the combination of the practical and the transcendental that is so hard for
+beginners to grasp." He slipped the sketch to the bottom of the pile.
+"Architecture is primarily a utilitarian conception, and the problem is to
+elevate the principle of pragmatism into the realm of esthetic abstraction. All
+else is nonsense." He glanced at two sketches and slipped them to the bottom. "I
+have no patience with visionaries who see a holy crusade in architecture for
+architecture’s sake. The great dynamic principle is the common principle of the
+human equation." He glanced at a sketch and slipped it under. "The public taste
+and the public heart are the final criteria of the artist. The genius is the one
+who knows how to express the general. The exception is to tap the
+unexceptional." He
+weighed the pile of sketches in his hand, noted that he had gone through half of
+them and dropped them down on the desk.
+"Ah, yes," he said, "your work. Very interesting. But not practical. Not mature.
+Unfocused and undisciplined. Adolescent. Originality for originality’s sake. Not
+at all in the spirit of the present day. If you want an idea of the sort of
+thing for which there is a crying need--here--let me show you." He took a sketch
+out of a drawer of the desk. "Here’s a young man who came to me totally
+unrecommended, a beginner who had never worked before. When you can produce
+stuff like this, you won’t find it necessary to look for a job. I saw this one
+sketch of his and I took him on at once, started him at twenty-five a week, too.
+There’s no question but that he is a potential genius." He extended the sketch
+to Roark. The sketch represented a house in the shape of a grain silo incredibly
+merged with the simplified, emaciated shadow of the Parthenon.
+"That," said Gordon L. Prescott, "is originality, the new in the eternal. Try
+toward something like this. I can’t really say that I predict a great deal for
+your future. We must be frank, I wouldn’t want to give you illusions based on my
+authority. You have a great deal to learn. I couldn’t venture a guess on what
+talent you might possess or develop later. But with hard work,
+perhaps...Architecture is a difficult profession, however, and the competition
+is stiff, you know, very stiff...And now, if you’ll excuse me, my secretary has
+an appointment waiting for me...."
+#
+83
+
+Roark walked home late on an evening in October. It had been another of the many
+days that stretched into months behind him, and he could not tell what had taken
+place in the hours of that day, whom he had seen, what form the words of refusal
+had taken. He concentrated fiercely on the few minutes at hand, when he was in
+an office, forgetting everything else; he forgot these minutes when he left the
+office; it had to be done, it had been done, it concerned him no longer. He was
+free once more on his way home.
+A long street stretched before him, its high banks, coming close together ahead,
+so narrow that he felt as if he could spread his arms, seize the spires and push
+them apart. He walked swiftly, the pavements as a springboard throwing his steps
+forward.
+He saw a lighted triangle of concrete suspended somewhere hundreds of feet above
+the ground. He could not see what stood below, supporting it; he was free to
+think of what he’d want to see there, what he would have made to be seen. Then
+he thought suddenly that now, in this moment, according to the city, according
+to everyone save that hard certainty within him, he would never build again,
+never--before he had begun. He shrugged. Those things happening to him, in those
+offices of strangers, were only a kind of sub-reality, unsubstantial incidents
+in the path of a substance they could not reach or touch.
+He turned into side streets leading to the East River. A lonely traffic light
+hung far ahead, a spot of red in a bleak darkness. The old houses crouched low
+to the ground, hunched under the weight of the sky. The street was empty and
+hollow, echoing to his footsteps. He went on, his collar raised, his hands in
+his pockets. His shadow rose from under his heels, when he passed a light, and
+brushed a wall in a long black arc, like the sweep of a windshield wiper.
+
+9.
+JOHN ERIK SNYTE looked through Roark’s sketches, flipped three of them aside,
+gathered the rest into an even pile, glanced again at the three, tossed them
+down one after another on top of the pile, with three sharp thuds, and said:
+"Remarkable. Radical, but remarkable. What are you doing tonight?"
+"Why?" asked Roark, stupefied.
+"Are you free? Mind starting in at once? Take your coat off, go to the drafting
+room, borrow tools from somebody and do me up a sketch for a department store
+we’re remodeling. Just a quick sketch, just a general idea, but I must have it
+tomorrow. Mind staying late tonight? The heat’s on and I’ll have Joe send you up
+some dinner. Want black coffee or Scotch or what? Just tell Joe. Can you stay?"
+"Yes," said Roark, incredulously. "I can work all night."
+"Fine! Splendid! that’s just what I’ve always needed--a Cameron man. I’ve got
+every other kind. Oh, yes, what did they pay you at Francon’s?"
+"Sixty-five."
+"Well, I can’t splurge like Guy the Epicure. Fifty’s tops. Okay? Fine. Go right
+in. I’ll have Billings explain about the store to you. I want something modern.
+Understand? Modern, violent, crazy, to knock their eye out. Don’t restrain
+yourself. Go the limit. Pull any stunt you can think of, the goofier the better.
+84
+
+Come on!"
+John Erik Snyte shot to his feet, flung a door open into a huge drafting room,
+flew in, skidded against a table, stopped, and said to a stout man with a grim
+moon-face: "Billings--Roark. He’s our modernist. Give him the Benton store. Get
+him some instruments. Leave him your keys and show him what to lock up tonight.
+Start him as of this morning. Fifty. What time was my appointment with Dolson
+Brothers? I’m late already. So long, I won’t be back tonight."
+He skidded out, slamming the door. Billings evinced no surprise. He looked at
+Roark as if Roark had always been there. He spoke impassively, in a weary drawl.
+Within twenty minutes he left Roark at a drafting table with paper, pencils,
+instruments, a set of plans and photographs of the department store, a set of
+charts and a long list of instructions.
+Roark looked at the clean white sheet before him, his fist closed tightly about
+the thin stem of a pencil. He put the pencil down, and picked it up again, his
+thumb running softly up and down the smooth shaft; he saw that the pencil was
+trembling. He put it down quickly, and he felt anger at himself for the weakness
+of allowing this job to mean so much to him, for the sudden knowledge of what
+the months of idleness behind him had really meant. His fingertips were pressed
+to the paper, as if the paper held them, as a surface charged with electricity
+will hold the flesh of a man who has brushed against it, hold and hurt. He tore
+his fingers off the paper. Then he went to work....
+John Erik Snyte was fifty years old; he wore an expression of quizzical
+amusement, shrewd and unwholesome, as if he shared with each man he contemplated
+a lewd secret which he would not mention because it was so obvious to them both.
+He was a prominent architect; his expression did not change when he spoke of
+this fact. He considered Guy Francon an impractical idealist; he was not
+restrained by an Classic dogma; he was much more skillful and liberal: he built
+anything. He had no distaste for modern architecture and built cheerfully, when
+a rare client asked for it, bare boxes with flat roofs, which he called
+progressive; he built Roman mansions which he called fastidious; he built Gothic
+churches which he called spiritual. He saw no difference among any of them. He
+never became angry, except when somebody called him eclectic.
+He had a system of his own. He employed five designers of various types and he
+staged a contest among them on each commission he received. He chose the winning
+design and improved it with bits of the four others. "Six minds," he said, "are
+better than one."
+When Roark saw the final drawing of the Benton Department Store, he understood
+why Snyte had not been afraid to hire him. He recognized his own planes of
+space, his windows, his system of circulation; he saw, added to it, Corinthian
+capitals, Gothic vaulting, Colonial chandeliers and incredible moldings, vaguely
+Moorish. The drawing was done in water-color, with miraculous delicacy, mounted
+on cardboard, covered with a veil of tissue paper. The men in the drafting room
+were not allowed to look at it, except from a safe distance; all hands had to be
+washed, all cigarettes discarded. John Erik Snyte attached a great importance to
+the proper appearance of a drawing for submission to clients, and kept a young
+Chinese student of architecture employed solely upon the execution of these
+masterpieces.
+Roark knew what to expect of his job. He would never see his work erected, only
+pieces of it, which he preferred not to see; but he would be free to design as
+he wished and he would have the experience of solving actual problems. It was
+less than he wanted and more than he could expect. He accepted it at that. He
+met his fellow designers, the four other contestants, and learned that they were
+85
+
+unofficially nicknamed in the drafting room as "Classic,"
+"Gothic,"
+"Renaissance" and "Miscellaneous." He winced a little when he was addressed as
+"Hey, Modernistic."
+#
+The strike of the building-trades unions infuriated Guy Francon. The strike had
+started against the contractors who were erecting the Noyes-Belmont Hotel, and
+had spread to all the new structures of the city. It had been mentioned in the
+press that the architects of the Noyes-Belmont were the firm of Francon & Heyer.
+Most of the press helped the fight along, urging the contractors not to
+surrender. The loudest attacks against the strikers came from the powerful
+papers of the great Wynand chain.
+"We have always stood," said the Wynand editorials, "for the rights of the
+common man against the yellow sharks of privilege, but we cannot give our
+support to the destruction of law and order." It had never been discovered
+whether the Wynand papers led the public or the public led the Wynand papers; it
+was known only that the two kept remarkably in step. It was not known to anyone,
+however, save to Guy Francon and a very few others, that Gail Wynand owned the
+corporation which owned the corporation which owned the Noyes-Belmont Hotel.
+This added greatly to Francon’s discomfort. Gail Wynand’s real-estate operations
+were rumored to be vaster than his journalistic empire. It was the first chance
+Francon had ever had at a Wynand commission and he grasped it avidly, thinking
+of the possibilities which it could open. He and Keating had put their best
+efforts into designing the most ornate of all Rococo palaces for future patrons
+who could pay twenty-five dollars per day per room and who were fond of plaster
+flowers, marble cupids and open elevator cages of bronze lace. The strike had
+shattered the future possibilities; Francon could not be blamed for it, but one
+could never tell whom Gail Wynand would blame and for what reason. The
+unpredictable, unaccountable shifts of Wynand’s favor were famous, and it was
+well known that few architects he employed once were ever employed by him again.
+Francon’s sullen mood led him to the unprecedented breach of snapping over
+nothing in particular at the one person who had always been immune from
+it--Peter Keating. Keating shrugged, and turned his back to him in silent
+insolence. Then Keating wandered aimlessly through the halls, snarling at young
+draftsmen without provocation. He bumped into Lucius N. Heyer in a doorway and
+snapped: "Look where you’re going!" Heyer stared after him, bewildered,
+blinking.
+There was little to do in the office, nothing to say and everyone to avoid.
+Keating left early and walked home through a cold December twilight.
+At home, he cursed aloud the thick smell of paint from the overheated radiators.
+He cursed the chill, when his mother opened a window. He could find no reason
+for his restlessness, unless it was the sudden inactivity that left him alone.
+He could not bear to be left alone.
+He snatched up the telephone receiver and called Catherine Halsey. The sound of
+her clear voice was like a hand pressed soothingly against his hot forehead. He
+said: "Oh, nothing important, dear, I just wondered if you’d be home tonight. I
+thought I’d drop in after dinner."
+"Of course, Peter. I’ll be home."
+86
+
+"Swell. About eight-thirty?"
+"Yes...Oh, Peter, have you heard about Uncle Ellsworth?"
+"Yes, God damn it, I’ve heard about your Uncle Ellsworth!...I’m sorry,
+Katie...Forgive me, darling, I didn’t mean to be rude, but I’ve been hearing
+about your uncle all day long. I know, it’s wonderful and all that, only look,
+we’re not going to talk about him again tonight!"
+"No, of course not. I’m sorry. I understand. I’ll be waiting for you."
+"So long, Katie."
+He had heard the latest story about Ellsworth Toohey, but he did not want to
+think of it because it brought him back to the annoying subject of the strike.
+Six months ago, on the wave of his success with Sermons in Stone, Ellsworth
+Toohey had been signed to write "One Small Voice," a daily syndicated column for
+the Wynand papers. It appeared in the Banner and had started as a department of
+art criticism, but grown into an informal tribune from which Ellsworth M. Toohey
+pronounced verdicts on art, literature, New York restaurants, international
+crises and sociology--mainly sociology. It had been a great success. But the
+building strike had placed Ellsworth M. Toohey in a difficult position. He made
+no secret of his sympathy with the strikers, but he had said nothing in his
+column, for no one could say what he pleased on the papers owned by Gail Wynand
+save Gail Wynand. However, a mass meeting of strike sympathizers had been called
+for this evening. Many famous men were to speak, Ellsworth Toohey among them. At
+least, Toohey’s name had been announced.
+The event caused a great deal of curious speculation and bets were made on
+whether Toohey would dare to appear. "He will," Keating had heard a draftsman
+insist vehemently, "he’ll sacrifice himself. He’s that kind. He’s the only
+honest man in print."
+"He won’t," another had said. "Do you realize what it means to pull a stunt like
+that on Wynand? Once Wynand gets it in for a man, he’ll break the guy for sure
+as hell’s fire. Nobody knows when he’ll do it or how he’ll do it, but he’ll do
+it, and nobody’ll prove a thing on him, and you’re done for once you get Wynand
+after you." Keating did not care about the issue one way or another, and the
+whole matter annoyed him.
+He ate his dinner, that evening, in grim silence and when Mrs. Keating began,
+with an "Oh, by the way..." to lead the conversation in a direction he
+recognized, he snapped: "You’re not going to talk about Catherine. Keep still."
+Mrs. Keating said nothing further and concentrated on forcing more food on his
+plate.
+He took a taxi to Greenwich Village. He hurried up the stairs. He jerked at the
+bell. He waited. There was no answer. He stood, leaning against the wall,
+ringing, for a long time. Catherine wouldn’t be out when she knew he was coming;
+she couldn’t be. He walked incredulously down the stairs, out to the street, and
+looked up at the windows of her apartment. The windows were dark.
+He stood, looking up at the windows as at a tremendous betrayal. Then came a
+sick feeling of loneliness, as if he were homeless in a great city; for the
+moment, he forgot his own address or its existence. Then he thought of the
+meeting, the great mass meeting where her uncle was publicly to make a martyr of
+himself tonight. That’s where she went, he thought, the damn little fool! He
+said aloud: "To hell with her!"...And he was walking rapidly in the direction of
+87
+
+the meeting hall.
+There was one naked bulb of light over the square frame of the hall’s entrance,
+a small, blue-white lump glowing ominously, too cold and too bright. It leaped
+out of the dark street, lighting one thin trickle of rain from some ledge above,
+a glistening needle of glass, so thin and smooth that Keating thought crazily of
+stories where men had been killed by being pierced with an icicle. A few curious
+loafers stood indifferently in the rain around the entrance, and a few
+policemen. The door was open. The dim lobby was crowded with people who could
+not get into the packed hall, they were listening to a loud-speaker installed
+there for the occasion. At the door three vague shadows were handing out
+pamphlets to passers-by. One of the shadows was a consumptive, unshaved young
+man with a long, bare neck; the other was a trim youth with a fur collar on an
+expensive coat; the third was Catherine Halsey.
+She stood in the rain, slumped, her stomach jutting forward in weariness, her
+nose shiny, her eyes bright with excitement. Keating stopped, staring at her.
+Her hand shot toward him mechanically with a pamphlet, then she raised her eyes
+and saw him. She smiled without astonishment and said happily:
+"Why, Peter! How sweet of you to come here!"
+"Katie..." He choked a little. "Katie, what the hell..."
+"But I had to, Peter." Her voice had no trace of apology. "You don’t understand,
+but I..."
+"Get out of the rain. Get inside."
+"But I can’t! I have to..."
+"Get out of the rain at least, you fool!" He pushed her roughly through the
+door, into a corner of the lobby.
+"Peter darling, you’re not angry, are you? You see, it was like this: I didn’t
+think Uncle would let me come here tonight, but at the last minute he said I
+could if I wanted to, and that I could help with the pamphlets. I knew you’d
+understand, and I left you a note on the living room table, explaining, and..."
+"You left me a note? Inside?"
+"Yes...Oh...Oh, dear me, I never thought of that, you couldn’t get in of course,
+how silly of me, but I was in such a rush! No, you’re not going to be angry, you
+can’t! Don’t you see what this means to him? Don’t you know what he’s
+sacrificing by coming here? And I knew he would. I told them so, those people
+who said not a chance, it’ll be the end of him--and it might be, but he doesn’t
+care. That’s what he’s like. I’m frightened and I’m terribly happy, because what
+he’s done--it makes me believe in all human beings. But I’m frightened, because
+you see, Wynand will..."
+"Keep still! I know it all. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to hear about your
+uncle or Wynand or the damn strike. Let’s get out of here."
+"Oh, no, Peter! We can’t! I want to hear him and..."
+"Shut up over there!" someone hissed at them from the crowd.
+"We’re missing it all," she whispered. "That’s Austen Heller speaking. Don’t you
+88
+
+want to hear Austen Heller?"
+Keating looked up at the loud-speaker with a certain respect, which he felt for
+all famous names. He had not read much of Austen Heller, but he knew that Heller
+was the star columnist of the Chronicle, a brilliant, independent newspaper,
+arch-enemy of the Wynand publications; that Heller came from an old,
+distinguished family and had graduated from Oxford; that he had started as a
+literary critic and ended by becoming a quiet fiend devoted to the destruction
+of all forms of compulsion, private or public, in heaven or on earth; that he
+had been cursed by preachers, bankers, club-women and labor organizers; that he
+had better manners than the social elite whom he usually mocked, and a tougher
+constitution than the laborers whom he usually defended; that he could discuss
+the latest play on Broadway, medieval poetry or international finance; that he
+never donated to charity, but spent more of his own money than he could afford,
+on defending political prisoners anywhere.
+The voice coming from the loud-speaker was dry, precise, with the faint trace of
+a British accent.
+"...and we must consider," Austen Heller was saying unemotionally, "that
+since--unfortunately--we are forced to live together, the most important thing
+for us to remember is that the only way in which we can have any law at all is
+to have as little of it as possible. I see no ethical standard to which to
+measure the whole unethical conception of a State, except in the amount of time,
+of thought, of money, of effort and of obedience, which a society extorts from
+its every member. Its value and its civilization are in inverse ratio to that
+extortion. There is no conceivable law by which a man can be forced to work on
+any terms except those he chooses to set. There is no conceivable law to prevent
+him from setting them--just as there is none to force his employer to accept
+them. The freedom to agree or disagree is the foundation of our kind of
+society--and the freedom to strike is a part of it. I am mentioning this as a
+reminder to a certain Petronius from Hell’s Kitchen, an exquisite bastard who
+has been rather noisy lately about telling us that this strike represents a
+destruction of law and order."
+The loud-speaker coughed out a high, shrill sound of approval and a clatter of
+applause. There were gasps among the people in the lobby. Catherine grasped
+Keating’s arm. "Oh, Peter!" she whispered. "He means Wynand! Wynand was born in
+Hell’s Kitchen. He can afford to say that, but Wynand will take it out on Uncle
+Ellsworth!"
+Keating could not listen to the rest of Heller’s speech, because his head was
+swimming in so violent an ache that the sounds hurt his eyes and he had to keep
+his eyelids shut tightly. He leaned against the wall.
+He opened his eyes with a jerk, when he became aware of the peculiar silence
+around him. He had not noticed the end of Heller’s speech. He saw the people in
+the lobby standing in tense, solemn expectation, and the blank rasping of the
+loud-speaker pulled every glance into its dark funnel. Then a voice came through
+the silence, loudly and slowly:
+"Ladies and gentlemen, I have the great honor of presenting to you now Mr.
+Ellsworth Monkton Toohey!"
+Well, thought Keating, Bennett’s won his six bits down at the office. There were
+a few seconds of silence. Then the thing which happened hit Keating on the back
+of the head; it was not a sound nor a blow, it was something that ripped time
+apart, that cut the moment from the normal one preceding it. He knew only the
+shock, at first; a distinct, conscious second was gone before he realized what
+89
+
+it was and that it was applause. It was such a crash of applause that he waited
+for the loud-speaker to explode; it went on and on and on, pressing against the
+walls of the lobby, and he thought he could feel the walls buckling out to the
+street.
+The people around him were cheering. Catherine stood, her lips parted, and he
+felt certain that she was not breathing at all.
+It was a long time before silence came suddenly, as abrupt and shocking as the
+roar; the loud-speaker died, choking on a high note. Those in the lobby stood
+still. Then came the voice.
+"My friends," it said, simply and solemnly. "My brothers," it added softly,
+involuntarily, both full of emotion and smiling apologetically at the emotion.
+"I am more touched by this reception than I should allow myself to be. I hope I
+shall be forgiven for a trace of the vain child which is in all of us. But I
+realize--and in that spirit I accept it--that this tribute was paid not to my
+person, but to a principle which chance has granted me to represent in all
+humility tonight."
+It was not a voice, it was a miracle. It unrolled as a velvet banner. It spoke
+English words, but the resonant clarity of each syllable made it sound like a
+new language spoken for the first time. It was the voice of a giant.
+Keating stood, his mouth open. He did not hear what the voice was saying. He
+heard the beauty of the sounds without meaning. He felt no need to know the
+meaning; he could accept anything, he would be led blindly anywhere.
+"...and so, my friends," the voice was saying, "the lesson to be learned from
+our tragic struggle is the lesson of unity. We shall unite or we shall be
+defeated. Our will--the will of the disinherited, the forgotten, the
+oppressed--shall weld us into a solid bulwark, with a common faith and a common
+goal. This is the time for every man to renounce the thoughts of his petty
+little problems, of gain, of comfort, of self-gratification. This is the time to
+merge his self in a great current, in the rising tide which is approaching to
+sweep us all, willing or unwilling, into the future. History, my friends, does
+not ask questions or acquiescence. It is irrevocable, as the voice of the masses
+that determine it. Let us listen to the call. Let us organize, my brothers. Let
+us organize. Let us organize. Let us organize."
+Keating looked at Catherine. There was no Catherine; there was only a white face
+dissolving in the sounds of the loudspeaker. It was not that she heard her
+uncle; Keating could feel no jealousy of him; he wished he could. It was not
+affection. It was something cold and impersonal that left her empty, her will
+surrendered and no human will holding hers, but a nameless thing in which she
+was being swallowed.
+"Let’s get out of here," he whispered. His voice was savage. He was afraid.
+She turned to him, as if she were emerging from unconsciousness. He knew that
+she was trying to recognize him and everything he implied. She whispered: "Yes.
+Let’s get out." They walked through the streets, through the rain, without
+direction. It was cold, but they went on, to move, to feel the movement, to know
+the sensation of their own muscles moving.
+"We’re getting drenched," Keating said at last, as bluntly and naturally as he
+could; their silence frightened him; it proved that they both knew the same
+thing and that the thing had been real. "Let’s find some place where we can have
+a drink."
+90
+
+"Yes," said Catherine, "let’s. It’s so cold....Isn’t it stupid of me? Now I’ve
+missed Uncle’s speech and I wanted so much to hear it." It was all right. She
+had mentioned it. She had mentioned it quite naturally, with a healthy amount of
+proper regret. The thing was gone. "But I wanted to be with you, Peter...I want
+to be with you always." The thing gave a last jerk, not in the meaning of what
+she said, but in the reason that had prompted her to say it. Then it was gone,
+and Keating smiled; his fingers sought her bare wrist between her sleeve and
+glove, and her skin was warm against his....
+Many days later Keating heard the story that was being told all over town. It
+was said that on the day after the mass meeting Gail Wynand had given Ellsworth
+Toohey a raise in salary. Toohey had been furious and had tried to refuse it.
+"You cannot bribe me, Mr. Wynand," he said. "I’m not bribing you," Wynand had
+answered; "don’t flatter yourself."
+#
+When the strike was settled, interrupted construction went forward with a spurt
+throughout the city, and Keating found himself spending days and nights at work,
+with new commissions pouring into the office. Francon smiled happily at
+everybody and gave a small party for his staff, to erase the memory of anything
+he might have said. The palatial residence of Mr. and Mrs. Dale Ainsworth on
+Riverside Drive, a pet project of Keating’s, done in Late Renaissance and gray
+granite, was complete at last. Mr. and Mrs. Dale Ainsworth gave a formal
+reception as a housewarming, to which Guy Francon and Peter Keating were
+invited, but Lucius N. Heyer was ignored, quite accidentally, as always happened
+to him of late. Francon enjoyed the reception, because every square foot of
+granite in the house reminded him of the stupendous payment received by a
+certain granite quarry in Connecticut. Keating enjoyed the reception, because
+the stately Mrs. Ainsworth said to him with a disarming smile: "But I was
+certain that you were Mr. Francon’s partner! It’s Francon and Heyer, of course!
+How perfectly careless of me! All I can offer by way of excuse is that if you
+aren’t his partner, one would certainly say you were entitled to be!" Life in
+the office rolled on smoothly, in one of those periods when everything seemed to
+go well.
+Keating was astonished, therefore, one morning shortly after the Ainsworth
+reception, to see Francon arrive at the office with a countenance of nervous
+irritation. "Oh, nothing," he waved his hand at Keating impatiently, "nothing at
+all." In the drafting room Keating noticed three draftsmen, their heads close
+together, bent over a section of the New York Banner, reading with a guilty kind
+of avid interest; he heard an unpleasant chuckle from one of them. When they saw
+him the paper disappeared, too quickly. He had no time to inquire into this; a
+contractor’s job runner was waiting for him in his office, also a stack of mail
+and drawings to be approved.
+He had forgotten the incident three hours later in a rush of appointments. He
+felt light, clear-headed, exhilarated by his own energy. When he had to consult
+his library on a new drawing which he wished to compare with its best
+prototypes, he walked out of his office, whistling, swinging the drawing gaily.
+His motion had propelled him halfway across the reception room, when he stopped
+short; the drawing swung forward and flapped back against his knees. He forgot
+that it was quite improper for him to pause there like that in the
+circumstances.
+A young woman stood before the railing, speaking to the reception clerk. Her
+slender body seemed out of all scale in relation to a normal human body; its
+lines were so long, so fragile, so exaggerated that she looked like a stylized
+91
+
+drawing of a woman and made the correct proportions of a normal being appear
+heavy and awkward beside her. She wore a plain gray suit; the contrast between
+its tailored severity and her appearance was deliberately exorbitant--and
+strangely elegant. She let the fingertips of one hand rest on the railing, a
+narrow hand ending the straight imperious line of her arm. She had gray eyes
+that were not ovals, but two long, rectangular cuts edged by parallel lines of
+lashes; she had an air of cold serenity and an exquisitely vicious mouth. Her
+face, her pale gold hair, her suit seemed to have no color, but only a hint,
+just on the verge of the reality of color, making the full reality seem vulgar.
+Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that
+artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.
+"I’ll see him now, if I see him at all," she was saying to the reception clerk.
+"He asked me to come and this is the only time I have." It was not a command;
+she spoke as if it were not necessary for her voice to assume the tones of
+commanding.
+"Yes, but..." A light buzzed on the clerk’s switchboard; she plugged the
+connection through, hastily. "Yes, Mr. Francon..." She listened and nodded with
+relief. "Yes, Mr. Francon." She turned to the visitor: "Will you go right in,
+please?"
+The young woman turned and looked at Keating as she passed him on her way to the
+stairs. Her eyes went past him without stopping. Something ebbed from his
+stunned admiration. He had had time to see her eyes; they seemed weary and a
+little contemptuous, but they left him with a sense of cold cruelty.
+He heard her walking up the stairs, and the feeling vanished, but the admiration
+remained. He approached the reception clerk eagerly.
+"Who was that?" he asked.
+The clerk shrugged:
+"That’s the boss’s little girl."
+"Why, the lucky stiff!" said Keating. "He’s been holding out on me."
+"You misunderstood me," the clerk said coldly. "It’s his daughter. It’s
+Dominique Francon."
+"Oh," said Keating. "Oh, Lord!"
+"Yeah?" the girl looked at him sarcastically. "Have you read this morning’s
+Banner?"
+"No. Why?"
+"Read it."
+Her switchboard buzzed and she turned away from him.
+He sent a boy for a copy of the Banner, and turned anxiously to the column,
+"Your House," by Dominique Francon. He had heard that she’d been quite
+successful lately with descriptions of the homes of prominent New Yorkers. Her
+field was confined to home decoration, but she ventured occasionally into
+architectural criticism. Today her subject was the new residence of Mr. and Mrs.
+Dale Ainsworth on Riverside Drive. He read, among many other things, the
+following:
+92
+
+"You enter a magnificent lobby of golden marble and you think that this is the
+City Hall or the Main Post Office, but it isn’t. It has, however, everything:
+the mezzanine with the colonnade and the stairway with a goitre and the
+cartouches in the form of looped leather belts. Only it’s not leather, it’s
+marble. The dining room has a splendid bronze gate, placed by mistake on the
+ceiling, in the shape of a trellis entwined with fresh bronze grapes. There are
+dead ducks and rabbits hanging on the wall panels, in bouquets of carrots,
+petunias and string beans. I do not think these would have been very attractive
+if real, but since they are bad plaster imitations, it is all right....The
+bedroom windows face a brick wall, not a very neat wall, but nobody needs to see
+the bedrooms....The front windows are large enough and admit plenty of light, as
+well as the feet of the marble cupids that roost on the outside. The cupids are
+well fed and present a pretty picture to the street, against the severe granite
+of the façade; they are quite commendable, unless you just can’t stand to look
+at dimpled soles every time you glance out to see whether it’s raining. If you
+get tired of it, you can always look out of the central windows of the third
+floor, and into the cast-iron rump of Mercury who sits on top of the pediment
+over the entrance. It’s a very beautiful entrance. Tomorrow, we shall visit the
+home of Mr. and Mrs. Smythe-Pickering."
+Keating had designed the house. But he could not help chuckling through his fury
+when he thought of what Francon must have felt reading this, and of how Francon
+was going to face Mrs. Dale Ainsworth. Then he forgot the house and the article.
+He remembered only the girl who had written it.
+He picked three sketches at random from his table and started for Francon’s
+office to ask his approval of the sketches, which he did not need.
+On the stair landing outside Francon’s closed door he stopped. He heard
+Francon’s voice behind the door, loud, angry and helpless, the voice he always
+heard when Francon was beaten.
+"...to expect such an outrage! From my own daughter! I’m used to anything from
+you, but this beats it all. What am I going to do? How am I going to explain? Do
+you have any kind of a vague idea of my position?"
+Then Keating heard her laughing; it was a sound so gay and so cold that he knew
+it was best not to go in. He knew he did not want to go in, because he was
+afraid again, as he had been when he’d seen her eyes.
+He turned and descended the stairs. When he had reached the floor below, he was
+thinking that he would meet her, that he would meet her soon and that Francon
+would not be able to prevent it now. He thought of it eagerly, laughing in
+relief at the picture of Francon’s daughter as he had imagined her for years,
+revising his vision of his future; even though he felt dimly that it would be
+better if he never met her again.
+
+10.
+RALSTON HOLCOMBE had no visible neck, but his chin took care of that. His chin
+and jaws formed an unbroken arc, resting on his chest. His cheeks were pink,
+soft to the touch, with the irresilient softness of age, like the skin of a
+peach that has been scalded. His rich white hair rose over his forehead and fell
+to his shoulders in the sweep of a medieval mane. It left dandruff on the back
+of his collar.
+93
+
+He walked through the streets of New York, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, a dark
+business suit, a pale green satin shirt, a vest of white brocade, a huge black
+bow emerging from under his chin, and he carried a staff, not a cane, but a tall
+ebony staff surmounted by a bulb of solid gold. It was as if his huge body were
+resigned to the conventions of a prosaic civilization and to its drab garments,
+but the oval of his chest and stomach sallied forth, flying the colors of his
+inner soul.
+These things were permitted to him, because he was a genius. He was also
+president of the Architects’ Guild of America. Ralston Holcombe did not
+subscribe to the views of his colleagues in the organization. He was not a
+grubbing builder nor a businessman. He was, he stated firmly, a man of ideals.
+He denounced the deplorable state of American architecture and the unprincipled
+eclecticism of its practitioners. In any period of history, he declared,
+architects built in the spirit of their own time, and did not pick designs from
+the past; we could be true to history only in heeding her law, which demanded
+that we plant the roots of our art firmly in the reality of our own life. He
+decried the stupidity of erecting buildings that were Greek, Gothic or
+Romanesque; let us, he begged, be modern and build in the style that belongs to
+our days. He had found that style. It was Renaissance.
+He stated his reasons clearly. Inasmuch, he pointed out, as nothing of great
+historical importance had happened in the world since the Renaissance, we should
+consider ourselves still living in that period; and all the outward forms of our
+existence should remain faithful to the examples of the great masters of the
+sixteenth century.
+He had no patience with the few who spoke of a modern architecture in terms
+quite different from his own; he ignored them; he stated only that men who
+wanted to break with all of the past were lazy ignoramuses, and that one could
+not put originality above Beauty. His voice trembled reverently on that last
+word. He accepted nothing but stupendous commissions. He specialized in the
+eternal and the monumental. He built a great many memorials and capitols. He
+designed for International Expositions.
+He built like a composer improvising under the spur of a mystic guidance. He had
+sudden inspirations. He would add an enormous dome to the flat roof of a
+finished structure, or encrust a long vault with gold-leaf mosaic, or rip off a
+facade of limestone to replace it with marble. His clients turned pale,
+stuttered--and paid. His imperial personality carried him to victory in any
+encounter with a client’s thrift; behind him stood the stern, unspoken,
+overwhelming assertion that he was an Artist. His prestige was enormous.
+He came from a family listed in the Social Register. In his middle years he had
+married a young lady whose family had not made the Social Register, but made
+piles of money instead, in a chewing-gum empire left to an only daughter.
+Ralston Holcombe was now sixty-five, to which he added a few years, for the sake
+of his friends’ compliments on his wonderful physique; Mrs. Ralston Holcombe was
+forty-two, from which she deducted considerably.
+Mrs. Ralston Holcombe maintained a salon that met informally every Sunday
+afternoon. "Everybody who is anybody in architecture drops in on us," she told
+her friends. "They’d better," she added.
+On a Sunday afternoon in March, Keating drove to the Holcombe mansion--a
+reproduction of a Florentine palazzo--dutifully, but a little reluctantly. He
+had been a frequent guest at these celebrated gatherings and he was beginning to
+94
+
+be bored, for he knew everybody he could expect to find there. He felt, however,
+that he had to attend this time, because the occasion was to be in honor of the
+completion of one more capitol by Ralston Holcombe in some state or another.
+A substantial crowd was lost in the marble ballroom of the Holcombes, scattered
+in forlorn islets through an expanse intended for court receptions. The guests
+stood about, self-consciously informal, working at being brilliant. Steps rang
+against the marble with the echoing sound of a crypt. The flames of tall candles
+clashed desolately with the gray of the light from the street; the light made
+the candles seem dimmer, the candles gave to the day outside a premonitory tinge
+of dusk. A scale model of the new state capitol stood displayed on a pedestal in
+the middle of the room, ablaze with tiny electric bulbs.
+Mrs. Ralston Holcombe presided over the tea table. Each guest accepted a fragile
+cup of transparent porcelain, took two delicate sips and vanished in the
+direction of the bar. Two stately butlers went about collecting the abandoned
+cups.
+Mrs. Ralston Holcombe, as an enthusiastic girl friend had described her, was
+"petite, but intellectual." Her diminutive stature was her secret sorrow, but
+she had learned to find compensations. She could talk, and did, of wearing
+dresses size ten and of shopping in the junior departments. She wore high-school
+garments and short socks in summer, displaying spindly legs with hard blue
+veins. She adored celebrities. That was her mission in life. She hunted them
+grimly; she faced them with wide-eyed admiration and spoke of her own
+insignificance, of her humility before achievement; she shrugged, tight-lipped
+and rancorous, whenever one of them did not seem to take sufficient account of
+her own views on life after death, the theory of relativity, Aztec architecture,
+birth control and the movies. She had a great many poor friends and advertised
+the fact. If a friend happened to improve his financial position, she dropped
+him, feeling that he had committed an act of treason. She hated the wealthy in
+all sincerity: they shared her only badge of distinction. She considered
+architecture her private domain. She had been christened Constance and found it
+awfully clever to be known as "Kiki," a nickname she had forced on her friends
+when she was well past thirty.
+Keating had never felt comfortable in Mrs. Holcombe’s presence, because she
+smiled at him too insistently and commented on his remarks by winking and
+saying: "Why, Peter, how naughty of you!" when no such intention had been in his
+mind at all. He bowed over her hand, however, this afternoon as usual, and she
+smiled from behind the silver teapot. She wore a regal gown of emerald velvet,
+and a magenta ribbon in her bobbed hair with a cute little bow in front. Her
+skin was tanned and dry, with enlarged pores showing on her nostrils. She handed
+a cup to Keating, a square-cut emerald glittering on her finger in the
+candlelight.
+Keating expressed his admiration for the capitol and escaped to examine the
+model. He stood before it for a correct number of minutes, scalding his lips
+with the hot liquid that smelled of cloves. Holcombe, who never looked in the
+direction of the model and never missed a guest stopping before it, slapped
+Keating’s shoulder and said something appropriate about young fellows learning
+the beauty of the style of the Renaissance. Then Keating wandered off, shook a
+few hands without enthusiasm, and glanced at his wrist watch, calculating the
+time when it would be permissible to leave. Then he stopped.
+Beyond a broad arch, in a small library, with three young men beside her, he saw
+Dominique Francon.
+She stood leaning against a column, a cocktail glass in her hand. She wore a
+95
+
+suit of black velvet; the heavy cloth, which transmitted no light rays, held her
+anchored to reality by stopping the light that flowed too freely through the
+flesh of her hands, her neck, her face. A white spark of fire flashed like a
+cold metallic cross in the glass she held, as if it were a lens gathering the
+diffused radiance of her skin.
+Keating tore forward and found Francon in the crowd. "Well, Peter!" said Francon
+brightly. "Want me to get you a drink? Not so hot," he added, lowering his
+voice, "but the Manhattans aren’t too bad."
+"No," said Keating, "thanks."
+"Entre nous," said Francon, winking at the model of the capitol, "it’s a holy
+mess, isn’t it?"
+"Yes," said Keating. "Miserable proportions....That dome looks like Holcombe’s
+face imitating a sunrise on the roof...." They had stopped in full view of the
+library and Keating’s eyes were fixed on the girl in black, inviting Francon to
+notice it; he enjoyed having Francon in a trap.
+"And the plan! The plan! Do you see that on the second floor...oh," said
+Francon, noticing.
+He looked at Keating, then at the library, then at Keating again.
+"Well," said Francon at last, "don’t blame me afterward. You’ve asked for it.
+Come on."
+They entered the library together. Keating stopped, correctly, but allowing his
+eyes an improper intensity, while Francon beamed with unconvincing cheeriness:
+"Dominique, my dear! May I present?--this is Peter Keating, my own right hand.
+Peter--my daughter."
+"How do you do," said Keating, his voice soft.
+Dominique bowed gravely.
+"I have waited to meet you for such a long time, Miss Francon."
+"This will be interesting," said Dominique. "You will want to be nice to me, of
+course, and yet that won’t be diplomatic."
+"What do you mean, Miss Francon?"
+"Father would prefer you to be horrible with me. Father and I don’t get along at
+all."
+"Why, Miss Francon, I..."
+"I think it’s only fair to tell you this at the beginning. You may want to
+redraw some conclusions." He was looking for Francon, but Francon had vanished.
+"No," she said softly, "Father doesn’t do these things well at all. He’s too
+obvious. You asked him for the introduction, but he shouldn’t have let me notice
+that. However, it’s quite all right, since we both admit it. Sit down."
+She slipped into a chair and he sat down obediently beside her. The young men
+whom he did not know stood about for a few minutes, trying to be included in the
+conversation by smiling blankly, then wandered off. Keating thought with relief
+96
+
+that there was nothing frightening about her; there was only a disquieting
+contrast between her words and the candid innocence of the manner she used to
+utter them; he did not know which to trust.
+"I admit I asked for the introduction," he said. "That’s obvious anyway, isn’t
+it? Who wouldn’t ask for it? But don’t you think that the conclusions I’ll draw
+may have nothing to do with your father?"
+"Don’t say that I’m beautiful and exquisite and like no one you’ve ever met
+before and that you’re very much afraid that you’re going to fall in love with
+me. You’ll say it eventually, but let’s postpone it. Apart from that, I think
+we’ll get along very nicely."
+"But you’re trying to make it very difficult for me, aren’t you?"
+"Yes. Father should have warned you."
+"He did."
+"You should have listened. Be very considerate of Father. I’ve met so many of
+his own right hands that I was beginning to be skeptical. But you’re the first
+one who’s lasted. And who looks like he’s going to last. I’ve heard a great deal
+about you. My congratulations."
+"I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for years. And I’ve been reading your
+column with so much..." He stopped. He knew he shouldn’t have mentioned that;
+and, above all, he shouldn’t have stopped.
+"So much...?" she asked gently.
+"...so much pleasure," he finished, hoping that she would let it go at that.
+"Oh, yes," she said. "The Ainsworth house. You designed it. I’m sorry. You just
+happened to be the victim of one of my rare attacks of honesty. I don’t have
+them often. As you know, if you’re read my stuff yesterday."
+"I’ve read it. And--well, I’ll follow your example and I’ll be perfectly frank.
+Don’t take it as a complaint--one must never complain against one’s critics. But
+really that capitol of Holcombe’s is much worse in all those very things that
+you blasted us for. Why did you give him such a glowing tribute yesterday? Or
+did you have to?"
+"Don’t flatter me. Of course I didn’t have to. Do you think anyone on the paper
+pays enough attention to a column on home decoration to care what I say in it?
+Besides, I’m not even supposed to write about capitols. Only I’m getting tired
+of home decorations."
+"Then why did you praise Holcombe?"
+"Because that capitol of his is so awful that to pan it would have been an
+anticlimax. So I thought it would be amusing to praise it to the sky. It was."
+"Is that the way you go about it?"
+"That’s the way I go about it. But no one reads my column, except housewives who
+can never afford to decorate their homes, so it doesn’t matter at all."
+"But what do you really like in architecture?"
+97
+
+"I don’t like anything in architecture."
+"Well, you know of course that I won’t believe that. Why do you write if you
+have nothing you want to say?"
+"To have something to do. Something more disgusting than many other things I
+could do. And more amusing."
+"Come on, that’s not a good reason."
+"I never have any good reasons."
+"But you must be enjoying your work."
+"I am. Don’t you see that I am?"
+"You know, I’ve actually envied you. Working for a magnificent enterprise like
+the Wynand papers. The largest organization in the country, commanding the best
+writing talent and..."
+"Look," she said, leaning toward him confidentially, "let me help you. If you
+had just met Father, and he were working for the Wynand papers, that would be
+exactly the right thing to say. But not with me. That’s what I’d expect you to
+say and I don’t like to hear what I expect. It would be much more interesting if
+you said that the Wynand papers are a contemptible dump heap of yellow
+journalism and all their writers put together aren’t worth two bits."
+"Is that what you really think of them?"
+"Not at all. But I don’t like people who try to say only what they think I
+think."
+"Thanks. I’ll need your help. I’ve never met anyone...oh, no, of course, that’s
+what you didn’t want me to say. But I really meant it about your papers. I’ve
+always admired Gail Wynand. I’ve always wished I could meet him. What is he
+like?"
+"Just what Austen Heller called him--an exquisite bastard." He winced. He
+remembered where he had heard Austen Heller say that. The memory of Catherine
+seemed heavy and vulgar in the presence of the thin white hand he saw hanging
+over the arm of the chair before him.
+"But, I mean," he asked, "what’s he like in person?"
+"I don’t know. I’ve never met him."
+"You haven’t?"
+"No."
+"Oh, I’ve heard he’s so interesting!"
+"Undoubtedly. When I’m in a mood for something decadent I’ll probably meet him."
+"Do you know Toohey?"
+"Oh," she said. He saw what he had seen in her eyes before, and he did not like
+the sweet gaiety of her voice. "Oh, Ellsworth Toohey. Of course I know him. He’s
+wonderful. He’s a man I always enjoy talking to. He’s such a perfect
+98
+
+black-guard."
+"Why, Miss Francon! You’re the first person who’s ever..."
+"I’m not trying to shock you. I meant all of it. I admire him. He’s so complete.
+You don’t meet perfection often in this world one way or the other, do you? And
+he’s just that. Sheer perfection in his own way. Everyone else is so unfinished,
+broken up into so many different pieces that don’t fit together. But not Toohey.
+He’s a monolith. Sometimes, when I feel bitter against the world, I find
+consolation in thinking that it’s all right, that I’ll be avenged, that the
+world will get what’s coming to it--because there’s Ellsworth Toohey."
+"What do you want to be avenged for?" She looked at him, her eyelids lifted for
+a moment, so that her eyes did not seem rectangular, but soft and clear.
+"That was very clever of you," she said. "That was the first clever thing you’ve
+said."
+"Why?"
+"Because you knew what to pick out of all the rubbish I uttered. So I’ll have to
+answer you. I’d like to be avenged for the fact that I have nothing to be
+avenged for. Now let’s go on about Ellsworth Toohey."
+"Well, I’ve always heard, from everybody, that he’s a sort of saint, the one
+pure idealist, utterly incorruptible and..."
+"That’s quite true. A plain grafter would be much safer. But Toohey is like a
+testing stone for people. You can learn about them by the way they take him."
+"Why? What do you actually mean?" She leaned back in her chair, and stretched
+her arms down to her knees, twisting her wrists, palms out, the fingers of her
+two hands entwined. She laughed easily.
+"Nothing that one should make a subject of discussion at a tea party. Kiki’s
+right. She hates the sight of me, but she’s got to invite me once in a while.
+And I can’t resist coming, because she’s so obvious about not wanting me. You
+know, I told Ralston tonight what I really thought of his capitol, but he
+wouldn’t believe me. He only beamed and said that I was a very nice little
+girl."
+"Well, aren’t you?"
+"What?"
+"A very nice little girl."
+"No. Not today. I’ve made you thoroughly uncomfortable. So I’ll make up for it.
+I’ll tell you what I think of you, because you’ll be worrying about that. I
+think you’re smart and safe and obvious and quite ambitious and you’ll get away
+with it. And I like you. I’ll tell Father that I approve of his right hand very
+much, so you see you have nothing to fear from the boss’s daughter. Though it
+would be better if I didn’t say anything to Father, because my recommendation
+would work the other way with him."
+"May I tell you only one thing that I think about you?"
+"Certainly. Any number of them."
+99
+
+"I think it would have been better if you hadn’t told me that you liked me. Then
+I would have had a better chance of its being true."
+She laughed.
+"If you understand that," she said, "then we’ll get along beautifully. Then it
+might even be true."
+Gordon L. Prescott appeared in the arch of the ballroom, glass in hand. He wore
+a gray suit and a turtle-neck sweater of silver wool. His boyish face looked
+freshly scrubbed, and he had his usual air of soap, tooth paste and the
+outdoors.
+"Dominique, darling!" he cried, waving his glass. "Hello, Keating," he added
+curtly. "Dominique, where have you been hiding yourself? I heard you were here
+and I’ve had a hell of a time looking for you!"
+"Hello, Gordon," she said. She said it quite correctly; there was nothing
+offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of
+enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its
+indifference--as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around
+the melodic thread of her contempt.
+Prescott had not heard. "Darling," he said, "you look lovelier every time I see
+you. One wouldn’t think it were possible."
+"Seventh time," said Dominique.
+"What?"
+"Seventh time that you’ve said it when meeting me, Gordon. I’m counting them."
+"You simply won’t be serious, Dominique. You’ll never be serious."
+"Oh, yes, Gordon. I was just having a very serious conversation here with my
+friend Peter Keating."
+A lady waved to Prescott and he accepted the opportunity, escaping, looking very
+foolish. And Keating delighted in the thought that she had dismissed another man
+for a conversation she wished to continue with her friend Peter Keating.
+But when he turned to her, she asked sweetly: "What was it we were talking
+about, Mr. Keating?" And then she was staring with too great an interest across
+the room, at the wizened figure of a little man coughing over a whisky glass.
+"Why," said Keating, "we were..."
+"Oh, there’s Eugene Pettingill. My great favorite. I must say hello to Eugene."
+And she was up, moving across the room, her body leaning back as she walked,
+moving toward the most unattractive septuagenarian present.
+Keating did not know whether he had been made to join the brotherhood of Gordon
+L. Prescott, or whether it had been only an accident.
+He returned to the ballroom reluctantly. He forced himself to join groups of
+guests and to talk. He watched Dominique Francon as she moved through the crowd,
+as she stopped in conversation with others. She never glanced at him again. He
+could not decide whether he had succeeded with her or failed miserably.
+100
+
+He managed to be at the door when she was leaving.
+She stopped and smiled at him enchantingly.
+"No," she said, before he could utter a word, "you can’t take me home. I have a
+car waiting. Thank you just the same."
+She was gone and he stood at the door, helpless and thinking furiously that he
+believed he was blushing.
+He felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned to find Francon beside him.
+"Going home, Peter? Let me give you a lift."
+"But I thought you had to be at the club by seven."
+"Oh, that’s all right, I’ll be a little late, doesn’t matter, I’ll drive you
+home, no trouble at all." There was a peculiar expression of purpose on
+Francon’s face, quite unusual for him and unbecoming.
+Keating followed him silently, amused, and said nothing when they were alone in
+the comfortable twilight of Francon’s car.
+"Well?" Francon asked ominously.
+Keating smiled. "You’re a pig, Guy. You don’t know how to appreciate what you’ve
+got. Why didn’t you tell me? She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen."
+"Oh, yes," said Francon darkly. "Maybe that’s the trouble."
+"What trouble? Where do you see any trouble?"
+"What do you really think of her, Peter? Forget the looks. You’ll see how
+quickly you’ll forget that. What do you think?"
+"Well, I think she has a great deal of character."
+"Thanks for the understatement."
+Francon was gloomily silent, and then he said with an awkward little note of
+something like hope in his voice:
+"You know, Peter, I was surprised. I watched you, and you had quite a long chat
+with her. That’s amazing. I fully expected her to chase you away with one nice,
+poisonous crack. Maybe you could get along with her, after all. I’ve concluded
+that you just can’t tell anything about her. Maybe...You know, Peter, what I
+wanted to tell you is this: Don’t pay any attention to what she said about my
+wanting you to be horrible with her."
+The heavy earnestness of that sentence was such a hint that Keating’s lips moved
+to shape a soft whistle, but he caught himself in time. Francon added heavily:
+"I don’t want you to be horrible with her at all."
+"You know, Guy," said Keating, in a tone of patronizing reproach, "you shouldn’t
+have run away like that."
+"I never know how to speak to her." He sighed. "I’ve never learned to. I can’t
+understand what in blazes is the matter with her, but something is. She just
+won’t behave like a human being. You know, she’s been expelled from two
+101
+
+finishing schools. How she ever got through college I can’t imagine, but I can
+tell you that I dreaded to open my mail for four solid years, waiting for word
+of the inevitable. Then I thought, well, once she’s on her own I’m through and I
+don’t have to worry about it, but she’s worse than ever."
+"What do you find to worry about?"
+"I don’t. I try not to. I’m glad when I don’t have to think of her at all. I
+can’t help it, I just wasn’t cut out for a father. But sometimes I get to feel
+that it’s my responsibility after all, though God knows I don’t want it, but
+still there it is, I should do something about it, there’s no one else to assume
+it."
+"You’ve let her frighten you, Guy, and really there’s nothing to be afraid of."
+"You don’t think so?"
+"No."
+"Maybe you’re the man to handle her. I don’t regret your meeting her now, and
+you know that I didn’t want you to. Yes, I think you’re the one man who could
+handle her. You...you’re quite determined--aren’t you, Peter?--when you’re after
+something?"
+"Well," said Keating, throwing one hand up in a careless gesture, "I’m not
+afraid very often."
+Then he leaned back against the cushions, as if he were tired, as if he had
+heard nothing of importance, and he kept silent for the rest of the drive.
+Francon kept silent also.
+#
+"Boys," said John Erik Snyte, "don’t spare yourselves on this. It’s the most
+important thing we’ve had this year. Not much money, you understand, but the
+prestige, the connections! If we do land it, won’t some of those great
+architects turn green! You see, Austen Heller has told me frankly that we’re the
+third firm he’s approached. He would have none of what those big fellows tried
+to sell him. So it’s up to us, boys. You know, something different, unusual, but
+in good taste, and you know, different. Now do your best."
+His five designers sat in a semicircle before him. "Gothic" looked bored and
+"Miscellaneous" looked discouraged in advance; "Renaissance" was following the
+course of a fly on the ceiling. Roark asked:
+"What did he actually say, Mr. Snyte?"
+Snyte shrugged and looked at Roark with amusement, as if he and Roark shared a
+shameful secret about the new client, not worth mentioning.
+"Nothing that makes great sense--quite between us, boys," said Snyte. "He was
+somewhat inarticulate, considering his great command of the English language in
+print. He admitted he knew nothing about architecture. He didn’t say whether he
+wanted it modernistic or period or what. He said something to the effect that he
+wanted a house of his own, but he’s hesitated for a long time about building one
+because all houses look alike to him and they all look like hell and he doesn’t
+see how anyone can become enthusiastic about any house, and yet he has the idea
+that he wants a building he could love. ’A building that would mean something’
+is what he said, though he added that he ’didn’t know what or how.’ There.
+That’s about all he said. Not much to go on, and I wouldn’t have undertaken to
+102
+
+submit sketches if it weren’t Austen Heller. But I grant you that it doesn’t
+make sense....What’s the matter, Roark?"
+"Nothing," said Roark.
+This ended the first conference on the subject of a residence for Austen Heller.
+Later that day Snyte crowded his five designers into a train, and they went to
+Connecticut to see the site Heller had chosen. They stood on a lonely, rocky
+stretch of shore, three miles beyond an unfashionable little town; they munched
+sandwiches and peanuts, and they looked at a cliff rising in broken ledges from
+the ground to end in a straight, brutal, naked drop over the sea, a vertical
+shaft of rock forming a cross with the long, pale horizontal of the sea.
+"There," said Snyte. "That’s it." He twirled a pencil in his hand. "Damnable,
+eh?" He sighed. "I tried to suggest a more respectable location, but he didn’t
+take it so well so I had to shut up." He twirled the pencil. "That’s where he
+wants the house, right on top of that rock." He scratched the tip of his nose
+with the point of the pencil. "I tried to suggest setting it farther back from
+the shore and keeping the damn rock for a view, but that didn’t go so well
+either." He bit the eraser between the tips of his teeth. "Just think of the
+blasting, the leveling one’s got to do on that top." He cleaned his fingernail
+with the lead, leaving a black mark. "Well, that’s that....Observe the grade,
+and the quality of the stone. The approach will be difficult....I have all the
+surveys and the photographs in the office....Well...Who’s got a
+cigarette?...Well, I think that’s about all....I’ll help you with suggestions
+anytime....Well...What time is that damn train back?"
+Thus the five designers were started on their task. Four of them proceeded
+immediately at their drawing boards. Roark returned alone to the site, many
+times.
+Roark’s five months with Snyte stretched behind him like a blank. Had he wished
+to ask himself what he had felt, he would have found no answer, save in the fact
+that he remembered nothing of these months. He could remember each sketch he had
+made. He could, if he tried, remember what had happened to those sketches; he
+did not try.
+But he had not loved any of them as he loved the house of Austen Heller. He
+stayed in the drafting room through evening after evening, alone with a sheet of
+paper and the thought of a cliff over the sea. No one saw his sketches until
+they were finished.
+When they were finished, late one night, he sat at his table, with the sheets
+spread before him, sat for many hours, one hand propping his forehead, the other
+hanging by his side, blood gathering in the fingers, numbing them, while the
+street beyond the window became deep blue, then pale gray. He did not look at
+the sketches. He felt empty and very tired.
+The house on the sketches had been designed not by Roark, but by the cliff on
+which it stood. It was as if the cliff had grown and completed itself and
+proclaimed the purpose for which it had been waiting. The house was broken into
+many levels, following the ledges of the rock, rising as it rose, in gradual
+masses, in planes flowing together up into one consummate harmony. The walls, of
+the same granite as the rock, continued its vertical lines upward; the wide,
+projecting terraces of concrete, silver as the sea, followed the line of the
+waves, of the straight horizon.
+Roark was still sitting at his table when the men returned to begin their day in
+103
+
+the drafting room. Then the sketches were sent to Snyte’s office.
+Two days later, the final version of the house to be submitted to Austen Heller,
+the version chosen and edited by John Erik Snyte, executed by the Chinese
+artist, lay swathed in tissue paper on a table. It was Roark’s house. His
+competitors had been eliminated. It was Roark’s house, but its walls were now of
+red brick, its windows were cut to conventional size and equipped with green
+shutters, two of its projecting wings were omitted, the great cantilevered
+terrace over the sea was replaced by a little wrought-iron balcony, and the
+house was provided with an entrance of Ionic columns supporting a broken
+pediment, and with a little spire supporting a weather vane.
+John Erik Snyte stood by the table, his two hands spread in the air over the
+sketch, without touching the virgin purity of its delicate colors.
+"That is what Mr. Heller had in mind, I’m sure," he said. "Pretty good...Yes,
+pretty good...Roark, how many times do I have to ask you not to smoke around a
+final sketch? Stand away. You’ll get ashes on it."
+Austen Heller was expected at twelve o’clock. But at half past eleven Mrs.
+Symington arrived unannounced and demanded to see Mr. Snyte immediately. Mrs.
+Symington was an imposing dowager who had just moved into her new residence
+designed by Mr. Snyte; besides, Snyte expected a commission for an apartment
+house from her brother. He could not refuse to see her and he bowed her into his
+office, where she proceeded to state without reticence of expression that the
+ceiling of her library had cracked and the bay windows of her drawing room were
+hidden under a perpetual veil of moisture which she could not combat. Snyte
+summoned his chief engineer and they launched together into detailed
+explanations, apologies and damnations of contractors. Mrs. Symington showed no
+sign of relenting when a signal buzzed on Snyte’s desk and the reception clerk’s
+voice announced Austen Heller.
+It would have been impossible to ask Mrs. Symington to leave or Austen Heller to
+wait. Snyte solved the problem by abandoning her to the soothing speech of his
+engineer and excusing himself for a moment. Then he emerged into the reception
+room, shook Heller’s hand and suggested: "Would you mind stepping into the
+drafting room, Mr. Heller? Better light in there, you know, and the sketch is
+all ready for you, and I didn’t want to take the chance of moving it."
+Heller did not seem to mind. He followed Snyte obediently into the drafting
+room, a tall, broad-shouldered figure in English tweeds, with sandy hair and a
+square face drawn in countless creases around the ironical calm of the eyes.
+The sketch lay on the Chinese artist’s table, and the artist stepped aside
+diffidently, in silence. The next table was Roark’s. He stood with his back to
+Heller; he went on with his drawing, and did not turn. The employees had been
+trained not to intrude on the occasions when Snyte brought a client into the
+drafting room.
+Snyte’s fingertips lifted the tissue paper, as if raising the veil of a bride.
+Then he stepped back and watched Heller’s face. Heller bent down and stood
+hunched, drawn, intent, saying nothing for a long time.
+"Listen, Mr. Snyte," he began at last. "Listen, I think..." and stopped.
+Snyte waited patiently, pleased, sensing the approach of something he didn’t
+want to disturb.
+"This," said Heller suddenly, loudly, slamming his fist down on the drawing, and
+104
+
+Snyte winced, "this is the nearest anyone’s ever come to it!"
+"I knew you’d like it, Mr. Heller," said Snyte.
+"I don’t," said Heller.
+Snyte blinked and waited.
+"It’s so near somehow," said Heller regretfully, "but it’s not right. I don’t
+know where, but it’s not. Do forgive me, if this sounds vague, but I like things
+at once or I don’t. I know that I wouldn’t be comfortable, for instance, with
+that entrance. It’s a lovely entrance, but you won’t even notice it because
+you’ve seen it so often."
+"Ah, but allow me to point out a few considerations, Mr. Heller. One wants to be
+modern, of course, but one wants to preserve the appearance of a home. A
+combination of stateliness and coziness, you understand, a very austere house
+like this must have a few softening touches. It is strictly correct
+architecturally."
+"No doubt," said Heller. "I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never been strictly
+correct in my life."
+"Just let me explain this scheme and you’ll see that it’s..."
+"I know," said Heller wearily. "I know. I’m sure you’re right. Only..." His
+voice had a sound of the eagerness he wished he could feel. "Only, if it had
+some unity, some...some central idea...which is there and isn’t...if it seemed
+to live...which it doesn’t...It lacks something and it has too much....If it
+were cleaner, more clear-cut...what’s the word I’ve heard used?--if it were
+integrated...."
+Roark turned. He was at the other side of the table. He seized the sketch, his
+hand flashed forward and a pencil ripped across the drawing, slashing raw black
+lines over the untouchable water-color. The lines blasted off the Ionic columns,
+the pediment, the entrance, the spire, the blinds, the bricks; they flung up two
+wings of stone; they rent the windows wide; they splintered the balcony and
+hurled a terrace over the sea.
+It was being done before the others had grasped the moment when it began. Then
+Snyte jumped forward, but Heller seized his wrist and stopped him. Roark’s hand
+went on razing walls, splitting, rebuilding in furious strokes.
+Roark threw his head up once, for a flash of a second, to look at Heller across
+the table. It was all the introduction they needed; it was like a handshake.
+Roark went on, and when he threw the pencil down, the house--as he had designed
+it--stood completed in an ordered pattern of black streaks. The performance had
+not lasted five minutes.
+Snyte made an attempt at a sound. As Heller said nothing, Snyte felt free to
+whirl on Roark and scream: "You’re fired, God damn you! Get out of here! You’re
+fired!"
+"We’re both fired," said Austen Heller, winking to Roark. "Come on. Have you had
+any lunch? Let’s go some place. I want to talk to you."
+Roark went to his locker to get his hat and coat. The drafting room witnessed a
+stupefying act and all work stopped to watch it: Austen Heller picked up the
+sketch, folded it over four times, cracking the sacred cardboard, and slipped it
+105
+
+into his pocket.
+"But, Mr. Heller..." Snyte stammered, "let me explain...It’s perfectly all right
+if that’s what you want, we’ll do the sketch over...let me explain..."
+"Not now," said Heller. "Not now." He added at the door: "I’ll send you a
+check."
+Then Heller was gone, and Roark with him; and the door, as Heller swung it shut
+behind them, sounded like the closing paragraph in one of Heller’s articles.
+Roark had not said a word.
+In the softly lighted booth of the most expensive restaurant that Roark had ever
+entered, across the crystal and silver glittering between them, Heller was
+saying:
+"...because that’s the house I want, because that’s the house I’ve always
+wanted. Can you build it for me, draw up the plans and supervise the
+construction?"
+"Yes," said Roark.
+"How long will it take if we start at once?"
+"About eight months."
+"I’ll have the house by late fall?"
+"Yes."
+"Just like that sketch?"
+"Just like that."
+"Look, I have no idea what kind of a contract one makes with an architect and
+you must know, so draw up one and let my lawyer okay it this afternoon, will
+you?"
+"Yes."
+Heller studied the man who sat facing him. He saw the hand lying on the table
+before him. Heller’s awareness became focused on that hand. He saw the long
+fingers, the sharp joints, the prominent veins. He had the feeling that he was
+not hiring this man, but surrendering himself into his employment. "How old are
+you," asked Heller, "whoever you are?"
+"Twenty-six. Do you want any references?"
+"Hell, no. I have them, here in my pocket. What’s your name?"
+"Howard Roark."
+Heller produced a checkbook, spread it open on the table and reached for his
+fountain pen.
+"Look," he said, writing, "I’ll give you five hundred dollars on account. Get
+yourself an office or whatever you have to get, and go ahead."
+He tore off the check and handed it to Roark, between the tips of two straight
+106
+
+fingers, leaning forward on his elbow, swinging his wrist in a sweeping curve.
+His eyes were narrowed, amused, watching Roark quizzically. But the gesture had
+the air of a salute.
+The check was made out to "Howard Roark, Architect."
+
+11.
+HOWARD ROARK opened his own office.
+It was one large room on the top of an old building, with a broad window high
+over the roofs. He could see the distant band of the Hudson at his window sill,
+with the small streaks of ships moving under his fingertips when he pressed them
+to the glass. He had a desk, two chairs, and a huge drafting table. The glass
+entrance door bore the words: "Howard Roark, Architect." He stood in the hall
+for a long time, looking at the words. Then he went in, and slammed his door, he
+picked up a T-square from the table and flung it down again, as if throwing an
+anchor.
+John Erik Snyte had objected. When Roark came to the office for his drawing
+instruments Snyte emerged into the reception room, shook his hand warmly and
+said: "Well, Roark! Well, how are you? Come in, come right in, I want to speak
+to you!"
+And with Roark seated before his desk Snyte proceeded loudly:
+"Look, fellow, I hope you’ve got sense enough not to hold it against me,
+anything that I might’ve said yesterday. You know how it is, I lost my head a
+little, and it wasn’t what you did, but that you had to go and do it on that
+sketch, that sketch...well, never mind. No hard feelings?"
+"No," said Roark. "None at all."
+"Of course, you’re not fired. You didn’t take me seriously, did you? You can go
+right back to work here this very minute."
+"What for, Mr. Snyte?"
+"What do you mean, what for? Oh, you’re thinking of the Heller house? But you’re
+not taking Heller seriously, are you? You saw how he is, that madman can change
+his mind sixty times a minute. He won’t really give you that commission, you
+know, it isn’t as simple as that, it isn’t being done that way."
+"We’ve signed the contract yesterday."
+"Oh, you have? Well, that’s splendid! Well, look, Roark, I’ll tell you what
+we’ll do: you bring the commission back to us and I’ll let you put your name on
+it with mine--’John Erik Snyte & Howard Roark.’ And we’ll split the fee. That’s
+in addition to your salary--and you’re getting a raise, incidentally. Then we’ll
+have the same arrangement on any other commission you bring in. And...Lord, man,
+what are you laughing at?"
+"Excuse me, Mr. Snyte. I’m sorry."
+"I don’t believe you understand," said Snyte, bewildered. "Don’t you see? It’s
+your insurance. You don’t want to break loose just yet. Commissions won’t fall
+into your lap like this. Then what will you do? This way, you’ll have a steady
+107
+
+job and you’ll be building toward independent practice, if that’s what you’re
+after. In four or five years, you’ll be ready to take the leap. That’s the way
+everybody does it. You see?"
+"Yes."
+"Then you agree?"
+"No."
+"But, good Lord, man, you’ve lost your mind! To set up alone now! Without
+experience, without connections, without...well, without anything at all! I
+never heard of such a thing. Ask anybody in the profession. See what they’ll
+tell you. It’s preposterous!"
+"Probably."
+"Listen. Roark, won’t you please listen?"
+"I’ll listen if you want me to, Mr. Snyte. But I think I should tell you now
+that nothing you can say will make any difference. If you don’t mind that, I
+don’t mind listening."
+Snyte went on speaking for a long time and Roark listened, without objecting,
+explaining or answering.
+"Well, if that’s how you are, don’t expect me to take you back when you find
+yourself on the pavement."
+"I don’t expect it, Mr. Snyte."
+"Don’t expect anyone else in the profession to take you in, after they hear what
+you’ve done to me."
+"I don’t expect that either."
+For a few days Snyte thought of suing Roark and Heller. But he decided against
+it, because there was no precedent to follow under the circumstances: because
+Heller had paid him for his efforts, and the house had been actually designed by
+Roark; and because no one ever sued Austen Heller. The first visitor to Roark’s
+office was Peter Keating. He walked in, without warning, one noon, walked
+straight across the room and sat down on Roark’s desk, smiling gaily, spreading
+his arms wide in a sweeping gesture: "Well, Howard!" he said. "Well, fancy
+that!" He had not seen Roark for a year. "Hello, Peter," said Roark.
+"Your own office, your own name and everything! Already! Just imagine!"
+"Who told you, Peter?"
+"Oh, one hears things. You wouldn’t expect me not to keep track of your career,
+now would you? You know what I’ve always thought of you. And I don’t have to
+tell you that I congratulate you and wish you the very best."
+"No, you don’t have to."
+"Nice place you got here. Light and roomy. Not quite as imposing as it should
+be, perhaps, but what can one expect at the beginning? And then, the prospects
+are uncertain, aren’t they, Howard?"
+108
+
+"Quite."
+"It’s an awful chance that you’ve taken."
+"Probably."
+"Are you really going to go through with it? I mean, on your
+own?"
+"Looks that way, doesn’t it?"
+"Well, it’s not too late, you know. I thought, when I heard the story, that
+you’d surely turn it over to Snyte and make a smart deal with him."
+"I didn’t."
+"Aren’t you really going to?"
+"No."
+Keating wondered why he should experience that sickening feeling of resentment;
+why he had come here hoping to find the story untrue, hoping to find Roark
+uncertain and willing to surrender. That feeling had haunted him ever since he’d
+heard the news about Roark; the sensation of something unpleasant that remained
+after he’d forgotten the cause. The feeling would come back to him, without
+reason, a blank wave of anger, and he would ask himself: now what the
+hell?--what was it I heard today? Then he would remember: Oh, yes,
+Roark--Roark’s opened his own office. He would ask himself impatiently: So
+what?--and know at the same time that the words were painful to face, and
+humiliating like an insult.
+"You know, Howard, I admire your courage. Really, you know, I’ve had much more
+experience and I’ve got more of a standing in the profession, don’t mind my
+saying it--I’m only speaking objectively--but I wouldn’t dare take such a step."
+"No, you wouldn’t."
+"So you’ve made the jump first. Well, well. Who would have thought it?...I wish
+you all the luck in the world."
+"Thank you, Peter."
+"I know you’ll succeed. I’m sure of it."
+"Are you?"
+"Of course! Of course, I am. Aren’t you?"
+"I haven’t thought of it."
+"You haven’t thought of it?"
+"Not much."
+"Then you’re not sure, Howard? You aren’t?"
+"Why do you ask that so eagerly?"
+109
+
+"What? Why...no, not eagerly, but of course, I’m concerned, Howard, it’s bad
+psychology not to be certain now, in your position. So you have doubts?"
+"None at all."
+"But you said..."
+"I’m quite sure of things, Peter."
+"Have you thought about getting your registration?"
+"I’ve applied for it."
+"You’ve got no college degree, you know. They’ll make it difficult for you at
+the examination."
+"Probably."
+"What are you going to do if you don’t get the license?"
+"I’ll get it."
+"Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you now at the A.G.A., if you don’t go high hat on
+me, because you’ll be a full-fledged member and I’m only a junior."
+"I’m not joining the A.G.A."
+"What do you mean, you’re not joining? You’re eligible now."
+"Possibly."
+"You’ll be invited to join."
+"Tell them not to bother."
+"What!"
+"You know, Peter, we had a conversation just like this seven years ago, when you
+tried to talk me into joining your fraternity at Stanton. Don’t start it again."
+"You won’t join the A.G.A. when you have a chance to?"
+"I won’t join anything, Peter, at any time."
+"But don’t you realize how it helps?"
+"In what?"
+"In being an architect."
+"I don’t like to be helped in being an architect."
+"You’re just making things harder for yourself."
+"I am."
+"And it will be plenty hard, you know."
+"I know."
+110
+
+"You’ll make enemies of them if you refuse such an invitation."
+"I’ll make enemies of them anyway."
+The first person to whom Roark had told the news was Henry Cameron. Roark went
+to New Jersey the day after he signed the contract with Heller. It had rained
+and he found Cameron in the garden, shuffling slowly down the damp paths,
+leaning heavily on a cane. In the past winter, Cameron had improved enough to
+walk a few hours each day. He walked with effort, his body bent.
+He looked at the first shoots of green on the earth under his feet. He lifted
+his cane, once in a while, bracing his legs to stand firm for a moment; with the
+tip of the cane, he touched a folded green cup and watched it spill a glistening
+drop in the twilight. He saw Roark coming up the hill, and frowned. He had seen
+Roark only a week ago, and because these visits meant too much to both of them,
+neither wished the occasion to be too frequent.
+"Well?" Cameron asked gruffly. "What do you want here again?"
+"I have something to tell you."
+"It can wait."
+"I don’t think so."
+"Well?"
+"I’m opening my own office. I’ve just signed for my first building."
+Cameron rotated his cane, the tip pressed into the earth, the shaft describing a
+wide circle, his two hands bearing down on the handle, the palm of one on the
+back of the other. His head nodded slowly, in rhythm with the motion, for a long
+time, his eyes closed. Then he looked at Roark and said:
+"Well, don’t brag about it."
+He added: "Help me to sit down." It was the first time Cameron had ever
+pronounced this sentence; his sister and Roark had long since learned that the
+one outrage forbidden in his presence was any intention of helping him to move.
+Roark took his elbow and led him to a bench. Cameron asked harshly, staring
+ahead at the sunset:
+"What? For whom? How much?"
+He listened silently to Roark’s story. He looked for a long time at the sketch
+on cracked cardboard with the pencil lines over the watercolor. Then he asked
+many questions about the stone, the steel, the roads, the contractors, the
+costs. He offered no congratulations. He made no comment.
+Only when Roark was leaving, Cameron said suddenly:
+"Howard, when you open your office, take snapshots of it--and show them to me."
+Then he shook his head, looked away guiltily, and swore.
+"I’m being senile. Forget it."
+111
+
+Roark said nothing.
+Three days later he came back. "You’re getting to be a nuisance," said Cameron.
+Roark handed him an envelope, without a word. Cameron looked at the snapshots,
+at the one of the broad, bare office, of the wide window, of the entrance door.
+He dropped the others, and held the one of the entrance door for a long time.
+"Well," he said at last, "I did live to see it."
+He dropped the snapshot.
+"Not quite exactly," he added. "Not in the way I had wanted to, but I did. It’s
+like the shadows some say we’ll see of the earth in that other world. Maybe
+that’s how I’ll see the rest of it. I’m learning."
+He picked up the snapshot.
+"Howard," he said. "Look at it."
+He held it between them.
+"It doesn’t say much. Only ’Howard Roark, Architect.’ But it’s like those
+mottoes men carved over the entrance of a castle and died for. It’s a challenge
+in the face of something so vast and so dark, that all the pain on earth--and do
+you know how much suffering there is on earth?--all the pain comes from that
+thing you are going to face. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know why it should
+be unleashed against you. I know only that it will be. And I know that if you
+carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for
+you, but for something that should win, that moves the world--and never wins
+acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have
+suffered as you will suffer. May God bless you--or whoever it is that is alone
+to see the best, the highest possible to human hearts. You’re on your way into
+hell, Howard."
+#
+Roark walked up the path to the top of the cliff where the steel hulk of the
+Heller house rose into a blue sky. The skeleton was up and the concrete was
+being poured; the great mats of the terraces hung over the silver sheet of water
+quivering far below; plumbers and electricians had started laying their
+conduits.
+He looked at the squares of sky delimited by the slender lines of girders and
+columns, the empty cubes of space he had torn out of the sky. His hands moved
+involuntarily, filling in the planes of walls to come, enfolding the future
+rooms. A stone clattered from under his feet and went bouncing down the hill,
+resonant drops of sound rolling in the sunny clarity of the summer air.
+He stood on the summit, his legs planted wide apart, leaning back against space.
+He looked at the materials before him, the knobs of rivets in steel, the sparks
+in blocks of stone, the weaving spirals in fresh, yellow planks.
+Then he saw a husky figure enmeshed in electric wires, a bulldog face spreading
+into a huge grin and china-blue eyes gloating in a kind of unholy triumph.
+"Mike!" he said incredulously.
+Mike had left for a big job in Philadelphia months ago, long before the
+appearance of Heller in Snyte’s office, and Mike had never heard the news--or so
+he supposed.
+112
+
+"Hello, Red," said Mike, much too casually, and added: "Hello, boss."
+"Mike, how did you...?"
+"You’re a hell of an architect. Neglecting the job like that. It’s my third day
+here, waiting for you to show up."
+"Mike, how did you get here? Why such a come-down?" He had never known Mike to
+bother with small private residences.
+"Don’t play the sap. You know how I got here. You didn’t think I’d miss it, your
+first house, did you? And you think it’s a come-down? Well, maybe it is. And
+maybe it’s the other way around."
+Roark extended his hand and Mike’s grimy fingers closed about it ferociously, as
+if the smudges he left implanted in Roark’s skin said everything he wanted to
+say. And because he was afraid that he might say it, Mike growled:
+"Run along, boss, run along. Don’t clog up the works like that."
+Roark walked through the house. There were moments when he could be precise,
+impersonal, and stop to give instructions as if this were not his house but only
+a mathematical problem; when he felt the existence of pipes and rivets, while
+his own person vanished.
+There were moments when something rose within him, not a thought nor a feeling,
+but a wave of some physical violence, and then he wanted to stop, to lean back,
+to feel the reality of his person heightened by the frame of steel that rose
+dimly about the bright, outstanding existence of his body as its center. He did
+not stop. He went on calmly. But his hands betrayed what he wanted to hide. His
+hands reached out, ran slowly down the beams and joints. The workers in the
+house had noticed it. They said: "That guy’s in love with the thing. He can’t
+keep his hands off."
+The workers liked him. The contractor’s superintendents did not. He had had
+trouble in finding a contractor to erect the house. Several of the better firms
+had refused the commission. "We don’t do that kinda stuff."
+"Nan, we won’t bother. Too complicated for a small job like that."
+"Who the hell wants that kind of house? Most likely we’ll never collect from the
+crank afterwards. To hell with it."
+"Never did anything like it. Wouldn’t know how to go about it. I’ll stick to
+construction that is construction." One contractor had looked at the plans
+briefly and thrown them aside, declaring with finality: "It won’t stand."
+"It will," said Roark. The contractor drawled indifferently. "Yeah? And who are
+you to tell me, Mister?"
+He had found a small firm that needed the work and undertook it, charging more
+than the job warranted--on the ground of the chance they were taking with a
+queer experiment. The construction went on, and the foremen obeyed sullenly, in
+disapproving silence, as if they were waiting for their predictions to come true
+and would be glad when the house collapsed about their heads. Roark had bought
+an old Ford and drove down to the job more often than was necessary. It was
+difficult to sit at a desk in his office, to stand at a table, forcing himself
+to stay away from the construction site. At the site there were moments when he
+113
+
+wished to forget his office and his drawing board, to seize the men’s tools and
+go to work on the actual erection of the house, as he had worked in his
+childhood, to build that house with his own hands.
+He walked through the structure, stepping lightly over piles of planks and coils
+of wire, he made notes, he gave brief orders in a harsh voice. He avoided
+looking in Mike’s direction. But Mike was watching him, following his progress
+through the house. Mike winked at him in understanding, whenever he passed by.
+Mike said once:
+"Control yourself, Red. You’re open like a book. God, it’s indecent to be so
+happy!"
+Roark stood on the cliff, by the structure, and looked at the countryside, at
+the long, gray ribbon of the road twisting past along the shore. An open car
+drove by, fleeing into the country. The car was overfilled with people bound for
+a picnic. There was a jumble of bright sweaters, and scarves fluttering in the
+wind; a jumble of voices shrieking without purpose over the roar of the motor,
+and overstressed hiccoughs of laughter; a girl sat sidewise, her legs flung over
+the side of the car; she wore a man’s straw hat slipping down to her nose and
+she yanked savagely at the strings of a ukulele, ejecting raucous sounds,
+yelling "Hey!" These people were enjoying a day of their existence; they were
+shrieking to the sky their release from the work and the burdens of the days
+behind them; they had worked and carried the burdens in order to reach a
+goal--and this was the goal.
+He looked at the car as it streaked past. He thought that there was a
+difference, some important difference, between the consciousness of this day in
+him and in them. He thought that he should try to grasp it. But he forgot. He
+was looking at a truck panting up the hill, loaded with a glittering mound of
+cut granite.
+#
+Austen Heller came to look at the house frequently, and watched it grow,
+curious, still a little astonished. He studied Roark and the house with the same
+meticulous scrutiny; he felt as if he could not quite tell them apart.
+Heller, the fighter against compulsion, was baffled by Roark, a man so
+impervious to compulsion that he became a kind of compulsion himself, an
+ultimatum against things Heller could not define. Within a week, Heller knew
+that he had found the best friend he would ever have; and he knew that the
+friendship came from Roark’s fundamental indifference. In the deeper reality of
+Roark’s existence there was no consciousness of Heller, no need for Heller, no
+appeal, no demand. Heller felt a line drawn, which he could not touch; beyond
+that line, Roark asked nothing of him and granted him nothing. But when Roark
+looked at him with approval, when Roark smiled, when Roark praised one of his
+articles, Heller felt the strangely clean joy of a sanction that was neither a
+bribe nor alms.
+In the summer evenings they sat together on a ledge halfway up the hill, and
+talked while darkness mounted slowly up the beams of the house above them, the
+last sunrays retreating to the tips of the steel uprights.
+"What is it that I like so much about the house you’re building for me, Howard?"
+"A house can have integrity, just like a person," said Roark, "and just as
+seldom."
+"In what way?"
+114
+
+"Well, look at it. Every piece of it is there because the house needs it--and
+for no other reason. You see it from here as it is inside. The rooms in which
+you’ll live made the shape. The relation of masses was determined by the
+distribution of space within. The ornament was determined by the method of
+construction, an emphasis of the principle that makes it stand. You can see each
+stress, each support that meets it. Your own eyes go through a structural
+process when you look at the house, you can follow each step, you see it rise,
+you know what made it and why it stands. But you’ve seen buildings with columns
+that support nothing, with purposeless cornices, with pilasters, moldings, false
+arches, false windows. You’ve seen buildings that look as if they contained a
+single large hall, they have solid columns and single, solid windows six floors
+high. But you enter and find six stories inside. Or buildings that contain a
+single hall, but with a facade cut up into floor lines, band courses, tiers of
+windows. Do you understand the difference? Your house is made by its own needs.
+Those others are made by the need to impress. The determining motive of your
+house is in the house. The determining motive of the others is in the audience."
+"Do you know that that’s what I’ve felt in a way? I’ve felt that when I move
+into this house, I’ll have a new sort of existence, and even my simple daily
+routine will have a kind of honesty or dignity that I can’t quite define. Don’t
+be astonished if I tell you that I feel as if I’ll have to live up to that
+house."
+"I intended that," said Roark.
+"And, incidentally, thank you for all the thought you seem to have taken about
+my comfort. There are so many things I notice that had never occurred to me
+before, but you’ve planned them as if you knew all my needs. For instance, my
+study is the room I’ll need most and you’ve given it the dominant spot--and,
+incidentally, I see where you’ve made it the dominant mass from the outside,
+too. And then the way it connects with the library, and the living room well out
+of my way, and the guest rooms where I won’t hear too much of them--and all
+that. You were very considerate of me."
+"You know," said Roark. "I haven’t thought of you at all. I thought of the
+house." He added: "Perhaps that’s why I knew how to be considerate of you."
+#
+The Heller house was completed in November of 1926.
+In January of 1927 the Architectural Tribune published a survey of the best
+American homes erected during the past year. It devoted twelve large, glossy
+pages to photographs of the twenty-four houses its editors had selected as the
+worthiest architectural achievements. The Heller house was not mentioned.
+The real-estate sections of the New York papers presented, each Sunday, brief
+accounts of the notable new residences in the vicinity. There was no account of
+the Heller house.
+The year book of the Architects’ Guild of America, which presented magnificent
+reproductions of what it chose as the best buildings of the country, under the
+title "Looking Forward," gave no reference to the Heller house.
+There were many occasions when lecturers rose to platforms and addressed trim
+audiences on the subject of the progress of American architecture. No one spoke
+of the Heller house.
+In the club rooms of the A.G.A. some opinions were expressed.
+115
+
+"It’s a disgrace to the country," said Ralston Holcombe, "that a thing like that
+Heller house is allowed to be erected. It’s a blot on the profession. There
+ought to be a law."
+"That’s what drives clients away," said John Erik Snyte. "They see a house like
+that and they think all architects are crazy."
+"I see no cause for indignation," said Gordon L. Prescott. "I think it’s
+screamingly funny. It looks like a cross between a filling station and a
+comic-strip idea of a rocket ship to the moon."
+"You watch it in a couple of years," said Eugene Pettingill, "and see what
+happens. The thing’ll collapse like a house of cards."
+"Why speak in terms of years?" said Guy Francon. "Those modernistic stunts never
+last more than a season. The owner will get good and sick of it and he’ll come
+running home to a good old early Colonial."
+The Heller house acquired fame throughout the countryside surrounding it. People
+drove out of their way to park on the road before it, to stare, point and
+giggle. Gas-station attendants snickered when Heller’s car drove past. Heller’s
+cook had to endure the derisive glances of shopkeepers when she went on her
+errands. The Heller house was known in the neighborhood as "The Booby Hatch."
+Peter Keating told his friends in the profession, with an indulgent smile: "Now,
+now, you shouldn’t say that about him. I’ve known Howard Roark for a long time,
+and he’s got quite a talent, quite. He’s even worked for me once. He’s just gone
+haywire on that house. He’ll learn. He has a future....Oh, you don’t think he
+has? You really don’t think he has?"
+Ellsworth M. Toohey, who let no stone spring from the ground of America without
+his comment, did not know that the Heller house had been erected, as far as his
+column was concerned. He did not consider it necessary to inform his readers
+about it, if only to damn it. He said nothing.
+
+12.
+A COLUMN entitled "Observations and Meditations" by Alvah Scarret appeared daily
+on the front page of the New York Banner. It was a trusted guide, a source of
+inspiration and a molder of public philosophy in small towns throughout the
+country. In this column there had appeared, years ago, the famous statement:
+"We’d all be a heap sight better off if we’d forget the highfalutin notions of
+our fancy civilization and mind more what the savages knew long before us: to
+honor our mother." Alvah Scarret was a bachelor, had made two millions dollars,
+played golf expertly and was editor-in-chief of the Wynand papers.
+It was Alvah Scarret who conceived the idea of the campaign against living
+conditions in the slums and "Landlord Sharks," which ran in the Banner for three
+weeks. This was material such as Alvah Scarret relished. It had human appeal and
+social implications. It lent itself to Sunday-supplement illustrations of girls
+leaping into rivers, their skirts flaring well above their knees. It boosted
+circulation. It embarrassed the sharks who owned a stretch of blocks by the East
+River, selected as the dire example of the campaign. The sharks had refused to
+sell these blocks to an obscure real-estate company; at the end of the campaign
+they surrendered and sold. No one could prove that the real-estate company was
+owned by a company owned by Gail Wynand.
+116
+
+The Wynand papers could not be left without a campaign for long. They had just
+concluded one on the subject of modern aviation. They had run scientific
+accounts of the history of aviation in the Sunday Family Magazine supplement,
+with pictures ranging from Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of flying machines to
+the latest bomber; with the added attraction of Icarus writhing in scarlet
+flames, his nude body blue-green, his wax wings yellow and the smoke purple;
+also of a leprous hag with flaming eyes and a crystal ball, who had predicted in
+the XIth century that man would fly; also of bats, vampires and werewolves.
+They had run a model plane construction contest; it was open to all boys under
+the age of ten who wished to send in three new subscriptions to the Banner. Gail
+Wynand, who was a licensed pilot, had made a solo flight from Los Angeles to New
+York, establishing a transcontinental speed record, in a small, specially built
+craft costing one hundred thousand dollars. He had made a slight miscalculation
+on reaching New York and had been forced to land in a rocky pasture; it had been
+a hair-raising landing, faultlessly executed; it had just so happened that a
+battery of photographers from the Banner were present in the neighborhood. Gail
+Wynand had stepped out of the plane. An ace pilot would have been shaken by the
+experience. Gail Wynand had stood before the cameras, an immaculate gardenia in
+the lapel of his flying jacket, his hand raised with a cigarette held between
+two fingers that did not tremble. When questioned about his first wish on
+returning to earth, he had expressed the desire to kiss the most attractive
+woman present, had chosen the dowdiest old hag from the crowd and bent to kiss
+her gravely on the forehead, explaining that she reminded him of his mother.
+Later, at the start of the slum campaign, Gail Wynand had said to Alvah Scarret;
+"Go ahead. Squeeze all you can out of the thing," and had departed on his yacht
+for a world cruise, accompanied by an enchanting aviatrix of twenty-four to whom
+he had made a present of his transcontinental plane.
+Alvah Scarret went ahead. Among many other steps of his campaign he assigned
+Dominique Francon to investigate the condition of homes in the slums and to
+gather human material. Dominique Francon had just returned from a summer in
+Biarritz; she always took a whole summer’s vacation and Alvah Scarret granted
+it, because she was one of his favorite employees, because he was baffled by her
+and because he knew that she could quit her job whenever she pleased.
+Dominique Francon went to live for two weeks in the hall bedroom of an East-Side
+tenement. The room had a skylight, but no windows; there were five flights of
+stairs to climb and no running water. She cooked her own meals in the kitchen of
+a numerous family on the floor below; she visited neighbors, she sat on the
+landings of fire escapes in the evenings and went to dime movies with the girls
+of the neighborhood.
+She wore frayed skirts and blouses. The abnormal fragility of her normal
+appearance made her look exhausted with privation in these surroundings; the
+neighbors felt certain that she had TB. But she moved as she had moved in the
+drawing room of Kiki Holcombe--with the same cold poise and confidence. She
+scrubbed the floor of her room, she peeled potatoes, she bathed in a tin pan of
+cold water. She had never done these things before; she did them expertly. She
+had a capacity for action, a competence that clashed incongruously with her
+appearance. She did not mind this new background; she was indifferent to the
+slums as she had been indifferent to the drawing rooms.
+At the end of two weeks she returned to her penthouse apartment on the roof of a
+hotel over Central Park, and her articles on life in the slums appeared in the
+Banner. They were a merciless, brilliant account.
+117
+
+She heard baffled questions at a dinner party. "My dear, you didn’t actually
+write those things?"
+"Dominique, you didn’t really live in that place?"
+"Oh, yes," she answered. "The house you own on East Twelfth Street, Mrs.
+Palmer," she said, her hand circling lazily from under the cuff of an emerald
+bracelet too broad and heavy for her thin wrist, "has a sewer that gets clogged
+every other day and runs over, all through the courtyard. It looks blue and
+purple in the sun, like a rainbow."
+"The block you control for the Claridge estate, Mr. Brooks, has the most
+attractive stalactites growing on all the ceilings," she said, her golden head
+leaning to her corsage of white gardenias with drops of water sparkling on the
+lusterless petals.
+She was asked to speak at a meeting of social workers. It was an important
+meeting, with a militant, radical mood, led by some of the most prominent women
+in the field. Alvah Scarret was pleased and gave her his blessing. "Go to it,
+kid," he said, "lay it on thick. We want the social workers." She stood in the
+speaker’s pulpit of an unaired hall and looked at a flat sheet of faces, faces
+lecherously eager with the sense of their own virtue. She spoke evenly, without
+inflection. She said, among many other things: "The family on the first floor
+rear do not bother to pay their rent, and the children cannot go to school for
+lack of clothes. The father has a charge account at a corner speak-easy. He is
+in good health and has a good job....The couple on the second floor have just
+purchased a radio for sixty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents cash. In the
+fourth floor front, the father of the family has not done a whole day’s work in
+his life, and does not intend to. There are nine children, supported by the
+local parish. There is a tenth one on its way..." When she finished there were a
+few claps of angry applause. She raised her hand and said: "You don’t have to
+applaud. I don’t expect it." She asked politely: "Are there any questions?"
+There were no questions.
+When she returned home she found Alvah Scarret waiting for her. He looked
+incongruous in the drawing room of her penthouse, his huge bulk perched on the
+edge of a delicate chair, a hunched gargoyle against the glowing spread of the
+city beyond a solid wall of glass. The city was like a mural designed to
+illuminate and complete the room: the fragile lines of spires on a black sky
+continued the fragile lines of the furniture; the lights glittering in distant
+windows threw reflections on the bare, lustrous floor; the cold precision of the
+angular structures outside answered the cold, inflexible grace of every object
+within. Alvah Scarret broke the harmony. He looked like a kindly country doctor
+and like a cardsharp. His heavy face bore the benevolent, paternal smile that
+had always been his passkey and his trademark. He had the knack of making the
+kindliness of his smile add to, not detract from his solemn appearance of
+dignity; his long, thin, hooked nose did detract from the kindliness, but it
+added to the dignity; his stomach, cantilevered over his legs, did detract from
+the dignity, but it added to the kindliness. He rose, beamed and held
+Dominique’s hand. "Thought I’d drop in on my way home," he said. "I’ve got
+something to tell you. How did it go, kid?"
+"As I expected it."
+She tore her hat off and threw it down on the first chair in sight. Her hair
+slanted in a flat curve across her forehead and fell in a straight line to her
+shoulders; it looked smooth and tight, like a bathing cap of pale, polished
+metal. She walked to the window and stood looking out over the city. She asked
+without turning: "What did you want to tell me?"
+118
+
+Alvah Scarret watched her pleasurably. He had long since given up any attempts
+beyond holding her hand when not necessary or patting her shoulder; he had
+stopped thinking of the subject, but he had a dim, half-conscious feeling which
+he summed up to himself in the words: You never can tell.
+"I’ve got good news for you, child," he said. "I’ve been working out a little
+scheme, just a bit of reorganization, and I’ve figured where I’ll consolidate a
+few things together into a Women’s Welfare Department. You know, the schools,
+the home economics, the care of babies, the juvenile delinquents and all the
+rest of it--all to be under one head. And I see no better woman for the job than
+my little girl."
+"Do you mean me?" she asked, without turning.
+"No one else but. Just as soon as Gail comes back, I’ll get his okay."
+She turned and looked at him, her arms crossed, her hands holding her elbows.
+She said:
+"Thank you, Alvah. But I don’t want it."
+"What do you mean, you don’t want it?"
+"I mean that I don’t want it."
+"For heaven’s sake, do you realize what an advance that would be?"
+"Toward what?"
+"Your career."
+"I never said I was planning a career."
+"But you don’t want to be running a dinky back-page column forever!"
+"Not forever. Until I get bored with it."
+"But think of what you could do in the real game! Think of what Gail could do
+for you once you come to his attention!"
+"I have no desire to come to his attention."
+"But, Dominique, we need you. The women will be for you solid after tonight."
+"I don’t think so."
+"Why, I’ve ordered two columns held for a yarn on the meeting and your speech."
+She reached for the telephone and handed the receiver to him. She said:
+"You’d better tell them to kill it."
+"Why?"
+She searched through a litter of papers on a desk, found some typewritten sheets
+and handed them to him. "Here’s the speech I made tonight," she said.
+He glanced through it. He said nothing, but clasped his forehead once. Then he
+119
+
+seized the telephone and gave orders to run as brief an account of the meeting
+as possible, and not to mention the speaker by name.
+"All right," said Dominique, when he dropped the receiver. "Am I fired?"
+He shook his head dolefully. "Do you want to be?"
+"Not necessarily."
+"I’ll squash the business," he muttered. "I’ll keep it from Gail."
+"If you wish. I don’t really care one way or the other."
+"Listen, Dominique--oh I know, I’m not to ask any questions--only why on earth
+are you always doing things like that?"
+"For no reason on earth."
+"Look, you know, I’ve heard about that swank dinner where you made certain
+remarks on this same subject. And then you go and say things like these at a
+radical meeting."
+"They’re true, though, both sides of it, aren’t they?"
+"Oh, sure, but couldn’t you have reversed the occasions when you chose to
+express them?"
+"There wouldn’t have been any point in that."
+"Was there any in what you’ve done?"
+"No. None at all. But it amused me."
+"I can’t figure you out, Dominique. You’ve done it before. You go along so
+beautifully, you do brilliant work and just when you’re about to make a real
+step forward--you spoil it by pulling something like this. Why?"
+"Perhaps that is precisely why."
+"Will you tell me--as a friend, because I like you and I’m interested in
+you--what are you really after?"
+"I should think that’s obvious. I’m after nothing at all."
+He spread his hands open, shrugging helplessly.
+She smiled gaily.
+"What is there to look so mournful about? I like you, too, Alvah, and I’m
+interested in you. I even like to talk to you, which is better. Now sit still
+and relax and I’ll get you a drink. You need a drink, Alvah."
+She brought him a frosted glass with ice cubes ringing in the silence. "You’re
+just a nice child, Dominique," he said.
+"Of course. That’s what I am."
+She sat down on the edge of a table, her hands flat behind her, leaning back on
+two straight arms, swinging her legs slowly. She said:
+120
+
+"You know, Alvah, it would be terrible if I had a job I really wanted."
+"Well, of all things! Well, of all fool things to say! What do you mean?"
+"Just that. That it would be terrible to have a job I enjoyed and did not want
+to lose."
+"Why?"
+"Because I would have to depend on you--you’re a wonderful person, Alvah, but
+not exactly inspiring and I don’t think it would be beautiful to cringe before a
+whip in your hand--oh, don’t protest, it would be such a polite little whip, and
+that’s what would make it uglier. I would have to depend on our boss Gail--he’s
+a great man, I’m sure, only I’d just as soon never set eyes on him."
+"Whatever gives you such a crazy attitude? When you know that Gail and I would
+do anything for you, and I personally..."
+"It’s not only that, Alvah. It’s not you alone. If I found a job, a project, an
+idea or a person I wanted--I’d have to depend on the whole world. Everything has
+strings leading to everything else. We’re all so tied together. We’re all in a
+net, the net is waiting, and we’re pushed into it by one single desire. You want
+a thing and it’s precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it
+out of your hands? You can’t know, it may be so involved and so far away, but
+someone is ready, and you’re afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl
+and you beg and you accept them--just so they’ll let you keep it. And look at
+whom you come to accept."
+"If I’m correct in gathering that you’re criticizing mankind in general..."
+"You know, it’s such a peculiar thing--our idea of mankind in general. We all
+have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big
+and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our
+lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you’d feel big and solemn about? There’s
+nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty
+words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent.
+As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They
+have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when they’re enjoying
+themselves? That’s when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money
+they’ve slaved for--at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who’re rich
+and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment.
+Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That’s your mankind in general. I don’t
+want to touch it."
+"But hell! That’s not the way to look at it. That’s not the whole picture.
+There’s some good in the worst of us. There’s always a redeeming feature."
+"So much the worse. Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic
+gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see
+a man who’s painted a magnificent canvas--and learn that he spends his time
+sleeping with every slut he meets?"
+"What do you want? Perfection?"
+"--or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing."
+"That doesn’t make sense."
+121
+
+"I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom."
+"You call that freedom?"
+"To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing."
+"What if you found something you wanted?"
+"I won’t find it. I won’t choose to see it. It would be part of that lovely
+world of yours. I’d have to share it with all the rest of you--and I wouldn’t.
+You know, I never open again any great book I’ve read and loved. It hurts me to
+think of the other eyes that have read it and of what they were. Things like
+that can’t be shared. Not with people like that."
+"Dominique, it’s abnormal to feel so strongly about anything."
+"That’s the only way I can feel. Or not at all."
+"Dominique, my dear," he said, with earnest, sincere concern, "I wish I’d been
+your father. What kind of a tragedy did you have in your childhood?"
+"Why, none at all. I had a wonderful childhood. Free and peaceful and not
+bothered too much by anybody. Well, yes, I did feel bored very often. But I’m
+used to that."
+"I suppose you’re just an unfortunate product of our times. That’s what I’ve
+always said. We’re too cynical, too decadent. If we went back in all humility to
+the simple virtues..."
+"Alvah, how can you start on that stuff? That’s only for your editorials and..."
+She stopped, seeing his eyes; they looked puzzled and a little hurt. Then she
+laughed. "I’m wrong. You really do believe all that. If it’s actually believing,
+or whatever it is you do that takes its place. Oh, Alvah! That’s why I love you.
+That’s why I’m doing again right now what I did tonight at the meeting."
+"What?" he asked, bewildered.
+"Talking as I am talking--to you as you are. It’s nice, talking to you about
+such things. Do you know, Alvah, that primitive people made statues of their
+gods in man’s likeness? Just think of what a statue of you would look like--of
+you nude, your stomach and all."
+"Now what’s that in relation to?"
+"To nothing at all, darling. Forgive me." She added: "You know, I love statues
+of naked men. Don’t look so silly. I said statues. I had one in particular. It
+was supposed to be Helios. I got it out of a museum in Europe. I had a terrible
+time getting it--it wasn’t for sale, of course. I think I was in love with it,
+Alvah. I brought it home with me."
+"Where is it? I’d like to see something you like, for a change."
+"It’s broken."
+"Broken? A museum piece? How did that happen?"
+"I broke it."
+"How?"
+122
+
+"I threw it down the air shaft. There’s a concrete floor below."
+"Are you totally crazy? Why?"
+"So that no one else would ever see it."
+"Dominique!"
+She jerked her head, as if to shake off the subject; the straight mass of her
+hair stirred in a heavy ripple, like a wave through a half-liquid pool of
+mercury. She said:
+"I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t want to shock you. I thought I could speak to you
+because you’re the one person who’s impervious to any sort of shock. I shouldn’t
+have. It’s no use, I guess."
+She jumped lightly off the table.
+"Run on home, Alvah," she said. "It’s getting late. I’m tired. See you
+tomorrow."
+#
+Guy Francon read his daughter’s articles; he heard of the remarks she had made
+at the reception and at the meeting of social workers. He understood nothing of
+it, but he understood that it had been precisely the sequence of events to
+expect from his daughter. It preyed on his mind, with the bewildered feeling of
+apprehension which the thought of her always brought him. He asked himself
+whether he actually hated his daughter.
+But one picture came back to his mind, irrelevantly, whenever he asked himself
+that question. It was a picture of her childhood, of a day from some forgotten
+summer on his country estate in Connecticut long ago. He had forgotten the rest
+of that day and what had led to the one moment he remembered. But he remembered
+how he stood on the terrace and saw her leaping over a high green hedge at the
+end of the lawn. The hedge seemed too high for her little body; he had time to
+think that she could not make it, in the very moment when he saw her flying
+triumphantly over the green barrier. He could not remember the beginning nor the
+end of that leap; but he still saw, clearly and sharply, as on a square of movie
+film cut out and held motionless forever, the one instant when her body hung in
+space, her long legs flung wide, her thin arms thrown up, hands braced against
+the air, her white dress and blond hair spread in two broad, flat mats on the
+wind, a single moment, the flash of a small body in the greatest burst of
+ecstatic freedom he had ever witnessed in his life.
+He did not know why that moment remained with him, what significance, unheeded
+at the time, had preserved it for him when so much else of greater import had
+been lost. He did not know why he had to see that moment again whenever he felt
+bitterness for his daughter, nor why, seeing it, he felt that unbearable twinge
+of tenderness. He told himself merely that his paternal affection was asserting
+itself quite against his will. But in an awkward, unthinking way he wanted to
+help her, not knowing, not wanting to know what she had to be helped against.
+So he began to look more frequently at Peter Keating. He began to accept the
+solution which he never quite admitted to himself. He found comfort in the
+person of Peter Keating, and he felt that Keating’s simple, stable wholesomeness
+was just the support needed by the unhealthy inconstancy of his daughter.
+Keating would not admit that he had tried to see Dominique again, persistently
+123
+
+and without results. He had obtained her telephone number from Francon long ago,
+and he had called her often. She had answered, and laughed gaily, and told him
+that of course she’d see him, she knew she wouldn’t be able to escape it, but
+she was so busy for weeks to come and would he give her a ring by the first of
+next month?
+Francon guessed it. He told Keating he would ask Dominique to lunch and bring
+them together again. "That is," he added, "I’ll try to ask her. She’ll refuse,
+of course." Dominique surprised him again: she accepted, promptly and
+cheerfully.
+She met them at a restaurant, and she smiled as if this were a reunion she
+welcomed. She talked gaily, and Keating felt enchanted, at ease, wondering why
+he had ever feared her. At the end of a half hour she looked at Francon and
+said:
+"It was wonderful of you to take time off to see me, Father. Particularly when
+you’re so busy and have so many appointments."
+Francon’s face assumed a look of consternation. "My God, Dominique, that reminds
+me!"
+"You have an appointment you forgot?" she asked gently. "Confound it, yes! It
+slipped my mind entirely. Old Andrew Colson phoned this morning and I forgot to
+make a note of it and he insisted on seeing me at two o’clock, you know how it
+is, I just simply can’t refuse to see Andrew Colson, confound it!--today of
+all..." He added, suspiciously: "How did you know it?"
+"Why, I didn’t know it at all. It’s perfectly all right, Father. Mr. Keating and
+I will excuse you, and we’ll have a lovely luncheon together, and I have no
+appointments at all for the day, so you don’t have to be afraid that I’ll escape
+from him."
+Francon wondered whether she knew that that had been the excuse he’d prepared in
+advance in order to leave her alone with Keating. He could not be sure. She was
+looking straight at him; her eyes seemed just a bit too candid. He was glad to
+escape.
+Dominique turned to Keating with a glance so gentle that it could mean nothing
+but contempt.
+"Now let’s relax," she said. "We both know what Father is after, so it’s
+perfectly all right. Don’t let it embarrass you. It doesn’t embarrass me. It’s
+nice that you’ve got Father on a leash. But I know it’s not helpful to you to
+have him pulling ahead of the leash. So let’s forget it and eat our lunch."
+He wanted to rise and walk out; and knew, in furious helplessness, that he
+wouldn’t. She said:
+"Don’t frown, Peter. You might as well call me Dominique, because we’ll come to
+that anyway, sooner or later. I’ll probably see a great deal of you, I see so
+many people, and if it will please Father to have you as one of them--why not?"
+For the rest of the luncheon she spoke to him as to an old friend, gaily and
+openly; with a disquieting candor which seemed to show that there was nothing to
+conceal, but showed that it was best to attempt no probe. The exquisite
+kindliness of her manner suggested that their relationship was of no possible
+consequence, that she could not pay him the tribute of hostility. He knew that
+he disliked her violently. But he watched the shape of her mouth, the movements
+124
+
+of her lips framing words; he watched the way she crossed her legs, a gesture
+smooth and exact, like an expensive instrument being folded; and he could not
+escape the feeling of incredulous admiration he had experienced when he had seen
+her for the first time. When they were leaving, she said:
+"Will you take me to the theater tonight, Peter? I don’t care what play, any one
+of them. Call for me after dinner. Tell Father about it. It will please him."
+"Though, of course, he should know better than to be pleased," said Keating,
+"and so should I, but I’ll be delighted just the same, Dominique."
+"Why should you know better?"
+"Because you have no desire to go to a theater or to see me tonight."
+"None whatever. I’m beginning to like you, Peter. Call for me at half past
+eight."
+When Keating returned to the office, Francon called him upstairs at once.
+"Well?" Francon asked anxiously.
+"What’s the matter, Guy?" said Keating, his voice innocent. "Why are you so
+concerned?"
+"Well, I...I’m just...frankly, I’m interested to see whether you two could get
+together at all. I think you’d be a good influence for her. What happened?"
+"Nothing at all. We had a lovely time. You know your restaurants--the food was
+wonderful...Oh, yes, I’m taking your daughter to a show tonight."
+"No!"
+"Why, yes."
+"How did you ever manage that?"
+Keating shrugged. "I told you one mustn’t be afraid of Dominique."
+"I’m not afraid, but...Oh, is it ’Dominique’ already? My congratulations,
+Peter....I’m not afraid, it’s only that I can’t figure her out. No one can
+approach her. She’s never had a single girl friend, not even in kindergarten.
+There’s always a mob around her, but never a friend. I don’t know what to think.
+There she is now, living all alone, always with a crowd of men around and..."
+"Now, Guy, you mustn’t think anything dishonorable about your own daughter."
+"I don’t! That’s just the trouble--that I don’t. I wish I could. But she’s
+twenty-four, Peter, and she’s a virgin--I know, I’m sure of it. Can’t you tell
+just by looking at a woman? I’m no moralist, Peter, and I think that’s abnormal.
+It’s unnatural at her age, with her looks, with the kind of utterly unrestricted
+existence that she leads. I wish to God she’d get married. I honestly
+do....Well, now, don’t repeat that, of course, and don’t misinterpret it, I
+didn’t mean it as an invitation."
+"Of course not."
+"By the way, Peter, the hospital called while you were out. They said poor
+Lucius is much better. They think he’ll pull through." Lucius N. Heyer had had a
+125
+
+stroke, and Keating had exhibited a great deal of concern for his progress, but
+had not gone to visit him at the hospital.
+"I’m so glad," said Keating.
+"But I don’t think he’ll ever be able to come back to work. He’s getting old,
+Peter....Yes, he’s getting old....One reaches an age when one can’t be burdened
+with business any longer." He let a paper knife hang between two fingers and
+tapped it pensively against the edge of a desk calendar. "It happens to all of
+us, Peter, sooner or later....One must look ahead...."
+#
+Keating sat on the floor by the imitation logs in the fireplace of his living
+room, his hands clasped about his knees, and listened to his mother’s questions
+on what did Dominique look like, what did she wear, what had she said to him and
+how much money did he suppose her mother had actually left her.
+He was meeting Dominique frequently now. He had just returned from an evening
+spent with her on a round of night clubs. She always accepted his invitations.
+He wondered whether her attitude was a deliberate proof that she could ignore
+him more completely by seeing him often than by refusing to see him. But each
+time he met her, he planned eagerly for the next meeting. He had not seen
+Catherine for a month. She was busy with research work which her uncle had
+entrusted to her, in preparation for a series of his lectures.
+Mrs. Keating sat under a lamp, mending a slight tear in the lining of Peter’s
+dinner jacket, reproaching him, between questions, for sitting on the floor in
+his dress trousers and best formal shirt. He paid no attention to the reproaches
+or the questions. But under his bored annoyance he felt an odd sense of relief;
+as if the stubborn stream of her words were pushing him on and justifying him.
+He answered once in a while: "Yes....No....I don’t know....Oh, yes, she’s
+lovely. She’s very lovely....It’s awfully late, Mother. I’m tired. I think I’ll
+go to bed...." The doorbell rang.
+"Well," said Mrs. Keating. "What can that be, at this hour?" Keating rose,
+shrugging, and ambled to the door. It was Catherine. She stood, her two hands
+clasped on a large, old, shapeless pocketbook. She looked determined and
+hesitant at once. She drew back a little. She said: "Good evening, Peter. Can I
+come in? I’ve got to speak to you."
+"Katie! Of course! How nice of you! Come right in. Mother, it’s Katie."
+Mrs. Keating looked at the girl’s feet which stepped as if moving on the rolling
+deck of a ship; she looked at her son, and she knew that something had happened,
+to be handled with great caution.
+"Good evening, Catherine," she said softly.
+Keating was conscious of nothing save the sudden stab of joy he had felt on
+seeing her; the joy told him that nothing had changed, that he was safe in
+certainty, that her presence resolved all doubts. He forgot to wonder about the
+lateness of the hour, about her first, uninvited appearance in his apartment.
+"Good evening, Mrs. Keating," she said, her voice bright and hollow. "I hope I’m
+not disturbing you, it’s late probably, is it?"
+"Why, not at all, child," said Mrs. Keating.
+Catherine hurried to speak, senselessly, hanging on to the sound of words:
+126
+
+"I’ll just take my hat off....Where can I put it, Mrs. Keating? Here on the
+table? Would that be all right?...No, maybe I’d better put it on this bureau,
+though it’s a little damp from the street, the hat is, it might hurt the
+varnish, it’s a nice bureau, I hope it doesn’t hurt the varnish...."
+"What’s the matter, Katie?" Keating asked, noticing at last.
+She looked at him and he saw that her eyes were terrified. Her lips parted; she
+was trying to smile. "Katie!" he gasped. She said nothing. "Take your coat off.
+Come here, get yourself warm by the fire."
+He pushed a low bench to the fireplace, he made her sit down. She was wearing a
+black sweater and an old black skirt, school-girlish house garments which she
+had not changed for her visit. She sat hunched, her knees drawn tight together.
+She said, her voice lower and more natural, with the first released sound of
+pain in it:
+"You have such a nice place....So warm and roomy....Can you open the windows any
+time you want to?"
+"Katie darling," he said gently, "what happened?"
+"Nothing. It’s not that anything really happened. Only I had to speak to you.
+Now. Tonight."
+He looked at Mrs. Keating. "If you’d rather..."
+"No. It’s perfectly all right. Mrs. Keating can hear it. Maybe it’s better if
+she hears it." She turned to his mother and said very simply: "You see, Mrs.
+Keating, Peter and I are engaged." She turned to him and added, her voice
+breaking: "Peter, I want to be married now, tomorrow, as soon as possible."
+Mrs. Keating’s hand descended slowly to her lap. She looked at Catherine, her
+eyes expressionless. She said quietly, with a dignity Keating had never expected
+of her:
+"I didn’t know it, I am very happy, my dear."
+"You don’t mind? You really don’t mind at all?" Catherine asked desperately.
+"Why, child, such things are to be decided only by you and my son."
+"Katie!" he gasped, regaining his voice. "What happened? Why as soon as
+possible?"
+"Oh! oh, it did sound as if...as if I were in the kind of trouble girls are
+supposed to..." She blushed furiously. "Oh, my God! No! It’s not that! You know
+it couldn’t be! Oh, you couldn’t think, Peter, that I...that..."
+"No, of course not," he laughed, sitting down on the floor by her side, slipping
+an arm around her. "But pull yourself together. What is it? You know I’d marry
+you tonight if you wanted me to. Only what happened?"
+"Nothing. I’m all right now. I’ll tell you. You’ll think I’m crazy. I just
+suddenly had the feeling that I’d never marry you, that something dreadful was
+happening to me and I had to escape from it."
+"What was happening to you?"
+127
+
+"I don’t know. Not a thing. I was working on my research notes all day, and
+nothing had happened at all. No calls or visitors. And then suddenly tonight, I
+had that feeling, it was like a nightmare, you know, the kind of horror that you
+can’t describe, that’s not like anything normal at all. Just the feeling that I
+was in mortal danger, that something was closing in on me, that I’d never escape
+it, because it wouldn’t let me and it was too late."
+"That you’d never escape what?"
+"I don’t know exactly. Everything. My whole life. You know, like quicksand.
+Smooth and natural. With not a thing that you can notice about it or suspect.
+And you walk on it easily. When you’ve noticed, it’s too late....And I felt that
+it would get me, that I’d never marry you, that I had to run, now, now or never.
+Haven’t you ever had a feeling like that, just fear that you couldn’t explain?"
+"Yes," he whispered.
+"You don’t think I’m crazy?"
+"No, Katie. Only what was it exactly that started it? Anything in particular?"
+"Well...it seems so silly now." She giggled apologetically. "It was like this: I
+was sitting in my room and it was a little chilly, so I didn’t open the window.
+I had so many papers and books on the table, I hardly had room to write and
+every time I made a note my elbow’d push something off. There were piles of
+things on the floor all around me, all paper, and it rustled a little, because I
+had the door to the living room half open and there was a little draft, I guess.
+Uncle was working too, in the living room. I was getting along fine, I’d been at
+it for hours, didn’t even know what time it was. And then suddenly it got me. I
+don’t know why. Maybe the room was stuffy, or maybe it was the silence, I
+couldn’t hear a thing, not a sound in the living room, and there was that paper
+rustling, so softly, like somebody being choked to death. And then I looked
+around and...and I couldn’t see Uncle in the living room, but I saw his shadow
+on the wall, a huge shadow, all hunched, and it didn’t move, only it was so
+huge!"
+She shuddered. The thing did not seem silly to her any longer. She whispered:
+"That’s when it got me. It wouldn’t move, that shadow, but I thought all that
+paper was moving, I thought it was rising very slowly off the floor, and it was
+going to come to my throat and I was going to drown. That’s when I screamed.
+And, Peter, he didn’t hear. He didn’t hear it! Because the shadow didn’t move.
+Then I seized my hat and coat and I ran. When I was running through the living
+room, I think he said: ’Why, Catherine, what time is it?--Where are you going?’
+Something like that, I’m not sure. But I didn’t look back and I didn’t answer--I
+couldn’t. I was afraid of him. Afraid of Uncle Ellsworth who’s never said a
+harsh word to me in his life!...That was all, Peter. I can’t understand it, but
+I’m afraid. Not so much any more, not here with you, but I’m afraid...." Mrs.
+Keating spoke, her voice dry and crisp: "Why, it’s plain what happened to you,
+my dear. You worked too hard and overdid it, and you just got a mite
+hysterical."
+"Yes...probably..."
+"No," said Keating dully, "no, it wasn’t that...." He was thinking of the
+loud-speaker in the lobby of the strike meeting. Then he added quickly: "Yes,
+Mother’s right. You’re killing yourself with work, Katie. That uncle of
+yours--I’ll wring his neck one of these days."
+128
+
+"Oh, but it’s not his fault! He doesn’t want me to work. He often takes the
+books away from me and tells me to go to the movies. He’s said that himself,
+that I work too hard. But I like it. I think that every note I make, every
+little bit of information--it’s going to be taught to hundreds of young
+students, all over the country, and I think it’s me who’s helping to educate
+people, just my own little bit in such a big cause--and I feel proud and I don’t
+want to stop. You see? I’ve really got nothing to complain about. And
+then...then, like tonight...I don’t know what’s the matter with me."
+"Look, Katie, we’ll get the license tomorrow morning and then we’ll be married
+at once, anywhere you wish."
+"Let’s, Peter," she whispered. "You really don’t mind? I have no real reasons,
+but I want it. I want it so much. Then I’ll know that everything’s all right.
+We’ll manage. I can get a job if you...if you’re not quite ready or..."
+"Oh, nonsense. Don’t talk about that. We’ll manage. It doesn’t matter. Only
+let’s get married and everything else will take care of itself."
+"Darling, you understand? You do understand?"
+"Yes, Katie."
+"Now that it’s all settled," said Mrs. Keating, "I’ll fix you a cup of hot tea,
+Catherine. You’ll need it before you go home." She prepared the tea, and
+Catherine drank it gratefully and said, smiling:
+"I...I’ve often been afraid that you wouldn’t approve, Mrs. Keating."
+"Whatever gave you that idea," Mrs. Keating drawled, her voice not in the tone
+of a question. "Now you run on home like a good girl and get a good night’s
+sleep."
+"Mother, couldn’t Katie stay here tonight? She could sleep with you."
+"Well, now, Peter, don’t get hysterical. What would her uncle think?"
+"Oh, no, of course not. I’ll be perfectly all right, Peter. I’ll go home."
+"Not if you..."
+"I’m not afraid. Not now. I’m fine. You don’t think that I’m really scared of
+Uncle Ellsworth?"
+"Well, all right. But don’t go yet."
+"Now, Peter," said Mrs. Keating, "you don’t want her to be running around the
+streets later than she has to."
+"I’ll take her home."
+"No," said Catherine. "I don’t want to be sillier than I am. No, I won’t let
+you."
+He kissed her at the door and he said: "I’ll come for you at ten o���clock
+tomorrow morning and we’ll go for the license."
+"Yes, Peter," she whispered.
+129
+
+He closed the door after her and he stood for a moment, not noticing that he was
+clenching his fists. Then he walked defiantly back to the living room, and he
+stopped, his hands in his pockets, facing his mother. He looked at her, his
+glance a silent demand. Mrs. Keating sat looking at him quietly, without
+pretending to ignore the glance and without answering it.
+Then she asked:
+"Do you want to go to bed, Peter?"
+He had expected anything but that. He felt a violent impulse to seize the
+chance, to turn, leave the room and escape. But he had to learn what she
+thought; he had to justify himself.
+"Now, Mother, I’m not going to listen to any objections."
+"I’ve made no objections," said Mrs. Keating.
+"Mother, I want you to understand that I love Katie, that nothing can stop me
+now, and that’s that."
+"Very well, Peter."
+"I don’t see what it is that you dislike about her."
+"What I like or dislike is of no importance to you any more."
+"Oh yes, Mother, of course it is! You know it is. How can you say that?"
+"Peter, I have no likes or dislikes as far as I’m concerned. I have no thought
+for myself at all, because nothing in the world matters to me, except you. It
+might be old-fashioned, but that’s the way I am. I know I shouldn’t be, because
+children don’t appreciate it nowadays, but I can’t help it."
+"Oh, Mother, you know that I appreciate it! You know that I wouldn’t want to
+hurt you."
+"You can’t hurt me, Peter, except by hurting yourself. And that...that’s hard to
+bear."
+"How am I hurting myself?"
+"Well, if you won’t refuse to listen to me..."
+"I’ve never refused to listen to you!"
+"If you do want to hear my opinion, I’ll say that this is the funeral of
+twenty-nine years of my life, of all the hopes I’ve had for you."
+"But why? Why?"
+"It’s not that I dislike, Catherine, Peter. I like her very much. She’s a nice
+girl--if she doesn’t let herself go to pieces often and pick things out of thin
+air like that. But she’s a respectable girl and I’d say she’d make a good wife
+for anybody. For any nice, plodding, respectable boy. But to think of it for
+you, Peter! For you!"
+"But..."
+130
+
+"You’re modest, Peter. You’re too modest. That’s always been your trouble. You
+don’t appreciate yourself. You think you’re just like anybody else."
+"I certainly don’t! and I won’t have anyone think that!"
+"Then use your head! Don’t you know what’s ahead of you? Don’t you see how far
+you’ve come already and how far you’re going? You have a chance to become--well,
+not the very best, but pretty near the top in the architectural profession,
+and..."
+"Pretty near the top? Is that what you think? If I can’t be the very best, if I
+can’t be the one architect of this country in my day--I don’t want any damn part
+of it!"
+"Ah, but one doesn’t get to that, Peter, by falling down on the job. One doesn’t
+get to be first in anything without the strength to make some sacrifices."
+"But..."
+"Your life doesn’t belong to you, Peter, if you’re really aiming high. You can’t
+allow yourself to indulge every whim, as ordinary people can, because with them
+it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not you or me or what we feel. Peter. It’s your
+career. It takes strength to deny yourself in order to win other people’s
+respect."
+"You just dislike Katie and you let your own prejudice..."
+"Whatever would I dislike about her? Well, of course, I can’t say that I approve
+of a girl who has so little consideration for her man that she’ll run to him and
+upset him over nothing at all, and ask him to chuck his future out the window
+just because she gets some crazy notion. That shows what help you can expect
+from a wife like that. But as far as I’m concerned, if you think that I’m
+worried about myself--well, you’re just blind, Peter. Don’t you see that for me
+personally it would be a perfect match? Because I’d have no trouble with
+Catherine, I could get along with her beautifully, she’d be respectful and
+obedient to her mother-in-law. While, on the other hand, Miss Francon..."
+He winced. He had known that this would come. It was the one subject he had been
+afraid to hear mentioned.
+"Oh yes, Peter," said Mrs. Keating quietly, firmly, "we’ve got to speak of that.
+Now, I’m sure I could never manage Miss Francon, and an elegant society girl
+like that wouldn’t even stand for a dowdy, uneducated mother like me. She’d
+probably edge me out of the house. Oh, yes, Peter. But you see, it’s not me that
+I’m thinking of."
+"Mother," he said harshly, "that part of it is pure drivel--about my having a
+chance with Dominique. That hell-cat--I’m not sure she’d ever look at me."
+"You’re slipping, Peter. There was a time when you wouldn’t have admitted that
+there was anything you couldn’t get."
+"But I don’t want her, Mother."
+"Oh, you don’t, don’t you? Well, there you are. Isn’t that what I’ve been
+saying? Look at yourself! There you’ve got Francon, the best architect in town,
+just where you want him! He’s practically begging you to take a partnership--at
+your age, over how many other, older men’s heads? He’s not permitting, he’s
+131
+
+asking you to marry his daughter! And you’ll walk in tomorrow and you’ll present
+to him the little nobody you’ve gone and married! Just stop thinking of yourself
+for a moment and think of others a bit. How do you suppose he’ll like that? How
+will he like it when you show him the little guttersnipe that you’ve preferred
+to his daughter?"
+"He won’t like it," Keating whispered.
+"You bet your life he won’t! You bet your life he’ll kick you right out on the
+street! He’ll find plenty who’ll jump at the chance to take your place. How
+about that Bennett fellow?"
+"Oh, no!" Keating gasped so furiously that she knew she had struck right. "Not
+Bennett!"
+"Yes," she said triumphantly. "Bennett! That’s what it’ll be--Francon & Bennett,
+while you’ll be pounding the pavements looking for a job! But you’ll have a
+wife! Oh, yes, you’ll have a wife!"
+"Mother, please..." he whispered, so desperately that she could allow herself to
+go on without restraint.
+"This is the kind of a wife you’ll have. A clumsy little girl who won’t know
+where to put her hands or feet. A sheepish little thing who’ll run and hide from
+any important person that you’ll want to bring to the house. So you think you’re
+so good? Don’t kid yourself, Peter Keating! No great man ever got there alone.
+Don’t you shrug it off, how much the right woman’s helped the best of them. Your
+Francon didn’t marry a chambermaid, you bet your life he didn’t! Just try to see
+things through other people’s eyes for a bit. What will they think of your wife?
+What will they think of you? You don’t make your living building chicken coops
+for soda jerkers, don’t you forget that! You’ve got to play the game as the big
+men of this world see it. You’ve got to live up to them. What will they think of
+a man who’s married to a common little piece of baggage like that? Will they
+admire you? Will they trust you? Will they respect you?"
+"Shut up!" he cried.
+But she went on. She spoke for a long time, while he sat, cracking his knuckles
+savagely, moaning once in a while: "But I love her....I can’t, Mother! I
+can’t....I love her...."
+She released him when the streets outside were gray with the light of morning.
+She let him stumble off to his room, to the accompaniment of the last, gentle,
+weary sounds of her voice:
+"At least, Peter, you can do that much. Just a few months. Ask her to wait just
+a few months. Heyer might die any moment and then, once you’re a partner, you
+can marry her and you might get away with it. She won’t mind waiting just that
+little bit longer, if she loves you....Think it over, Peter....And while you’re
+thinking it over, think just a bit that if you do this now, you’ll be breaking
+your mother’s heart. It’s not important, but take just a tiny notice of that.
+Think of yourself for an hour, but give one minute to the thought of others...."
+He did not try to sleep. He did not undress, but sat on his bed for hours, and
+the thing clearest in his mind was the wish to find himself transported a year
+ahead when everything would have been settled, he did not care how.
+He had decided nothing when he rang the doorbell of Catherine’s apartment at ten
+o’clock. He felt dimly that she would take his hand, that she would lead him,
+132
+
+that she would insist--and thus the decision would be made.
+Catherine opened the door and smiled, happily and confidently, as if nothing had
+happened. She led him to her room, where broad shafts of sunlight flooded the
+columns of books and papers stacked neatly on her desk. The room was clean,
+orderly, the pile of the rug still striped in bands left by a carpet sweeper.
+Catherine wore a crisp organdy blouse, with sleeves standing stiffly, cheerfully
+about her shoulders; little fluffy needles glittered through her hair in the
+sunlight. He felt a brief wrench of disappointment that no menace met him in her
+house; a wrench of relief also, and of disappointment.
+"I’m ready, Peter," she said. "Get me my coat."
+"Did you tell your uncle?" he asked.
+"Oh, yes. I told him last night. He was still working when I got back."
+"What did he say?"
+"Nothing. He just laughed and asked me what I wanted for a wedding present. But
+he laughed so much!"
+"Where is he? Didn’t he want to meet me at least?"
+"He had to go to his newspaper office. He said he’d have plenty of time to see
+more than enough of you. But he said it so nicely!"
+"Listen, Katie, I...there’s one thing I wanted to tell you." He hesitated, not
+looking at her. His voice was flat. "You see, it’s like this: Lucius Heyer,
+Francon’s partner, is very ill and they don’t expect him to live. Francon’s been
+hinting quite openly mat I’m to take Heyer’s place. But Francon has the crazy
+idea that he wants me to marry his daughter. Now don’t misunderstand me, you
+know there’s not a chance, but I can’t tell him so. And I thought...I thought
+that if we waited...for just a few weeks...I’d be set with the firm and then
+Francon could do nothing to me when I come and tell him that I’m married....But,
+of course it’s up to you." He looked at her and his voice was eager. "If you
+want to do it now, we’ll go at once."
+"But, Peter," she said calmly, serene and astonished. "But of course. We’ll
+wait."
+He smiled in approval and relief. But he closed his eyes.
+"Of course, we’ll wait," she said firmly. "I didn’t know this and it’s very
+important. There’s really no reason to hurry at all."
+"You’re not afraid that Francon’s daughter might get me?"
+She laughed. "Oh, Peter! I know you too well."
+"But if you’d rather..."
+"No, it’s much better. You see, to tell you the truth, I thought this morning
+that it would be better if we waited, but I didn’t want to say anything if you
+had made up your mind. Since you’d rather wait, I’d much rather too, because,
+you see, we got word this morning that Uncle’s invited to repeat this same
+course of lectures at a terribly important university on the West Coast this
+summer. I felt horrible about leaving him flat, with the work unfinished. And
+then I thought also that perhaps we were being foolish, we’re both so young. And
+133
+
+Uncle Ellsworth laughed so much. You see, it’s really wiser to wait a little."
+"Yes. Well, that’s fine. But, Katie, if you feel as you did last night..."
+"But I don’t! I’m so ashamed of myself. I can’t imagine what ever happened to me
+last night. I try to remember it and I can’t understand. You know how it is, you
+feel so silly afterward. Everything’s so clear and simple the next day. Did I
+say a lot of awful nonsense last night?"
+"Well, forget it. You’re a sensible little girl. We’re both sensible. And we’ll
+wait just a while, it won’t be long."
+"Yes, Peter."
+He said suddenly, fiercely:
+"Insist on it now, Katie."
+And then he laughed stupidly, as if he had not been quite serious.
+She smiled gaily in answer. "You see?" she said, spreading her hands out.
+"Well..." he muttered. "Well, all right, Katie. We’ll wait. It’s better, of
+course. I...I’ll run along then. I’ll be late at the office." He felt he had to
+escape her room for the moment, for that day. "I’ll give you a ring. Let’s have
+dinner together tomorrow."
+"Yes, Peter. That will be nice."
+He went away, relieved and desolate, cursing himself for the dull, persistent
+feeling that told him he had missed a chance which would never return; that
+something was closing in on them both and they had surrendered. He cursed,
+because he could not say what it was that they should have fought. He hurried on
+to his office where he was being late for an appointment with Mrs. Moorehead.
+Catherine stood in the middle of the room, after he had left, and wondered why
+she suddenly felt empty and cold; why she hadn’t known until this moment that
+she had hoped he would force her to follow him. Then she shrugged, and smiled
+reproachfully at herself, and went back to the work on her desk.
+
+13.
+ON A DAY in October, when the Heller house was nearing completion, a lanky young
+man in overalls stepped out of a small group that stood watching the house from
+the road and approached Roark.
+"You the fellow who built the Booby Hatch?" he asked, quite diffidently.
+"If you mean this house, yes," Roark answered.
+"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. It’s only that that’s what they call the place
+around here. It’s not what I’d call it. You see, I’ve got a building job...well,
+not exactly, but I’m going to build a filling station of my own about ten miles
+from here, down on the Post Road. I’d like to talk to you."
+Later, on a bench in front of the garage where he worked, Jimmy Gowan explained
+in detail. He added: "And how I happened to think of you, Mr. Roark, is that I
+134
+
+like it, that funny house of yours. Can’t say why, but I like it. It makes sense
+to me. And then again I figured everybody’s gaping at it and talking about it,
+well, that’s no use to a house, but that’d be plenty smart for a business, let
+them giggle, but let them talk about it. So I thought I’d get you to build it,
+and then they’ll all say I’m crazy, but do you care? I don’t."
+Jimmy Gowan had worked like a mule for fifteen years, saving money for a
+business of his own. People voiced indignant objections to his choice of
+architect; Jimmy uttered no word of explanation or self-defense; he said
+politely: "Maybe so, folks, maybe so," and proceeded to have Roark build his
+station.
+The station opened on a day in late December. It stood on the edge of the Boston
+Post Road, two small structures of glass and concrete forming a semicircle among
+the trees: the cylinder of the office and the long, low oval of the diner, with
+the gasoline pumps as the colonnade of a forecourt between them. It was a study
+in circles; there were no angles and no straight lines; it looked like shapes
+caught in a flow, held still at the moment of being poured, at the precise
+moment when they formed a harmony that seemed too perfect to be intentional. It
+looked like a cluster of bubbles hanging low over the ground, not quite touching
+it, to be swept aside in an instant on a wind of speed; it looked gay, with the
+hard, bracing gaiety of efficiency, like a powerful airplane engine.
+Roark stayed at the station on the day of its opening. He drank coffee in a
+clean, white mug, at the counter of the diner, and he watched the cars stopping
+at the door. He left late at night. He looked back once, driving down the long,
+empty road. The lights of the station winked, flowing away from him. There it
+stood, at the crossing of two roads, and cars would be streaming past it day and
+night, cars coming from cities in which there was no room for buildings such as
+this, going to cities in which there would be no buildings such as this. He
+turned his face to the road before him, and he kept his eyes off the mirror
+which still held, glittering softly, dots of light that moved away far behind
+him....
+He drove back to months of idleness. He sat in his office each morning, because
+he knew that he had to sit there, looking at a door that never opened, his
+fingers forgotten on a telephone that never rang. The ash trays he emptied each
+day, before leaving, contained nothing but the stubs of his own cigarettes.
+"What are you doing about it, Howard?" Austen Heller asked him at dinner one
+evening.
+"Nothing."
+"But you must."
+"There’s nothing I can do."
+"You must learn how to handle people."
+"I can’t."
+"Why?"
+"I don’t know how. I was born without some one particular sense."
+"It’s something one acquires."
+"I have no organ to acquire it with. I don’t know whether it’s something I lack,
+135
+
+or something extra I have that stops me. Besides, I don’t like people who have
+to be handled."
+"But you can’t sit still and do nothing now. You’ve got to go after
+commissions."
+"What can I tell people in order to get commissions? I can only show my work. If
+they don’t hear that, they won’t hear anything I say. I’m nothing to them, but
+my work--my work is all we have in common. And I have no desire to tell them
+anything else."
+"Then what are you going to do? You’re not worried?"
+"No. I expected it. I’m waiting."
+"For what?"
+"My kind of people."
+"What kind is that?"
+"I don’t know. Yes, I do know, but I can’t explain it. I’ve often wished I
+could. There must be some one principle to cover it, but I don’t know what it
+is."
+"Honesty?"
+"Yes...no, only partly. Guy Francon is an honest man, but it isn’t that.
+Courage? Ralston Holcombe has courage, in his own manner....I don’t know. I’m
+not that vague on other things. But I can tell my kind of people by their faces.
+By something in their faces. There will be thousands passing by your house and
+by the gas station. If out of those thousands, one stops and sees it--that’s all
+I need."
+"Then you do need other people, after all, don’t you, Howard?"
+"Of course. What are you laughing at?"
+"I’ve always thought that you were the most anti-social animal I’ve ever had the
+pleasure of meeting."
+"I need people to give me work. I’m not building mausoleums. Do you suppose I
+should need them in some other way? In a closer, more personal way?"
+"You don’t need anyone in a very personal way."
+"No."
+"You’re not even boasting about it."
+"Should I?"
+You can’t. You’re too arrogant to boast."
+"Is that what I am?"
+"Don’t you know what you are?"
+"No. Not as far as you’re seeing me, or anyone else."
+136
+
+Heller sat silently, his wrist describing circles with a cigarette. Then Heller
+laughed, and said:
+"That was typical."
+"What?"
+"That you didn’t ask me to tell you what you are as I see you. Anybody else
+would have."
+"I’m sorry. It wasn’t indifference. You’re one of the few friends I want to
+keep. I just didn’t think of asking."
+"I know you didn’t. That’s the point. You’re a self-centered monster, Howard.
+The more monstrous because you’re utterly innocent about it."
+"That’s true."
+"You should show a little concern when you admit that."
+"Why?"
+"You know, there’s a thing that stumps me. You’re the coldest man I know. And I
+can’t understand why--knowing that you’re actually a fiend in your quiet sort of
+way--why I always feel, when I see you, that you’re the most life-giving person
+I’ve ever met."
+"What do you mean?"
+"I don’t know. Just that."
+The weeks went by, and Roark walked to his office each day, sat at his desk for
+eight hours, and read a great deal. At five o’clock, he walked home. He had
+moved to a better room, near the office; he spent little; he had enough money
+for a long time to come.
+On a morning in February the telephone rang in his office. A brisk, emphatic
+feminine voice asked for an appointment with Mr. Roark, the architect. That
+afternoon, a brisk, small, dark-skinned woman entered the office; she wore a
+mink coat and exotic earrings that tinkled when she moved her head. She moved
+her head a great deal, in sharp little birdlike jerks. She was Mrs. Wayne Wilmot
+of Long Island and she wished to build a country house. She had selected Mr.
+Roark to build it, she explained, because he had designed the home of Austen
+Heller. She adored Austen Heller; he was, she stated, an oracle to all those
+pretending just the tiniest bit to the title of progressive intellectual, she
+thought--"don’t you?"--and she followed Heller like a zealot, "yes, literally,
+like a zealot." Mr. Roark was very young, wasn’t he?--but she didn’t mind that,
+she was very liberal and glad to help youth. She wanted a large house, she had
+two children, she believed in expressing their individuality--"don’t you?"--and
+each had to have a separate nursery, she had to have a library--"I read to
+distraction"--a music room, a conservatory--"we grow lilies-of-the-valley, my
+friends tell me it’s my flower"--a den for her husband, who trusted her
+implicitly and let her plan the house--"because I’m so good at it, if I weren’t
+a woman I’m sure I’d be an architect"--servants’ rooms and all that, and a
+three-car garage. After an hour and a half of details and explanations, she
+said:
+"And of course, as to the style of the house, it will be English Tudor. I adore
+137
+
+English Tudor."
+He looked at her. He asked slowly:
+"Have you seen Austen Heller’s house?"
+"No, though I did want to see it, but how could I?--I’ve never met Mr. Heller,
+I’m only his fan, just that, a plain, ordinary fan, what is he like in
+person?--you must tell me, I’m dying to hear it--no, I haven’t seen his house,
+it’s somewhere up in Maine, isn’t it?"
+Roark took photographs out of the desk drawer and handed them to her.
+"This," he said, "is the Heller house."
+She looked at the photographs, her glance like water skimming off their glossy
+surfaces, and threw them down on the desk.
+"Very interesting," she said. "Most unusual. Quite stunning. But, of course,
+that’s not what I want. That kind of a house wouldn’t express my personality. My
+friends tell me I have the Elizabethan personality."
+Quietly, patiently, he tried to explain to her why she should not build a Tudor
+house. She interrupted him in the middle of a sentence.
+"Look here, Mr. Roark, you’re not trying to teach me something, are you? I’m
+quite sure that I have good taste, and I know a great deal about architecture,
+I’ve taken a special course at the club. My friends tell me that I know more
+than many architects. I’ve quite made up my mind that I shall have an English
+Tudor house. I do not care to argue about it."
+"You’ll have to go to some other architect, Mrs. Wilmot."
+She stared at him incredulously.
+"You mean, you’re refusing the commission?"
+"Yes."
+"You don’t want my commission?"
+"No."
+"But why?"
+"I don’t do this sort of thing."
+"But I thought architects..."
+"Yes. Architects will build you anything you ask for. Any other architect in
+town will."
+"But I gave you first chance."
+"Will you do me a favor, Mrs. Wilmot? Will you tell me why you came to me if all
+you wanted was a Tudor house?"
+"Well, I certainly thought you’d appreciate the opportunity. And then, I thought
+I could tell my friends that I had Austen Heller’s architect."
+138
+
+He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was
+useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was
+no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the
+opinions of her friends, the picture post cards she had seen, the novels of
+country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this
+immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad
+of cotton.
+"I’m sorry," said Mrs. Wayne Wilmot, "but I’m not accustomed to dealing with a
+person utterly incapable of reason. I’m quite sure I shall find plenty of bigger
+men who’ll be glad to work for me. My husband was opposed to my idea of having
+you, in the first place, and I’m sorry to see that he was right. Good day, Mr.
+Roark."
+She walked out with dignity, but she slammed the door. He slipped the
+photographs back into the drawer of his desk.
+Mr. Robert L. Mundy, who came to Roark’s office in March, had been sent by
+Austin Heller. Mr. Mundy’s voice and hair were gray as steel, but his eyes were
+blue, gentle and wistful. He wanted to build a house in Connecticut, and he
+spoke of it tremulously, like a young bridegroom and like a man groping for his
+last, secret goal.
+"It’s not just a house, Mr. Roark," he said with timid diffidence, as if he were
+speaking to a man older and more prominent than himself, "it’s like...like a
+symbol to me. It’s what I’ve been waiting and working for all these years. It’s
+so many years now....I must tell you this, so you’ll understand. I have a great
+deal of money now, more than I care to think about. I didn’t always have it.
+Maybe it came too late. I don’t know. Young people think that you forget what
+happens on the way when you get there. But you don’t. Something stays. I’ll
+always remember how I was a boy--in a little place down in Georgia, that
+was--and how I ran errands for the harness maker, and the kids laughed when
+carriages drove by and splashed mud all over my pants. That’s how long ago I
+decided that some day I’d have a house of my own, the kind of house that
+carriages stop before. After that, no matter how hard it got to be at times, I’d
+always think of that house, and it helped. Afterward, there were years when I
+was afraid of it--I could have built it, but I was afraid. Well, now the time
+has come. Do you understand, Mr. Roark? Austen said you’d be just the man who’d
+understand."
+"Yes," said Roark eagerly, "I do."
+"There was a place," said Mr. Mundy, "down there, near my home town. The mansion
+of the whole county. The Randolph place. An old plantation house, as they don’t
+build them any more. I used to deliver things there sometimes, at the back door.
+That’s the house I want, Mr. Roark. Just like it. But not back there in Georgia.
+I don’t want to go back. Right here, near the city. I’ve bought the land. You
+must help me to have it landscaped just like the Randolph place. We’ll plant
+trees and shrubs, the kind they have in Georgia, the flowers and everything.
+We’ll find a way to make them grow. I don’t care how much it costs. Of course,
+we’ll have electric lights and garages now, not carriages. But I want the
+electric lights made like candles and I want the garages to look like the
+stables. Everything, just as it was. I have photographs of the Randolph place.
+And I’ve bought some of their old furniture."
+When Roark began to speak Mr. Mundy listened, in polite astonishment. He did not
+seem to resent the words. They did not penetrate.
+139
+
+"Don’t you see?" Roark was saying. "It’s a monument you want to build, but not
+to yourself. Not to your own life or your own achievement. To other people. To
+their supremacy over you. You’re not challenging that supremacy. You’re
+immortalizing it. You haven’t thrown it off--you’re putting it up forever. Will
+you be happy if you seal yourself for the rest of your life in that borrowed
+shape? Or if you strike free, for once, and build a new house, your own? You
+don’t want the Randolph place. You want what it stood for. But what it stood for
+is what you’ve fought all your life."
+Mr. Mundy listened blankly. And Roark felt again a bewildered helplessness
+before unreality: there was no such person as Mr. Mundy; there were only the
+remnants, long dead, of the people who had inhabited the Randolph place; one
+could not plead with remnants or convince them.
+"No," said Mr. Mundy, at last. "No. You may be right, but that’s not what I want
+at all. I don’t say you haven’t got your reasons, and they sound like good
+reasons, but I like the Randolph place."
+"Why?"
+"Just because I like it. Just because that’s what I like."
+When Roark told him that he would have to select another architect, Mr. Mundy
+said unexpectedly:
+"But I like you. Why can’t you build it for me? What difference would it make to
+you?"
+Roark did not explain.
+Later, Austen Heller said to him: "I expected it. I was afraid you’d turn him
+down. I’m not blaming you, Howard. Only he’s so rich. It could have helped you
+so much. And, after all, you’ve got to live."
+"Not that way," said Roark.
+#
+In April Mr. Nathaniel Janss, of the Janss-Stuart Real Estate Company, called
+Roark to his office. Mr. Janss was frank and blunt. He stated that his company
+was planning the erection of a small office building--thirty stories--on lower
+Broadway, and that he was not sold on Roark as the architect, in fact he was
+more or less opposed to him, but his friend Austen Heller had insisted that he
+should meet Roark and talk to him about it; Mr. Janss did not think very much of
+Roark’s stuff, but Heller had simply bullied him and he would listen to Roark
+before deciding on anyone, and what did Roark have to say on the subject?
+Roark had a great deal to say. He said it calmly, and this was difficult, at
+first, because he wanted that building, because what he felt was the desire to
+wrench that building out of Mr. Janss at the point of a gun, if he’d had one.
+But after a few minutes, it became simple and easy, the thought of the gun
+vanished, and even his desire for the building; it was not a commission to get
+and he was not there to get it; he was only speaking of buildings.
+"Mr. Janss, when you buy an automobile, you don’t want it to have rose garlands
+about the windows, a lion on each fender and an angel sitting on the roof. Why
+don’t you?"
+"That would be silly," stated Mr. Janss.
+140
+
+"Why would it be silly? Now I think it would be beautiful. Besides, Louis the
+Fourteenth had a carriage like that and what was good enough for Louis is good
+enough for us. We shouldn’t go in for rash innovations and we shouldn’t break
+with tradition."
+"Now you know damn well you don’t believe anything of the sort!"
+"I know I don’t. But that’s what you believe, isn’t it? Now take a human body.
+Why wouldn’t you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of
+ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would
+be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well,
+why don’t you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because
+the beauty of the human body is that it hasn’t a single muscle which doesn’t
+serve its purpose; that there’s not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits
+one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man. Will you tell me why, when it
+comes to a building, you don’t want it to look as if it had any sense or
+purpose, you want to choke it with trimmings, you want to sacrifice its purpose
+to its envelope--not knowing even why you want that kind of an envelope? You
+want it to look like a hybrid beast produced by crossing the bastards of ten
+different species until you get a creature without guts, without heart or brain,
+a creature all pelt, tail, claws and feathers? Why? You must tell me, because
+I’ve never been able to understand it."
+"Well," said Mr. Janss, "I’ve never thought of it that way." He added, without
+great conviction: "But we want our building to have dignity, you know, and
+beauty, what they call real beauty."
+"What who calls what beauty?"
+"Well-l-l..."
+"Tell me, Mr. Janss, do you really think that Greek columns and fruit baskets
+are beautiful on a modern, steel office building?"
+"I don’t know that I’ve ever thought anything about why a building was
+beautiful, one way or another," Mr. Janss confessed, "but I guess that’s what
+the public wants."
+"Why do you suppose they want it?"
+"I don’t know."
+"Then why should you care what they want?"
+"You’ve got to consider the public."
+"Don’t you know that most people take most things because that’s what’s given
+them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they
+expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?"
+"You can’t force it down their throats."
+"You don’t have to. You must only be patient. Because on your side you have
+reason--oh, I know, it’s something no one really wants to have on his side--and
+against you, you have just a vague, fat, blind inertia."
+"Why do you think that I don’t want reason on my side?"
+"It’s not you, Mr. Janss. It’s the way most people feel. They have to take a
+141
+
+chance, everything they do is taking a chance, but they feel so much safer when
+they take it on something they know to be ugly, vain and stupid."
+"That’s true, you know," said Mr. Janss.
+At the conclusion of the interview, Mr. Janss said thoughtfully: "I can’t say
+that it doesn’t make sense, Mr. Roark. Let me think it over. You’ll hear from me
+shortly."
+Mr. Janss called him a week later. "It’s the board of directors that will have
+to decide. Are you willing to try, Roark? Draw up the plans and some preliminary
+sketches. I’ll submit them to the board. I can’t promise anything. But I’m for
+you and I’ll fight them on it."
+Roark worked on the plans for two weeks of days and nights. The plans were
+submitted. Then he was called before the board of directors of the Janss-Stuart
+Real Estate Company. He stood at the side of a long table and he spoke, his eyes
+moving slowly from face to face. He tried not to look down at the table, but on
+the lower rim of his vision there remained the white spot of his drawings spread
+before the twelve men. He was asked a great many questions. Mr. Janss jumped up
+at times to answer instead, to pound the table with his fist, to snarl: "Don’t
+you see? Isn’t it clear?...What of it, Mr. Grant? What if no one has ever built
+anything like it?...Gothic, Mr. Hubbard? Why must we have Gothic?...I’ve a jolly
+good mind to resign if you turn this down!"
+Roark spoke quietly. He was the only man in the room who felt certain of his own
+words. He felt also that he had no hope. The twelve faces before him had a
+variety of countenances, but there was something, neither color nor feature,
+upon all of them, as a common denominator, something that dissolved their
+expressions, so that they were not faces any longer but only empty ovals of
+flesh. He was addressing everyone. He was addressing no one. He felt no answer,
+not even the echo of his own words striking against the membrane of an eardrum.
+His words were falling down a well, hitting stone salients on their way, and
+each salient refused to stop them, threw them farther, tossed them from one
+another, sent them to seek a bottom that did not exist.
+He was told that he would be informed of the board’s decision. He knew that
+decision in advance. When he received the letter, he read it without feeling.
+The letter was from Mr. Janss and it began: "Dear Mr. Roark, I am sorry to
+inform you that our board of directors find themselves unable to grant you the
+commission for..." There was a plea in the letter’s brutal, offensive formality:
+the plea of a man who could not face him.
+#
+John Fargo had started in life as a pushcart peddler. At fifty he owned a modest
+fortune and a prosperous department store on lower Sixth Avenue. For years he
+had fought successfully against a large store across the street, one of many
+inherited by a numerous family. In the fall of last year the family had moved
+that particular branch to new quarters, farther uptown. They were convinced that
+the center of the city’s retail business was shifting north and they had decided
+to hasten the downfall of their former neighborhood by leaving their old store
+vacant, a grim reminder and embarrassment to their competitor across the street.
+John Fargo had answered by announcing that he would build a new store of his
+own, on the very same spot, next door to his old one; a store newer and smarter
+than any the city had seen; he would, he declared, keep the prestige of his old
+neighborhood.
+When he called Roark to his office he did not say that he would have to decide
+later or think things over. He said: "You’re the architect." He sat, his feet on
+142
+
+his desk, smoking a pipe, snapping out words and puffs of smoke together. "I’ll
+tell you what space I need and how much I want to spend. If you need more--say
+so. The rest is up to you. I don’t know much about buildings. But I know a man
+who knows when I see him. Go ahead."
+Fargo had chosen Roark because Fargo had driven, one day, past Gowan’s Service
+Station, and stopped, and gone in, and asked a few questions. After that, he
+bribed Heller’s cook to show him through the house in Heller’s absence. Fargo
+needed no further argument.
+#
+Late in May, when the drafting table in Roark’s office was buried deep in
+sketches for the Fargo store, he received another commission.
+Mr. Whitford Sanborn, the client, owned an office building that had been built
+for him many years ago by Henry Cameron. When Mr. Sanborn decided that he needed
+a new country residence he rejected his wife’s suggestions of other architects;
+he wrote to Henry Cameron. Cameron wrote a ten-page letter in answer; the first
+three lines of the letter stated that he had retired from practice; the rest of
+it was about Howard Roark. Roark never learned what had been said in that
+letter; Sanborn would not show it to him and Cameron would not tell him. But
+Sanborn signed him to build the country residence, in spite of Mrs. Sanborn’s
+violent objections.
+Mrs. Sanborn was the president of many charity organizations and this had given
+her an addiction to autocracy such as no other avocation could develop. Mrs.
+Sanborn wished a French chateau built upon their new estate on the Hudson. She
+wished it to look stately and ancient, as if it had always belonged to the
+family; of course, she admitted, people would know that it hadn’t, but it would
+appear as if it had.
+Mr. Sanborn signed the contract after Roark had explained to him in detail the
+kind of a house he was to expect; Mr. Sanborn had agreed to it readily, had not
+wished even to wait for sketches. "But of course, Fanny," Mr. Sanborn said
+wearily, "I want a modern house. I told you that long ago. That’s what Cameron
+would have designed."
+"What in heaven’s name does Cameron mean now?" she asked. "I don’t know, Fanny.
+I know only that there’s no building in New York like the one he did for me."
+The arguments continued for many long evenings in the dark, cluttered, polished
+mahogany splendor of the Sanborns’ Victorian drawing room. Mr. Sanborn wavered.
+Roark asked, his arm sweeping out at the room around them: "Is this what you
+want?"
+"Well, if you’re going to be impertinent..." Mrs. Sanborn began, but Mr. Sanborn
+exploded: "Christ, Fanny! He’s right! That’s just what I don’t want! That’s just
+what I’m sick of!"
+Roark saw no one until his sketches were ready. The house--of plain fieldstone,
+with great windows and many terraces--stood in the gardens over the river, as
+spacious as the spread of water, as open as the gardens, and one had to follow
+its lines attentively to find the exact steps by which it was tied to the sweep
+of the gardens, so gradual was the rise of the terraces, the approach to and the
+full reality of the walls; it seemed only that the trees flowed into the house
+and through it; it seemed that the house was not a barrier against the sunlight,
+but a bowl to gather it, to concentrate it into brighter radiance than that of
+the air outside.
+143
+
+Mr. Sanborn was first to see the sketches. He studied them, and then he said:
+"I...I don’t know quite how to say it, Mr. Roark. It’s great. Cameron was right
+about you."
+After others had seen the sketches Mr. Sanborn was not certain of this any
+longer. Mrs. Sanborn said that the house was awful. And the long evening
+arguments were resumed. "Now why, why can’t we add turrets there, on the
+corners?" Mrs. Sanborn asked. "There’s plenty of room on those flat roofs." When
+she had been talked out of the turrets, she inquired: "Why can’t we have
+mullioned windows? What difference would that make? God knows, the windows are
+large enough--though why they have to be so large I fail to see, it gives one no
+privacy at all--but I’m willing to accept your windows, Mr. Roark, if you’re so
+stubborn about it, but why can’t you put mullions on the panes? It will soften
+things, and it gives a regal air, you know, a feudal sort of mood."
+The friends and relatives to whom Mrs. Sanborn hurried with the sketches did not
+like the house at all. Mrs. Walling called it preposterous, and Mrs.
+Hooper--crude. Mr. Melander said he wouldn’t have it as a present. Mrs. Applebee
+stated that it looked like a shoe factory. Miss Davitt glanced at the sketches
+and said with approval: "Oh, how very artistic, my dear! Who designed
+it?...Roark?...Roark?...Never heard of him....Well, frankly, Fanny, it looks
+like something phony."
+The two children of the family were divided on the question. June Sanborn, aged
+nineteen, had always thought that all architects were romantic, and she had been
+delighted to learn that they would have a very young architect; but she did not
+like Roark’s appearance and his indifference to her hints, so she declared that
+the house was hideous and she, for one, would refuse to live in it. Richard
+Sanborn, aged twenty-four, who had been a brilliant student in college and was
+now slowly drinking himself to death, startled his family by emerging from his
+usual lethargy and declaring that the house was magnificent. No one could tell
+whether it was esthetic appreciation or hatred of his mother or both.
+Whitford Sanborn swayed with every new current. He would mutter: "Well, now, not
+mullions, of course, that’s utter rubbish, but couldn’t you give her a cornice,
+Mr. Roark, to keep peace in the family? Just a kind of a crenelated cornice, it
+wouldn’t spoil anything. Or would it?"
+The arguments ended when Roark declared that he would not build the house unless
+Mr. Sanborn approved the sketches just as they were and signed his approval on
+every sheet of the drawings. Mr. Sanborn signed.
+Mrs. Sanborn was pleased to learn, shortly afterward, that no reputable
+contractor would undertake the erection of the house. "You see?" she stated
+triumphantly. Mr. Sanborn refused to see. He found an obscure firm that accepted
+the commission, grudgingly and as a special favor to him. Mrs. Sanborn learned
+that she had an ally in the contractor, and she broke social precedent to the
+extent of inviting him for tea. She had long since lost all coherent ideas about
+the house; she merely hated Roark. Her contractor hated all architects on
+principle.
+The construction of the Sanborn house proceeded through the months of summer and
+fall, each day bringing new battles. "But, of course, Mr. Roark, I told you I
+wanted three closets in my bedroom, I remember distinctly, it was on a Friday
+and we were sitting in the drawing room and Mr. Sanborn was sitting in the big
+chair by the window and I was...What about the plans? What plans? How do you
+expect me to understand plans?"
+"Aunt Rosalie says she can’t possibly climb a circular stairway, Mr. Roark. What
+144
+
+are we going to do? Select our guests to fit your house?"
+"Mr. Hulburt says that kind of ceiling won’t hold....Oh yes, Mr. Hulburt knows a
+lot about architecture. He’s spent two summers in Venice."
+"June, poor darling, says her room will be dark as a cellar....Well, that’s the
+way she feels, Mr. Roark. Even if it isn’t dark, but if it makes her feel dark,
+it’s the same thing." Roark stayed up nights, redrafting the plans for the
+alterations which he could not avoid. It meant days of tearing down floors,
+stairways, partitions already erected; it meant extras piling up on the
+contractor’s budget. The contractor shrugged and said: "I told you so. That’s
+what always happens when you get one of those fancy architects. You wait and see
+what this thing will cost you before he gets through."
+Then, as the house took shape, it was Roark who found that he wanted to make a
+change. The eastern wing had never quite satisfied him. Watching it rise, he saw
+the mistake he had made and the way to correct it; he knew it would bring the
+house into a more logical whole. He was making his first steps in building and
+they were his first experiments. He could admit it openly. But Mr. Sanborn
+refused to allow the change; it was his turn. Roark pleaded with him; once the
+picture of that new wing had become clear in Roark’s mind he could not bear to
+look at the house as it stood. "It’s not that I disagree with you," Mr. Sanborn
+said coldly, "in fact, I do think you’re right. But we cannot afford it. Sorry."
+"It will cost you less than the senseless changes Mrs. Sanborn has forced me to
+make."
+"Don’t bring that up again."
+"Mr. Sanborn," Roark asked slowly, "will you sign a paper that you authorize
+this change provided it costs you nothing?"
+"Certainly. If you can conjure up a miracle to work that."
+He signed. The eastern wing was rebuilt. Roark paid for it himself. It cost him
+more than the fee he received. Mr. Sanborn hesitated: he wanted to repay it.
+Mrs. Sanborn stopped him. "It’s just a low trick," she said, "just a form of
+high-pressure. He’s blackmailing you on your better feelings. He expects you to
+pay. Wait and see. He’ll ask for it. Don’t let him get away with that." Roark
+did not ask for it. Mr. Sanborn never paid him.
+When the house was completed, Mrs. Sanborn refused to live in it. Mr. Sanborn
+looked at it wistfully, too tired to admit that he loved it, that he had always
+wanted a house just like it. He surrendered. The house was not furnished. Mrs.
+Sanborn took herself, her husband and her daughter off to Florida for the
+winter, "where," she said, "we have a house that’s a decent Spanish, thank
+God!--because we bought it ready-made. This is what happens when you venture to
+build for yourself, with some half-baked idiot of an architect!" Her son, to
+everybody’s amazement, exhibited a sudden burst of savage will power: he refused
+to go to Florida; he liked the new house, he would live nowhere else. So three
+of the rooms were furnished for him. The family left and he moved alone into the
+house on the Hudson. At night, one could see from the river a single rectangle
+of yellow, small and lost, among the windows of the huge, dead house.
+The bulletin of the Architects’ Guild of America carried a small item:
+"A curious incident, which would be amusing if it were not deplorable, is
+reported to us about a home recently built by Mr. Whitford Sanborn, noted
+industrialist. Designed by one Howard Roark and erected at a cost of well over
+145
+
+$100,000, this house was found by the family to be uninhabitable. It stands now,
+abandoned, as an eloquent witness to professional incompetence."
+
+14.
+LUCIUS N. Heyer stubbornly refused to die. He had recovered from the stroke and
+returned to his office, ignoring the objections of his doctor and the solicitous
+protests of Guy Francon. Francon offered to buy him out. Heyer refused, his
+pale, watering eyes staring obstinately at nothing at all. He came to his office
+every two or three days; he read the copies of correspondence left in his letter
+basket according to custom; he sat at his desk and drew flowers on a clean pad;
+then he went home. He walked, dragging his feet slowly; he held his elbows
+pressed to his sides and his forearms thrust forward, with the fingers half
+closed, like claws; the fingers shook; he could not use his left hand at all. He
+would not retire. He liked to see his name on the firm’s stationery.
+He wondered dimly why he was no longer introduced to prominent clients, why he
+never saw the sketches of their new buildings, until they were half erected. If
+he mentioned this, Francon protested: "But, Lucius, I couldn’t think of
+bothering you in your condition. Any other man would have retired, long ago."
+Francon puzzled him mildly. Peter Keating baffled him. Keating barely bothered
+to greet him when they met, and then as an afterthought; Keating walked off in
+the middle of a sentence addressed to him; when Heyer issued some minor order to
+one of the draftsmen, it was not carried out and the draftsman informed him that
+the order had been countermanded by Mr. Keating. Heyer could not understand it;
+he always remembered Keating as the diffident boy who had talked to him so
+nicely about old porcelain. He excused Keating at first; then he tried to
+mollify him, humbly and clumsily; then he conceived an unreasoning fear of
+Keating. He complained to Francon. He said, petulantly, assuming the tone of an
+authority he could never have exercised: "That boy of yours, Guy, that Keating
+fellow, he’s getting to be impossible. He’s rude to me. You ought to get rid of
+him."
+"Now you see, Lucius," Francon answered dryly, "why I say that you should
+retire. You’re overstraining your nerves and you’re beginning to imagine
+things."
+Then came the competition for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building.
+Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures of Hollywood, California, had decided to erect a
+stupendous home office in New York, a skyscraper to house a motion-picture
+theater and forty floors of offices. A world-wide competition for the selection
+of the architect had been announced a year in advance. It was stated that
+Cosmo-Slotnick were not merely the leaders in the art of the motion picture, but
+embraced all the arts, since all contributed to the creation of the films; and
+architecture being a lofty, though neglected, branch of esthetics,
+Cosmo-Slotnick were ready to put it on the map.
+With the latest news of the casting of I’ll Take a Sailor and the shooting of
+Wives for Sale, came stories about the Parthenon and the Pantheon. Miss Sally
+O’Dawn was photographed on the steps of the Rheims Cathedral--in a bathing suit,
+and Mr. Pratt ("Pardner") Purcell gave an interview, stating that he had always
+dreamed of being a master builder, if he hadn’t been a movie actor. Ralston
+Holcombe, Guy Francon and Gordon L. Prescott were quoted on the future of
+American architecture--in an article written by Miss Dimples Williams, and an
+imaginary interview quoted what Sir Christopher Wren would have said about the
+146
+
+motion picture. In the Sunday supplements there were photographs of
+Cosmo-Slotnick starlets in shorts and sweaters, holding T-squares and
+slide-rules, standing before drawing boards that bore the legend:
+"Cosmo-Slotnick Building" over a huge question mark.
+The competition was open to all architects of all countries; the building was to
+rise on Broadway and to cost ten million dollars; it was to symbolize the genius
+of modern technology and the spirit of the American people; it was announced in
+advance as "the most beautiful building in the world." The jury of award
+consisted of Mr. Shupe, representing Cosmo, Mr. Slotnick, representing Slotnick.
+Professor Peterkin of the Stanton Institute of Technology, the Mayor of the City
+of New York, Ralston Holcombe, president of the A.G.A., and Ellsworth M. Toohey.
+"Go to it, Peter!" Francon told Keating enthusiastically. "Do your best. Give me
+all you’ve got. This is your great chance. You’ll be known the world over if you
+win. And here’s what we’ll do: we’ll put your name on our entry, along with the
+firm’s. If we win, you’ll get one fifth of the prize. The grand prize is sixty
+thousand dollars, you know."
+"Heyer will object" said Keating cautiously.
+"Let him object. That’s why I’m doing it. He might get it through his head
+what’s the decent thing for him to do. And I...well, you know how I feel, Peter.
+I think of you as my partner already. I owe it to you. You’ve earned it. This
+might be your key to it."
+Keating redrew his project five times. He hated it. He hated every girder of
+that building before it was born. He worked, his hand trembling. He did not
+think of the drawing under his hand. He thought of all the other contestants, of
+the man who might win and be proclaimed publicly as his superior. He wondered
+what that other one would do, how the other would solve the problem and surpass
+him. He had to beat that man; nothing else mattered; there was no Peter Keating,
+there was only a suction chamber, like the kind of tropical plant he’d heard
+about, a plant that drew an insect into its vacuum and sucked it dry and thus
+acquired its own substance.
+He felt nothing but immense uncertainty when his sketches were ready and the
+delicate perspective of a white marble edifice lay, neatly finished, before him.
+It looked like a Renaissance palace made of rubber and stretched to the height
+of forty stories. He had chosen the style of the Renaissance because he knew the
+unwritten law that all architectural juries liked columns, and because he
+remembered Ralston Holcombe was on the jury. He had borrowed from all of
+Holcombe’s favorite Italian palaces. It looked good...it might be good...he was
+not sure. He had no one to ask.
+He heard these words in his own mind and he felt a wave of blind fury. He felt
+it before he knew the reason, but he knew the reason almost in the same instant:
+there was someone whom he could ask. He did not want to think of that name; he
+would not go to him; the anger rose to his face and he felt the hot, tight
+patches under his eyes. He knew that he would go.
+He pushed the thought out of his mind. He was not going anywhere. When the time
+came, he slipped his drawings into a folder and went to Roark’s office.
+He found Roark alone, sitting at the desk in the large room that bore no signs
+of activity.
+"Hello, Howard!" he said brightly. "How are you? I’m not interrupting anything,
+am I?"
+147
+
+"Hello, Peter," said Roark. "You aren’t."
+"Not awfully busy, are you?"
+"No."
+"Mind if I sit down for a few minutes?"
+"Sit down."
+"Well, Howard, you’ve been doing great work. I’ve seen the Fargo Store. It’s
+splendid. My congratulations."
+"Thank you."
+"You’ve been forging straight ahead, haven’t you? Had three commissions
+already?"
+"Four."
+"Oh, yes, of course, four. Pretty good. I hear you’ve been having a little
+trouble with the Sanborns."
+"I have."
+"Well, it’s not all smooth sailing, not all of it, you know. No new commissions
+since? Nothing?"
+"No. Nothing."
+"Well, it will come. I’ve always said that architects don’t have to cut one
+another’s throat, there’s plenty of work for all of us, we must develop a spirit
+of professional unity and co-operation. For instance, take that
+competition--have you sent your entry in already?"
+"What competition?"
+"Why, the competition. The Cosmo-Slotnick competition."
+"I’m not sending any entry."
+"You’re...not? Not at all?"
+"No."
+"Why?"
+"I don’t enter competitions."
+"Why, for heaven’s sake?"
+"Come on, Peter. You didn’t come here to discuss that."
+"As a matter of fact I did think I’d show you my own entry, you understand I’m
+not asking you to help me, I just want your reaction, just a general opinion."
+He hastened to open the folder.
+148
+
+Roark studied the sketches. Keating snapped: "Well? Is it all right?"
+"No. It’s rotten. And you know it."
+Then, for hours, while Keating watched and the sky darkened and lights flared up
+in the windows of the city, Roark talked, explained, slashed lines through the
+plans, untangled the labyrinth of the theater’s exits out windows, unraveled
+halls, smashed useless arches, straightened stairways. Keating stammered once:
+"Jesus, Howard! Why don’t you enter the competition, if you can do it like
+this?" Roark answered: "Because I can’t. I couldn’t if I tried. I dry up. I go
+blank. I can’t give them what they want. But I can straighten someone else’s
+damn mess when I see it:"
+It was morning when he pushed the plans aside. Keating whispered:
+"And the elevation?"
+"Oh, to hell with your elevation! I don’t want to look at your damn Renaissance
+elevations!" But he looked. He could not prevent his hand from cutting lines
+across the perspective. "All right, damn you, give them good Renaissance if you
+must and if there is such a thing! Only I can’t do that for you. Figure it out
+yourself. Something like this. Simpler. Peter, simpler, more direct, as honest
+as you can make of a dishonest thing. Now go home and try to work out something
+on this order."
+Keating went home. He copied Roark’s plans. He worked out Roark’s hasty sketch
+of the elevation into a neat, finished perspective. Then the drawings were
+mailed, properly addressed to:
+#
+"The Most Beautiful Building in the World" Competition
+Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures, Inc.
+New York City.
+#
+The envelope, accompanying the entry, contained the names: "Francon & Heyer,
+architects, Peter Keating, associated designer."
+#
+Through the months of that winter Roark found no other chances, no offers, no
+prospects of commissions. He sat at his desk and forgot, at times, to turn on
+the lights in the early dusk. It was as if the heavy immobility of all the hours
+that had flowed through the office, of its door, of its air were beginning to
+seep into his muscles. He would rise and fling a book at the wall, to feel his
+arm move, to hear the burst of sound. He smiled, amused, picked up the book, and
+laid it neatly back on the desk. He turned on the desk lamp. Then he stopped,
+before he had withdrawn his hands from the cone of light under the lamp, and he
+looked at his hands; he spread his fingers out slowly. Then he remembered what
+Cameron had said to him long ago. He jerked his hands away. He reached for his
+coat, turned the lights off, locked the door and went home.
+As spring approached he knew that his money would not last much longer. He paid
+the rent on his office promptly on the first of each month. He wanted the
+feeling of thirty days ahead, during which he would still own the office. He
+entered it calmly each morning. He found only that he did not want to look at
+the calendar when it began to grow dark and he knew that another day of the
+thirty had gone. When he noticed this, he made himself look at the calendar. It
+149
+
+was a race he was running now, a race between his rent money and...he did not
+know the name of the other contestant. Perhaps it was every man whom he passed
+on the street.
+When he went up to his office, the elevator operators looked at him in a queer,
+lazy, curious sort of way; when he spoke, they answered, not insolently, but in
+an indifferent drawl that seemed to say it would become insolent in a moment.
+They did not know what he was doing or why; they knew only that he was a man to
+whom no clients ever came. He attended, because Austen Heller asked him to
+attend, the few parties Heller gave occasionally; he was asked by guests: "Oh,
+you’re an architect? You’ll forgive me, I haven’t kept up with
+architecture--what have you built?" When he answered, he heard them say: "Oh,
+yes, indeed," and he saw the conscious politeness of their manner tell him that
+he was an architect by presumption. They had never seen his buildings; they did
+not know whether his buildings were good or worthless; they knew only that they
+had never heard of these buildings.
+It was a war in which he was invited to fight nothing, yet he was pushed forward
+to fight, he had to fight, he had no choice--and no adversary.
+He passed by buildings under construction. He stopped to look at the steel
+cages. He felt at times as if the beams and girders were shaping themselves not
+into a house, but into a barricade to stop him; and the few steps on the
+sidewalk that separated him from the wooden fence enclosing the construction
+were the steps he would never be able to take. It was pain, but it was a
+blunted, unpenetrating pain. It’s true, he would tell himself; it’s not, his
+body would answer, the strange, untouchable healthiness of his body.
+The Fargo Store had opened. But one building could not save a neighborhood;
+Fargo’s competitors had been right, the tide had turned, was flowing uptown, his
+customers were deserting him. Remarks were made openly on the decline of John
+Fargo, who had topped his poor business judgment by an investment in a
+preposterous kind of a building; which proved, it was stated, that the public
+would not accept these architectural innovations. It was not stated that the
+store was the cleanest and brightest in the city; that the skill of its plan
+made its operation easier than had ever been possible; that the neighborhood had
+been doomed before its erection. The building took the blame.
+Athelstan Beasely, the wit of the architectural profession, the court jester of
+the A.G.A., who never seemed to be building anything, but organized all the
+charity balls, wrote in his column entitled "Quips and Quirks" in the A.G.A.
+Bulletin:
+"Well, lads and lassies, here’s a fairy tale with a moral: seems there was, once
+upon a time, a little boy with hair the color of a Hallowe’en pumpkin, who
+thought that he was better than all you common boys and girls. So to prove it,
+he up and built a house, which is a very nice house, except that nobody can live
+in it, and a store, which is a very lovely store, except that it’s going
+bankrupt. He also erected a very eminent structure, to wit: a dogcart on a mud
+road. This last is reported to be doing very well indeed, which, perhaps, is the
+right field of endeavor for that little boy."
+At the end of March Roark read in the papers about Roger Enright. Roger Enright
+possessed millions, an oil concern and no sense of restraint. This made his name
+appear in the papers frequently. He aroused a half-admiring, half-derisive awe
+by the incoherent variety of his sudden ventures. The latest was a project for a
+new type of residential development--an apartment building, with each unit
+complete and isolated like an expensive private home. It was to be known as the
+Enright House. Enright had declared that he did not want it to look like
+150
+
+anything anywhere else. He had approached and rejected several of the best
+architects in town.
+Roark felt as if this newspaper item were a personal invitation; the kind of
+chance created expressly for him. For the first time he attempted to go after a
+commission. He requested an interview with Roger Enright. He got an interview
+with a secretary. The secretary, a young man who looked bored, asked him several
+questions about his experience; he asked them slowly, as if it required an
+effort to decide just what it would be appropriate to ask under the
+circumstances, since the answers would make no difference whatever; he glanced
+at some photographs of Roark’s buildings, and declared that Mr. Enright would
+not be interested.
+In the first week of April, when Roark had paid his last rental for one more
+month at the office, he was asked to submit drawings for the new building of the
+Manhattan Bank Company. He was asked by Mr. Weidler, a member of the board of
+directors, who was a friend of young Richard Sanborn. Weidler told him: "I’ve
+had a stiff fight, Mr. Roark, but I think I’ve won. I’ve taken them personally
+through the Sanborn house, and Dick and I explained a few things. However, the
+board must see the drawings before they make a decision. So it’s not quite
+certain as yet, I must tell you frankly, but it’s almost certain. They’ve turned
+down two other architects. They’re very much interested in you. Go ahead. Good
+luck!"
+Henry Cameron had had a relapse and the doctor warned his sister that no
+recovery could be expected. She did not believe it. She felt a new hope, because
+she saw that Cameron, lying still in bed, looked serene and--almost happy, a
+word she had never found it possible to associate with her brother.
+But she was frightened, one evening, when he said suddenly: "Call Howard. Ask
+him to come here." In the three years since his retirement he had never called
+for Roark, he had merely waited for Roark’s visits.
+Roark arrived within an hour. He sat by the side of Cameron’s bed, and Cameron
+talked to him as usual. He did not mention the special invitation and did not
+explain. The night was warm and the window of Cameron’s bedroom stood open to
+the dark garden. When he noticed, in a pause between sentences, the silence of
+the trees outside, the unmoving silence of late hours, Cameron called his sister
+and said: "Fix the couch in the living room for Howard. He’s staying here."
+Roark looked at him and understood. Roark inclined his head in agreement; he
+could acknowledge what Cameron had just declared to him only by a quiet glance
+as solemn as Cameron’s.
+Roark remained at the house for three days. No reference was made to his staying
+here--nor to how long he would have to stay. His presence was accepted as a
+natural fact requiring no comment. Miss Cameron understood--and knew that she
+must say nothing. She moved about silently, with the meek courage of
+resignation.
+Cameron did not want Roark’s continuous presence in his room. He would say: "Go
+out, take a walk through the garden, Howard. It’s beautiful, the grass is coming
+up." He would lie in bed and watch, with contentment, through the open window,
+Roark’s figure moving among the bare trees that stood against a pale blue sky.
+He asked only that Roark eat his meals with him. Miss Cameron would put a tray
+on Cameron’s knees, and serve Roark’s meal on a small table by the bed. Cameron
+seemed to take pleasure in what he had never had nor sought: a sense of warmth
+in performing a daily routine, the sense of family.
+151
+
+On the evening of the third day Cameron lay back on his pillow, talking as
+usual, but the words came slowly and he did not move his head. Roark listened
+and concentrated on not showing that he knew what went on in the terrible pauses
+between Cameron’s words. The words sounded natural, and the strain they cost was
+to remain Cameron’s last secret, as he wished.
+Cameron spoke about the future of building materials. "Watch the light metals
+industry, Howard....In a few...years...you’ll see them do some astounding
+things....Watch the plastics, there’s a whole new era...coming from
+that....You’ll find new tools, new means, new forms....You’ll have to show...the
+damn fools...what wealth the human brain has made for them...what
+possibilities....Last week I read about a new kind of composition tile...and
+I’ve thought of a way to use it where nothing...else would do...take, for
+instance, a small house...about five thousand dollars..."
+After a while he stopped and remained silent, his eyes closed. Then Roark heard
+him whisper suddenly:
+"Gail Wynand..."
+Roark leaned closer to him, bewildered.
+"I don’t...hate anybody any more...only Gail Wynand...No, I’ve never laid eyes
+on him....But he represents...everything that’s wrong with the world...the
+triumph...of overbearing vulgarity....It’s Gail Wynand that you’ll have to
+fight, Howard...."
+Then he did not speak for a long time. When he opened his eyes again, he smiled.
+He said:
+"I know...what you’re going through at your office just now...." Roark had never
+spoken to him of that. "No...don’t deny and...don’t say anything....I
+know....But...it’s all right....Don’t be afraid....Do you remember the day when
+I tried to fire you?...Forget what I said to you then....It was not the whole
+story....This is...Don’t be afraid....It was worth it...."
+His voice failed and he could not use it any longer. But the faculty of sight
+remained untouched and he could lie silently and look at Roark without effort.
+He died half an hour later.
+#
+Keating saw Catherine often. He had not announced their engagement, but his
+mother knew, and it was not a precious secret of his own any longer. Catherine
+thought, at times, that he had dropped the sense of significance in their
+meetings. She was spared the loneliness of waiting for him; but she had lost the
+reassurance of his inevitable returns.
+Keating had told her: "Let’s wait for the results of that movie competition,
+Katie. It won’t be long, they’ll announce the decision in May. If I win--I’ll be
+set for life. Then we’ll be married. And that’s when I’ll meet your uncle--and
+he’ll want to meet me. And I’ve got to win."
+"I know you’ll win."
+"Besides, old Heyer won’t last another month. The doctor told us that we can
+expect a second stroke at any time and that will be that. If it doesn’t get him
+to the graveyard, it’ll certainly get him out of the office."
+"Oh, Peter, I don’t like to hear you talk like that. You mustn’t be so...so
+152
+
+terribly selfish."
+"I’m sorry, dear. Well...yes, I guess I’m selfish. Everybody is."
+He spent more time with Dominique. Dominique watched him complacently, as if he
+presented no further problem to her. She seemed to find him suitable as an
+inconsequential companion for an occasional, inconsequential evening. He thought
+that she liked him. He knew that this was not an encouraging sign.
+He forgot at times that she was Francon’s daughter; he forgot all the reasons
+that prompted him to want her. He felt no need to be prompted. He wanted her. He
+needed no reasons now but the excitement of her presence.
+Yet he felt helpless before her. He refused to accept the thought that a woman
+could remain indifferent to him. But he was not certain even of her
+indifference. He waited and tried to guess her moods, to respond as he supposed
+she wished him to respond. He received no answer.
+On a spring night they attended a ball together. They danced, and he drew her
+close, he stressed the touch of his fingers on her body. He knew that she
+noticed and understood. She did not withdraw; she looked at him with an unmoving
+glance that was almost expectation. When they were leaving, he held her wrap and
+let his fingers rest on her shoulders; she did not move or draw the wrap closed;
+she waited; she let him lift his hands. Then they walked together down to the
+cab.
+She sat silently in a corner of the cab; she had never before considered his
+presence important enough to require silence. She sat, her legs crossed, her
+wrap gathered tightly, her fingertips beating in slow rotation against her knee.
+He closed his hand softly about her forearm. She did not resist; she did not
+answer; only her fingers stopped beating. His lips touched her hair; it was not
+a kiss, he merely let his lips rest against her hair for a long time.
+When the cab stopped, he whispered: "Dominique...let me come up...for just a
+moment..."
+"Yes," she answered. The word was flat, impersonal, with no sound of invitation.
+But she had never allowed it before. He followed her, his heart pounding.
+There was one fragment of a second, as she entered her apartment, when she
+stopped, waiting. He stared at her helplessly, bewildered, too happy. He noticed
+the pause only when she was moving again, walking away from him, into the
+drawing room. She sat down, and her hands fell limply one at each side, her arms
+away from her body, leaving her unprotected. Her eyes were half closed,
+rectangular, empty.
+"Dominique..." he whispered, "Dominique...how lovely you are!..."
+Then he was beside her, whispering incoherently:
+"Dominique...Dominique, I love you...Don’t laugh at me, please don’t laugh!...My
+whole life...anything you wish...Don’t you know how beautiful you
+are?...Dominique...I love you..."
+He stopped with his arms around her and his face over hers, to catch some hint
+of response or resistance; he saw nothing. He jerked her violently against him
+and kissed her lips.
+His arms fell open. He let her body fall back against the seat, and he stared at
+153
+
+her, aghast. It had not been a kiss; he had not held a woman in his arms; what
+he had held and kissed had not been alive. Her lips had not moved in answer
+against his; her arms had not moved to embrace him; it was not revulsion--he
+could have understood revulsion. It was as if he could hold her forever or drop
+her, kiss her again or go further to satisfy his desire--and her body would not
+know it, would not notice it. She was looking at him, past him. She saw a
+cigarette stub that had fallen off a tray on a table beside her, she moved her
+hand and slipped the cigarette back into the tray.
+"Dominique," he whispered stupidly, "didn’t you want me to kiss you?"
+"Yes." She was not laughing at him; she was answering simply and helplessly.
+"Haven’t you ever been kissed before?"
+"Yes. Many times."
+"Do you always act like that?"
+"Always. Just like that."
+"Why did you want me to kiss you?"
+"I wanted to try it."
+"You’re not human, Dominique."
+She lifted her head, she got up and the sharp precision of the movement was her
+own again. He knew he would hear no simple, confessing helplessness in her
+voice; he knew the intimacy was ended, even though her words, when she spoke,
+were more intimate and revealing than anything she had said; but she spoke as if
+she did not care what she revealed or to whom:
+"I suppose I’m one of those freaks you hear about, an utterly frigid woman. I’m
+sorry, Peter. You see? You have no rivals, but that includes you also. A
+disappointment, darling?"
+"You...you’ll outgrow it...some day..."
+"I’m really not so young, Peter. Twenty-five. It must be an interesting
+experience to sleep with a man. I’ve wanted to want it. I should think it would
+be exciting to become a dissolute woman. I am, you know, in everything but in
+fact....Peter, you look as if you were going to blush in a moment, and that’s
+very amusing."
+"Dominique! Haven’t you ever been in love at all? Not even a little?"
+"I haven’t. I really wanted to fall in love with you. I thought it would be
+convenient. I’d have no trouble with you at all. But you see? I can’t feel
+anything. I can’t feel any difference, whether it’s you or Alvah Scarret or
+Lucius Heyer."
+He got up. He did not want to look at her. He walked to a window and stood,
+staring out, his hands clasped behind his back. He had forgotten his desire and
+her beauty, but he remembered now that she was Francon’s daughter.
+"Dominique, will you marry me?"
+He knew he had to say it now; if he let himself think of her, he would never say
+154
+
+it; what he felt for her did not matter any longer; he could not let it stand
+between him and his future; and what lie felt for her was growing into hatred.
+"You’re not serious?" she asked.
+He turned to her. He spoke rapidly, easily; he was lying now, and so he was sure
+of himself and it was not difficult:
+"I love you, Dominique. I’m crazy about you. Give me a chance. If there’s no one
+else, why not? You’ll learn to love me--because I understand you. I’ll be
+patient. I’ll make you happy."
+She shuddered suddenly, and then she laughed. She laughed simply, completely; he
+saw the pale form of her dress trembling; she stood straight, her head thrown
+back, like a string shaking with the vibrations of a blinding insult to him; an
+insult, because her laughter was not bitter or mocking, but quite simply gay.
+Then it stopped. She stood looking at him. She said earnestly:
+"Peter, if I ever want to punish myself for something terrible, if I ever want
+to punish myself disgustingly--I’ll marry you." She added: "Consider it a
+promise."
+"I’ll wait--no matter what reason you choose for it."
+Then she smiled gaily, the cold, gay smile he dreaded.
+"Really, Peter, you don’t have to do it, you know. You’ll get that partnership
+anyway. And we’ll always be good friends. Now its time for you to go home. Don’t
+forget, you’re taking me to the horse show Wednesday. Oh, yes, we’re going to
+the horse show Wednesday. I adore horse shows. Good night, Peter."
+He left and walked home through the warm spring night. He walked savagely. If,
+at that moment, someone had offered him sole ownership of the firm of Francon &
+Heyer at the price of marrying Dominique, he would have refused it. He knew
+also, hating himself, that he would not refuse, if it were offered to him on the
+following morning.
+
+15.
+THIS was fear. This was what one feels in nightmares, thought Peter Keating,
+only then one awakens when it becomes unbearable, but he could neither awaken
+nor bear it any longer. It had been growing, for days, for weeks, and now it had
+caught him: this lewd, unspeakable dread of defeat. He would lose the
+competition, he was certain that he would lose it, and the certainty grew as
+each day of waiting passed. He could not work; he jerked when people spoke to
+him; he had not slept for nights.
+He walked toward the house of Lucius Heyer. He tried not to notice the faces of
+the people he passed, but he had to notice; he had always looked at people; and
+people looked at him, as they always did. He wanted to shout at them and tell
+them to turn away, to leave him alone. They were staring at him, he thought,
+because he was to fail and they knew it.
+He was going to Heyer’s house to save himself from the coming disaster in the
+only way he saw left to him. If he failed in that competition--and he knew he
+was to fail--Francon would be shocked and disillusioned; then if Heyer died, as
+155
+
+he could die at any moment, Francon would hesitate--in the bitter aftermath of a
+public humiliation--to accept Keating as his partner; if Francon hesitated, the
+game was lost. There were others waiting for the opportunity: Bennett, whom he
+had been unable to get out of the office; Claude Stengel, who had been doing
+very well on his own, and had approached Francon with an offer to buy Heyer’s
+place. Keating had nothing to count on, except Francon’s uncertain faith in him.
+Once another partner replaced Heyer, it would be the end of Keating’s future. He
+had come too close and had missed. That was never forgiven.
+Through the sleepless nights the decision had become clear and hard in his mind:
+he had to close the issue at once; he had to take advantage of Francon’s deluded
+hopes before the winner of the competition was announced; he had to force Heyer
+out and take his place; he had only a few days left.
+He remembered Francon’s gossip about Heyer’s character. He looked through the
+files in Heyer’s office and found what he had hoped to find. It was a letter
+from a contractor, written fifteen years ago; it stated merely that the
+contractor was enclosing a check for twenty thousand dollars due Mr. Heyer.
+Keating looked up the records for that particular building; it did seem that the
+structure had cost more than it should have cost. That was the year when Heyer
+had started his collection of porcelain.
+He found Heyer alone in his study. It was a small, dim room and the air in it
+seemed heavy, as if it had not been disturbed for years. The dark mahogany
+paneling, the tapestries, the priceless pieces of old furniture were kept
+faultlessly clean, but the room smelt, somehow, of indigence and of decay. There
+was a single lamp burning on a small table in a corner, and five delicate,
+precious cups of ancient porcelain on the table. Heyer sat hunched, examining
+the cups in the dim light, with a vague, pointless enjoyment. He shuddered a
+little when his old valet admitted Keating, and he blinked in vapid
+bewilderment, but he asked Keating to sit down.
+When he heard the first sounds of his own voice, Keating knew he had lost the
+fear that had followed him on his way through the streets; his voice was cold
+and steady. Tim Davis, he thought, Claude Stengel, and now just one more to be
+removed.
+He explained what he wanted, spreading upon the still air of the room one short,
+concise, complete paragraph of thought, perfect as a gem with clean edges.
+"And so, unless you inform Francon of your retirement tomorrow morning," he
+concluded, holding the letter by a corner between two fingers, "this goes to the
+A.G.A."
+He waited. Heyer sat still, with his pale, bulging eyes blank and his mouth open
+in a perfect circle. Keating shuddered and wondered whether he was speaking to
+an idiot.
+Then Heyer’s mouth moved and his pale pink tongue showed, flickering against his
+lower teeth.
+"But I don’t want to retire." He said it simply, guilelessly, in a little
+petulant whine.
+"You will have to retire."
+"I don’t want to. I’m not going to. I’m a famous architect. I’ve always been a
+famous architect. I wish people would stop bothering me. They all want me to
+retire. I’ll tell you a secret." He leaned forward; he whispered slyly: "You may
+156
+
+not know it, but I know, he can’t deceive me; Guy wants me to retire. He thinks
+he’s outwitting me, but I can see through him. That’s a good one on Guy." He
+giggled softly.
+"I don’t think you understood me. Do you understand this?" Keating pushed the
+letter into Heyer’s half-closed fingers.
+He watched the thin sheet trembling as Heyer held it. Then it dropped to the
+table and Heyer’s left hand with the paralyzed fingers jabbed at it blindly,
+purposelessly, like a hook. He said, gulping:
+"You can’t send this to the A.G.A. They’ll have my license taken away."
+"Certainly," said Keating, "they will."
+"And it will be in the papers."
+"In all of them."
+"You can’t do that."
+"I’m going to--unless you retire."
+Heyer’s shoulders drew down to the edge of the table. His head remained above
+the edge, timidly, as if he were ready to draw it also out of sight.
+"You won’t do that please you won’t," Heyer mumbled in one long whine without
+pauses. "You’re a nice boy you’re a very nice boy you won’t do it will you?"
+The yellow square of paper lay on the table. Heyer’s useless left hand reached
+for it, crawling slowly over the edge. Keating leaned forward and snatched the
+letter from under his hand.
+Heyer looked at him, his head bent to one side, his mouth open. He looked as if
+he expected Keating to strike him; with a sickening, pleading glance that said
+he would allow Keating to strike him.
+"Please," whispered Heyer, "you won’t do that, will you? I don’t feel very well.
+I’ve never hurt you. I seem to remember, I did something very nice for you
+once."
+"What?" snapped Keating. "What did you do for me?"
+"Your name’s Peter Keating...Peter Keating...I remember...I did something nice
+for you....You’re the boy Guy has so much faith in. Don’t trust Guy. I don’t
+trust him. But I like you. We’ll make you a designer one of these days." His
+mouth remained hanging open on the word. A thin strand of saliva trickled down
+from the corner of his mouth. "Please...don’t..."
+Keating’s eyes were bright with disgust; aversion goaded him on; he had to make
+it worse because he couldn’t stand it.
+"You’ll be exposed publicly," said Keating, the sounds of his voice glittering.
+"You’ll be denounced as a grafter. People will point at you. They’ll print your
+picture in the papers. The owners of that building will sue you. They’ll throw
+you in jail."
+Heyer said nothing. He did not move. Keating heard the cups on the table
+tinkling suddenly. He could not see the shaking of Heyer’s body. He heard a
+157
+
+thin, glassy ringing in the silence of the room, as if the cups were trembling
+of themselves.
+"Get out!" said Keating, raising his voice, not to hear that sound. "Get out of
+the firm! What do you want to stay for? You’re no good. You’ve never been any
+good."
+The yellow face at the edge of the table opened its mouth and made a wet,
+gurgling sound like a moan.
+Keating sat easily, leaning forward, his knees spread apart, one elbow resting
+on his knee, the hand hanging down, swinging the letter.
+"I..." Heyer choked. "I..."
+"Shut up! You’ve got nothing to say, except yes or no. Think fast now. I’m not
+here to argue with you."
+Heyer stopped trembling. A shadow cut diagonally across his face. Keating saw
+one eye that did not blink, and half a mouth, open, the darkness flowing in
+through the hole, into the face, as if it were drowning.
+"Answer me!" Keating screamed, frightened suddenly. "Why don’t you answer me?"
+The half-face swayed and he saw the head lurch forward; it fell down on the
+table, and went on, and rolled to the floor, as it cut off; two of the cups fell
+after it, cracking softly to pieces on the carpet. The first thing Keating felt
+was relief to see that the body had followed the head and lay crumpled in a heap
+on the floor, intact. There had been no sound; only the muffled, musical
+bursting of porcelain.
+He’ll be furious, thought Keating, looking down at the cups. He had jumped to
+his feet, he was kneeling, gathering the pieces pointlessly; he saw that they
+were broken beyond repair. He knew he was thinking also, at the same time, that
+it had come, that second stroke they had been expecting, and that he would have
+to do something about it in a moment, but that it was all right, because Heyer
+would have to retire now.
+Then he moved on his knees closer to Heyer’s body. He wondered why he did not
+want to touch it. "Mr. Heyer," he called. His voice was soft, almost respectful.
+He lifted Heyer’s head, cautiously. He let it drop. He heard no sound of its
+falling. He heard the hiccough in his own throat. Heyer was dead.
+He sat beside the body, his buttocks against his heels, his hands spread on his
+knees. He looked straight ahead; his glance stopped on the folds of the hangings
+by the door; he wondered whether the gray sheen was dust or the nap of velvet
+and was it velvet and how old-fashioned it was to have hangings by a door. Then
+he felt himself shaking. He wanted to vomit. He rose, walked across the room and
+threw the door open, because he remembered that there was the rest of the
+apartment somewhere and a valet in it, and he called, trying to scream for help.
+#
+Keating came to the office as usual. He answered questions, he explained that
+Heyer had asked him, that day, to come to his house after dinner; Heyer had
+wanted to discuss the matter of his retirement. No one doubted the story and
+Keating knew that no one ever would. Heyer’s end had come as everybody had
+expected it to come. Francon felt nothing but relief. "We knew he would, sooner
+or later," said Francon. "Why regret that he spared himself and all of us a
+prolonged agony?"
+158
+
+Keating’s manner was calmer than it had been for weeks. It was the calm of blank
+stupor. The thought followed him, gentle, unstressed, monotonous, at his work,
+at home, at night: he was a murderer...no, but almost a murderer...almost a
+murderer...He knew that it had not been an accident; he knew he had counted on
+the shock and the terror; he had counted on that second stroke which would send
+Heyer to the hospital for the rest of his days. But was that all he had
+expected? Hadn’t he known what else a second stroke could mean? Had he counted
+on that? He tried to remember. He tried, wringing his mind dry. He felt nothing.
+He expected to feel nothing, one way or another. Only he wanted to know. He did
+not notice what went on in the office around him. He forgot that he had but a
+short time left to close the deal with Francon about the partnership.
+A few days after Heyer’s death Francon called him to his office.
+"Sit down, Peter," he said with a brighter smile than usual. "Well, I have some
+good news for you, kid. They read Lucius’s will this morning. He had no
+relatives left, you know. Well, I was surprised, I didn’t give him enough
+credit, I guess, but it seems he could make a nice gesture on occasion. He’s
+left everything to you....Pretty grand, isn’t it? Now you won’t have to worry
+about investment when we make arrangements for...What’s the matter,
+Peter?...Peter, my boy, are you sick?"
+Keating’s face fell upon his arm on the corner of the desk. He could not let
+Francon see his face. He was going to be sick; sick, because through the horror,
+he had caught himself wondering how much Heyer had actually left....
+The will had been made out five years ago; perhaps in a senseless spurt of
+affection for the only person who had shown Heyer consideration in the office;
+perhaps as a gesture against his partner; it had been made and forgotten. The
+estate amounted to two hundred thousand dollars, plus Heyer’s interest in the
+firm and his porcelain collection.
+Keating left the office early, that day, not hearing the congratulations. He
+went home, told the news to his mother, left her gasping in the middle of the
+living room, and locked himself in his bedroom. He went out, saying nothing,
+before dinner. He had no dinner that night, but he drank himself into a
+ferocious lucidity, at his favorite speak-easy. And in that heightened state of
+luminous vision, his head nodding over a glass but his mind steady, he told
+himself that he had nothing to regret; he had done what anyone would have done;
+Catherine had said it, he was selfish; everybody was selfish; it was not a
+pretty thing, to be selfish, but he was not alone in it; he had merely been
+luckier than most; he had been, because he was better than most; he felt fine;
+he hoped the useless questions would never come back to him again; every man for
+himself, he muttered, falling asleep on the table.
+The useless questions never came back to him again. He had no time for them in
+the days that followed. He had won the Cosmo-Slotnick competition.
+#
+Peter Keating had known it would be a triumph, but he had not expected the thing
+that happened. He had dreamed of a sound of trumpets; he had not foreseen a
+symphonic explosion.
+It began with the thin ringing of a telephone, announcing the names of the
+winners. Then every phone in the office joined in, screaming, bursting from
+under the fingers of the operator who could barely control the switchboard;
+calls from every paper in town, from famous architects, questions, demands for
+interviews, congratulations. Then the flood rushed out of the elevators, poured
+159
+
+through the office doors, the messages, the telegrams, the people Keating knew,
+the people he had never seen before, the reception clerk losing all sense, not
+knowing whom to admit or refuse, and Keating shaking hands, an endless stream of
+hands like a wheel with soft moist cogs flapping against his fingers. He did not
+know what he said at that first interview, with Francon’s office full of people
+and cameras; Francon had thrown the doors of his liquor cabinet wide-open.
+Francon gulped to all these people that the Cosmo-Slotnick building had been
+created by Peter Keating alone; Francon did not care; he was magnanimous in a
+spurt of enthusiasm; besides, it made a good story.
+It made a better story than Francon had expected. From the pages of newspapers
+the face of Peter Keating looked upon the country, the handsome, wholesome,
+smiling face with the brilliant eyes and the dark curls; it headed columns of
+print about poverty, struggle, aspiration and unremitting toil that had won
+their reward; about the faith of a mother who had sacrificed everything to her
+boy’s success; about the "Cinderella of Architecture."
+Cosmo-Slotnick were pleased; they had not thought that prize-winning architects
+could also be young, handsome and poor--well, so recently poor. They had
+discovered a boy genius; Cosmo-Slotnick adored boy geniuses; Mr. Slotnick was
+one himself, being only forty-three.
+Keating’s drawings of the "most beautiful skyscraper on earth" were reproduced
+in the papers, with the words of the award underneath: "...for the brilliant
+skill and simplicity of its plan...for its clean, ruthless efficiency...for its
+ingenious economy of space...for the masterful blending of the modern with the
+traditional in Art...to Francon & Heyer and Peter Keating..."
+Keating appeared in newsreels, shaking hands with Mr. Shupe and Mr. Slotnick,
+and the subtitle announced what these two gentlemen thought of his building.
+Keating appeared in newsreels, shaking hands with Miss Dimples Williams, and the
+subtitle announced what he thought of her current picture. He appeared at
+architectural banquets and at film banquets, in the place of honor, and he had
+to make speeches, forgetting whether he was to speak of buildings or of movies.
+He appeared at architectural clubs and at fan clubs. Cosmo-Slotnick put out a
+composite picture of Keating and of his building, which could be had for a
+self-addressed, stamped envelope, and two bits. He made a personal appearance
+each evening, for a week, on the stage of the Cosmo Theater, with the first run
+of the latest Cosmo-Slotnick special; he bowed over the footlights, slim and
+graceful in a black tuxedo, and he spoke for two minutes on the significance of
+architecture. He presided as judge at a beauty contest in Atlantic City, the
+winner to be awarded a screen test by Cosmo-Slotnick. He was photographed with a
+famous prize-fighter, under the caption: "Champions." A scale model of his
+building was made and sent on tour, together with the photographs of the best
+among the other entries, to be exhibited in the foyers of Cosmo-Slotnick
+theaters throughout the country.
+Mrs. Keating had sobbed at first, clasped Peter in her arms and gulped that she
+could not believe it. She had stammered, answering questions about Petey, and
+she had posed for pictures, embarrassed, eager to please. Then she became used
+to it. She told Peter, shrugging, that of course he had won, it was nothing to
+gape at, no one else could have won. She acquired a brisk little tone of
+condescension for the reporters. She was distinctly annoyed when she was not
+included in the photographs taken of Petey. She acquired a mink coat.
+Keating let himself be carried by the torrent. He needed the people and the
+clamor around him. There were no questions and no doubts when he stood on a
+platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a
+single solvent--admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great;
+160
+
+great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right at the number
+of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself
+born in them, he saw himself being granted the gift of life. That was Peter
+Keating, that, the reflection in those staring pupils, and his body was only its
+reflection.
+He found time to spend two hours with Catherine, one evening. He held her in his
+arms and she whispered radiant plans for their future; he glanced at her with
+contentment; he did not hear her words; he was thinking of how it would look if
+they were photographed like this together and in how many papers it would be
+syndicated.
+He saw Dominique once. She was leaving the city for the summer. Dominique was
+disappointing. She congratulated him, quite correctly; but she looked at him as
+she had always looked, as if nothing had happened. Of all architectural
+publications, her column had been the only one that had never mentioned the
+Cosmo-Slotnick competition or its winner.
+"I’m going to Connecticut," she told him. "I’m taking over Father’s place down
+there for the summer. He’s letting me have it all to myself. No, Peter, you
+can’t come to visit me. Not even once. I’m going there so I won’t have to see
+anybody." He was disappointed, but it did not spoil the triumph of his days. He
+was not afraid of Dominique any longer. He felt confident that he could bring
+her to change her attitude, that he would see the change when she came back in
+the fall.
+But there was one thing which did spoil his triumph; not often and not too
+loudly. He never tired of hearing what was said about him; but he did not like
+to hear too much about his building. And when he had to hear it, he did not mind
+the comments on "the masterful blending of the modern with the traditional" in
+its facade; but when they spoke of the plan--and they spoke so much of the
+plan--when he heard about "the brilliant skill and simplicity...the clean,
+ruthless efficiency...the ingenious economy of space..." when he heard it and
+thought of...He did not think it. There were no words in his brain. He would not
+allow them. There was only a heavy, dark feeling--and a name.
+For two weeks after the award he pushed this thing out of his mind, as a thing
+unworthy of his concern, to be buried as his doubting, humble past was buried.
+All winter long he had kept his own sketches of the building with the pencil
+lines cut across them by another’s hands; on the evening of the award he had
+burned them; it was the first thing he had done.
+But the thing would not leave him. Then he grasped suddenly that it was not a
+vague threat, but a practical danger; and he lost all fear of it. He could deal
+with a practical danger, he could dispose of it quite simply. He chuckled with
+relief, he telephoned Roark’s office, and made an appointment to see him.
+He went to that appointment confidently. For the first time in his life he felt
+free of the strange uneasiness which he had never been able to explain or escape
+in Roark’s presence. He felt safe now. He was through with Howard Roark.
+#
+Roark sat at the desk in his office, waiting. The telephone had rung once, that
+morning, but it had been only Peter Keating asking for an appointment. He had
+forgotten now that Keating was coming. He was waiting for the telephone. He had
+become dependent on that telephone in the last few weeks. He was to hear at any
+moment about his drawings for the Manhattan Bank Company.
+His rent on the office was long since overdue. So was the rent on the room where
+161
+
+he lived. He did not care about the room; he could tell the landlord to wait;
+the landlord waited; it would not have mattered greatly if he had stopped
+waiting. But it mattered at the office. He told the rental agent that he would
+have to wait; he did not ask for the delay; he only said flatly, quietly, that
+there would be a delay, which was all he knew how to do. But his knowledge that
+he needed his alms from the rental agent, that too much depended on it, and made
+it sound like begging in his own mind. That was torture. All right, he thought,
+it’s torture. What of it?
+The telephone bill was overdue for two months. He had received the final
+warning. The telephone was to be disconnected in a few days. He had to wait. So
+much could happen in a few days.
+The answer of the bank board, which Weidler had promised him long ago, had been
+postponed from week to week. The board could reach no decision; there had been
+objectors and there had been violent supporters; there had been conferences;
+Weidler told him eloquently little, but he could guess much; there had been days
+of silence, of silence in the office, of silence in the whole city, of silence
+within him. He waited.
+He sat, slumped across the desk, his face on his arm, his fingers on the stand
+of the telephone. He thought dimly that he should not sit like that; but he felt
+very tired today. He thought that he should take his hand off that phone; but he
+did not move it. Well, yes, he depended on that phone, he could smash it, but he
+would still depend on it; he and every breath in him and every bit of him. His
+fingers rested on the stand without moving. It was this and the mail; he had
+lied to himself also about the mail; he had lied when he had forced himself not
+to leap, as a rare letter fell through the slot in the door, not to run forward,
+but to wait, to stand looking at me white envelope on the floor, then to walk to
+it slowly and pick it up. The slot in the door and the telephone--there was
+nothing else left to him of the world.
+He raised his head, as he thought of it, to look down at the door, at the foot
+of the door. There was nothing. It was late in the afternoon, probably past the
+time of the last delivery. He raised his wrist to glance at his watch; he saw
+his bare wrist; the watch had been pawned. He turned to the window; there was a
+clock he could distinguish on a distant tower; it was half past four; there
+would be no other delivery today.
+He saw that his hand was lifting the telephone receiver. His fingers were
+dialing the number.
+"No, not yet," Weidler’s voice told him over the wire. "We had that meeting
+scheduled for yesterday, but it had to be called off....I’m keeping after them
+like a bulldog....I can promise you that we’ll have a definite answer tomorrow.
+I can almost promise you. If not tomorrow, then it will have to wait over the
+week end, but by Monday I promise it for certain....You’ve been wonderfully
+patient with us, Mr. Roark. We appreciate it." Roark dropped the receiver. He
+closed his eyes. He thought he would allow himself to rest, just to rest blankly
+like this for a few minutes, before he would begin to think of what the date on
+the telephone notice had been and in what way he could manage to last until
+Monday.
+"Hello, Howard," said Peter Keating.
+He opened his eyes. Keating had entered and stood before him, smiling. He wore a
+light tan spring coat, thrown open, the loops of its belt like handles at his
+sides, a blue cornflower in his buttonhole. He stood, his legs apart, his fists
+on his hips, his hat on the back of his head, his black curls so bright and
+162
+
+crisp over his pale forehead that one expected to see drops of spring dew
+glistening on them as on the cornflower.
+"Hello, Peter," said Roark.
+Keating sat down comfortably, took his hat off, dropped it in the middle of the
+desk, and clasped one hand over each knee with a brisk little slap.
+"Well, Howard, things are happening, aren’t they?"
+"Congratulations."
+"Thanks. What’s the matter, Howard? You look like hell. Surely, you’re not
+overworking yourself, from what I hear?"
+This was not the manner he had intended to assume. He had planned the interview
+to be smooth and friendly. Well, he decided, he’d switch back to that later. But
+first he had to show that he was not afraid of Roark, that he’d never be afraid
+again.
+"No, I’m not overworking."
+"Look, Howard, why don’t you drop it?"
+That was something he had not intended saying at all. His mouth remained open a
+little, in astonishment.
+"Drop what?"
+"The pose. Oh, the ideals, if you prefer. Why don’t you come down to earth? Why
+don’t you start working like everybody else? Why don’t you stop being a damn
+fool?" He felt himself rolling down a hill, without brakes. He could not stop.
+"What’s the matter, Peter?"
+"How do you expect to get along in the world? You have to live with people, you
+know. There are only two ways. You can join them or you can fight them. But you
+don’t seem to be doing either."
+"No. Not either."
+"And people don’t want you. They don’t want you! Aren’t you afraid?"
+"No."
+"You haven’t worked for a year. And you won’t. Who’ll ever give you work? You
+might have a few hundreds left--and then it’s the end."
+"That’s wrong, Peter. I have fourteen dollars left, and fifty-seven cents."
+"Well? And look at me! I don’t care if it’s crude to say that myself. That’s not
+the point. I’m not boasting. It doesn’t matter who says it. But look at me!
+Remember how we started? Then look at us now. And then think that it’s up to
+you. Just drop that fool delusion that you’re better than everybody else--and go
+to work. In a year, you’ll have an office that’ll make you blush to think of
+this dump. You’ll have people running after you, you’ll have clients, you’ll
+have friends, you’ll have an army of draftsmen to order around!...Hell! Howard,
+it’s nothing to me--what can it mean to me?--but this time I’m not fishing for
+anything for myself, in fact I know that you’d make a dangerous competitor, but
+163
+
+I’ve got to say this to you. Just think, Howard, think of it! You’ll be rich,
+you’ll be famous, you’ll be respected, you’ll be praised, you’ll be
+admired--you’ll be one of us!...Well?...Say something! Why don’t you say
+something?"
+He saw that Roark’s eyes were not empty and scornful, but attentive and
+wondering. It was close to some sort of surrender for Roark, because he had not
+dropped the iron sheet in his eyes, because he allowed his eyes to be puzzled
+and curious--and almost helpless.
+"Look, Peter. I believe you. I know that you have nothing to gain by saying
+this. I know more than that. I know that you don’t want me to succeed--it’s all
+right, I’m not reproaching you, I’ve always known it--you don’t want me ever to
+reach these things you’re offering me. And yet you’re pushing me on to reach
+them, quite sincerely. And you know that if I take your advice, I’ll reach them.
+And it’s not love for me, because that wouldn’t make you so angry--and so
+frightened....Peter, what is it that disturbs you about me as I am?"
+"I don’t know..." whispered Rearing.
+He understood that it was a confession, that answer of his, and a terrifying
+one. He did not know the nature of what he had confessed and he felt certain
+that Roark did not know it either. But the thing had been bared; they could not
+grasp it, but they felt its shape. And it made them sit silently, facing each
+other, in astonishment, in resignation.
+"Pull yourself together, Peter," said Roark gently, as to a comrade. "We’ll
+never speak of that again."
+Then Keating said suddenly, his voice clinging in relief to the bright vulgarity
+of its new tone:
+"Aw hell, Howard, I was only talking good plain horse sense. Now if you wanted
+to work like a normal person--"
+"Shut up!" snapped Roark.
+Keating leaned back, exhausted. He had nothing else to say. He had forgotten
+what he had come here to discuss.
+"Now," said Roark, "what did you want to tell me about the competition?"
+Keating jerked forward. He wondered what had made Roark guess that. And then it
+became easier, because he forgot the rest in a sweeping surge of resentment.
+"Oh, yes!" said Keating crisply, a bright edge of irritation in the sound of his
+voice. "Yes, I did want to speak to you about that. Thanks for reminding me. Of
+course, you’d guess it, because you know that I’m not an ungrateful swine. I
+really came here to thank you, Howard. I haven’t forgotten that you had a share
+in that building, you did give me some advice on it. I’d be the first one to
+give you part of the credit."
+"That’s not necessary."
+"Oh, it’s not that I’d mind, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to say anything
+about it. And I’m sure you don’t want to say anything yourself, because you know
+how it is, people are so funny, they misinterpret everything in such a stupid
+way....But since I’m getting part of the award money, I thought it’s only fair
+to let you have some of it. I’m glad that it comes at a time when you need it so
+164
+
+badly."
+He produced his billfold, pulled from it a check he had made out in advance and
+put it down on the desk. It read: "Pay to the order of Howard Roark--the sum of
+five hundred dollars."
+"Thank you, Peter," said Roark, taking the check.
+Then he turned it over, took his fountain pen, wrote on the back: "Pay to the
+order of Peter Keating," signed and handed the check to Keating.
+"And here’s my bribe to you, Peter," he said. "For the same purpose. To keep
+your mouth shut."
+Keating stared at him blankly.
+"That’s all I can offer you now," said Roark. "You can’t extort anything from me
+at present, but later, when I’ll have money, I’d like to ask you please not to
+blackmail me. I’m telling you frankly that you could. Because I don’t want
+anyone to know that I had anything to do with that building."
+He laughed at the slow look of comprehension on Keating’s face.
+"No?" said Roark. "You don’t want to blackmail me on that?...Go home, Peter.
+You’re perfectly safe. I’ll never say a word about it. It’s yours, the building
+and every girder of it and every foot of plumbing and every picture of your face
+in the papers."
+Then Keating jumped to his feet. He was shaking.
+"God damn you!" he screamed. "God damn you! Who do you think you are? Who told
+you that you could do this to people? So you’re too good for that building? You
+want to make me ashamed of it? You rotten, lousy, conceited bastard! Who are
+you? You don’t even have the wits to know that you’re a flop, an incompetent, a
+beggar, a failure, a failure, a failure! And you stand there pronouncing
+judgment! You, against the whole country! You against everybody! Why should I
+listen to you? You can’t frighten me. You can’t touch me. I have the whole world
+with me!...Don’t stare at me like that! I’ve always hated you! You didn’t know
+that, did you? I’ve always hated you! I always will! I’ll break you some day, I
+swear I will, if it’s the last thing I do!"
+"Peter," said Roark, "why betray so much?"
+Keating’s breath failed on a choked moan. He slumped down on a chair, he sat
+still, his hands clasping the sides of the seat under him.
+After a while he raised his head. He asked woodenly:
+"Oh God, Howard, what have I been saying?"
+"Are you all right now? Can you go?"
+"Howard, I’m sorry. I apologize, if you want me to." His voice was raw and dull,
+without conviction. "I lost my head. Guess I’m just unstrung. I didn’t mean any
+of it. I don’t know why I said it. Honestly, I don’t."
+"Fix your collar. It’s unfastened."
+"I guess I was angry about what you did with that check. But I suppose you were
+165
+
+insulted, too. I’m sorry. I’m stupid like that sometimes. I didn’t mean to
+offend you. We’ll just destroy the damn thing."
+He picked up the check, struck a match, cautiously watched the paper burn till
+he had to drop the last scrap.
+"Howard, we’ll forget it?"
+"Don’t you think you’d better go now?"
+Keating rose heavily, his hands poked about in a few useless gestures, and he
+mumbled:
+"Well...well, good night, Howard. I...I’ll see you soon....It’s because so
+much’s happened to me lately....Guess I need a rest....So long, Howard...."
+When he stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him, Keating felt
+an icy sense of relief. He felt heavy and very tired, but drearily sure of
+himself. He had acquired the knowledge of one thing: he hated Roark. It was not
+necessary to doubt and wonder and squirm in uneasiness any longer. It was
+simple. He hated Roark. The reasons? It was not necessary to wonder about the
+reasons. It was necessary only to hate, to hate blindly, to hate patiently, to
+hate without anger; only to hate, and let nothing intervene, and not let oneself
+forget, ever.
+#
+The telephone rang late on Monday afternoon.
+"Mr. Roark?" said Weidler. "Can you come right over? I don’t want to say
+anything over the phone, but get here at once." The voice sounded clear, gay,
+radiantly premonitory.
+Roark looked at the window, at the clock on the distant tower. He sat laughing
+at that clock, as at a friendly old enemy; he would not need it any longer, he
+would have a watch of his own again. He threw his head back in defiance to that
+pale gray dial hanging high over the city.
+He rose and reached for his coat. He threw his shoulders back, slipping the coat
+on; he felt pleasure in the jolt of his muscles.
+In the street outside, he took a taxi which he could not afford.
+The chairman of the board was waiting for him in his office, with Weidler and
+with the vice-president of the Manhattan Bank Company. There was a long
+conference table in the room, and Roark’s drawings were spread upon it. Weidler
+rose when he entered and walked to meet him, his hand outstretched. It was in
+the air of the room, like an overture to the words Weidler uttered, and Roark
+was not certain of the moment when he heard them, because he thought he had
+heard them the instant he entered.
+"Well, Mr. Roark, the commission’s yours," said Weidler.
+Roark bowed. It was best not to trust his voice for a few minutes.
+The chairman smiled amiably, inviting him to sit down. Roark sat down by the
+side of the table that supported his drawings. His hand rested on the table. The
+polished mahogany felt warm and living under his fingers; it was almost as if he
+were pressing his hand against the foundations of his building; his greatest
+building, fifty stories to rise in the center of Manhattan.
+166
+
+"I must tell you," the chairman was saying, "that we’ve had a hell of a fight
+over that building of yours. Thank God it’s over. Some of our members just
+couldn’t swallow your radical innovations. You know how stupidly conservative
+some people are. But we’ve found a way to please them, and we got their consent.
+Mr. Weidler here was really magnificently convincing on your behalf."
+A great deal more was said by the three men. Roark barely heard it. He was
+thinking of the first bite of machine into earth that begins an excavation. Then
+he heard the chairman saying: "...and so it’s yours, on one minor condition." He
+heard that and looked at the chairman.
+"It’s a small compromise, and when you agree to it we can sign the contract.
+It’s only an inconsequential matter of the building’s appearance. I understand
+that you modernists attach no great importance to a mere facade, it’s the plan
+that counts with you, quite rightly, and we wouldn’t think of altering your plan
+in any way, it’s the logic of the plan that sold us on the building. So I’m sure
+you won’t mind."
+"What do you want?"
+"It’s only a matter of a slight alteration in the facade. I’ll show you. Our Mr.
+Parker’s son is studying architecture and we had him draw us up a sketch, just a
+rough sketch to illustrate what we had in mind and to show the members of the
+board, because they couldn’t have visualized the compromise we offered. Here it
+is."
+He pulled a sketch from under the drawings on the table and handed it to Roark.
+It was Roark’s building on the sketch, very neatly drawn. It was his building,
+but it had a simplified Doric portico in front, a cornice on top, and his
+ornament was replaced by a stylized Greek ornament.
+Roark got up. He had to stand. He concentrated on the effort of standing. It
+made the rest easier. He leaned on one straight arm, his hand closed over the
+edge of the table, the tendons showing under the skin of his wrist.
+"You see the point?" said the chairman soothingly. "Our conservatives simply
+refused to accept a queer stark building like yours. And they claim that the
+public won’t accept it either. So we hit upon the middle course. In this way,
+though it’s not traditional architecture of course, it will give the public the
+impression of what they’re accustomed to. It adds a certain air of sound, stable
+dignity--and that’s what we want in a bank, isn’t it? It does seem to be an
+unwritten law that a bank must have a Classic portico--and a bank is not exactly
+the right institution to parade law-breaking and rebellion. Undermines that
+intangible feeling of confidence, you know. People don’t trust novelty. But this
+is the scheme that pleased everybody. Personally, I wouldn’t insist on it, but I
+really don’t see that it spoils anything. And that’s what the board has decided.
+Of course, we don’t mean that we want you to follow this sketch. But it gives
+you our general idea and you’ll work it out yourself, make your own adaptation
+of the Classic motive to the facade."
+Then Roark answered. The men could not classify the tone of his voice; they
+could not decide whether it was too great a calm or too great an emotion. They
+concluded that it was calm, because the voice moved forward evenly, without
+stress, without color, each syllable spaced as by a machine; only the air in the
+room was not the air that vibrates to a calm voice.
+They concluded that there was nothing abnormal in the manner of the man who was
+167
+
+speaking, except the fact that his right hand would not leave the edge of the
+table, and when he had to move the drawings, he did it with his left hand, like
+a man with one arm paralyzed.
+He spoke for a long time. He explained why this structure could not have a
+Classic motive on its facade. He explained why an honest building, like an
+honest man, had to be of one piece and one faith; what constituted the life
+source, the idea in any existing thing or creature, and why--if one smallest
+part committed treason to that idea--the thing of the creature was dead; and why
+the good, the high and the noble on earth was only that which kept its
+integrity.
+The chairman interrupted him:
+"Mr. Roark, I agree with you. There’s no answer to what you’re saying. But
+unfortunately, in practical life, one can’t always be so flawlessly consistent.
+There’s always the incalculable human element of emotion. We can’t fight that
+with cold logic. This discussion is actually superfluous. I can agree with you,
+but I can’t help you. The matter is closed. It was the board’s final
+decision--after more than usually prolonged consideration, as you know."
+"Will you let me appear before the board and speak to them?"
+"I’m sorry, Mr. Roark, but the board will not re-open the question for further
+debate. It was final. I can only ask you to state whether you agree to accept
+the commission on our terms or not. I must admit that the board has considered
+the possibility of your refusal. In which case, the name of another architect,
+one Gordon L. Prescott, has been mentioned most favorably as an alternative. But
+I told the board that I felt certain you would accept."
+He waited. Roark said nothing.
+"You understand the situation, Mr. Roark?"
+"Yes," said Roark. His eyes were lowered. He was looking down at the drawings.
+"Well?"
+Roark did not answer.
+"Yes or no, Mr. Roark?"
+Roark’s head leaned back. He closed his eyes.
+"No," said Roark.
+After a while the chairman asked:
+"Do you realize what you’re doing?"
+"Quite," said Roark.
+"Good God!" Weidler cried suddenly. "Don’t you know how big a commission this
+is? You’re a young man, you won’t get another chance like this. And...all right,
+damn it, I’ll say it! You need this! I know how badly you need it!"
+Roark gathered the drawings from the table, rolled them together and put them
+under his arm.
+168
+
+"It’s sheer insanity!" Weidler moaned. "I want you. We want your building. You
+need the commission. Do you have to be quite so fanatical and selfless about
+it?"
+"What?" Roark asked incredulously.
+"Fanatical and selfless."
+Roark smiled. He looked down at his drawings. His elbow moved a little, pressing
+them to his body. He said:
+"That was the most selfish thing you’ve ever seen a man do."
+He walked back to his office. He gathered his drawing instruments and the few
+things he had there. It made one package and he carried it under his arm. He
+locked the door and gave the key to the rental agent. He told the agent that he
+was closing his office. He walked home and left the package there. Then he went
+to Mike Donnigan’s house.
+"No?" Mike asked, after one look at him.
+"No," said Roark.
+"What happened?"
+"I’ll tell you some other time."
+"The bastards!"
+"Never mind that, Mike."
+"How about the office now?"
+"I’ve closed the office."
+"For good?"
+"For the time being."
+"God damn them all, Red! God damn them!"
+"Shut up. I need a job, Mike. Can you help me?"
+"Me?"
+"I don’t know anyone in those trades here. Not anyone that would want me. You
+know them all."
+"In what trades? What are you talking about?"
+"In the building trades. Structural work. As I’ve done before."
+"You mean--a plain workman’s job?"
+"I mean a plain workman’s job."
+"You’re crazy, you God-damn fool!"
+"Cut it, Mike. Will you get me a job?"
+169
+
+"But why in hell? You can get a decent job in an architect’s office. You know
+you can."
+"I won’t, Mike. Not ever again."
+"Why?"
+"I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to help them do
+what they’re doing."
+"You can get a nice clean job in some other line."
+"I would have to think on a nice clean job. I don’t want to think. Not their
+way. It will have to be their way, no matter where I go. I want a job where I
+won’t have to think."
+"Architects don’t take workmen’s jobs."
+"That’s all this architect can do."
+"You can learn something in no time."
+"I don’t want to learn anything."
+"You mean you want me to get you into a construction gang, here, in town?"
+"That’s what I mean."
+"No, God damn you! I can’t! I won’t! I won’t do it!"
+"Why?"
+"Red, to be putting yourself up like a show for all the bastards in this town to
+see? For all the sons of bitches to know they brought you down like this? For
+all of them to gloat?"
+Roark laughed.
+"I don’t give a damn about that, Mike. Why should you?"
+"Well, I’m not letting you. I’m not giving the sons of bitches that kinda
+treat."
+"Mike," Roark said softly, "there’s nothing else for me to do."
+"Hell, yes, there is. I told you before. You’ll be listening to reason now. I
+got all the dough you need until..."
+"I’ll tell you what I’ve told Austen Heller: If you ever offer me money again,
+that’ll be the end between us."
+"But why?"
+"Don’t argue, Mike."
+"But..."
+"I’m asking you to do me a bigger favor. I want that job. You don’t have to feel
+170
+
+sorry for me. I don’t."
+"But...but what’ll happen to you, Red?"
+"Where?"
+"I mean...your future?"
+"I’ll save enough money and I’ll come back. Or maybe someone will send for me
+before then."
+Mike looked at him. He saw something in Roark’s eyes which he knew Roark did not
+want to be there.
+"Okay, Red," said Mike softly.
+He thought it over for a long time. He said:
+"Listen, Red, I won’t get you a job in town. I just can’t. It turns my stomach
+to think of it. But I’ll get you something in the same line."
+"All right. Anything. It doesn’t make any difference to me."
+"I’ve worked for all of that bastard Francon’s pet contractors for so long I
+know everybody ever worked for him. He’s got a granite quarry down in
+Connecticut. One of the foremen’s a great pal of mine. He’s in town right now.
+Ever worked in a quarry before?"
+"Once. Long ago."
+"Think you’ll like that?"
+"Sure."
+"I’ll go see him. We won’t be telling him who you are, just a friend of mine,
+that’s all."
+"Thanks, Mike."
+Mike reached for his coat, and then his hands fell back, and he looked at the
+floor.
+"Red..."
+"It will be all right, Mike."
+Roark walked home. It was dark and the street was deserted. There was a strong
+wind. He could feel the cold, whistling pressure strike his cheeks. It was the
+only evidence of the flow ripping the air. Nothing moved in the stone corridor
+about him. There was not a tree to stir, no curtains, no awnings; only naked
+masses of stone, glass, asphalt and sharp corners. It was strange to feel that
+fierce movement against his face. But in a trash basket on a corner a crumpled
+sheet of newspaper was rustling, beating convulsively against the wire mesh. It
+made the wind real.
+#
+In the evening, two days later, Roark left for Connecticut.
+From the train, he looked back once at the skyline of the city as it flashed
+171
+
+into sight and was held for some moments beyond the windows. The twilight had
+washed off the details of the buildings. They rose in thin shafts of a soft,
+porcelain blue, a color not of real things, but of evening and distance. They
+rose in bare outlines, like empty molds waiting to be filled. The distance had
+flattened the city. The single shafts stood immeasurably tall, out of scale to
+the rest of the earth. They were of their own world, and they held up to the sky
+the statement of what man had conceived and made possible. They were empty
+molds. But man had come so far; he could go farther. The city on the edge of the
+sky held a question--and a promise.
+#
+Little pinheads of light flared up about the peak of one famous tower, in the
+windows of the Star Roof Restaurant. Then the train swerved around a bend and
+the city vanished.
+That evening, in the banquet hall of the Star Roof Restaurant, a dinner was held
+to celebrate the admittance of Peter Keating to partnership in the firm to be
+known henceforward as Francon & Keating.
+At the long table that seemed covered, not with a tablecloth, but with a sheet
+of light, sat Guy Francon. Somehow, tonight, he did not mind the streaks of
+silver that appeared on his temples; they sparkled crisply against the black of
+his hair and they gave him an air of cleanliness and elegance, like the rigid
+white of his shirt against his black evening clothes. In the place of honor sat
+Peter Keating. He leaned back, his shoulders straight, his hand closed about the
+stem of a glass. His black curls glistened against his white forehead. In that
+one moment of silence, the guests felt no envy, no resentment, no malice. There
+was a grave feeling of brotherhood in the room, in the presence of the pale,
+handsome boy who looked solemn as at his first communion. Ralston Holcombe had
+risen to speak. He stood, his glass in hand. He had prepared his speech, but he
+was astonished to hear himself saying something quite different, in a voice of
+complete sincerity. He said:
+"We are the guardians of a great human function. Perhaps of the greatest
+function among the endeavors of man. We have achieved much and we have erred
+often. But we are willing in all humility to make way for our heirs. We are only
+men and we are only seekers. But we seek for truth with the best there is in our
+hearts. We seek with what there is of the sublime granted to the race of men. It
+is a great quest. To the future of American Architecture!"
+
+Part Two: ELLSWORTH M. TOOHEY
+
+1.
+TO HOLD his fists closed tight, as if the skin of his palms had grown fast to
+the steel he clasped--to keep his feet steady, pressed down hard, the flat rock
+an upward thrust against his soles--not to feel the existence of his body, but
+only a few clots of tension: his knees, his wrists, his shoulders and the drill
+he held--to feel the drill trembling in a long convulsive shudder--to feel his
+stomach trembling, his lungs trembling, the straight lines of the stone ledges
+before him dissolving into jagged streaks of trembling--to feel the drill and
+his body gathered into the single will of pressure, that a shaft of steel might
+sink slowly into granite--this was all of life for Howard Roark, as it had been
+172
+
+in the days of the two months behind him.
+He stood on the hot stone in the sun. His face was scorched to bronze. His shirt
+stuck in long, damp patches to his back. The quarry rose about him in flat
+shelves breaking against one another. It was a world without curves, grass or
+soil, a simplified world of stone planes, sharp edges and angles. The stone had
+not been made by patient centuries welding the sediment of winds and tides; it
+had come from a molten mass cooling slowly at unknown depth; it had been flung,
+forced out of the earth, and it still held the shape of violence against the
+violence of the men on its ledges.
+The straight planes stood witness to the force of each cut; the drive of each
+blow had run in an unswerving line; the stone had cracked open in unbending
+resistance. Drills bored forward with a low, continuous drone, the tension of
+the sound cutting through nerves, through skulls, as if the quivering tools were
+shattering slowly both the stone and the men who held them.
+He liked the work. He felt at times as if it were a match of wrestling between
+his muscles and the granite. He was very tired at night. He liked the emptiness
+of his body’s exhaustion.
+Each evening he walked the two miles from the quarry to the little town where
+the workers lived. The earth of the woods he crossed was soft and warm under his
+feet; it was strange, after a day spent on the granite ridges; he smiled as at a
+new pleasure, each evening, and looked down to watch his feet crushing a surface
+that responded, gave way and conceded faint prints to be left behind.
+There was a bathroom in the garret of the house where he roomed; the paint had
+peeled off the floor long ago and the naked boards were gray-white. He lay in
+the tub for a long time and let the cool water soak the stone dust out of his
+skin. He let his head hang back, on the edge of the tub, his eyes closed. The
+greatness of the weariness was its own relief: it allowed no sensation but the
+slow pleasure of the tension leaving his muscles.
+He ate his dinner in a kitchen, with other quarry workers. He sat alone at a
+table in a corner; the fumes of the grease, crackling eternally on the vast gas
+range, hid the rest of the room in a sticky haze. He ate little. He drank a
+great deal of water; the cold, glittering liquid in a clean glass was
+intoxicating.
+He slept in a small wooden cube under the roof. The boards of the ceiling
+slanted down over his bed. When it rained, he could hear the burst of each drop
+against the roof, and it took an effort to realize why he did not feel the rain
+beating against his body.
+Sometimes, after dinner, he would walk into the woods that began behind the
+house. He would stretch down on the ground, on his stomach, his elbows planted
+before him, his hands propping his chin, and he would watch the patterns of
+veins on the green blades of grass under his face; he would blow at them and
+watch the blades tremble then stop again. He would roll over on his back and lie
+still, feeling the warmth of the earth under him. Far above, the leaves were
+still green, but it was a thick, compressed green, as if the color were
+condensed in one last effort before the dusk coming to dissolve it. The leaves
+hung without motion against a sky of polished lemon yellow; its luminous pallor
+emphasized that its light was failing. He pressed his hips, his back into the
+earth under him; the earth resisted, but it gave way; it was a silent victory;
+he felt a dim, sensuous pleasure in the muscles of his legs.
+Sometimes, not often, he sat up and did not move for a long time; then he
+173
+
+smiled, the slow smile of an executioner watching a victim. He thought of his
+days going by, of the buildings he could have been doing, should have been doing
+and, perhaps, never would be doing again. He watched the pain’s unsummoned
+appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is
+again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard
+pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own
+suffering; he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own
+agony. Such moments were rare. But when they came, he felt as he did in the
+quarry: that he had to drill through granite, that he had to drive a wedge and
+blast the thing within him which persisted in calling to his pity.
+#
+Dominique Francon lived alone, that summer, in the great Colonial mansion of her
+father’s estate, three miles beyond the quarry town. She received no visitors.
+An old caretaker and his wife were the only human beings she saw, not too often
+and merely of necessity; they lived some distance from the mansion, near the
+stables; the caretaker attended to the grounds and the horses; his wife attended
+to the house and cooked Dominique’s meals.
+The meals were served with the gracious severity the old woman had learned in
+the days when Dominique’s mother lived and presided over the guests in that
+great dining room. At night Dominique found her solitary place at the table laid
+out as for a formal banquet, the candles lighted, the tongues of yellow flame
+standing motionless like the shining metal spears of a guard of honor. The
+darkness stretched the room into a hall, the big windows rose like a flat
+colonnade of sentinels. A shallow crystal bowl stood in a pool of light in the
+center of the long table, with a single water lily spreading white petals about
+a heart yellow like a drop of candle fire.
+The old woman served the meal in unobtrusive silence, and disappeared from the
+house as soon as she could afterward. When Dominique walked up the stairs to her
+bedroom, she found the fragile lace folds of her nightgown laid out on the bed.
+In the morning she entered her bathroom and found water in the sunken bathtub,
+the hyacinth odor of her bath sails, the aquamarine tiles polished, shining
+under her feet, her huge towels spread out like snowdrifts to swallow her
+body--yet she heard no steps and felt no living presence in the house. The old
+woman’s treatment of Dominique had the same reverent caution with which she
+handled the pieces of Venetian glass in the drawing-room cabinets. Dominique had
+spent so many summers and winters, surrounding herself with people in order to
+feel alone, that the experiment of actual solitude was an enchantment to her and
+a betrayal into a weakness she had never allowed herself: the weakness of
+enjoying it. She stretched her arms and let them drop lazily, feeling a sweet,
+drowsy heaviness above her elbows, as after a first drink. She was conscious of
+her summer dresses, she felt her knees, her thighs encountering the faint
+resistance of cloth when she moved, and it made her conscious not of the cloth,
+but of her knees and thighs.
+The house stood alone amidst vast grounds, and the woods stretched beyond; there
+were no neighbors for miles. She rode on horseback down long, deserted roads,
+down hidden paths leading nowhere. Leaves glittered in the sun and twigs snapped
+in the wind of her flying passage. She caught her breath at times from the
+sudden feeling that something magnificent and deadly would meet her beyond the
+next turn of the road; she could give no identity to what she expected, she
+could not say whether it was a sight, a person or an event; she knew only its
+quality--the sensation of a defiling pleasure.
+Sometimes she started on foot from the house and walked for miles, setting
+herself no goal and no hour of return. Cars passed her on the road; the people
+of the quarry town knew her and bowed to her; she was considered the chatelaine
+174
+
+of the countryside, as her mother had been long ago. She turned off the road
+into the woods and walked on, her arms swinging loosely, her head thrown back,
+watching the tree tops. She saw clouds swimming behind the leaves; it looked as
+if a giant tree before her were moving, slanting, ready to fall and crush her;
+she stopped; she waited, her head thrown back, her throat pulled tight; she felt
+as if she wanted to be crushed. Then she shrugged and went on. She flung thick
+branches impatiently out of her way and let them scratch her bare arms. She
+walked on long after she was exhausted, she drove herself forward against the
+weariness of her muscles. Then she fell down on her back and lay still, her arms
+and legs flung out like a cross on the ground, breathing in release, feeling
+empty and flattened, feeling the weight of the air like a pressure against her
+breasts.
+Some mornings, when she awakened in her bedroom, she heard the explosions of
+blasting at the granite quarry. She stretched, her arms flung back above her
+head on the white silk pillow, and she listened. It was the sound of destruction
+and she liked it.
+#
+Because the sun was too hot, that morning, and she knew it would be hotter at
+the granite quarry, because she wanted to see no one and knew she would face a
+gang of workers, Dominique walked to the quarry. The thought of seeing it on
+that blazing day was revolting; she enjoyed the prospect.
+When she came out of the woods to the edge of the great stone bowl, she felt as
+if she were thrust into an execution chamber filled with scalding steam. The
+heat did not come from the sun, but from that broken cut in the earth, from the
+reflectors of flat ridges. Her shoulders, her head, her back, exposed to the
+sky, seemed cool while she felt the hot breath of the stone rising up her legs,
+to her chin, to her nostrils. The air shimmered below, sparks of fire shot
+through the granite; she thought the stone was stirring, melting, running in
+white trickles of lava. Drills and hammers cracked the still weight of the air.
+It was obscene to see men on the shelves of the furnace. They did not look like
+workers, they looked like a chain gang serving an unspeakable penance for some
+unspeakable crime. She could not turn away.
+She stood, as an insult to the place below. Her dress--the color of water, a
+pale green-blue, too simple and expensive, its pleats exact like edges of
+glass--her thin heels planted wide apart on the boulders, the smooth helmet of
+her hair, the exaggerated fragility of her body against the sky--flaunted the
+fastidious coolness of the gardens and drawing rooms from which she came.
+She looked down. Her eyes stopped on the orange hair of a man who raised his
+head and looked at her.
+She stood very still, because her first perception was not of sight, but of
+touch: the consciousness, not of a visual presence, but of a slap in the face.
+She held one hand awkwardly away from her body, the fingers spread wide on the
+air, as against a wall. She knew that she could not move until he permitted her
+to.
+She saw his mouth and the silent contempt in the shape of his mouth; the planes
+of his gaunt, hollow cheeks; the cold, pure brilliance of the eyes that had no
+trace of pity. She knew it was the most beautiful face she would ever see,
+because it was the abstraction of strength made visible. She felt a convulsion
+of anger, of protest, of resistance--and of pleasure. He stood looking up at
+her; it was not a glance, but an act of ownership. She thought she must let her
+face give him the answer he deserved. But she was looking, instead, at the stone
+dust on his burned arms, the wet shirt clinging to his ribs, the lines of his
+175
+
+long legs. She was thinking of those statues of men she had always sought; she
+was wondering what he would look like naked. She saw him looking at her as if he
+knew that. She thought she had found an aim in life--a sudden, sweeping hatred
+for that man.
+She was first to move. She turned and walked away from him. She saw the
+superintendent of the quarry on the path ahead, and she waved. The
+superintendent rushed forward to meet her. "Why, Miss Francon!" he cried. "Why,
+how do you do, Miss Francon!"
+She hoped the words were heard by the man below. For the first time in her life,
+she was glad of being Miss Francon, glad of her father’s position and
+possessions, which she had always despised. She thought suddenly that the man
+below was only a common worker, owned by the owner of this place, and she was
+almost the owner of this place.
+The superintendent stood before her respectfully. She smiled and said:
+"I suppose I’ll inherit the quarry some day, so I thought I should show some
+interest in it once in a while."
+The superintendent preceded her down the path, displayed his domain to her,
+explained the work. She followed him far to the other side of the quarry; she
+descended to the dusty green dell of the work sheds; she inspected the
+bewildering machinery. She allowed a convincingly sufficient time to elapse.
+Then she walked back, alone, down the edge of the granite bowl.
+She saw him from a distance as she approached. He was working. She saw one
+strand of red hair that fell over his face and swayed with the trembling of the
+drill. She thought--hopefully--that the vibrations of the drill hurt him, hurt
+his body, everything inside his body.
+When she was on the rocks above him, he raised his head and looked at her; she
+had not caught him noticing her approach; he looked up as if he expected her to
+be there, as if he knew she would be back. She saw the hint of a smile, more
+insulting than words. He sustained the insolence of looking straight at her, he
+would not move, he would not grant the concession of turning away--of
+acknowledging that he had no right to look at her in such manner. He had not
+merely taken that right, he was saying silently that she had given it to him.
+She turned sharply and walked on, down the rocky slope, away from the quarry.
+#
+It was not his eyes, not his mouth that she remembered, but his hands. The
+meaning of that day seemed held in a single picture she had noted: the simple
+instant of his one hand resting against granite. She saw it again: his
+fingertips pressed to the stone, his long fingers continuing the straight lines
+of the tendons that spread in a fan from his wrist to his knuckles. She thought
+of him, but the vision present through all her thoughts was the picture of that
+hand on the granite. It frightened her; she could not understand it.
+He’s only a common worker, she thought, a hired man doing a convict’s labor. She
+thought of that, sitting before the glass shelf of her dressing table. She
+looked at the crystal objects spread before her; they were like sculptures in
+ice--they proclaimed her own cold, luxurious fragility; and she thought of his
+strained body, of his clothes drenched in dust and sweat, of his hands. She
+stressed the contrast, because it degraded her. She leaned back, closing her
+eyes. She thought of the many distinguished men whom she had refused. She
+thought of the quarry worker. She thought of being broken--not by a man she
+176
+
+admired, but by a man she loathed. She let her head fall down on her arm; the
+thought left her weak with pleasure.
+For two days she made herself believe that she would escape from this place; she
+found old travel folders in her trunk, studied them, chose the resort, the hotel
+and the particular room in that hotel, selected the train she would take, the
+boat and the number of the stateroom. She found a vicious amusement in doing
+that, because she knew she would not take this trip she wanted; she would go
+back to the quarry.
+She went back to the quarry three days later. She stopped over the ledge where
+he worked and she stood watching him openly. When he raised his head, she did
+not turn away. Her glance told him she knew the meaning of her action, but did
+not respect him enough to conceal it. His glance told her only that he had
+expected her to come. He bent over his drill and went on with his work. She
+waited. She wanted him to look up. She knew that he knew it. He would not look
+again.
+She stood, watching his hands, waiting for the moments when he touched stone.
+She forgot the drill and the dynamite. She liked to think of the granite being
+broken by his hands.
+She heard the superintendent calling her name, hurrying to her up the path. She
+turned to him when he approached.
+"I like to watch the men working," she explained.
+"Yes, quite a picture, isn’t it?" the superintendent agreed. "There’s the train
+starting over there with another load."
+She was not watching the train. She saw the man below looking at her, she saw
+the insolent hint of amusement tell her that he knew she did not want him to
+look at her now. She turned her head away. The superintendent’s eyes traveled
+over the pit and stopped on the man below them.
+"Hey, you down there!" he shouted. "Are you paid to work or to gape?"
+The man bent silently over his drill. Dominique laughed aloud.
+The superintendent said: "It’s a tough crew we got down here, Miss
+Francon....Some of ’em even with jail records."
+"Has that man a jail record?" she asked, pointing down.
+"Well, I couldn’t say. Wouldn’t know them all by sight."
+She hoped he had. She wondered whether they whipped convicts nowadays. She hoped
+they did. At the thought of it, she felt a sinking gasp such as she had felt in
+childhood, in dreams of falling down a long stairway; but she felt the sinking
+in her stomach.
+She turned brusquely and left the quarry.
+She came back many days later. She saw him, unexpectedly, on a flat stretch of
+stone before her, by the side of the path. She stopped short. She did not want
+to come too close. It was strange to see him before her, without the defense and
+excuse of distance.
+He stood looking straight at her. Their understanding was too offensively
+177
+
+intimate, because they had never said a word to each other. She destroyed it by
+speaking to him.
+"Why do you always stare at me?" she asked sharply.
+She thought with relief that words were the best means of estrangement. She had
+denied everything they both knew by naming it. For a moment, he stood silently,
+looking at her. She felt terror at the thought that he would not answer, that he
+would let his silence tell her too clearly why no answer was necessary. But he
+answered. He said:
+"For the same reason you’ve been staring at me."
+"I don’t know what you’re talking about."
+"If you didn’t, you’d be much more astonished and much less angry, Miss
+Francon."
+"So you know my name?"
+"You’ve been advertising it loudly enough."
+"You’d better not be insolent. I can have you fired at a moment’s notice, you
+know."
+He turned his head, looking for someone among the men below. He asked: "Shall I
+call the superintendent?"
+She smiled contemptuously.
+"No, of course not. It would be too simple. But since you know who I am, it
+would be better if you stopped looking at me when I come here. It might be
+misunderstood."
+"I don’t think so."
+She turned away. She had to control her voice. She looked over the stone ledges.
+She asked: "Do you find it very hard to work here?"
+"Yes. Terribly."
+"Do you get tired?"
+"Inhumanly."
+"How does that feel?"
+"I can hardly walk when the day’s ended. I can’t move my arms at night. When I
+lie in bed, I can count every muscle in my body to the number of separate,
+different pains."
+She knew suddenly that he was not telling her about himself; he was speaking of
+her, he was saying the things she wanted to hear and telling her that he knew
+why she wanted to hear these particular sentences.
+She felt anger, a satisfying anger because it was cold and certain. She felt
+also a desire to let her skin touch his; to let the length of her bare arm press
+against the length of his; just that; the desire went no further.,
+178
+
+She was asking calmly:
+"You don’t belong here, do you? You don’t talk like a worker. What were you
+before?"
+"An electrician. A plumber. A plasterer. Many things."
+"Why are you working here?"
+"For the money you’re paying me, Miss Francon."
+She shrugged. She turned and walked away from him up the path. She knew that he
+was looking after her. She did not glance back. She continued on her way through
+the quarry, and she left it as soon as she could, but she did not go back down
+the path where she would have to see him again.
+
+2.
+DOMINIQUE awakened each morning to the prospect of a day made significant by the
+existence of a goal to be reached: the goal of making it a day on which she
+would not go to the quarry.
+She had lost the freedom she loved. She knew that a continuous struggle against
+the compulsion of a single desire was compulsion also, but it was the form she
+preferred to accept. It was the only manner in which she could let him motivate
+her life. She found a dark satisfaction in pain--because that pain came from
+him.
+She went to call on he distant neighbors, a wealthy, gracious family who had
+bored her in New York; she had visited no one all summer. They were astonished
+and delighted to see her. She sat among a group of distinguished people at the
+edge of a swimming pool. She watched the air of fastidious elegance around her.
+She watched the deference of these people’s manner when they spoke to her. She
+glanced at her own reflection in the pool: she looked more delicately austere
+than any among them.
+And she thought, with a vicious thrill, of what these people would do if they
+read her mind in this moment; if they knew that she was thinking of a man in a
+quarry, thinking of his body with a sharp intimacy as one does not think of
+another’s body but only of one’s own. She smiled; the cold purity of her face
+prevented them from seeing the nature of that smile. She came back again to
+visit these people--for the same of such thoughts in the presence of their
+respect for her.
+One evening, a guest offered to drive her back to her house. He was an eminent
+young poet. He was pale and slender; he had a soft, sensitive mouth, and eyes
+hurt by the whole universe. She had not noticed the wistful attention with which
+he had watched her for a long time. As they drove through the twilight she saw
+him leaning hesitantly closer to her. She heard his voice whispering the
+pleading, incoherent things she had heard from many men. He stopped the car. She
+felt his lips pressed to her shoulder.
+She jerked away from him. She sat still for an instant, because she would have
+to brush against him if she moved and she could not bear to touch him. Then she
+flung the door open, she leaped out, she slammed the door behind her as if the
+crash of sound could wipe him out of existence, and she ran blindly. She stopped
+running after a while, and she walked on shivering, walked down the dark road
+179
+
+until she saw the roof line of her own house.
+She stopped, looking about her with her first coherent thought of astonishment.
+Such incidents had happened to her often in the past; only then she had been
+amused; she had felt no revulsion; she had felt nothing.
+She walked slowly across the lawn, to the house. On the stairs to her room she
+stopped. She thought of the man in the quarry. She thought, in clear, formed
+words, that the man in the quarry wanted her. She had known it before; she had
+known it with his first glance at her. But she had never stated the knowledge to
+herself.
+She laughed. She looked about her, at the silent splendor of her house. The
+house made the words preposterous. She knew that would never happen to her. And
+she knew the kind of suffering she could impose on him.
+For days she walked with satisfaction through the rooms of her house. It was her
+defense. She heard the explosions of blasting from the quarry and smiled.
+But she felt too certain and the house was too safe. She felt a desire to
+underscore the safety by challenging it.
+She chose the marble slab in front of the fireplace in her bedroom. She wanted
+it broken. She knelt, hammer in hand, and tried to smash the marble. She pounded
+it, her thin arm sweeping high over her head, crashing down with ferocious
+helplessness. She felt the pain in the bones of her arms, in her shoulder
+sockets. She succeeded in making a long scratch across the marble.
+She went to the quarry. She saw him from a distance and walked straight to him.
+"Hello," she said casually.
+He stopped the drill. He leaned against a stone shelf. He answered:
+"Hello."
+"I have been thinking of you," she said softly, and stopped, then added, her
+voice flowing on in the same tone of compelling invitation, "because there’s a
+bit of a dirty job to be done at my house. Would you like to make some extra
+money?"
+"Certainly, Miss Francon."
+"Will you come to my house tonight? The way to the servants’ entrance is off
+Ridgewood Road. There’s a marble piece at a fireplace that’s broken and has to
+be replaced. I want you to take it out and order a new one made for me."
+She expected anger and refusal. He asked:
+"What time shall I come?"
+"At seven o’clock. What are you paid here?"
+"Sixty-two cents an hour."
+"I’m sure you’re worth that. I’m quite willing to pay you at the same rate. Do
+you know how to find my house?"
+"No, Miss Francon."
+180
+
+"Just ask anyone in the village to direct you."
+"Yes, Miss Francon."
+She walked away, disappointed. She felt that their secret understanding was
+lost; he had spoken as if it were a simple job which she could have offered to
+any other workman. Then she felt the sinking gasp inside, that feeling of shame
+and pleasure which he always gave her: she realized that their understanding had
+been more intimate and flagrant than ever--in his natural acceptance of an
+unnatural offer; he had shown her how much he knew--by his lack of astonishment.
+She asked her old caretaker and his wife to remain in the house that evening.
+Their diffident presence completed the picture of a feudal mansion. She heard
+the bell of the servants’ entrance at seven o’clock. The old woman escorted him
+to the great front hall where Dominique stood on the landing of a broad
+stairway.
+She watched him approaching, looking up at her. She held the pose long enough to
+let him suspect that it was a deliberate pose deliberately planned; she broke it
+at the exact moment before he could become certain of it. She said: "Good
+evening." Her voice was austerely quiet.
+He did not answer, but inclined his head and walked on up the stairs toward her.
+He wore his work clothes and he carried a bag of tools. His movements had a
+swift, relaxed kind of energy that did not belong here, in her house, on the
+polished steps, between the delicate, rigid banisters. She had expected him to
+seem incongruous in her house; but it was the house that seemed incongruous
+around him.
+She moved one hand, indicating the door of her bedroom. He followed obediently.
+He did not seem to notice the room when he entered. He entered it as if it were
+a workshop. He walked straight to the fireplace.
+"There it is," she said, one finger pointing to the marble slab.
+He said nothing. He knelt, took a thin metal wedge from his bag, held its point
+against the scratch on the slab, took a hammer and struck one blow. The marble
+split in a long, deep cut.
+He glanced up at her. It was the look she dreaded, a look of laughter that could
+not be answered, because the laughter could not be seen, only felt. He said:
+"Now it’s broken and has to be replaced."
+She asked calmly:
+"Would you know what kind of marble this is and where to order another piece
+like it?"
+"Yes, Miss Francon."
+"Go ahead, then. Take it out."
+"Yes, Miss Francon."
+She stood watching him. It was strange to feel a senseless necessity to watch
+the mechanical process of the work as if her eyes were helping it. Then she knew
+that she was afraid to look at the room around them. She made herself raise her
+181
+
+head.
+She saw the shelf of her dressing table, its glass edge like a narrow green
+satin ribbon in the semidarkness, and the crystal containers; she saw a pair of
+white bedroom slippers, a pale blue towel on the floor by a mirror, a pair of
+stockings thrown over the arm of a chair; she saw the white satin cover of her
+bed. His shirt had damp stains and gray patches of stone dust; the dust made
+streaks on the skin of his arms. She felt as if each object in the room had been
+touched by him, as if the air were a heavy pool of water into which they had
+been plunged together, and the water that touched him carried the touch to her,
+to every object in the room. She wanted him to look up. He worked, without
+raising his head.
+She approached him and stood silently over him. She had never stood so close to
+him before. She looked down at the smooth skin on the back of his neck; she
+could distinguish single threads of his hair. She glanced down at the tip of her
+sandal. It was there, on the floor, an inch away from his body; she needed but
+one movement, a very slight movement of her foot, to touch him. She made a step
+back.
+He moved his head, but not to look up, only to pick another tool from the bag,
+and bent over his work again.
+She laughed aloud. He stopped and glanced at her.
+"Yes?" he asked.
+Her face was grave, her voice gentle when she answered:
+"Oh, I’m sorry. You might have thought that I was laughing at you. But I wasn’t,
+of course."
+She added:
+"I didn’t want to disturb you. I’m sure you’re anxious to finish and get out of
+here. I mean, of course, because you must be tired. But then, on the other hand,
+I’m paying you by the hour, so it’s quite all right if you stretch your time a
+little, if you want to make more out of it. There must be things you’d like to
+talk about."
+"Oh, yes, Miss Francon."
+"Well?"
+"I think this is an atrocious fireplace."
+"Really? This house was designed by my father."
+"Yes, of course, Miss Francon."
+"There’s no point in your discussing the work of an architect."
+"None at all."
+"Surely we could choose some other subject."
+"Yes, Miss Francon."
+She moved away from him. She sat down on the bed, leaning back on straight arms,
+182
+
+her legs crossed and pressed close together in a long, straight line. Her body,
+sagging limply from her shoulders, contradicted the inflexible precision of the
+legs; the cold austerity of her face contradicted the pose of her body.
+He glanced at her occasionally, as he worked. He was speaking obediently. He was
+saying:
+"I shall make certain to get a piece of marble of precisely the same quality,
+Miss Francon. It is very important to distinguish between the various kinds of
+marble. Generally speaking, there are three kinds. The white marbles, which are
+derived from the recrystallization of limestone, the onyx marbles which are
+chemical deposits of calcium carbonate, and the green marbles which consist
+mainly of hydrous magnesium silicate or serpentine. This last must not be
+considered as true marble. True marble is a metamorphic form of limestone,
+produced by heat and pressure. Pressure is a powerful factor. It leads to
+consequences which, once started, cannot be controlled."
+"What consequences?" she asked, leaning forward.
+"The recrystallization of the particles of limestone and the infiltration of
+foreign elements from the surrounding soil. These constitute the colored streaks
+which are to be found in most marbles. Pink marble is caused by the presence of
+manganese oxides, gray marble is due to carbonaceous matter, yellow marble is
+attributed to a hydrous oxide of iron. This piece here is, of course, white
+marble. There are a great many varieties of white marble. You should be very
+careful, Miss Francon..."
+She sat leaning forward, gathered into a dim black huddle; the lamp light fell
+on one hand she had dropped limply on her knees, palm up, the fingers
+half-closed, a thin edge of fire outlining each finger, the dark cloth of her
+dress making the hand too naked and brilliant.
+"...to make certain that I order a new piece of precisely the same quality. It
+would not be advisable, for instance, to substitute a piece of white Georgia
+marble which is not as fine-grained as the white marble of Alabama. This is
+Alabama marble. Very high grade. Very expensive."
+He saw her hand close and drop down, out of the light. He continued his work in
+silence.
+When he had finished, he rose, asking:
+"Where shall I put the stone?"
+"Leave it there. I’ll have it removed."
+"I’ll order a new piece cut to measure and delivered to you C.O.D. Do you wish
+me to set it?"
+"Yes, certainly. I’ll let you know when it comes. How much do I owe you?" She
+glanced at a clock on her bedside table. "Let me see, you’ve been here three
+quarters of an hour. That’s forty-eight cents." She reached for her bag, she
+took out the dollar bill, she handed it to him. "Keep the change," she said.
+She hoped he would throw it back in her face. He slipped the bill into his
+pocket. He said:
+"Thank you, Miss Francon."
+183
+
+He saw the edge of her long black sleeve trembling over her closed fingers.
+"Good night," she said, her voice hollow in anger.
+He bowed: "Good night, Miss Francon."
+He turned and walked down the stairs, out of the house.
+She stopped thinking of him. She thought of the piece of marble he had ordered.
+She waited for it to come, with the feverish intensity of a sudden mania; she
+counted the days; she watched the rare trucks on the road beyond the lawn.
+She told herself fiercely that she merely wanted the marble to come; just that;
+nothing else, no hidden reasons; no reasons at all. It was a last, hysterical
+aftermath; she was free of everything else. The stone would come and that would
+be the end.
+When the stone came, she barely glanced at it. The delivery truck had not left
+the grounds, when she was at her desk, writing a note on a piece of exquisite
+stationery. She wrote:
+#
+"The marble is here. I want it set tonight."
+#
+She sent her caretaker with the note to the quarry. She ordered it delivered to:
+"I don’t know his name. The redheaded workman who was here."
+The caretaker came back and brought her a scrap torn from a brown paper bag,
+bearing in pencil:
+#
+"You’ll have it set tonight."
+#
+She waited, in the suffocating emptiness of impatience, at the window of her
+bedroom. The servants’ entrance bell rang at seven o’clock. There was a knock at
+her door. "Come in," she snapped--to hide the strange sound of her own voice.
+The door opened and the caretaker’s wife entered, motioning for someone to
+follow. The person who followed was a short, squat, middle-aged Italian with bow
+legs, a gold hoop in one ear and a frayed hat held respectfully in both hands.
+"The man sent from the quarry, Miss Francon," said the caretaker’s wife.
+Dominique asked, her voice not a scream and not a question:
+"Who are you?"
+"Pasquale Orsini," the man answered obediently, bewildered.
+"What do you want?"
+"Well, I...Well, Red down at the quarry said fireplace gotta be fixed, he said
+you wanta I fix her."
+"Yes. Yes, of course," she said, rising. "I forgot. Go ahead."
+She had to get out of the room. She had to run, not to be seen by anyone, not to
+be seen by herself if she could escape it.
+184
+
+She stopped somewhere in the garden and stood trembling, pressing her fists
+against her eyes. It was anger. It was a pure, single emotion that swept
+everything clean; everything but the terror under the anger; terror, because she
+knew that she could not go near the quarry now and that she would go.
+It was early evening, many days later, when she went to the quarry. She returned
+on horseback from a long ride through the country, and she saw the shadows
+lengthening on the lawn; she knew that she could not live through another night.
+She had to get there before the workers left. She wheeled about. She rode to the
+quarry, flying, the wind cutting her cheeks.
+He was not there when she reached the quarry. She knew at once that he was not
+there, even though the workers were just leaving and a great many of them were
+filing down the paths from the stone bowl. She stood, her lips tight, and she
+looked for him. But she knew that he had left.
+She rode into the woods. She flew at random between walls of leaves that melted
+ahead in the gathering twilight. She stopped, broke a long, thin branch off a
+tree, tore the leaves off, and went on, using the flexible stick as a whip,
+lashing her horse to fly faster. She felt as if the speed would hasten the
+evening on, force the hours ahead to pass more quickly, let her leap across time
+to catch the coming morning before it came. And then she saw him walking alone
+on the path before her.
+She tore ahead. She caught up with him and stopped sharply, the jolt throwing
+her forward then back like the release of a spring. He stopped.
+They said nothing. They looked at each other. She thought that every silent
+instant passing was a betrayal; this wordless encounter was too eloquent, this
+recognition that no greeting was necessary.
+She asked, her voice flat:
+"Why didn’t you come to set the marble?"
+"I didn’t think it would make any difference to you who came. Or did it, Miss
+Francon?"
+She felt the words not as sounds, but as a blow flat against her mouth. The
+branch she held went up and slashed across his face. She started off in the
+sweep of the same motion.
+#
+Dominique sat at the dressing table in her bedroom. It was very late. There was
+no sound in the vast, empty house around her. The french windows of the bedroom
+were open on a terrace and there was no sound of leaves in the dark garden
+beyond.
+The blankets on her bed were turned down, waiting for her, the pillow white
+against the tall, black windows. She thought she would try to sleep. She had not
+seen him for three days. She ran her hands over her head, the curves of her
+palms pressing against the smooth planes of hair. She pressed her fingertips,
+wet with perfume, to the hollows of her temples, and held them there for a
+moment; she felt relief in the cold, contracting bite of the liquid on her skin.
+A spilled drop of perfume remained on the glass of the dressing table, a drop
+sparkling like a gem and as expensive.
+She did not hear the sound of steps in the garden. She heard them only when they
+185
+
+rose up the stairs to the terrace. She sat up, frowning. She looked at the
+french windows.
+He came in. He wore his work clothes, the dirty shirt with rolled sleeves, the
+trousers smeared with stone dust. He stood looking at her. There was no laughing
+understanding in his face. His face was drawn, austere in cruelty, ascetic in
+passion, the cheeks sunken, the lips pulled down, set tight. She jumped to her
+feet, she stood, her arms thrown back, her fingers spread apart. He did not
+move. She saw a vein of his neck rise, beating, and fall down again.
+Then he walked to her. He held her as if his flesh had cut through hers and she
+felt the bones of his arms on the bones of her ribs, her legs jerked tight
+against his, his mouth on hers.
+She did not know whether the jolt of terror shook her first and she thrust her
+elbows at his throat, twisting her body to escape, or whether she lay still in
+his arms, in the first instant, in the shock of feeling his skin against hers,
+the thing she had thought about, had expected, had never known to be like this,
+could not have known, because this was not part of living, but a thing one could
+not bear longer than a second.
+She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that
+had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He
+moved one hand, took her two wrists, pinned them behind her, under his arm,
+wrenching her shoulder blades. She twisted her head back. She felt his lips on
+her breast. She tore herself free.
+She fell back against the dressing table, she stood crouching, her hands
+clasping the edge behind her, her eyes wide, colorless, shapeless in terror. He
+was laughing. There was the movement of laughter on his face, but no sound.
+Perhaps he had released her intentionally. He stood, his legs apart, his arms
+hanging at his sides, letting her be more sharply aware of his body across the
+space between them than she had been in his arms. She looked at the door behind
+him, he saw the first hint of movement, no more than a thought of leaping toward
+that door. He extended his arm, not touching her, and fell back. Her shoulders
+moved faintly, rising. He took a step forward and her shoulders fell. She
+huddled lower, closer to the table. He let her wait. Then he approached. He
+lifted her without effort. She let her teeth sink into his hand and felt blood
+on the tip of her tongue. He pulled her head back and he forced her mouth open
+against his.
+She fought like an animal. But she made no sound. She did not call for help. She
+heard the echoes of her blows in a gasp of his breath, and she knew that it was
+a gasp of pleasure. She reached for the lamp on the dressing table. He knocked
+the lamp out of her hand. The crystal burst to pieces in the darkness.
+He had thrown her down on the bed and she felt the blood beating in her throat,
+in her eyes, the hatred, the helpless terror in her blood. She felt the hatred
+and his hands; his hands moving over her body, the hands that broke granite. She
+fought in a last convulsion. Then the sudden pain shot up, through her body, to
+her throat, and she screamed. Then she lay still.
+It was an act that could be performed in tenderness, as a seal of love, or in
+contempt, as a symbol of humiliation and conquest. It could be the act of a
+lover or the act of a soldier violating an enemy woman. He did it as an act of
+scorn. Not as love, but as defilement. And this made her lie still and submit.
+One gesture of tenderness from him--and she would have remained cold, untouched
+by the thing done to her body. But the act of a master taking shameful,
+contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she had wanted. Then she
+186
+
+felt him shaking with the agony of a pleasure unbearable even to him, she knew
+that she had given that to him, that it came from her, from her body, and she
+bit her lips and she knew what he had wanted her to know.
+He lay still across the bed, away from her, his head hanging back over the edge.
+She heard the slow, ending gasps of his breath. She lay on her back, as he had
+left her, not moving, her mouth open. She felt empty, light and flat.
+She saw him get up. She saw his silhouette against the window. He went out,
+without a word or a glance at her. She noticed that, but it did not matter. She
+listened blankly to the sound of his steps moving away in the garden.
+She lay still for a long time. Then she moved her tongue in her open mouth. She
+heard a sound that came from somewhere within her, and it was the dry, short,
+sickening sound of a sob, but she was not crying, her eyes were held paralyzed,
+dry and open. The sound became motion, a jolt running down her throat to her
+stomach. It flung her up, she stood awkwardly, bent over, her forearms pressed
+to her stomach. She heard the small table by the bed rattling in the darkness,
+and she looked at it, in empty astonishment that a table should move without
+reason. Then she understood that she was shaking. She was not frightened; it
+seemed foolish to shake like that, in short, separate jerks, like soundless
+hiccoughs. She thought she must take a bath. The need was unbearable, as if she
+had felt it for a long time. Nothing mattered, if only she would take a bath.
+She dragged her feet slowly to the door of her bathroom.
+She turned the light on in the bathroom. She saw herself in a tall mirror. She
+saw the purple bruises left on her body by his mouth. She heard a moan muffled
+in her throat, not very loud. It was not the sight, but the sudden flash of
+knowledge. She knew that she would not take a bath. She knew that she wanted to
+keep the feeling of his body, the traces of his body on hers, knowing also what
+such a desire implied. She fell on her knees, clasping the edge of the bathtub.
+She could not make herself crawl over that edge. Her hands slipped, she lay
+still on the floor. The tiles were hard and cold under her body. She lay there
+till morning.
+Roark awakened in the morning and thought that last night had been like a point
+reached, like a stop in the movement of his life. He was moving forward for the
+sake of such stops; like the moments when he had walked through the
+half-finished Heller house; like last night. In some unstated way, last night
+had been what building was to him; in some quality of reaction within him, in
+what it gave to his consciousness of existence.
+They had been united in an understanding beyond the violence, beyond the
+deliberate obscenity of his action; had she meant less to him, he would not have
+taken her as he did; had he meant less to her, she would not have fought so
+desperately. The unrepeatable exultation was in knowing that they both
+understood this.
+He went to the quarry and he worked that day as usual. She did not come to the
+quarry and he did not expect her to come. But the thought of her remained. He
+watched it with curiosity. It was strange to be conscious of another person’s
+existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without
+qualifications, neither pleasant nor painful, merely final like an ultimatum. It
+was important to know that she existed in the world; it was important to think
+of her, of how she had awakened this morning, of how she moved, with her body
+still his, now his forever, of what she thought.
+That evening, at dinner in the sooted kitchen, he opened a newspaper and saw the
+name of Roger Enright in the lines of a gossip column. He read the short
+187
+
+paragraph:
+"It looks like another grand project on its way to the wastebasket. Roger
+Enright, the oil king, seems to be stumped this time. He’ll have to call a halt
+to his latest pipe dream of an Enright House. Architect trouble, we are told.
+Seems as if half a dozen of the big building boys have been shown the gate by
+the unsatisfiable Mr. Enright. Top-notchers, all of them."
+Roark felt the wrench he had tried so often to fight, not to let it hurt him too
+much: the wrench of helplessness before the vision of what he could do, what
+should have been possible and was closed to him. Then, without reason, he
+thought of Dominique Francon. She had no relation to the things in his mind; he
+was shocked only to know that she could remain present even among these things.
+A week passed. Then, one evening, he found a letter waiting for him at home. It
+had been forwarded from his former office to his last New York address, from
+there to Mike, from Mike to Connecticut. The engraved address of an oil company
+on the envelope meant nothing to him. He opened the letter. He read:
+#
+"Dear Mr. Roark,
+"I have been endeavoring for some time to get in touch with you, but have been
+unable to locate you. Please communicate with me at your earliest convenience. I
+should like to discuss with you my proposed Enright House, if you are the man
+who built the Fargo Store.
+"Sincerely yours,
+"Roger Enright."
+#
+Half an hour later Roark was on a train. When the train started moving, he
+remembered Dominique and that he was leaving her behind. The thought seemed
+distant and unimportant. He was astonished only to know that he still thought of
+her, even now.
+#
+She could accept, thought Dominique, and come to forget in time everything that
+had happened to her, save one memory: that she had found pleasure in the thing
+which had happened, that he had known it, and more: that he had known it before
+he came to her and that he would not have come but for that knowledge. She had
+not given him the one answer that would have saved her: an answer of simple
+revulsion--she had found joy in her revulsion, in her terror and in his
+strength. That was the degradation she had wanted and she hated him for it.
+She found a letter one morning, waiting for her on the breakfast table. It was
+from Alvah Scarret. "...When are you coming back, Dominique? I can’t tell you
+how much we miss you here. You’re not a comfortable person to have around, I’m
+actually scared of you, but I might as well inflate your inflated ego some more,
+at a distance, and confess that we’re all waiting for you impatiently. It will
+be like the homecoming of an Empress."
+She read it and smiled. She thought, if they knew...those people...that old life
+and that awed reverence before her person...I’ve been raped...I’ve been raped by
+some redheaded hoodlum from a stone quarry....I, Dominique Francon....Through
+the fierce sense of humiliation, the words gave her the same kind of pleasure
+she had felt in his arms.
+She thought of it when she walked through the countryside, when she passed
+188
+
+people on the road and the people bowed to her, the chatelaine of the town. She
+wanted to scream it to the hearing of all.
+She was not conscious of the days that passed. She felt content in a strange
+detachment, alone with the words she kept repeating to herself. Then, one
+morning, standing on the lawn in her garden, she understood that a week had
+passed and that she had not seen him for a week. She turned and walked rapidly
+across the lawn to the road. She was going to the quarry.
+She walked the miles to the quarry, down the road, bareheaded in the sun. She
+did not hurry. It was not necessary to hurry. It was inevitable. To see him
+again....She had no purpose. The need was too great to name a
+purpose....Afterward...There were other things, hideous, important things behind
+her and rising vaguely in her mind, but first, above all, just one thing: to see
+him again...
+She came to the quarry and she looked slowly, carefully, stupidly about her,
+stupidly because the enormity of what she saw would not penetrate her brain: she
+saw at once that he was not there. The work was in full swing, the sun was high
+over the busiest hour of the day, there was not an idle man in sight, but he was
+not among the men. She stood, waiting numbly, for a long time.
+Then she saw the foreman and she motioned for him to approach.
+"Good afternoon, Miss Francon....Lovely day, Miss Francon, isn’t it? Just like
+the middle of summer again and yet fall’s not far away, yes, fall’s coming, look
+at the leaves, Miss Francon."
+She asked:
+"There was a man you had here...a man with very bright orange hair...where is
+he?"
+"Oh yes. That one. He’s gone."
+"Gone?"
+"Quit. Left for New York, I think. Very suddenly too."
+"When? A week ago?"
+"Why, no. Just yesterday."
+"Who was..."
+Then she stopped. She was going to ask: "Who was he?" She asked instead:
+"Who was working here so late last night? I heard blasting."
+"That was for a special order for Mr. Francon’s building. The Cosmo-Slotnick
+Building, you know. A rash job."
+"Yes...I see...."
+"Sorry it disturbed you, Miss Francon."
+"Oh, not at all...."
+She walked away. She would not ask for his name. It was her last chance of
+189
+
+freedom.
+She walked swiftly, easily, in sudden relief. She wondered why she had never
+noticed that she did not know his name and why she had never asked him. Perhaps
+because she had known everything she had to know about him from that first
+glance. She thought, one could not find some nameless worker in the city of New
+York. She was safe. If she knew his name, she would be on her way to New York
+now.
+The future was simple. She had nothing to do except never to ask for his name.
+She had a reprieve. She had a chance to fight. She would break it--or it would
+break her. If it did, she would ask for his name.
+
+3.
+WHEN Peter Keating entered the office, the opening of the door sounded like a
+single high blast on a trumpet. The door flew forward as if it had opened of
+itself to the approach of a man before whom all doors were to open in such
+manner.
+His day in the office began with the newspapers. There was a neat pile of them
+waiting, stacked on his desk by his secretary. He liked to see what new mentions
+appeared in print about the progress of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building or the firm
+of Francon & Keating.
+There were no mentions in the papers this morning, and Keating frowned. He saw,
+however, a story about Ellsworth M. Toohey. It was a startling story. Thomas L.
+Foster, noted philanthropist, had died and had left, among larger bequests, the
+modest sum of one hundred thousand dollars to Ellsworth M. Toohey, "my friend
+and spiritual guide--in appreciation of his noble mind and true devotion to
+humanity." Ellsworth M. Toohey had accepted the legacy and had turned it over,
+intact, to the "Workshop of Social Study," a progressive institute of learning
+where he held the post of lecturer on "Art as a Social Symptom." He had given
+the simple explanation that he "did not believe in the institution of private
+inheritance." He had refused all further comment. "No, my friends," he had said,
+"not about this." And had added, with his charming knack for destroying the
+earnestness of his own moment: "I like to indulge in the luxury of commenting
+solely upon interesting subjects. I do not consider myself one of these."
+Peter Keating read the story. And because he knew that it was an action which he
+would never have committed, he admired it tremendously.
+Then he thought, with a familiar twinge of annoyance, that he had not been able
+to meet Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey had left on a lecture tour shortly after the
+award in the Cosmo-Slotnick competition, and the brilliant gatherings Keating
+had attended ever since were made empty by the absence of the one man he’d been
+most eager to meet. No mention of Keating’s name had appeared in Toohey’s
+column. Keating turned hopefully, as he did each morning, to "One Small Voice"
+in the Banner. But "One Small Voice" was subtitled "Songs and Things" today, and
+was devoted to proving the superiority of folk songs over any other forms of
+musical art, and of choral singing over any other manner of musical rendition.
+Keating dropped the Banner. He got up and paced viciously across the office,
+because he had to turn now to a disturbing problem. He had been postponing it
+for several mornings. It was the matter of choosing a sculptor for the
+Cosmo-Slotnick Building. Months ago the commission for the giant statue of
+"Industry" to stand in the main lobby of the building had been
+190
+
+awarded--tentatively--to Steven Mallory. The award had puzzled Keating, but it
+had been made by Mr. Slotnick, so Keating had approved of it. He had interviewed
+Mallory and said: "...in recognition of your unusual ability...of course you
+have no name, but you will have, after a commission like this...they don’t come
+every day like this building of mine."
+He had not liked Mallory. Mallory’s eyes were like black holes left after a fire
+not quite put out, and Mallory had not smiled once. He was twenty-four years
+old, had had one show of his work, but not many commissions. His work was
+strange and too violent. Keating remembered that Ellsworth Toohey had said once,
+long ago, in "One Small Voice."
+"Mr. Mallory’s human figures would have been very fine were it not for the
+hypothesis that God created the world and the human form. Had Mr. Mallory been
+entrusted with the job, he might, perhaps, have done better than the Almighty,
+if we are to judge by what he passes as human bodies in stone. Or would he?"
+Keating had been baffled by Mr. Slotnick’s choice, until he heard that Dimples
+Williams had once lived in the same Greenwich Village tenement with Steven
+Mallory, and Mr. Slotnick could refuse nothing to Dimples Williams at the
+moment. Mallory had been hired, had worked and had submitted a model of his
+statue of "Industry." When he saw it, Keating knew that the statue would look
+like a raw gash, like a smear of fire in the neat elegance of his lobby. It was
+a slender naked body of a man who looked as if he could break through the steel
+plate of a battleship and through any barrier whatever. It stood like a
+challenge. It left a strange stamp on one’s eyes. It made the people around it
+seem smaller and sadder than usual. For the first time in his life, looking at
+that statue, Keating thought he understood what was meant by the word "heroic."
+He said nothing. But the model was sent on to Mr. Slotnick and many people said,
+with indignation, what Keating had felt. Mr. Slotnick asked him to select
+another sculptor and left the choice in his hands.
+Keating flopped down in an armchair, leaned back and clicked his tongue against
+his palate. He wondered whether he should give the commission to Bronson, the
+sculptor who was a friend of Mrs. Shupe, wife of the president of Cosmo; or to
+Palmer, who had been recommended by Mr. Huseby who was planning the erection of
+a new five-million-dollar cosmetic factory. Keating discovered that he liked
+this process of hesitation; he held the fate of two men and of many potential
+others; their fate, their work, their hope, perhaps even the amount of food in
+their stomachs. He could choose as he pleased, for any reason, without reasons;
+he could flip a coin, he could count them off on the buttons of his vest. He was
+a great man--by the grace of those who depended on him.
+Then he noticed the envelope.
+It lay on top of a pile of letters on his desk. It was a plain, thin, narrow
+envelope, but it bore the small masthead of the Banner in one corner. He reached
+for it hastily. It contained no letter; only a strip of proofs for tomorrow’s
+Banner. He saw the familiar "One Small Voice" by Ellsworth M. Toohey, and under
+it a single word as subtitle, in large, spaced letters, a single word, blatant
+in its singleness, a salute by dint of omission:
+#
+"KEATING"
+#
+He dropped the paper strip and seized it again and read, choking upon great
+unchewed hunks of sentences, the paper trembling in his hand, the skin on his
+forehead drawing into tight pink spots. Toohey had written:
+191
+
+#
+"Greatness is an exaggeration, and like all exaggerations of dimension it
+connotes at once the necessary corollary of emptiness. One thinks of an inflated
+toy balloon, does one not? There are, however, occasions when we are forced to
+acknowledge the promise of an approach--brilliantly close--to what we designate
+loosely by the term of greatness. Such a promise is looming on our architectural
+horizon in the person of a mere boy named Peter Keating.
+"We have heard a great deal--and with justice--about the superb Cosmo-Slotnick
+Building which he has designed. Let us glance, for once, beyond the building, at
+the man whose personality is stamped upon it.
+"There is no personality stamped upon that building--and in this, my friend,
+lies the greatness of the personality. It is the greatness of a selfless young
+spirit that assimilates all things and returns them to the world from which they
+came, enriched by the gentle brilliance of its own talent. Thus a single man
+comes to represent, not a lone freak, but the multitude of all men together, to
+embody the reach of all aspirations in his own....
+"...Those gifted with discrimination will be able to hear the message which
+Peter Keating addresses to us in the shape of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, to
+see that the three simple, massive ground floors are the solid bulk of our
+working classes which support all of society; that the rows of identical windows
+offering their panes to the sun are the souls of the common people, of the
+countless anonymous ones alike in the uniformity of brotherhood, reaching for
+the light; that the graceful pilasters rising from their firm base in the ground
+floors and bursting into the gay effervescence of their Corinthian capitals, are
+the flowers of Culture which blossom only when rooted in the rich soil of the
+broad masses....
+"...In answer to those who consider all critics as fiends devoted solely to the
+destruction of sensitive talent, this column wishes to thank Peter Keating for
+affording us the rare--oh, so rare!--opportunity to prove our delight in our
+true mission, which is to discover young talent--when it is there to be
+discovered. And if Pete Keating should chance to read these lines, we expect no
+gratitude from him. The gratitude is ours."
+#
+It was when Keating began to read the article for the third time that he noticed
+a few lines written in red pencil across the space by its title:
+#
+"Dear Peter Keating,
+"Drop in to see me at my office one of these days. Would love to discover what
+you look like.
+"E.M.T."
+#
+He let the clipping flutter down to his desk, and he stood over it, running a
+strand of hair between his fingers, in a kind of happy stupor. Then he whirled
+around to his drawing of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, that hung on the wall
+between a huge photograph of the Parthenon and one of the Louvre. He looked at
+the pilasters of his building. He had never thought of them as Culture flowering
+from out of the broad masses, but he decided that one could very well think that
+and all the rest of the beautiful stuff.
+Then he seized the telephone, he spoke to a high, flat voice which belonged to
+192
+
+Ellsworth Toohey’s secretary, and he made an appointment to see Toohey at
+four-thirty of the next afternoon.
+In the hours that followed, his daily work assumed a new relish. It was as if
+his usual activity had been only a bright, flat mural and had now become a noble
+bas-relief, pushed forward, given a three-dimensional reality by the words of
+Ellsworth Toohey.
+Guy Francon descended from his office once in a while, for no ascertainable
+purpose. The subtler shades of his shirts and socks matched the gray of his
+temples. He stood smiling benevolently in silence. Keating flashed past him in
+the drafting room and acknowledged his presence, not stopping, but slowing his
+steps long enough to plant a crackling bit of newspaper into the folds of the
+mauve handkerchief in Francon’s breast-pocket, with "Read that when you have
+time, Guy." He added, his steps halfway across the next room: "Want to have
+lunch with me today, Guy? Wait for me at the Plaza."
+When he came back from lunch, Keating was stopped by a young draftsman who
+asked, his voice high with excitement:
+"Say, Mr. Keating, who’s it took a shot at Ellsworth Toohey?"
+Keating managed to gasp out:
+"Who is it did what?"
+"Shot Mr. Toohey."
+"Who?"
+"That’s what I want to know, who."
+"Shot...Ellsworth Toohey?"
+"That’s what I saw in the paper in the restaurant a guy had. Didn’t have time to
+get one."
+"He’s...killed?"
+"That’s what I don’t know. Saw only it said about a shot."
+"If he’s dead, does that mean they won’t publish his column tomorrow?"
+"Dunno. Why, Mr. Keating?"
+"Go get me a paper."
+"But I’ve got to..."
+"Get me that paper, you damned idiot!"
+The story was there, in the afternoon papers. A shot had been fired at Ellsworth
+Toohey that morning, as he stepped out of his car in front of a radio station
+where he was to deliver an address on "The Voiceless and the Undefended." The
+shot had missed him. Ellsworth Toohey had remained calm and sane throughout. His
+behavior had been theatrical only in too complete an absence of anything
+theatrical. He had said: "We cannot keep a radio audience waiting," and had
+hurried on upstairs to the microphone where, never mentioning the incident, he
+delivered a half-hour’s speech from memory, as he always did. The assailant had
+193
+
+said nothing when arrested.
+Keating stared--his throat dry--at the name of the assailant. It was Steven
+Mallory.
+Only the inexplicable frightened Keating, particularly when the inexplicable
+lay, not in tangible facts, but in that causeless feeling of dread within him.
+There was nothing to concern him directly in what had happened, except his wish
+that it had been someone else, anyone but Steven Mallory; and that he didn’t
+know why he should wish this.
+Steven Mallory had remained silent. He had given no explanation of his act. At
+first, it was supposed that he might have been prompted by despair at the loss
+of his commission for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, since it was learned that he
+lived in revolting poverty. But it was learned, beyond any doubt, that Ellsworth
+Toohey had had no connection whatever with his loss. Toohey had never spoken to
+Mr. Slotnick about Steven Mallory. Toohey had not seen the statue of "Industry."
+On this point Mallory had broken his silence to admit that he had never met
+Toohey nor seen him in person before, nor known any of Toohey’s friends. "Do you
+think that Mr. Toohey was in some way responsible for your losing that
+commission?" he was asked. Mallory had answered: "No."
+"Then why?" Mallory said nothing.
+Toohey had not recognized his assailant when he saw him seized by policemen on
+the sidewalk outside the radio station. He did not learn his name until after
+the broadcast. Then, stepping out of the studio into an anteroom full of waiting
+newsmen, Toohey said: "No, of course I won’t press any charges. I wish they’d
+let him go. Who is he, by the way?" When he heard the name, Toohey’s glance
+remained fixed somewhere between the shoulder of one man and the hat brim of
+another. Then Toohey--who had stood calmly while a bullet struck an inch from
+his face against the glass of the entrance door below--uttered one word and the
+word seemed to fall at his feet, heavy with fear: "Why?"
+No one could answer. Presently, Toohey shrugged, smiled, and said: "If it was an
+attempt at free publicity--well, what atrocious taste!" But nobody believed this
+explanation, because all felt that Toohey did not believe it either. Through the
+interviews that followed, Toohey answered questions gaily. He said: "I had never
+thought myself important enough to warrant assassination. It would be the
+greatest tribute one could possibly expect--if it weren’t so much in the style
+of an operetta." He managed to convey the charming impression that nothing of
+importance had happened because nothing of importance ever happened on earth.
+Mallory was sent to jail to await trial. All efforts to question him failed.
+The thought that kept Keating uneasily awake for many hours, that night, was the
+groundless certainty that Toohey felt exactly as he did. He knows, thought
+Keating, and I know, that there is--in Steven Mallory’s motive--a greater danger
+than in his murderous attempt. But we shall never know his motive. Or shall
+we?...And then he touched the core of fear: it was the sudden wish that he might
+be guarded, through the years to come, to the end of his life, from ever
+learning that motive.
+#
+Ellsworth Toohey’s secretary rose in a leisurely manner, when Keating entered,
+and opened for him the door into Ellsworth Toohey’s office.
+Keating had grown past the stage of experiencing anxiety at the prospect of
+meeting a famous man, but he experienced it in the moment when he saw the door
+194
+
+opening under her hand. He wondered what Toohey really looked like. He
+remembered the magnificent voice he had heard in the lobby of the strike
+meeting, and he imagined a giant of a man, with a rich mane of hair, perhaps
+just turning gray, with bold, broad features of an ineffable benevolence,
+something vaguely like the countenance of God the Father.
+"Mr. Peter Keating--Mr. Toohey," said the secretary and closed the door behind
+him.
+At a first glance upon Ellsworth Monkton Toohey one wished to offer him a heavy,
+well-padded overcoat--so frail and unprotected did his thin little body appear,
+like that of a chicken just emerging from the egg, in all the sorry fragility of
+unhardened bones. At a second glance one wished to be sure that the overcoat
+should be an exceedingly good one--so exquisite were the garments covering that
+body. The lines of the dark suit followed frankly the shape within it,
+apologizing for nothing: they sank with the concavity of the narrow chest, they
+slid down from the long, thin neck with the sharp slope of the shoulders. A
+great forehead dominated the body. The wedge-shaped face descended from the
+broad temples to a small, pointed chin. The hair was black, lacquered, divided
+into equal halves by a thin white line. This made the skull look tight and trim,
+but left too much emphasis to the ears that flared out in solitary nakedness,
+like the handles of a bouillon cup. The nose was long and thin, prolonged by the
+small dab of a black mustache. The eyes were dark and startling. They held such
+a wealth of intellect and of twinkling gaiety that his glasses seemed to be worn
+not to protect his eyes but to protect other men from their excessive
+brilliance.
+"Hello, Peter Keating," said Ellsworth Monkton Toohey in his compelling, magical
+voice. "What do you think of the temple of Nike Apteros?"
+"How...do you do, Mr. Toohey," said Keating, stopped, stupefied. "What do I
+think...of what?"
+"Sit down, my friend. Of the temple of Nike Apteros."
+"Well...Well...I..."
+"I feel certain that you couldn’t have overlooked that little gem. The Parthenon
+has usurped the recognition which--and isn’t that usually the case? the bigger
+and stronger appropriating all the glory, while the beauty of the
+unprepossessing goes unsung--which should have been awarded to that magnificent
+little creation of the great free spirit of Greece. You’ve noted, I’m sure, the
+fine balance of its mass, the supreme perfection of its modest proportions--ah,
+yes, you know, the supreme in the modest--the delicate craftsmanship of detail?"
+"Yes, of course," muttered Keating, "that’s always been my favorite--the temple
+of Nike Apteros."
+"Really?" said Ellsworth Toohey, with a smile which Keating could not quite
+classify. "I was certain of it. I was certain you’d say it. You have a very
+handsome face, Peter Keating, when you don’t stare like this--which is really
+quite unnecessary."
+And Toohey was laughing suddenly, laughing quite obviously, quite insultingly,
+at Keating and at himself; it was as if he were underscoring the falseness of
+the whole procedure. Keating sat aghast for an instant; and then he found
+himself laughing easily in answer, as if at home with a very old friend.
+"That’s better," said Toohey. "Don’t you find it advisable not to talk too
+195
+
+seriously in an important moment? And this might be a very important moment--who
+knows?--for both of us. And, of course, I knew you’d be a little afraid of me
+and--oh, I admit--I was quite a bit afraid of you, so isn’t this much better?"
+"Oh, yes, Mr. Toohey," said Keating happily. His normal assurance in meeting
+people had vanished; but he felt at ease, as if all responsibility were taken
+away from him and he did not have to worry about saying the right things,
+because he was being led gently into saying them without any effort on his part.
+"I’ve always known it would be an important moment when I met you, Mr. Toohey.
+Always. For years."
+"Really?" said Ellsworth Toohey, the eyes behind the glasses attentive. "Why?"
+"Because I’d always hoped that I would please you, that you’d approve of me...of
+my work...when the time came...why, I even..."
+"Yes?"
+"...I even thought, so often, when drawing, is this the kind of building that
+Ellsworth Toohey would say is good? I tried to see it like that, through your
+eyes...I...I’ve..." Toohey listened watchfully. "I’ve always wanted to meet you
+because you’re such a profound thinker and a man of such cultural distinc--"
+"Now," said Toohey, his voice kindly but a little impatient; his interest had
+dropped on that last sentence. "None of that. I don’t mean to be ungracious, but
+we’ll dispense with that sort of thing, shall we? Unnatural as this may sound, I
+really don’t like to hear personal praise."
+It was Toohey’s eyes, thought Keating, that put him at ease. There was such a
+vast understanding in Toohey’s eyes and such an unfastidious kindness--no, what
+a word to think of--such an unlimited kindness. It was as if one could hide
+nothing from him, but it was not necessary to hide it, because he would forgive
+anything. They were the most unaccusing eyes that Keating had ever seen.
+"But, Mr. Toohey," he muttered, "I did want to..."
+"You wanted to thank me for my article," said Toohey and made a little grimace
+of gay despair. "And here I’ve been trying so hard to prevent you from doing it.
+Do let me get away with it, won’t you? There’s no reason why you should thank
+me. If you happened to deserve the things I said--well, the credit belongs to
+you, not to me. Doesn’t it?"
+"But I was so happy that you thought I’m..."
+"...a great architect? But surely, my boy, you knew that. Or weren’t you quite
+sure? Never quite sure of it?"
+"Well, I..."
+It was only a second’s pause. And it seemed to Keating that this pause was all
+Toohey had wanted to hear from him; Toohey did not wait for the rest, but spoke
+as if he had received a full answer, and an answer that pleased him.
+"And as for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, who can deny that it’s an extraordinary
+achievement? You know, I was greatly intrigued by its plan. It’s a most
+ingenious plan. A brilliant plan. Very unusual. Quite different from what I have
+observed in your previous work. Isn’t it?"
+"Naturally," said Keating, his voice clear and hard for the first time, "the
+196
+
+problem was different from anything I’d done before, so I worked out that plan
+to fit the particular requirements of the problem."
+"Of course," said Toohey gently. "A beautiful piece of work. You should be proud
+of it."
+Keating noticed that Toohey’s eyes stood centered in the middle of the lenses
+and the lenses stood focused straight on his pupils, and Keating knew suddenly
+that Toohey knew he had not designed the plan of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building.
+This did not frighten him. What frightened him was that he saw approval in
+Toohey’s eyes.
+"If you must feel--no, not gratitude, gratitude is such an embarrassing
+word--but, shall we say, appreciation?" Toohey continued, and his voice had
+grown softer, as if Keating were a fellow conspirator who would know that the
+words used were to be, from now on, a code for a private meaning, "you might
+thank me for understanding the symbolic implications of your building and for
+stating them in words as you stated them in marble. Since, of course, you are
+not just a common mason, but a thinker in stone."
+"Yes," said Keating, "that was my abstract theme, when I designed the
+building--the great masses and the flowers of culture. I’ve always believed that
+true culture springs from the common man. But I had no hope that anyone would
+ever understand me."
+Toohey smiled. His thin lips slid open, his teeth showed. He was not looking at
+Keating. He was looking down at his own hand, the long, slender, sensitive hand
+of a concert pianist, moving a sheet of paper on the desk. Then he said:
+"Perhaps we’re brothers of the spirit, Keating. The human spirit. That is all
+that matters in life"--not looking at Keating, but past him, the lenses raised
+flagrantly to a line over Keating’s face.
+And Keating knew that Toohey knew he had never thought of any abstract theme
+until he’d read that article, and more: that Toohey approved again. When the
+lenses moved slowly to Keating’s face, the eyes were sweet with affection, an
+affection very cold and very real. Then Keating felt as if the walls of the room
+were moving gently in upon him, pushing him into a terrible intimacy, not with
+Toohey, but with some unknown guilt. He wanted to leap to his feet and run. He
+sat still, his mouth half open.
+And without knowing what prompted him, Keating heard his own voice in the
+silence:
+"And I did want to say how glad I was that you escaped that maniac’s bullet
+yesterday, Mr. Toohey."
+"Oh?...Oh, thanks. That? Well! Don’t let it upset you. Just one of the minor
+penalties one pays for prominence in public life."
+"I’ve never liked Mallory. A strange sort of person. Too tense. I don’t like
+people who’re tense. I’ve never liked his work either."
+"Just an exhibitionist. Won’t amount to much."
+"It wasn’t my idea, of course, to give him a try. It was Mr. Slotnick’s. Pull,
+you know. But Mr. Slotnick knew better in the end."
+"Did Mallory ever mention my name to you?"
+197
+
+"No. Never."
+"I haven’t even met him, you know. Never saw him before. Why did he do it?"
+And then it was Toohey who sat still, before what he saw on Keating’s face;
+Toohey, alert and insecure for the first time. This was it, thought Keating,
+this was the bond between them, and the bond was fear, and more, much more than
+that, but fear was the only recognizable name to give it. And he knew, with
+unreasoning finality, that he liked Toohey better than any man he had ever met.
+"Well, you know how it is," said Keating brightly, hoping that the commonplace
+he was about to utter would close the subject. "Mallory is an incompetent and
+knows it and he decided to take it out on you as a symbol of the great and the
+able."
+But instead of a smile, Keating saw the shot of Toohey’s sudden glance at him;
+it was not a glance, it was a fluoroscope, he thought he could feel it crawling
+searchingly inside his bones. Then Toohey’s face seemed to harden, drawing
+together again in composure, and Keating knew that Toohey had found relief
+somewhere, in his bones or in his gaping, bewildered face, that some hidden
+immensity of ignorance within him had given Toohey reassurance. Then Toohey said
+slowly, strangely, derisively:
+"You and I, we’re going to be great friends, Peter."
+Keating let a moment pass before he caught himself to answer hastily:
+"Oh, I hope so, Mr. Toohey!"
+"Really, Peter! I’m not as old as all that, am I? ’Ellsworth’ is the monument to
+my parents’ peculiar taste in nomenclature."
+"Yes...Ellsworth."
+"That’s better. I really don’t mind the name, when compared to some of the
+things I’ve been called privately--and publicly--these many years. Oh, well.
+Flattering. When one makes enemies one knows that one’s dangerous where it’s
+necessary to be dangerous. There are things that must be destroyed--or they’ll
+destroy us. We’ll see a great deal of each other, Peter." The voice was smooth
+and sure now, with the finality of a decision tested and reached, with the
+certainty that never again would anything in Keating be a question mark to him.
+"For instance, I’ve been thinking for some time of getting together a few young
+architects--I know so many of them--just an informal little organization, to
+exchange ideas, you know, to develop a spirit of co-operation, to follow a
+common line of action for the common good of the profession if necessity arises.
+Nothing as stuffy as the A.G.A. Just a youth group. Think you’d be interested?"
+"Why, of course! And you’d be the chairman?"
+"Oh dear, no. I’m never chairman of anything, Peter. I dislike titles. No, I
+rather thought you’d make the right chairman for us, can’t think of anyone
+better."
+"Me?"
+"You, Peter. Oh, well, it’s only a project--nothing definite--just an idea I’ve
+been toying with in odd moments. We’ll talk about it some other time. There’s
+something I’d like you to do--and that’s really one of the reasons why I wanted
+to meet you,"
+198
+
+"Oh, sure, Mr. Too--sure, Ellsworth. Anything I can do for you..."
+"It’s not for me. Do you know Lois Cook?"
+"Lois...who?"
+"Cook. You don’t. But you will. That young woman is the greatest literary genius
+since Goethe. You must read her, Peter. I don’t suggest that as a rule except to
+the discriminating. She’s so much above the heads of the middle-class who love
+the obvious. She’s planning to build a house. A little private residence on the
+Bowery. Yes, on the Bowery. Just like Lois. She’s asked me to recommend an
+architect. I’m certain that it will take a person like you to understand a
+person like Lois. I’m going to give her your name--if you’re interested in what
+is to be a small, though quite costly, residence."
+"But of course! That’s...very kind of you, Ellsworth! You know, I thought when
+you said...and when I read your note, that you wanted--well, some favor from me,
+you know, a good turn for a good turn, and here you’re..."
+"My dear Peter, how naive you are!"
+"Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t have said that! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend
+you, I..."
+"I don’t mind. You must learn to know me better. Strange as it may sound, a
+totally selfless interest in one’s fellow men is possible in this world, Peter."
+Then they talked about Lois Cook and her three published works--"Novels? No,
+Peter, not exactly novels....No, not collections of stories either...that’s just
+it, just Lois Cook--a new form of literature entirely..."--about the fortune she
+had inherited from a long line of successful tradesmen, and about the house she
+planned to build.
+It was only when Toohey had risen to escort Keating to the door--and Keating
+noted how precariously erect he stood on his very small feet--that Toohey paused
+suddenly to say:
+"Incidentally, it seems to me as if I should remember some personal connection
+between us, though for the life of me I can’t quite place...oh, yes, of course.
+My niece. Little Catherine."
+Keating felt his face tighten, and knew he must not allow this to be discussed,
+but smiled awkwardly instead of protesting.
+"I understand you’re engaged to her?"
+"Yes."
+"Charming," said Toohey. "Very charming. Should enjoy being your uncle. You love
+her very much?"
+"Yes," said Keating. "Very much."
+The absence of stress in his voice made the answer solemn. It was, laid before
+Toohey, the first bit of sincerity and of importance within Keating’s being.
+"How pretty," said Toohey. "Young love. Spring and dawn and heaven and drugstore
+chocolates at a dollar and a quarter a box. The prerogative of the gods and of
+199
+
+the movies....Oh, I do approve, Peter. I think it’s lovely. You couldn’t have
+made a better choice than Catherine. She’s just the kind for whom the world is
+well lost--the world with all its problems and all its opportunities for
+greatness--oh, yes, well lost because she’s innocent and sweet and pretty and
+anemic."
+"If you’re going to..." Keating began, but Toohey smiled with a luminous sort of
+kindliness.
+"Oh, Peter, of course I understand. And I approve. I’m a realist. Man has always
+insisted on making an ass of himself. Oh, come now, we must never lose our sense
+of humor. Nothing’s really sacred but a sense of humor. Still, I’ve always loved
+the tale of Tristan and Isolde. It’s the most beautiful story ever told--next to
+that of Mickey and Minnie Mouse."
+
+4.
+"...TOOTHBRUSH in the jaw toothbrush brush brush tooth jaw foam dome in the foam
+Roman dome come home home in the jaw Rome dome tooth toothbrush toothpick
+pickpocket socket rocket..."
+Peter Keating squinted his eyes, his glance unfocused as for a great distance,
+but put the book down. The book was thin and black, with scarlet letters
+forming: Clouds and Shrouds by Lois Cook. The jacket said that it was a record
+of Miss Cook’s travels around the world.
+Keating leaned back with a sense of warmth and well-being. He liked this book.
+It had made the routine of his Sunday morning breakfast a profound spiritual
+experience; he was certain that it was profound, because he didn’t understand
+it.
+Peter Keating had never felt the need to formulate abstract convictions. But he
+had a working substitute. "A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not
+great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its
+bottom"--this had always been his credo, unstated and unquestioned. This spared
+him any attempt to reach, reason or see; and it cast a nice reflection of scorn
+on those who made the attempt. So he was able to enjoy the work of Lois Cook. He
+felt uplifted by the knowledge of his own capacity to respond to the abstract,
+the profound, the ideal. Toohey had said: "That’s just it, sound as sound, the
+poetry of words as words, style as a revolt against style. But only the fines’
+spirit can appreciate it, Peter." Keating thought he could talk of this book to
+his friends, and if they did not understand he would know that he was superior
+to them. He would not need to explain that superiority--that’s just it,
+"superiority as superiority"--automatically denied to those who asked for
+explanations. He loved the book.
+He reached for another piece of toast. He saw, at the end of the table, left
+there for him by his mother, the heavy pile of the Sunday paper. He picked it
+up, feeling strong enough, in this moment, in the confidence of his secret
+spiritual grandeur, to face the whole world contained in that pile. He pulled
+out the rotogravure section. He stopped. He saw the reproduction of a drawing:
+the Enright House by Howard Roark.
+He did not need to see the caption or the brusque signature in the corner of the
+sketch; he knew that no one else had conceived that house and he knew the manner
+of drawing, serene and violent at once, the pencil lines like high-tension wires
+on the paper, slender and innocent to see, but not to be touched. It was a
+200
+
+structure on a broad space by the East River. He did not grasp it as a building,
+at first glance, but as a rising mass of rock crystal. There was the same
+severe, mathematical order holding together a free, fantastic growth; straight
+lines and clean angles, space slashed with a knife, yet in a harmony of
+formation as delicate as the work of a jeweler; an incredible variety of shapes,
+each separate unit unrepeated, but leading inevitably to the next one and to the
+whole; so that the future inhabitants were to have, not a square cage out of a
+square pile of cages, but each a single house held to the other houses like a
+single crystal to the side of a rock. Keating looked at the sketch. He had known
+for a long time that Howard Roark had been chosen to build the Enright House. He
+had seen a few mentions of Roark’s name in the papers; not much, all of it to be
+summed up only as "some young architect chosen by Mr. Enright for some reason,
+probably an interesting young architect." The caption under the drawing
+announced that the construction of the project was to begin at once. Well,
+thought Keating, and dropped the paper, so what? The paper fell beside the black
+and scarlet book. He looked at both. He felt dimly as if Lois Cook were his
+defense against Howard Roark. "What’s that, Petey?" his mother’s voice asked
+behind him. He handed the paper to her over his shoulder. The paper fell past
+him back to the table in a second. "Oh," shrugged Mrs. Keating. "Huh..." She
+stood beside him. Her trim silk dress was fitted too tightly, revealing the
+solid rigidity of her corset; a small pin glittered at her throat, small enough
+to display ostentatiously that it was made of real diamonds. She was like the
+new apartment into which they had moved: conspicuously expensive. The
+apartment’s decoration had been Keating’s first professional job for himself. It
+had been furnished in fresh, new mid-Victorian. It was conservative and stately.
+Over the fireplace in the drawing room hung a large old painting of what was not
+but looked like an illustrious ancestor.
+"Petey sweetheart, I do hate to rush you on a Sunday morning, but isn’t it time
+to dress up? I’ve got to run now and I’d hate you to forget the time and be
+late, it’s so nice of Mr. Toohey asking you to his house!"
+"Yes, Mother."
+"Any famous guests coming too?"
+"No. No guests. But there will be one other person there. Not famous." She
+looked at him expectantly. He added: "Katie will be there."
+The name seemed to have no effect on her whatever. A strange assurance had
+coated her lately, like a layer of fat through which that particular question
+could penetrate no longer.
+"Just a family tea," he emphasized. "That’s what he said."
+"Very nice of him. I’m sure Mr. Toohey is a very intelligent man."
+"Yes, Mother."
+He rose impatiently and went to his room.
+#
+It was Keating’s first visit to the distinguished residential hotel where
+Catherine and her uncle had moved recently. He did not notice much about the
+apartment, beyond remembering that it was simple, very clean and smartly modest,
+that it contained a great number of books and very few pictures, but these
+authentic and precious. One never remembered the apartment of Ellsworth Toohey,
+only its host. The host, on this Sunday afternoon, wore a dark gray suit,
+correct as a uniform, and bedroom slippers of black patent leather trimmed with
+201
+
+red; the slippers mocked the severe elegance of the suit, yet completed the
+elegance as an audacious anticlimax. He sat in a broad, low chair and his face
+wore an expression of cautious gentleness, so cautious that Keating and
+Catherine felt, at times, as if they were insignificant soap bubbles.
+Keating did not like the way Catherine sat on the edge of a chair, hunched, her
+legs drawn awkwardly together. He wished she would not wear the same suit for
+the third season, but she did. She kept her eyes on one point somewhere in the
+middle of the carpet. She seldom looked at Keating. She never looked at her
+uncle. Keating found no trace of that joyous admiration with which she had
+always spoken of Toohey, which he had expected to see her display in his
+presence. There was something heavy and colorless about Catherine, and very
+tired.
+Toohey’s valet brought in the tea tray.
+"You will pour, won’t you please, my dear?" said Toohey to Catherine. "Ah,
+there’s nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses,
+historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to
+civilization--this tea ritual and the detective novel. Catherine, my dear, do
+you have to grasp that pot handle as if it were a meat axe? But never mind, it’s
+charming, it’s really what we love you for, Peter and I, we wouldn’t love you if
+you were graceful as a duchess--who wants a duchess nowadays?"
+Catherine poured the tea and spilled it on the glass table top, which she had
+never done before.
+"I did want to see you two together for once," said Toohey, holding a delicate
+cup balanced nonchalantly. "Perfectly silly of me, isn’t it? There’s really
+nothing to make an occasion of, but then I’m silly and sentimental at times,
+like all of us. My compliments on your choice, Catherine. I owe you an apology,
+I never suspected you of such good taste. You and Peter make a wonderful couple.
+You’ll do a great deal for him. You’ll cook his Cream of Wheat, launder his
+handkerchiefs and bear his children, though of course the children will all have
+measles at one time or another, which is a nuisance."
+"But, after all, you...you do approve of it?" Keating asked anxiously.
+"Approve of it? Of what, Peter?"
+"Of our marriage...eventually."
+"What a superfluous question, Peter! Of course, I approve of it. But how young
+you are! That’s the way of young people--they make an issue where none exists.
+You asked that as if the whole thing were important enough to disapprove of."
+"Katie and I met seven years ago," said Keating defensively. "And it was love at
+first sight of course?"
+"Yes," said Keating and felt himself being ridiculous. "It must have been
+spring," said Toohey. "It usually is. There’s always a dark movie theater, and
+two people lost to the world, their hands clasped together--but hands do
+perspire when held too long, don’t they? Still, it’s beautiful to be in love.
+The sweetest story ever told--and the tritest. Don’t turn away like that,
+Catherine. We must never allow ourselves to lose our sense of humor."
+He smiled. The kindliness of his smile embraced them both. The kindliness was so
+great that it made their love seem small and mean, because only something
+contemptible could evoke such immensity of compassion. He asked:
+202
+
+"Incidentally, Peter, when do you intend to get married?"
+"Oh, well...we’ve never really set a definite date, you know how it’s been, all
+the things happening to me and now Katie has this work of hers and...And, by the
+way," he added sharply, because that matter of Katie’s work irritated him
+without reason, "when we’re married, Katie will have to give that up. I don’t
+approve of it."
+"But of course," said Toohey, "I don’t approve of it either, if Catherine
+doesn’t like it."
+Catherine was working as day nursery attendant at the Clifford Settlement House.
+It had been her own idea. She had visited the settlement often with her uncle,
+who conducted classes in economics there, and she had become interested in the
+work.
+"But I do like it!" she said with sudden excitement. "I don’t see why you resent
+it, Peter!" There was a harsh little note in her voice, defiant and unpleasant.
+"I’ve never enjoyed anything so much in my life. Helping people who’re helpless
+and unhappy. I went there this morning--I didn’t have to, but I wanted to--and
+then I rushed so on my way home, I didn’t have time to change my clothes, but
+that doesn’t matter, who cares what I look like? And"--the harsh note was gone,
+she was speaking eagerly and very fast--"Uncle Ellsworth, imagine! little Billy
+Hansen had a sore throat--you remember Billy? And the nurse wasn’t there, and I
+had to swab his throat with Argyrol, the poor thing! He had the most awful white
+mucus patches down in his throat!" Her voice seemed to shine, as if she were
+speaking of great beauty. She looked at her uncle. For the first time Keating
+saw the affection he had expected. She went on speaking about her work, the
+children, the settlement. Toohey listened gravely. He said nothing. But the
+earnest attention in his eyes changed him, his mocking gaiety vanished and he
+forgot his own advice, he was being serious, very serious indeed. When he
+noticed that Catherine’s plate was empty, he offered her the sandwich tray with
+a simple gesture and made it, somehow, a gracious gesture of respect.
+Keating waited impatiently till she paused for an instant. He wanted to change
+the subject. He glanced about the room and saw the Sunday papers. This was a
+question he had wanted to ask for a long time. He asked cautiously:
+"Ellsworth...what do you think of Roark?"
+"Roark? Roark?" asked Toohey. "Who is Roark?" The too innocent, too trifling
+manner in which he repeated the name, with the faint, contemptuous question mark
+quite audible at the end, made Keating certain that Toohey knew the name well.
+One did not stress total ignorance of a subject if one were in total ignorance
+of it. Keating said:
+"Howard Roark. You know, the architect. The one who’s doing the Enright House."
+"Oh? Oh, yes, someone’s doing that Enright House at last, isn’t he?"
+"There’s a picture of it in the Chronicle today."
+"Is there? I did glance through the Chronicle."
+"And...what do you think of that building?"
+"If it were important, I should have remembered it."
+203
+
+"Of course!" Keating’s syllables danced, as if his breath caught at each one in
+passing: "It’s an awful, crazy thing! Like nothing you ever saw or want to see!"
+He felt a sense of deliverance. It was as if he had spent his life believing
+that he carried a congenital disease, and suddenly the words of the greatest
+specialist on earth had pronounced him healthy. He wanted to laugh, freely,
+stupidly, without dignity. He wanted to talk.
+"Howard’s a friend of mine," he said happily. "A friend of yours? You know him?"
+"Do I know him! Why, we went to school together--Stanton, you know--why, he
+lived at our house for three years, I can tell you the color of his underwear
+and how he takes a shower--I’ve seen him!"
+"He lived at your house in Stanton?" Toohey repeated. Toohey spoke with a kind
+of cautious precision. The sounds of his voice were small and dry and final,
+like the cracks of matches being broken.
+It was very peculiar, thought Keating. Toohey was asking him a great many
+questions about Howard Roark. But the questions did not make sense. They were
+not about buildings, they were not about architecture at all. They were
+pointless personal questions--strange to ask about a man of whom he had never
+heard before.
+"Does he laugh often?"
+"Very rarely."
+"Does he seem unhappy?"
+"Never."
+"Did he have many friends at Stanton?"
+"He’s never had any friends anywhere."
+"The boys didn’t like him?"
+"Nobody can like him."
+"Why?"
+"He makes you feel it would be an impertinence to like him."
+"Did he go out, drink, have a good time?"
+"Never."
+"Does he like money?"
+"No."
+"Does he like to be admired?"
+"No."
+"Does he believe in God?"
+"No."
+204
+
+"Does he talk much?"
+"Very little."
+"Does he listen if others discuss any...ideas with him?"
+"He listens. It would be better if he didn’t."
+"Why?"
+"It would be less insulting--if you know what I mean, when a man listens like
+that and you know it hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference to him."
+"Did he always want to be an architect?"
+"He..."
+"What’s the matter, Peter?"
+"Nothing. It just occurred to me how strange it is that I’ve never asked myself
+that about him before. Here’s what’s strange: you can’t ask that about him. He’s
+a maniac on the subject of architecture. It seems to mean so damn much to him
+that he’s lost all human perspective. He just has no sense of humor about
+himself at all--now there’s a man without a sense of humor, Ellsworth. You don’t
+ask what he’d do if he didn’t want to be an architect."
+"No," said Toohey. "You ask what he’d do if he couldn’t be an
+architect."
+"He’d walk over corpses. Any and all of them. All of us. But
+he’d be an architect."
+Toohey folded his napkin, a crisp little square of cloth on his knee; he folded
+it accurately, once across each way, and he ran his fingernail along the edges
+to make a sharp crease.
+"Do you remember our little youth group of architects, Peter?" he asked. "I’m
+making arrangements for a first meeting soon. I’ve spoken to many of our future
+members and you’d be flattered by what they said about you as our prospective
+chairman."
+They talked pleasantly for another half hour. When Keating rose to go, Toohey
+declared:
+"Oh, yes. I did speak to Lois Cook about you. You’ll hear from her shortly."
+"Thank you so much, Ellsworth. By the way, I’m reading Clouds and Shrouds."
+"And?"
+"Oh, it’s tremendous. You know, Ellsworth, it...it makes you think so
+differently about everything you’ve thought before."
+"Yes," said Toohey, "doesn’t it?"
+He stood at the window, looking out at the last sunshine of a cold, bright
+205
+
+afternoon. Then he turned and said:
+"It’s a lovely day. Probably one of the last this year. Why don’t you take
+Catherine out for a little walk, Peter?"
+"Oh, I’d love to!" said Catherine eagerly.
+"Well, go ahead." Toohey smiled gaily. "What’s the matter, Catherine? Do you
+have to wait for my permission?"
+When they walked out together, when they were alone in the cold brilliance of
+streets flooded with late sunlight, Keating felt himself recapturing everything
+Catherine had always meant to him, the strange emotion that he could not keep in
+the presence of others. He closed his hand over hers. She withdrew her hand,
+took off her glove and slipped her fingers into his. And then he thought
+suddenly that hands did perspire when held too long, and he walked faster in
+irritation. He thought that they were walking there like Mickey and Minnie Mouse
+and that they probably appeared ridiculous to the passers-by. To shake himself
+free of these thoughts he glanced down at her face. She was looking straight
+ahead at the gold light, he saw her delicate profile and the faint crease of a
+smile in the corner of her mouth, a smile of quiet happiness. But he noticed
+that the edge of her eyelid was pale and he began to wonder whether she was
+anemic.
+#
+Lois Cook sat on the floor in the middle of her living room, her legs crossed
+Turkish fashion, showing large bare knees, gray stockings rolled over tight
+garters, and a piece of faded pink drawers. Peter Keating sat on the edge of a
+violet satin chaise lounge. Never before had he felt uncomfortable at a first
+interview with a client.
+Lois Cook was thirty-seven. She had stated insistently, in her publicity and in
+private conversation, that she was sixty-four. It was repeated as a whimsical
+joke and it created about her name a vague impression of eternal youth. She was
+tall, dry, narrow-shouldered and broad-hipped. She had a long, sallow face, and
+eyes set close together. Her hair hung about her ears in greasy strands. Her
+fingernails were broken. She looked offensively unkempt, with studied
+slovenliness as careful as grooming--and for the same purpose.
+She talked incessantly, rocking back and forth on her haunches:
+"...yes, on the Bowery. A private residence. The shrine on the Bowery. I have
+the site, I wanted it and I bought it, as simple as that, or my fool lawyer
+bought it for me, you must meet my lawyer, he has halitosis. I don’t know what
+you’ll cost me, but it’s unessential, money is commonplace. Cabbage is
+commonplace too. It must have three stories and a living room with a tile
+floor."
+"Miss Cook, I’ve read Clouds and Shrouds and it was a spiritual revelation to
+me. Allow me to include myself among the few who understand the courage and
+significance of what you’re achieving single-handed while..."
+"Oh, can the crap," said Lois Cook and winked at him.
+"But I mean it!" he snapped angrily. "I loved your book. I..."
+She looked bored.
+"It is so commonplace," she drawled, "to be understood by everybody."
+206
+
+"But Mr. Toohey said..."
+"Ah, yes. Mr. Toohey." Her eyes were alert now, insolently guilty, like the eyes
+of a child who has just perpetrated some nasty little joke. "Mr. Toohey. I’m
+chairman of a little youth group of writers in which Mr. Toohey is very
+interested."
+"You are?" he said happily. It seemed to be the first direct communication
+between them. "Isn’t that interesting! Mr. Toohey is getting together a little
+youth group of architects, too, and he’s kind enough to have me in mind for
+chairman."
+"Oh," she said and winked. "One of us?"
+"Of whom?"
+He did not know what he had done, but he knew that he had disappointed her in
+some way. She began to laugh. She sat there, looking up at him, laughing
+deliberately in his face, laughing ungraciously and not gaily.
+"What the...!" He controlled himself. "What’s the matter, Miss Cook?"
+"Oh my!" she said. "You’re such a sweet, sweet boy and so pretty!"
+"Mr. Toohey is a great man," he said angrily. "He’s the most...the noblest
+personality I’ve ever..."
+"Oh, yes. Mr. Toohey is a wonderful man." Her voice was strange by omission, it
+was flagrantly devoid of respect. "My best friend. The most wonderful man on
+earth. There’s the earth and there’s Mr. Toohey--a law of nature. Besides, think
+how nicely you can rhyme it: Toohey--gooey--phooey--hooey. Nevertheless, he’s a
+saint. That’s very rare. As rare as genius. I’m a genius. I want a living room
+without windows. No windows at all, remember that when you draw up the plans. No
+windows, a tile floor and a black ceiling. And no electricity. I want no
+electricity in my house, just kerosene lamps. Kerosene lamps with chimneys, and
+candles. To hell with Thomas Edison! Who was he anyway?"
+Her words did not disturb him as much as her smile. It was not a smile, it was a
+permanent smirk raising the corners of her long mouth, making her look like a
+sly, vicious imp.
+"And, Keating, I want the house to be ugly. Magnificently ugly. I want it to be
+the ugliest house in New York."
+"The...ugliest. Miss Cook?"
+"Sweetheart, the beautiful is so commonplace!"
+"Yes, but...but I...well, I don’t see how I could permit myself to..."
+"Keating, where’s your courage? Aren’t you capable of a sublime gesture on
+occasion? They all work so hard and struggle and suffer, trying to achieve
+beauty, trying to surpass one another in beauty. Let’s surpass them all! Let’s
+throw their sweat in their face. Let’s destroy them at one stroke. Let’s be
+gods. Let’s be ugly."
+He accepted the commission. After a few weeks he stopped feeling uneasy about
+it. Wherever he mentioned this new job, he met a respectful curiosity. It was an
+207
+
+amused curiosity, but it was respectful. The name of Lois Cook was well known in
+the best drawing rooms he visited. The titles of her books were flashed in
+conversation like the diamonds in the speaker’s intellectual crown. There was
+always a note of challenge in the voices pronouncing them. It sounded as if the
+speaker were being very brave. It was a satisfying bravery; it never aroused
+antagonism. For an author who did not sell, her name seemed strangely famous and
+honored. She was the standard-bearer of a vanguard of intellect and revolt. Only
+it was not quite clear to him just exactly what the revolt was against. Somehow,
+he preferred not to know.
+He designed the house as she wished it. It was a three-floor edifice, part
+marble, part stucco, adorned with gargoyles and carriage lanterns. It looked
+like a structure from an amusement park.
+His sketch of it was reproduced in more publications than any other drawing he
+had ever made, with the exception of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. One
+commentator expressed the opinion that "Peter Keating is showing a promise of
+being more than just a bright young man with a knack for pleasing stuffy moguls
+of big business. He is venturing into the field of intellectual experimentation
+with a client such as Lois Cook." Toohey referred to the house as "a cosmic
+joke."
+But a peculiar sensation remained in Keating’s mind: the feeling of an
+aftertaste. He would experience a dim flash of it while working on some
+important structure he liked; he would experience it in the moments when he felt
+proud of his work. He could not identify the quality of the feeling; but he knew
+that part of it was a sense of shame.
+Once, he confessed it to Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey laughed. "That’s good for you,
+Peter. One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one’s own
+importance. There’s no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes."
+
+5.
+DOMINIQUE had returned to New York. She returned without purpose, merely because
+she could not stay in her country house longer than three days after her last
+visit to the quarry. She had to be in the city, it was a sudden necessity,
+irresistible and senseless. She expected nothing of the city. But she wanted the
+feeling of the streets and the buildings holding her there. In the morning, when
+she awakened and heard the muffled roar of traffic far below, the sound was a
+humiliation, a reminder of where she was and why. She stood at the window, her
+arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame; it was as if she held a
+piece of the city, all the streets and rooftops outlined on the glass between
+her two hands.
+She went out alone for long walks. She walked fast, her hands in the pockets of
+an old coat, its collar raised. She had told herself that she was not hoping to
+meet him. She was not looking for him. But she had to be out in the streets,
+blank, purposeless, for hours at a time.
+She had always hated the streets of a city. She saw the faces streaming past
+her, the faces made alike by fear--fear as a common denominator, fear of
+themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce
+upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met. She could not define
+the nature or the reason of that fear. But she had always felt its presence. She
+had kept herself clean and free in a single passion--to touch nothing. She had
+liked facing them in the streets, she had liked the impotence of their hatred,
+because she offered them nothing to be hurt.
+208
+
+She was not free any longer. Each step through the streets hurt her now. She was
+tied to him--as he was tied to every part of the city. He was a nameless worker
+doing some nameless job, lost in these crowds, dependent on them, to be hurt by
+any one of them, to be shared by her with the whole city. She hated the thought
+of him on the sidewalks people had used. She hated the thought of a clerk
+handing to him a package of cigarettes across a counter. She hated the elbows
+touching his elbows in a subway train. She came home, after these walks, shaking
+with fever. She went out again the next day.
+When the term of her vacation expired, she went to the office of the Banner in
+order to resign. Her work and her column did not seem amusing to her any longer.
+She stopped Alvah Scarret’s effusive greetings. She said: "I just came back to
+tell you that I’m quitting, Alvah." He looked at her stupidly. He uttered only:
+"Why?"
+It was the first sound from the outside world to reach her in a long time. She
+had always acted on the impulse of the moment, proud of the freedom to need no
+reasons for her actions. Now she had to face a "why?" that carried an answer she
+could not escape. She thought: Because of him, because she was letting him
+change the course of her life. It would be another violation; she could see him
+smiling as he had smiled on the path in the woods. She had no choice. Either
+course taken would be taken under compulsion: she could leave her work, because
+he had made her want to leave it, or she could remain, hating it, in order to
+keep her life unchanged, in defiance of him. The last was harder.
+She raised her head. She said: "Just a joke, Alvah. Just wanted to see what
+you’d say. I’m not quitting."
+#
+She had been back at work for a few days when Ellsworth Toohey walked into her
+office.
+"Hello, Dominique," he said. "Just heard you’re back."
+"Hello, Ellsworth."
+"I’m glad. You know, I’ve always had the feeling that you’ll walk out on us some
+morning without any reason."
+"The feeling, Ellsworth? Or the hope?"
+He was looking at her, his eyes as kindly, his smile as charming as ever; but
+there was a tinge of self-mockery in the charm, as if he knew that she did not
+approve of it, and a tinge of assurance, as if he were showing that he would
+look kindly and charming just the same.
+"You know, you’re wrong there," he said, smiling peacefully. "You’ve always been
+wrong about that."
+"No. I don’t fit, Ellsworth. Do I?"
+"I could, of course, ask: Into what? But supposing I don’t ask it. Supposing I
+just say that people who don’t fit have their uses also, as well as those who
+do? Would you like that better? Of course, the simplest thing to say is that
+I’ve always been a great admirer of yours and always will be."
+"That’s not a compliment."
+209
+
+"Somehow, I don’t think we’ll ever be enemies, Dominique, if that’s what you’d
+like."
+"No, I don’t think we’ll ever be enemies, Ellsworth. You’re the most comforting
+person I know."
+"Of course."
+"In the sense I mean?"
+"In any sense you wish."
+On the desk before her lay the rotogravure section of the Sunday Chronicle. It
+was folded on the page that bore the drawing of the Enright House. She picked it
+up and held it out to him, her eyes narrowed in a silent question. He looked at
+the drawing, then his glance moved to her face and returned to the drawing. He
+let the paper drop back on the desk.
+"As independent as an insult, isn’t it?" he said.
+"You know, Ellsworth, I think the man who designed this should have committed
+suicide. A man who can conceive a thing as beautiful as this should never allow
+it to be erected. He should not want to exist. But he will let it be built, so
+that women will hang out diapers on his terraces, so that men will spit on his
+stairways and draw dirty pictures on his walls. He’s given it to them and he’s
+made it part of them, part of everything. He shouldn’t have offered it for men
+like you to look at. For men like you to talk about. He’s defiled his own work
+by the first word you’ll utter about it. He’s made himself worse than you are.
+You’ll be committing only a mean little indecency, but he’s committed a
+sacrilege. A man who knows what he must have known to produce this should not
+have been able to remain alive."
+"Going to write a piece about this?" he asked.
+"No. That would be repeating his crime."
+"And talking to me about it?"
+She looked at him. He was smiling pleasantly.
+"Yes of course," she said, "that’s part of the same crime also."
+"Let’s have dinner together one of these days, Dominique," he said. "You really
+don’t let me see enough of you."
+"All right," she said. "Anytime you wish."
+#
+At his trial for the assault on Ellsworth Toohey, Steven Mallory refused to
+disclose his motive. He made no statement. He seemed indifferent to any possible
+sentence. But Ellsworth Toohey created a minor sensation when he appeared,
+unsolicited, in Mallory’s defense. He pleaded with the judge for leniency; he
+explained that he had no desire to see Mallory’s future and career destroyed.
+Everybody in the courtroom was touched--except Steven Mallory. Steven Mallory
+listened and looked as if he were enduring some special process of cruelty. The
+judge gave him two years and suspended the sentence.
+There was a great deal of comment on Toohey’s extraordinary generosity. Toohey
+dismissed all praise, gaily and modestly. "My friends," was his remark--the one
+210
+
+to appear in all the papers--"I refuse to be an accomplice in the manufacturing
+of martyrs."
+#
+At the first meeting of the proposed organization of young architects Keating
+concluded that Toohey had a wonderful ability for choosing people who fitted
+well together. There was an air about the eighteen persons present which he
+could not define, but which gave him a sense of comfort, a security he had not
+experienced in solitude or in any other gathering; and part of the comfort was
+the knowledge that all the others felt the same way for the same unaccountable
+reason. It was a feeling of brotherhood, but somehow not of a sainted or noble
+brotherhood; yet this precisely was the comfort--that one felt, among them, no
+necessity for being sainted or noble.
+Were it not for this kinship, Keating would have been disappointed in the
+gathering. Of the eighteen seated about Toohey’s living room, none was an
+architect of distinction, except himself and Gordon L. Prescott, who wore a
+beige turtle-neck sweater and looked faintly patronizing, but eager. Keating had
+never heard the names of the others. Most of them were beginners, young, poorly
+dressed and belligerent. Some were only draftsmen. There was one woman architect
+who had built a few small private homes, mainly for wealthy widows; she had an
+aggressive manner, a tight mouth and a fresh petunia in her hair. There was a
+boy with pure, innocent eyes. There was an obscure contractor with a fat,
+expressionless face. There was a tall, dry woman who was an interior decorator,
+and another woman of no definite occupation at all.
+Keating could not understand what exactly was to be the purpose of the group,
+though there was a great deal of talk. None of the talk was too coherent, but
+all of it seemed to have the same undercurrent. He felt that the undercurrent
+was the one thing clear among all the vague generalities, even though nobody
+would mention it. It held him there, as it held the others, and he had no desire
+to define it.
+The young men talked a great deal about injustice, unfairness, the cruelty of
+society toward youth, and suggested that everyone should have his future
+commissions guaranteed when he left college. The woman architect shrieked
+briefly something about the iniquity of the rich. The contractor barked that it
+was a hard world and that "fellows gotta help one another." The boy with the
+innocent eyes pleaded that "we could do so much good..." His voice had a note of
+desperate sincerity which seemed embarrassing and out of place. Gordon L.
+Prescott declared that the A.G.A. was a bunch of old fogies with no conception
+of social responsibility and not a drop of virile blood in the lot of them, and
+that it was time to kick them in the pants anyway. The woman of indefinite
+occupation spoke about ideals and causes, though nobody could gather just what
+these were.
+Peter Keating was elected chairman, unanimously. Gordon L. Prescott was elected
+vice-chairman and treasurer. Toohey declined all nominations. He declared that
+he would act only as an unofficial advisor. It was decided that the organization
+would be named the "Council of American Builders." It was decided that
+membership would not be restricted to architects, but would be open to "allied
+crafts" and to "all those holding the interests of the great profession of
+building at heart."
+Then Toohey spoke. He spoke at some length, standing up, leaning on the knuckles
+of one hand against a table. His great voice was soft and persuasive. It filled
+the room, but it made his listeners realize that it could have filled a Roman
+amphitheater; there was something subtly flattering in this realization, in the
+sound of the powerful voice being held in check for their benefit.
+211
+
+"...and thus, my friends, what the architectural profession lacks is an
+understanding of its own social importance. This lack is due to a double cause:
+to the anti-social nature of our entire society and to your own inherent
+modesty. You have been conditioned to think of yourselves merely as breadwinners
+with no higher purpose than to earn your fees and the means of your own
+existence. Isn’t it time, my friends, to pause and to redefine your position in
+society? Of all the crafts, yours is the most important. Important, not in the
+amount of money you might make, not in the degree of artistic skill you might
+exhibit, but in the service you render to your fellow men. You are those who
+provide mankind’s shelter. Remember this and then look at our cities, at our
+slums, to realize the gigantic task awaiting you. But to meet this challenge you
+must be armed with a broader vision of yourselves and of your work. You are not
+hired lackeys of the rich. You are crusaders in the cause of the underprivileged
+and the unsheltered. Not by what we are shall we be judged, but by those we
+serve. Let us stand united in this spirit. Let us--in all matters--be faithful
+to this new, broader, higher perspective. Let us organize--well, my friends,
+shall I say--a nobler dream?"
+Keating listened avidly. He had always thought of himself as a breadwinner bent
+upon earning his fees, in a profession he had chosen because his mother had
+wanted him to choose it. It was gratifying to discover that he was much more
+than this; that his daily activity carried a nobler significance. It was
+pleasant and it was drugging. He knew that all the others in the room felt it
+also.
+"...and when our system of society collapses, the craft of builders will not be
+swept under, it will be swept up to greater prominence and greater
+recognition..."
+The doorbell rang. Then Toohey’s valet appeared for an instant, holding the door
+of the living room open to admit Dominique Francon.
+By the manner in which Toohey stopped, on a half-uttered word, Keating knew that
+Dominique had not been invited or expected. She smiled at Toohey, shook her head
+and moved one hand in a gesture telling him to continue. He managed a faint bow
+in her direction, barely more than a movement of his eyebrows, and went on with
+his speech. It was a pleasant greeting and its informality included the guest in
+the intimate brotherhood of the occasion, but it seemed to Keating that it had
+come just one beat too late. He had never before seen Toohey miss the right
+moment.
+Dominique sat down in a corner, behind the others. Keating forgot to listen for
+a while, trying to attract her attention. He had to wait until her eyes had
+traveled thoughtfully about the room, from face to face, and stopped on his. He
+bowed and nodded vigorously, with the smile of greeting a private possession.
+She inclined her head, he saw her lashes touching her cheeks for an instant as
+her eyes closed, and then she looked at him again. She sat looking at him for a
+long moment, without smiling, as if she were rediscovering something in his
+face. He had not seen her since spring. He thought that she looked a little
+tired and lovelier than his memory of her.
+Then he turned to Ellsworth Toohey once more and he listened. The words he heard
+were as stirring as ever, but his pleasure in them had an edge of uneasiness. He
+looked at Dominique. She did not belong in this room, at this meeting. He could
+not say why, but the certainty of it was enormous and oppressive. It was not her
+beauty, it was not her insolent elegance. But something made her an outsider. It
+was as if they had all been comfortably naked, and a person had entered fully
+clothed, suddenly making them self-conscious and indecent. Yet she did nothing.
+212
+
+She sat listening attentively. Once, she leaned back, crossing her legs, and
+lighted a cigarette. She shook the flame off the match with a brusque little
+jerk of her wrist and she dropped the match into an ash tray on a table beside
+her. He saw her drop the match into the ash tray; he felt as if that movement of
+her wrist had tossed the match into all their faces. He thought that he was
+being preposterous. But he noticed that Ellsworth Toohey never looked at her as
+he spoke.
+When the meeting ended, Toohey rushed over to her.
+"Dominique, my dear!" he said brightly. "Shall I consider myself flattered?"
+"If you wish."
+"Had I known that you were interested, I would have sent you a very special
+invitation."
+"But you didn’t think I’d be interested?"
+"No, frankly, I..."
+"That was a mistake, Ellsworth. You discounted my newspaperwoman’s instinct.
+Never miss a scoop. It’s not often that one has the chance to witness the birth
+of a felony."
+"Just exactly what do you mean, Dominique?" asked Keating, his voice sharp.
+She turned to him. "Hello, Peter."
+"You know Peter Keating, of course?" Toohey smiled at her.
+"Oh, yes. Peter was in love with me once."
+"You’re using the wrong tense, Dominique," said Keating.
+"You must never take seriously anything Dominique chooses to say, Peter. She
+does not intend us to take it seriously. Would you like to join our little
+group, Dominique? Your professional qualifications make you eminently eligible."
+"No, Ellsworth. I wouldn’t like to join your little group. I really don’t hate
+you enough to do that."
+"Just why do you disapprove of it?" snapped Keating.
+"Why, Peter!" she drawled. "Whatever gave you that idea? I don’t disapprove of
+it at all. Do I, Ellsworth? I think it’s a proper undertaking in answer to an
+obvious necessity. It’s just what we all need--and deserve."
+"Can we count on your presence at our next meeting?" Toohey asked. "It is
+pleasant to have so understanding a listener who will not be in the way at
+all--at our next meeting, I mean."
+"No, Ellsworth. Thank you. It was merely curiosity. Though you do have an
+interesting group of people here. Young builders. By the way, why didn’t you
+invite that man who designed the Enright House--what’s his name?--Howard Roark?"
+Keating felt his jaw snap tight. But she looked at them innocently, she had said
+it lightly, in the tone of a casual remark--surely, he thought, she did not
+mean...what? he asked himself and added: she did not mean whatever it was he’d
+213
+
+thought for a moment she meant, whatever had terrified him in that moment.
+"I have never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Roark," Toohey answered gravely.
+"Do you know him?" Keating asked her.
+"No," she answered. "I’ve merely seen a sketch of the Enright House."
+"And?" Keating insisted. "What do you think of it?"
+"I don’t think of it," she answered.
+When she turned to leave, Keating accompanied her. He looked at her in the
+elevator, on their way down. He saw her hand, in a tight black glove, holding
+the flat corner of a pocket-book. The limp carelessness of her fingers was
+insolent and inviting at once. He felt himself surrendering to her again.
+"Dominique, why did you actually come here today?"
+"Oh, I haven’t been anywhere for a long time and I decided to start in with
+that. You know, when I go swimming I don’t like to torture myself getting into
+cold water by degrees. I dive right in and it’s a nasty shock, but after that
+the rest is not so hard to take."
+"What do you mean? What do you really see that’s so wrong with that meeting?
+After all, we’re not planning to do anything definite. We don’t have any actual
+program. I don’t even know what we were there for."
+"That’s it, Peter. You don’t even know what you were there for."
+"It’s only a group for fellows to get together. Mostly to talk. What harm is
+there in that?"
+"Peter, I’m tired."
+"Well, did your appearance tonight mean at least that you’re coming out of your
+seclusion?"
+"Yes. Just that...My seclusion?"
+"I’ve tried and tried to get in touch with you, you know."
+"Have you?"
+"Shall I begin to tell you how happy I am to see you again?"
+"No. Let’s consider that you’ve told me."
+"You know, you’ve changed, Dominique. I don’t know exactly in what way, but
+you’ve changed."
+"Have I?"
+"Let’s consider that I’ve told you how lovely you are, because I can’t find
+words to say it."
+The streets were dark. He called a cab. Sitting close to her, he turned and
+looked at her directly, his glance compelling like an open hint, hoping to make
+the silence significant between them. She did not turn away. She sat studying
+his face. She seemed to be wondering, attentive to some thought of her own which
+214
+
+he could not guess. He reached over slowly and took her hand. He felt an effort
+in her hand, he could feel through her rigid fingers the effort of her whole
+arm, not an effort to withdraw her hand, but to let him hold it. He raised the
+hand, turned it over and pressed his lips to her wrist.
+Then he looked at her face. He dropped her hand and it remained suspended in the
+air for an instant, the fingers stiff, half closed. This was not the
+indifference he remembered. This was revulsion, so great that it became
+impersonal, it could not offend him, it seemed to include more than his person.
+He was suddenly aware of her body; not in desire or resentment, but just aware
+of its presence close to him, under her dress. He whispered involuntarily:
+"Dominique, who was he?"
+She whirled to face him. Then he saw her eyes narrowing. He saw her lips
+relaxing, growing fuller, softer, her mouth lengthening slowly into a faint
+smile, without opening. She answered, looking straight at him:
+"A workman in the granite quarry."
+She succeeded; he laughed aloud.
+"Serves me right, Dominique. I shouldn’t suspect the impossible."
+"Peter, isn’t it strange? It was you that I thought I could make myself want, at
+one time."
+"Why is that strange?"
+"Only in thinking how little we know about ourselves. Some day you’ll know the
+truth about yourself too, Peter, and it will be worse for you than for most of
+us. But you don’t have to think about it. It won’t come for a long time."
+"You did want me, Dominique?"
+"I thought I could never want anything and you suited that so well."
+"I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you ever think you’re saying. I
+know that I’ll always love you. And I won’t let you disappear again. Now that
+you’re back..."
+"Now that I’m back, Peter, I don’t want to see you again. Oh, I’ll have to see
+you when we run into each other, as we will, but don’t call on me. Don’t come to
+see me. I’m not trying to offend you, Peter. It’s not that. You’ve done nothing
+to make me angry. It’s something in myself that I don’t want to face again. I’m
+sorry to choose you as the example. But you suit so well. You--Peter, you’re
+everything I despise in the world and I don’t want to remember how much I
+despise it. If I let myself remember--I’ll return to it. This is not an insult
+to you, Peter. Try to understand that. You’re not the worst of the world. You’re
+its best. That’s what’s frightening. If I ever come back to you--don’t let me
+come. I’m saying this now because I can, but if I come back to you, you won’t be
+able to stop me, and now is the only time when I can warn you."
+"I don’t know," he said in cold fury, his lips stiff, "what you’re talking
+about."
+"Don’t try to know. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just stay away from each other.
+Shall we?"
+215
+
+"I’ll never give you up."
+She shrugged. "All right, Peter. This is the only time I’ve ever been kind to
+you. Or to anyone."
+
+6.
+ROGER ENRIGHT had started life as a coal miner in Pennsylvania. On his way to
+the millions he now owned, no one had ever helped him. "That," he explained, "is
+why no one has ever stood in my way." A great many things and people had stood
+in his way, however; but he had never noticed them. Many incidents of his long
+career were not admired; none was whispered about. His career had been glaring
+and public like a billboard. He made a poor subject for blackmailers or
+debunking biographers. Among the wealthy he was disliked for having become
+wealthy so crudely.
+He hated bankers, labor unions, women, evangelists and the stock exchange. He
+had never bought a share of stock nor sold a share in any of his enterprises,
+and he owned his fortune single-handed, as simply as if he carried all his cash
+in his pocket. Besides his oil business he owned a publishing house, a
+restaurant, a radio shop, a garage, a plant manufacturing electric
+refrigerators. Before each new venture he studied the field for a long time,
+then proceeded to act as if he had never heard of it, upsetting all precedent.
+Some of his ventures were successful, others failed. He continued running them
+all with ferocious energy. He worked twelve hours a day.
+When he decided to erect a building, he spent six months looking for an
+architect. Then he hired Roark at the end of their first interview, which lasted
+half an hour. Later, when the drawings were made, he gave orders to proceed with
+construction at once. When Roark began to speak about the drawings, Enright
+interrupted him: "Don’t explain. It’s no use explaining abstract ideals to me.
+I’ve never had any ideals. People say I’m completely immoral. I go only by what
+I like. But I do know what I like."
+Roark never mentioned the attempt he had made to reach Enright, nor his
+interview with the bored secretary. Enright learned of it somehow. Within five
+minutes the secretary was discharged, and within ten minutes he was walking out
+of the office, as ordered, in the middle of a busy day, a letter left half typed
+in his machine.
+Roark reopened his office, the same big room on the top of an old building. He
+enlarged it by the addition of an adjoining room--for the draftsmen he hired in
+order to keep up with the planned lightning schedule of construction. The
+draftsmen were young and without much experience. He had never heard of them
+before and he did not ask for letters of recommendation. He chose them from
+among many applicants, merely by glancing at their drawings for a few minutes.
+In the crowded tension of the days that followed he never spoke to them, except
+of their work. They felt, entering the office in the morning, that they had no
+private lives, no significance and no reality save the overwhelming reality of
+the broad sheets of paper on their tables. The place seemed cold and soulless
+like a factory, until they looked at him; then they thought that it was not a
+factory, but a furnace fed on their bodies, his own first.
+There were times when he remained in the office all night. They found him still
+working when they returned in the morning. He did not seem tired. Once he stayed
+there for two days and two nights in succession. On the afternoon of the third
+216
+
+day he fell asleep, half lying across his table. He awakened in a few hours,
+made no comment and walked from one table to another, to see what had been done.
+He made corrections, his words sounding as if nothing had interrupted a thought
+begun some hours ago.
+"You’re unbearable when you’re working, Howard," Austen Heller told him one
+evening, even though he had not spoken of his work at all.
+"Why?" he asked, astonished.
+"It’s uncomfortable to be in the same room with you. Tension is contagious, you
+know."
+"What tension? I feel completely natural only when I’m working."
+"That’s it. You’re completely natural only when you’re one inch from bursting
+into pieces. What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it’s only a
+building. It’s not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture and sexual
+ecstasy that you seem to make of it."
+"Isn’t it?"
+#
+He did not think of Dominique often, but when he did, the thought was not a
+sudden recollection, it was the acknowledgment of a continuous presence that
+needed no acknowledgment. He wanted her. He knew where to find her. He waited.
+It amused him to wait, because he knew that the waiting was unbearable to her.
+He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and
+humiliating than his presence could enforce. He was giving her time to attempt
+an escape, in order to let her know her own helplessness when he chose to see
+her again. She would know that the attempt itself had been of his choice, that
+it had been only another form of mastery. Then she would be ready either to kill
+him or to come to him of her own will. The two acts would be equal in her mind.
+He wanted her brought to this. He waited.
+#
+The construction of the Enright House was about to begin, when Roark was
+summoned to the office of Joel Sutton. Joel Sutton, a successful businessman,
+was planning the erection of a huge office building. Joel Sutton had based his
+success on the faculty of understanding nothing about people. He loved
+everybody. His love admitted no distinctions. It was a great leveler; it could
+hold no peaks and no hollows, as the surface of a bowl of molasses could not
+hold them.
+Joe Sutton met Roark at a dinner given by Enright. Joel Sutton liked Roark. He
+admired Roark. He saw no difference between Roark and anyone else. When Roark
+came to his office, Joel Sutton declared:
+"Now I’m not sure, I’m not sure, I’m not sure at all, but I thought that I might
+consider you for that little building I have in mind. Your Enright House is sort
+of...peculiar, but it’s attractive, all buildings are attractive, love
+buildings, don’t you?--and Rog Enright is a very smart man, an exceedingly smart
+man, he coins money where nobody else’d think it grew. I’ll take a tip from Rog
+Enright any time, what’s good enough for Rog Enright is good enough for me."
+Roark waited for weeks after that first interview. Joel Sutton never made up his
+mind in a hurry.
+On an evening in December Austen Heller called on Roark without warning and
+217
+
+declared that he must accompany him next Friday to a formal party given by Mrs.
+Ralston Holcombe.
+"Hell, no, Austen," said Roark.
+"Listen, Howard, just exactly why not? Oh, I know, you hate that sort of thing,
+but that’s not a good reason. On the other hand, I can give you many excellent
+ones for going. The place is a kind of house of assignation for architects and,
+of course, you’d sell anything there is to you for a building--oh, I know, for
+your kind of building, but still you’d sell the soul you haven’t got, so can’t
+you stand a few hours of boredom for the sake of future possibilities?"
+"Certainly. Only I don’t believe that this sort of thing ever leads to any
+possibilities."
+"Will you go this time?"
+"Why particularly this time?"
+"Well, in the first place, that infernal pest Kiki Holcombe demands it. She
+spent two hours yesterday demanding it and made me miss a luncheon date. It
+spoils her reputation to have a building like the Enright House going up in town
+and not be able to display its architect in her salon. It’s a hobby. She
+collects architects. She insisted that I must bring you and I promised I would."
+"What for?"
+"Specifically, she’s going to have Joel Sutton there next Friday. Try, if it
+kills you, to be nice to him. He’s practically decided to give you that
+building, from what I hear. A little personal contact might be all that’s needed
+to set it. He’s got a lot of others after him. They’ll all be there. I want you
+there. I want you to get that building. I don’t want to hear anything about
+granite quarries for the next ten years. I don’t like granite quarries."
+Roark sat on a table, his hands clasping the table’s edge to keep himself still.
+He was exhausted after fourteen hours spent in his office, he thought he should
+be exhausted, but he could not feel it. He made his shoulders sag in an effort
+to achieve a relaxation that would not come; his arms were tense, drawn, and one
+elbow shuddered in a thin, continuous quiver. His long legs were spread apart,
+one bent and still, with the knee resting on the table, the other hanging down
+straight from the hip over the table’s edge, swinging impatiently. It was so
+difficult these days to force himself to rest.
+His new home was one large room in a small, modern apartment house on a quiet
+street. He had chosen the house because it had no cornices over the windows and
+no paneling on the walls inside. His room contained a few pieces of simple
+furniture; it looked clean, vast and empty; one expected to hear echoes from its
+corners.
+"Why not go, just once?" said Heller. "It won’t be too awful. It might even
+amuse you. You’ll see a lot of your old friends there. John Erik Snyte, Peter
+Keating, Guy Francon and his daughter--you should meet his daughter. Have you
+ever read her stuff?"
+"I’ll go," said Roark abruptly.
+"You’re unpredictable enough even to be sensible at times. I’ll call for you at
+eight-thirty Friday. Black tie. Do you own a tux, by the way?"
+218
+
+"Enright made me get one."
+"Enright is a very sensible man."
+When Heller left, Roark remained sitting on the table for a long time. He had
+decided to go to the party, because he knew that it would be the last of all
+places where Dominique could wish to meet him again.
+#
+"There is nothing as useless, my dear Kiki," said Ellsworth Toohey, "as a rich
+woman who makes herself a profession of entertaining. But then, all useless
+things have charm. Like aristocracy, for instance, the most useless conception
+of all."
+Kiki Holcombe wrinkled her nose in a cute little pout of reproach, but she liked
+the comparison to aristocracy. Three crystal chandeliers blazed over her
+Florentine ballroom, and when she looked up at Toohey the lights stood reflected
+in her eyes, making them a moist collection of sparks between heavy, beaded
+lashes.
+"You say disgusting things, Ellsworth. I don’t know why I keep on inviting you."
+"That is precisely why, my dear. I think I shall be invited here as often as I
+wish."
+"What can a mere woman do against that?"
+"Never start an argument with Mr. Toohey," said Mrs. Gillespie, a tall woman
+wearing a necklace of large diamonds, the size of the teeth she bared when she
+smiled. "It’s no use. We’re beaten in advance."
+"Argument, Mrs. Gillespie," he said, "is one of the things that has neither use
+nor charm. Leave it to the men of brains. Brains, of course, are a dangerous
+confession of weakness. It has been said that men develop brains when they have
+failed in everything else."
+"Now you don’t mean that at all," said Mrs. Gillespie, while her smile accepted
+it as a pleasant truth. She took possession of him triumphantly and led him away
+as a prize stolen from Mrs. Holcombe who had turned aside for a moment to greet
+new guests. "But you men of intellect are such children. You’re so sensitive.
+One must pamper you."
+"I wouldn’t do that, Mrs. Gillespie. We’ll take advantage of it. And to display
+one’s brain is so vulgar. It’s even more vulgar than to display one’s wealth."
+"Oh dear, you would get that in, wouldn’t you? Now of course I’ve heard that
+you’re some sort of a radical, but I won’t take it seriously. Not one bit. How
+do you like that?"
+"I like it very much," said Toohey.
+"You can’t kid me. You can’t make me think that you’re one of the dangerous
+kind. The dangerous kind are all dirty and use bad grammar. And you have such a
+beautiful voice!"
+"Whatever made you think that I aspired to be dangerous, Mrs. Gillespie? I’m
+merely--well, shall we say? that mildest of all things, a conscience. Your own
+conscience, conveniently personified in the body of another person and attending
+to your concern for the less fortunate of this world, thus leaving you free not
+219
+
+to attend to."
+"Well, what a quaint idea! I don’t know whether it’s horrible or very wise
+indeed."
+"Both, Mrs. Gillespie. As all wisdom."
+Kiki Holcombe surveyed her ballroom with satisfaction. She looked up at the
+twilight of the ceiling, left untouched above the chandeliers, and she noted how
+far it was above the guests, how dominant and undisturbed. The huge crowd of
+guests did not dwarf her hall; it stood over them like a square box of space,
+grotesquely out of scale; and it was this wasted expanse of air imprisoned above
+them that gave the occasion an aspect of regal luxury; it was like the lid of a
+jewel case, unnecessarily large over a flat bottom holding a single small gem.
+The guests moved in two broad, changing currents that drew them all, sooner or
+later, toward two whirlpools; at the center of one stood Ellsworth Toohey, of
+the other--Peter Keating. Evening clothes were not becoming to Ellsworth Toohey;
+the rectangle of white shirt front prolonged his face, stretching him out into
+two dimensions; the wings of his tie made his thin neck look like that of a
+plucked chicken, pale, bluish and ready to be twisted by a single movement of
+some strong fist. But he wore his clothes better than any man present. He wore
+them with the careless impertinence of utter ease in the unbecoming, and the
+very grotesqueness of his appearance became a declaration of his superiority, a
+superiority great enough to warrant disregard of so much ungainliness.
+He was saying to a somber young female who wore glasses and a low-cut evening
+gown: "My dear, you will never be more than a dilettante of the intellect,
+unless you submerge yourself in some cause greater than yourself."
+He was saying to an obese gentlemen with a face turning purple in the heat of an
+argument: "But, my friend, I might not like it either. I merely said that such
+happens to be the inevitable course of history. And who are you or I to oppose
+the course of history?"
+He was saying to an unhappy young architect: "No, my boy, what I have against
+you is not the bad building you designed, but the bad taste you exhibited in
+whining about my criticism of it. You should be careful. Someone might say that
+you can neither dish it out nor take it."
+He was saying to a millionaire’s widow: "Yes, I do think it would be a good idea
+if you made a contribution to the Workshop of Social Study. It would be a way of
+taking part in the great human stream of cultural achievement, without upsetting
+your routine or your digestion."
+Those around him were saying: "Isn’t he witty? And such courage!"
+Peter Keating smiled radiantly. He felt the attention and admiration flowing
+toward him from every part of the ballroom. He looked at the people, all these
+trim, perfumed, silk-rustling people lacquered with light, dripping with light,
+as they had all been dripping with shower water a few hours ago, getting ready
+to come here and stand in homage before a man named Peter Keating. There were
+moments when he forgot that he was Peter Keating and he glanced at a mirror, at
+his own figure, he wanted to join in the general admiration for it.
+Once the current left him face to face with Ellsworth Toohey. Keating smiled
+like a boy emerging from a stream on a summer day, glowing, invigorated,
+restless with energy. Toohey stood looking at him; Toohey’s hands had slipped
+negligently into his trouser pockets, making his jacket flare out over his thin
+220
+
+hips; he seemed to teeter faintly on his small feet; his eyes were attentive in
+enigmatic appraisal.
+"Now this, Ellsworth...this...isn’t it a wonderful evening?" said Keating, like
+a child to a mother who would understand, and a little like a drunk.
+"Being happy, Peter? You’re quite the sensation tonight. Little Peter seems to
+have crossed the line into a big celebrity. It happens like this, one can never
+tell exactly when or why...There’s someone here, though, who seems to be
+ignoring you quite flagrantly, doesn’t she?"
+Keating winced. He wondered when and how Toohey had had the time to notice that.
+"Oh, well," said Toohey, "the exception proves the rule. Regrettable, however.
+I’ve always had the absurd idea that it would take a most unusual man to attract
+Dominique Francon. So of course I thought of you. Just an idle thought. Still,
+you know, the man who’ll get her will have something you won’t be able to match.
+He’ll beat you there."
+"No one’s got her," snapped Keating.
+"No, undoubtedly not. Not yet. That’s rather astonishing. Oh, I suppose it will
+take an extraordinary kind of man."
+"Look here, what in hell are you doing? You don’t like Dominique Francon. Do
+you?"
+"I never said I did."
+A little later Keating heard Toohey saying solemnly in the midst of some earnest
+discussion: "Happiness? But that is so middle-class. What is happiness? There
+are so many things in life so much more important than happiness."
+Keating made his way slowly toward Dominique. She stood leaning back, as if the
+air were a support solid enough for her thin, naked shoulder blades. Her evening
+gown was the color of glass. He had the feeling that he should be able to see
+the wall behind her, through her body. She seemed too fragile to exist; and that
+very fragility spoke of some frightening strength which held her anchored to
+existence with a body insufficient for reality.
+When he approached, she made no effort to ignore him; she turned to him, she
+answered; but the monotonous precision of her answers stopped him, made him
+helpless, made him leave her in a few moments.
+When Roark and Heller entered, Kiki Holcombe met them at the door. Heller
+presented Roark to her, and she spoke as she always did, her voice like a shrill
+rocket sweeping all opposition aside by sheer speed.
+"Oh, Mr. Roark, I’ve been so eager to meet you! We’ve all heard so much about
+you! Now I must warn you that my husband doesn’t approve of you--oh, purely on
+artistic grounds, you understand--but don’t let that worry you, you have an ally
+in this household, an enthusiastic ally!"
+"It’s very kind, Mrs. Holcombe," said Roark. "And perhaps unnecessary."
+"Oh, I adore your Enright House! Of course, I can’t say that it represents my
+own esthetic convictions, but people of culture must keep their minds open to
+anything, I mean, to include any viewpoint in creative art, we must be
+broad-minded above all, don’t you think so?"
+221
+
+"I don’t know," said Roark. "I’ve never been broad-minded."
+She was certain that he intended no insolence; it was not in his voice nor his
+manner; but insolence had been her first impression of him. He wore evening
+clothes and they looked well on his tall, thin figure, but somehow it seemed
+that he did not belong in them; the orange hair looked preposterous with formal
+dress; besides, she did not like his face; that face suited a work gang or an
+army, it had no place in her drawing room. She said:
+"We’ve all been so interested in your work. Your first building?"
+"My fifth."
+"Oh, indeed? Of course. How interesting."
+She clasped her hands, and turned to greet a new arrival. Heller said:
+"Whom do you want to meet first?...There’s Dominique Francon looking at us. Come
+on."
+Roark turned; he saw Dominique standing alone across the room. There was no
+expression on her face, not even an effort to avoid expression; it was strange
+to see a human face presenting a bone structure and an arrangement of muscles,
+but no meaning, a face as a simple anatomical feature, like a shoulder or an
+arm, not a mirror of sensate perception any longer. She looked at them as they
+approached. Her feet stood posed oddly, two small triangles pointed straight and
+parallel, as if there were no floor around her but the few square inches under
+her soles and she were safe so long as she did not move or look down. He felt a
+violent pleasure, because she seemed too fragile to stand the brutality of what
+he was doing; and because she stood it so well.
+"Miss Francon, may I present Howard Roark?" said Heller.
+He had not raised his voice to pronounce the name; he wondered why it had
+sounded so stressed; then he thought that the silence had caught the name and
+held it still; but there had been no silence: Roark’s face was politely blank
+and Dominique was saying correctly:
+"How do you do, Mr. Roark."
+Roark bowed: "How do you do, Miss Francon."
+She said: "The Enright House..."
+She said it as if she had not wanted to pronounce these three words; and as if
+they named, not a house, but many things beyond it.
+Roark said: "Yes, Miss Francon."
+Then she smiled, the correct, perfunctory smile with which one greets an
+introduction. She said:
+"I know Roger Enright. He is almost a friend of the family."
+"I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting many friends of Mr. Enright."
+"I remember once Father invited him to dinner. It was a miserable dinner. Father
+is called a brilliant conversationalist, but he couldn’t bring a sound out of
+222
+
+Mr. Enright. Roger just sat there. One must know Father to realize what a defeat
+it was for him."
+"I have worked for your father"--her hand had been moving and it stopped in
+midair--"a few years ago, as a draftsman."
+Her hand dropped. "Then you can see that Father couldn’t possibly get along with
+Roger Enright."
+"No. He couldn’t."
+"I think Roger almost liked me, though, but he’s never forgiven me for working
+on a Wynand paper."
+Standing between them, Heller thought that he had been mistaken; there was
+nothing strange in this meeting; in fact, there simply was nothing. He felt
+annoyed that Dominique did not speak of architecture, as one would have expected
+her to do; he concluded regretfully that she disliked this man, as she disliked
+most people she met.
+Then Mrs. Gillespie caught hold of Heller and led him away. Roark and Dominique
+were left alone. Roark said:
+"Mr. Enright reads every paper in town. They are all brought to his office--with
+the editorial pages cut out."
+"He’s always done that. Roger missed his real vocation. He should have been a
+scientist. He has such a love for facts and such contempt for commentaries."
+"On the other hand, do you know Mr. Fleming?" he asked.
+"No."
+"He’s a friend of Heller’s. Mr. Fleming never reads anything but editorial
+pages. People like to hear him talk."
+She watched him. He was looking straight at her, very politely, as any man would
+have looked, meeting her for the first time. She wished she could find some hint
+in his face, if only a hint of his old derisive smile; even mockery would be an
+acknowledgment and a tie; she found nothing. He spoke as a stranger. He allowed
+no reality but that of a man introduced to her in a drawing room, flawlessly
+obedient to every convention of deference. She faced this respectful formality,
+thinking that her dress had nothing to hide from him, that he had used her for a
+need more intimate than the use of the food he ate--while he stood now at a
+distance of a few feet from her, like a man who could not possibly permit
+himself to come closer. She thought that this was his form of mockery, after
+what he had not forgotten and would not acknowledge. She thought that he wanted
+her to be first to name it, he would bring her to the humiliation of accepting
+the past--by being first to utter the word recalling it to reality; because he
+knew that she could not leave it unrecalled.
+"And what does Mr. Fleming do for a living?" she asked.
+"He’s a manufacturer of pencil sharpeners."
+"Really? A friend of Austen’s?"
+"Austen knows many people. He says that’s his business."
+223
+
+"Is he successful?"
+"Who, Miss Francon? I’m not sure about Austen, but Mr. Fleming is very
+successful. He has branch factories in New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode
+Island."
+"You’re wrong about Austen, Mr. Roark. He’s very successful. In his profession
+and mine you’re successful if it leaves you untouched."
+"How does one achieve that?"
+"In one of two ways: by not looking at people at all or by looking at everything
+about them."
+"Which is preferable, Miss Francon?"
+"Whichever is hardest."
+"But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in
+itself."
+"Of course, Mr. Roark. But it’s the least offensive form of confession."
+"If the weakness is there to be confessed at all."
+Then someone came flying through the crowd, and an arm fell about Roark’s
+shoulders. It was John Erik Snyte.
+"Roark, well of all people to see here!" he cried. "So glad, so glad! Ages,
+hasn’t it been? Listen, I want to talk to you! Let me have him for a moment,
+Dominique."
+Roark bowed to her, his arms at his sides, a strand of hair falling forward, so
+that she did not see his face, but only the orange head bowed courteously for a
+moment, and he followed Snyte into the crowd.
+Snyte was saying: "God, how you’ve come up these last few years! Listen, do you
+know whether Enright’s planning to go into real estate in a big way, I mean, any
+other buildings up his sleeve?"
+It was Heller who forced Snyte away and brought Roark to Joel Sutton. Joel
+Sutton was delighted. He felt that Roark’s presence here removed the last of his
+doubts; it was a stamp of safety on Roark’s person. Joel Sutton’s hand closed
+about Roark’s elbow, five pink, stubby fingers on the black sleeve. Joel Sutton
+gulped confidentially:
+"Listen, kid, it’s all settled. You’re it. Now don’t squeeze the last pennies
+out of me, all you architects are cutthroats and highway robbers, but I’ll take
+a chance on you, you’re a smart boy, snared old Rog, didn’t you? So here you’ve
+got me swindled too, just about almost, that is, I’ll give you a ring in a few
+days and we’ll have a dogfight over the contract!"
+Heller looked at them and thought that it was almost indecent to see them
+together: Roark’s tall, ascetic figure, with that proud cleanliness peculiar to
+long-lined bodies, and beside him the smiling ball of meat whose decision could
+mean so much.
+Then Roark began to speak about the future building, but Joel Sutton looked up
+at him, astonished and hurt. Joel Sutton had not come here to talk about
+224
+
+buildings; parties were given for the purpose of enjoying oneself, and what
+greater joy could there be but to forget the important things of one’s life? So
+Joel Sutton talked about badminton; that was his hobby; it was a patrician
+hobby, he explained, he was not being common like other men who wasted time on
+golf. Roark listened politely. He had nothing to say.
+"You do play badminton, don’t you?" Joel Sutton asked suddenly.
+"No," said Roark.
+"You don’t?" gulped Joel Sutton. "You don’t? Well, what a pity, oh what a rotten
+pity! I thought sure you did, with that lanky frame of yours you’d be good,
+you’d be a wow, I thought sure we’d beat the pants off of old Tompkins anytime
+while that building’s being put up."
+"While that building’s being put up, Mr. Sutton, I wouldn’t have the time to
+play anyway."
+"What d’you mean, wouldn’t have the time? What’ve you got draftsmen for? Hire a
+couple extra, let them worry, I’ll be paying you enough, won’t I? But then, you
+don’t play, what a rotten shame, I thought sure...The architect who did my
+building down on Canal Street was a whiz at badminton, but he died last year,
+got himself cracked up in an auto accident, damn him, was a fine architect, too.
+And here you don’t play."
+"Mr. Sutton, you’re not really upset about it, are you?"
+"I’m very seriously disappointed, my boy."
+"But what are you actually hiring me for?"
+"What am I what?"
+"Hiring me for?"
+"Why, to do a building of course."
+"Do you really think it would be a better building if I played badminton?"
+"Well, there’s business and there’s fun, there’s the practical and there’s the
+human end of it, oh, I don’t mind, still I thought with a skinny frame like
+yours you’d surely...but all right, all right, we can’t have everything...."
+When Joel Sutton left him, Roark heard a bright voice saying: "Congratulations,
+Howard," and turned to find Peter Keating smiling at him radiantly and
+derisively.
+"Hello, Peter. What did you say?"
+"I said, congratulations on landing Joel Sutton. Only, you know, you didn’t
+handle that very well."
+"What?"
+"Old Joel. Oh, of course, I heard most of it--why shouldn’t I?--it was very
+entertaining. That’s no way to go about it, Howard. You know what I would have
+done? I’d have sworn I’d played badminton since I was two years old and how it’s
+the game of kings and earls and it takes a soul of rare distinction to
+appreciate it and by the time he’d put me to the test I’d have made it my
+225
+
+business to play like an earl, too. What would it cost you?"
+"I didn’t think of it."
+"It’s a secret, Howard. A rare one. I’ll give it to you free of charge with my
+compliments: always be what people want you to be. Then you’ve got them where
+you want them. I’m giving it free because you’ll never make use of it. You’ll
+never know how. You’re brilliant in some respects, Howard, I’ve always said
+that--and terribly stupid in others."
+"Possibly."
+"You ought to try and learn a few things, if you’re going in for playing the
+game through the Kiki Holcombe salon. Are you? Growing up, Howard? Though it did
+give me a shock to see you here of all places. Oh, and yes, congratulations on
+the Enright job, beautiful job as usual--where have you been all summer?--remind
+me to give you a lesson on how to wear a tux, God, but it looks silly on you!
+That’s what I like, I like to see you looking silly, we’re old friends, aren’t
+we, Howard?"
+"You’re drunk, Peter."
+"Of course I am. But I haven’t touched a drop tonight, not a drop. What I’m
+drunk on--you’ll never learn, never, it’s not for you, and that’s also part of
+what I’m drunk on, that it’s not for you. You know, Howard, I love you. I really
+do. I do--tonight."
+"Yes, Peter. You always will, you know."
+Roark was introduced to many people and many people spoke to him. They smiled
+and seemed sincere in their efforts to approach him as a friend, to express
+appreciation, to display good will and cordial interest. But what he heard was:
+"The Enright House is magnificent. It’s almost as good as the Cosmo-Slotnick
+Building."
+"I’m sure you have a great future, Mr. Roark, believe me, I know the signs,
+you’ll be another Ralston Holcombe." He was accustomed to hostility; this kind
+of benevolence was more offensive than hostility. He shrugged; he thought that
+he would be out of here soon and back in the simple, clean reality of his own
+office.
+He did not look at Dominique again for the rest of the evening. She watched him
+in the crowd. She watched those who stopped him and spoke to him. She watched
+his shoulders stooped courteously as he listened. She thought that this, too,
+was his manner of laughing at her; he let her see him being delivered to the
+crowd before her eyes, being surrendered to any person who wished to own him for
+a few moments. He knew that this was harder for her to watch than the sun and
+the drill in the quarry. She stood obediently, watching. She did not expect him
+to notice her again; she had to remain there as long as he was in this room.
+There was another person, that night, abnormally aware of Roark’s presence,
+aware from the moment Roark had entered the room. Ellsworth Toohey had seen him
+enter. Toohey had never set eyes on him before and did not know him. But Toohey
+stood looking at him for a long time.
+Then Toohey moved through the crowd, and smiled at his friends. But between
+smiles and sentences, his eyes went back to the man with the orange hair. He
+looked at the man as he looked occasionally at the pavement from a window on the
+thirtieth floor, wondering about his own body were it to be hurled down and what
+226
+
+would happen when he struck against that pavement. He did not know the man’s
+name, his profession or his past; he had no need to know; it was not a man to
+him, but only a force; Toohey never saw men. Perhaps it was the fascination of
+seeing that particular force so explicitly personified in a human body.
+After a while he asked John Erik Snyte, pointing:
+"Who is that man?"
+"That?" said Snyte. "Howard Roark. You know, the Enright House."
+"Oh," said Toohey.
+"What?"
+"Of course. It would be."
+"Want to meet him?"
+"No," said Toohey. "No, I don’t want to meet him."
+For the rest of the evening whenever some figure obstructed Toohey’s view of the
+hall, his head would jerk impatiently to find Roark again. He did not want to
+look at Roark; he had to look; just as he always had to look down at that
+distant pavement, dreading the sight.
+That evening, Ellsworth Toohey was conscious of no one but Roark. Roark did not
+know that Toohey existed in the room.
+When Roark left, Dominique stood counting the minutes, to be certain that he
+would be lost to sight in the streets before she could trust herself to go out.
+Then she moved to leave.
+Kiki Holcombe’s thin, moist fingers clasped her hand in parting, clasped it
+vaguely and slipped up to hold her wrist for a moment.
+"And, my dear," asked Kiki Holcombe, "what did you think of that new one, you
+know, I saw you talking to him, that Howard Roark?"
+"I think," said Dominique firmly, "that he is the most revolting person I’ve
+ever met."
+"Oh, now, really?"
+"Do you care for that sort of unbridled arrogance? I don’t know what one could
+say for him, unless it’s that he’s terribly good-looking, if that matters."
+"Good-looking! Are you being funny, Dominique?"
+Kiki Holcombe saw Dominique being stupidly puzzled for once. And Dominique
+realized that what she saw in his face, what made it the face of a god to her,
+was not seen by others; that it could leave them indifferent; that what she had
+thought to be the most obvious, inconsequential remark was, instead, a
+confession of something within her, some quality not shared by others.
+"Why, my dear," said Kiki, "he’s not good-looking at all, but extremely
+masculine."
+"Don’t let it astonish you, Dominique," said a voice behind her. "Kiki’s
+227
+
+esthetic judgment is not yours--nor mine."
+Dominique turned. Ellsworth Toohey stood there, smiling, watching her face
+attentively.
+"You..." she began and stopped.
+"Of course," said Toohey, bowing faintly in understanding affirmative of what
+she had not said. "Do give me credit for discernment, Dominique, somewhat equal
+to yours. Though not for esthetic enjoyment. I’ll leave that part of it to you.
+But we do see things, at times, which are not obvious, don’t we--you and I?"
+"What things?"
+"My dear, what a long philosophical discussion that would take, and how
+involved, and how--unnecessary. I’ve always told you that we should be good
+friends. We have so much in common intellectually. We start from opposite poles,
+but that makes no difference, because you see, we meet in the same point. It was
+a very interesting evening, Dominique."
+"What are you driving at?"
+"For instance, it was interesting to discover what sort of thing appears
+good-looking to you. It’s nice to have you classified firmly, concretely.
+Without words--just with the aid of a certain face."
+"If...if you can see what you’re talking about, you can’t be what you are."
+"No, my dear. I must be what I am, precisely because of what I see."
+"You know, Ellsworth, I think you’re much worse than I thought you were."
+"And perhaps much worse than you’re thinking now. But useful. We’re all useful
+to one another. As you will be to me. As, I think, you will want to be."
+"What are you talking about?"
+"That’s bad, Dominique. Very bad. So pointless. If you don’t know what I’m
+talking about, I couldn’t possibly explain it. If you do--I have you, already,
+without saying anything further."
+"What kind of a conversation is this?" asked Kiki, bewildered.
+"Just our way of kidding each other," said Toohey brightly. "Don’t let it bother
+you, Kiki. Dominique and I are always kidding each other. Not very well, though,
+because you see--we can’t."
+"Some day, Ellsworth," said Dominique, "you’ll make a mistake."
+"Quite possible. And you, my dear, have made yours already."
+"Good night, Ellsworth."
+"Good night, Dominique."
+Kiki turned to him when Dominique had gone.
+"What’s the matter with both of you, Ellsworth? Why such talk--over nothing at
+all? People’s faces and first impressions don’t mean a thing."
+228
+
+"That, my dear Kiki," he answered, his voice soft and distant, as if he were
+giving an answer, not to her, but to a thought of his own, "is one of our
+greatest common fallacies. There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor
+as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance
+at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not
+always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought about the
+style of a soul, Kiki?"
+"The...what?"
+"The style of a soul. Do you remember the famous philosopher who spoke of the
+style of a civilization? He called it ’style.’ He said it was the nearest word
+he could find for it. He said that every civilization has its one basic
+principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavor of
+men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one
+principle....I think, Kiki, that every human soul has a style of its own, also.
+Its one basic theme. You’ll see it reflected in every thought, every act, every
+wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living
+creature. Years of studying a man won’t show it to you. His face will. You’d
+have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of his face. You need nothing
+else."
+"That sounds fantastic, Ellsworth. And unfair, if true. It would leave people
+naked before you."
+"It’s worse than that. It also leaves you naked before them. You betray yourself
+by the manner in which you react to a certain face. To a certain kind of
+face....The style of your soul...There’s nothing important on earth, except
+human beings. There’s nothing as important about human beings as their relations
+to one another...."
+"Well, what do you see in my face?"
+He looked at her, as if he had just noticed her presence.
+"What did you say?"
+"I said, what do you see in my face?"
+"Oh...yes...well, tell me the movie stars you like and I’ll tell you what you
+are."
+"You know, I just love to be analyzed. Now let’s see. My greatest favorite has
+always been..."
+But he was not listening. He had turned his back on her, he was walking away
+without apology. He looked tired. She had never seen him being rude
+before--except by intention.
+A little later, from among a group of friends, she heard his rich, vibrant voice
+saying:
+"...and, therefore, the noblest conception on earth is that of men’s absolute
+equality."
+
+7.
+229
+
+"...AND there it will stand, as a monument to nothing but the egotism of Mr.
+Enright and of Mr. Roark. It will stand between a row of brownstone tenements on
+one side and the tanks of a gashouse on the other. This, perhaps, is not an
+accident, but a testimonial to fate’s sense of fitness. No other setting could
+bring out so eloquently the essential insolence of this building. It will rise
+as a mockery to all the structures of the city and to the men who built them.
+Our structures are meaningless and false; this building will make them more so.
+But the contrast will not be to its advantage. By creating the contrast it will
+have made itself a part of the great ineptitude, its most ludicrous part. If a
+ray of light falls into a pigsty, it is the ray that shows us the muck and it is
+the ray that is offensive. Our structures have the great advantage of obscurity
+and timidity. Besides, they suit us. The Enright House is bright and bold. So is
+a feather boa. It will attract attention--but only to the immense audacity of
+Mr. Roark’s conceit. When this building is erected, it will be a wound on the
+face of our city. A wound, too, is colorful."
+This appeared in the column "Your House" by Dominique Francon, a week after the
+party at the home of Kiki Holcombe.
+On the morning of its appearance Ellsworth Toohey walked into Dominique’s
+office. He held a copy of the Banner, with the page bearing her column turned
+toward her. He stood silently, rocking a little on his small feet. It seemed as
+if the expression of his eyes had to be heard, not seen: it was a visual roar of
+laughter. His lips were folded primly, innocently.
+"Well?" she asked.
+"Where did you meet Roark before that party?"
+She sat looking at him, one arm flung over the back of her chair, a pencil
+dangling precariously between the tips of her fingers. She seemed to be smiling.
+She said:
+"I had never met Roark before that party."
+"My mistake. I was just wondering about..." he made the paper rustle, "...the
+change of sentiment."
+"Oh, that? Well, I didn’t like him when I met him--at the party."
+"So I noticed."
+"Sit down, Ellsworth. You don’t look your best standing up."
+"Do you mind? Not busy?"
+"Not particularly."
+He sat down on the corner of her desk. He sat, thoughtfully tapping his knee
+with the folded paper.
+"You know, Dominique," he said, "it’s not well done. Not well at all."
+"Why?"
+"Don’t you see what can be read between the lines? Of course, not many will
+notice that. He will. I do."
+230
+
+"It’s not written for him or for you."
+"But for the others?"
+"For the others."
+"Then it’s a rotten trick on him and me."
+"You see? I thought it was well done."
+"Well, everyone to his own methods."
+"What are you going to write about it?"
+"About what?"
+"About the Enright House."
+"Nothing."
+"Nothing?"
+"Nothing."
+He threw the paper down on the desk, without moving, just flicking his wrist
+forward. He said:
+"Speaking of architecture, Dominique, why haven’t you ever written anything
+about the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?"
+"Is it worth writing about?"
+"Oh, decidedly. There are people whom it would annoy very much."
+"And are those people worth annoying?"
+"So it seems."
+"What people?"
+"Oh, I don’t know. How can we know who reads our stuff? That’s what makes it so
+interesting. All those strangers we’ve never seen before, have never spoken to,
+or can’t speak to--and here’s this paper where they can read our answer, if we
+want to give an answer. I really think you should dash off a few nice things
+about the Cosmo-Slotnick Building."
+"You do seem to like Peter Keating very much."
+"I? I’m awfully fond of Peter. You will be, too--eventually, when you know him
+better. Peter is a useful person to know. Why don’t you take time, one of these
+days, to get him to tell you the story of his life? You’ll learn many
+interesting things."
+"For instance?"
+"For instance, that he went to Stanton."
+"I know that."
+231
+
+"You don’t think it’s interesting? I do, Wonderful place, Stanton. Remarkable
+example of Gothic architecture. The stained-glass window in the Chapel is really
+one of the finest in this country. And then, think, so many young students. All
+so different. Some graduating with high honors. Others being expelled."
+"Well?"
+"Did you know that Peter Keating is an old friend of Howard Roark?"
+"No. Is he?"
+"He is."
+"Peter Keating is an old friend of everybody."
+"Quite true. A remarkable boy. But this is different. You didn’t know that Roark
+went to Stanton?"
+"No."
+"You don’t seem to know very much about Mr. Roark."
+"I don’t know anything about Mr. Roark. We weren’t discussing Mr. Roark."
+"Weren’t we? No, of course, we were discussing Peter Keating. Well, you see, one
+can make one’s point best by contrast, by comparison. As you did in your pretty
+little article today. To appreciate Peter as he should be appreciated, let’s
+follow up a comparison. Let’s take two parallel lines. I’m inclined to agree
+with Euclid, I don’t think these two parallels will ever meet. Well, they both
+went to Stanton. Peter’s mother ran a sort of boardinghouse and Roark lived with
+them for three years. This doesn’t really matter, except that it makes the
+contrast more eloquent and--well--more personal, later on. Peter graduated with
+high honors, the highest of his class. Roark was expelled. Don’t look like that.
+I don’t have to explain why he was expelled, we understand, you and I. Peter
+went to work for your father and he’s a partner now. Roark worked for your
+father and got kicked out. Yes, he did. Isn’t that funny, by the way?--he did,
+without any help from you at all--that time. Peter has the Cosmo-Slotnick
+Building to his credit--and Roark has a hot-dog stand in Connecticut. Peter
+signs autographs--and Roark is not known even to all the bathroom fixtures
+manufacturers. Now Roark’s got an apartment house to do and it’s precious to him
+like an only son--while Peter wouldn’t even have noticed it had he got the
+Enright House, he gets them every day. Now, I don’t think that Roark thinks very
+much of Peter’s work. He never has and he never will, no matter what happens.
+Follow this a step further. No man likes to be beaten. But to be beaten by the
+man who has always stood as the particular example of mediocrity in his eyes, to
+start by the side of this mediocrity and to watch it shoot up, while he
+struggles and gets nothing but a boot in his face, to see the mediocrity snatch
+from him, one after another, the chances he’d give his life for, to see the
+mediocrity worshipped, to miss the place he wants and to see the mediocrity
+enshrined upon it, to lose, to be sacrificed, to be ignored, to be beaten,
+beaten, beaten--not by a greater genius, not by a god, but by a Peter
+Keating--well, my little amateur, do you think the Spanish Inquisition ever
+thought of a torture to equal this?"
+"Ellsworth!" she screamed. "Get out of here!"
+She had shot to her feet. She stood straight for a moment, then she slumped
+forward, her two palms flat on the desk, and she stood, bent over; he saw her
+smooth mass of hair swinging heavily, then hanging still, hiding her face.
+232
+
+"But, Dominique," he said pleasantly, "I was only telling you why Peter Keating
+is such an interesting person."
+Her hair flew back like a mop, and her face followed, she dropped down on her
+chair, looking at him, her mouth loose and very ugly.
+"Dominique," he said softly, "you’re obvious. Much too obvious."
+"Get out of here."
+"Well, I’ve always said that you underestimated me. Call on me next time you
+need some help."
+At the door, he turned to add:
+"Of course, personally, I think Peter Keating is the greatest architect we’ve
+got."
+#
+That evening, when she came home, the telephone rang.
+"Dominique, my dear," a voice gulped anxiously over the wire, "did you really
+mean all that?"
+"Who is this?"
+"Joel Sutton. I..."
+"Hello, Joel. Did I mean what?"
+"Hello, dear, how are you? How is your charming father? I mean, did you mean all
+that about the Enright House and that fellow Roark? I mean, what you said in
+your column today. I’m quite a bit upset, quite a bit. You know about my
+building? Well, we’re all ready to go ahead and it’s such a bit of money, I
+thought I was very careful about deciding, but I trust you of all people, I’ve
+always trusted you, you’re a smart kid, plenty smart, if you work for a fellow
+like Wynand I guess you know your stuff. Wynand knows buildings, why, that man’s
+made more in real estate than on all his papers, you bet he did, it’s not
+supposed to be known, but I know it. And you working for him, and now I don’t
+know what to think. Because, you see, I had decided, yes, I had absolutely and
+definitely decided--almost--to have this fellow Roark, in fact I told him so, in
+fact he’s coming over tomorrow afternoon to sign the contract, and now...Do you
+really think it will look like a feather boa?"
+"Listen, Joel," she said, her teeth set tight together, "can you have lunch with
+me tomorrow?"
+She met Joel Sutton in the vast, deserted dining room of a distinguished hotel.
+There were few, solitary guests among the white tables, so that each stood out,
+the empty tables serving as an elegant setting that proclaimed the guest’s
+exclusiveness. Joel Sutton smiled broadly. He had never escorted a woman as
+decorative as Dominique.
+"You know, Joel," she said, facing him across a table, her voice quiet, set,
+unsmiling, "it was a brilliant idea, your choosing Roark."
+"Oh, do you think so?"
+233
+
+"I think so. You’ll have a building that will be beautiful, like an anthem. A
+building that will take your breath away--also your tenants. A hundred years
+from now they will write about you in history--and search for your grave in
+Potter’s Field."
+"Good heavens, Dominique, what are you talking about?"
+"About your building. About the kind of building that Roark will design for you.
+It will be a great building, Joel."
+"You mean, good?"
+"I don’t mean good. I mean great."
+"It’s not the same thing."
+"No, Joel, no, it’s not the same thing."
+"I don’t like this ’great’ stuff."
+"No. You don’t. I didn’t think you would. Then what do you want with Roark? You
+want a building that won’t shock anybody. A building that will be folksy and
+comfortable and safe, like the old parlor back home that smells of clam chowder.
+A building that everybody will like, everybody and anybody. It’s very
+uncomfortable to be a hero, Joel, and you don’t have the figure for it."
+"Well, of course I want a building that people will like. What do you think I’m
+putting it up for, for my health?"
+"No, Joel. Nor for your soul."
+"You mean, Roark’s no good?"
+She sat straight and stiff, as if all her muscles were drawn tight against pain.
+But her eyes were heavy, half closed, as if a hand were caressing her body. She
+said:
+"Do you see many buildings that he’s done? Do you see many people hiring him?
+There are six million people in the city of New York. Six million people can’t
+be wrong. Can they?"
+"Of course not."
+"Of course."
+"But I thought Enright..."
+"You’re not Enright, Joel. For one thing, he doesn’t smile so much. Then, you
+see, Enright wouldn’t have asked my opinion. You did. That’s what I like you
+for."
+"Do you really like me, Dominique?"
+"Didn’t you know that you’ve always been one of my great favorites?"
+"I...I’ve always trusted you. I’ll take your word anytime. What do you really
+think I should do?"
+"It’s simple. You want the best that money can buy--of what money can buy. You
+234
+
+want a building that will be--what it deserves to be. You want an architect whom
+other people have employed, so that you can show them that you’re just as good
+as they are."
+"That’s right. That’s exactly right....Look, Dominique, you’ve hardly touched
+your food."
+"I’m not hungry."
+"Well, what architect would you recommend?"
+"Think, Joel. Who is there, at the moment, that everybody’s talking about? Who
+gets the pick of all commissions? Who makes the most money for himself and his
+clients? Who’s young and famous and safe and popular?"
+"Why, I guess...I guess Peter Keating."
+"Yes, Joel. Peter Keating."
+#
+"I’m so sorry, Mr. Roark, so terribly sorry, believe me, but after all, I’m not
+in business for my health...not for my health nor for my soul...that is, I mean,
+well, I’m sure you can understand my position. And it’s not that I have anything
+against you, quite the contrary, I think you’re a great architect. You see
+that’s just the trouble, greatness is fine but it’s not practical. That’s the
+trouble, Mr. Roark, not practical, and after all you must admit that Mr. Keating
+has much the better name and he’s got that...that popular touch which you
+haven’t been able to achieve."
+It disturbed Mr. Sutton that Roark did not protest. He wished Roark would try to
+argue; then he could bring forth the unanswerable justifications which Dominique
+had taught him a few hours ago. But Roark said nothing; he had merely inclined
+his head when he heard the decision. Mr. Sutton wanted desperately to utter the
+justifications, but it seemed pointless to try to convince a man who seemed
+convinced. Still, Mr. Sutton loved people and did not want to hurt anyone.
+"As a matter of fact, Mr. Roark, I’m not alone in this decision. As a matter of
+fact, I did want you, I had decided on you, honestly I had, but it was Miss
+Dominique Francon, whose judgment I value most highly, who convinced me that you
+were not the right choice for this commission--and she was fair enough to allow
+me to tell you that she did."
+He saw Roark looking at him suddenly. Then he saw the hollows of Roark’s cheeks
+twisted, as if drawn in deeper, and his mouth open: he was laughing, without
+sound but for one sharp intake of breath.
+"What on earth are you laughing at, Mr. Roark?"
+"So Miss Francon wanted you to tell me this?"
+"She didn’t want me to, why should she?--she merely said that I could tell you
+if I wished."
+"Yes, of course."
+"Which only shows her honesty and that she had good reasons for her convictions
+and will stand by them openly."
+"Yes."
+235
+
+"Well, what’s the matter?"
+"Nothing, Mr. Sutton."
+"Look, it’s not decent to laugh like that."
+"No."
+#
+His room was half dark around him. A sketch of the Heller house was tacked,
+unframed, on a long, blank wall; it made the room seem emptier and the wall
+longer. He did not feel the minutes passing, but he felt time as a solid thing
+enclosed and kept apart within the room; time clear of all meaning save the
+unmoving reality of his body.
+When he heard the knock at the door, he said: "Come in," without rising.
+Dominique came in. She entered as if she had entered this room before. She wore
+a black suit of heavy cloth, simple like a child’s garment, worn as mere
+protection, not as ornament; she had a high masculine collar raised to her
+cheeks, and a hat cutting half her face out of sight. He sat looking at her. She
+waited to see the derisive smile, but it did not come. The smile seemed implicit
+in the room itself, in her standing there, halfway across that room. She took
+her hat off, like a man entering a house, she pulled it off by the brim with the
+tips of stiff fingers and held it hanging down at the end of her arm. She
+waited, her face stern and cold; but her smooth pale hair looked defenseless and
+humble. She said:
+"You are not surprised to see me."
+"I expected you tonight."
+She raised her hand, bending her elbow with a tight economy of motion, the bare
+minimum needed, and flung her hat across to a table. The hat’s long flight
+showed the violence in that controlled jerk of her wrist.
+He asked: "What do you want?"
+She answered: "You know what I want," her voice heavy and flat.
+"Yes. But I want to hear you say it. All of it."
+"If you wish." Her voice had the sound of efficiency, obeying an order with
+metallic precision. "I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you
+may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin, your mouth, your hands.
+I want you--like this--not hysterical with desire--but coldly and
+consciously--without dignity and without regrets--I want you--I have no
+self-respect to bargain with me and divide me--I want you--I want you like an
+animal, or a cat on a fence, or a whore."
+She spoke on a single, level tone, as if she were reciting an austere catechism
+of faith. She stood without moving, her feet in flat shoes planted apart, her
+shoulders thrown back, her arms hanging straight at her sides. She looked
+impersonal, untouched by the words she pronounced, chaste like a young boy.
+"You know that I hate you, Roark. I hate you for what you are, for wanting you,
+for having to want you. I’m going to fight you--and I’m going to destroy
+you--and I tell you this as calmly as I told you mat I’m a begging animal. I’m
+236
+
+going to pray that you can’t be destroyed--I tell you this, too--even though I
+believe in nothing and have nothing to pray to. But I will fight to block every
+step you take. I will fight to tear every chance you want away from you. I will
+hurt you through the only thing that can hurt you--through your work. I will
+fight to starve you, to strangle you on the things you won’t be able to reach. I
+have done it to you today--and that is why I shall sleep with you tonight."
+He sat deep in his chair, stretched out, his body relaxed, and taut in
+relaxation, a stillness being filled slowly with the violence of future motion.
+"I have hurt you today. I’ll do it again. I’ll come to you whenever I have
+beaten you--whenever I know that I have hurt you--and I’ll let you own me. I
+want to be owned, not by a lover, but by an adversary who will destroy my
+victory over him, not with honorable blows, but with the touch of his body on
+mine. That is what I want of you, Roark. That is what I am. You wanted to hear
+it all. You’ve heard it. What do you wish to say now?"
+"Take your clothes off."
+She stood still for a moment; two hard spots swelled and grew white under the
+corners of her mouth. Then she saw a movement in the cloth of his shirt, one
+jolt of controlled breath--and she smiled in her turn, derisively, as he had
+always smiled at her.
+She lifted her two hands to her collar and unfastened the buttons of her jacket,
+simply, precisely, one after another. She threw the jacket down on the floor,
+she took off a thin white blouse, and she noticed the tight black gloves on the
+wrists of her naked arms. She took the gloves off, pulling at each finger in
+turn. She undressed indifferently, as if she were alone in her own bedroom.
+Then she looked at him. She stood naked, waiting, feeling the space between them
+like a pressure against her stomach, knowing that it was torture for him also
+and that it was as they both wanted it. Then he got up, he walked to her, and
+when he held her, her arms rose willingly and she felt the shape of his body
+imprinted into the skin on the inside of her arm as it encircled him, his ribs,
+his armpit, his back, his shoulder blade under her fingers, her mouth on his, in
+a surrender more violent than her struggle had been.
+Afterward, she lay in bed by his side, under his blanket, looking at his room,
+and she asked:
+"Roark, why were you working in that quarry?"
+"You know it."
+"Yes. Anyone else would have taken a job in an architect’s office."
+"And then you’d have no desire at all to destroy me."
+"You understand that?"
+"Yes. Keep still. It doesn’t matter now."
+"Do you know that the Enright House is the most beautiful building in New York?"
+"I know that you know it."
+"Roark, you worked in that quarry when you had the Enright House in you, and
+many other Enright Houses, and you were drilling granite like a..."
+237
+
+"You’re going to weaken in a moment, Dominique, and then you’ll regret it
+tomorrow."
+"Yes."
+"You’re very lovely, Dominique."
+"Don’t."
+"You’re lovely."
+"Roark, I...I’ll still want to destroy you."
+"Do you think I would want you if you didn’t?"
+"Roark..."
+"You want to hear that again? Part of it? I want you, Dominique. I want you. I
+want you."
+"I..." She stopped, the word on which she stopped almost audible in her breath.
+"No," he said. "Not yet. You won’t say that yet. Go to sleep.
+"Here? With you?"
+"Here. With me. I’ll fix breakfast for you in the morning. Did you know that I
+fix my own breakfast? You’ll like seeing that. Like the work in the quarry. Then
+you’ll go home and think about destroying me. Good night, Dominique."
+
+8.
+THE BLINDS raised over the windows of her living room, the lights of the city
+rising to a black horizon halfway up the glass panes, Dominique sat at her desk,
+correcting the last sheets of an article, when she heard the doorbell. Guests
+did not disturb her without warning--and she looked up, the pencil held in
+midair, angry and curious. She heard the steps of the maid in the hall, then the
+maid came in, saying: "A gentleman to see you, madam," a faint hostility in her
+voice explaining that the gentleman had refused to give his name.
+A man with orange hair?--Dominique wanted to ask, but didn’t; the pencil jerked
+stiffly and she said: "Have him come
+Then the door opened; against the light of the hall she saw a long neck and
+sloping shoulders, like the silhouette of a bottle; a rich, creamy voice said,
+"Good evening, Dominique," and she recognized Ellsworth Toohey whom she had
+never asked to her house.
+,
+She smiled. She said: "Good evening, Ellsworth. I haven’t seen you for such a
+long time."
+"You should have expected me now, don’t you think so?" He turned to the maid:
+"Cointreau, please, if you have it, and I’m sure you do."
+The maid glanced at Dominique, wide-eyed; Dominique nodded silently, and the
+maid went out, closing the door.
+238
+
+"Busy, of course?" said Toohey, glancing at the littered desk. "Very becoming,
+Dominique. Gets results, too. You’ve been writing much better lately."
+She let the pencil fall, and threw an arm over the back of her chair, half
+turning to him, watching him placidly. "What do you want, Ellsworth?"
+He did not sit down, but stood examining the place with the unhurried curiosity
+of an expert.
+"Not bad, Dominique. Just about as I’d expect you to have it. A little cold. You
+know, I wouldn’t have that ice-blue chair over there. Too obvious. Fits in too
+well. Just what people would expect in just that spot. I’d have it carrot red.
+An ugly, glaring, outrageous red. Like Mr. Howard Roark’s hair. That’s quite en
+passant--merely a convenient figure of speech--nothing personal at all. Just one
+touch of the wrong color would make the whole room. The sort of thing that gives
+a place elegance. Your flower arrangements are nice. The pictures, too--not
+bad."
+"All right, Ellsworth, all right, what is it?"
+"But don’t you know that I’ve never been here before? Somehow, you’ve never
+asked me. I don’t know why." He sat down comfortably, resting an ankle on a
+knee, one thin leg stretched horizontally across the other, the full length of a
+tight, gunmetal sock exposed under the trouser cuff, and a patch of skin showing
+above the sock, bluish-white with a few black hairs. "But then, you’ve been so
+unsociable. The past tense, my dear, the past tense. Did you say that we haven’t
+seen each other for a long time? That’s true. You’ve been so busy--in such an
+unusual way. Visits, dinners, speakeasies and giving tea parties. Haven’t you?"
+"I have."
+"Tea parties--I thought that was tops. This is a good room for
+parties--large--plenty of space to stuff people into--particularly if you’re not
+particular whom you stuff it with--and you’re not. Not now. What do you serve
+them? Anchovy paste and minced egg cut out like hearts?"
+"Caviar and minced onion cut out like stars."
+"What about the old ladies?"
+"Cream cheese and chopped walnuts--in spirals."
+"I’d like to have seen you taking care of things like that. It’s wonderful how
+thoughtful you’ve become of old ladies. Particularly the filthy rich--with
+sons-in-law in real estate. Though I don’t think that’s as bad as going to see
+Knock Me Flat with Commodore Higbee who has false teeth and a nice vacant lot on
+the corner of Broadway and Chambers."
+The maid came in with the tray. Toohey took a glass and held it delicately,
+inhaling, while the maid went out.
+"Will you tell me why the secret service department--I won’t ask who--and why
+the detailed reports on ray activities?" Dominique said indifferently.
+"You can ask who. Anyone and everyone. Don’t you suppose people are talking
+about Miss Dominique Francon in the role of a famous hostess--so suddenly? Miss
+Dominique Francon as a sort of second Kiki Holcombe, but much better--oh
+much!--much subtler, much abler, and then, just think, how much more beautiful.
+239
+
+It’s about time you made some use of that superlative appearance of yours that
+any woman would cut your throat for. It’s still being wasted, of course, if one
+thinks of form in relation to its proper function, but at least some people are
+getting some good out of it. Your father, for instance. I’m sure he’s delighted
+with this new life of yours. Little Dominique being friendly to people. Little
+Dominique who’s become normal at last. He’s wrong, of course, but it’s nice to
+make him happy. A few others, too. Me, for instance. Though you’d never do
+anything just to make me happy, but then, you see, that’s my lucky faculty--to
+extract joy from what was not intended for me at all, in a purely selfless way."
+"You’re not answering my question."
+"But I am. You asked why the interest in your activities--and I answer: because
+they make me happy. Besides, look, one could be astonished--though
+shortsightedly--if I were gathering information on the activities of my enemies.
+But not to be informed about the actions of my own side--really, you know, you
+didn’t think I’d be so unskilled a general, and whatever else you might think of
+me, you’ve never thought me unskilled."
+"Your side, Ellsworth?"
+"Look, Dominique, that’s the trouble with your written--and spoken--style: you
+use too many question marks. Bad, in any case. Particularly bad when
+unnecessary. Let’s drop the quiz technique--and just talk. Since we both
+understand and there aren’t any questions to be asked between us. If there
+were--you’d have thrown me out. Instead, you gave me a very expensive liqueur."
+He held the rim of the glass under his nose and inhaled with a loose kind of
+sensual relish, which, at a dinner table, would have been equivalent to a loud
+lipsmacking, vulgar there, superlatively elegant here, over a cut-crystal edge
+pressed to a neat little mustache.
+"All right," she said. "Talk."
+"That’s what I’ve been doing. Which is considerate of me--since you’re not ready
+to talk. Not yet, for a while. Well, let’s talk--in a purely contemplative
+manner--about how interesting it is to see people welcoming you into their midst
+so eagerly, accepting you, flocking to you. Why is it, do you suppose? They do
+plenty of snubbing on their own, but just let someone who’s snubbed them all her
+life suddenly break down and turn gregarious--and they all come rolling on their
+backs with their paws folded, for you to rub their bellies. Why? There could be
+two explanations, I think. The nice one would be that they are generous and wish
+to honor you with their friendship. Only the nice explanations are never the
+true ones. The other one is that they know you’re degrading yourself by needing
+them, you’re coming down off a pinnacle--every loneliness is a pinnacle--and
+they’re delighted to drag you down through their friendship. Though, of course,
+none of them knows it consciously, except yourself. That’s why you go through
+agonies, doing it, and you’d never do it for a noble cause, you’d never do it
+except for the end you’ve chosen, an end viler than the means and making the
+means endurable."
+"You know, Ellsworth, you’ve said a sentence there that you’d never use in your
+column."
+"Did I? Undoubtedly. I can say a great many things to you that I’d never use in
+my column. Which one?"
+"Every loneliness is a pinnacle."
+240
+
+"That? Yes, quite right. I wouldn’t. You’re welcome to it--though it’s not too
+good. Fairly crude. I’ll give you better ones some day, if you wish. Sorry,
+however, that that’s all you picked out of my little speech."
+"What did you want me to pick?"
+"Well, my two explanations, for instance. There’s an interesting question there.
+What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility
+beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it
+makes them comfortable? Kindness being more important than justice, of course."
+"I don’t give a damn, Ellsworth."
+"Not in a mood for abstract speculation? Interested only in concrete results?
+All right. How many commissions have you landed for Peter Keating in the last
+three months?"
+She rose, walked to the tray which the maid had left, poured herself a drink,
+and said: "Four," raising the glass to her mouth. Then she turned to look at
+him, standing, glass in hand, and added: "And that was the famous Toohey
+technique. Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end.
+Sneak it in where it’s least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to
+get in that one important line."
+He bowed courteously. "Quite. That’s why I like to talk to you. It’s such a
+waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don’t even know that you’re being
+subtle and vicious. But the drivel is never accidental, Dominique. Also, I
+didn’t know that the technique of my column was becoming obvious. I will have to
+think of a new one."
+"Don’t bother. They love it."
+"Of course. They’ll love anything I write. So it’s four? I missed one. I counted
+three."
+"I can’t understand why you had to come here if that’s all you wanted to know.
+You’re so fond of Peter Keating, and I’m helping him along beautifully, better
+than you could, so if you wanted to give me a pep talk about Petey--it wasn’t
+necessary, was it?"
+"You’re wrong there twice in one sentence, Dominique. One honest error and one
+lie. The honest error is the assumption that I wish to help Petey Keating--and,
+incidentally, I can help him much better than you can, and I have and will, but
+that’s long-range contemplation. The lie is that I came here to talk about Peter
+Keating--you knew what I came here to talk about when you saw me enter. And--oh
+my!--you’d allow someone more obnoxious than myself to barge in on you, just to
+talk about that subject. Though I don’t know who could be more obnoxious to you
+than myself, at the moment."
+"Peter Keating," she said.
+He made a grimace, wrinkling his nose: "Oh, no. He’s not big enough for that.
+But let’s talk about Peter Keating. It’s such a convenient coincidence that he
+happens to be your father’s partner. You’re merely working your head off to
+procure commissions for your father, like a dutiful daughter, nothing more
+natural. You’ve done wonders for the firm of Francon & Keating in these last
+three months. Just by smiling at a few dowagers and wearing stunning models at
+some of our better gatherings. Wonder what you’d accomplish if you decided to go
+all the way and sell your matchless body for purposes other than esthetic
+241
+
+contemplation--in exchange for commissions for Peter Keating." He paused, she
+said nothing, and he added: "My compliments, Dominique, you’ve lived up to my
+best opinion of you--by not being shocked at this."
+"What was that intended for, Ellsworth? Shock value or hint value?"
+"Oh, it could have been a number of things--a preliminary feeler, for instance.
+But, as a matter of fact, it was nothing at all. Just a touch of vulgarity. Also
+the Toohey technique--you know, I always advise the wrong touch at the right
+time. I am--essentially--such an earnest, single-toned Puritan that I must allow
+myself another color occasionally--to relieve the monotony."
+"Are you, Ellsworth? I wonder what you are--essentially. I don’t know."
+"I dare say nobody does," he said pleasantly. "Although really, there’s no
+mystery about it at all. It’s very simple. All things are simple when you reduce
+them to fundamentals. You’d be surprised if you knew how few fundamentals there
+are. Only two, perhaps. To explain all of us. It’s the untangling, the reducing
+that’s difficult--that’s why people don’t like to bother. I don’t think they’d
+like the results, either."
+"I don’t mind. I know what I am. Go ahead and say it. I’m just a bitch."
+"Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint.
+Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable."
+"And you?"
+"As a matter of fact, I know exactly what I am. That alone can explain a great
+deal about me. I’m giving you a helpful hint--if you care to use it. You don’t,
+of course. You might, though--in the future."
+"Why should I?"
+"You need me, Dominique. You might as well understand me a little. You see, I’m
+not afraid of being understood. Not by you."
+"I need you?"
+"Oh, come on, show a little courage, too."
+She sat up and waited coldly, silently. He smiled, obviously with pleasure,
+making no effort to hide the pleasure.
+"Let’s see," he said, studying the ceiling with casual attention, "those
+commissions you got for Peter Keating. The Cryon office building was mere
+nuisance value--Howard Roark never had a chance at that. The Lindsay home was
+better--Roark was definitely considered, I think he would have got it but for
+you. The Stonebrook Clubhouse also--he had a chance at that, which you ruined."
+He looked at her and chuckled softly. "No comments on techniques and punches,
+Dominique?" The smile was like cold grease floating over the fluid sounds of his
+voice. "You slipped up on the Norris country house--he got that last week, you
+know. Well, you can’t be a hundred per cent successful. After all, the Enright
+House is a big job; it’s creating a lot of talk, and quite a few people are
+beginning to show interest in Mr. Howard Roark. But you’ve done remarkably well.
+My congratulations. Now don’t you think I’m being nice to you? Every artist
+needs appreciation--and there’s nobody to compliment you, since nobody knows
+what you’re doing, but Roark and me, and he won’t thank you. On second thought,
+I don’t think Roark knows what you’re doing, and that spoils the fun, doesn’t
+242
+
+it?"
+She asked: "How do you know what I’m doing?"--her voice tired.
+"My dear, surely you haven’t forgotten that it was I who gave you the idea in
+the first place?"
+"Oh, yes," she said absently. "Yes."
+"And now you know why I came here. Now you know what I meant when I spoke about
+my side."
+"Yes," she said. "Of course."
+"This is a pact, my dear. An alliance. Allies never trust each other, but that
+doesn’t spoil their effectiveness. Our motives might be quite opposite. In fact,
+they are. But it doesn’t matter. The result will be the same. It is not
+necessary to have a noble aim in common. It is necessary only to have a common
+enemy. We have."
+"Yes."
+"That’s why you need me. I’ve been helpful once."
+"Yes."
+"I can hurt your Mr. Roark much better than any tea party you’ll ever give."
+"What for?"
+"Omit the what-fors. I don’t inquire into yours."
+"All right."
+"Then it’s to be understood between us? We’re allies in this?"
+She looked at him, she slouched forward, attentive, her face empty. Then she
+said: "We’re allies."
+"Fine, my dear. Now listen. Stop mentioning him in your column every other day
+or so. I know, you take vicious cracks at him each time, but it’s too much.
+You’re keeping his name in print, and you don’t want to do that. Further, you’d
+better invite me to those parties of yours. There are things I can do which you
+can’t. Another tip: Mr. Gilbert Colton--you know, the California pottery
+Coltons--is planning a branch factory in the east. He’s thinking of a good
+modernist. In fact, he’s thinking of Mr. Roark. Don’t let Roark get it. It’s a
+huge job--with lots of publicity. Go and invent a new tea sandwich for Mrs.
+Colton. Do anything you wish. But don’t let Roark get it."
+She got up, dragged her feet to a table, her arms swinging loosely, and took a
+cigarette. She lighted it, turned to him, and said indifferently: "You can talk
+very briefly and to the point--when you want to."
+"When I find it necessary."
+She stood at the window, looking out over the city. She said: "You’ve never
+actually done anything against Roark. I didn’t know you cared quite so much."
+"Oh, my dear. Haven’t I"
+243
+
+"You’ve never mentioned him in print."
+"That, my dear, is what I’ve done against Mr. Roark. So far."
+"When did you first hear of him?"
+"When I saw drawings of the Heller house. You didn’t think I’d miss that, did
+you? And you?"
+"When I saw drawings of the Enright House."
+"Not before?"
+"Not before."
+She smoked in silence; then she said, without turning to him:
+"Ellsworth, if one of us tried to repeat what we said here tonight, the other
+would deny it and it could never be proved. So it doesn’t matter if we’re
+sincere with each other, does it? It’s quite safe. Why do you hate him?"
+"I never said I hated him."
+She shrugged.
+"As for the rest," he added, "I think you can answer that yourself."
+She nodded slowly to the bright little point of her cigarette’s reflection on
+the glass plane.
+He got up, walked over to her, and stood looking at the lights of the city below
+them, at the angular shapes of buildings, at the dark walls made translucent by
+the glow of the windows, as if the walls were only a checkered veil of thin
+black gauze over a solid mass of radiance. And Ellsworth Toohey said softly:
+"Look at it. A sublime achievement, isn’t it? A heroic achievement. Think of the
+thousands who worked to create this and of the millions who profit by it. And it
+is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages,
+but for a dozen men--less, perhaps--none of this would have been possible. And
+that might be true. If so, there are--again--two possible attitudes to take. We
+can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the
+overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to
+accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or, we can say that by the splendor of
+their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown
+us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a
+cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to
+skyscrapers and neon lights--if the cave and the sticks are the limit of your
+own creative capacities. Of the two attitudes, Dominique, which would you call
+the truly humanitarian one? Because, you see, I’m a humanitarian."
+#
+After a while Dominique found it easier to associate with people. She learned to
+accept self-torture as an endurance test, urged on by the curiosity to discover
+how much she could endure. She moved through formal receptions, theater parties,
+dinners, dances--gracious and smiling, a smile that made her face brighter and
+colder, like the sun on a winter day. She listened emptily to empty words
+uttered as if the speaker would be insulted by any sign of enthusiastic interest
+from his listener, as if only boredom were the only bond possible between
+244
+
+people, the only preservative of their precarious dignity. She nodded to
+everything and accepted everything.
+"Yes, Mr. Holt, I think Peter Keating is the man of the century--our century."
+"No, Mr. Inskip, not Howard Roark, you don’t want Howard Roark....A phony? Of
+course, he’s a phony--it takes your sensitive honesty to evaluate the integrity
+of a man....Nothing much? No, Mr. Inskip, of course, Howard Roark is nothing
+much. It’s all a matter of size and distance--and distance....No, I don’t think
+very much, Mr. Inskip--I’m glad you like my eyes--yes, they always look like
+that when I’m enjoying myself--and it made me so happy to hear you say that
+Howard Roark is nothing much."
+"You’ve met Mr. Roark, Mrs. Jones? And you didn’t like him?...Oh, he’s the type
+of man for whom one can feel no compassion? How true. Compassion is a wonderful
+thing. It’s what one feels when one looks at a squashed caterpillar. An
+elevating experience. One can let oneself go and spread--you know, like taking a
+girdle off. You don’t have to hold your stomach, your heart or your spirit
+up--when you feel compassion. All you have to do is look down. It’s much easier.
+When you look up, you get a pain in the neck. Compassion is the greatest virtue.
+It justifies suffering. There’s got to be suffering in the world, else how would
+we be virtuous and feel compassion?...Oh, it has an antithesis--but such a hard,
+demanding one....Admiration, Mrs. Jones, admiration. But that takes more than a
+girdle....So I say that anyone for whom we can’t feel sorry is a vicious person.
+Like Howard Roark."
+Late at night, often, she came to Roark’s room. She came unannounced, certain of
+finding him there and alone. In his room, there was no necessity to spare, lie,
+agree and erase herself out of being. Here she was free to resist, to see her
+resistance welcomed by an adversary too strong to fear a contest, strong enough
+to need it; she found a will granting her the recognition of her own entity,
+untouched and not to be touched except in clean battle, to win or to be
+defeated, but to be preserved in victory or defeat, not ground into the
+meaningless pulp of the impersonal.
+When they lay in bed together it was--as it had to be, as the nature of the act
+demanded--an act of violence. It was surrender, made the more complete by the
+force of their resistance. It was an act of tension, as the great things on
+earth are things of tension. It was tense as electricity, the force fed on
+resistance, rushing through wires of metal stretched tight; it was tense as
+water made into power by the restraining violence of a dam. The touch of his
+skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being
+wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and
+denial. It was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the
+agony, an act of passion--the word born to mean suffering--it was the moment
+made of hatred, tension, pain--the moment that broke its own elements, inverted
+them, triumphed, swept into a denial of all suffering, into its antithesis, into
+ecstasy.
+She came to his room from a party, wearing an evening gown expensive and fragile
+like a coating of ice over her body--and she leaned against the wall, feeling
+the rough plaster under her skin, glancing slowly at every object around her, at
+the crude kitchen table loaded with sheets of paper, at the steel rulers, at the
+towels smudged by the black prints of five fingers, at the bare boards of the
+floor--and she let her glance slide down the length of her shining satin, down
+to the small triangle of a silver sandal, thinking of how she would be undressed
+here. She liked to wander about the room, to throw her gloves down among a
+litter of pencils, rubber erasers and rags, to put her small silver bag on a
+stained, discarded shirt, to snap open the catch of a diamond bracelet and drop
+245
+
+it on a plate with the remnant of a sandwich, by an unfinished drawing.
+"Roark," she said, standing behind his chair, her arms over his shoulders, her
+hand under his shirt, fingers spread and pressed flat against his chest, "I made
+Mr. Symons promise his job to Peter Keating today. Thirty-five floors, and
+anything he’ll wish to make it cost, money no objective, just art, free art."
+She heard the sound of his soft chuckle, but he did not turn to look at her,
+only his fingers closed over her wrist and he pushed her hand farther down under
+his shirt, pressing it hard against his skin. Then she pulled his head back, and
+she bent down to cover his mouth with hers.
+She came in and found a copy of the Banner spread out on his table, open at the
+page bearing "Your House" by Dominique Francon. Her column contained the line:
+"Howard Roark is the Marquis de Sade of architecture. He’s in love with his
+buildings--and look at them." She knew that he disliked the Banner, that he put
+it there only for her sake, that he watched her noticing it, with the half-smile
+she dreaded on his face. She was angry; she wanted him to read everything she
+wrote, yet she would have preferred to think that it hurt him enough to make him
+avoid it. Later, lying across the bed, with his mouth on her breast, she looked
+past the orange tangle of his head, at that sheet of newspaper on the table, and
+he felt her trembling with pleasure.
+She sat on the floor, at his feet, her head pressed to his knees, holding his
+hand, closing her fist in turn over each of his fingers, closing it tight and
+letting it slide slowly down the length of his finger, feeling the hard, small
+stops at the joints, and she asked softly: "Roark, you wanted to get the Colton
+factory? You wanted it very badly?"
+"Yes, very badly," he answered, without smiling and without pain. Then she
+raised his hand to her lips and held it there for a long time.
+She got out of bed in the darkness, and walked naked across his room to take a
+cigarette from the table. She bent to the light of a match, her flat stomach
+rounded faintly in the movement. He said: "Light one for me," and she put a
+cigarette between his lips; then she wandered through the dark room, smoking,
+while he lay in bed, propped up on his elbow, watching her.
+Once she came in and found him working at his table. He said: "I’ve got to
+finish this. Sit down. Wait." He did not look at her again. She waited silently,
+huddled in a chair at the farthest end of the room. She watched the straight
+lines of his eyebrows drawn in concentration, the set of his mouth, the vein
+beating under the tight skin of his neck, the sharp, surgical assurance of his
+hand. He did not look like an artist, he looked like the quarry worker, like a
+wrecker demolishing walls, and like a monk. Then she did not want him to stop or
+glance at her, because she wanted to watch the ascetic purity of his person, the
+absence of all sensuality; to watch that--and to think of what she remembered.
+There were nights when he came to her apartment, as she came to his, without
+warning. If she had guests, he said: "Get rid of them," and walked into the
+bedroom while she obeyed. They had a silent agreement, understood without
+mention, never to be seen together. Her bedroom was an exquisite place of glass
+and pale ice-green. He liked to come in wearing clothes stained by a day spent
+on the construction site. He liked to throw back the covers of her bed, then to
+sit talking quietly for an hour or two, not looking at the bed, not mentioning
+her writing or buildings or the latest commission she had obtained for Peter
+Keating, the simplicity of being at ease, here, like this, making the hours more
+sensual than the moments they delayed.
+There were evenings when they sat together in her living room, at the huge
+246
+
+window high over the city. She liked to see him at that window. He would stand,
+half turned to her, smoking, looking at the city below. She would move away from
+him and sit down on the floor in the middle of the room and watch him.
+Once, when he got out of bed, she switched the light on and saw him standing
+there, naked; she looked at him, then she said, her voice quiet and desperate
+with the simple despair of complete sincerity: "Roark, everything I’ve done all
+my life is because it’s the kind of a world that made you work in a quarry last
+summer."
+"I know that."
+He sat down at the foot of the bed. She moved over, she pressed her face against
+his thigh, curled up, her feet on the pillow, her arm hanging down, letting her
+palm move slowly up the length of his leg, from the ankle to the knee and back
+again. She said: "But, of course, if it had been up to me, last spring, when you
+were broke and jobless, I would have sent you precisely to that kind of a job in
+that particular quarry."
+"I know that too. But maybe you wouldn’t have. Maybe you’d have had me as
+washroom attendant in the clubhouse of the A.G.A."
+"Yes. Possibly. Put your hand on my back, Roark. Just hold it there. Like that."
+She lay still, her face buried against his knees, her arm hanging down over the
+side of the bed, not moving, as if nothing in her were alive but the skin
+between her shoulder blades under his hand.
+In the drawing rooms she visited, in the restaurants, in the offices of the
+A.G.A. people talked about the dislike of Miss Dominique Francon of the Banner
+for Howard Roark, that architectural freak of Roger Enright’s. It gave him a
+sort of scandalous fame. It was said: "Roark? You know, the guy Dominique
+Francon can’t stand the guts of."
+"The Francon girl knows her architecture all right, and if she says he’s no
+good, he must be worse than I thought he was."
+"God, but these two must hate each other! Though I understand they haven’t even
+met." She liked to hear these things. It pleased her when Athelstan Beasely
+wrote in his column in the A.G.A. Bulletin, discussing the architecture of
+medieval castles: "To understand the grim ferocity of these structures, we must
+remember that the wars between feudal lords were a savage business--something
+like the feud between Miss Dominique Francon and Mr. Howard Roark."
+Austen Heller, who had been her friend, spoke to her about it. He was angrier
+than she had ever seen him; his face lost all the charm of his usual sarcastic
+poise.
+"What in hell do you think you’re doing, Dominique?" he snapped. "This is the
+greatest exhibition of journalistic hooliganism I’ve ever seen swilled out in
+public print. Why don’t you leave that sort of thing to Ellsworth Toohey?"
+"Ellsworth is good, isn’t he?" she said.
+"At least, he’s had the decency to keep his unsanitary trap shut about
+Roark--though, of course, that too is an indecency. But what’s happened to you?
+Do you realize who and what you’re talking about? It was all right when you
+amused yourself by praising some horrible abortion of Grandpaw Holcombe’s or
+panning the pants off your own father and that pretty butcher’s-calendar boy
+that he’s got himself for a partner. It didn’t matter one way or another. But to
+247
+
+bring that same intellectual manner to the appraisal of someone like
+Roark....You know, I really thought you had integrity and judgment--if ever
+given a chance to exercise them. In fact, I thought you were behaving like a
+tramp only to emphasize the mediocrity of the saps whose works you had to write
+about. I didn’t think that you were just an irresponsible bitch."
+"You were wrong," she said.
+Roger Enright entered her office, one morning, and said, without greeting: "Get
+your hat. You’re coming to see it with me."
+"Good morning, Roger," she said. "To see what?"
+"The Enright House. As much of it as we’ve got put up."
+"Why, certainly, Roger," she smiled, rising, "I’d love to see the Enright
+House."
+On their way, she asked: "What’s the matter, Roger? Trying to bribe me?"
+He sat stiffly on the vast, gray cushions of his limousine, not looking at her.
+He answered: "I can understand stupid malice. I can understand ignorant malice.
+I can’t understand deliberate rottenness. You are free, of course, to write
+anything you wish--afterward. But it won’t be stupidity and it won’t be
+ignorance."
+"You overestimate me, Roger," she shrugged, and said nothing else for the rest
+of the ride.
+They walked together past the wooden fence, into the jungle of naked steel and
+planks that was to be the Enright House. Her high heels stepped lightly over
+lime-spattered boards and she walked, leaning back, in careless, insolent
+elegance. She stopped and looked at the sky held in a frame of steel, the sky
+that seemed more distant than usual, thrust back by the sweeping length of
+beams. She looked at the steel cages of future projections, at the insolent
+angles, at the incredible complexity of this shape coming to life as a simple,
+logical whole, a naked skeleton with planes of air to form the walls, a naked
+skeleton on a cold winter day, with a sense of birth and promise, like a bare
+tree with a first touch of green.
+"Oh, Roger!"
+He looked at her and saw the kind of face one should expect to see in church at
+Easter.
+"I didn’t underestimate either one," he said dryly. "Neither you nor the
+building."
+"Good morning," said a low, hard voice beside them.
+She was not shocked to see Roark. She had not heard him approaching, but it
+would have been unnatural to think of this building without him. She felt that
+he simply was there, that he had been there from the moment she crossed the
+outside fence, that this structure was he, in a manner more personal than his
+body. He stood before them, his hand thrust into the pockets of a loose coat,
+his hair hatless in the cold.
+"Miss Francon--Mr. Roark," said Enright.
+248
+
+"We have met once," she said, "at the Holcombes. If Mr. Roark remembers."
+"Of course, Miss Francon," said Roark.
+"I wanted Miss Francon to see it," said Enright.
+"Shall I show you around?" Roark asked him.
+"Yes, do please," she answered first.
+The three of them walked together through the structure, and the workers stared
+curiously at Dominique. Roark explained the layout of future rooms, the system
+of elevators, the heating plant, the arrangement of windows--as he would have
+explained it to a contractor’s assistant. She asked questions and he answered.
+"How many cubic feet of space, Mr. Roark?"
+"How many tons of steel?"
+"Be careful of these pipes, Miss Francon. Step this way." Enright walked along,
+his eyes on the ground, looking at nothing. But then he asked: "How’s it going,
+Howard?" and Roark smiled, answering: "Two days ahead of schedule," and they
+stood talking about the job, like brothers, forgetting her for a moment, the
+clanging roar of machines around them drowning out their words.
+She thought, standing here in the heart of the building, that if she had nothing
+of him, nothing but his body, here it was, offered to her, the rest of him, to
+be seen and touched, open to all; the girders and the conduits and the sweeping
+reaches of space were his and could not have been anyone else’s in the world;
+his, as his face, as his soul; here was the shape he had made and the thing
+within him which had caused him to make it, the end and the cause together, the
+motive power eloquent in every line of steel, a man’s self, hers for this
+moment, hers by grace of her seeing it and understanding.
+"Are you tired, Miss Francon?" asked Roark, looking at her face.
+"No," she said, "no, not at all. I have been thinking--what kind of plumbing
+fixtures are you going to use here, Mr. Roark?"
+A few days later, in his room, sitting on the edge of his drafting table, she
+looked at a newspaper, at her column and the lines: "I have visited the Enright
+construction site. I wish that in some future air raid a bomb would blast this
+house out of existence. It would be a worthy ending. So much better than to see
+it growing old and soot-stained, degraded by the family photographs, the dirty
+socks, the cocktail shakers and the grapefruit rinds of its inhabitants. There
+is not a person in New York City who should be allowed to live in this
+building."
+Roark came to stand beside her, his legs pressed to her knees, and he looked
+down at the paper, smiling.
+"You have Roger completely bewildered by this," he said.
+"Has he read it?"
+"I was in his office this morning when he read it. At first, he called you some
+names I’d never heard before. Then he said, Wait a minute, and he read it again,
+he looked up, very puzzled, but not angry at all, and he said, if you read it
+one way...but on the other hand..."
+249
+
+"What did you say?"
+"Nothing. You know, Dominique, I’m very grateful, but when are you going to stop
+handing me all that extravagant praise? Someone else might see it. And you won’t
+like that."
+"Someone else?"
+"You know that I got it, from that first article of yours about the Enright
+House. You wanted me to get it. But don’t you think someone else might
+understand your way of doing things?"
+"Oh yes. But the effect--for you--will be worse than if they didn’t. They’ll
+like you the less for it. However, I don’t know who’ll even bother to
+understand. Unless it’s...Roark, what do you think of Ellsworth Toohey?"
+"Good God, why should anyone think of Ellsworth Toohey?"
+She liked the rare occasions when she met Roark at some gathering where Heller
+or Enright had brought him. She liked the polite, impersonal "Miss Francon"
+pronounced by his voice. She enjoyed the nervous concern of the hostess and her
+efforts not to let them come together. She knew that the people around them
+expected some explosion, some shocking sign of hostility which never came. She
+did not seek Roark out and she did not avoid him. They spoke to each other if
+they happened to be included in the same group, as they would have spoken to
+anyone else. It required no effort; it was real and right; it made everything
+right, even this gathering. She found a deep sense of fitness in the fact that
+here, among people, they should be strangers; strangers and enemies. She
+thought, these people can think of many things he and I are to each
+other--except what we are. It made the moments she remembered greater, the
+moments not touched by the sight of others, by the words of others, not even by
+their knowledge. She thought, it has no existence here, except in me and in him.
+She felt a sense of possession, such as she could feel nowhere else. She could
+never own him as she owned him in a room among strangers when she seldom looked
+in his direction. If she glanced at him across the room and saw him in
+conversation with blank, indifferent faces, she turned away, unconcerned; if the
+faces were hostile, she watched for a second, pleased; she was angry when she
+saw a smile, a sign of warmth or approval on a face turned to him. It was not
+jealousy; she did not care whether the face was a man’s or a woman’s; she
+resented the approval as an impertinence.
+She was tortured by peculiar things: by the street where he lived, by the
+doorstep of his house, by the cars that turned the corner of his block. She
+resented the cars in particular; she wished she could make them drive on to the
+next street. She looked at the garbage pail by the stoop next door, and she
+wondered whether it had stood there when he passed by, on his way to his office
+this morning, whether he had looked at that crumpled cigarette package on top.
+Once, in the lobby of his house, she saw a man stepping out of the elevator; she
+was shocked for a second; she had always felt as if he were the only inhabitant
+of that house. When she rode up in the small, self-operating elevator, she stood
+leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her breast, her hands hugging
+her shoulders, feeling huddled and intimate, as in a stall under a warm shower.
+She thought of that, while some gentleman was telling her about the latest show
+on Broadway, while Roark was sipping a cocktail at the other end of the room,
+while she heard the hostess whispering to somebody: "My Lord, I didn’t think
+Gordon would bring Dominique--I know Austen will be furious at me, because of
+his friend Roark being here, you know."
+Later, lying across his bed, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, her lips wet,
+250
+
+losing the sense of the rules she herself had imposed, losing the sense of her
+words, she whispered: "Roark, there was a man talking to you out there today,
+and he was smiling at you, the fool, the terrible fool, last week he was looking
+at a pair of movie comedians and loving them, I wanted to tell that man: don’t
+look at him, you’ll have no right to want to look at anything else, don’t like
+him, you’ll have to hate the rest of the world, it’s like that, you damn fool,
+one or the other, not together, not with the same eyes, don’t look at him, don’t
+like him, don’t approve, that’s what I wanted to tell him, not you and the rest
+of it, I can’t bear to see that, I can’t stand it, anything to take you away
+from it, from their world, from all of them, anything, Roark..." She did not
+hear herself saying it, she did not see him smiling, she did not recognize the
+full understanding in his face, she saw only his face close over hers, and she
+had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted,
+answered, found.
+#
+Peter Keating was bewildered. Dominique’s sudden devotion to his career seemed
+dazzling, flattering, enormously profitable; everybody told him so; but there
+were moments when he did not feel dazzled or flattered; he felt uneasy.
+He tried to avoid Guy Francon. "How did you do it, Peter? How did you do it?"
+Francon would ask. "She must be crazy about you! Who’d every think that
+Dominique of all people would...? And who’d think she could? She’d have made me
+a millionaire if she’d done her stuff five years ago. But then, of course, a
+father is not the same inspiration as a..." He caught an ominous look on
+Keating’s face and changed the end of his sentence to: "as her man, shall we
+say?"
+"Listen, Guy," Keating began, and stopped, sighing, and muttered: "Please, Guy,
+we mustn’t..."
+"I know, I know, I know. We mustn’t be premature. But hell, Peter, entre nous,
+isn’t it all as public as an engagement? More so. And louder." Then the smile
+vanished, and Francon’s face looked earnest, peaceful, frankly aged, in one of
+his rare flashes of genuine dignity. "And I’m glad, Peter," he said simply.
+"That’s what I wanted to happen. I guess I always did love Dominique, after all.
+It makes me happy. I know I’ll be leaving her in good hands. Her and everything
+else eventually..."
+"Look, old man, will you forgive me? I’m so terribly rushed--had two hours sleep
+last night, the Colton factory, you know, Jesus, what a job!--thanks to
+Dominique--it’s a killer, but wait till you see it! Wait till you see the check,
+too!"
+"Isn’t she wonderful? Will you tell me, why is she doing it? I’ve asked her and
+I can’t make head or tail of what she says, she gives me the craziest gibberish,
+you know how she talks."
+"Oh well, we should worry, so long as she’s doing it!"
+He could not tell Francon that he had no answer; he couldn’t admit that he had
+not seen Dominique alone for months; that she refused to see him.
+He remembered his last private conversation with her--in the cab on their way
+from Toohey’s meeting. He remembered the indifferent calm of her insults to
+him--the utter contempt of insults delivered without anger. He could have
+expected anything after that--except to see her turn into his champion, his
+press agent, almost--his pimp. That’s what’s wrong, he thought, that I can think
+of words like that when I think about it.
+251
+
+He had seen her often since she started on her unrequested campaign; he had been
+invited to her parties--and introduced to his future clients; he had never been
+allowed a moment alone with her. He had tried to thank her and to question her.
+But he could not force a conversation she did not want continued, with a curious
+mob of guests pressing all around them. So he went on smiling blandly--her hand
+resting casually on the black sleeve of his dinner jacket, her thigh against his
+as she stood beside him, her pose possessive and intimate, made flagrantly
+intimate by her air of not noticing it, while she told an admiring circle what
+she thought of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. He heard envious comments from all
+his friends. He was, he thought bitterly, the only man in New York City who did
+not think that Dominique Francon was in love with him.
+But he knew the dangerous instability of her whims, and this was too valuable a
+whim to disturb. He stayed away from her and sent her flowers; he rode along and
+tried not to think of it; the little edge remained--a thin edge of uneasiness.
+One day, he met her by chance in a restaurant. He saw her lunching alone and
+grasped the opportunity. He walked straight to her table, determined to act like
+an old friend who remembered nothing but her incredible benevolence. After many
+bright comments on his luck, he asked: "Dominique, why have you been refusing to
+see me?"
+"What should I have wanted to see you for?"
+"But good Lord Almighty!..." That came out involuntarily, with too sharp a sound
+of long-suppressed anger, and he corrected it hastily, smiling: "Well, don’t you
+think you owed me a chance to thank you?"
+"You’ve thanked me. Many times."
+"Yes, but didn’t you think we really had to meet alone? Didn’t you think that
+I’d be a little...bewildered?"
+"I haven’t thought of it. Yes, I suppose you could be."
+"Well?"
+"Well what?"
+"What is it all about?"
+"About...fifty thousand dollars by now, I think."
+"You’re being nasty."
+"Want me to stop?"
+"Oh no! That is, not..."
+"Not the commissions. Fine. I won’t stop them. You see? What was there for us to
+talk about? I’m doing things for you and you’re glad to have me do them--so
+we’re in perfect agreement."
+"You do say the funniest things! In perfect agreement. That’s
+sort of a redundancy and an understatement at the same time,
+isn’t it? What else could we be under the circumstances? You
+252
+
+wouldn’t expect me to object to what you’re doing, would you?"
+"No. I wouldn’t."
+"But agreeing is not the word for what I feel. I’m so terribly grateful to you
+that I’m simply dizzy--I was bowled over--don’t let me get silly now--I know you
+don’t like that--but I’m so grateful I don’t know what to do with myself."
+"Fine, Peter. Now you’ve thanked me."
+"You see, I’ve never flattered myself by thinking that you thought very much of
+my work or cared or took any notice. And then you...That’s what makes me so
+happy and...Dominique," he asked, and his voice jerked a little, because the
+question was like a nook pulling at a line, long and hidden, and he knew that
+this was the core of his uneasiness, "do you really think that I’m a great
+architect?"
+She smiled slowly. She said: "Peter, if people heard you asking that, they’d
+laugh. Particularly, asking that of me."
+"Yes, I know, but...but do you really mean them, all those things you say about
+me?"
+"They work."
+"Yes, but is that why you picked me? Because you think I’m good?"
+"You sell like hot cakes. Isn’t that proof?"
+"Yes...No...I mean...in a different way...I mean...Dominique, I’d like to hear
+you say once, just once, that I..."
+"Listen, Peter, I’ll have to run along in a moment, but before I go I must tell
+you that you’ll probably hear from Mrs. Lonsdale tomorrow or the next day. Now
+remember that she’s a prohibitionist, loves dogs, hates women who smoke, and
+believes in reincarnation. She wants her house to be better than Mrs.
+Purdee’s--Holcombe did Purdee’s--so if you tell her that Mrs. Purdee’s house
+looks ostentatious and that true simplicity costs much more money, you’ll get
+along fine. You might discuss petit point too. That’s her hobby."
+He went away, thinking happily about Mrs. Lonsdale’s house, and he forgot his
+question. Later, he remembered it resentfully, and shrugged, and told himself
+that the best part of Dominique’s help was her desire not to see him.
+As a compensation, he found pleasure in attending the meetings of Toohey’s
+Council of American Builders. He did not know why he should think of it as
+compensation, but he did and it was comforting. He listened attentively when
+Gordon L. Prescott made a speech on the meaning of architecture.
+"And thus the intrinsic significance of our craft lies in the philosophical fact
+that we deal in nothing. We create emptiness through which certain physical
+bodies are to move--we shall designate them for convenience as humans. By
+emptiness I mean what is commonly known as rooms. Thus it is only the crass
+layman who thinks that we put up stone walls. We do nothing of the kind. We put
+up emptiness, as I have proved. This leads us to a corollary of astronomical
+importance: to the unconditional acceptance of the premise that ’absence’ is
+superior to ’presence.’ That is, to the acceptance of non-acceptance. I shall
+state this in simpler terms--for the sake of clarity: ’nothing’ is superior to
+253
+
+’something.’ Thus it is clear that the architect is more than a
+bricklayer--since the fact of bricks is a secondary illusion anyway. The
+architect is a metaphysical priest dealing in basic essentials, who has the
+courage to face the primal conception of reality as nonreality--since there is
+nothing and he creates nothingness. If this sounds like a contradiction, it is
+not a proof of bad logic, but of a higher logic, the dialectics of all life and
+art. Should you wish to make the inevitable deductions from this basic
+conception, you may come to conclusions of vast sociological importance. You may
+see that a beautiful woman is inferior to a non-beautiful one, that the literate
+is inferior to the illiterate, that the rich is inferior to the poor, and the
+able to the incompetent. The architect is the concrete illustration of a cosmic
+paradox. Let us be modest in the vast pride of this realization. Everything else
+is twaddle."
+One could not worry about one’s value or greatness when listening to this. It
+made self-respect unnecessary.
+Keating listened in thick contentment. He glanced at the others. There was an
+attentive silence in the audience; they all liked it as he liked it. He saw a
+boy chewing gum, a man cleaning his fingernails with the corner of a match
+folder, a youth stretched out loutishly. That, too, pleased Keating; it was as
+if they said: We are glad to listen to the sublime, but it’s not necessary to be
+too damn reverent about the sublime.
+The Council of American Builders met once a month and engaged in no tangible
+activity, beyond listening to speeches and sipping an inferior brand of root
+beer. Its membership did not grow fast either in quantity or in quality. There
+were no concrete results achieved.
+The meetings of the Council were held in a huge, empty room over a garage on the
+West Side. A long, narrow, unventilated stairway led to a door bearing the
+Council’s name; there were folding chairs inside, a table for the chairman, and
+a wastebasket. The A.G.A. considered the Council of American Builders a silly
+joke. "Why do you want to waste time on those cranks for?"
+Francon asked Keating in the rose-lit satin-stuffed rooms of the A.G.A.,
+wrinkling his nose with fastidious amusement. "Damned if I know," Keating
+answered gaily. "I like them." Ellsworth Toohey attended every meeting of the
+Council, but did not speak. He sat in a corner and listened.
+One night Keating and Toohey walked home together after the meeting, down the
+dark, shabby streets of the West Side, and stopped for a cup of coffee at a
+seedy drugstore. "Why not a drugstore?" Toohey laughed when Keating reminded him
+of the distinguished restaurants made famous by Toohey’s patronage. "At least,
+no one will recognize us here and bother us."
+He sent a jet of smoke from his Egyptian cigarette at a faded Coca-Cola sign
+over their booth, he ordered a sandwich, he nibbled daintily a slice of pickle
+which was not flyspecked but looked it, and he talked to Keating. He talked at
+random. What he said did not matter, at first; it was his voice, the matchless
+voice of Ellsworth Toohey. Keating felt as if he were standing in the middle of
+a vast plain, under the stars, held and owned, in assurance, in security.
+"Kindness, Peter," said the voice softly, "kindness. That is the first
+commandment, perhaps the only one. That is why I had to pan that new play, in my
+column yesterday. That play lacked essential kindness. We must be kind, Peter,
+to everybody around us. We must accept and forgive--there is so much to be
+forgiven in each one of us. If you learn to love everything, the humblest, the
+least, the meanest, then the meanest in you will be loved. Then we’ll find the
+254
+
+sense of universal equality, the great peace of brotherhood, a new world, Peter,
+a beautiful new world...."
+
+9.
+ELLSWORTH MONKTON TOOHEY was seven years old when he turned the hose upon Johnny
+Stokes, as Johnny was passing by the Toohey lawn, dressed in his best Sunday
+suit. Johnny had waited for that suit a year and a half, his mother being very
+poor. Ellsworth did not sneak or hide, but committed his act openly, with
+systematic deliberation: he walked to the tap, turned it on, stood in the middle
+of the lawn and directed the hose at Johnny, his aim faultless--with Johnny’s
+mother just a few steps behind him down the street, with his own mother and
+father and the visiting minister in full view on the Toohey porch. Johnny Stokes
+was a bright kid with dimples and golden curls; people always turned to look at
+Johnny Stokes. Nobody had ever turned to look at Ellsworth Toohey.
+The shock and amazement of the grownups present were such that nobody rushed to
+stop Ellsworth for a long moment. He stood, bracing his thin little body against
+the violence of the nozzle jerking in his hands, never allowing it to leave its
+objective until he felt satisfied; then he let it drop, the water hissing
+through the grass, and made two steps toward the porch, and stopped, waiting,
+his head high, delivering himself for punishment. The punishment would have come
+from Johnny if Mrs. Stokes had not seized her boy and held him. Ellsworth did
+not turn to the Stokeses behind him, but said, slowly, distinctly, looking at
+his mother and the minister: "Johnny is a dirty bully. He beats up all the boys
+in school." This was true.
+The question of punishment became an ethical problem. It was difficult to punish
+Ellsworth under any circumstances, because of his fragile body and delicate
+health; besides, it seemed wrong to chastise a boy who had sacrificed himself to
+avenge injustice, and done it bravely, in the open, ignoring his own physical
+weakness; somehow, he looked like a martyr. Ellsworth did not say so; he said
+nothing further; but his mother said it. The minister was inclined to agree with
+her. Ellsworth was sent to his room without supper. He did not complain. He
+remained there meekly--and refused the food his mother sneaked up to him, late
+at night, disobeying her husband. Mr. Toohey insisted on paying Mrs. Stokes for
+Johnny’s suit. Mrs. Toohey let him do it, sullenly; she did not like Mrs.
+Stokes.
+Ellsworth’s father managed the Boston branch of a national chain of shoe stores.
+He earned a modest, comfortable salary and owned a modest, comfortable home in
+an undistinguished suburb of Boston. The secret sorrow of his life was that he
+did not head a business of his own. But he was a quiet, conscientious,
+unimaginative man, and an early marriage had ended all his ambition. Ellsworth’s
+mother was a thin, restless woman who adopted and discarded five religions in
+nine years. She had delicate features, the kind that made her look beautiful for
+a few years of her life, at the one period of full flower, never before and
+never afterward. Ellsworth was her idol. His sister Helen, five years older, was
+a good-natured, unremarkable girl, not beautiful but pretty and healthy; she
+presented no problem. Ellsworth, however, had been born puny in health. His
+mother adored him from the moment the doctor pronounced him unfit to survive; it
+made her grow in spiritual stature--to know the extent of her own magnanimity in
+her love for so uninspiring an object; the bluer and uglier baby Ellsworth
+looked, the more passionate grew her love for him. She was almost disappointed
+when he survived without becoming an actual cripple. She took little interest in
+Helen; there was no martyrdom in loving Helen. The girl was so obviously more
+deserving of love that it seemed just to deny it to her.
+255
+
+Mr. Toohey, for reasons which he could not explain, was not too fond of his son.
+Ellsworth, however, was the ruler of the household, by a tacit, voluntary
+submission of both parents, though his father could never understand the cause
+of his own share in that submission.
+In the evenings, under the lamp of the family sitting room, Mrs. Toohey would
+begin, in a tense, challenging voice, angry and defeated in advance: "Horace, I
+want a bicycle. A bicycle for Ellsworth. All the boys his age have them, Willie
+Lovett just got a new one the other day, Horace. Horace, I want a bicycle for
+Ellsworth."
+"Not right now, Mary," Mr. Toohey would answer wearily. "Maybe next
+summer....Just now we can’t afford..."
+Mrs. Toohey would argue, her voice rising in jerks toward a shriek.
+"Mother, what for?" said Ellsworth, his voice soft, rich and clear, lower than
+the voices of his parents, yet cutting across them, commanding, strangely
+persuasive. "There’s many things we need more than a bicycle. What do you care
+about Willie Lovett? I don’t like Willie. Willie’s a dumbbell. Willie can afford
+it, because his pa’s got his own dry-goods store. His pa’s a showoff. I don’t
+want a bicycle."
+Every word of this was true, and Ellsworth did not want a bicycle. But Mr.
+Toohey looked at him strangely, wondering what had made him say that. He saw his
+son’s eyes looking at him blankly from behind the small glasses; the eyes were
+not ostentatiously sweet, not reproachful, not malicious; just blank. Mr. Toohey
+felt that he should be grateful for his son’s understanding--and wished to hell
+the boy had not mentioned that part about the private store.
+Ellsworth did not get the bicycle. But he got a polite attention in the house, a
+respectful solicitude--tender and guilty, from his mother, uneasy and suspicious
+from his father. Mr. Toohey would do anything rather than be forced into a
+conversation with Ellsworth--feeling, at the same time, foolish and angry at
+himself for his fear.
+"Horace, I want a new suit. A new suit for Ellsworth. I saw one in a window
+today and I’ve..."
+"Mother, I’ve got four suits. What do I need another one for? I don’t want to
+look silly like Pat Noonan who changes them every day. That’s because his pa’s
+got his own ice-cream parlor. Pat’s stuck up like a girl about his clothes. I
+don’t want to be a sissy."
+Ellsworth, thought Mrs. Toohey at times, happy and frightened, is going to be a
+saint; he doesn’t care about material things at all; not one bit. This was true.
+Ellsworth did not care about material things.
+He was a thin, pale boy with a bad stomach, and his mother had to watch his
+diet, as well as his tendency to frequent colds in the head. His sonorous voice
+was astonishing in his puny frame. He sang in the choir, where he had no rivals.
+At school he was a model pupil. He always knew his lessons, had the neatest
+copybooks, the cleanest fingernails, loved Sunday school and preferred reading
+to athletic games, in which he had no chance. He was not too good at
+mathematics--which he disliked--but excellent at history. English, civics and
+penmanship; later, at psychology and sociology.
+He studied conscientiously and hard. He was not like Johnny Stokes, who never
+256
+
+listened in class, seldom opened a book at home, yet knew everything almost
+before the teacher had explained it. Learning came to Johnny automatically, as
+did all things: his able little fists, his healthy body, his startling good
+looks, his overexuberant vitality. But Johnny did the shocking and the
+unexpected: Ellsworth did the expected, better than anyone had ever seen it
+done. When they came to compositions, Johnny would stun the class by some
+brilliant display of rebellion. Given the theme of "School Days--The Golden
+Age," Johnny came through with a masterly essay on how he hated school and why.
+Ellsworth delivered a prose poem on the glory of school days, which was
+reprinted in a local newspaper.
+Besides, Ellsworth had Johnny beaten hollow when it came to names and dates;
+Ellsworth’s memory was like a spread of liquid cement: it held anything that
+fell upon it. Johnny was a shooting geyser; Ellsworth was a sponge.
+The children called him "Elsie Toohey." They usually let him have his way, and
+avoided him when possible, but not openly; they could not figure him out. He was
+helpful and dependable when they needed assistance with their lessons; he had a
+sharp wit and could ruin any child by the apt nickname he coined, the kind that
+hurt; he drew devastating cartoons on fences; he had all the earmarks of a
+sissy, but somehow he could not be classified as one; he had too much
+self-assurance and quiet, disturbingly wise contempt for everybody. He was
+afraid of nothing.
+He would march right up to the strongest boys, in the middle of the street, and
+state, not yell, in a clear voice that carried for blocks, state without
+anger--no one had ever seen Ellsworth Toohey angry--"Johnny Stokes’s got a patch
+on his ass. Johnny Stokes lives in a rented flat. Willie Lovett is a dunce. Pat
+Noonan is a fish eater." Johnny never gave him a beating, and neither did the
+other boys, because Ellsworth wore glasses.
+He could not take part in ball games, and was the only child who boasted about
+it, instead of feeling frustrated or ashamed like the other boys with
+substandard bodies. He considered athletics vulgar and said so; the brain, he
+said, was mightier than the brawn; he meant it.
+He had no close personal friends. He was considered impartial and incorruptible.
+There were two incidents in his childhood of which his mother was very proud.
+It happened that the wealthy, popular Willie Lovett gave a birthday party on the
+same day as Drippy Munn, son of a widowed seamstress, a whining boy whose nose
+was always running. Nobody accepted Drippy’s invitation, except the children who
+were never invited anywhere. Of those asked for both occasions, Ellsworth Toohey
+was the only one who snubbed Willie Lovett and went to Drippy Munn’s party, a
+miserable affair from which he expected and received no pleasure. Willie
+Lovett’s enemies howled and taunted Willie for months afterward--about being
+passed up in favor of Drippy Munn.
+It happened that Pat Noonan offered Ellsworth a bag of jelly beans in exchange
+for a surreptitious peek at his test paper. Ellsworth took the jelly beans and
+allowed Pat to copy his test. A week later, Ellsworth marched up to the teacher,
+laid the jelly beans, untouched, upon her desk and confessed his crime, without
+naming the other culprit. All her efforts to extract that name could not budge
+him; Ellsworth remained silent; he explained only that the guilty boy was one of
+the best students, and he could not sacrifice the boy’s record to the demands of
+his own conscience. He was the only one punished--kept after school for two
+hours. Then the teacher had to drop the matter and let the test marks remain as
+they were. But it threw suspicion on the grades of Johnny Stokes, Pat Noonan,
+and all the best pupils of the class, except Ellsworth Toohey.
+257
+
+Ellsworth was eleven years old when his mother died. Aunt Adeline, his father’s
+maiden sister, came to live with them and run the Toohey household. Aunt Adeline
+was a tall, capable woman to whom the word "horse" clung in conjunction with the
+words "sense" and "face." The secret sorrow of her life was that she had never
+inspired romance. Helen became her immediate favorite. She considered Ellsworth
+an imp out of hell. But Ellsworth never wavered in his manner of grave courtesy
+toward Aunt Adeline. He leaped to pick up her handkerchief, to move her chair,
+when they had company, particularly masculine company. He sent her beautiful
+Valentines on the appropriate day--with paper lace, rosebuds and love poems. He
+sang "Sweet Adeline" at the top of his town crier’s voice. "You’re a maggot,
+Elsie," she told him once. "You feed on sores."
+"Then I’ll never starve," he answered. After a while they reached a state of
+armed neutrality. Ellsworth was left to grow up as he pleased.
+In high school Ellsworth became a local celebrity--the star orator. For years
+the school did not refer to a promising boy as a good speaker, but as "a
+Toohey." He won every contest. Afterward, members of the audience spoke about
+"that beautiful boy"; they did not remember the sorry little figure with the
+sunken chest, inadequate legs and glasses; they remembered the voice. He won
+every debate. He could prove anything. Once, after beating Willie Lovett with
+the affirmative of "The Pen Is Mightier than the Sword," he challenged Willie to
+reverse their positions, took the negative and won again.,
+Until the age of sixteen Ellsworth felt himself drawn to the career of a
+minister. He thought a great deal about religion. He talked about God and the
+spirit. He read extensively on the subject. He read more books on the history of
+the church than on the substance of faith. He brought his audience to tears in
+one of his greatest oratorical triumphs with the theme of "The meek shall
+inherit the earth."
+At this period he began to acquire friends. He liked to speak of faith and he
+found those who liked to listen. Only, he discovered that the bright, the
+strong, the able boys of his class felt no need of listening, felt no need of
+him at all. But the suffering and ill-endowed came to him. Drippy Munn began to
+follow him about with the silent devotion of a dog. Billy Wilson lost his
+mother, and came wandering to the Toohey house in the evenings, to sit with
+Ellsworth on the porch, listening, shivering once in a while, saying nothing,
+his eyes wide, dry and pleading. Skinny Dix got infantile paralysis--and would
+lie in bed, watching the street corner beyond the window, waiting for Ellsworth.
+Rusty Hazelton failed to pass in his grades, and sat for many hours, crying,
+with Ellsworth’s cold, steady hand on his shoulder. It was never clear whether
+they all discovered Ellsworth or Ellsworth discovered them. It seemed to work
+more like a law of nature: as nature allows no vacuum, so pain and Ellsworth
+Toohey drew each other. His rich, beautiful voice said to them: "It’s good to
+suffer. Don’t complain. Bear, bow, accept--and be grateful that God has made you
+suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy. If
+you don’t understand this, don’t try to understand. Everything bad comes from
+the mind, because the mind asks too many questions. It is blessed to believe,
+not to understand. So if you didn’t get passing grades, be glad of it. It means
+that you are better than the smart boys who think too much and too easily."
+People said it was touching, the way Ellsworth’s friends clung to him. After
+they had taken him for a while, they could not do without him. It was like a
+drug habit.
+Ellsworth was fifteen, when he astonished the Bible-class teacher by an odd
+question. The teacher had been elaborating upon the text: "What shall it profit
+258
+
+a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Ellsworth
+asked: "Then in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?" The
+teacher was about to ask him what the hell did he mean, but controlled himself
+and asked what did he mean. Ellsworth would not elucidate.
+At the age of sixteen, Ellsworth lost interest in religion. He discovered
+socialism. His transition shocked Aunt Adeline. "In the first place, it is
+blasphemous and drivel," she said. "In the second place, it doesn’t make sense.
+I’m surprised at you, Elsie. ’The poor in spirit’--that was fine, but just ’the
+poor’--that doesn’t sound respectable at all. Besides it’s not like you. You’re
+not cut out to make big trouble--only little trouble. Something’s crazy
+somewhere, Elsie. It just don’t fit. It’s not like you at all."
+"In the first place, my dear aunt," he answered, "don’t call me Elsie. In the
+second place, you’re wrong."
+The change seemed good for Ellsworth. He did not become an aggressive zealot. He
+became gentler, quieter, milder. He became more attentively considerate of
+people. It was as if something had taken the nervous edges off his personality
+and given him new confidence. Those around him began to like him. Aunt Adeline
+stopped worrying. Nothing actual seemed to come of his preoccupation with
+revolutionary theories. He joined no political party. He read a great deal and
+he attended a few dubious meetings, where he spoke once or twice, not too well,
+but mostly sat in a corner, listening, watching, thinking.
+Ellsworth went to Harvard. His mother had willed her life insurance for that
+specific purpose. At Harvard his scholastic record was superlative. He majored
+in history. Aunt Adeline had expected to see him go in for economics and
+sociology; she half feared that he would end up as a social worker. He didn’t.
+He became absorbed in literature and the fine arts. It baffled her a little; it
+was a new trait in him; he had never shown any particular tendency in that
+direction. "You’re not the arty kind, Elsie," she stated. "It don’t fit."
+"You’re wrong, auntie," he said.
+Ellsworth’s relations with his fellow students were the most unusual of his
+achievements at Harvard. He made himself accepted. Among the proud young
+descendants of proud old names, he did not hide the fact of his humble
+background; he exaggerated it. He did not tell them that his father was the
+manager of a shoe store; "he said that his father was a shoe cobbler. He said it
+without defiance, bitterness or proletarian arrogance; he said it as if it were
+a joke on him and--if one looked closely into his smile--on them. He acted like
+a snob; not a flagrant snob, but a natural, innocent one who tries very hard not
+to be snobbish. He was polite, not in the manner of one seeking favor, but in
+the manner of one granting it. His attitude was contagious. People did not
+question the reasons of his superiority; they took it for granted that such
+reasons existed. It became amusing, at first, to accept "Monk" Toohey; then it
+became distinctive and progressive. If this was a victory Ellsworth did not seem
+conscious of it as such; he did not seem to care. He moved among all these
+unformed youths, with the assurance of a man who has a plan, a long-range plan
+set in every detail, and who can spare nothing but amusement for the small
+incidentals on his way. His smile had a secret, closed quality, the smile of a
+shopkeeper counting profits--even though nothing in particular seemed to be
+happening.
+He did not talk about God and the nobility of suffering. He talked about the
+masses. He proved to a rapt audience, at bull sessions lasting till dawn, that
+religion bred selfishness; because, he stated, religion overemphasized the
+importance of the individual spirit; religion preached nothing but a single
+259
+
+concern--the salvation of one’s own soul.
+"To achieve virtue in the absolute sense," said Ellsworth Toohey, "a man must be
+willing to take the foulest crimes upon his soul--for the sake of his brothers.
+To mortify the flesh is nothing. To mortify the soul is the only act of virtue.
+So you think you love the broad mass of mankind? You know nothing of love. You
+give two bucks to a strike fund and you think you’ve done your duty? You poor
+fools! No gift is worth a damn, unless it’s the most precious thing you’ve got.
+Give your soul. To a lie? Yes, if others believe it. To deceit? Yes, if others
+need it. To treachery, knavery, crime? Yes! To whatever it is that seems lowest
+and vilest in your eyes. Only when you can feel contempt for your own priceless
+little ego, only then can you achieve the true, broad peace of selflessness, the
+merging of your spirit with the vast collective spirit of mankind. There is no
+room for the love of others within the tight, crowded miser’s hole of a private
+ego. Be empty in order to be filled. ’He that loveth his life shall lose it; and
+he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.’ The
+opium peddlers of the church had something there, but they didn’t know what they
+had. Self-abnegation? Yes, my friends, by all means. But one doesn’t abnegate by
+keeping one’s self pure and proud of its own purity. The sacrifice that includes
+the destruction of one’s soul--ah, but what am I talking about? This is only for
+heroes to grasp and to achieve."
+He did not have much success among the poor boys working their way through
+college. He acquired a sizable following among the young heirs, the second and
+third generation millionaires. He offered them an achievement of which they felt
+capable.
+He graduated with high honors. When he came to New York, he was preceded by a
+small, private fame; a few trickles of rumor had seeped down from Harvard about
+an unusual person named Ellsworth Toohey; a few people, among the extreme
+intellectuals and the extremely wealthy, heard these rumors and promptly forgot
+what they heard, but remembered the name; it remained in their minds with a
+vague connotation of such things as brilliance, courage, idealism.
+People began to ooze toward Ellsworth Toohey; the right kind of people, those
+who soon found him to be a spiritual necessity. The other kind did not come;
+there seemed to be an instinct about it. When someone commented on the loyalty
+of Toohey’s following--he had no title, program or organization, but somehow his
+circle was called a following from the first--an envious rival remarked: "Toohey
+draws the sticky kind. You know the two things that stick best: mud and glue."
+Toohey overheard it and shrugged, smiling, and said: "Oh, come, come, come,
+there are many more: adhesive plaster, leeches, taffy, wet socks, rubber
+girdles, chewing gum and tapioca pudding." Moving away, he added over his
+shoulder, without smiling: "And cement."
+He took his Master’s degree from a New York university and wrote a thesis on
+"Collective Patterns in the City Architecture of the XlVth Century." He earned
+his living in a busy, varied, scattered way: no one could keep track of all his
+activities. He held the post of vocational adviser at the university, he
+reviewed books, plays, art exhibitions, he wrote articles, gave a few lectures
+to small, obscure audiences. Certain tendencies were apparent in his work. When
+reviewing books, he leaned toward novels about the soil rather than the city,
+about the average rather than the gifted, about the sick rather than the
+healthy; there was a special glow in his writing when he referred to stories
+about "little people"; "human" was his favorite adjective; he preferred
+character study to action, and description to character study; he preferred
+novels without a plot and, above all, novels without a hero.
+He was considered outstanding as a vocational adviser. His tiny office at the
+260
+
+university became an informal confessional where students brought all their
+problems, academic as well as personal. He was willing to discuss--with the same
+gentle, earnest concentration--the choice of classes, or love affairs, or--most
+particularly--the selection of a future career.
+When consulted on love affairs, Toohey counseled surrender, if it concerned a
+romance with a charming little pushover, good for a few drunken parties--"let us
+be modern"; and renunciation, if it concerned a deep, emotional passion--"let us
+be grownup." When a boy came to confess a feeling of shame after some unsavory
+sexual experience, Toohey told him to snap out of it: "It was damn good for you.
+There are two things we must get rid of early in life: a feeling of personal
+superiority and an exaggerated reverence for the sexual act."
+People noticed that Ellsworth Toohey seldom let a boy pursue the career he had
+chosen. "No, I wouldn’t go in for law if I were you. You’re much too tense and
+passionate about it. A hysterical devotion to one’s career does not make for
+happiness or success. It is wiser to select a profession about which you can be
+calm, sane and matter-of-fact. Yes, even if you hate it. It makes for
+down-to-earthness."..."No, I wouldn’t advise you to continue with your music.
+The fact that it comes to you so easily is a sure sign that your talent is only
+a superficial one. That’s just the trouble--that you love it. Don’t you think
+that sounds like a childish reason? Give it up. Yes, even if it hurts like
+hell."..."No, I’m sorry, I would like so much to say that I approve, but I
+don’t. When you thought of architecture, it was a purely selfish choice, wasn’t
+it? Have you considered anything but your own egotistical satisfaction? Yet a
+man’s career concerns all society. The question of where you could be most
+useful to your fellow men comes first. It’s not what you can get out of society,
+it’s what you can give. And where opportunities for service are concerned,
+there’s no endeavor comparable to that of a surgeon. Think it over."
+After leaving college some of his protégés did quite well, others failed. Only
+one committed suicide. It was said that Ellsworth Toohey had exercised a
+beneficent influence upon them--for they never forgot him: they came to consult
+him on many things, years later, they wrote him, they clung to him. They were
+like machines without a self-starter, that had to be cranked up by an outside
+hand. He was never too busy to give them his full attention.
+His life was crowded, public and impersonal as a city square. The friend of
+humanity had no single private friend. People came to him; he came close to no
+one. He accepted all. His affection was golden, smooth and even, like a great
+expanse of sand; there was no wind of discrimination to raise dunes; the sands
+lay still and the sun stood high.
+Out of his meager income he donated money to many organizations. He was never
+known to have loaned a dollar to an individual. He never asked his rich friends
+to assist a person in need; but he obtained from them large sums and endowments
+for charitable institutions: for settlement houses, recreation centers, homes
+for fallen girls, schools for defective children. He served on the boards of all
+these institutions--without salary. A great many philanthropic undertakings and
+radical publications, run by all sorts of people, had a single connecting link
+among them, one common denominator: the name of Ellsworth M. Toohey on their
+stationery. He was a sort of one-man holding company of altruism.
+Women played no part in his life. Sex had never interested him. His furtive,
+infrequent urges drew him to the young, slim, full-bosomed, brainless girls--the
+giggling little waitresses, the lisping manicurists, the less efficient
+stenographers, the kind who wore pink or orchid dresses and little hats on the
+back of their heads with gobs of blond curls in front. He was indifferent to
+women of intellect.
+261
+
+He contended that the family was a bourgeois institution; but he made no issue
+of it and did not crusade for free love. The subject of sex bored him. There
+was, he felt, too much fuss made over the damn thing; it was of no importance;
+there were too many weightier problems in the world.
+The years passed, with each busy day of his life like a small, neat coin dropped
+patiently into a gigantic slot machine, without a glance at the combination of
+symbols, without return. Gradually, one of his many activities began to stand
+out among the others: he became known as an eminent critic of architecture. He
+wrote about buildings for three successive magazines that limped on noisily for
+a few years and failed, one after the other: New Voices, New Pathways, New
+Horizons. The fourth, New Frontiers, survived. Ellsworth Toohey was the only
+thing salvaged from the successive wrecks. Architectural criticism seemed to be
+a neglected field of endeavor; few people bothered to write about buildings,
+fewer to read. Toohey acquired a reputation and an unofficial monopoly. The
+better magazines began calling upon him whenever they needed anything connected
+with architecture.
+In the year 1921 a small change occurred in Toohey’s private life; his niece
+Catherine Halsey, the daughter of his sister Helen, came to live with him. His
+father had long since died, and Aunt Adeline had vanished into the obscure
+poverty of some small town; at the death of Catherine’s parents there was no one
+else to take care of her. Toohey had not intended to keep her in his own home.
+But when she stepped off the train in New York, her plain little face looked
+beautiful for a moment, as if the future were opening before her and its glow
+were already upon her forehead, as if she were eager and proud and ready to meet
+it. It was one of those rare moments when the humblest person knows suddenly
+what it means to feel as the center of the universe, and is made beautiful by
+the knowledge, and the world--in the eyes of witnesses--looks like a better
+place for having such a center. Ellsworth Toohey saw this--and decided that
+Catherine would remain with him.
+In the year 1925 came Sermons in Stone--and fame.
+Ellsworth Toohey became a fashion. Intellectual hostesses fought over him. Some
+people disliked him and laughed at him. But there was little satisfaction in
+laughing at Ellsworth Toohey, because he was always first to make the most
+outrageous remarks about himself. Once, at a party, a smug, boorish businessman
+listened to Toohey’s earnest social theories for a while and said complacently:
+"Well, I wouldn’t know much about all that intellectual stuff. I play the stock
+market."
+"I," said Toohey, "play the stock market of the spirit. And I sell short."
+The most important consequence of Sermons in Stone was Toohey’s contract to
+write a daily column for Gail Wynand’s New York Banner.
+The contract came as a surprise to the followers of both sides involved, and, at
+first, it made everybody angry. Toohey had referred to Wynand frequently and not
+respectfully; the Wynand papers had called Toohey every name fit to print. But
+the Wynand papers had no policy, save that of reflecting the greatest prejudices
+of the greatest number, and this made for an erratic direction, but a
+recognizable direction, nevertheless: toward the inconsistent, the
+irresponsible, the trite and the maudlin. The Wynand papers stood against
+Privilege and for the Common Man, but in a respectable manner that could shock
+nobody; they exposed monopolies, when they wished; they supported strikes, when
+they wished, and vice versa. They denounced Wall Street and they denounced
+socialism and they hollered for clean movies, all with the same gusto. They were
+262
+
+strident and blatant--and, in essence, lifelessly mild. Ellsworth Toohey was a
+phenomenon much too extreme to fit behind the front page of the Banner.
+But the staff of the Banner was as unfastidious as its policy. It included
+everybody who could please the public or any large section thereof. It was said:
+"Gail Wynand is not a pig. He’ll eat anything." Ellsworth Toohey was a great
+success and the public was suddenly interested in architecture; the Banner had
+no authority on architecture; the Banner would get Ellsworth Toohey. It was a
+simple syllogism.
+Thus "One Small Voice" came into existence.
+The Banner explained its appearance by announcing: "On Monday the Banner will
+present to you a new friend--ELLSWORTH M. TOOHEY--whose scintillating book
+Sermons in Stone you have all read and loved. The name of Mr. Toohey stands for
+the great profession of architecture. He will help you to understand everything
+you want to know about the wonders of modern building. Watch for ’ONE SMALL
+VOICE’ on Monday. To appear exclusively in the Banner in New York City." The
+rest of what Mr. Toohey stood for was ignored.
+Ellsworth Toohey made no announcement or explanation to anyone. He disregarded
+the friends who cried that he had sold himself. He simply went to work. He
+devoted "One Small Voice" to architecture--once a month. The rest of the time it
+was the voice of Ellsworth Toohey saying what he wished said--to syndicated
+millions.
+Toohey was the only Wynand employee who had a contract permitting him to write
+anything he pleased. He had insisted upon it. It was considered a great victory,
+by everybody except Ellsworth Toohey. He realized that it could mean one of two
+things: either Wynand had surrendered respectfully to the prestige of his
+name--or Wynand considered him too contemptible to be worth restraining.
+"One Small Voice" never seemed to say anything dangerously revolutionary, and
+seldom anything political. It merely preached sentiments with which most people
+felt in agreement: unselfishness, brotherhood, equality. "I’d rather be kind
+than right."
+"Mercy is superior to justice, the shallow-hearted to the contrary
+notwithstanding."
+"Speaking anatomically--and perhaps otherwise--the heart is our most valuable
+organ. The brain is a superstition."
+"In spiritual matters there is a simple, infallible test: everything that
+proceeds from the ego is evil; everything that proceeds from love for others is
+good."
+"Service is the only badge of nobility. I see nothing offensive in the
+conception of fertilizer as the highest symbol of man’s destiny: it is
+fertilizer that produces wheat and roses."
+"The worst folk song is superior to the best symphony."
+"A man braver than his brothers insults them by implication. Let us aspire to no
+virtue which cannot be shared."
+"I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would
+feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother."
+263
+
+"Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a
+disease."
+"We are all brothers under the skin--and I, for one, would be willing to skin
+humanity to prove it."
+In the offices of the Banner Ellsworth Toohey was treated respectfully and left
+alone. It was whispered that Gail Wynand did not like him--because Wynand was
+always polite to him. Alvah Scarret unbent to the point of cordiality, but kept
+a wary distance. There was a silent, watchful equilibrium between Toohey and
+Scarret: they understood each other.
+Toohey made no attempt to approach Wynand in any way. Toohey seemed indifferent
+to all the men who counted on the Banner. He concentrated on the others,
+instead.
+He organized a club of Wynand employees. It was not a labor union; it was just a
+club. It met once a month in the library of the Banner. It did not concern
+itself with wages, hours or working conditions; it had no concrete program at
+all. People got acquainted, talked, and listened to speeches. Ellsworth Toohey
+made most of the speeches. He spoke about new horizons and the press as the
+voice of the masses. Gail Wynand appeared at a meeting once, entering
+unexpectedly in the middle of a session. Toohey smiled and invited him to join
+the club, declaring that he was eligible. Wynand did not join. He sat listening
+for half an hour, yawned, got up, and left before the meeting was over.
+Alvah Scarret appreciated the fact that Toohey did not try to reach into his
+field, into the important matters of policy. As a kind of return courtesy,
+Scarret let Toohey recommend new employees, when there was a vacancy to fill,
+particularly if the position was not an important one; as a rule, Scarret did
+not care, while Toohey always cared, even when it was only the post of copy boy.
+Toohey’s selections got the jobs. Most of them were young, brash, competent,
+shifty-eyed and shook hands limply. They had other things in common, but these
+were not so apparent.
+There were several monthly meetings which Toohey attended regularly; the
+meetings of: the Council of American Builders, the Council of American Writers,
+the Council of American Artists. He had organized them all.
+Lois Cook was chairman of the Council of American Writers. It met in the drawing
+room of her home on the Bowery. She was the only famous member. The rest
+included a woman who never used capitals in her books, and a man who never used
+commas; a youth who had written a thousand-page novel without a single letter o,
+and another who wrote poems that neither rhymed nor scanned; a man with a beard
+who was sophisticated and proved it by using every unprintable four-letter word
+in every ten pages of his manuscript; a woman who imitated Lois Cook, except
+that her style was less clear; when asked for explanations she stated that this
+was the way life sounded to her, when broken by the prism of her
+subconscious--"You know what a prism does to a ray of light, don’t you?" she
+said. There was also a fierce young man known simply as Ike the Genius, though
+nobody knew just what he had done, except that he talked about loving all of
+life. The Council signed a declaration which stated that writers were servants
+of the proletariat--but the statement did not sound as simple as that; it was
+more involved and much longer. The declaration was sent to every newspaper in
+the country. It was never published anywhere, except on page 32 of New
+Frontiers. The Council of American Artists had, as chairman, a cadaverous youth
+who painted what he saw in his nightly dreams. There was a boy who used no
+canvas, but did something with bird cages and metronomes, and another who
+discovered a new technique of painting: he blackened a sheet of paper and then
+264
+
+painted with a rubber eraser. There was a stout middle-aged lady who drew
+subconsciously, claiming that she never looked at her hand and had no idea of
+what the hand was doing; her hand, she said, was guided by the spirit of the
+departed lover whom she had never met on earth. Here they did not talk so much
+about the proletariat, but merely rebelled against the tyranny of reality and of
+the objective.
+A few friends pointed out to Ellsworth Toohey that he seemed guilty of
+inconsistency; he was so deeply opposed to individualism, they said, and here
+were all these writers and artists of his, and every one of them was a rabid
+individualist. "Do you really think so?" said Toohey, smiling blandly.
+Nobody took these Councils seriously. People talked about them, because they
+thought it made good conversation; it was such a huge joke, they said, certainly
+there was no harm in any of it. "Do you really think so?" said Toohey.
+Ellsworth Toohey was now forty-one years old. He lived in a distinguished
+apartment that seemed modest when compared to the size of the income he could
+have commanded if he wished. He liked to apply the adjective "conservative" to
+himself in one respect only: in his conservative good taste for clothes. No one
+had ever seen him lose his temper. His manner was immutable; it was the same in
+a drawing room, at a labor meeting, on a lecture platform, in the bathroom or
+during sexual intercourse: cool, self-possessed, amused, faintly patronizing.
+People admired his sense of humor. He was, they said, a man who could laugh at
+himself. "I’m a dangerous person. Somebody ought to warn you against me," he
+said to people, in the tone of uttering the most preposterous thing in the
+world.
+Of all the many titles bestowed upon him, he preferred one: Ellsworth Toohey,
+the Humanitarian.
+
+10.
+THE ENRIGHT HOUSE was opened in June of 1929.
+There was no formal ceremony. But Roger Enright wanted to mark the moment for
+his own satisfaction. He invited a few people he liked and he unlocked the great
+glass entrance door, throwing it open to the sun-filled air. Some press
+photographers had arrived, because the story concerned Roger Enright and because
+Roger Enright did not want to have them there. He ignored them. He stood in the
+middle of the street, looking at the building, then he walked through the lobby,
+stopping short without reason and resuming his pacing. He said nothing. He
+frowned fiercely, as if he were about to scream with rage. His friends knew that
+Roger Enright was happy.
+The building stood on the shore of the East River, a structure rapt as raised
+arms. The rock crystal forms mounted in such eloquent steps that the building
+did not seem stationary, but moving upward in a continuous flow--until one
+realized that it was only the movement of one’s glance and that one’s glance was
+forced to move in that particular rhythm. The walls of pale gray limestone
+looked silver against the sky, with the clean, dulled luster of metal, but a
+metal that had become a warm, living substance, carved by the most cutting of
+all instruments--a purposeful human will. It made the house alive in a strange,
+personal way of its own, so that in the minds of spectators five words ran
+dimly, without object or clear connection: "...in His image and likeness..."
+265
+
+A young photographer from the Banner noticed Howard Roark standing alone across
+the street, at the parapet of the river. He was leaning back, his hands closed
+over the parapet, hatless, looking up at the building. It was an accidental,
+unconscious moment. The young photographer glanced at Roark’s face--and thought
+of something that had puzzled him for a long time: he had always wondered why
+the sensations one felt in dreams were so much more intense than anything one
+could experience in waking reality--why the horror was so total and the ecstasy
+so complete--and what was that extra quality which could never be recaptured
+afterward; the quality of what he felt when he walked down a path through
+tangled green leaves in a dream, in an air full of expectation, of causeless,
+utter rapture--and when he awakened he could not explain it, it had been just a
+path through some woods. He thought of that because he saw that extra quality
+for the first time in waking existence, he saw it in Roark’s face lifted to the
+building. The photographer was a young boy, new to his job; he did not know much
+about it; but he loved his work; he had been an amateur photographer since
+childhood. So he snapped a picture of Roark in that one moment.
+Later the Art Editor of the Banner saw the picture and barked: "What the hell’s
+that?"
+"Howard Roark," said the photographer. "Who’s Howard Roark?"
+"The architect."
+"Who the hell wants a picture of the architect?"
+"Well, I only thought..."
+"Besides, it’s crazy. What’s the matter with the man?" So the picture was thrown
+into the morgue.
+The Enright House rented promptly. The tenants who moved in were people who
+wanted to live in sane comfort and cared about nothing else. They did not
+discuss the value of the building; they merely liked living there. They were the
+sort who lead useful, active private lives in public silence.
+But others talked a great deal of the Enright House, for about three weeks. They
+said that it was preposterous, exhibitionist and phony. They said: "My dear,
+imagine inviting Mrs. Moreland if you lived in a place like that! And her home
+is in such good taste!" A few were beginning to appear who said: "You know, I
+rather like modern architecture, there are some mighty interesting things being
+done that way nowadays, there’s quite a school of it in Germany that’s rather
+remarkable--but this is not like it at all. This is a freak."
+Ellsworth Toohey never mentioned the Enright House in his column. A reader of
+the Banner wrote to him: "Dear Mr. Toohey: What do you think of this place they
+call the Enright House? I have a friend who is an interior decorator and he
+talks a lot about it and he says it’s lousy. Architecture and such various arts
+being my hobby, I don’t know what to think. Will you tell us in your column?"
+Ellsworth Toohey answered in a private letter: "Dear friend: There are so many
+important buildings and great events going on in the world today that I cannot
+devote my column to trivialities."
+But people came to Roark--the few he wanted. That winter, he had received a
+commission to build the Norris house, a modest country home. In May he signed
+another contract--for his first office building, a fifty-story skyscraper in the
+center of Manhattan. Anthony Cord, the owner, had come from nowhere and made a
+fortune in Wall Street within a few brilliant, violent years. He wanted a
+266
+
+building of his own and he went to Roark. Roark’s office had grown to four
+rooms. His staff loved him. They did not realize it and would have been shocked
+to apply such a term as love to their cold, unapproachable, inhuman boss. These
+were the words they used to describe Roark, these were the words they had been
+trained to use by all the standards and conceptions of their past; only, working
+with him, they knew that he was none of these things, but they could not
+explain, neither what he was nor what they felt for him.
+He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never
+inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He
+responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office
+one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating
+considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his
+employer’s benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was
+granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of
+self-respect within every man in that office.
+"Oh, but that’s not human," said somebody when one of Roark’s draftsmen tried to
+explain this at home, "such a cold, intellectual approach!" One boy, a younger
+sort of Peter Keating, tried to introduce the human in preference to the
+intellectual in Roark’s office; he did not last two weeks. Roark made mistakes
+in choosing his employees occasionally, not often; those whom he kept for a
+month became his friends for life. They did not call themselves friends; they
+did not praise him to outsiders; they did not talk about him. They knew only, in
+a dim way, that it was not loyalty to him, but to the best within themselves.
+#
+Dominique remained in the city all summer. She remembered, with bitter pleasure,
+her custom to travel; it made her angry to think that she could not go, could
+not want to go. She enjoyed the anger; it drove her to his room. On the nights
+which she did not spend with him she walked through the streets of the city. She
+walked to the Enright House or to the Fargo Store, and stood looking at the
+building for a long time. She drove alone out of town--to see the Heller house,
+the Sanborn house, the Gowan Service Station. She never spoke to him about that.
+Once, she took the Staten Island ferry at two o’clock in the morning; she rode
+to the island, standing alone at the rail of an empty deck. She watched the city
+moving away from her. In the vast emptiness of sky and ocean, the city was only
+a small, jagged solid. It seemed condensed, pressed tight together, not a place
+of streets and separate buildings, but a single sculptured form. A form of
+irregular steps that rose and dropped without ordered continuity, long
+ascensions and sudden drops, like the graph of a stubborn struggle. But it went
+on mounting--toward a few points, toward the triumphant masts of skyscrapers
+raised out of the struggle.
+The boat went past the Statue of Liberty--a figure in a green light, with an arm
+raised like the skyscrapers behind it.
+She stood at the rail, while the city diminished, and she felt the motion of
+growing distance as a growing tightness within her, the pull of a living cord
+that could not be stretched too far. She stood in quiet excitement when the boat
+sailed back and she saw the city growing again to meet her. She stretched her
+arms wide. The city expanded, to her elbows, to her wrists, beyond her
+fingertips. Then the skyscrapers rose over her head, and she was back.
+She came ashore. She knew where she had to go, and wanted to get there fast, but
+felt she must get there herself, like this, on her own feet. So she walked half
+the length of Manhattan, through long, empty, echoing streets. It was
+four-thirty when she knocked at his door. He had been asleep. She shook her
+267
+
+head. "No," she said. "Go back to sleep. I just want to be here." She did not
+touch him. She took off her hat and shoes, huddled into an armchair, and fell
+asleep, her arm hanging over the chair’s side, her head on her arm. In the
+morning he asked no questions. They fixed breakfast together, then he hurried
+away to his office. Before leaving, he took her in his arms and kissed her. He
+walked out, and she stood for a few moments, then left. They had not exchanged
+twenty words.
+There were week ends when they left the city together and drove in her car to
+some obscure point on the coast. They stretched out in the sun, on the sand of a
+deserted beach, they swam in the ocean. She liked to watch his body in the
+water. She would remain behind and stand, the waves hitting her knees, and watch
+him cutting a straight line through the breakers. She liked to lie with him at
+the edge of the water; she would lie on her stomach, a few feet away from him,
+facing the shore, her toes stretched to the waves; she would not touch him, but
+she would feel the waves coming up behind them, breaking against their bodies,
+and she would see the backwash running in mingled streams off her body and his.
+They spent the nights at some country inn, taking a single room. They never
+spoke of the things left behind them in the city. But it was the unstated that
+gave meaning to the relaxed simplicity of these hours; their eyes laughed
+silently at the preposterous contract whenever they looked at each other.
+She tried to demonstrate her power over him. She stayed away from his house; she
+waited for him to come to her. He spoiled it by coming too soon; by refusing her
+the satisfaction of knowing that he waited and struggled against his desire; by
+surrendering at once. She would say: "Kiss my hand, Roark." He would kneel and
+kiss her ankle. He defeated her by admitting her power; she could not have the
+gratification of enforcing it. He would lie at her feet, he would say: "Of
+course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you
+wish with me. Is that what you want to hear? Almost, Dominique. And the things
+you couldn’t make me do--you could put me through hell if you demanded them and
+I had to refuse you, as I would. Through utter hell, Dominique. Does that please
+you? Why do you want to know whether you own me? It’s so simple. Of course you
+do. All of me that can be owned. You’ll never demand anything else. But you want
+to know whether you could make me suffer. You could. What of it?" The words did
+not sound like surrender, because they were not torn out of him, but admitted
+simply and willingly. She felt no thrill of conquest; she felt herself owned
+more than ever, by a man who could say these things, know of them to be true,
+and still remain controlled and controlling--as she wanted him to remain.
+#
+Late in June a man named Kent Lansing came to see Roark. He was forty years old,
+he was dressed like a fashion plate and looked like a prize fighter, though he
+was not burly, muscular or tough: he was thin and angular. He merely made one
+think of a boxer and of other things that did not fit his appearance: of a
+battering ram, of a tank, of a submarine torpedo. He was a member of a
+corporation formed for the purpose of erecting a luxurious hotel on Central Park
+South. There were many wealthy men involved and the corporation was ruled by a
+numerous board; they had purchased their site; they had not decided on an
+architect. But Kent Lansing had made up his mind that it would be Roark.
+"I won’t try to tell you how much I’d like to do it," Roark said to him at the
+end of their first interview. "But there’s not a chance of my getting it. I can
+get along with people--when they’re alone. I can do nothing with them in groups.
+No board has ever hired me--and I don’t think one ever will."
+Kent Lansing smiled. "Have you ever known a board to do. anything?"
+268
+
+"What do you mean?"
+"Just that: have you ever known a board to do anything at all?"
+"Well, they seem to exist and function."
+"Do they? You know, there was a time when everyone thought it self-evident that
+the earth was flat. It would be entertaining to speculate upon the nature and
+causes of humanity’s illusions. I’ll write a book about it some day. It won’t be
+popular. I’ll have a chapter on boards of directors. You see, they don’t exist."
+"I’d like to believe you, but what’s the gag?"
+"No, you wouldn’t like to believe me. The causes of illusions are not pretty to
+discover. They’re either vicious or tragic. This one is both. Mainly vicious.
+And it’s not a gag. But we won’t go into that now. All I mean is that a board of
+directors is one or two ambitious men--and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups
+of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can’t visualize a
+total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses
+to fill that nothing. It’s a tough battle. The toughest. It’s simple enough to
+fight any enemy, so long as he’s there to be fought. But when he isn’t...Don’t
+look at me like that, as if I were crazy. You ought to know. You’ve fought a
+vacuum all your life."
+"I’m looking at you like that because I like you."
+"Of course you like me. As I knew I’d like you. Men are brothers, you know, and
+they have a great instinct for brotherhood--except in boards, unions,
+corporations and other chain gangs. But I talk too much. That’s why I’m a good
+salesman. However, I have nothing to sell you. You know. So we’ll just say that
+you’re going to build the Aquitania--that’s the name of our hotel--and we’ll let
+it go at that."
+If the violence of the battles which people never hear about could be measured
+in material statistics, the battle of Kent Lansing against the board of
+directors of the Aquitania Corporation would have been listed among the greatest
+carnages of history. But the things he fought were not solid enough to leave
+anything as substantial as corpses on the battlefield.
+He had to fight phenomena such as: "Listen, Palmer, Lansing’s talking about
+somebody named Roark, how’re you going to vote, do the big boys approve of him
+or not?"
+"I’m not going to decide till I know who’s voted for or against."
+"Lansing says...but on the other hand, Thorpe tells me..."Talbot’s putting up a
+swank hotel on Fifth up in the sixties--and he’s got Francon & Keating." "Harper
+swears by this young fellow--Gordon Prescott." "Listen, Betsy says we’re crazy."
+"I don’t like Roark’s face--he doesn’t look co-operative." "I know, I feel it,
+Roark’s the kind that don’t fit in. He’s not a regular fellow."
+"What’s a regular fellow?"
+"Aw hell, you know very well what I mean: regular."
+"Thompson says that Mrs. Pritchett says that she knows for certain because Mr.
+Macy told her that if..."
+"Well, boys, I don’t give a damn what anybody says, I make up my own mind, and
+269
+
+I’m here to tell you that I think this Roark is lousy. I don’t like the Enright
+House."
+"Why?"
+"I don’t know why. I just don’t like it, and that’s that. Haven’t I got a right
+to an opinion of my own?"
+The battle lasted for weeks. Everybody had his say, except Roark. Lansing told
+him: "It’s all right. Lay off. Don’t do anything. Let me do the talking. There’s
+nothing you can do. When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is
+to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say. It’s taken for
+granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in
+advance as prejudiced--since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker.
+It’s so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in
+hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain
+is more than I’ll ever understand. However, that’s how it’s done. You see,
+reasons require scales to weigh them. And scales are not made of cotton. And
+cotton is what the human spirit is made of--you know, the stuff that keeps no
+shape and offers no resistance and can be twisted forward and backward and into
+a pretzel. You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than
+I could. But they won’t listen to you and they’ll listen to me. Because I’m the
+middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line--it’s
+a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a
+pretzel."
+"Why are you fighting for me like that?" Roark asked.
+"Why are you a good architect? Because you have certain standards of what is
+good, and they’re your own, and you stand by them. I want a good hotel, and I
+have certain standards of what is good, and they’re my own, and you’re the one
+who can give me what I want. And when I fight for you, I’m doing--on my side of
+it--just what you’re doing when you design a building. Do you think integrity is
+the monopoly of the artist? And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is?
+The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor’s pocket? No, it’s not as
+easy as that. If that were all, I’d say ninety-five percent of humanity were
+honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren’t. Integrity is the ability
+to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is
+something one doesn’t borrow or pawn. And yet, if I were asked to choose a
+symbol for humanity as we know it, I wouldn’t choose a cross nor an eagle nor a
+lion and unicorn. I’d choose three gilded balls."
+And as Roark looked at him, he added: "Don’t worry. They’re all against me. But
+I have one advantage: they don’t know what they want. I do."
+At the end of July, Roark signed a contract to build the Aquitania.
+#
+Ellsworth Toohey sat in his office, looking at a newspaper spread out on his
+desk, at the item announcing the Aquitania contract. He smoked, holding a
+cigarette propped in the corner of his mouth, supported by two straight fingers;
+one finger tapped against the cigarette, slowly, rhythmically, for a long time.
+He heard the sound of his door thrown open, and he glanced up to see Dominique
+standing there, leaning against the doorjamb, her arms crossed on her chest. Her
+face looked interested, nothing more, but it was alarming to see an expression
+of actual interest on her face.
+"My dear," he said, rising, "this is the first time you’ve taken the trouble to
+270
+
+enter my office--in the four years that we’ve worked in the same building. This
+is really an occasion."
+She said nothing, but smiled gently, which was still more alarming. He added,
+his voice pleasant: "My little speech, of course, was the equivalent of a
+question. Or don’t we understand each other any longer?"
+"I suppose we don’t--if you find it necessary to ask what brought me here. But
+you know it, Ellsworth, you know it; there it is on your desk." She walked to
+the desk and flipped a comer of the newspaper. She laughed. "Do you wish you had
+it hidden somewhere? Of course you didn’t expect me to come. Not that it makes
+any difference. But I just like to see you being obvious for once. Right on your
+desk, like that. Open at the real-estate page, too."
+"You sound as if that little piece of news had made you happy."
+"It did, Ellsworth. It does."
+"I thought you had worked hard to prevent that contract."
+"I had."
+"If you think this is an act you’re putting on right now, Dominique, you’re
+fooling yourself. This isn’t an act."
+"No, Ellsworth. This isn’t."
+"You’re happy that Roark got it?"
+"I’m so happy. I could sleep with this Kent Lansing, whoever he is, if I ever
+met him and if he asked me."
+"Then the pact is off?"
+"By no means. I shall try to stop any job that comes his way. I shall continue
+trying. It’s not going to be so easy as it was, though. The Enright House, the
+Cord Building--and this. Not so easy for me--and for you. He’s beating you,
+Ellsworth. Ellsworth, what if we were wrong about the world, you and I?"
+"You’ve always been, my dear. Do forgive me. I should have known better than to
+be astonished. It would make you happy, of course, that he got it. I don’t even
+mind admitting that it doesn’t make me happy at all. There, you see? Now your
+visit to my office has been a complete success. So we shall just write the
+Aquitania off as a major defeat, forget all about it and continue as we were."
+"Certainly, Ellsworth. Just as we were. I’m cinching a beautiful new hospital
+for Peter Keating at a dinner party tonight."
+Ellsworth Toohey went home and spent the evening thinking about Hopton Stoddard.
+Hopton Stoddard was a little man worth twenty million dollars. Three
+inheritances had contributed to that sum, and seventy-two years of a busy life
+devoted to the purpose of making money. Hopton Stoddard had a genius for
+investment; he invested in everything--houses of ill fame, Broadway spectacles
+on the grand scale, preferably of a religious nature, factories, farm mortgages
+and contraceptives. He was small and bent. His face was not disfigured; people
+merely thought it was, because it had a single expression: he smiled. His little
+mouth was shaped like a v in eternal good cheer; his eyebrows were tiny v’s
+inverted over round, blue eyes; his hair, rich, white and waved, looked like a
+271
+
+wig, but was real.
+Toohey had known Hopton Stoddard for many years and exercised a strong influence
+upon him. Hopton Stoddard had never married, had no relatives and no friends; he
+distrusted people, believing that they were always after his money. But he felt
+a tremendous respect for Ellsworth Toohey, because Toohey represented the exact
+opposite of his own life; Toohey had no concern whatever for worldly wealth; by
+the mere fact of this contrast, he considered Toohey the personification of
+virtue; what this estimate implied in regard to his own life never quite
+occurred to him. He was not easy in his mind about his life, and the uneasiness
+grew with the years, with the certainty of an approaching end. He found relief
+in religion--in the form of a bribe. He experimented with several different
+creeds, attended services, donated large sums and switched to another faith. As
+the years passed, the tempo of his quest accelerated; it had the tone of panic.
+Toohey’s indifference to religion was the only flaw that disturbed him in the
+person of his friend and mentor. But everything Toohey preached seemed in line
+with God’s law: charity, sacrifice, help to the poor. Hopton Stoddard felt safe
+whenever he followed Toohey’s advice. He donated handsomely to the institutions
+recommended by Toohey, without much prompting. In matters of the spirit he
+regarded Toohey upon earth somewhat as he expected to regard God in heaven.
+But this summer Toohey met defeat with Hopton Stoddard for the first time.
+Hopton Stoddard decided to realize a dream which he had been planning slyly and
+cautiously, like all his other investments, for several years: he decided to
+build a temple. It was not to be the temple of any particular creed, but an
+interdenominational, non-sectarian monument to religion, a cathedral of faith,
+open to all. Hopton Stoddard wanted to play safe.
+He felt crushed when Ellsworth Toohey advised him against the project. Toohey
+wanted a building to house a new home for subnormal children; he had an
+organization set up, a distinguished committee of sponsors, an endowment for
+operating expenses--but no building and no funds to erect one. If Hopton
+Stoddard wished a worthy memorial to his name, a grand climax of his generosity,
+to what nobler purpose could he dedicate his money than to the Hopton Stoddard
+Home for Subnormal Children, Toohey pointed out to him emphatically; to the poor
+little blighted ones for whom nobody cared. But Hopton Stoddard could not be
+aroused to any enthusiasm for a Home nor for any mundane institution. It had to
+be "The Hopton Stoddard Temple of the Human Spirit."
+He could offer no arguments against Toohey’s brilliant array; he could say
+nothing except: "No, Ellsworth, no, it’s not right, not right." The matter was
+left unsettled. Hopton Stoddard would not budge, but Toohey’s disapproval made
+him uncomfortable and he postponed his decision from day to day. He knew only
+that he would have to decide by the end of summer, because in the fall he was to
+depart on a long journey, a world tour of the holy shrines of all faiths, from
+Lourdes to Jerusalem to Mecca to Benares.
+A few days after the announcement of the Aquitania contract Toohey came to see
+Hopton Stoddard, in the evening, in the privacy of Stoddard’s vast, overstuffed
+apartment on Riverside Drive.
+"Hopton," he said cheerfully, "I was wrong. You were right about that temple."
+"No!" said Hopton Stoddard, aghast.
+"Yes," said Toohey, "you were right. Nothing else would be quite fitting. You
+must build a temple. A Temple of the Human Spirit."
+272
+
+Hopton Stoddard swallowed, and his blue eyes became moist. He felt that he must
+have progressed far upon the path of righteousness if he had been able to teach
+a point of virtue to his teacher. After that, nothing else mattered; he sat,
+like a meek, wrinkled baby, listening to Ellsworth Toohey, nodding, agreeing to
+everything.
+"It’s an ambitious undertaking, Hopton, and if you do it, you must do it right.
+It’s a little presumptuous, you know--offering a present to God--and unless you
+do it in the best way possible, it will be offensive, not reverent."
+"Yes, of course. It must be right. It must be right. It must be the best. You’ll
+help me, won’t you, Ellsworth? You know all about buildings and art and
+everything--it must be right."
+"I’ll be glad to help you, if you really want me to."
+"If I want you to! What do you mean--if I want...! Goodness gracious, what would
+I do without you? I don’t know anything about...about anything like that. And it
+must be right."
+"If you want it right, will you do exactly as I say?"
+"Yes. Yes. Yes, of course."
+"First of all, the architect. That’s very important."
+"Yes, indeed."
+"You don’t want one of those satin-lined commercial boys with the dollar sign
+all over them. You want a man who believes in his work as--as you believe in
+God."
+"That’s right. That’s absolutely right."
+"You must take the one I name."
+"Certainly. Who’s that?"
+"Howard Roark."
+"Huh?" Hopton Stoddard looked blank. "Who’s he?"
+"He’s the man who’s going to build the Temple of the Human Spirit."
+"Is he any good?"
+Ellsworth Toohey turned and looked straight into his eyes.
+"By my immortal soul, Hopton," he said slowly, "he’s the best there is."
+"Oh!..."
+"But he’s difficult to get. He doesn’t work except on certain conditions. You
+must observe them scrupulously. You must give him complete freedom. Tell him
+what you want and how much you want to spend, and leave the rest up to him. Let
+him design it and build it as he wishes. He won’t work otherwise. Just tell him
+frankly that you know nothing about architecture and that you chose him because
+you felt he was the only one who could be trusted to do it right without advice
+273
+
+or interference."
+"Okay, if you vouch for him."
+"I vouch for him."
+"That’s fine. And I don’t care how much it costs me."
+"But you must be careful about approaching him. I think he will refuse to do it,
+at first. He will tell you that he doesn’t believe in God."
+"What!"
+"Don’t believe him. He’s a profoundly religious man--in his own way. You can see
+that in his buildings."
+"Oh."
+"But he doesn’t belong to any established church. So you won’t appear partial.
+You won’t offend anyone."
+"That’s good."
+"Now, when you deal in matters of faith, you must be the first one to have
+faith. Is that right?"
+"That’s right."
+"Don’t wait to see his drawings. They will take some time--and you mustn’t delay
+your trip. Just hire him--don’t sign a contract, it’s not necessary--make
+arrangements for your bank to take care of the financial end and let him do the
+rest. You don’t have to pay him his fee until you return. In a year or so, when
+you come back after seeing all those great temples, you’ll have a better one of
+your own, waiting here for you."
+"That’s just what I wanted."
+"But you must think of the proper unveiling to the public, the proper
+dedication, the right publicity."
+"Of course...That is, publicity?"
+"Certainly. Do you know of any great event that’s not accompanied by a good
+publicity campaign? One that isn’t, can’t be much. If you skimp on that, it will
+be downright disrespectful."
+"That’s true."
+"Now if you want the proper publicity, you must plan it carefully, well in
+advance. What you want, when you unveil it, is one grand fanfare, like an opera
+overture, like a blast on Gabriel’s horn."
+"That’s beautiful, the way you put it."
+"Well, to do that you mustn’t allow a lot of newspaper punks to dissipate your
+effect by dribbling out premature stories. Don’t release the drawings of the
+temple. Keep them secret. Tell Roark that you want them kept secret. He won’t
+object to that. Have the contractor put up a solid fence all around the site
+while it’s being built. No one’s to know what it’s like until you come back and
+274
+
+preside at the unveiling in person. Then--pictures in every damn paper in the
+country!"
+"Ellsworth!"
+"I beg your pardon."
+"The idea’s right. That’s how we put over The Legend of the Virgin, ten years
+ago that was, with a cast of ninety-seven."
+"Yes. But in the meantime, keep the public interested. Get yourself a good press
+agent and tell him how you want it handled. I’ll give you the name of an
+excellent one. See to it that there’s something about the mysterious Stoddard
+Temple in the papers every other week or so. Keep ’em guessing. Keep ���em
+waiting. They’ll be good and ready when the time comes."
+"Right."
+"But, above all, don’t let Roark know that I recommended him. Don’t breathe a
+word to anyone about my having anything to do with it. Not to a soul. Swear it."
+"But why?"
+"Because I have too many friends who are architects, and it’s such an important
+commission, and I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings."
+"Yes. That’s true."
+"Swear it."
+"Oh, Ellsworth!"
+"Swear it. By the salvation of your soul."
+"I swear it. By...that."
+"All right. Now you’ve never dealt with architects, and he’s an unusual kind of
+architect, and you don’t want to muff it. So I’ll tell you exactly what you’re
+to say to him."
+On the following day Toohey walked into Dominique’s office. He stood at her
+desk, smiled and said, his voice unsmiling:
+"Do you remember Hopton Stoddard and that temple of all faith that he’s been
+talking about for six years?"
+"Vaguely."
+"He’s going to build it."
+"Is he?"
+"He’s giving the job to Howard Roark."
+"Not really!"
+"Really."
+"Well, of all the incredible...Not Hopton!"
+275
+
+"Hopton."
+"Oh, all right. I’ll go to work on him."
+"No. You lay off. I told him to give it to Roark."
+She sat still, exactly as the words caught her, the amusement gone from her
+face. He added:
+"I wanted you to know that I did it, so there won’t be any tactical
+contradictions. No one else knows it or is to know it. I trust you to remember
+that."
+She asked, her lips moving tightly: "What are you after?"
+He smiled. He said:
+"I’m going to make him famous."
+#
+Roark sat in Hopton Stoddard’s office and listened, stupefied. Hopton Stoddard
+spoke slowly; it sounded earnest and impressive, but was due to the fact that he
+had memorized his speeches almost verbatim. His baby eyes looked at Roark with
+an ingratiating plea. For once, Roark almost forgot architecture and placed the
+human element first; he wanted to get up and get out of the office; he could not
+stand the man. But the words he heard held him; the words did not match the
+man’s face or voice.
+"So you see, Mr. Roark, though it is to be a religious edifice, it is also more
+than that. You notice that we call it the Temple of the Human Spirit. We want to
+capture--in stone, as others capture in music--not some narrow creed, but the
+essence of all religion. And what is the essence of religion? The great
+aspiration of the human spirit toward the highest, the noblest, the best. The
+human spirit as the creator and the conqueror of the ideal. The great
+life-giving force of the universe. The heroic human spirit. That is your
+assignment, Mr. Roark."
+Roark rubbed the back of his hand against his eyes, helplessly. It was not
+possible. It simply was not possible. That could not be what the man wanted; not
+that man. It seemed horrible to hear him say that.
+"Mr. Stoddard, I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake," he said, his voice slow and
+tired. "I don’t think I’m the man you want. I don’t think it would be right for
+me to undertake it. I don’t believe in God."
+He was astonished to see Hopton Stoddard’s expression of delight and triumph.
+Hopton Stoddard glowed in appreciation--in appreciation of the clairvoyant
+wisdom of Ellsworth Toohey who was always right. He drew himself up with new
+confidence, and he said firmly, for the first time in the tone of an old man
+addressing a youth, wise and gently patronizing:
+"That doesn’t matter. You’re a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark--in your own
+way. I can see that in your buildings."
+He wondered why Roark stared at him like that, without moving, for such a long
+time.
+"That’s true," said Roark. It was almost a whisper.
+276
+
+That he should learn something about himself, about his buildings, from this man
+who had seen it and known it before he knew it, that this man should say it with
+that air of tolerant confidence implying full understanding--removed Roark’s
+doubts. He told himself that he did not really understand people; that an
+impression could be deceptive; that Hopton Stoddard would be far on another
+continent away; that nothing mattered in the face of such an assignment; that
+nothing could matter when a human voice--even Hopton Stoddard’s--was going on,
+saying:
+"I wish to call it God. You may choose any other name. But what I want in that
+building is your spirit. Your spirit, Mr. Roark. Give me the best of that--and
+you will have done your job, as I shall have done mine. Do not worry about the
+meaning I wish conveyed. Let it be your spirit in the shape of a building--and
+it will have that meaning, whether you know it or not."
+And so Roark agreed to build the Stoddard Temple of the Human Spirit.
+
+11.
+IN DECEMBER the Cosmo-Slotnick Building was opened with great ceremony. There
+were celebrities, flower horseshoes, newsreel cameras, revolving searchlights
+and three hours of speeches, all alike.
+I should be happy, Peter Keating told himself--and wasn’t. He watched from a
+window the solid spread of faces filling Broadway from curb to curb. He tried to
+talk himself into joy. He felt nothing. He had to admit that he was bored. But
+he smiled and shook hands and let himself be photographed. The Cosmo-Slotnick
+Building rose ponderously over the street, like a big white bromide.
+After the ceremonies Ellsworth Toohey took Keating away to the retreat of a
+pale-orchid booth in a quiet, expensive restaurant. Many brilliant parties were
+being given in honor of the opening, but Keating grasped Toohey’s offer and
+declined all the other invitations. Toohey watched him as he seized his drink
+and slumped in his seat.
+"Wasn’t it grand?" said Toohey. ’That, Peter, is the climax of what you can
+expect from life." He lifted his glass delicately. "Here’s to the hope that you
+shall have many triumphs such as this. Such as tonight."
+"Thanks," said Keating, and reached for his glass hastily, without looking, and
+lifted it, to find it empty.
+"Don’t you feel proud, Peter?"
+"Yes. Yes, of course."
+"That’s good. That’s how I like to see you. You looked extremely handsome
+tonight. You’ll be splendid in those newsreels."
+A flicker of interest snapped in Keating’s eyes. "Well, I sure hope so."
+"It’s too bad you’re not married, Peter. A wife would have been most decorative
+tonight. Goes well with the public. With the movie audiences, too."
+"Katie doesn’t photograph well."
+277
+
+"Oh, that’s right, you’re engaged to Katie. So stupid of me. I keep forgetting
+it. No, Katie doesn’t photograph well at all. Also, for the life of me, I can’t
+imagine Katie being very effective at a social function. There are a great many
+nice adjectives one could use about Katie, but ’poised’ and ’distinguished’ are
+not among them. You must forgive me, Peter. I let my imagination run away with
+me. Dealing with art as much as I do, I’m inclined to see things purely from the
+viewpoint of artistic fitness. And looking at you tonight, I couldn’t help
+thinking of the woman who would have made such a perfect picture by your side."
+"Who?"
+"Oh, don’t pay attention to me. It’s only an esthetic fancy. Life is never as
+perfect as that. People have too much to envy you for. You couldn’t add that to
+your other achievements."
+"Who?"
+"Drop it, Peter. You can’t get her. Nobody can get her. You’re good, but you’re
+not good enough for that."
+"Who?"
+"Dominique Francon, of course."
+Keating sat up straight and Toohey saw wariness in his eyes, rebellion, actual
+hostility. Toohey held his glance calmly. It was Keating who gave in; he slumped
+again and he said, pleading:
+"Oh, God, Ellsworth, I don’t love her."
+"I never thought you did. But I do keep forgetting the exaggerated importance
+which the average man attaches to love--sexual love."
+"I’m not an average man," said Keating wearily; it was an automatic
+protest--without fire.
+"Sit up, Peter. You don’t look like a hero, slumped that way."
+Keating jerked himself up--anxious and angry. He said:
+"I’ve always felt that you wanted me to marry Dominique. Why? What’s it to you?"
+"You’ve answered your own question, Peter. What could it possibly be to me? But
+we were speaking of love. Sexual love, Peter, is a profoundly selfish emotion.
+And selfish emotions are not the ones that lead to happiness. Are they? Take
+tonight for instance. That was an evening to swell an egotist’s heart. Were you
+happy, Peter? Don’t bother, my dear, no answer is required. The point I wish to
+make is only that one must mistrust one’s most personal impulses. What one
+desires is actually of so little importance! One can’t expect to find happiness
+until one realizes this completely. Think of tonight for a moment. You, my dear
+Peter, were the least important person there. Which is as it should be. It is
+not the doer that counts but those for whom things are done. But you were not
+able to accept that--and so you didn’t feel the great elation that should have
+been yours."
+"That’s true," whispered Keating. He would not have admitted it to anyone else.
+"You missed the beautiful pride of utter selflessness. Only when you learn to
+278
+
+deny your ego, completely, only when you learn to be amused by such piddling
+sentimentalities as your little sex urges--only then will you achieve the
+greatness which I have always expected of you."
+"You...you believe that about me, Ellsworth? You really do?"
+"I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t. But to come back to love. Personal
+love, Peter, is a great evil--as everything personal. And it always leads to
+misery. Don’t you see why? Personal love is an act of discrimination, of
+preference. It is an act of injustice--to every human being on earth whom you
+rob of the affection arbitrarily granted to one. You must love all men equally.
+But you cannot achieve so noble an emotion if you don’t kill your selfish little
+choices. They are vicious and futile--since they contradict the first cosmic
+law--the basic equality of all men."
+"You mean," said Keating, suddenly interested, "that in a...in a philosophical
+way, deep down, I mean, we’re all equal? All of us?"
+"Of course," said Toohey.
+Keating wondered why the thought was so warmly pleasant to him. He did not mind
+that this made him the equal of every pickpocket in the crowd gathered to
+celebrate his building tonight; it occurred to him dimly--and left him
+undisturbed, even though it contradicted the passionate quest for superiority
+that had driven him all his life. The contradiction did not matter; he was not
+thinking of tonight nor of the crowd; he was thinking of a man who had not been
+there tonight.
+"You know, Ellsworth," he said, leaning forward, happy in an uneasy kind of way,
+"I...I’d rather talk to you than do anything else, anything at all. I had so
+many places to go tonight--and I’m so much happier just sitting here with you.
+Sometimes I wonder how I’d ever go on without you."
+"That," said Toohey, "is as it should be. Or else what are friends for?"
+#
+That winter the annual costume Arts Ball was an event of greater brilliance and
+originality than usual. Athelstan Beasely, the leading spirit of its
+organization, had had what he called a stroke of genius: all the architects were
+invited to come dressed as their best buildings. It was a huge success.
+Peter Keating was the star of the evening. He looked wonderful as the
+Cosmo-Slotnick Building. An exact papier-mâché replica of his famous structure
+covered him from head to knees; one could not see his face, but his bright eyes
+peered from behind the windows of the top floor, and the crowning pyramid of the
+roof rose over his head; the colonnade hit him somewhere about the diaphragm,
+and he wagged a finger through the portals of the great entrance door. His legs
+were free to move with his usual elegance, in faultless dress trousers and
+patent-leather pumps.
+Guy Francon was very impressive as the Frink National Bank Building, although
+the structure looked a little squatter than in the original, in order to allow
+for Francon’s stomach; the Hadrian torch over his head had a real electric bulb
+lit by a miniature battery. Ralston Holcombe was magnificent as a state capitol,
+and Gordon L. Prescott was very masculine as a grain elevator. Eugene Pettingill
+waddled about on his skinny, ancient legs, small and bent, an imposing Park
+Avenue hotel, with horn-rimmed spectacles peering from under the majestic tower.
+Two wits engaged in a duel, butting each other in the belly with famous spires,
+great landmarks of the city that greet the ships approaching from across the
+279
+
+ocean. Everybody had lots of fun.
+Many of the architects, Athelstan Beasely in particular, commented resentfully
+on Howard Roark who had been invited and did not come. They had expected to see
+him dressed as the Enright House.
+#
+Dominique stopped in the hall and stood looking at the door, at the inscription:
+"HOWARD ROARK, ARCHITECT."
+She had never seen his office. She had fought against coming here for a long
+time. But she had to see the place where he worked.
+The secretary in the reception room was startled when Dominique gave her name,
+but announced the visitor to Roark. "Go right in, Miss Francon," she said.
+Roark smiled when she entered his office; a faint smile without surprise.
+"I knew you’d come here some day," he said. "Want me to show you the place?"
+"What’s that?" she asked.
+His hands were smeared with clay; on a long table, among a litter of unfinished
+sketches, stood the clay model of a building, a rough study of angles and
+terraces.
+"The Aquitania?" she asked.
+He nodded.
+"Do you always do that?"
+"No. Not always. Sometimes. There’s a hard problem here. I like to play with it
+for a while. It will probably be my favorite building--it’s so difficult."
+"Go ahead. I want to watch you doing that. Do you mind?"
+"Not at all."
+In a moment, he had forgotten her presence. She sat in a corner and watched his
+hands. She saw them molding walls. She saw them smash a part of the structure,
+and begin again, slowly, patiently, with a strange certainty even in his
+hesitation. She saw the palm of his hand smooth a long, straight plane, she saw
+an angle jerked across the space in the motion of his hand before she saw it in
+clay.
+She rose and walked to the window. The buildings of the city far below looked no
+bigger than the model on his table. It seemed to her that she could see his
+hands shaping the setbacks, the corners, the roofs of all the structures below,
+smashing and molding again. Her hand moved absently, following the form of a
+distant building in rising steps, feeling a physical sense of possession,
+feeling it for him.
+She turned back to the table. A strand of hair hung down over his face bent
+attentively to the model; he was not looking at her, he was looking at the shape
+under his fingers. It was almost as if she were watching his hands moving over
+the body of another woman. She leaned against the wall, weak with a feeling of
+violent, physical pleasure.
+#
+280
+
+At the beginning of January, while the first steel columns rose from the
+excavations that were to become the Cord Building and the Aquitania Hotel, Roark
+worked on the drawings for the Temple.
+When the first sketches were finished, he said to his secretary:
+"Get me Steve Mallory."
+"Mallory, Mr. Roark? Who...Oh, yes, the shooting sculptor."
+"The what?"
+"He took a shot at Ellsworth Toohey, didn’t he?"
+"Did he? Yes, that’s right."
+"Is that the one you want, Mr. Roark?"
+"That’s the one."
+For two days the secretary telephoned art dealers, galleries, architects,
+newspapers. No one could tell her what had become of Steven Mallory or where he
+could be found. On the third day she reported to Roark: "I’ve found an address,
+in the Village, which I’m told might be his. There’s no telephone." Roark
+dictated a letter asking Mallory to telephone his office.
+The letter was not returned, but a week passed without answer. Then Steven
+Mallory telephoned.
+"Hello?" said Roark, when the secretary switched the call to him.
+"Steven Mallory speaking," said a young, hard voice, in a way that left an
+impatient, belligerent silence after the words.
+"I should like to see you, Mr. Mallory. Can we make an appointment for you to
+come to my office?"
+"What do you want to see me about?"
+"About a commission, of course. I want you to do some work for a building of
+mine." There was a long silence.
+"All right," said Mallory; his voice sounded dead. He added: "Which building?"
+"The Stoddard Temple. You may have heard..."
+"Yeah, I heard. You’re doing it. Who hasn’t heard? Will you pay me as much as
+you’re paying your press agent?"
+"I’m not paying the press agent. I’ll pay you whatever you wish to ask."
+"You know that can’t be much."
+"What time would it be convenient for you to come here?"
+"Oh, hell, you name it. You know I’m not busy."
+"Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?"
+281
+
+"All right." He added: "I don’t like your voice." Roark laughed. "I like yours.
+Cut it out and be here tomorrow at two."
+"Okay." Mallory hung up.
+Roark dropped the receiver, grinning. But the grin vanished suddenly, and he sat
+looking at the telephone, his face grave.
+Mallory did not keep the appointment. Three days passed without a word from him.
+Then Roark went to find him in person.
+The rooming house where Mallory lived was a dilapidated brownstone in an
+unlighted street that smelled of a fish market. There was a laundry and a
+cobbler on the ground floor, at either side of a narrow entrance. A slatternly
+landlady said: "Mallory? Fifth floor rear," and shuffled away indifferently.
+Roark climbed sagging wooden stairs lighted by bulbs stuck in a web of pipes. He
+knocked at a grimy door.
+The door opened. A gaunt young man stood on the threshold; he had disheveled
+hair, a strong mouth with a square lower lip, and the most expressive eyes that
+Roark had ever seen. "What do you want?" he snapped. "Mr. Mallory?"
+"Yeah."
+"I’m Howard Roark."
+Mallory laughed, leaning against the doorjamb, one arm stretched across the
+opening, with no intention of stepping aside. He was obviously drunk. "Well,
+well!" he said. "In person."
+"May I come in?"
+"What for?"
+Roark sat down on the stair banister. "Why didn’t you keep your appointment?"
+"Oh, the appointment? Oh, yes. Well, I’ll tell you," Mallory said gravely. "It
+was like this: I really intended to keep it, I really did, and I started out for
+your office, but on my way there I passed a movie theater that was showing Two
+Heads on a Pillow, so I went in. I just had to see Two Heads on a Pillow." He
+grinned, sagging against his stretched arm. "You’d better let me come in," said
+Roark quietly. "Oh, what the hell, come in."
+The room was a narrow hole. There was an unmade bed in a corner, a litter of
+newspapers and old clothes, a gas ring, a framed landscape from the
+five-and-ten, representing some sort of sick brown meadows with sheep; there
+were no drawings or figures, no hints of the occupant’s profession.
+Roark pushed some books and a skillet off the only chair, and sat down. Mallory
+stood before him, grinning, swaying a little.
+"You’re doing it all wrong," said Mallory. "That’s not the way it’s done. You
+must be pretty hard up to come running after a sculptor. The way it’s done is
+like this: You make me come to your office, and the first time I come you
+mustn’t be there. The second time you must keep me waiting for an hour and a
+half, then come out into the reception room and shake hands and ask me whether I
+know the Wilsons of Podunk and say how nice that we have mutual friends, but
+you’re in an awful hurry today and you’ll call me up for lunch soon and then
+282
+
+we’ll talk business. Then you keep this up for two months. Then you give me the
+commission. Then you tell me that I’m no good and wasn’t any good in the first
+place, and you throw the thing into the ash can. Then you hire Valerian Bronson
+and he does the job. That’s the way it’s done. Only not this time."
+But his eyes were studying Roark intently, and his eyes had the certainty of a
+professional. As he spoke, his voice kept losing its swaggering gaiety, and it
+slipped to a dead flatness on the last sentences.
+"No," said Roark, "not this time."
+The boy stood looking at him silently.
+"You’re Howard Roark?" he asked. "I like your buildings. That’s why I didn’t
+want to meet you. So I wouldn’t have to be sick every time I looked at them. I
+wanted to go on thinking that they had to be done by somebody who matched them."
+"What if I do?"
+"That doesn’t happen."
+But he sat down on the edge of the crumpled bed and slumped forward, his glance
+like a sensitive scale weighing Roark’s features, impertinent in its open action
+of appraisal.
+"Listen," said Roark, speaking clearly and very carefully, "I want you to do a
+statue for the Stoddard Temple. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write you a
+contract right now, stating that I will owe you a million dollars damages if I
+hire another sculptor or if your work is not used."
+"You can speak normal. I’m not drunk. Not all the way. I understand."
+"Well?"
+"Why did you pick me?"
+"Because you’re a good sculptor."
+"That’s not true."
+"That you’re good?"
+"No. That it’s your reason. Who asked you to hire me?"
+"Nobody."
+"Some woman I laid?"
+"I don’t know any women you laid."
+"Stuck on your building budget?"
+"No. The budget’s unlimited."
+"Feel sorry for me?"
+"No. Why should I?"
+"Want to get publicity out of that shooting Toohey business?"
+283
+
+"Good God, no!"
+"Well, what then?"
+"Why did you fish for all that nonsense instead of the simplest reason?"
+"Which?"
+"That I like your work."
+"Sure. That’s what they all say. That’s what we’re all supposed to say and to
+believe. Imagine what would happen if somebody blew the lid off that one! So,
+all right, you like my work. What’s the real reason?"
+"I like your work."
+Mallory spoke earnestly, his voice sober.
+"You mean you saw the things I’ve done, and you like
+them--you--yourself--alone--without anyone telling you that you should like them
+or why you should like them--and you decided that you wanted me, for that
+reason--only for that reason--without knowing anything about me or giving a
+damn--only because of the things I’ve done and...and what you saw in them--only
+because of that, you decided to hire me, and you went to the bother of finding
+me and coming here, and being insulted--only because you saw--and what you saw
+made me important to you, made you want me? Is that what you mean?"
+"Just that," said Roark.
+The things that pulled Mallory’s eyes wide were frightening to see. Then he
+shook his head, and said very simply, in the tone of soothing himself:
+"No."
+He leaned forward. His voice sounded dead and pleading.
+"Listen, Mr. Roark. I won’t be mad at you. I just want to know. All right, I see
+that you’re set on having me work for you, and you know you can get me, for
+anything you say, you don’t have to sign any million-dollar contract, look at
+this room, you know you’ve got me, so why shouldn’t you tell me the truth? It
+won’t make any difference to you--and it’s very important to me."
+"What’s very important to you?"
+"Not to...not to...Look. I didn’t think anybody’d ever want me again. But you
+do. All right. I’ll go through it again. Only I don’t want to think again that
+I’m working for somebody who...who likes my work. That, I couldn’t go through
+any more. I’ll feel better if you tell me, I’ll...I’ll feel calmer. Why should
+you put on an act for me? I’m nothing. I won’t think less of you, if that’s what
+you’re afraid of. Don’t you see? It’s much more decent to tell me the truth.
+Then it will be simple and honest. I’ll respect you more. Really, I will."
+"What’s the matter with you, kid? What have they done to you? Why do you want to
+say things like that?"
+"Because..." Mallory roared suddenly, and then his voice broke, and his head
+dropped, and he finished in a flat whisper: "because I’ve spent two years"--his
+hand circled limply indicating the room--"that’s how I’ve spent them--trying to
+284
+
+get used to the fact that what you’re trying to tell me doesn’t exist...."
+Roark walked over to him, lifted his chin, knocking it upward, and said:
+"You’re a God-damn fool. You have no right to care what I think of your work,
+what I am or why I’m here. You’re too good for that. But if you want to know
+it--I think you’re the best sculptor we’ve got. I think it, because your figures
+are not what men are, but what men could be--and should be. Because you’ve gone
+beyond the probable and made us see what is possible, but possible only through
+you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt for humanity than any work
+I’ve ever seen. Because you have a magnificent respect for the human being.
+Because your figures are the heroic in man. And so I didn’t come here to do you
+a favor or because I felt sorry for you or because you need a job pretty badly.
+I came for a simple, selfish reason--the same reason that makes a man choose the
+cleanest food he can find. It’s a law of survival, isn’t it?--to seek the best.
+I didn’t come for your sake. I came for mine."
+Mallory jerked himself away from him, and dropped face down on the bed, his two
+arms stretched out, one on each side of his head, hands closed into fists. The
+thin trembling of the shirt cloth on his back showed that he was sobbing; the
+shirt cloth and the fists that twisted slowly, digging into the pillow. Roark
+knew that he was looking at a man who had never cried before. He sat down on the
+side of the bed and could not take his eyes off the twisting wrists, even though
+the sight was hard to bear.
+After a while Mallory sat up. He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest
+face--a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men
+who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of
+a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul
+that feeds upon another’s humiliation. Roark’s face seemed tired, drawn at the
+temples, as if he had just taken a beating. But his eyes were serene and they
+looked at Mallory quietly, a hard, clean glance of understanding--and respect.
+"Lie down now," said Roar. "Lie still for a while."
+"How did they ever let you survive?"
+"Lie down. Rest. We’ll talk afterward."
+Mallory got up. Roark took him by the shoulders, forced him down, lifted his
+legs off the floor, lowered his head on the pillow. The boy did not resist.
+Stepping back, Roark brushed against a table loaded with junk. Something
+clattered to the floor. Mallory jerked forward, trying to reach it first. Roark
+pushed his arm aside and picked up the object.
+It was a small plaster plaque, the kind sold in cheap gift shops. It represented
+a baby sprawled on its stomach, dimpled rear forward, peeking coyly over its
+shoulder. A few lines, the structure of a few muscles showed a magnificent
+talent that could not be hidden, that broke fiercely through the rest; the rest
+was a deliberate attempt to be obvious, vulgar and trite, a clumsy effort,
+unconvincing and tortured. It was an object that belonged in a chamber of
+horrors.
+Mallory saw Roark’s hand begin to shake. Then Roark’s arm went back and up, over
+his head, slowly, as if gathering the weight of air in the crook of his elbow;
+it was only a flash, but it seemed to last for minutes, the arm stood lifted and
+still--then it slashed forward, the plaque shot across the room and burst to
+pieces against the wall. It was the only time anyone had ever seen Roark
+285
+
+murderously angry.
+"Roark."
+"Yes?"
+"Roark, I wish I’d met you before you had a job to give me." He spoke without
+expression, his head lying back on the pillow, his eyes closed. "So that there
+would be no other reason mixed in. Because, you see, I’m very grateful to you.
+Not for giving me a job. Not for coming here. Not for anything you’ll ever do
+for me. Just for what you are."
+Then he lay without moving, straight and limp, like a man long past the stage of
+suffering. Roark stood at the window, looking at the wrenched room and at the
+boy on the bed. He wondered why he felt as if he were waiting. He was waiting
+for an explosion over their heads. It seemed senseless. Then he understood. He
+thought, this is how men feel, trapped in a shell hole; this room is not an
+accident of poverty, it’s the footprint of a war; it’s the devastation torn by
+explosives more vicious than any stored in the arsenals of the world. A
+war...against?...The enemy had no name and no face. But this boy was a
+comrade-in-arms, hurt in battle, and Roark stood over him, feeling a strange new
+thing, a desire to lift him in his arms and carry him to safety...Only the hell
+and the safety had no known designations...He kept thinking of Kent Lansing,
+trying to remember something Kent Lansing had said...
+Then Mallory opened his eyes, and lifted himself up on one elbow. Roark pulled
+the chair over to the bed and sat down.
+"Now," he said, "talk. Talk about the things you really want said. Don’t tell me
+about your family, your childhood, your friends or your feelings. Tell me about
+the things you think."
+Mallory looked at him incredulously and whispered:
+"How did you know that?"
+Roark smiled and said nothing.
+"How did you know what’s been killing me? Slowly, for years, driving me to hate
+people when I don’t want to hate....Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how
+your best friends love everything about you--except the things that count? And
+your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can
+recognize. You mean, you want to hear? You want to know what I do and why I do
+it, you want to know what I think! It’s not boring to you? It’s important?"
+"Go ahead," said Roark.
+Then he sat for hours, listening, while Mallory spoke of his work, of the
+thoughts behind his work, of the thoughts that shaped his life, spoke
+gluttonously, like a drowning man flung out to shore, getting drunk on huge,
+clean snatches of air.
+#
+Mallory came to Roark’s office on the following morning, and Roark showed him
+the sketches of the Temple. When he stood at a drafting table, with a problem to
+consider, Mallory changed; there was no uncertainty in him, no remembrance of
+pain; the gesture of his hand taking the drawing was sharp and sure, like that
+of a soldier on duty. The gesture said that nothing ever done to him could alter
+the function of the thing within him that was now called into action. He had an
+286
+
+unyielding, impersonal confidence; he faced Roark as an equal.
+He studied the drawings for a long time, then raised his head. Everything about
+his face was controlled, except his eyes.
+"Like it?" Roark asked.
+"Don’t use stupid words."
+He held one of the drawings, walked to the window, stood looking down the sketch
+to the street to Roark’s face and back again.
+"It doesn’t seem possible," he said. "Not this--and that." He waved the sketch
+at the street.
+There was a poolroom on the corner of the street below; a rooming house with a
+Corinthian portico; a billboard advertising a Broadway musical; a line of
+pink-gray underwear fluttering on a roof.
+"Not in the same city. Not on the same earth," said Mallory. "But you made it
+happen. It’s possible....I’ll never be afraid again."
+"Of what?"
+Mallory put the sketch down on the table, cautiously. He answered:
+"You said something yesterday about a first law. A law demanding that man seek
+the best....It was funny....The unrecognized genius--that’s an old story. Have
+you ever thought of a much worse one--the genius recognized too well?...That a
+great many men are poor fools who can’t see the best--that’s nothing. One can’t
+get angry at that. But do you understand about the men who see it and don’t want
+it?"
+"No."
+"No. You wouldn’t. I spent all night thinking about you. I didn’t sleep at all.
+Do you know what your secret is? It’s your terrible innocence."
+Roark laughed aloud, looking at the boyish face.
+"No," said Mallory, "it’s not funny. I know what I’m talking about--and you
+don’t. You can’t know. It’s because of that absolute health of yours. You’re so
+healthy that you can’t conceive of disease. You know of it. But you don’t really
+believe it. I do. I’m wiser than you are about some things, because I’m weaker.
+I understand--the other side. That’s what did it to me...what you saw
+yesterday."
+"That’s over."
+"Probably. But not quite. I’m not afraid any more. But I know that the terror
+exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can’t conceive of that kind.
+Listen, what’s the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me--it’s being
+left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who’s
+had some disease that’s eaten his brain out. You’d have nothing then but your
+voice--your voice and your thought. You’d scream to that creature why it should
+not touch you, you’d have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you’d
+become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you’d see living eyes watching you
+and you’d know that the thing can’t hear you, that it can’t be reached, not
+reached, not in any way, yet it’s breathing and moving there before you with a
+287
+
+purpose of its own. That’s horror. Well, that’s what’s hanging over the world,
+prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless,
+utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don’t
+think I’m a coward, but I’m afraid of it. And that’s all I know--only that it
+exists. I don’t know its purpose, I don’t know its nature."
+"The principle behind the Dean," said Roark.
+"What?"
+"It’s something I wonder about once in a while....Mallory, why did you try to
+shoot Ellsworth Toohey?" He saw the boy’s eyes, and he added: "You don’t have to
+tell me if you don’t like to talk about it."
+"I don’t like to talk about it," said Mallory, his voice tight. "But it was the
+right question to ask."
+"Sit down," said Roark. "We’ll talk about your commission."
+Then Mallory listened attentively while Roark spoke of the building and of what
+he wanted from the sculptor. He concluded:
+"Just one figure. It will stand here." He pointed to a sketch. "The place is
+built around it. The statue of a naked woman. If you understand the building,
+you understand what the figure must be. The human spirit. The heroic in man. The
+aspiration and the fulfillment, both. Uplifted in its quest--and uplifting by
+its own essence. Seeking God--and finding itself. Showing that there is no
+higher reach beyond its own form....You’re the only one who can do it for me."
+"Yes."
+"You’ll work as I work for my clients. You know what I want--the rest is up to
+you. Do it any way you wish. I’d like to suggest the model, but if she doesn’t
+fit your purpose, choose anyone you prefer."
+"Who’s your choice?"
+"Dominique Francon."
+"Oh, God!"
+"Know her?"
+"I’ve seen her. If I could have her...Christ! there’s no other woman so right,
+for this. She..." He stopped. He added, deflated: "She won’t pose. Certainly not
+for you."
+"She will."
+#
+Guy Francon tried to object when he heard of it.
+"Listen, Dominique," he said angrily, "there is a limit. There really is a
+limit--even for you. Why are you doing it? Why--for a building of Roark’s of all
+things? After everything you’ve said and done against him--do you wonder people
+are talking? Nobody’d care or notice if it were anyone else. But you--and Roark!
+I can’t go anywhere without having somebody ask me about it. What am I to do?"
+"Order yourself a reproduction of the statue, Father. It’s going to be
+288
+
+beautiful."
+Peter Keating refused to discuss it. But he met Dominique at a party and he
+asked, having intended not to ask it:
+"Is it true that you’re posing for a statue for Roark’s temple?"
+"Yes."
+"Dominique, I don’t like it."
+"No?"
+"Oh, I’m sorry. I know I have no right...It’s only...It’s only that of all
+people, I don’t want to see you being friendly with Roark. Not Roark. Anybody
+but Roark."
+She looked interested: "Why?"
+"I don’t know."
+Her glance of curious study worried him.
+"Maybe," he muttered, "maybe it’s because it has never seemed right that you
+should have such contempt for his work. It made me very happy that you had,
+but...but it never seemed right--for you."
+"It didn’t, Peter?"
+"No. But you don’t like him as a person, do you?"
+"No, I don’t like him as a person."
+Ellsworth Toohey was displeased. "It was most unwise of you, Dominique," he said
+in the privacy of her office. His voice did not sound smooth.
+"I know it was."
+"Can’t you change your mind and refuse?"
+"I won’t change my mind, Ellsworth."
+He sat down, and shrugged; after a while he smiled. "All right, my dear, have it
+your own way."
+She ran a pencil through a line of copy and said nothing.
+Toohey lighted a cigarette. "So he’s chosen Steven Mallory for the job," he
+said.
+"Yes. A funny coincidence, wasn’t it?"
+"It’s no coincidence at all, my dear. Things like that are never a coincidence.
+There’s a basic law behind it. Though I’m sure he doesn’t know it and nobody
+helped him to choose."
+"I believe you approve?"
+"Wholeheartedly. It makes everything just right. Better than ever."
+289
+
+"Ellsworth, why did Mallory try to kill you?"
+"I haven’t the faintest idea. I don’t know. I think Mr. Roark does. Or should.
+Incidentally, who selected you to pose for that statue? Roark or Mallory?"
+"That’s none of your business, Ellsworth."
+"I see. Roark."
+"Incidentally, I’ve told Roark that it was you who made Hopton Stoddard hire
+him."
+He stopped his cigarette in midair; then moved again and placed it in his mouth.
+"You did? Why?"
+"I saw the drawings of the Temple."
+"That good?"
+"Better, Ellsworth."
+"What did he say when you told him?"
+"Nothing. He laughed."
+"He did? Nice of him. I daresay many people will join him after a while."
+#
+Through the months of that winter Roark seldom slept more than three hours a
+night. There was a swinging sharpness in his movements, as if his body fed
+energy to all those around him. The energy ran through the walls of his office
+to three points of the city: to the Cord Building, in the center of Manhattan, a
+tower of copper and glass; to the Aquitania Hotel on Central Park South; and to
+the Temple on a rock over the Hudson, far north on Riverside Drive.
+When they had time to meet, Austen Heller watched him, amused and pleased. "When
+these three are finished, Howard," he said, "nobody will be able to stop you.
+Not ever again. I speculate occasionally upon how far you’ll go. You see, I’ve
+always had a weakness for astronomy."
+On an evening in March Roark stood within the tall enclosure that had been
+erected around the site of the Temple, according to Stoddard’s orders. The first
+blocks of stone, the base of future walls, rose above the ground. It was late
+and the workers had left. The place lay deserted, cut off from the world,
+dissolved in darkness; but the sky glowed, too luminous for the night below, as
+if the light had remained past the normal hour, in announcement of the coming
+spring. A ship’s siren cried out once, somewhere on the river, and the sound
+seemed to come from a distant countryside, through miles of silence. A light
+still burned in the wooden shack built as a studio for Steven Mallory, where
+Dominique posed for him.
+The Temple was to be a small building of gray limestone. Its lines were
+horizontal, not the lines reaching to heaven, but the lines of the earth. It
+seemed to spread over the ground like arms outstretched at shoulder-height,
+palms down, in great, silent acceptance. It did not cling to the soil and it did
+not crouch under the sky. It seemed to lift the earth, and its few vertical
+shafts pulled the sky down. It was scaled to human height in such a manner that
+290
+
+it did not dwarf man, but stood as a setting that made his figure the only
+absolute, the gauge of perfection by which all dimensions were to be judged.
+When a man entered this temple, he would feel space molded around him, for him,
+as if it had waited for his entrance, to be completed. It was a joyous place,
+with the joy of exaltation that must be quiet. It was a place where one would
+come to feel sinless and strong, to find the peace of spirit never granted save
+by one’s own glory.
+There was no ornamentation inside, except the graded projections of the walls,
+and the vast windows. The place was not sealed under vaults, but thrown open to
+the earth around it, to the trees, the river, the sun--and to the skyline of the
+city in the distance, the skyscrapers, the shapes of man’s achievement on earth.
+At the end of the room, facing the entrance, with the city as background, stood
+the figure of a naked human body.
+There was nothing before him now in the darkness except the first stones, but
+Roark thought of the finished building, feeling it in the joints of his fingers,
+still remembering the movements of his pencil that had drawn it. He stood
+thinking of it. Then he walked across the rough, torn earth to the studio shack.
+"Just a moment," said Mallory’s voice when he knocked.
+Inside the shack Dominique stepped down from the stand and pulled a robe on.
+Then Mallory opened the door.
+"Oh, it’s you?" he said. "We thought it was the watchman. What are you doing
+here so late?"
+"Good evening, Miss Francon," said Roark, and she nodded curtly. "Sorry to
+interrupt, Steve."
+"It’s all right. We haven’t been doing so well. Dominique can’t get quite what I
+want tonight. Sit down, Howard. What the hell time is it?"
+"Nine-thirty. If you’re going to stay longer, want me to have some dinner sent
+up?"
+"I don’t know. Let’s have a cigarette."
+The place had an unpainted wooden floor, bare wooden rafters, a cast-iron stove
+glowing in a corner. Mallory moved about like a feudal host, with smudges of
+clay on his forehead. He smoked nervously, pacing up and down.
+"Want to get dressed, Dominique?" he asked. "I don’t think we’ll do much more
+tonight." She didn’t answer. She stood looking at Roark. Mallory reached the end
+of the room, whirled around, smiled at Roark: "Why haven’t you ever come in
+before, Howard? Of course, if I’d been really busy, I’d have thrown you out.
+What, by the way, are you doing here at this hour?"
+"I just wanted to see the place tonight. Couldn’t get here earlier."
+"Is this what you want, Steve?" Dominique asked suddenly. She took her robe off
+and walked naked to the stand. Mallory looked from her to Roark and back again.
+Then he saw what he had been struggling to see all day. He saw her body standing
+before him, straight and tense, her head thrown back, her arms at her sides,
+palms out, as she stood for many days; but now her body was alive, so still that
+it seemed to tremble, saying what he had wanted to hear: a proud, reverent,
+enraptured surrender to a vision of her own, the right moment, the moment before
+the figure would sway and break, the moment touched by the reflection of what
+291
+
+she saw.
+Mallory’s cigarette went flying across the room.
+"Hold it, Dominique!" he cried. "Hold it! Hold it!"
+He was at his stand before the cigarette hit the ground. He worked, and
+Dominique stood without moving, and Roark stood facing her, leaning against the
+wall.
+#
+In April the walls of the Temple rose in broken lines over the ground. On
+moonlit nights they had a soft, smeared, underwater glow. The tall fence stood
+on guard around them.
+After the day’s work, four people would often remain at the site--Roark,
+Mallory, Dominique and Mike Donnigan. Mike had not missed employment on a single
+building of Roark’s.
+The four of them sat together in Mallory’s shack, after all the others had left.
+A wet cloth covered the unfinished statue. The door of the shack stood open to
+the first warmth of a spring night. A tree branch hung outside, with three new
+leaves against the black sky, stars trembling like drops of water on the edges
+of the leaves. There were no chairs in the shack. Mallory stood at the cast-iron
+stove, fixing hot dogs and coffee. Mike sat on the model’s stand, smoking a
+pipe. Roark lay stretched out on the floor, propped up on his elbows, Dominique
+sat on a kitchen stool, a thin silk robe wrapped about her, her bare feet on the
+planks of the floor.
+They did not speak about their work. Mallory told outrageous stories and
+Dominique laughed like a child. They talked about nothing in particular,
+sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in the warm gaiety,
+in the ease of complete relaxation. They were simply four people who liked being
+there together. The walls rising in the darkness beyond the open door gave
+sanction to their rest, gave them the right to lightness, the building on which
+they had all worked together, the building that was like a low, audible harmony
+to the sound of their voices. Roark laughed as Dominique had never seen him
+laugh anywhere else, his mouth loose and young.
+They stayed there late into the night. Mallory poured coffee into a mongrel
+assortment of cracked cups. The odor of coffee met the odor of the new leaves
+outside.
+#
+In May work was stopped on the construction of the Aquitania Hotel.
+Two of the owners had been cleaned out in the stock market; a third got his
+funds attached by a lawsuit over an inheritance disputed by someone; a fourth
+embezzled somebody else’s shares. The corporation blew up in a tangle of court
+cases that were to require years of untangling. The building had to wait,
+unfinished.
+"I’ll straighten it out, if I have to murder a few of them," Kent Lansing told
+Roark. "I’ll get it out of their hands. We’ll finish it some day, you and I. But
+it will take time. Probably a long time. I won’t tell you to be patient. Men
+like you and me would not survive beyond their first fifteen years if they did
+not acquire the patience of a Chinese executioner. And the hide of a
+battleship."
+292
+
+Ellsworth Toohey laughed, sitting on the edge of Dominique’s desk. "The
+Unfinished Symphony--thank God," he said.
+Dominique used that in her column. "The Unfinished Symphony on Central Park
+South," she wrote. She did not say, "thank God." The nickname was repeated.
+Strangers noticed the odd sight of an expensive structure on an important
+street, left gaping with empty windows, half-covered walls, naked beams; when
+they asked what it was, people who had never heard of Roark or of the story
+behind the building, snickered and answered: "Oh, that’s the Unfinished
+Symphony."
+Late at night Roark would stand across the street, under the trees of the Park,
+and look at the black, dead shape among the glowing structures of the city’s
+skyline. His hands would move as they had moved over the clay model; at that
+distance, a broken projection could be covered by the palm of his hand; but the
+instinctive completing motion met nothing but air.
+He forced himself sometimes to walk through the building. He walked on shivering
+planks hung over emptiness, through rooms without ceilings and rooms without
+floors, to the open edges where girders stuck out like bones through a broken
+skin.
+An old watchman lived in a cubbyhole at the back of the ground floor. He knew
+Roark and let him wander around. Once, he stopped Roark on the way out and said
+suddenly: "I had a son once--almost. He was born dead." Something had made him
+say that, and he looked at Roark, not quite certain of what he had wanted to
+say. But Roark smiled, his eyes closed, and his hand covered the old man’s
+shoulder, like a handshake, and then he walked away.
+It was only the first few weeks. Then he made himself forget the Aquitania.
+On an evening in October Roark and Dominique walked together through the
+completed Temple. It was to be opened publicly in a week, the day after
+Stoddard’s return. No one had seen it except those who had worked on its
+construction.
+It was a clear, quiet evening. The site of the Temple lay empty and silent. The
+red of the sunset on the limestone walls was like the first light of morning.
+They stood looking at the Temple, and then stood inside, before the marble
+figure, saying nothing to each other. The shadows in the molded space around
+them seemed shaped by the same hand that had shaped the walls. The ebbing motion
+of light flowed in controlled discipline, like the sentences of a speech giving
+voice to the changing facets of the walls.
+"Roark..."
+"Yes, my dearest?"
+"No...nothing..."
+They walked back to the car together, his hand clasping her wrist.
+
+12.
+THE OPENING of the Stoddard Temple was announced for the afternoon of November
+293
+
+first.
+The press agent had done a good job. People talked about the event, about Howard
+Roark, about the architectural masterpiece which the city was to expect.
+On the morning of October 31 Hopton Stoddard returned from his journey around
+the world. Ellsworth Toohey met him at the pier.
+On the morning of November 1 Hopton Stoddard issued a brief statement announcing
+that there would be no opening. No explanation was given.
+On the morning of November 2 the New York Banner came out with the column "One
+Small Voice" by Ellsworth M. Toohey subtitled "Sacrilege." It read as follows:
+#
+"The time has come, the walrus said,
+To talk of many things:
+Of ships--and shoes--and Howard Roark-And cabbages--and kings-And why the sea is boiling hot-And whether Roark has wings.
+#
+"It is not our function--paraphrasing a philosopher whom we do not like--to be a
+fly swatter, but when a fly acquires delusions of grandeur, the best of us must
+stoop to do a little job of extermination.
+"There has been a great deal of talk lately about somebody named Howard Roark.
+Since freedom of speech is our sacred heritage and includes the freedom to waste
+one’s time, there would have been no harm in such talk--beyond the fact that one
+could find so many endeavors more profitable than discussions of a man who seems
+to have nothing to his credit except a building that was begun and could not be
+completed. There would have been no harm, if the ludicrous had not become the
+tragic--and the fraudulent.
+"Howard Roark--as most of you have not heard and are not likely to hear
+again--is an architect. A year ago he was entrusted with an assignment of
+extraordinary responsibility. He was commissioned to erect a great monument in
+the absence of the owner who believed in him and gave him complete freedom of
+action. If the terminology of our criminal law could be applied to the realm of
+art, we would have to say that what Mr. Roark delivered constitutes the
+equivalent of spiritual embezzlement.
+"Mr. Hopton Stoddard, the noted philanthropist, had intended to present the City
+of New York with a Temple of Religion, a nonsectarian cathedral symbolizing the
+spirit of human faith. What Mr. Roark has built for him might be a
+warehouse--though it does not seem practical. It might be a brothel--which is
+more likely, if we consider some of its sculptural ornamentation. It is
+certainly not a temple.
+"It seems as if a deliberate malice had reversed in this building every
+conception proper to a religious structure. Instead of being austerely enclosed,
+this alleged temple is wide open, like a western saloon. Instead of a mood of
+deferential sorrow, befitting a place where one contemplates eternity and
+294
+
+realizes the insignificance of man, this building has a quality of loose,
+orgiastic elation. Instead of the soaring lines reaching for heaven, demanded by
+the very nature of a temple, as a symbol of man’s quest for something higher
+than his little ego, this building is flauntingly horizontal, its belly in the
+mud, thus declaring its allegiance to the carnal, glorifying the gross pleasures
+of the flesh above those of the spirit. The statue of a nude female in a place
+where men come to be uplifted speaks for itself and requires no further comment.
+"A person entering a temple seeks release from himself. He wishes to humble his
+pride, to confess his unworthiness, to beg forgiveness. He finds fulfillment in
+a sense of abject humility. Man’s proper posture in a house of God is on his
+knees. Nobody in his right mind would kneel within Mr. Roark’s temple. The place
+forbids it. The emotions it suggests are of a different nature: arrogance,
+audacity, defiance, self-exaltation. It is not a house of God, but the cell of a
+megalomaniac. It is not a temple, but its perfect antithesis, an insolent
+mockery of all religion. We would call it pagan but for the fact that the pagans
+were notoriously good architects.
+"This column is not the supporter of any particular creed, but simple decency
+demands that we respect the religious convictions of our fellow men. We felt we
+must explain to the public the nature of this deliberate attack on religion. We
+cannot condone an outrageous sacrilege.
+"If we seem to have forgotten our function as a critic of purely architectural
+values, we can say only that the occasion does not call for it. It is a mistake
+to glorify mediocrity by an effort at serious criticism. We seem to recall
+something or other that this Howard Roark has built before, and it had the same
+ineptitude, the same pedestrian quality of an overambitious amateur. All God’s
+chillun may have wings, but, unfortunately, this is not true of all God’s
+geniuses. "And that, my friends, is that. We are glad today’s chore is over. We
+really do not enjoy writing obituaries."
+#
+On November 3 Hopton Stoddard filed suit against Howard Roark for breach of
+contract and malpractice, asking damages; he asked a sum sufficient to have the
+Temple altered by another architect.
+#
+It had been easy to persuade Hopton Stoddard. He had returned from his journey,
+crushed by the universal spectacle of religion, most particularly by the various
+forms in which the promise of hell confronted him all over the earth. He had
+been driven to the conclusion that his life qualified him for the worst possible
+hereafter under any system of faith. It had shaken what remained of his mind.
+The ship stewards, on his return trip, had felt certain that the old gentleman
+was senile.
+On the afternoon of his return Ellsworth Toohey took him to see the Temple.
+Toohey said nothing. Hopton Stoddard stared, and Toohey heard Stoddard’s false
+teeth clicking spasmodically. The place did not resemble anything Stoddard had
+seen anywhere in the world; nor anything he had expected. He did not know what
+to think. When he turned a glance of desperate appeal upon Toohey, Stoddard’s
+eyes looked like Jell-O. He waited. In that moment, Toohey could have convinced
+him of anything. Toohey spoke and said what he said later in his column.
+"But you told me this Roark was good!" Stoddard moaned in panic.
+"I had expected him to be good," Toohey answered coldly.
+"But then--why?"
+295
+
+"I don’t know," said Toohey--and his accusing glance gave Stoddard to understand
+that there was an ominous guilt behind it all, and that the guilt was
+Stoddard’s.
+Toohey said nothing in the limousine, on their way back to Stoddard’s apartment,
+while Stoddard begged him to speak. He would not answer. The silence drove
+Stoddard to terror. In the apartment, Toohey led him to an armchair and stood
+before him, somber as a judge.
+"Hopton, I know why it happened."
+"Oh, why?"
+"Can you think of any reason why I should have lied to you?"
+"No, of course not, you’re the greatest expert and the most honest man living,
+and I don’t understand, I just simply don’t understand at all!"
+"I do. When I recommended Roark, I had every reason to expect--to the best of my
+honest judgment--that he would give you a masterpiece. But he didn’t. Hopton, do
+you know what power can upset all the calculations of men?"
+"W-what power?"
+"God has chosen this way to reject your offering. He did not consider you worthy
+of presenting Him with a shrine. I guess you can fool me, Hopton, and all men,
+but you can’t fool God. He knows that your record is blacker than anything I
+suspected."
+He went on speaking for a long time, calmly, severely, to a silent huddle of
+terror. At the end, he said:
+"It seems obvious, Hopton, that you cannot buy forgiveness by starting at the
+top. Only the pure in heart can erect a shrine. You must go through many humbler
+steps of expiation before you reach that stage. You must atone to your fellow
+men before you can atone to God. This building was not meant to be a temple, but
+an institution of human charity. Such as a home for subnormal children."
+Hopton Stoddard would not commit himself to that. "Afterward, Ellsworth,
+afterward," he moaned. "Give me time." He agreed to sue Roark, as Toohey
+suggested, for recovery of the costs of alterations, and later to decide what
+these alterations would be.
+"Don’t be shocked by anything I will say or write about this," Toohey told him
+in parting. "I shall be forced to stage a few things which are not quite true. I
+must protect my own reputation from a disgrace which is your fault, not mine.
+Just remember that you have sworn never to reveal who advised you to hire
+Roark."
+On the following day "Sacrilege" appeared in the Banner and set the fuse. The
+announcement of Stoddard’s suit lighted it.
+Nobody would have felt an urge to crusade about a building; but religion had
+been attacked; the press agent had prepared the ground too well, the spring of
+public attention was wound, a great many people could make use of it.
+The clamor of indignation that rose against Howard Roark and his temple
+astonished everyone, except Ellsworth Toohey. Ministers damned the building in
+296
+
+sermons. Women’s clubs passed resolutions of protest. A Committee of Mothers
+made page eight of the newspapers, with a petition that shrieked something about
+the protection of their children. A famous actress wrote an article on the
+essential unity of all the arts, explained that the Stoddard Temple had no sense
+of structural diction, and spoke of the time when she had played Mary Magdalene
+in a great Biblical drama. A society woman wrote an article on the exotic
+shrines she had seen in her dangerous jungle travels, praised the touching faith
+of the savages and reproached modern man for cynicism; the Stoddard Temple, she
+said, was a symptom of softness and decadence; the illustration showed her in
+breeches, one slim foot on the neck of a dead lion. A college professor wrote a
+letter to the editor about his spiritual experiences and stated that he could
+not have experienced them in a place like the Stoddard Temple. Kiki Holcombe
+wrote a letter to the editor about her views on life and death.
+The A.G.A. issued a dignified statement denouncing the Stoddard Temple as a
+spiritual and artistic fraud. Similar statements, with less dignity and more
+slang, were issued by the Councils of American Builders, Writers and Artists.
+Nobody had ever heard of them, but they were Councils and this gave weight to
+their voice. One man would say to another: "Do you know that the Council of
+American Builders has said this temple is a piece of architectural tripe?" in a
+tone suggesting intimacy with the best of the art world. The other wouldn’t want
+to reply that he had not heard of such a group, but would answer: "I expected
+them to say it. Didn’t you?"
+Hopton Stoddard received so many letters of sympathy that he began to feel quite
+happy. He had never been popular before. Ellsworth, he thought, was right; his
+brother men were forgiving him; Ellsworth was always right.
+The better newspapers dropped the story after a while. But the Banner kept it
+going. It had been a boon to the Banner. Gail Wynand was away, sailing his yacht
+through the Indian Ocean, and Alvah Scarret was stuck for a crusade. This suited
+him. Ellsworth Toohey needed to make no suggestions; Scarret rose to the
+occasion all by himself.
+He wrote about the decline of civilization and deplored the loss of the simple
+faith. He sponsored an essay contest for high-school students on "Why I Go to
+Church." He ran a series of illustrated articles on "The Churches of Our
+Childhood." He ran photographs of religious sculpture through the ages--the
+Sphinx, gargoyles, totem poles--and gave great prominence to pictures of
+Dominique’s statue, with proper captions of indignation, but omitting the
+model’s name. He ran cartoons of Roark as a barbarian with bearskin and club. He
+wrote many clever things about the Tower of Babel that could not reach heaven
+and about Icarus who flopped on his wax wings.
+Ellsworth Toohey sat back and watched. He made two minor suggestions: he found,
+in the Banner’s morgue, the photograph of Roark at the opening of the Enright
+House, the photograph of a man’s face in a moment of exaltation, and he had it
+printed in the Banner, over the caption: "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" He made
+Stoddard open the Temple to the public while awaiting the trial of his suit. The
+Temple attracted crowds of people who left obscene drawings and inscriptions on
+the pedestal of Dominique’s statue.
+There were a few who came, and saw, and admired the building in silence. But
+they were the kind who do not take part in public issues. Austen Heller wrote a
+furious article in defense of Roark and of the Temple. But he was not an
+authority on architecture or religion, and the article was drowned in the storm.
+Howard Roark did nothing.
+297
+
+He was asked for a statement, and he received a group of reporters in his
+office. He spoke without anger. He said: "I can’t tell anyone anything about my
+building. If I prepared a hash of words to stuff into other people’s brains, it
+would be an insult to them and to me. But I am glad you came here. I do have
+something to say. I want to ask every man who is interested in this to go and
+see the building, to look at it and then to use the words of his own mind, if he
+cares to speak."
+The Banner printed the interview as follows: "Mr. Roark, who seems to be a
+publicity hound, received reporters with an air of swaggering insolence and
+stated that the public mind was hash. He did not choose to talk, but he seemed
+well aware of the advertising angles in the situation. All he cared about, he
+explained, was to have his building seen by as many people as possible."
+Roark refused to hire an attorney to represent him at the coming trial. He said
+he would handle his own defense and refused to explain how he intended to handle
+it, in spite of Austen Heller’s angry protests.
+"Austen, there are some rules I’m perfectly willing to obey. I’m willing to wear
+the kind of clothes everybody wears, to eat the same food and use the same
+subways. But there are some things which I can’t do their way--and this is one
+of them."
+"What do you know about courtrooms and law? He’s going to win."
+"To win what?"
+"His case."
+"Is the case of any importance? There’s nothing I can do to stop him from
+touching the building. He owns it. He can blast it off the face of the earth or
+make a glue factory out of it. He can do it whether I win that suit or lose it."
+"But he’ll take your money to do it with."
+"Yes. He might take my money."
+Steven Mallory made no comment on anything. But his face looked as it had looked
+on the night Roark met him for the first time.
+"Steve, talk about it, if it will make it easier for you," Roark said to him one
+evening.
+"There’s nothing to talk about," Mallory answered indifferently. "I told you I
+didn’t think they’d let you survive."
+"Rubbish. You have no right to be afraid for me."
+"I’m not afraid for you. What would be the use? It’s something else."
+Days later, sitting on the window sill in Roark’s room, looking out at the
+street, Mallory said suddenly:
+"Howard, do you remember what I told you about the beast I’m afraid of? I know
+nothing about Ellsworth Toohey. I had never seen him before I shot at him. I had
+only read what he writes. Howard, I shot at him because I think he knows
+everything about that beast."
+Dominique came to Roark’s room on the evening when Stoddard announced his
+298
+
+lawsuit. She said nothing. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing
+her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a
+routine gesture here, in his room; she looked down at her fingers. Then she
+raised her head. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was
+hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.
+"You’re wrong," he said. They could always speak like this to each other,
+continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. "I don’t
+feel that."
+"I don’t want to know."
+"I want you to know. What you’re thinking is much worse than the truth. I don’t
+believe it matters to me--that they’re going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so
+much that I don’t even know I’m hurt. But I don’t think so. If you want to carry
+it for my sake, don’t carry more than I do. I’m not capable of suffering
+completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it
+stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain. You
+mustn’t look like that."
+"Where does it stop?"
+"Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that
+temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important."
+"You shouldn’t have built it. You shouldn’t have delivered it to the sort of
+thing they’re doing."
+"That doesn’t matter. Not even that they’ll destroy it. Only that it had
+existed."
+She shook her head. "Do you see what I was saving you from when I took
+commissions away from you?...To give them no right to do this to you....No right
+to live in a building of yours...No right to touch you...not in any way...."
+#
+When Dominique walked into Toohey’s office, he smiled, an eager smile of
+welcome, unexpectedly sincere. He forgot to control it while his eyebrows moved
+into a frown of disappointment; the frown and the smile remained ludicrously
+together for a moment. He was disappointed, because it was not her usual
+dramatic entrance; he saw no anger, no mockery; she entered like a bookkeeper on
+a business errand. She asked:
+"What do you intend to accomplish by it?"
+He tried to recapture the exhilaration of their usual feud. He
+"Sit down, my dear. I’m delighted to see you. Quite frankly and helplessly
+delighted. It really took you too long. I expected you here much sooner. I’ve
+had so many compliments on that little article of mine, but, honestly, it was no
+fun at all, I wanted to hear what you’d say."
+"What do you intend to accomplish by it?"
+"Look, darling, I do hope you didn’t mind what I said about that uplifting
+statue of yours. I thought you d understand I just couldn’t pass up that one."
+"What is the purpose of that lawsuit?"
+299
+
+"Oh well, you want to make me talk. And I did so want to hear you. But half a
+pleasure is better than none. I want to talk. I’ve waited for you so
+impatiently. But I do wish you’d sit down, I’ll be more comfortable....No? Well,
+as you prefer, so long as you don’t run away. The lawsuit? Well, isn’t it
+obvious?"
+"How is it going to stop him?" she asked in the tone one would use to recite a
+list of statistics. "It will prove nothing, whether he wins or loses. The whole
+thing is just a spree for great number of louts, filthy but pointless. I did not
+think you wasted your time on stink bombs. All of it will be forgotten before
+Christmas."
+"My God, but I must be a failure! I never thought of myself as such a poor
+teacher. That you should have learned so little in two years of close
+association with me! It’s really discouraging. Since you are the most
+intelligent woman I know, the fault must be mine. Well, let’s see, you did learn
+one thing: that I don’t waste my time. Quite correct. I don’t. Right, my dear,
+everything will be forgotten by next Christmas. And that, you see, will be the
+achievement. You can fight a live issue. You can’t fight a dead one. Dead
+issues, like all dead things, don’t just vanish, but leave some decomposing
+matter behind. A most unpleasant thing to carry on your name. Mr. Hopton
+Stoddard will be thoroughly forgotten. The Temple will be forgotten. The lawsuit
+will be forgotten. But here’s what will remain: ’Howard Roark? Why, how could
+you trust a man like that? He’s an enemy of religion. He’s completely immortal.
+First thing you know, he’ll gyp you on your construction costs.’ ’Roark? He’s no
+good--why, a client had to sue him because he made such a botch of a building.’
+’Roark? Roark? Wait a moment, isn’t that the guy who got into all the papers
+over some sort of a mess? Now what was it? Some rotten kind of scandal, the
+owner of the building--I think the place was a disorderly house--anyway the
+owner had to sue him. You don’t want to get involved with a notorious character
+like that. What for, when there are so many decent architects to choose from?’
+Fight that, my dear. Tell me a way to fight it. Particularly when you have no
+weapons except your genius, which is not a weapon but a great liability."
+Her eyes were disappointing; they listened patiently, an unmoving glance that
+would not become anger. She stood before his desk, straight, controlled, like a
+sentry in a storm who knows that he has to take it and has to remain there even
+when he can take it no longer.
+"I believe you want me to continue," said Toohey. "Now you see the peculiar
+effectiveness of a dead issue. You can’t talk your way out of it, you can’t
+explain, you can’t defend yourself. Nobody wants to listen. It is difficult
+enough to acquire fame. It is impossible to change its nature once you’ve
+acquired it. No, you can never ruin an architect by proving that he’s a bad
+architect. But you can ruin him because he’s an atheist, or because somebody
+sued him, or because he slept with some woman, or because he pulls wings off
+bottleflies. You’ll say it doesn’t make sense? Of course it doesn’t. That’s why
+it works. Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the
+unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you
+don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major
+factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy. But if you can make
+it become your ally--ah, my dear!...Look, Dominique, I will stop talking the
+moment you show a sign of being frightened."
+"Go on," she said.
+"I think you should now ask me a question, or perhaps you don’t like to be
+obvious and feel that I must guess the question myself? I think you’re right.
+The question is, why did I choose Howard Roark? Because--to quote my own
+300
+
+article--it is not my function to be a fly swatter. I quote this now with a
+somewhat different meaning, but we’ll let that pass. Also, this has helped me to
+get something I wanted from Hopton Stoddard, but that’s only a minor side-issue,
+an incidental, just pure gravy. Principally, however, the whole thing was an
+experiment. Just a test skirmish, shall we say? The results are most gratifying.
+If you were not involved as you are, you’d be the one person who’d appreciate
+the spectacle. Really, you know, I’ve done very little when you consider the
+extent of what followed. Don’t you find it interesting to see a huge,
+complicated piece of machinery, such as our society, all levers and belts and
+interlocking gears, the kind that looks as if one would need an army to operate
+it--and you find that by pressing your little finger against one spot, the one
+vital spot, the center of all its gravity, you can make the thing crumble into a
+worthless heap of scrap iron? It can be done, my dear. But it takes a long time.
+It takes centuries. I have the advantage of many experts who came before me. I
+think I shall be the last and the successful one of the line, because--though
+not abler than they were--I see more clearly what we’re after. However, that’s
+abstraction. Speaking of concrete reality, don’t you find anything amusing in my
+little experiment? I do. For instance, do you notice that all the wrong people
+are on the wrong sides? Alvah Scarret, the college professors, the newspaper
+editors, the respectable mothers and the Chambers of Commerce should have come
+flying to the defense of Howard Roark--if they value their own lives. But they
+didn’t. They are upholding Hopton Stoddard. On the other hand I heard that some
+screwy bunch of cafeteria radicals called ’The New League of Proletarian Art’
+tried to enlist in support of Howard Roark--they said he was a victim of
+capitalism--when they should have known that Hopton Stoddard is their champion.
+Roark, by the way, had the good sense to decline. He understands. You do. I do.
+Not many others. Oh, well. Scrap iron has its uses."
+She turned to leave the room.
+"Dominique, you’re not going?" He sounded hurt. "You won’t say anything? Not
+anything at all?"
+"No."
+"Dominique, you’re letting me down. And how I waited for you! I’m a very
+self-sufficient person, as a rule, but I do need an audience once in a while.
+You’re the only person with whom I can be myself. I suppose it’s because you
+have such contempt for me that nothing I say can make any difference. You see, I
+know that, but I don’t care. Also, the methods I use on other people would never
+work on you. Strangely enough, only my honesty will. Hell, what’s the use of
+accomplishing a skillful piece of work if nobody knows that you’ve accomplished
+it? Had you been your old self, you’d tell me, at this point, that that is the
+psychology of a murderer who’s committed the perfect crime and then confesses
+because he can’t bear the idea that nobody knows it’s a perfect crime. And I’d
+answer that you’re right. I want an audience. That’s the trouble with
+victims--they don’t even know they’re victims, which is as it should be, but it
+does become monotonous and takes half the fun away. You’re such a rare treat--a
+victim who can appreciate the artistry of its own execution....For God’s sake,
+Dominique, are you leaving when I’m practically begging you to remain?"
+She put her hand on the doorknob. He shrugged and settled back in his chair.
+"All right," he said. "Incidentally, don’t try to buy Hopton Stoddard out. He’s
+eating out of my hand just now. He won’t sell." She had opened the door, but she
+stopped and pulled it shut again. "Oh, yes, of course I know that you’ve tried,
+it’s no use. You’re not that rich. You haven’t enough to buy that temple and you
+couldn’t raise enough. Also, Hopton won’t accept any money from you to pay for
+the alterations. I know you’ve offered that, too. He wants it from Roark. By the
+301
+
+way, I don’t think Roark would like it if I let him know that you’ve tried."
+He smiled in a manner that demanded a protest. Her face gave no answer. She
+turned to the door again. "Just one more question, Dominique. Mr. Stoddard’s
+attorney wants to know whether he can call you as a witness. An expert on
+architecture. You will testify for the plaintiff, of course?"
+"Yes. I will testify for the plaintiff."
+#
+The case of Hopton Stoddard versus Howard Roark opened in February of 1931.
+The courtroom was so full that mass reactions could be expressed only by a slow
+motion running across the spread of heads, a sluggish wave like the ripple under
+the tight-packed skin of a sea lion.
+The crowd, brown and streaked with subdued color, looked like a fruitcake of all
+the arts, with the cream of the A.G.A. rich and heavy on top. There were
+distinguished men and well-dressed, tight-lipped women; each woman seemed to
+feel an exclusive proprietorship of the art practiced by her escort, a monopoly
+guarded by resentful glances at the others. Almost everybody knew almost
+everybody else. The room had the atmosphere of a convention, an opening night
+and a family picnic. There was a feeling of "our bunch,"
+"our boys,"
+"our show."
+Steven Mallory, Austen Heller, Roger Enright, Kent Lansing and Mike sat together
+in one corner. They tried not to look around them. Mike was worried about Steven
+Mallory. He kept close to Mallory, insisted on sitting next to him and glanced
+at him whenever a particularly offensive bit of conversation reached them.
+Mallory noticed it at last, and said: "Don’t worry, Mike. I won’t scream. I
+won’t shoot anyone."
+"Watch your stomach, kid," said Mike, "just watch your stomach. A man can’t get
+sick just because he oughta."
+"Mike, do you remember the night when we stayed so late that it was almost
+daylight, and Dominique’s car was out of gas, and there were no busses, and we
+all decided to walk home, and there was sun on the rooftops by the time the
+first one of us got to his house?"
+"That’s right. You think about that, and I’ll think about the granite quarry."
+"What granite quarry?"
+"It’s something made me very sick once, but then it turned out it make no
+difference at all, in the long run."
+Beyond the windows the sky was white and flat like frosted glass. The light
+seemed to come from the banks of snow on roofs and ledges, an unnatural light
+that made everything in the room look naked.
+The judge sat hunched on his high bench as if he were roosting. He had a small
+face, wizened into virtue. He kept his hands upright in front of his chest, the
+fingertips pressed together. Hopton Stoddard was not present. He was represented
+by his attorney a handsome gentleman, tall and grave as an ambassador.
+302
+
+Roark sat alone at the defense table. The crowd had stared at him and given up
+angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look
+defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a
+public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio.
+He took no notes; there were no papers on the table before him, only a large
+brown envelope. The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could
+remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer. Some of
+them had come prepared to pity him; all of them hated him after the first few
+minutes.
+The plaintiff’s attorney stated his case in a simple opening address; it was
+true, he admitted, that Hopton Stoddard had given Roark full freedom to design
+and build the Temple; the point was, however, that Mr. Stoddard had clearly
+specified and expected a temple; the building in question could not be
+considered a temple by any known standards; as the plaintiff proposed to prove
+with the help of the best authorities in the field.
+Roark waived his privilege to make an opening statement to the jury.
+Ellsworth Monkton Toohey was the first witness called by the plaintiff. He sat
+on the edge of the witness chair and leaned back, resting on the end of his
+spine: he lifted one leg and placed it horizontally across the other. He looked
+amused--but managed to suggest that his amusement was a well-bred protection
+against looking bored.
+The attorney went through a long list of questions about Mr. Toohey’s
+professional qualifications, including the number of copies sold of his book
+Sermons in Stone. Then he read aloud Toohey’s column "Sacrilege" and asked him
+to state whether he had written it. Toohey replied that he had. There followed a
+list of questions in erudite terms on the architectural merits of the Temple.
+Toohey proved that it had none. There followed an historical review. Toohey,
+speaking easily and casually, gave a brief sketch of all known civilizations and
+of their outstanding religious monuments--from the Incas to the Phoenicians to
+the Easter Islanders--including, whenever possible, the dates when these
+monuments were begun and the dates when they were completed, the number of
+workers employed in the construction and the approximate cost in modern American
+dollars. The audience listened punch-drunk.
+Toohey proved that the Stoddard Temple contradicted every brick, stone and
+precept of history. "I have endeavored to show," he said in conclusion, "that
+the two essentials of the conception of a temple are a sense of awe and a sense
+of man’s humility. We have noted the gigantic proportions of religious edifices,
+the soaring lines, the horrible grotesques of monster-like gods, or, later,
+gargoyles. All of it tends to impress upon man his essential insignificance, to
+crush him by sheer magnitude, to imbue him with that sacred terror which leads
+to the meekness of virtue. The Stoddard Temple is a brazen denial of our entire
+past, an insolent ’No’ flung in the face of history. I may venture a guess as to
+the reason why this case has aroused such public interest. All of us have
+recognized instinctively that it involves a moral issue much beyond its legal
+aspects. This building is a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. It is one
+man’s ego defying the most sacred impulses of all mankind, of every man on the
+street, of every man in this courtroom!"
+This was not a witness in court, but Ellsworth Toohey addressing a meeting--and
+the reaction was inevitable: the audience burst into applause. The judge struck
+his gavel and made a threat to have the courtroom cleared. Order was restored,
+but not to the faces of the crowd: the faces remained lecherously
+self-righteous. It was pleasant to be singled out and brought into the case as
+an injured party. Three-fourths of them had never seen the Stoddard Temple.
+303
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Toohey," said the attorney, faintly suggesting a bow. Then he
+turned to Roark and said with delicate courtesy: "Your witness."
+"No questions," said Roark.
+Ellsworth Toohey raised one eyebrow and left the stand regretfully.
+"Mr. Peter Keating!" called the attorney. Peter Keating’s face looked attractive
+and fresh, as if he had had a good night’s sleep. He mounted the witness stand
+with a collegiate sort of gusto, swinging his shoulders and arms unnecessarily.
+He took the oath and answered the first questions gaily. His pose in the witness
+chair was strange: his torso slumped to one side with swaggering ease, an elbow
+on the chair’s arm; but his feet were planted awkwardly straight, and his knees
+were pressed tight together. He never looked at Roark.
+"Will you please name some of the outstanding buildings which you have designed,
+Mr. Keating?" the attorney asked.
+Keating began a list of impressive names; the first few came fast, the rest
+slower and slower, as if he wished to be stopped; the last one died in the air,
+unfinished.
+"Aren’t you forgetting the most important one, Mr. Keating?" the attorney asked.
+"Didn’t you design the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?"
+"Yes," whispered Keating.
+"Now, Mr. Keating, you attended the Stanton Institute of Technology at the same
+period as Mr. Roark?"
+"Yes."
+"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s record there?"
+"He was expelled."
+"He was expelled because he was unable to live up to the Institute’s high
+standard of requirements?"
+"Yes. Yes, that was it."
+The judge glanced at Roark. A lawyer would have objected to this testimony as
+irrelevant. Roark made no objection.
+"At that time, did you think that he showed any talent for the profession of
+architecture?"
+"No."
+"Will you please speak a little louder, Mr. Keating?"
+"I didn’t...think he had any talent."
+Queer things were happening to Keating’s verbal punctuation: some words came out
+crisply, as if he dropped an exclamation point after each; others ran together,
+as if he would not stop to let himself hear them. He did not look at the
+attorney. He kept his eyes on the audience. At times, he looked like a boy out
+on a lark, a boy who has just drawn a mustache on the face of a beautiful girl
+304
+
+on a subway toothpaste ad. Then he looked as if he were begging the crowd for
+support--as if he were on trial before them.
+"At one time you employed Mr. Roark in your office?"
+"Yes."
+"And you found yourself forced to fire him?"
+"Yes...we did."
+"For incompetence?"
+"Yes."
+"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s subsequent career?"
+"Well, you know, ’career’ is a relative term. In volume of achievement any
+draftsman in our office has done more than Mr. Roark. We don’t call one or two
+buildings a career. We put up that many every month or so."
+"Will you give us your professional opinion of his work?"
+"Well, I think it’s immature. Very startling, even quite interesting at times,
+but essentially--adolescent."
+"Then Mr. Roark cannot be called a full-fledged architect?"
+"Not in the sense in which we speak of Mr. Ralston Holcombe, Mr. Guy Francon,
+Mr. Gordon Prescott--no. But, of course, I want to be fair. I think Mr. Roark
+had definite potentialities, particularly in problems of pure engineering. He
+could have made something of himself. I’ve tried to talk to him about it--I’ve
+tried to help him--I honestly did. But it was like talking to one of his pet
+pieces of reinforced concrete. I knew that he’d come to something like this. I
+wasn’t surprised when I heard that a client had had to sue him at last."
+"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s attitude toward clients?"
+"Well, that’s the point. That’s the whole point. He didn’t care what the clients
+thought or wished, what anyone in the world thought or wished. He didn’t even
+understand how other architects could care. He wouldn’t even give you that, not
+even understanding, not even enough to...respect you a little just the same. I
+don’t see what’s so wrong with trying to please people. I don’t see what’s wrong
+with wanting to be friendly and liked and popular. Why is that a crime? Why
+should anyone sneer at you for that, sneer all the time, all the time, day and
+night, not giving you a moment’s peace, like the Chinese water torture, you know
+where they drop water on your skull drop by drop?"
+People in the audience began to realize that Peter Keating was drunk. The
+attorney frowned; the testimony had been rehearsed; but it was getting off the
+rails.
+"Well, now, Mr. Keating, perhaps you’d better tell us about Mr. Roark’s views on
+architecture."
+"I’ll tell you, if you want to know. He thinks you should take your shoes off
+and kneel, when you speak of architecture. That’s what he thinks. Now why should
+you? Why? It’s a business like any other, isn’t it? What’s so damn sacred about
+it? Why do we have to be all keyed up? We’re only human. We want to make a
+305
+
+living. Why can’t things be simple and easy? Why do we have to be some sort of
+God-damn heroes?"
+"Now, now, Mr. Keating, I think we’re straying slightly from the subject.
+We’re..."
+"No, we’re not. I know what I’m talking about. You do, too. They all do. Every
+one of them here. I’m talking about the Temple. Don’t you see? Why pick a fiend
+to build a temple? Only a very human sort of man should be chosen to do that. A
+man who understands...and forgives. A man who forgives...That’s what you go to
+church for--to be...forgiven..."
+"Yes, Mr. Keating, but speaking of Mr. Roark..."
+"Well, what about Mr. Roark? He’s no architect. He’s no good. Why should I be
+afraid to say that he’s no good? Why are you all afraid of him?"
+"Mr. Keating, if you’re not well and wish to be dismissed...?" Keating looked at
+him, as if awakening. He tried to control himself. After a while he said, his
+voice flat, resigned:
+"No. I’m all right. I’ll tell you anything you want. What is it you want me to
+say?"
+"Will you tell us--in professional terms--your opinion of the structure known as
+the Stoddard Temple?"
+"Yes. Sure. The Stoddard Temple...The Stoddard Temple has an improperly
+articulated plan, which leads to spatial confusion. There is no balance of
+masses. It lacks a sense of symmetry. Its proportions are inept." He spoke in a
+monotone. His neck was stiff; he was making an effort not to let it drop
+forward. "It’s out of scale. It contradicts the elementary principles of
+composition. The total effect is that of..."
+"Louder please, Mr. Keating."
+"The total effect is that of crudeness and architectural illiteracy. It
+shows...it shows no sense of structure, no instinct for beauty, no creative
+imagination, no..." he closed his eyes, "...artistic integrity..."
+"Thank you, Mr. Keating. That is all."
+The attorney turned to Roark and said nervously:
+"Your witness."
+"No questions," said Roark.
+This concluded the first day of the trial.
+That evening Mallory, Heller, Mike, Enright and Lansing gathered in Roark’s
+room. They had not consulted one another, but they all came, prompted by the
+same feeling. They did not talk about the trial, but there was no strain and no
+conscious avoidance of the subject. Roark sat on his drafting table and talked
+to them about the future of the plastics industry. Mallory laughed aloud
+suddenly, without apparent reason. "What’s the matter, Steve?" Roark asked. "I
+just thought...Howard, we all came here to help you, to cheer you up. But it’s
+you who’re helping us, instead. You’re supporting your supporters, Howard."
+306
+
+That evening, Peter Keating lay half-stretched across a table in a speakeasy,
+one arm extending along the table top, his face on his arm.
+In the next two days a succession of witnesses testified for the plaintiff.
+Every examination began with questions that brought out the professional
+achievements of the witness. The attorney gave them leads like an expert press
+agent. Austen Heller remarked that architects must have fought for the privilege
+of being called to the witness stand, since it was the grandest spree of
+publicity in a usually silent profession.
+None of the witnesses looked at Roark. He looked at them. He listened to the
+testimony. He said: "No questions," to each one.
+Ralston Holcombe on the stand, with flowing tie and gold-headed cane, had the
+appearance of a Grand Duke or a beer-garden composer. His testimony was long and
+scholarly, but it came down to:
+"It’s all nonsense. It’s all a lot of childish nonsense. I can’t say that I feel
+much sympathy for Mr. Hopton Stoddard. He should have known better. It is a
+scientific fact that the architectural style of the Renaissance is the only one
+appropriate to our age. If our best people, like Mr. Stoddard, refuse to
+recognize this, what can you expect from all sorts of parvenus, would-be
+architects and the rabble in general? It has been proved that Renaissance is the
+only permissible style for all churches, temples and cathedrals. What about Sir
+Christopher Wren? Just laugh that off. And remember the greatest religious
+monument of all time--St. Peter’s in Rome. Are you going to improve upon St.
+Peter’s? And if Mr. Stoddard did not specifically insist on Renaissance, he got
+just exactly what he deserved. It serves him jolly well right." Gordon L.
+Prescott wore a turtleneck sweater under a plaid coat, tweed trousers and heavy
+golf shoes.
+"The correlation of the transcendental to the purely spatial in the building
+under discussion is entirely screwy," he said. "If we take the horizontal as the
+one-dimensional, the vertical as the two-dimensional, the diagonal as the
+three-dimensional, and the interpenetration of spaces as the
+fourth-dimensional--architecture being a fourth-dimensional art--we can see
+quite simply that this building is homaloidal, or--in the language of the
+layman--flat. The flowing life which comes from the sense of order in chaos, or,
+if you prefer, from unity in diversity, as well as vice versa, which is the
+realization of the contradiction inherent in architecture, is here absolutely
+absent. I am really trying to express myself as clearly as I can, but it is
+impossible to present a dialectic state by covering it up with an old fig leaf
+of logic just for the sake of the mentally lazy layman."
+John Erik Snyte testified modestly and unobtrusively that he had employed Roark
+in his office, that Roark had been an unreliable, disloyal and unscrupulous
+employee, and that Roark had started his career by stealing a client from him.
+On the fourth day of the trial the plaintiff’s attorney called his last witness.
+"Miss Dominique Francon," he announced solemnly.
+Mallory gasped, but no one heard it; Mike’s hand clamped down on his wrist and
+made him keep still.
+The attorney had reserved Dominique for his climax, partly because he expected a
+great deal from her, and partly because he was worried; she was the only
+unrehearsed witness; she had refused to be coached. She had never mentioned the
+Stoddard Temple in her column; but he had looked up her earlier writings on
+307
+
+Roark; and Ellsworth Toohey had advised him to call her.
+Dominique stood for a moment on the elevation of the witness stand, looking
+slowly over the crowd. Her beauty was startling but too impersonal, as if it did
+not belong to her; it seemed present in the room as a separate entity. People
+thought of a vision that had not quite appeared, of a victim on a scaffold, of a
+person standing at night at the rail of an ocean liner.
+"What is your name?"
+"Dominique Francon."
+"And your occupation, Miss Francon?"
+"Newspaper woman."
+"You are the author of the brilliant column ’Your House’ appearing in the New
+York Banner!"
+"I am the author of ’Your House.’"
+"Your father is Guy Francon, the eminent architect?"
+"Yes. My father was asked to come here to testify. He refused. He said he did
+not care for a building such as the Stoddard Temple, but he did not think that
+we were behaving like gentlemen."
+"Well, now, Miss Francon, shall we confine our answers to our questions? We are
+indeed fortunate to have you with us, since you are our only woman witness, and
+women have always had the purest sense of religious faith. Being, in addition,
+an outstanding authority on architecture, you are eminently qualified to give us
+what I shall call, with all deference, the feminine angle on this case. Will you
+tell us in your own words what you think of the Stoddard Temple?"
+"I think that Mr. Stoddard has made a mistake. There would have been no doubt
+about the justice of his case if he had sued, not for alteration costs, but for
+demolition costs."
+The attorney looked relieved. "Will you explain your reasons, Miss Francon?"
+"You have heard them from every witness at this trial."
+"Then I take it that you agree with the preceding testimony?"
+"Completely. Even more completely than the persons who testified. They were very
+convincing witnesses."
+"Will you...clarify that, Miss Francon? Just what do you mean?"
+"What Mr. Toohey said: that this temple is a threat to all of us."
+"Oh, I see."
+"Mr. Toohey understood the issue so well. Shall I clarify it--in my own words?"
+"By all means."
+"Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud,
+clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to
+308
+
+that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that
+exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth
+and achieving it, of living up to one’s highest possibility, of knowing no shame
+and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He
+thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man’s birthright. He thought
+that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard
+Roark thought of man and of exaltation. But Ellsworth Toohey said that this
+temple was a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. Ellsworth Toohey said
+that the essence of exaltation was to be scared out of your wits, to fall down
+and to grovel. Ellsworth Toohey said that man’s highest act was to realize his
+own worthlessness and to beg forgiveness. Ellsworth Toohey said it was depraved
+not to take for granted that man is something which needs to be forgiven.
+Ellsworth Toohey saw that this building was of man and of the earth--and
+Ellsworth Toohey said that this building had its belly in the mud. To glorify
+man, said Ellsworth Toohey, was to glorify the gross pleasure of the flesh, for
+the realm of the spirit is beyond the grasp of man. To enter that realm, said
+Ellsworth Toohey, man must come as a beggar, on his knees. Ellsworth Toohey is a
+lover of mankind."
+"Miss Francon, we are not really discussing Mr. Toohey, so if you will confine
+yourself to..."
+"I do not condemn Ellsworth Toohey. I condemn Howard Roark. A building, they
+say, must be part of its site. In what kind of world did Roark build his temple?
+For what kind of men? Look around you. Can you see a shrine becoming sacred by
+serving as a setting for Mr. Hopton Stoddard? For Mr. Ralston Holcombe? For Mr.
+Peter Keating? When you look at them all, do you hate Ellsworth Toohey--or do
+you damn Howard Roark for the unspeakable indignity which he did commit?
+Ellsworth Toohey is right, that temple is a sacrilege, though not in the sense
+he meant. I think Mr. Toohey knows that, however. When you see a man casting
+pearls without getting even a pork chop in return--it is not against the swine
+that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little
+that he was willing to fling them into the muck and to let them become the
+occasion for a whole concert of grunting, transcribed by the court
+stenographer."
+"Miss Francon, I hardly think that this line of testimony is relevant or
+admissible..."
+"The witness must be allowed to testify," the judge declared unexpectedly. He
+had been bored and he liked to watch Dominique’s figure. Besides, he knew that
+the audience was enjoying it, in the sheer excitement of scandal, even though
+their sympathies were with Hopton Stoddard.
+"Your Honor, some misunderstanding seems to have occurred," said the attorney.
+"Miss Francon, for whom are you testifying? For Mr. Roark or Mr. Stoddard?"
+"For Mr. Stoddard, of course. I am stating the reasons why Mr. Stoddard should
+win this case. I have sworn to tell the truth."
+"Proceed," said the judge.
+"All the witnesses have told the truth. But not the whole truth. I am merely
+filling in the omissions. They spoke of a threat and of hatred. They were right.
+The Stoddard Temple is a threat to many things. If it were allowed to exist,
+nobody would dare to look at himself in the mirror. And that is a cruel thing to
+do to men. Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love,
+brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect.
+They will hate your soul. Well, they know best. They must have their reasons.
+309
+
+They won’t say, of course, that they hate you. They will say that you hate them.
+It’s near enough, I suppose. They know the emotion involved. Such are men as
+they are. So what is the use of being a martyr to the impossible? What is the
+use of building for a world that does not exist?"
+"Your Honor, I don’t see what possible bearing this can have on..."
+"I am proving your case for you. I am proving why you must go with Ellsworth
+Toohey, as you will anyway. The Stoddard Temple must be destroyed. Not to save
+men from it, but to save it from men. What’s the difference, however? Mr.
+Stoddard wins. I am in full agreement with everything that’s being done here,
+except for one point. I didn’t think we should be allowed to get away with that
+point. Let us destroy, but don’t let us pretend that we are committing an act of
+virtue. Let us say that we are moles and we object to mountain peaks. Or,
+perhaps, that we are lemmings, the animals who cannot help swimming out to
+self-destruction. I realize fully that at this moment I am as futile as Howard
+Roark. This is my Stoddard Temple--my first and my last." She inclined her head
+to the judge. "That is all, Your Honor."
+"Your witness," the attorney snapped to Roark.
+"No questions," said Roark.
+Dominique left the stand.
+The attorney bowed to the bench and said: "The plaintiff rests."
+The judge turned to Roark and made a vague gesture, inviting him to proceed.
+Roark got up and walked to the bench, the brown envelope in hand. He took out of
+the envelope ten photographs of the Stoddard Temple and laid them on the judge’s
+desk. He said:
+"The defense rests."
+
+13.
+HOPTON STODDARD won the suit.
+Ellsworth Toohey wrote in his column: "Mr. Roark pulled a Phryne in court and
+didn’t get away with it. We never believed that story in the first place."
+Roark was instructed to pay the costs of the Temple’s alterations. He said that
+he would not appeal the case. Hopton Stoddard announced that the Temple would be
+remodeled into the Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children.
+On the day after the end of the trial Alvah Scarret gasped when he glanced at
+the proofs of "Your House" delivered to his desk: the column contained most of
+Dominique’s testimony in court. Her testimony had been quoted in the newspaper
+accounts of the case but only in harmless excerpts. Alvah Scarret hurried to
+Dominique’s office.
+"Darling, darling, darling," he said, "we can’t print that."
+She looked at him blankly and said nothing.
+310
+
+"Dominique, sweetheart, be reasonable. Quite apart from some of the language you
+use and some of your utterly unprintable ideas, you know very well the stand
+this paper has taken on the case. You know the campaign we’ve conducted. You’ve
+read my editorial this morning--’A Victory for Decency.’ We can’t have one
+writer running against our whole policy."
+"You’ll have to print it."
+"But, sweetheart..."
+"Or I’ll have to quit."
+"Oh, go on, go on, go on, don’t be silly. Now don’t get ridiculous. You know
+better than that. We can’t get along without you. We can’t..."
+"You’ll have to choose, Alvah."
+Scarret knew that he would get hell from Gail Wynand if he printed the thing,
+and might get hell if he lost Dominique Francon whose column was popular. Wynand
+had not returned from his cruise. Scarret cabled him in Bali, explaining the
+situation.
+Within a few hours Scarret received an answer. It was in Wynand’s private code.
+Translated it read FIRE THE BITCH. G.W.
+Scarret stared at the cable, crushed. It was an order that allowed no
+alternative, even if Dominique surrendered. He hoped she would resign. He could
+not face the thought of having to fire her.
+Through an office boy whom he had recommended for the job, Toohey obtained the
+decoded copy of Wynand’s cable. He put it in his pocket and went to Dominique’s
+office. He had not seen her since the trial. He found her engaged in emptying
+the drawers of her desk.
+"Hello," he said curtly. "What are you doing?"
+"Waiting to hear from Alvah Scarret."
+"Meaning?"
+"Waiting to hear whether I’ll have to resign."
+"Feel like talking about the trial?"
+"No."
+"I do. I think I owe you the courtesy of admitting that you’ve done what no one
+has ever done before: you proved me wrong." He spoke coldly; his face looked
+flat; his eyes had no trace of kindness. "I had not expected you to do what you
+did on the stand. It was a scurvy trick. Though up to your usual standard. I
+simply miscalculated the direction of your malice. However, you did have the
+good sense to admit that your act was futile. Of course, you made your point.
+And mine. As a token of appreciation, I have a present for you." He laid the
+cable on her desk. She read it and stood holding it in her hand. "You can’t even
+resign, my dear," he said. "You can’t make that sacrifice to your pearl-casting
+hero. Remembering that you attach such great importance to not being beaten
+except by your own hand, I thought you would enjoy this."
+She folded the cable and slipped it into her purse.
+311
+
+"Thank you, Ellsworth."
+"If you’re going to fight me, my dear, it will take more than speeches."
+"Haven’t I always?"
+"Yes. Yes, of course you have. Quite right. You’re correcting me again. You have
+always fought me--and the only time you broke down and screamed for mercy was on
+that witness stand."
+"That’s right."
+"That’s where I miscalculated."
+"Yes."
+He bowed formally and left the room.
+She made a package of the things she wanted to take home. Then she went to
+Scarret’s office. She showed him the cable in her hand, but she did not give it
+to him.
+"Okay, Alvah," she said.
+"Dominique, I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it, it was--How the hell did you
+get that?"
+"It’s all right, Alvah. No, I won’t give it back to you. I want to keep it." She
+put the cable back in her bag. "Mail me my check and anything else that has to
+be discussed."
+"You...you were going to resign anyway, weren’t you?"
+"Yes, I was. But I like it better--being fired."
+"Dominique, if you knew how awful I feel about it. I can’t believe it. I simply
+can’t believe it."
+"So you people made a martyr out of me, after all. And that is the one thing
+I’ve tried all my life not to be. It’s so graceless, being a martyr. It’s
+honoring your adversaries too much. But I’ll tell you this, Alvah--I’ll tell it
+to you, because I couldn’t find a less appropriate person to hear it: nothing
+that you do to me--or to him--will be worse than what I’ll do myself. If you
+think I can’t take the Stoddard Temple, wait till you see what I can take."
+#
+On an evening three days after the trial Ellsworth Toohey sat in his room,
+listening to the radio. He did not feel like working and he allowed himself a
+rest, relaxing luxuriously in an armchair, letting his fingers follow the rhythm
+of a complicated symphony. He heard a knock at his door. "Co-ome in," he
+drawled.
+Catherine came in. She glanced at the radio by way of apology for her entrance.
+"I knew you weren’t working, Uncle Ellsworth. I want to speak to you."
+She stood slumped, her body thin and curveless. She wore a skirt of expensive
+tweed, unpressed. She had smeared some makeup on her face; the skin showed
+312
+
+lifeless under the patches of powder. At twenty-six she looked like a woman
+trying to hide the fact of being over thirty.
+In the last few years, with her uncle’s help, she had become an able social
+worker. She held a paid job in a settlement house, she had a small bank account
+of her own; she took her friends out to lunch, older women of her profession,
+and they talked about the problems of unwed mothers, self-expression for the
+children of the poor, and the evils of industrial corporations.
+In the last few years Toohey seemed to have forgotten her existence. But he knew
+that she was enormously aware of him in her silent, self-effacing way. He was
+seldom first to speak to her. But she came to him continuously for minor advice.
+She was like a small motor running on his energy, and she had to stop for
+refueling once in a while. She would not go to the theater without consulting
+him about the play. She would not attend a lecture course without asking his
+opinion. Once she developed a friendship with a girl who was intelligent,
+capable, gay and loved the poor, though a social worker. Toohey did not approve
+of the girl. Catherine dropped her.
+When she needed advice, she asked for it briefly, in passing, anxious not to
+delay him: between the courses of a meal, at the elevator door on his way out,
+in the living room when some important broadcast stopped for station
+identification. She made it a point to show that she would presume to claim
+nothing but the waste scraps of his time.
+So Toohey looked at her, surprised, when she entered his study. He said:
+"Certainly, pet. I’m not busy. I’m never too busy for you, anyway. Turn the
+thing down a bit, will you?"
+She softened the volume of the radio, and she slumped down in an armchair facing
+him. Her movements were awkward and contradictory, like an adolescent’s: she had
+lost the habit of moving with assurance, and yet, at times, a gesture, a jerk of
+her head, would show a dry, overbearing impatience which she was beginning to
+develop.
+She looked at her uncle. Behind her glasses, her eyes were still and tense, but
+unrevealing. She said:
+"What have you been doing, Uncle Ellsworth? I saw something in the papers about
+winning some big lawsuit that you were connected with. I was glad. I haven’t
+read the papers for months. I’ve been so busy...No, that’s not quite true. I’ve
+had the time, but when I came home I just couldn’t make myself do anything, I
+just fell in bed and went to sleep. Uncle Ellsworth, do people sleep a lot
+because they’re tired or because they want to escape from something?"
+"Now, my dear, this doesn’t sound like you at all. None of it." She shook her
+head helplessly: "I know."
+"What is the matter?"
+She said, looking at the toes of her shoes, her lips moving with effort:
+"I guess I’m no good, Uncle Ellsworth." She raised her eyes to him. "I’m so
+terribly unhappy."
+He looked at her silently, his face earnest, his eyes gentle. She whispered:
+"You understand?" He nodded. "You’re not angry at me? You don’t despise me?"
+313
+
+"My dear, how could I?"
+"I didn’t want to say it. Not even to myself. It’s not just tonight, it’s for a
+long time back. Just let me say everything, don’t be shocked, I’ve got to tell
+it. It’s like going to confession as I used to--oh, don’t think I’m returning to
+that, I know religion is only a...a device of class exploitation, don’t think
+I’d let you down after you explained it all so well. I don’t miss going to
+church. But it’s just--it’s just that I’ve got to have somebody listen."
+"Katie, darling, first of all, why are you so frightened? You mustn’t be.
+Certainly not of speaking to me. Just relax, be yourself and tell me what
+happened."
+She looked at him gratefully. "You’re...so sensitive, Uncle Ellsworth. That’s
+one thing I didn’t want to say, but you guessed. I am frightened. Because--well,
+you see, you just said, be yourself. And what I’m afraid of most is of being
+myself. Because I’m vicious."
+He laughed, not offensively, but warmly, the sound destroying her statement. But
+she did not smile.
+"No, Uncle Ellsworth, it’s true. I’ll try to explain. You see, always, since I
+was a child, I wanted to do right. I used to think everybody did, but now I
+don’t think so. Some people try their best, even if they do make mistakes, and
+others just don’t care. I’ve always cared. I took it very seriously. Of course I
+knew that I’m not a brilliant person and that it’s a very big subject, good and
+evil. But I felt that whatever is the good--as much as it would be possible for
+me to know--I would do my honest best to live up to it. Which is all anybody can
+try, isn’t it? This probably sounds terribly childish to you."
+"No, Katie, it doesn’t. Go on, my dear."
+"Well, to begin with, I knew that it was evil to be selfish. That much I was
+sure of. So I tried never to demand anything for myself. When Peter would
+disappear for months...No, I don’t think you approve of that."
+"Of what, my dear?"
+"Of Peter and me. So I won’t talk about that. It’s not important anyway. Well,
+you can see why I was so happy when I came to live with you. You’re as close to
+the ideal of unselfishness as anyone can be. I tried to follow you the best I
+could. That’s how I chose the work I’m doing. You never actually said that I
+should choose it, but I came to feel that you thought so. Don’t ask me how I
+came to feel it--it was nothing tangible, just little things you said. I felt
+very confident when I started. I knew that unhappiness comes from selfishness,
+and that one can find true happiness only in dedicating oneself to others. You
+said that. So many people have said that. Why, all the greatest men in history
+have been saying that for centuries."
+"And?"
+"Well, look at me."
+His face remained motionless for a moment, then he smiled gaily and said:
+"What’s wrong with you, pet? Apart from the fact that your stockings don’t match
+and that you could be more careful about your make-up?"
+314
+
+"Don’t laugh, Uncle Ellsworth. Please don’t laugh. I know you say we must be
+able to laugh at everything, particularly at ourselves. Only--I can’t."
+"I won’t laugh, Katie. But what is the matter?"
+"I’m unhappy. I’m unhappy in such a horrible, nasty, undignified way. In a way
+that seems...unclean. And dishonest. I go for days, afraid to think, to look at
+myself. And that’s wrong. It’s...becoming a hypocrite. I always wanted to be
+honest with myself. But I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!"
+"Hold on, my dear. Don’t shout. The neighbors will hear you."
+She brushed the back of her hand against her forehead. She shook her head. She
+whispered:
+"I’m sorry....I’ll be all right...."
+"Just why are you unhappy, my dear?"
+"I don’t know. I can’t understand it. For instance, it was I who arranged to
+have the classes in prenatal care down at the Clifford House--it was my idea--I
+raised the money--I found the teacher. The classes are doing very well. I tell
+myself that I should be happy about it. But I’m not. It doesn’t seem to make any
+difference to me. I sit down and I tell myself: It was you who arranged to have
+Marie Gonzales’ baby adopted into a nice family--now, be happy. But I’m not. I
+feel nothing. When I’m honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I’ve
+felt for years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It’s as if...as
+if there were nobody there to feel any more."
+She took off her glasses, as if the double barrier of her glasses and his
+prevented her from reaching him. She spoke, her voice lower, the words coming
+with greater effort:
+"But that’s not all. There’s something much worse. It’s doing something horrible
+to me. I’m beginning to hate people, Uncle Ellsworth. I’m beginning to be cruel
+and mean and petty in a way I’ve never been before. I expect people to be
+grateful to me. I...I demand gratitude. I find myself pleased when slum people
+bow and scrape and fawn over me. I find myself liking only those who are
+servile. Once...once I told a woman that she didn’t appreciate what people like
+us did for trash like her. I cried for hours afterward, I was so ashamed. I
+begin to resent it when people argue with me. I feel that they have no right to
+minds of their own, that I know best, that I’m the final authority for them.
+There was a girl we were worried about, because she was running around with a
+very handsome boy who had a bad reputation, I tortured her for weeks about it,
+telling her how he’d get her in trouble and that she should drop him. Well, they
+got married and they’re the happiest couple in the district. Do you think I’m
+glad? No, I’m furious and I’m barely civil to the girl when I meet her. Then
+there was a girl who needed a job desperately--it was really a ghastly situation
+in her home, and I promised that I’d get her one. Before I could find it, she
+got a good job all by herself. I wasn’t pleased. I was sore as hell that
+somebody got out of a bad hole without my help. Yesterday, I was speaking to a
+boy who wanted to go to college and I was discouraging him, telling him to get a
+good job, instead. I was quite angry, too. And suddenly I realized that it was
+because I had wanted so much to go to college--you remember, you wouldn’t let
+me--and so I wasn’t going to let that kid do it either....Uncle Ellsworth, don’t
+you see? I’m becoming selfish. I’m becoming selfish in a way that’s much more
+horrible than if I were some petty chiseler pinching pennies off these people’s
+wages in a sweatshop!"
+315
+
+He asked quietly:
+"Is that all?"
+She closed her eyes, and then she said, looking down at her hands:
+"Yes...except that I’m not the only one who’s like that. A lot of them are, most
+of the women I work with....I don’t know how they got that way....I don’t know
+how it happened to me....I used to feel happy when I helped somebody. I remember
+once--I had lunch with Peter that day--and on my way back I saw an old
+organ-grinder and I gave him five dollars I had in my bag. It was all the money
+I had; I’d saved it to buy a bottle of ’Christmas Night,’ I wanted ’Christmas
+Night’ very badly, but afterward every time I thought of that organ-grinder I
+was happy....I saw Peter often in those days....I’d come home after seeing him
+and I’d want to kiss every ragged kid on our block....I think I hate the poor
+now....I think all the other women do, too....But the poor don’t hate us, as
+they should. They only despise us....You know, it’s funny: it’s the masters who
+despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters. I don’t know who is
+which. Maybe it doesn’t fit here. Maybe it does. I don’t know..."
+She raised her head with a last spurt of rebellion.
+"Don’t you see what it is that I must understand? Why is it that I set out
+honestly to do what I thought was right and it’s making me rotten? I think it’s
+probably because I’m vicious by nature and incapable of leading a good life.
+That seems to be the only explanation. But...but sometimes I think it doesn’t
+make sense that a human being is completely sincere in good will and yet the
+good is not for him to achieve. I can’t be as rotten as that. But...but I’ve
+given up everything, I have no selfish desire left, I have nothing of my
+own--and I’m miserable. And so are the other women like me. And I don’t know a
+single selfless person in the world who’s happy--except you."
+She dropped her head and she did not raise it again; she seemed indifferent even
+to the answer she was seeking.
+"Katie," he said softly, reproachfully, "Katie darling."
+She waited silently.
+"Do you really want me to tell you the answer?" She nodded. "Because, you know,
+you’ve given the answer yourself, in the things you said." She lifted her eyes
+blankly. "What have you been talking about? What have you been complaining
+about? About the fact that you are unhappy. About Katie Halsey and nothing else.
+It was the most egotistical speech I’ve ever heard in my life."
+She blinked attentively, like a schoolchild disturbed by a difficult lesson.
+"Don’t you see how selfish you have been? You chose a noble career, not for the
+good you could accomplish, but for the personal happiness you expected to find
+in it."
+"But I really wanted to help people."
+"Because you thought you’d be good and virtuous doing it."
+"Why--yes. Because I thought it was right. Is it vicious to want to do right?"
+"Yes, if it’s your chief concern. Don’t you see how egotistical it is? To hell
+with everybody so long as I’m virtuous."
+316
+
+"But if you have no...no self-respect, how can you be anything?"
+"Why must you be anything?"
+She spread her hands out, bewildered.
+"If your first concern is for what you are or think or feel or have or haven’t
+got--you’re still a common egotist."
+"But I can’t jump out of my own body."
+"No. But you can jump out of your narrow soul."
+"You mean, I must want to be unhappy?"
+"No. You must stop wanting anything. You must forget how important Miss
+Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn’t. Men are important only in
+relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless
+you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or
+another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you’ve found
+yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It’s just growing pains. One
+can’t jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living
+without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. A beautiful woman
+is usually a gawky adolescent first. All growth demands destruction. You can’t
+make an omelet without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be
+cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean--anything, my dear, anything to kill the
+most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no
+longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your
+soul--only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates
+of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you."
+"But, Uncle Ellsworth," she whispered, "when the gates fall open, who is it
+that’s going to enter?"
+He laughed aloud, crisply. It sounded like a laugh of appreciation. "My dear,"
+he said, "I never thought you could surprise me."
+Then his face became earnest again.
+"It was a smart crack, Katie, but you know, I hope, that it was only a smart
+crack?"
+"Yes," she said uncertainly, "I suppose so. Still..."
+"We can’t be too literal when we deal in abstractions. Of course it’s you who’ll
+enter. You won’t have lost your identity--you will merely have acquired a
+broader one, an identity that will be part of everybody else and of the whole
+universe."
+"How? In what way? Part of what?"
+"Now you see how difficult it is to discuss these things when our entire
+language is the language of individualism, with all its terms and superstitions.
+’Identity’--it’s an illusion, you know. But you can’t build a new house out of
+crumbling old bricks. You can’t expect to understand me completely through the
+medium of present-day conceptions. We are poisoned by the superstition of the
+ego. We cannot know what will be right or wrong in a selfless society, nor what
+we’ll feel, nor in what manner. We must destroy the ego first. That is why the
+317
+
+mind is so unreliable. We must not think. We must believe. Believe, Katie, even
+if your mind objects. Don’t think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain.
+Don’t think. Feel. Believe."
+She sat still, composed, but somehow she looked like something run over by a
+tank. She whispered obediently:
+"Yes, Uncle Ellsworth...I...I didn’t think of it that way. I mean I always
+thought that I must think...But you’re right, that is, if right is the word I
+mean, if there is a word...Yes, I will believe....I’ll try to understand....No,
+not to understand. To feel. To believe, I mean....Only I’m so weak....I always
+feel so small after talking to you....I suppose I was right in a way--I am
+worthless...but it doesn’t matter...it doesn’t matter...."
+#
+When the doorbell rang on the following evening Toohey went to open the door
+himself.
+He smiled when he admitted Peter Keating. After the trial he had expected
+Keating to come to him; he knew that Keating would need to come. But he had
+expected him sooner.
+Keating walked in uncertainly. His hands seemed too heavy for his wrists. His
+eyes were puffed, and the skin of his face looked slack.
+"Hello, Peter," said Toohey brightly. "Want to see me? Come right in. Just your
+luck. I have the whole evening free."
+"No," said Keating. "I want to see Katie."
+He was not looking at Toohey and he did not see the expression behind Toohey’s
+glasses.
+"Katie? But of course!" said Toohey gaily. "You know, you’ve never come here to
+call on Katie, so it didn’t occur to me, but...Go right in, I believe she’s
+home. This way--you don’t know her room?--second door."
+Keating shuffled heavily down the hall, knocked on Catherine’s door and went in
+when she answered. Toohey stood looking after him, his face thoughtful.
+Catherine jumped to her feet when she saw her guest. She stood stupidly,
+incredulously for a moment, then she dashed to her bed to snatch a girdle she
+had left lying there and stuff it hurriedly under the pillow. Then she jerked
+off her glasses, closed her whole fist over them, and slipped them into her
+pocket. She wondered which would be worse: to remain as she was or to sit down
+at her dressing table and make up her face in his presence.
+She had not seen Keating for six months. In the last three years, they had met
+occasionally, at long intervals, they had had a few luncheons together, a few
+dinners, they had gone to the movies twice. They had always met in a public
+place. Since the beginning of his acquaintance with Toohey, Keating would not
+come to see her at her home. When they met, they talked as if nothing had
+changed. But they had not spoken of marriage for a long time. "Hello, Katie,"
+said Keating softly. "I didn’t know you wore glasses now."
+"It’s just...it’s only for reading....I...Hello, Peter....I guess I look
+terrible tonight....I’m glad to see you, Peter...."
+He sat down heavily, his hat in his hand, his overcoat on. She stood smiling
+318
+
+helplessly. Then she made a vague, circular motion with her hands and asked:
+"Is it just for a little while or...or do you want to take your coat off?"
+"No, it’s not just for a little while." He got up, threw his coat and hat on the
+bed, then he smiled for the first time and asked: "Or are you busy and want to
+throw me out?"
+She pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets, and dropped her
+hands again quickly; she had to meet him as she had always met him, she had to
+sound light and normal: "No, no, Fin not busy at all."
+He sat down and stretched out his arm in silent invitation. She came to him
+promptly, she put her hand in his, and he pulled her down to the arm of his
+chair.
+The lamplight fell on him, and she had recovered enough to notice the appearance
+of his face.
+"Peter," she gasped, "what have you been doing to yourself? You look awful."
+"Drinking."
+"Not...like that!"
+"Like that. But it’s over now."
+"What was it?"
+"I wanted to see you, Katie. I wanted to see you."
+"Darling...what have they done to you?"
+"Nobody’s done anything to me. I’m all right now. I’m all right. Because I came
+here...Katie, have you ever heard of Hopton Stoddard?"
+"Stoddard?...I don’t know. I’ve seen the name somewhere."
+"Well, never mind, it doesn’t matter. I was only thinking how strange it is. You
+see, Stoddard’s an old bastard who just couldn’t take his own rottenness any
+more, so to make up for it he built a big present to the city. But when I...when
+I couldn’t take any more, I felt that the only way I could make up for it was by
+doing the thing I really wanted to do most--by coming here."
+"When you couldn’t take--what, Peter?"
+"I’ve done something very dirty, Katie. I’ll tell you about it some day, but not
+now....Look will you say that you forgive me--without asking what it is? I’ll
+think...I’ll think that I’ve been forgiven by someone who can never forgive me.
+Someone who can’t be hurt and so can’t forgive--but that makes it worse for me."
+She did not seem perplexed. She said earnestly:
+"I forgive you, Peter."
+He nodded his head slowly several times and said:
+"Thank you."
+319
+
+Then she pressed her head to his and she whispered:
+"You’ve gone through hell, haven’t you?"
+"Yes. But it’s all right now."
+He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Then he did not think of the
+Stoddard Temple any longer, and she did not think of good and evil. They did not
+need to; they felt too clean.
+"Katie, why haven’t we married?"
+"I don’t know," she said. And added hastily, saying it only because her heart
+was pounding, because she could not remain silent and because she felt called
+upon not to take advantage of him: "I guess it’s because we knew we don’t have
+to hurry,"
+"But we do. If we’re not too late already."
+"Peter, you...you’re not proposing to me again?"
+"Don’t look stunned, Katie. If you do, I’ll know that you’ve doubted it all
+these years. And I couldn’t stand to think that just now. That’s what I came
+here to tell you tonight. We’re going to get married. We’re going to get married
+right away."
+"Yes, Peter."
+"We don’t need announcements, dates, preparations, guests, any of it. We’ve let
+one of those things or another stop us every time. I honestly don’t know just
+how it happened that we’ve let it all drift like that....We won’t say anything
+to anyone. We’ll just slip out of town and get married. We’ll announce and
+explain afterward, if anyone wants explanations. And that means your uncle, and
+my mother, and everybody."
+"Yes, Peter."
+"Quit your damn job tomorrow. I’ll make arrangements at the office to take a
+month off. Guy will be sore as hell--I’ll enjoy that. Get your things ready--you
+won’t need much--don’t bother about the makeup, by the way--did you say you
+looked terrible tonight?--you’ve never looked lovelier. I’ll be here at nine
+o’clock in the morning, day after tomorrow. You must be ready to start then."
+"Yes, Peter."
+After he had gone, she lay on her bed, sobbing aloud, without restraint, without
+dignity, without a care in the world.
+Ellsworth Toohey had left the door of his study open. He had seen Keating pass
+by the door without noticing it and go out. Then he heard the sound of
+Catherine’s sobs. He walked to her room and entered without knocking. He asked:
+"What’s the matter, my dear? Has Peter done something to hurt you?"
+She half lifted herself on the bed, she looked at him, throwing her hair back
+off her face, sobbing exultantly. She said without thinking the first thing she
+felt like saying. She said something which she did not understand, but he did:
+"I’m not afraid of you, Uncle Ellsworth!"
+320
+
+14.
+"WHO?" gasped Keating.
+"Miss Dominique Francon," the maid repeated.
+"You’re drunk, you damn fool!"
+"Mr. Keating!..."
+He was on his feet, he shoved her out of the way, he flew into the living room,
+and saw Dominique Francon standing there, in his apartment.
+"Hello, Peter."
+"Dominique!...Dominique, how come?" In his anger, apprehension, curiosity and
+flattered pleasure, his first conscious thought was gratitude to God that his
+mother was not at home.
+"I phoned your office. They said you had gone home."
+"I’m so delighted, so pleasantly sur...Oh, hell, Dominique, what’s the use? I
+always try to be correct with you and you always see through it so well that
+it’s perfectly pointless. So I won’t play the poised host. You know that I’m
+knocked silly and that your coming here isn’t natural and anything I say will
+probably be wrong."
+"Yes, that’s better, Peter."
+He noticed that he still held a key in his hand and he slipped it into his
+pocket; he had been packing a suitcase for his wedding trip of tomorrow. He
+glanced at the room and noted angrily how vulgar his Victorian furniture looked
+beside the elegance of Dominique’s figure. She wore a gray suit, a black fur
+jacket with a collar raised to her cheeks, and a hat slanting down. She did not
+look as she had looked on the witness stand, nor as he remembered her at dinner
+parties. He thought suddenly of that moment, years ago, when he stood on the
+stair landing outside Guy Francon’s office and wished never to see Dominique
+again. She was what she had been then: a stranger who frightened him by the
+crystal emptiness of her face.
+"Well, sit down, Dominique. Take your coat off."
+"No, I shan’t stay long. Since we’re not pretending anything today, shall I tell
+you what I came for--or do you want some polite conversation first?"
+"No, I don’t want polite conversation."
+"All right. Will you marry me, Peter?"
+He stood very still; then he sat down heavily--because he knew she meant it.
+"If you want to marry me," she went on in the same precise, impersonal voice,
+"you must do it right now. My car is downstairs. We drive to Connecticut and we
+come back. It will take about three hours."
+"Dominique..." He didn’t want to move his lips beyond the effort of her name. He
+321
+
+wanted to think that he was paralyzed. He knew that he was violently alive, that
+he was forcing the stupor into his muscles and into his mind, because he wished
+to escape the responsibility of consciousness.
+"We���re not pretending, Peter. Usually, people discuss their reasons and their
+feelings first, then make the practical arrangements. With us, this is the only
+way. If I offered it to you in any other form, I’d be cheating you. It must be
+like this. No questions, no conditions, no explanations. What we don’t say
+answers itself. By not being said. There is nothing for you to ponder--only
+whether you want to do it or not."
+"Dominique," he spoke with the concentration he used when he walked down a naked
+girder in an unfinished building, "I understand only this much: I understand
+that I must try to imitate you, not to discuss it, not to talk, just answer."
+"Yes."
+"Only--I can’t--quite."
+"This is one time, Peter, when there are no protections. Nothing to hide behind.
+Not even words."
+"If you’d just say one thing..."
+"No."
+"If you’d give me time..."
+"No. Either we go downstairs together now or we forget it."
+"You mustn’t resent it if I...You’ve never allowed me to hope that you
+could...that you...no, no, I won’t say it...but what can you expect me to think?
+I’m here, alone, and..."
+"And I’m the only one present to give you advice. My advice is to refuse. I’m
+honest with you, Peter. But I won’t help you by withdrawing the offer. You would
+prefer not to have had the chance of marrying me. But you have the chance. Now.
+The choice will be yours."
+Then he could not hold on to his dignity any longer; he let his head drop, he
+pressed his fist to his forehead. "Dominique--why?"
+"You know the reasons. I told them to you once, long ago. If you haven’t the
+courage to think of them, don’t expect me to repeat them."
+He sat still, his head down. Then he said: "Dominique, two people like you and
+me getting married, it’s almost a front-page event."
+"Yes."
+"Wouldn’t it be better to do it properly, with an announcement and a real
+wedding ceremony?"
+"I’m strong, Peter, but I’m not that strong. You can have your receptions and
+your publicity afterward."
+"You don’t want me to say anything now, except yes or no?"
+"That’s all."
+322
+
+He sat looking up at her for a long time. Her glance was on his eyes, but it had
+no more reality than the glance of a portrait. He felt alone in the room. She
+stood, patient, waiting, granting him nothing, not even the kindness of
+prompting him to hurry. "All right, Dominique. Yes," he said at last. She
+inclined her head gravely in acquiescence. He stood up. "I’ll get my coat," he
+said. "Do you want to take your car?"
+"Yes."
+"It’s an open car, isn’t it? Should I wear my fur coat? "No. Take a warm
+muffler, though. There’s a little wind."
+"No luggage? We’re coming right back to the city?"
+"We’re coming right back."
+He left the door to the hall open, and she saw him putting on his coat, throwing
+a muffler around his throat, with the gesture of flinging a cape over his
+shoulder. He stepped to the door of the living room, hat in hand, and invited
+her to go, with a silent movement of his head. In the hall outside he pressed
+the button of the elevator and he stepped back to let her enter first. He was
+precise, sure of himself, without joy, without emotion. He seemed more coldly
+masculine than he had ever been before.
+He took her elbow firmly, protectively, to cross the street where she had left
+her car. He opened the car’s door, let her slide behind the wheel and got in
+silently beside her. She leaned over across him and adjusted the glass wind
+screen on his side. She said: "If it’s not right, fix it any way you want when
+we start moving, so it won’t be too cold for you." He said: "Get to the Grand
+Concourse, fewer lights there." She put her handbag down on his lap while she
+took the wheel and started the car. There was suddenly no antagonism between
+them, but a quiet, hopeless feeling of comradeship, as if they were victims of
+the same impersonal disaster, who had to help each other.
+She drove fast, as a matter of habit, an even speed without a sense of haste.
+They sat silently to the level drone of the motor, and they sat patiently,
+without shifting the positions of their bodies, when the car stopped for a
+light. They seemed caught in a single streak of motion, an imperative direction
+like the flight of a bullet that could not be stopped on its course. There was a
+first hint of twilight in the streets of the city. The pavements looked yellow.
+The shops were still open. A movie theater had lighted its sign, and the red
+bulbs whirled jerkily, sucking the last daylight out of the air, making the
+street look darker.
+Peter Keating felt no need of speech. He did not seem to be Peter Keating any
+longer. He did not ask for warmth and he did not ask for pity. He asked nothing.
+She thought of that once, and she glanced at him, a glance of appreciation that
+was almost gentle. He met her eyes steadily; she saw understanding, but no
+comment. It was as if his glance said: "Of course," nothing else.
+They were out of the city, with a cold brown road flying to meet them, when he
+said:
+"The traffic cops are bad around here. Got your press card with you, just in
+case?"
+"I’m not the press any longer."
+323
+
+"You’re not what?"
+"I’m not a newspaper woman any more."
+"You quit your job?"
+"No, I was fired."
+"What are you talking about?"
+"Where have you been the last few days? I thought everybody knew it."
+"Sorry. I didn’t follow things very well the last few days."
+Miles later, she said: "Give me a cigarette. In my bag." He opened her bag, and
+he saw her cigarette case, her compact, her lipstick, her comb, a folded
+handkerchief too white to touch, smelling faintly of her perfume. Somewhere
+within him he thought that this was almost like unbuttoning her blouse. But most
+of him was not conscious of the thought nor of the intimate proprietorship with
+which he opened the bag. He took a cigarette from her case, lighted it and put
+it from his lips to hers. "Thanks," she said. He lighted one for himself and
+closed the bag.
+When they reached Greenwich, it was he who made the inquiries, told her where to
+drive, at what block to turn, and said, "Here it is," when they pulled up in
+front of the judge’s house. He got out first and helped her out of the car. He
+pressed the button of the doorbell.
+They were married in a living room that displayed armchairs of faded tapestry,
+blue and purple, and a lamp with a fringe of glass beads. The witnesses were the
+judge’s wife and someone from next door named Chuck, who had been interrupted at
+some household task and smelled faintly of Clorox.
+Then they came back to their car and Keating asked: "Want me to drive if you’re
+tired?" She said: "No, I’ll drive."
+The road to the city cut through brown fields where every rise in the ground had
+a shade of tired red on the side facing west. There was a purple haze eating
+away the edges of the fields, and a motionless streak of fire in the sky. A few
+cars came toward them as brown shapes, still visible; others had their lights
+on, two disquieting spots of yellow.
+Keating watched the road; it looked narrow, a small dash in the middle of the
+windshield, framed by earth and hills, all of it held within the rectangle of
+glass before him. But the road spread as the windshield flew forward. The road
+filled the glass, it ran over the edges, it tore apart to let them pass,
+streaming in two gray bands on either side of the car. He thought it was a race
+and he waited to see the windshield win, to see the car hurtle into that small
+dash before it had time to stretch.
+"Where are we going to live now, at first?" he asked. "Your place or mine?"
+"Yours, of course."
+"I’d rather move to yours."
+"No. I’m closing my place."
+"You can’t possibly like my apartment."
+324
+
+"Why not?"
+"I don’t know. It doesn’t fit you."
+"I’ll like it."
+They were silent for a while, then he asked: "How are we going to announce this
+now?"
+"In any way you wish. I’ll leave it up to you."
+It was growing darker and she switched on the car’s headlights. He watched the
+small blurs of traffic signs, low by the side of the road, springing suddenly
+into life as they approached, spelling out: "Left turn,"
+"Crossing ahead," in dots of light that seemed conscious, malevolent, winking.
+They drove silently, but there was no bond in their silence now; they were not
+walking together toward disaster; the disaster had come; their courage did not
+matter any longer.
+He felt disturbed and uncertain as he always felt in the presence of Dominique
+Francon.
+He half turned to look at her. She kept her eyes on the road. Her profile in the
+cold wind was serene and remote and lovely in a way that was hard to bear. He
+looked at her gloved hands resting firmly, one on each side of the wheel. He
+looked down at her slender foot on the accelerator, then his eyes rose up the
+line of her leg. His glance remained on the narrow triangle of her tight gray
+skirt. He realized suddenly that he had a right to think what he was thinking.
+For the first time this implication of marriage occurred to him fully and
+consciously. Then he knew that he had always wanted this woman, that it was the
+kind of feeling he would have for a whore, only lasting and hopeless and
+vicious. My wife, he thought for the first time, without a trace of respect in
+the word. He felt so violent a desire that had it been summer he would have
+ordered her to drive into the first side lane and he would have taken her there.
+He slipped his arm along the back of the seat and encircled her shoulders, his
+fingers barely touching her. She did not move, resist or turn to look at him. He
+pulled his arm away, and he sat staring straight ahead.
+"Mrs. Keating," he said flatly, not addressing her, just as a statement of fact.
+"Mrs. Peter Keating," she said.
+When they stopped in front of his apartment house, he got out and held the door
+for her, but she remained sitting behind the wheel.
+"Good night, Peter," she said. "I’ll see you tomorrow."
+She added, before the expression of his face had turned into an obscene
+swearword: "I’ll send my things over tomorrow and we’ll discuss everything then.
+Everything will begin tomorrow, Peter."
+"Where are you going?"
+"I have things to settle."
+325
+
+"But what will I tell people tonight?"
+"Anything you wish, if at all."
+She swung the car into the traffic and drove away.
+#
+When she entered Roark’s room, that evening, he smiled, not his usual faint
+smile of acknowledging the expected, but a smile that spoke of waiting and pain.
+He had not seen her since the trial. She had left the courtroom after her
+testimony and he had heard nothing from her since. He had come to her house, but
+her maid had told him that Miss Francon could not see him.
+She looked at him now and she smiled. It was, for the first time, like a gesture
+of complete acceptance, as if the sight of him solved everything, answered all
+questions, and her meaning was only to be a woman who looked at him.
+They stood silently before each other for a moment, and she thought that the
+most beautiful words were those which were not needed.
+When he moved, she said: "Don’t say anything about the trial. Afterward."
+When he took her in his arms, she turned her body to meet his straight on, to
+feel the width of his chest with the width of hers, the length of his legs with
+the length of hers, as if she were lying against him, and her feet felt no
+weight, and she was held upright by the pressure of his body.
+They lay in bed together that night, and they did not know when they slept, the
+intervals of exhausted unconsciousness as intense an act of union as the
+convulsed meetings of their bodies.
+In the morning, when they were dressed, she watched him move about the room. She
+saw the drained relaxation of his movements; she thought of what she had taken
+from him, and the heaviness of her wrists told her that her own strength was now
+in his nerves, as if they had exchanged their energy.
+He was at the other end of the room, his back turned to her for a moment, when
+she said, "Roark," her voice quiet and low.
+He turned to her, as if he had expected it and, perhaps, guessed the rest.
+She stood in the middle of the floor, as she had stood on her first night in
+this room, solemnly composed to the performance of a rite.
+"I love you, Roark."
+She had said it for the first time.
+She saw the reflection of her next words on his face before she had pronounced
+them.
+"I was married yesterday. To Peter Keating."
+It would have been easy, if she had seen a man distorting his mouth to bite off
+sound, closing his fists and twisting them in defense against himself. But it
+was not easy, because she did not see him doing this, yet knew that this was
+being done, without the relief of a physical gesture.
+326
+
+"Roark..." she whispered, gently, frightened.
+He said: "I’m all right." Then he said: "Please wait a moment...All right. Go
+on."
+"Roark, before I met you, I had always been afraid of seeing someone like you,
+because I knew that I’d also have to see what I saw on the witness stand and I’d
+have to do what I did in that courtroom. I hated doing it, because it was an
+insult to you to defend you--and it was an insult to myself that you had to be
+defended....Roark, I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest
+for most people: the halfway, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. They
+may have their justifications. I don’t know. I don’t care to inquire. I know
+that it is the one thing not given me to understand. When I think of what you
+are, I can’t accept any reality except a world of your kind. Or at least a world
+in which you have a fighting chance and a fight on your own terms. That does not
+exist. And I can’t live a life torn between that which exists--and you. It would
+mean to struggle against things and men who don’t deserve to be your opponents.
+Your fight, using their methods--and that’s too horrible a desecration. It would
+mean doing for you what I did for Peter Keating: lie, flatter, evade,
+compromise, pander to every ineptitude--in order to beg of them a chance for
+you, beg them to let you live, to let you function, to beg them, Roark, not to
+laugh at them, but to tremble because they hold the power to hurt you. Am I too
+weak because I can’t do this? I don’t know which is the greater strength: to
+accept all this for you--or to love you so much that the rest is beyond
+acceptance. I don’t know. I love you too much."
+He looked at her, waiting. She knew that he had understood this long ago, but
+that it had to be said.
+"You’re not aware of them. I am. I can’t help it, I love you. The contrast is
+too great. Roark, you won’t win, they’ll destroy you, but I won’t be there to
+see it happen. I will have destroyed myself first. That’s the only gesture of
+protest open to me. What else could I offer you? The things people sacrifice are
+so little. I’ll give you my marriage to Peter Keating. I’ll refuse to permit
+myself happiness in their world. I’ll take suffering. That will be my answer to
+them, and my gift to you. I shall probably never see you again. I shall try not
+to. But I will live for you, through every minute and every shameful act I take,
+I will live for you in my own way, in the only way I can."
+He made a movement to speak, and she said:
+"Wait. Let me finish. You could ask, why not kill myself then. Because I love
+you. Because you exist. That alone is so much that it won’t allow me to die. And
+since I must be alive in order to know that you are, I will live in the world as
+it is, in the manner of life it demands. Not halfway, but completely. Not
+pleading and running from it, but walking out to meet it, beating it to the pain
+and the ugliness, being first to choose the worst it can do to me. Not as the
+wife of some half-decent human being, but as the wife of Peter Keating. And only
+within my own mind, only where nothing can touch it, kept sacred by the
+protecting wall of my own degradation, there will be the thought of you and the
+knowledge of you, and I shall say ’Howard Roark to myself once in a while, and I
+shall feel that I have deserved to say it." She stood before him, her face
+raised; her lips were not drawn, but closed softly, yet the shape of her mouth
+was too definite on her face, a shape of pain and tenderness, and resignation.
+In his face she saw suffering that was made old, as if it had been part of him
+for a long time, because it was accepted, and it looked not like a wound, but
+like a scar.
+327
+
+"Dominique, if I told you now to have that marriage annulled at once--to forget
+the world and my struggle--to feel no anger, no concern, no hope--just to exist
+for me, for my need of you--as my wife--as my property...?"
+He saw in her face what she had seen in his when she told him of her marriage;
+but he was not frightened and he watched it calmly. After a while, she answered
+and the words did not come from her lips, but as if her lips were forced to
+gather the sounds from the outside: "I’d obey you."
+"Now you see why I won’t do it. I won’t try to stop you. I love you, Dominique."
+She closed her eyes, and he said:
+"You’d rather not hear it now? But I want you to hear it. We never need to say
+anything to each other when we’re together. This is--for the time when we won’t
+be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As
+selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel
+of my body, for my survival. I’ve given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my
+ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is
+the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become
+your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want
+yourself--and so you would not love me long. To say ’I love you’ one must know
+first how to say the ’I.’ The kind of surrender I could have from you now would
+give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I’d destroy you. That’s why
+I won’t stop you. I’ll let you go to your husband. I don’t know how I’ll live
+through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you’ll remain in the
+battle you’ve chosen. A battle is never selfless."
+She heard, in the measured tension of his words, that it was harder for him to
+speak them than for her to listen. So she listened.
+"You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are
+now. Never to be hurt by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn
+it. I can’t help you. You must find your own way. When you have, you’ll come
+back to me. They won’t destroy me, Dominique. And they won’t destroy you. You’ll
+win, because you’ve chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the
+world. I’ll wait for you. I love you. I’m saying this now for all the years
+we’ll have to wait. I love you, Dominique."
+Then he kissed her and let her go.
+
+15.
+AT NINE O’CLOCK that morning Peter Keating was pacing the floor of his room, his
+door locked. He forgot that it was nine o’clock and that Catherine was waiting
+for him. He had made himself forget her and everything she implied.
+The door of his room was locked to protect him from his mother. Last night,
+seeing his furious restlessness, she had forced him to tell her the truth. He
+had snapped that he was married to Dominique Francon, and he had added some sort
+of explanation about Dominique going out of town to announce the marriage to
+some old relative. His mother had been so busy with gasps of delight and
+questions, that he had been able to ’answer nothing and to hide his panic; he
+was not certain that he had a wife and that she would come back to him in the
+morning.
+328
+
+He had forbidden his mother to announce the news, but she had made a few
+telephone calls last night, and she was making a few more this morning, and now
+their telephone was ringing constantly, with eager voices asking: "Is it true?"
+pouring out sounds of amazement and congratulations. Keating could see the news
+spreading through the city in widening circles, by the names and social
+positions of the people who called. He refused to answer the telephone. It
+seemed to him that every corner of New York was flooded with celebration and
+that he alone, hidden in the watertight caisson of his room, was cold and lost
+and horrified.
+It was almost noon when the doorbell rang, and he pressed his hands to his ears,
+not to know who it was and what they wanted. Then he heard his mother’s voice,
+so shrill with joy that it sounded embarrassingly silly: "Petey darling, don’t
+you want to come out and kiss your wife?" He flew out into the hall, and there
+was Dominique, removing her soft mink coat, the fur throwing to his nostrils a
+wave of the street’s cold air touched by her perfume. She was smiling correctly,
+looking straight at him, saying: "Good morning, Peter."
+He stood drawn up, for one instant, and in that instant he relived all the
+telephone calls and felt the triumph to which they entitled him. He moved as a
+man in the arena of a crowded stadium, he smiled as if he felt the ray of an arc
+light playing in the creases of his smile, and he said: "Dominique my dear, this
+is like a dream come true!"
+The dignity of their doomed understanding was gone and their marriage was what
+it had been intended to be.
+She seemed glad of it. She said: "Sorry you didn’t carry me over the threshold,
+Peter." He did not kiss her, but took her hand and kissed her arm above the
+wrist, in casual, intimate tenderness.
+He saw his mother standing there, and he said with a dashing gesture of triumph:
+"Mother--Dominique Keating."
+He saw his mother kissing her. Dominique returned the kiss gravely. Mrs. Keating
+was gulping: "My dear, I’m so happy, so happy, God bless you, I had no idea you
+were so beautiful!"
+He did not know what to do next, but Dominique took charge, simply, leaving them
+no time for wonder. She walked into the living room and she said: "Let’s have
+lunch first, and then you’ll show me the place, Peter. My things will be here in
+an hour or so."
+Mrs. Keating beamed: "Lunch is all ready for three, Miss Fran..." She stopped.
+"Oh, dear, what am I to call you, honey? Mrs. Keating or..."
+"Dominique, of course," Dominique answered without smiling.
+"Aren’t we going to announce, to invite anyone, to...?" Keating began, but
+Dominique said:
+"Afterwards, Peter. It will announce itself."
+Later, when her luggage arrived, he saw her walking into his bedroom without
+hesitation. She instructed the maid how to hang up her clothes, she asked him to
+help her rearrange the contents of the closets.
+Mrs. Keating looked puzzled. "But aren’t you children going to go away at all?
+It’s all so sudden and romantic, but--no honeymoon of any kind?"
+329
+
+"No," said Dominique, "I don’t want to take Peter away from his work."
+He said: "This is temporary of course, Dominique. We’ll have to move to another
+apartment, a bigger one. I want you to choose it."
+"Why, no," she said. "I don’t think that’s necessary. We’ll remain here."
+"I’ll move out," Mrs. Keating offered generously, without thinking, prompted by
+an overwhelming fear of Dominique. "I’ll take a little place for myself."
+"No," said Dominique. "I’d rather you wouldn’t. I want to change nothing. I want
+to fit myself into Peter’s life just as it is."
+"That’s sweet of you!" Mrs. Keating smiled, while Keating thought numbly that it
+was not sweet of her at all.
+Mrs. Keating knew that when she had recovered she would hate her
+daughter-in-law. She could have accepted snubbing. She could not forgive
+Dominique’s grave politeness.
+The telephone rang. Keating’s chief designer at the office delivered his
+congratulations and said: "We just heard it, Peter, and Guy’s pretty stunned. I
+really think you ought to call him up or come over here or something."
+Keating hurried to the office, glad to escape from his house for a while. He
+entered the office like a perfect figure of a radiant young lover. He laughed
+and shook hands in the drafting room, through noisy congratulations, gay shouts
+of envy and a few smutty references. Then he hastened to Francon’s office.
+For an instant he felt oddly guilty when he entered and saw the smile on
+Francon’s face, a smile like a blessing. He tugged affectionately at Francon’s
+shoulders and he muttered: "I’m so happy, Guy, I’m so happy..."
+"I’ve always expected it," said Francon quietly, "but now I feel right. Now it’s
+right that it should be all yours, Peter, all of it, this room, everything,
+soon."
+"What are you talking about?"
+"Come, you always understand. I’m tired, Peter. You know, there comes a time
+when you get tired in a way that’s final and then...No, you wouldn’t know,
+you’re too young. But hell, Peter, of what use am I around here? The funny part
+of it is that I don’t care any more even about pretending to be of any use....I
+like to be honest sometimes. It’s a nice sort of feeling....Well, anyway, it
+might be another year or two, but then I’m going to retire. Then it’s all yours.
+It might amuse me to hang on around here just a little longer--you know, I
+actually love the place--it’s so busy, it’s done so well, people respect us--it
+was a good firm, Francon & Heyer, wasn’t it?--What the hell am I saying? Francon
+& Keating. Then it will be just Keating....Peter," he asked softly, "why don’t
+you look happy?"
+"Of course I’m happy, I’m very grateful and all that, but why in blazes should
+you think of retiring now?"
+"I don’t mean that. I mean--why don’t you look happy when I say that it will be
+yours? I...I’d like you to be happy about that, Peter."
+"For God’s sake, Guy, you’re being morbid, you’re..."
+330
+
+"Peter, it’s very important to me--that you should be happy at what I’m leaving
+you. That you should be proud of it. And you are, aren’t you, Peter? You are?"
+"Well, who wouldn’t be?" He did not look at Francon. He could not stand the
+sound of pleading in Francon’s voice.
+"Yes, who wouldn’t be? Of course....And you are, Peter?"
+"What do you want?" snapped Keating angrily.
+"I want you to feel proud of me, Peter," said Francon humbly, simply,
+desperately. "I want to know that I’ve accomplished something. I want to feel
+that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure that it
+wasn’t all--for nothing."
+"You’re not sure of that? You’re not sure?" Keating’s eyes were murderous, as if
+Francon were a sudden danger to him.
+"What’s the matter, Peter?" Francon asked gently, almost indifferently.
+"God damn you, you have no right--not to be sure! At your age, with your name,
+with your prestige, with your..."
+"I want to be sure, Peter. I’ve worked very hard."
+"But you’re not sure!" He was furious and frightened, and so he wanted to hurt,
+and he flung out the one thing that could hurt most, forgetting that it hurt
+him, not Francon, that Francon wouldn’t know, had never known, wouldn’t even
+guess: "Well, I know somebody who’ll be sure, at the end of his life, who’ll be
+so God-damn sure I’d like to cut his damn throat for it!"
+"Who?" asked Francon quietly, without interest. "Guy! Guy, what’s the matter
+with us? What are we talking about?"
+"I don’t know," said Francon. He looked tired.
+That evening Francon came to Keating’s house for dinner. He was dressed
+jauntily, and he twinkled with his old gallantry as he kissed Mrs. Keating’s
+hand. But he looked grave when he congratulated Dominique and he found little to
+say to her; there was a pleading look in his eyes when he glanced up at her
+face. Instead of the bright, cutting mockery he had expected from her, he saw a
+sudden understanding. She said nothing, but bent down and kissed him on the
+forehead and held her lips pressed gently to his head a second longer than
+formality required. He felt a warm flood of gratitude--and then he felt
+frightened. "Dominique," he whispered--the others could not hear him--"how
+terribly unhappy you must be...." She laughed gaily, taking his arm: "Why, no,
+Father, how can you say that!"
+"Forgive me," he muttered, "I’m just stupid....This is really wonderful...."
+Guests kept coming in all evening, uninvited and unannounced, anyone who had
+heard the news and felt privileged to drop in. Keating did not know whether he
+was glad to see them or not. It seemed all right, so long as the gay confusion
+lasted. Dominique behaved exquisitely. He did not catch a single hint of sarcasm
+in her manner.
+It was late when the last guest departed and they were left alone among the
+filled ash trays and empty glasses. They sat at opposite ends of the living
+331
+
+room, and Keating tried to postpone the moment of thinking what he had to think
+now.
+"All right, Peter," said Dominique, rising, "let’s get it over with."
+When he lay in the darkness beside her, his desire satisfied and left hungrier
+than ever by the unmoving body that had not responded, not even in revulsion,
+when he felt defeated in the one act of mastery he had hoped to impose upon her,
+his first whispered words were: "God damn you!"
+He heard no movement from her.
+Then he remembered the discovery which the moments of passion had wiped off his
+mind.
+"Who was he?" he asked.
+"Howard Roark," she answered.
+"All right," he snapped, "you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to!"
+He switched on the light. He saw her lying still, naked, her head thrown back.
+Her face looked peaceful, innocent, clean. She said to the ceiling, her voice
+gentle: "Peter, if I could do this...I can do anything now...."
+"If you think I’m going to bother you often, if that’s your idea of..."
+#
+"As often or as seldom as you wish, Peter."
+Next morning, entering the dining room for breakfast, Dominique found a
+florist’s box, long and white, resting across her plate.
+"What’s that?" she asked the maid.
+"It was brought this morning, madam, with instructions to be put on the
+breakfast table."
+The box was addressed to Mrs. Peter Keating. Dominique opened it. It contained a
+few branches of white lilac, more extravagantly luxurious than orchids at this
+time of the year. There was a small card with a name written upon it in large
+letters that still held the quality of a hand’s dashing movement, as if the
+letters were laughing on the pasteboard: "Ellsworth M. Toohey."
+"How nice!" said Keating. "I wondered why we hadn’t heard from him at all
+yesterday."
+"Please put them in water, Mary," said Dominique, handing the box to the maid.
+In the afternoon Dominique telephoned Toohey and invited him for dinner.
+The dinner took place a few days later. Keating’s mother had pleaded some
+previous engagement and escaped for the evening; she explained it to herself by
+believing that she merely needed time to get used to things. So there were only
+three places set on the dining-room table, candles in crystal holders, a
+centerpiece of blue flowers and glass bubbles.
+When Toohey entered he bowed to his hosts in a manner proper to a court
+reception. Dominique looked like a society hostess who had always been a society
+332
+
+hostess and could not possibly be imagined as anything else.
+"Well, Ellsworth? Well?" Keating asked, with a gesture that included the hall,
+the air and Dominique.
+"My dear Peter," said Toohey, "let’s skip the obvious."
+Dominique led the way into the living room. She wore a dinner dress--a white
+satin blouse tailored like a man’s, and a long black skirt, straight and simple
+as the polished planes of her hair. The narrow band of the skirt about her
+waistline seemed to state that two hands could encircle her waist completely or
+snap her figure in half without much effort. The short sleeves left her arms
+bare, and she wore a plain gold bracelet, too large and heavy for her thin
+wrist. She had an appearance of elegance become perversion, an appearance of
+wise, dangerous maturity achieved by looking like a very young girl.
+"Ellsworth, isn’t it wonderful?" said Keating, watching Dominique as one watches
+a fat bank account. "No less than I expected," said Toohey. "And no more." At
+the dinner table Keating did most of the talking. He seemed possessed by a
+talking jag. He turned over words with the sensuous abandon of a cat rolling in
+catnip.
+"Actually, Ellsworth, it was Dominique who invited you. I didn’t ask her to.
+You’re our first formal guest. I think that’s wonderful. My wife and my best
+friend. I’ve always had the silly idea that you two didn’t like each other. God
+knows where I get those notions. But this is what makes me so damn happy--the
+three of us, together."
+"Then you don’t believe in mathematics, do you, Peter?" said Toohey. "Why the
+surprise? Certain figures in combination have to give certain results. Granting
+three entities such as Dominique, you and I--this had to be the inevitable sum."
+"They say three’s a crowd," laughed Keating. "But that’s bosh. Two are better
+than one, and sometimes three are better than two, it all depends."
+"The only thing wrong with that old cliché," said Toohey, "is the erroneous
+implication that ’a crowd’ is a term of opprobrium. It is quite the opposite. As
+you are so merrily discovering. Three, I might add, is a mystic key number. As
+for instance, the Holy Trinity. Or the triangle, without which we would have no
+movie industry. There are so many variations upon the triangle, not necessarily
+unhappy. Like the three of us--with me serving as understudy for the hypotenuse,
+quite an appropriate substitution, since I’m replacing my antipode, don’t you
+think so, Dominique?"
+They were finishing dessert when Keating was called to the telephone. They could
+hear his impatient voice in the next room, snapping instructions to a draftsman
+who was working late on a rush job and needed help. Toohey turned, looked at
+Dominique and smiled. The smile said everything her manner had not allowed to be
+said earlier. There was no visible movement on her face, as she held his glance,
+but there was a change of expression, as if she were acknowledging his meaning
+instead of refusing to understand it. He would have preferred the closed look of
+refusal. The acceptance was infinitely more scornful.
+"So you’ve come back to the fold, Dominique?"
+"Yes, Ellsworth."
+"No more pleas for mercy?"
+333
+
+"Does it appear as if they will be necessary?"
+"No. I admire you, Dominique....How do you like it? I should imagine Peter is
+not bad, though not as good as the man we’re both thinking of, who’s probably
+superlative, but you’ll never have a chance to learn."
+She did not look disgusted; she looked genuinely puzzled.
+"What are you talking about, Ellsworth?"
+"Oh, come, my dear, we’re past pretending now, aren’t we? You’ve been in love
+with Roark from that first moment you saw him in Kiki Holcombe’s drawing
+room--or shall I be honest?--you wanted to sleep with him--but he wouldn’t spit
+at you--hence all your subsequent behavior."
+"Is that what you thought?" she asked quietly. "Wasn’t it obvious? The woman
+scorned. As obvious as the fact that Roark had to be the man you’d want. That
+you’d want him in the most primitive way. And that he’d never know you existed."
+"I overestimated you, Ellsworth," she said. She had lost all interest in his
+presence, even the need of caution. She looked bored. He frowned, puzzled.
+Keating came back. Toohey slapped his shoulder as he passed by on the way to his
+seat.
+"Before I go, Peter, we must have a chat about the rebuilding of the Stoddard
+Temple. I want you to bitch that up, too."
+"Ellsworth...!" he gasped.
+Toohey laughed. "Don’t be stuffy, Peter. Just a little professional vulgarity.
+Dominique won’t mind. She’s an ex-newspaper woman."
+"What’s the matter, Ellsworth?" Dominique asked. "Feeling pretty desperate? The
+weapons aren’t up to your usual standard." She rose. "Shall we have coffee in
+the drawing room?"
+#
+Hopton Stoddard added a generous sum to the award he had won from Roark, and the
+Stoddard Temple was rebuilt for its new purpose by a group of architects chosen
+by Ellsworth Toohey: Peter Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, John Erik Snyte and
+somebody named Gus Webb, a boy of twenty-four who liked to utter obscenities
+when passing well-bred women on the street, and who had never handled an
+architectural commission of his own. Three of these men had social and
+professional standing; Gus Webb had none; Toohey included him for that reason.
+Of the four Gus Webb had the loudest voice and the greatest self-assurance. Gus
+Webb said he was afraid of nothing; he meant it. They were all members of the
+Council of American Builders.
+The Council of American Builders had grown. After the Stoddard trial many
+earnest discussions were held informally in the club rooms of the A.G.A. The
+attitude of the A.G.A. toward Ellsworth Toohey had not been cordial,
+particularly since the establishment of his Council. But the trial brought a
+subtle change; many members pointed out that the article in "One Small Voice"
+had actually brought about the Stoddard lawsuit; and that a man who could force
+clients to sue was a man to be treated with caution. So it was suggested that
+Ellsworth Toohey should be invited to address the A.G.A. at one of its
+luncheons. Some members objected, Guy Francon among them. The most passionate
+objector was a young architect who made an eloquent speech, his voice trembling
+334
+
+with the embarrassment of speaking in public for the first time; he said that he
+admired Ellsworth Toohey and had always agreed with Toohey’s social ideals, but
+if a group of people felt that some person was acquiring power over them, that
+was the time to fight such a person. The majority overruled him. Ellsworth
+Toohey was asked to speak at the luncheon, the attendance was enormous and
+Toohey made a witty, gracious speech. Many members of the A.G.A. joined the
+Council of American Builders, John Erik Snyte among the first.
+The four architects in charge of the Stoddard reconstruction met in Keating’s
+office, around a table on which they spread blueprints of the Temple,
+photographs of Roark’s original drawings, obtained from the contractor, and a
+clay model which Keating had ordered made. They talked about the depression and
+its disastrous effect on the building industry; they talked about women, and
+Gordon L. Prescott told a few jokes of a bathroom nature. Then Gus Webb raised
+his fist and smacked it plump upon the roof of the model which was not quite dry
+and spread into a flat mess. "Well, boys," he said, "let’s go to work."
+"Gus, you son of a bitch," said Keating, "the thing cost money."
+"Balls!" said Gus, "we’re not paying for it."
+Each of them had a set of photographs of the original sketches with the
+signature "Howard Roark" visible in the corner. They spent many evenings and
+many weeks, drawing their own versions right on the originals, remaking and
+improving. They took longer than necessary. They made more changes than
+required. They seemed to find pleasure in doing it. Afterward, they put the four
+versions together and made a cooperative combination. None of them had ever
+enjoyed a job quite so much. They had long, friendly conferences. There were
+minor dissensions, such as Gus Webb saying: "Hell, Gordon, if the kitchen’s
+going to be yours, then the johns’ve got to be mine," but these were only
+surface ripples. They felt a sense of unity and an anxious affection for one
+another, the kind of brotherhood that makes a man withstand the third degree
+rather than squeal on the gang.
+The Stoddard Temple was not torn down, but its framework was carved into five
+floors, containing dormitories, schoolrooms, infirmary, kitchen, laundry. The
+entrance hall was paved with colored marble, the stairways had railings of
+hand-wrought aluminum, the shower stalls were glass-enclosed, the recreation
+rooms had gold-leafed Corinthian pilasters. The huge windows were left
+untouched, merely crossed by floorlines.
+The four architects had decided to achieve an effect of harmony and therefore
+not to use any historical style in its pure form. Peter Keating designed the
+white marble semi-Doric portico that rose over the main entrance, and the
+Venetian balconies for which new doors were cut. John Erik Snyte designed the
+small semi-Gothic spire surmounted by a cross, and the bandcourses of stylized
+acanthus leaves which were cut into the limestone of the walls. Gordon L.
+Prescott designed the semi-Renaissance cornice, and the glass-enclosed terrace
+projecting from the third floor. Gus Webb designed a cubistic ornament to frame
+the original windows, and the modern neon sign on the roof, which read: "The
+Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children."
+"Comes the revolution," said Gus Webb, looking at the completed structure, "and
+every kid in the country will have a home like that!"
+The original shape of the building remained discernible. It was not like a
+corpse whose fragments had been mercifully scattered; it was like a corpse
+hacked to pieces and reassembled.
+335
+
+In September the tenants of the Home moved in. A small, expert staff was chosen
+by Toohey. It had been harder to find the children who qualified as inmates.
+Most of them had to be taken from other institutions. Sixty-five children, their
+ages ranging from three to fifteen, were picked out by zealous ladies who were
+full of kindness and so made a point of rejecting those who could be cured and
+selecting only the hopeless cases. There was a fifteen-year-old boy who had
+never learned to speak; a grinning child who could not be taught to read or
+write; a girl born without a nose, whose father was also her grandfather; a
+person called "Jackie" of whose age or sex nobody could be certain. They marched
+into their new home, their eyes staring vacantly, the stare of death before
+which no world existed.
+On warm evenings children from the slums nearby would sneak into the park of the
+Stoddard Home and gaze wistfully at the playrooms, the gymnasium, the kitchen
+beyond the big windows. These children had filthy clothes and smudged faces,
+agile little bodies, impertinent grins, and eyes bright with a roaring,
+imperious, demanding intelligence. The ladies in charge of the Home chased them
+away with angry exclamations about "little gangsters."
+Once a month a delegation from the sponsors came to visit the Home. It was a
+distinguished group whose names were in many exclusive registers, though no
+personal achievement had ever put them there. It was a group of mink coats and
+diamond clips; occasionally, there was a dollar cigar and a glossy derby from a
+British shop among them. Ellsworth Toohey was always present to show them
+through the Home. The inspection made the mink coats seem warmer and their
+wearers’ rights to them incontestable, since it established superiority and
+altruistic virtue together, in a demonstration more potent than a visit to a
+morgue. On the way back from such an inspection Ellsworth Toohey received
+humbled compliments on the wonderful work he was doing, and had no trouble in
+obtaining checks for his other humanitarian activities, such as publications,
+lecture courses, radio forums and the Workshop of Social Study.
+Catherine Halsey was put in charge of the children’s occupational therapy, and
+she moved into the Home as a permanent resident. She took up her work with a
+fierce zeal. She spoke about it insistently to anyone who would listen. Her
+voice was dry and arbitrary. When she spoke, the movements of her mouth hid the
+two lines that had appeared recently, cut from her nostrils to her chin; people
+preferred her not to remove her glasses; her eyes were not good to see. She
+spoke belligerently about her work not being charity, but "human reclamation."
+The most important time of her day was the hour assigned to the children’s art
+activities, known as the "Creative Period." There was a special room for the
+purpose--a room with a view of the distant city skyline--where the children were
+given materials and encouraged to create freely, under the guidance of Catherine
+who stood watch over them like an angel presiding at a birth.
+She was elated on the day when Jackie, the least promising one of the lot,
+achieved a completed work of imagination. Jackie picked up fistfuls of colored
+felt scraps and a pot of glue, and carried them to a corner of the room. There
+was, in the corner, a slanting ledge projecting from the wall-plastered over and
+painted green--left from Roark’s modeling of the Temple interior that had once
+controlled the recession of the light at sunset. Catherine walked over to Jackie
+and saw, spread out on the ledge, the recognizable shape of a dog, brown, with
+blue spots and five legs. Jackie wore an expression of pride. "Now you see, you
+see?" Catherine said to her colleagues. "Isn’t it wonderful and moving! There’s
+no telling how far the child will go with proper encouragement. Think of what
+happens to their little souls if they are frustrated in their creative
+instincts! It’s so important not to deny them a chance for self-expression. Did
+you see Jackie’s face?"
+336
+
+Dominique’s statue had been sold. No one knew who bought it. It had been bought
+by Ellsworth Toohey.
+#
+Roark’s office had shrunk back to one room. After the completion of the Cord
+Building he found no work. The depression had wrecked the building trade; there
+was little work for anyone; it was said that the skyscraper was finished;
+architects were closing their offices.
+A few commissions still dribbled out occasionally, and a group of architects
+hovered about them with the dignity of a bread line. There were men like Ralston
+Holcombe among them, men who had never begged, but had demanded references
+before they accepted a client. When Roark tried to get a commission, he was
+rejected in a manner implying that if he had no more sense than that, politeness
+would be a wasted effort. "Roark?" cautious businessmen said. "The tabloid hero?
+Money’s too scarce nowadays to waste it on lawsuits afterwards."
+He got a few jobs, remodeling rooming houses, an assignment that involved no
+more than erecting partitions and rearranging the plumbing. "Don’t take it,
+Howard," Austen Heller said angrily. "The infernal gall of offering you that
+kind of work! After a skyscraper like the Cord Building. After the Enright
+House."
+"I’ll take anything," said Roark.
+The Stoddard award had taken more than the amount of his fee for the Cord
+Building. But he had saved enough to exist on for a while. He paid Mallory’s
+rent and he paid for most of their frequent meals together.
+Mallory had tried to object. "Shut up, Steve," Roark had said. "I’m not doing it
+for you. At a time like this I owe myself a few luxuries. So I’m simply buying
+the most valuable thing that can be bought--your time. I’m competing with a
+whole country--and that’s quite a luxury, isn’t it? They want you to do baby
+plaques and I don’t, and I like having my way against theirs."
+"What do you want me to work on, Howard?"
+"I want you to work without asking anyone what he wants you to work on."
+Austen Heller heard about it from Mallory, and spoke of it to Roark in private.
+"If you’re helping him, why don’t you let me help you?"
+"I’d let you if you could," said Roark. "But you can’t. All he needs is his
+time. He can work without clients. I can’t."
+"It’s amusing, Howard, to see you in the role of an altruist."
+"You don’t have to insult me. It’s not altruism. But I’ll tell you this: most
+people say they’re concerned with the suffering of others. I’m not. And yet
+there’s one thing I can’t understand. Most of them would not pass by if they saw
+a man bleeding in the road, mangled by a hit-and-run driver. And most of them
+would not turn their heads to look at Steven Mallory. But don’t they know that
+if suffering could be measured, there’s no suffering in Steven Mallory when he
+can’t do the work he wants to do, than in a whole field of victims mowed down by
+a tank? If one must relieve the pain of this world, isn’t Mallory the place to
+begin?...However, that’s not why I’m doing it."
+#
+337
+
+Roark had never seen the reconstructed Stoddard Temple. On an evening in
+November he went to see it. He did not know whether it was surrender to pain or
+victory over the fear of seeing it.
+It was late and the garden of the Stoddard Home was deserted. The building was
+dark, a single light showed in a back window upstairs. Roark stood looking at
+the building for a long time.
+The door under the Greek portico opened and a slight masculine figure came out.
+It hurried casually down the steps--and then stopped.
+"Hello, Mr. Roark," said Ellsworth Toohey quietly.
+Roark looked at him without curiosity. "Hello," said Roark.
+"Please don’t run away." The voice was not mocking, but earnest.
+"I wasn’t going to."
+"I think I knew that you’d come here some day and I think I wanted to be here
+when you came. I’ve kept inventing excuses for myself to hang about this place."
+There was no gloating in the voice; it sounded drained and simple.
+"Well?"
+"You shouldn’t mind speaking to me. You see, I understand your work. What I do
+about it is another matter."
+"You are free to do what you wish about it."
+"I understand your work better than any living person--with the possible
+exception of Dominique Francon. And, perhaps, better than she does. That’s a
+deal, isn’t it, Mr. Roark? You haven’t many people around you who can say that.
+It’s a greater bond than if I were your devoted, but blind supporter."
+"I knew you understood."
+"Then you won’t mind talking to me."
+"About what?"
+In the darkness it sounded almost as if Toohey had sighed. After a while he
+pointed to the building and asked:
+"Do you understand this?"
+Roark did not answer.
+Toohey went on softly: "What does it look like to you? Like a senseless mess?
+Like a chance collection of driftwood? Like an imbecile chaos? But is it, Mr.
+Roark? Do you see no method? You who know the language of structure and the
+meaning of form. Do you see no purpose here?"
+"I see none in discussing it."
+"Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any
+words you wish. No one will hear us."
+338
+
+"But I don’t think of you."
+Toohey’s face had an expression of attentiveness, of listening quietly to
+something as simple as fate. He remained silent, and Roark asked:
+"What did you want to say to me?"
+Toohey looked at him, and then at the bare trees around them, at the river far
+below, at the great rise of the sky beyond the river.
+"Nothing," said Toohey.
+He walked away, his steps creaking on the gravel in the silence, sharp and even,
+like the cracks of an engine’s pistons.
+Roark stood alone in the empty driveway, looking at the building.
+
+Part Three: GAIL WYNAND
+
+1.
+GAIL WYNAND raised a gun to his temple.
+He felt the pressure of a metal ring against his skin--and nothing else. He
+might have been holding a lead pipe or a piece of jewelry; it was just a small
+circle without significance. "I am going to die," he said aloud--and yawned.
+He felt no relief, no despair, no fear. The moment of his end would not grant
+him even the dignity of seriousness. It was an anonymous moment; a few minutes
+ago, he had held a toothbrush in that hand; now he held a gun with the same
+casual indifference.
+One does not die like this, he thought. One must feel a great joy or a healthy
+terror. One must salute one’s own end. Let me feel a spasm of dread and I’ll
+pull the trigger. He felt nothing.
+He shrugged and lowered the gun. He stood tapping it against the palm of his
+left hand. People always speak of a black death or a red death, he thought;
+yours, Gail Wynand, will be a gray death. Why hasn’t anyone ever said that this
+is the ultimate horror? Not screams, pleas or convulsions. Not the indifference
+of a clean emptiness, disinfected by the fire of some great disaster. But
+this--a mean, smutty little horror, impotent even to frighten. You can’t do it
+like that, he told himself, smiling coldly; it would be in such bad taste.
+He walked to the wall of his bedroom. His penthouse was built above the
+fifty-seventh floor of a great residential hotel which he owned, in the center
+of Manhattan; he could see the whole city below him. The bedroom was a glass
+cage on the roof of the penthouse, its walls and ceiling made of huge glass
+sheets. There were dust-blue suede curtains to be pulled across the walls and
+enclose the room when he wished; there was nothing to cover the ceiling. Lying
+in bed, he could study the stars over his head, or see flashes of lightning, or
+watch the rain smashed into furious, glittering sunbursts in mid-air above him,
+339
+
+against the unseen protection. He liked to extinguish the lights and pull all
+the curtains open when he lay in bed with a woman. "We are fornicating in the
+sight of six million people," he would tell her.
+He was alone now. The curtains were open. He stood looking at the city. It was
+late and the great riot of lights below him was beginning to die down. He
+thought that he did not mind having to look at the city for many more years and
+he did not mind never seeing it again.
+He leaned against the wall and felt the cold glass through the thin, dark silk
+of his pyjamas. A monogram was embroidered in white on his breast pocket: GW,
+reproduced from his handwriting, exactly as he signed his initials with a single
+imperial motion.
+People said that Gail Wynand’s greatest deception, among many, was his
+appearance. He looked like the decadent, overperfected end product of a long
+line of exquisite breeding--and everybody knew that he came from the gutter. He
+was tall, too slender for physical beauty, as if all his flesh and muscle had
+been bred away. It was not necessary for him to stand erect in order to convey
+an impression of hardness. Like a piece of expensive steel, he bent, slouched
+and made people conscious, not of his pose, but of the ferocious spring that
+could snap him straight at any moment. This hint was all he needed; he seldom
+stood quite straight; he lounged about. Under any clothes he wore, it gave him
+an air of consummate elegance.
+His face did not belong to modern civilization, but to ancient Rome; the face of
+an eternal patrician. His hair, streaked with gray, was swept smoothly back from
+a high forehead. His skin was pulled tight over the sharp bones of his face; his
+mouth was long and thin; his eyes, under slanting eyebrows, were pale blue and
+photographed like two sardonic white ovals. An artist had asked him once to sit
+for a painting of Mephistopheles; Wynand had laughed, refusing, and the artist
+had watched sadly, because the laughter made the face perfect for his purpose.
+He slouched casually against the glass pane of his bedroom, the weight of a gun
+on his palm. Today, he thought; what was today? Did anything happen that would
+help me now and give meaning to this moment?
+Today had been like so many other days behind him that particular features were
+hard to recognize. He was fifty-one years old, and it was the middle of October
+in the year 1932; he was certain of this much; the rest took an effort of
+memory.
+He had awakened and dressed at six o’clock this morning; he had never slept more
+than four hours on any night of his adult life. He descended to his dining room
+where breakfast was served to him. His penthouse, a small structure, stood on
+the edge of a vast roof landscaped as a garden. The rooms were a superlative
+artistic achievement; their simplicity and beauty would have aroused gasps of
+admiration had this house belonged to anyone else; but people were shocked into
+silence when they thought that this was the home of the publisher of the New
+York Banner, the most vulgar newspaper in the country.
+After breakfast he went to his study. His desk was piled with every important
+newspaper, book and magazine received that morning from all over the country. He
+worked alone at his desk for three hours, reading and making brief notes with a
+large blue pencil across the printed pages. The notes looked like a spy’s
+shorthand; nobody could decipher them except the dry, middle-aged secretary who
+entered the study when Wynand left it. He had not heard her voice in five years,
+but no communication between them was necessary. When he returned to his study
+in the evening, the secretary and the pile of papers were gone; on his desk he
+340
+
+found neatly typed pages containing the things he had wished to be recorded from
+his morning’s work.
+At ten o’clock he arrived at the Banner Building, a plain, grimy structure in an
+undistinguished neighborhood of lower Manhattan. When he walked through the
+narrow halls of the building, the employees he met wished him a good morning.
+The greeting was correct and he answered courteously; but his passage had the
+effect of a death ray that stopped the motor of living organisms.
+Among the many hard rules imposed upon the employees of all Wynand enterprises,
+the hardest was the one demanding that no man pause in his work if Mr. Wynand
+entered the room, or notice his entrance. Nobody could predict what department
+he would choose to visit or when. He could appear at any moment in any part of
+the building--and his presence was as unobtrusive as an electric shock. The
+employees tried to obey the rule as best they could; but they preferred three
+hours of overtime to ten minutes of working under his silent observation.
+This morning, in his office, he went over the proofs of the Banner’s Sunday
+editorials. He slashed blue lines across the spreads he wished eliminated. He
+did not sign his initials; everybody knew that only Gail Wynand could make quite
+that kind of blue slashes, lines that seemed to rip the authors of the copy out
+of existence.
+He finished the proofs, then asked to be connected with the editor of the Wynand
+Herald, in Springville, Kansas. When he telephoned his provinces, Wynand’s name
+was never announced to the victim. He expected his voice to be known to every
+key citizen of his empire.
+"Good morning, Cummings," he said when the editor answered.
+"My God!" gasped the editor. "It isn’t..."
+"It is," said Wynand. "Listen, Cummings. One more piece of crap like yesterday’s
+yarn on the Last Rose of Summer and you can go back to the high school Bugle."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+Wynand hung up. He asked to be connected with an eminent Senator in Washington.
+"Good morning, Senator," he said when the gentleman came on the wire within two
+minutes. "It is so kind of you to answer this call. I appreciate it. I do not
+wish to impose on your time. But I felt I owed you an expression of my deepest
+gratitude. I called to thank you for your work in passing the Hayes-Langston
+Bill."
+"But...Mr. Wynand!" The Senator’s voice seemed to squirm. "It’s so nice of you,
+but...the Bill hasn’t been passed."
+"Oh, that’s right. My mistake. It will be passed tomorrow." A meeting of the
+board of directors of the Wynand Enterprises, Inc., had been scheduled for
+eleven-thirty that morning. The Wynand Enterprises consisted of twenty-two
+newspapers, seven magazines, three news services and two newsreels. Wynand owned
+seventy-five percent of the stock. The directors were not certain of their
+functions or purpose. Wynand had ordered meetings of the board always to start
+on time, whether he was present or not. Today he entered the board room at
+twelve twenty-five. A distinguished old gentleman was making a speech. The
+directors were not allowed to stop or notice Wynand’s presence. He walked to the
+empty chair at the head of the long mahogany table and sat down. No one turned
+to him; it was as if the chair had just been occupied by a ghost whose existence
+341
+
+they dared not admit. He listened silently for fifteen minutes. He got up in the
+middle of a sentence and left the room as he had entered.
+On a large table in his office he spread out maps of Stoneridge, his new
+real-estate venture, and spent half an hour discussing it with two of his
+agents. He had purchased a vast tract of land on Long Island, which was to be
+converted into the Stoneridge Development, a new community of small home owners,
+every curbstone, street and house to be built by Gail Wynand. The few people who
+knew of his real-estate activities had told him that he was crazy. It was a year
+when no one thought of building. But Gail Wynand had made his fortune on
+decisions which people called crazy.
+The architect to design Stoneridge had not been chosen. News of the project had
+seeped into the starved profession. For weeks Wynand had refused to read letters
+or answer calls from the best architects of the country and their friends. He
+refused once more when, at the end of his conference, his secretary informed him
+that Mr. Ralston Holcombe most urgently requested two minutes of his time on the
+telephone.
+When the agents were gone, Wynand pressed a button on his desk, summoning Alvah
+Scarret. Scarret entered the office, smiling happily. He always answered that
+buzzer with the flattered eagerness of an office boy.
+"Alvah, what in hell is the Gallant Gallstone?"
+Scarret laughed. "Oh, that? It’s the title of a novel. By Lois Cook."
+"What kind of a novel?"
+"Oh, just a lot of drivel. It’s supposed to be a sort of prose poem. It’s all
+about a gallstone that thinks that it’s an independent entity, a sort of a
+rugged individualist of the gall bladder, if you see what I mean, and then the
+man takes a big dose of castor oil--there’s a graphic description of the
+consequences--I’m not sure it’s correct medically, but anyway that’s the end of
+the Gallant Gallstone. It’s all supposed to prove that there’s no such thing as
+free will."
+"How many copies has it sold?"
+"I don’t know. Not very many, I think. Just among the intelligentsia. But I hear
+it’s picked up some, lately, and..."
+"Precisely. What’s going on around here, Alvah?"
+"What? Oh, you mean you noticed the few mentions which..."
+"I mean I’ve noticed it all over the Banner in the last few weeks. Very nicely
+done, too, if it took me that long to discover that it wasn’t accidental."
+"What do you mean?"
+"What do you think I mean? Why should that particular title appear continuously,
+in the most inappropriate places? One day it’s in a police story about the
+execution of some murderer who ’died bravely like the Gallant Gallstone.’ Two
+days later it’s on page sixteen, in a state yarn from Albany. ’Senator Hazleton
+thinks he’s an independent entity, but it might turn out that he’s only a
+Gallant Gallstone.’ Then it’s in the obituaries. Yesterday it was on the women’s
+page. Today, it’s in the comics. Snooxy calls his rich landlord a Gallant
+Gallstone."
+342
+
+Scarret chortled peacefully. "Yes, isn’t it silly?"
+"I thought it was silly. At first. Now I don’t."
+"But what the hell, Gail! It’s not as if it were a major issue and our by-liners
+plugged it. It’s just the small fry, the forty-dollar-a-week ones."
+"That’s the point. One of them. The other is that the book’s not a famous
+bestseller. If it were, I could understand the title popping into their heads
+automatically. But it isn’t. So someone’s doing the popping. Why?"
+"Oh, come, Gail! Why would anyone want to bother? And what do we care? If it
+were a political issue...But hell, who can get any gravy out of plugging for
+free will or against free will?"
+"Did anyone consult you about this plugging?"
+"No. I tell you, nobody’s behind it. It’s just spontaneous. Just a lot of people
+who thought it was a funny gag."
+"Who was the first one that you heard it from?"
+"I don’t know....Let me see....It was...yes, I think it was Ellsworth Toohey."
+"Have it stopped. Be sure to tell Mr. Toohey."
+"Okay, if you say so. But it’s really nothing. Just a lot of people amusing
+themselves."
+"I don’t like to have anyone amusing himself on my paper."
+"Yes, Gail."
+At two o’clock Wynand arrived, as guest of honor, at a luncheon given by a
+National Convention of Women’s Clubs. He sat at the right of the chairwoman in
+an echoing banquet hall filled with the odors of corsages--gardenias and sweet
+peas--and of fried chicken. After luncheon Wynand spoke. The Convention
+advocated careers for married women; the Wynand papers had fought against the
+employment of married women for many years. Wynand spoke for twenty minutes and
+said nothing at all; but he conveyed the impression that he supported every
+sentiment expressed at the meeting. Nobody had ever been able to explain the
+effect of Gail Wynand on an audience, particularly an audience of women. He did
+nothing spectacular; his voice was low, metallic, inclined to sound monotonous;
+he was too correct, in a manner that was almost deliberate satire on
+correctness. Yet he conquered all listeners. People said it was his subtle,
+enormous virility; it made the courteous voice speaking about school, home and
+family sound as if he were making love to every old hag present.
+Returning to his office, Wynand stopped in the city room. Standing at a tall
+desk, a big blue pencil in his hand, he wrote on a huge sheet of plain print
+stock, in letters an inch high, a brilliant, ruthless editorial denouncing all
+advocates of careers for women. The GW at the end stood like a streak of blue
+flame. He did not read the piece over--he never needed to--but threw it on the
+desk of the first editor in sight and walked out of the room. Late in the
+afternoon, when Wynand was ready to leave his office, his secretary announced
+that Ellsworth Toohey requested the privilege of seeing him. "Let him in," said
+Wynand.
+343
+
+Toohey entered, a cautious half-smile on his face, a smile mocking himself and
+his boss, but with a delicate sense of balance, sixty percent of the mockery
+directed at himself. He knew that Wynand did not want to see him, and being
+received was not in his favor.
+Wynand sat behind his desk, his face courteously blank. Two diagonal ridges
+stood out faintly on his forehead, parallel with his slanting eyebrows. It was a
+disconcerting peculiarity which his face assumed at times; it gave the effect of
+a double exposure, an ominous emphasis.
+"Sit down, Mr. Toohey. Of what service can I be to you?"
+"Oh, I’m much more presumptuous than that, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey gaily. "I
+didn’t come to ask for your services, but to offer you mine."
+"In what matter?"
+"Stoneridge."
+The diagonal lines stood out sharper on Wynand’s forehead.
+"Of what use can a newspaper columnist be to Stoneridge?"
+"A newspaper columnist--none, Mr. Wynand. But an architectural expert..." Toohey
+let his voice trail into a mocking question mark.
+If Toohey’s eyes had not been fixed insolently on Wynand’s, he would have been
+ordered out of the office at once. But the glance told Wynand that Toohey knew
+to what extent he had been plagued by people recommending architects and how
+hard he had tried to avoid them; and that Toohey had outwitted him by obtaining
+this interview for a purpose Wynand had not expected. The impertinence of it
+amused Wynand, as Toohey had known it would.
+"All right, Mr. Toohey. Whom are you selling?"
+"Peter Keating."
+"Well?"
+"I beg your pardon?"
+"Well, sell him to me."
+Toohey was stopped, then shrugged brightly and plunged in:
+"You understand, of course, that I’m not connected with Mr. Keating in any way.
+I’m acting only as his friend--and yours." The voice sounded pleasantly
+informal, but it had lost some of its certainty. "Honestly, I know it does sound
+trite, but what else can I say? It just happens to be the truth." Wynand would
+not help him out. "I presumed to come here because I felt it was my duty to give
+you my opinion. No, not a moral duty. Call it an esthetic one. I know that you
+demand the best in anything you do. For a project of the size you have in mind
+there’s not another architect living who can equal Peter Keating in efficiency,
+taste, originality, imagination. That, Mr. Wynand, is my sincere opinion."
+"I quite believe you."
+"You do?"
+344
+
+"Of course. But, Mr. Toohey, why should I consider your opinion?"
+"Well, after all, I am your architectural expert!" He could not keep the edge of
+anger out of his voice.
+"My dear, Mr. Toohey, don’t confuse me with my readers." After a moment, Toohey
+leaned back and spread his hands out in laughing helplessness.
+"Frankly, Mr. Wynand, I didn’t think my word would carry much weight with you.
+So I didn’t intend trying to sell you Peter Keating."
+"No? What did you intend?"
+"Only to ask that you give half an hour of your time to someone who can convince
+you of Peter Keating’s ability much better than I can."
+"Who is that?"
+"Mrs. Peter Keating."
+"Why should I wish to discuss this matter with Mrs. Peter Keating?"
+"Because she is an exceedingly beautiful woman and an extremely difficult one."
+Wynand threw his head back and laughed aloud.
+"Good God, Toohey, am I as obvious as that?"
+Toohey, blinked, unprepared.
+"Really, Mr. Toohey, I owe you an apology, if, by allowing my tastes to become
+so well known, I caused you to be so crude. But I had no idea that among your
+many other humanitarian activities you were also a pimp."
+Toohey rose to his feet.
+"Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Toohey. I have no desire whatever to meet Mrs.
+Peter Keating."
+"I didn’t think you would have, Mr. Wynand. Not on my unsupported suggestion. I
+foresaw that several hours ago. In fact, as early as this morning. So I took the
+liberty of preparing for myself another chance to discuss this with you. I took
+the liberty of sending you a present. When you get home tonight, you will find
+my gift there. Then, if you feel that I was justified in expecting you to do so,
+you can telephone me and I shall come over at once so that you will be able to
+tell me whether you wish to meet Mrs. Peter Keating or not."
+"Toohey, this is unbelievable, but I believe you’re offering me a bribe."
+"I am."
+"You know, that’s the sort of stunt you should be allowed to get away with
+completely--or lose your job for."
+"I shall rest upon your opinion of my present tonight."
+"All right, Mr. Toohey, I’ll look at your present."
+Toohey bowed and turned to go. He was at the door when Wynand added:
+345
+
+"You know, Toohey, one of these days you’ll bore me."
+"I shall endeavor not to do so until the right time," said Toohey, bowed again
+and went out.
+When Wynand returned to his home, he had forgotten all about Ellsworth Toohey.
+That evening, in his penthouse, Wynand had dinner with a woman who had a white
+face, soft brown hair and, behind her, three centuries of fathers and brothers
+who would have killed a man for a hint of the things which Gail Wynand had
+experienced with her.
+The line of her arm, when she raised a crystal goblet of water to her lips, was
+as perfect as the lines of the silver candelabra produced by a matchless
+talent--and Wynand observed it with the same appreciation. The candlelight
+flickering on the planes of her face made a sight of such beauty that he wished
+she were not alive, so that he could look, say nothing and think what he
+pleased.
+"In a month or two, Gail," she said, smiling lazily, "when it gets really cold
+and nasty, let’s take the I Do and sail somewhere straight into the sun, as we
+did last winter."
+I Do was the name of Wynand’s yacht. He had never explained that name to anyone.
+Many women had questioned him about it. This woman had questioned him before.
+Now, as he remained silent, she asked it again:
+"By the way, darling, what does it mean--the name of that wonderful mudscow of
+yours?"
+"It’s a question I don’t answer," he said. "One of them."
+"Well, shall I get my wardrobe ready for the cruise?"
+"Green is your best color. It looks well at sea. I love to watch what it does to
+your hair and your arms. I shall miss the sight of your naked arms against green
+silk. Because tonight is the last time."
+Her fingers lay still on the stem of the glass. Nothing had given her a hint
+that tonight was to be the last time. But she knew that these words were all he
+needed to end it. All of Wynand’s women had known that they were to expect an
+end like this and that it was not to be discussed. After a while, she asked, her
+voice low:
+"What reason, Gail?"
+"The obvious one."
+He reached into his pocket and took out a diamond bracelet; it flashed a cold,
+brilliant fire in the candlelight: its heavy links hung limply in his fingers.
+It had no case, no wrapper. He tossed it across the table.
+"A memorial, my dear," he said. "Much more valuable than that which it
+commemorates."
+The bracelet hit the goblet and made it ring, a thin, sharp cry, as if the glass
+had screamed for the woman. The woman made no sound. He knew that it was
+horrible, because she was the kind to whom one did not offer such gifts at such
+346
+
+moments, just as all those other women had been; and because she would not
+refuse, as all the others had not refused.
+"Thank you, Gail," she said, clasping the bracelet about her wrist, not looking
+at him across the candles.
+Later, when they had walked into the drawing room, she stopped and the glance
+between her long eyelashes moved toward the darkness where the stairway to his
+bedroom began. "To let me earn the memorial, Gail?" she asked, her voice flat.
+He shook his head.
+"I had really intended that," he said. "But I’m tired."
+When she had gone, he stood in the hall and thought that she suffered, that the
+suffering was real, but after a while none of it would be real to her, except
+the bracelet. He could no longer remember the time when such a thought had the
+power to give him bitterness. When he recalled that he, too, was concerned in
+the event of this evening, he felt nothing, except wonder why he had not done
+this long ago.
+He went to his library. He sat reading for a few hours. Then he stopped. He
+stopped short, without reason, in the middle of an important sentence. He had no
+desire to read on. He had no desire ever to make another effort.
+Nothing had happened to him--a happening is a positive reality, and no reality
+could ever make him helpless; this was some enormous negative--as if everything
+had been wiped out, leaving a senseless emptiness, faintly indecent because it
+seemed so ordinary, so unexciting, like murder wearing a homey smile.
+Nothing was gone--except desire; no, more than that--the root, the desire to
+desire. He thought that a man who loses his eyes still retains the concept of
+sight; but he had heard of a ghastlier blindness--if the brain centers
+controlling vision are destroyed, one loses even the memory of visual
+perception.
+He dropped the book and stood up. He had no wish to remain on that spot; he had
+no wish to move from it. He thought that he should go to sleep. It was much too
+early for him, but he could get up earlier tomorrow. He went to his bedroom, he
+took a shower, he put on his pyjamas. Then he opened a drawer of his dresser and
+saw the gun he always kept there. It was the immediate recognition, the sudden
+stab of interest, that made him pick it up.
+It was the lack of shock, when he thought he would kill himself, that convinced
+him he should. The thought seemed so simple, like an argument not worth
+contesting. Like a bromide.
+Now he stood at the glass wall, stopped by that very simplicity. One could make
+a bromide of one’s life, he thought; but not of one’s death.
+He walked to the bed and sat down, the gun hanging in his hand. A man about to
+die, he thought, is supposed to see his whole life in a last flash. I see
+nothing. But I could make myself see it. I could go over it again, by force. Let
+me find in it either the will to live on or the reason to end it now.
+#
+Gail Wynand, aged twelve, stood in the darkness under a broken piece of wall on
+the shore of the Hudson, one arm swung back, the fist closed, ready to strike,
+waiting.
+347
+
+The stones under his feet rose to the remnant of a corner; one side of it hid
+him from the street; there was nothing behind the other side but a sheer drop to
+the river. An unlighted, unpaved stretch of waterfront lay before him, sagging
+structures and empty spaces of sky, warehouses, a crooked cornice hanging
+somewhere over a window with a malignant light.
+In a moment he would have to fight--and he knew it would be for his life. He
+stood still. His closed fist, held down and back, seemed to clutch invisible
+wires that stretched to every key spot of his lanky, fleshless body, under the
+ragged pants and shirt, to the long, swollen tendon of his bare arm, to the taut
+cords of his neck. The wires seemed to quiver; the body was motionless. He was
+like a new sort of lethal instrument; if a finger were to touch any part of him,
+it would release the trigger.
+He knew that the leader of the boys’ gang was looking for him and that the
+leader would not come alone. Two of the boys he expected fought with knives; one
+had a killing to his credit. He waited for them, his own pockets empty. He was
+the youngest member of the gang and the last to join. The leader had said that
+he needed a lesson.
+It had started over the looting of the barges on the river, which the gang was
+planning. The leader had decided that the job would be done at night. The gang
+had agreed; all but Gail Wynand. Gail Wynand had explained, in a slow,
+contemptuous voice, that the Little Plug-Uglies, farther down the river, had
+tried the same stunt last week and had left six members in the hands of the
+cops, plus two in the cemetery; the job had to be done at daybreak, when no one
+would expect it. The gang hooted him. It made no difference. Gail Wynand was not
+good at taking orders. He recognized nothing but the accuracy of his own
+judgment. So the leader wished to settle the issue once and for all. The three
+boys walked so softly that the people behind the thin walls they passed could
+not hear their steps. Gail Wynand heard them a block away. He did not move in
+his corner; only his wrist stiffened a little.
+When the moment was right, he leaped. He leaped straight into space, without
+thought of landing, as if a catapult had sent him on a flight of miles. His
+chest struck the head of one enemy, his stomach another, his feet smashed into
+the chest of the third. The four of them went down. When the three lifted their
+faces, Gail Wynand was unrecognizable; they saw a whirl suspended in the air
+above them, and something darted at them out of the whirl with a scalding touch.
+He had nothing but his two fists; they had five fists and a knife on their side;
+it did not seem to count. They heard their blows landing with a thud as on hard
+rubber; they felt the break in the thrust of their knife, which told that it had
+been stopped and had cut its way out. But the thing they were fighting was
+invulnerable. He had no time to feel; he was too fast; pain could not catch up
+with him; he seemed to leave it hanging in the air over the spot where it had
+hit him and where he was no longer in the next second.
+He seemed to have a motor between his shoulder blades to propel his arms in two
+circles; only the circles were visible; the arms had vanished like the spokes of
+a speeding wheel. The circle landed each time, and stopped whatever it had
+landed upon, without a break in its spin. One boy saw his knife disappear in
+Wynand’s shoulder; he saw the jerk of the shoulder that sent the knife slicing
+down through Wynand’s side and flung it out at the belt. It was the last thing
+the boy saw. Something happened to his chin and he did not feel it when the back
+of his head struck against a pile of old bricks.
+For a long time the two others fought the centrifuge that was now spattering red
+348
+
+drops against the walls around them. But it was no use. They were not fighting a
+man. They were fighting a bodiless human will.
+When they gave up, groaning among the bricks, Gail Wynand said in a normal
+voice: "We’ll pull it off at daybreak," and walked away. From that moment on, he
+was the leader of the gang.
+The looting of the barges was done at daybreak, two days later, and came off
+with brilliant success.
+Gail Wynand lived with his father in the basement of an old house in the heart
+of Hell’s Kitchen. His father was a longshoreman, a tall, silent, illiterate man
+who had never gone to school. His own father and his grandfather were of the
+same kind, and they knew of nothing but poverty in their family. But somewhere
+far back in the line there had been a root of aristocracy, the glory of some
+noble ancestor and then some tragedy, long since forgotten, that had brought the
+descendants to the gutter. Something about all the Wynands--in tenement, saloon
+and jail--did not fit their surroundings. Gail’s father was known on the
+waterfront as the Duke.
+Gail’s mother had died of consumption when he was two years old. He was an only
+son. He knew vaguely that there had been some great drama in his father’s
+marriage; he had seen a picture of his mother; she did not look and she was not
+dressed like the women of their neighborhood; she was very beautiful. All life
+had gone out of his father when she died. He loved Gail; but it was the kind of
+devotion that did not require two sentences a week.
+Gail did not look like his mother or father. He was a throwback to something no
+one could quite figure out; the distance had to be reckoned, not in generations,
+but in centuries. He was always too tall for his age, and too thin. The boys
+called him Stretch Wynand. Nobody knew what he used for muscles; they knew only
+that he used it.
+He had worked at one job after another since early childhood. For a long while
+he sold newspapers on street corners. One day he walked up to the pressroom boss
+and stated that they should start a new service--delivering the paper to the
+reader’s door in the morning; he explained how and why it would boost
+circulation. "Yeah?" said the boss. "I know it will work," said Wynand. "Well,
+you don’t run things around here," said the boss. "You’re a fool," said Wynand.
+He lost the job.
+He worked in a grocery store. He ran errands, he swept the soggy wooden floor,
+he sorted out barrels of rotting vegetables, he helped to wait on customers,
+patiently weighing a pound of flour or filling a pitcher with milk from a huge
+can. It was like using a steamroller to press handkerchiefs. But he set his
+teeth and stuck to it. One day, he explained to the grocer what a good idea it
+would be to put milk up in bottles, like whisky. "You shut your trap and go wait
+on Mrs. Sullivan there," said the grocer, "don’t you tell me nothing I don’t
+know about my business. You don’t run things around here." He waited on Mrs.
+Sullivan and said nothing.
+He worked in a poolroom. He cleaned spittoons and washed up after drunks. He
+heard and saw things that gave him immunity from astonishment for the rest of
+his life. He made his greatest effort and learned to keep silent, to keep the
+place others described as his place, to accept ineptitude as his master--and to
+wait. No one had ever heard him speak of what he felt. He felt many emotions
+toward his fellow men, but respect was not one of them.
+He worked as bootblack on a ferryboat. He was shoved and ordered around by every
+349
+
+bloated horse trader, by every drunken deck hand aboard. If he spoke, he heard
+some thick voice answering: "You don’t run things around here." But he liked
+this job. When he had no customers, he stood at the rail and looked at
+Manhattan. He looked at the yellow boards of new houses, at the vacant lots, at
+the cranes and derricks, at the few towers rising in the distance. He thought of
+what should be built and what should be destroyed, of the space, the promise and
+what could be made of it. A hoarse shout--"Hey, boy!"--interrupted him. He went
+back to his bench and bent obediently over some muddy shoe. The customer saw
+only a small head of light brown hair and two thin, capable hands.
+On foggy evenings, under a gas lantern on a street corner, nobody noticed the
+slender figure leaning against a lamppost, the aristocrat of the Middle Ages,
+the timeless patrician whose every instinct cried that he should command, whose
+swift brain told him why he had the right to do so, the feudal baron created to
+rule--but born to sweep floors and take orders.
+He had taught himself to read and write at the age of five, by asking questions.
+He read everything he found. He could not tolerate the inexplicable. He had to
+understand anything known to anyone. The emblem of his childhood--the
+coat-of-arms he devised for himself in place of the one lost for him centuries
+ago--was the question mark. No one ever needed to explain anything to him twice.
+He learned his first mathematics from the engineers laying sewer pipes. He
+learned geography from the sailors on the waterfront. He learned civics from the
+politicians at a local club that was a gangsters’ hangout. He had never gone to
+church or to school. He was twelve when he walked into a church. He listened to
+a sermon on patience and humility. He never came back. He was thirteen when he
+decided to see what education was like and enrolled at a public school. His
+father said nothing about this decision, as he said nothing whenever Gail came
+home battered after a gang fight.
+During his first week at school the teacher called on Gail Wynand constantly--it
+was sheer pleasure to her, because he always knew the answers. When he trusted
+his superiors and their purpose, he obeyed like a Spartan, imposing on himself
+the kind of discipline he demanded of his own subjects in the gang. But the
+force of his will was wasted: within a week he saw that he needed no effort to
+be first in the class. After a month the teacher stopped noticing his presence;
+it seemed pointless, he always knew his lesson and she had to concentrate on the
+slower, duller children. He sat, unflinching, through hours that dragged like
+chains, while the teacher repeated and chewed and rechewed, sweating to force
+some spark of intellect from vacant eyes and mumbling voices. At the end of two
+months, reviewing the rudiments of history which she had tried to pound into her
+class, the teacher asked: "And how many original states were there in the
+Union?" No hands were raised. Then Gail Wynand’s arm went up. The teacher nodded
+to him. He rose. "Why," he asked, "should I swill everything down ten times? I
+know all that."
+"You are not the only one in the class," said the teacher. He uttered an
+expression that struck her white and made her blush fifteen minutes later, when
+she grasped it fully. He walked to the door. On the threshold he turned to add:
+"Oh yes. There were thirteen original states." That was the last of his formal
+education. There were people in Hell’s Kitchen who never ventured beyond its
+boundaries, and others who seldom stepped out of the tenement in which they were
+born. But Gail Wynand often went for a walk through the best streets of the
+city. He felt no bitterness against the world of wealth, no envy and no fear. He
+was simply curious and he felt at home on Fifth Avenue, just as anywhere else.
+He walked past the stately mansions, his hands in his pockets, his toes sticking
+out of flat-soled shoes. People glared at him, but it had no effect. He passed
+by and left behind him the feeling that he belonged on this street and they
+didn’t. He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand.
+350
+
+He wanted to know what made these people different from those in his
+neighborhood. It was not the clothes, the carriages or the banks that caught his
+notice; it was the books. People in his neighborhood had clothes, horse wagons
+and money; degrees were inessential; but they did not read books. He decided to
+learn what was read by the people on Fifth Avenue. One day, he saw a lady
+waiting in a carriage at the curb; he knew she was a lady--his judgment on such
+matters was more acute than the discrimination of the Social Register; she was
+reading a book. He leaped to the steps of the carriage, snatched the book and
+ran away. It would have taken swifter, slimmer men than the cops to catch him.
+It was a volume of Herbert Spencer. He went through a quiet agony trying to read
+it to the end. He read it to the end. He understood one quarter of what he had
+read. But this started him on a process which he pursued with a systematic,
+fist-clenched determination. Without advice, assistance or plan, he began
+reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he
+could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject. He
+branched out erratically in all directions; he read volumes of specialized
+erudition first, and high-school primers afterward. There was no order in his
+reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.
+He discovered the reading room of the Public Library and he went there for a
+while--to study the layout. Then, one day, at various times, a succession of
+young boys, painfully combed and unconvincingly washed, came to visit the
+reading room. They were thin when they came, but not when they left. That
+evening Gail Wynand had a small library of his own in the corner of his
+basement. His gang had executed his orders without protest. It was a scandalous
+assignment; no self-respecting gang had ever looted anything as pointless as
+books. But Stretch Wynand had given the orders--and one did not argue with
+Stretch Wynand. He was fifteen when he was found, one morning, in the gutter, a
+mass of bleeding pulp, both legs broken, beaten by some drunken longshoreman. He
+was unconscious when found. But he had been conscious that night, after the
+beating. He had been left alone in a dark alley. He had seen a light around the
+corner. Nobody knew how he could have managed to drag himself around that
+corner; but he had; they saw the long smear of blood on the pavement afterward.
+He had crawled, able to move nothing but his arms. He had knocked against the
+bottom of a door. It was a saloon, still open. The saloonkeeper came out. It was
+the only time in his life that Gail Wynand asked for help. The saloonkeeper
+looked at him with a flat, heavy glance, a glance that showed full consciousness
+of agony, of injustice--and a stolid, bovine indifference. The saloonkeeper went
+inside and slammed the door. He had no desire to get mixed up with gang fights.
+Years later, Gail Wynand, publisher of the New York Banner, still knew the names
+of the longshoreman and the saloonkeeper, and where to find them. He never did
+anything to the longshoreman. But he caused the saloonkeeper’s business to be
+ruined, his home and savings to be lost, and drove the man to suicide.
+Gail Wynand was sixteen when his father died. He was alone, jobless at the
+moment, with sixty-five cents in his pocket, an unpaid rent bill and a chaotic
+erudition. He decided that the time had come to decide what he would make of his
+life. He went, that night, to the roof of his tenement and looked at the lights
+of the city, the city where he did not run things. He let his eyes move slowly
+from the windows of the sagging hovels around him to the windows of the mansions
+in the distance. There were only lighted squares hanging in space, but he could
+tell from them the quality of the structures to which they belonged; the lights
+around him looked muddy, discouraged; those in the distance were clean and
+tight. He asked himself a single question: what was there that entered all those
+houses, the dim and the brilliant alike, what reached into every room, into
+every person? They all had bread. Could one rule men through the bread they
+351
+
+bought? They had shoes, they had coffee, they had...The course of his life was
+set.
+Next morning, he walked into the office of the editor of the Gazette, a
+fourth-rate newspaper in a rundown building, and asked for a job in the city
+room. The editor looked at his clothes and inquired, "Can you spell cat?"
+"Can you spell anthropomorphology?" asked Wynand. "We have no jobs here," said
+the editor. "I’ll hang around," said Wynand. "Use me when you want to. You don’t
+have to pay me. You’ll put me on salary when you’ll feel you’d better."
+He remained in the building, sitting on the stairs outside the city room. He sat
+there every day for a week. No one paid any attention to him. At night he slept
+in doorways. When most of his money was gone, he stole food, from counters or
+from garbage pails, before returning to his post on the stairs.
+One day a reporter felt sorry for him and, walking down the stairs, threw a
+nickel into Wynand’s lap, saying: "Go buy yourself a bowl of stew, kid." Wynand
+had a dime left in his pocket. He took the dime and threw it at the reporter,
+saying: "Go buy yourself a screw." The man swore and went on down. The nickel
+and the dime remained lying on the steps. Wynand would not touch them. The story
+was repeated in the city room. A pimply-faced clerk shrugged and took the two
+coins.
+At the end of the week, in a rush hour, a man from the city room called Wynand
+to run an errand. Other small chores followed. He obeyed with military
+precision. In ten days he was on salary. In six months he was a reporter. In two
+years he was an associate editor.
+Gail Wynand was twenty when he fell in love. He had known everything there was
+to know about sex since the age of thirteen. He had had many girls. He never
+spoke of love, created no romantic illusion and treated the whole matter as a
+simple animal transaction; but at this he was an expert--and women could tell
+it, just by looking at him. The girl with whom he fell in love had an exquisite
+beauty, a beauty to be worshipped, not desired. She was fragile and silent. Her
+face told of the lovely mysteries within her, left unexpressed.
+She became Gail Wynand’s mistress. He allowed himself the weakness of being
+happy. He would have married her at once, had she mentioned it. But they said
+little to each other. He felt that everything was understood between them.
+One evening he spoke. Sitting at her feet, his face raised to her, he allowed
+his soul to be heard. "My darling, anything you wish, anything I am, anything I
+can ever be...That’s what I want to offer you--not the things I’ll get for you,
+but the thing in me that will make me able to get them. That thing--a man can’t
+renounce it--but I want to renounce it--so that it will be yours--so that it
+will be in your service--only for you." The girl smiled and asked: "Do you think
+I’m prettier than Maggy Kelly?"
+He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. He never saw that girl
+again. Gail Wynand, who prided himself on never needing a lesson twice, did not
+fall in love again in the years that followed.
+He was twenty-one when his career on the Gazette was threatened, for the first
+and only time. Politics and corruption had never disturbed him; he knew all
+about it; his gang had been paid to help stage beatings at the polls on election
+days. But when Pat Mulligan, police captain of his precinct, was framed, Wynand
+could not take it; because Pat Mulligan was the only honest man he had ever met
+in his life.
+352
+
+The Gazette was controlled by the powers that had framed Mulligan. Wynand said
+nothing. He merely put in order in his mind such items of information he
+possessed as would blow the Gazette into hell. His job would be blown with it,
+but that did not matter. His decision contradicted every rule he had laid down
+for his career. But he did not think. It was one of the rare explosions that hit
+him at times, throwing him beyond caution, making of him a creature possessed by
+the single impulse to have his way, because the rightness of his way was so
+blindingly total. But he knew that the destruction of the Gazette would be only
+a first step. It was not enough to save Mulligan.
+For three years Wynand had kept one small clipping, an editorial on corruption,
+by the famous editor of a great newspaper. He had kept it, because it was the
+most beautiful tribute to integrity he had ever read. He took that clipping and
+went to see the great editor. He would tell him about Mulligan and together they
+would beat the machine.
+He walked far across town, to the building of the famous paper. He had to walk.
+It helped to control the fury within him. He was admitted into the office of the
+editor--he had a way of getting admitted into places against all rules. He saw a
+fat man at a desk, with thin slits of eyes set close together. He did not
+introduce himself, but laid the clipping down on the desk and asked: "Do you
+remember this?" The editor glanced at the clipping, then at Wynand. It was a
+glance Wynand had seen before: in the eyes of the saloonkeeper who had slammed
+the door. "How do you expect me to remember every piece of swill I write?" asked
+the editor.
+After a moment, Wynand said: "Thanks." It was the only time in his life that he
+felt gratitude to anyone. The gratitude was genuine--a payment for a lesson he
+would never need again. But even the editor knew there was something very wrong
+in that short "Thanks," and very frightening. He did not know that it had been
+an obituary on Gail Wynand.
+Wynand walked back to the Gazette, feeling no anger toward the editor or the
+political machine. He felt only a furious contempt for himself, for Pat
+Mulligan, for all integrity; he felt shame when he thought of those whose
+victims he and Mulligan had been willing to become. He did not think
+"victims"--he thought "suckers." He got back to the office and wrote a brilliant
+editorial blasting Captain Mulligan. "Why, I thought you kinda felt sorry for
+the poor bastard," said his editor, pleased. "I don’t feel sorry for anyone,"
+said Wynand.
+Grocers and deck hands had not appreciated Gail Wynand; politicians did. In his
+years on the paper he had learned how to get along with people. His face had
+assumed the expression it was to wear for the rest of his life: not quite a
+smile, but a motionless look of irony directed at the whole world. People could
+presume that his mockery was intended for the particular things they wished to
+mock. Besides, it was pleasant to deal with a man untroubled by passion or
+sanctity.
+He was twenty-three when a rival political gang, intent on winning a municipal
+election and needing a newspaper to plug a certain issue, bought the Gazette.
+They bought it in the name of Gail Wynand, who was to serve as a respectable
+front for the machine. Gail Wynand became editor-in-chief. He plugged the issue,
+he won the election for his bosses. Two years later, he smashed the gang, sent
+its leaders to the penitentiary, and remained as sole owner of the Gazette.
+His first act was to tear down the sign over the door of the building and to
+throw out the paper’s old masthead. The Gazette became the New York Banner. His
+353
+
+friends objected. "Publishers don’t change the name of a paper," they told him.
+"This one does," he said.
+The first campaign of the Banner was an appeal for money for a charitable cause.
+Displayed side by side, with an equal amount of space, the Banner ran two
+stories: one about a struggling young scientist, starving in a garret, working
+on a great invention; the other about a chambermaid, the sweetheart of an
+executed murderer, awaiting the birth of her illegitimate child. One story was
+illustrated with scientific diagrams; the other--with the picture of a
+loose-mouthed girl wearing a tragic expression and disarranged clothes. The
+Banner asked its readers to help both these unfortunates. It received nine
+dollars and forty-five cents for the young scientist; it received one thousand
+and seventy-seven dollars for the unwed mother. Gail Wynand called a meeting of
+his staff. He put down on the table the paper carrying both stories and the
+money collected for both funds. "Is there anyone here who doesn’t understand?"
+he asked. No one answered. He said: "Now you all know the kind of paper the
+Banner is to be."
+The publishers of his time took pride in stamping their individual personalities
+upon their newspapers. Gail Wynand delivered his paper, body and soul, to the
+mob. The Banner assumed the appearance of a circus poster in body, of a circus
+performance in soul. It accepted the same goal--to stun, to amuse and to collect
+admission. It bore the imprint, not of one, but of a million men. "Men differ in
+their virtues, if any," said Gail Wynand, explaining his policy, "but they are
+alike in their vices." He added, looking straight into the questioner’s eyes: "I
+am serving that which exists on this earth in greatest quantity. I am
+representing the majority--surely an act of virtue?"
+The public asked for crime, scandal and sentiment. Gail Wynand provided it. He
+gave people what they wanted, plus a justification for indulging the tastes of
+which they had been ashamed. The Banner presented murder, arson, rape,
+corruption--with an appropriate moral against each. There were three columns of
+details to one stick of moral. "If you make people perform a noble duty, it
+bores them," said Wynand. "If you make them indulge themselves, it shames them.
+But combine the two--and you’ve got them." He ran stories about fallen girls,
+society divorces, foundling asylums, red-light districts, charity hospitals.
+"Sex first," said Wynand. "Tears second. Make them itch and make them cry--and
+you’ve got them."
+The Banner led great, brave crusades--on issues that had no opposition. It
+exposed politicians--one step ahead of the Grand Jury; it attacked
+monopolies--in the name of the downtrodden; it mocked the rich and the
+successful--in the manner of those who could never be either. It overstressed
+the glamour of society--and presented society news with a subtle sneer. This
+gave the man on the street two satisfactions: that of entering illustrious
+drawing rooms and that of not wiping his feet on the threshold. The Banner was
+permitted to strain truth, taste and credibility, but not its readers’ brain
+power. Its enormous headlines, glaring pictures and oversimplified text hit the
+senses and entered men’s consciousness without any necessity for an intermediary
+process of reason, like food shot through the rectum, requiring no digestion.
+"News," Gail Wynand told his staff, "is that which will create the greatest
+excitement among the greatest number. The thing that will knock them silly. The
+sillier the better, provided there’s enough of them."
+One day he brought into the office a man he had picked off the street. It was an
+ordinary man, neither well-dressed nor shabby, neither tall nor short, neither
+dark nor quite blond; he had the kind of face one could not remember even while
+looking at it. He was frightening by being so totally undifferentiated; he
+354
+
+lacked even the positive distinction of a half-wit. Wynand took him through the
+building, introduced him to every member of the staff and let him go. Then
+Wynand called his staff together and told them: "When in doubt about your work,
+remember that man’s face. You’re writing for him."
+"But, Mr. Wynand," said a young editor, "one can’t remember his face."
+"That’s the point," said Wynand.
+When the name of Gail Wynand became a threat in the publishing world, a group of
+newspaper owners took him aside--at a city charity affair which all had to
+attend--and reproached him for what they called his debasement of the public
+taste. "It is not my function," said Wynand, "to help people preserve a
+self-respect they haven’t got. You give them what they profess to like in
+public. I give them what they really like. Honesty is the best policy,
+gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to believe."
+It was impossible for Wynand not to do a job well. Whatever his aim, his means
+were superlative. All the drive, the force, the will barred from the pages of
+his paper went into its making. An exceptional talent was burned prodigally to
+achieve perfection in the unexceptional. A new religious faith could have been
+founded on the energy of spirit which he spent upon collecting lurid stories and
+smearing them across sheets of paper.
+The Banner was always first with the news. When an earthquake occurred in South
+America and no communications came from the stricken area, Wynand chartered a
+liner, sent a crew down to the scene and had extras on the streets of New York
+days ahead of his competitors, extras with drawings that represented flames,
+chasms and crushed bodies. When an S.O.S. was received from a ship sinking in a
+storm off the Atlantic coast, Wynand himself sped to the scene with his crew,
+ahead of the Coast Guard; Wynand directed the rescue and brought back an
+exclusive story with photographs of himself climbing a ladder over raging waves,
+a baby in his arms. When a Canadian village was cut off from the world by an
+avalanche, it was the Banner that sent a balloon to drop food and Bibles to the
+inhabitants. When a coal-mining community was paralyzed by a strike, the Banner
+opened soup-kitchens and printed tragic stories on the perils confronting the
+miners’ pretty daughters under the pressure of poverty. When a kitten got
+trapped on the top of a pole, it was rescued by a Banner photographer.
+"When there’s no news, make it," was Wynand’s order. A lunatic escaped from a
+state institution for the insane. After days of terror for miles around--terror
+fed by the Banner’s dire predictions and its indignation at the inefficiency of
+the local police--he was captured by a reporter of the Banner. The lunatic
+recovered miraculously two weeks after his capture, was released, and sold to
+the Banner an expose of the ill-treatment he had suffered at the institution. It
+led to sweeping reforms. Afterward, some people said that the lunatic had worked
+on the Banner before his commitment. It could never be proved.
+A fire broke out in a sweatshop employing thirty young girls. Two of them
+perished in the disaster. Mary Watson, one of the survivors, gave the Banner an
+exclusive story about the exploitation they had suffered. It led to a crusade
+against sweatshops, headed by the best women of the city. The origin of the fire
+was never discovered. It was whispered that Mary Watson had once been Evelyn
+Drake who wrote for the Banner. It could not be proved.
+In the first years of the Banner’s existence Gail Wynand spent more nights on
+his office couch than in his bedroom. The effort he demanded of his employees
+was hard to perform; the effort he demanded of himself was hard to believe. He
+drove them like an army; he drove himself like a slave. He paid them well; he
+355
+
+got nothing but his rent and meals. He lived in a furnished room at the time
+when his best reporters lived in suites at expensive hotels. He spent money
+faster than it came in--and he spent it all on the Banner. The paper was like a
+luxurious mistress whose every need was satisfied without inquiry about the
+price.
+The Banner was first to get the newest typographical equipment. The Banner was
+last to get the best newspapermen--last, because it kept them. Wynand raided his
+competitors’ city rooms; nobody could meet the salaries he offered. His
+procedure evolved into a simple formula. When a newspaperman received an
+invitation to call on Wynand, he took it as an insult to his journalistic
+integrity, but he came to the appointment. He came, prepared to deliver a set of
+offensive conditions on which he would accept the job, if at all. Wynand began
+the interview by stating the salary he would pay. Then he added: "You might
+wish, of course, to discuss other conditions--" and seeing the swallowing
+movement in the man’s throat, concluded: "No? Fine. Report to me on Monday."
+When Wynand opened his second paper--in Philadelphia--the local publishers met
+him like European chieftains united against the invasion of Attila. The war that
+followed was as savage. Wynand laughed over it. No one could teach him anything
+about hiring thugs to highjack a paper’s delivery wagons and beat up news
+vendors. Two of his competitors perished in the battle. The Wynand Philadelphia
+Star survived.
+The rest was swift and simple like an epidemic. By the time he reached the age
+of thirty-five there were Wynand papers in all the key cities of the United
+States. By the time he was forty there were Wynand magazines, Wynand newsreels
+and most of the Wynand Enterprises, Inc.
+A great many activities, not publicized, helped to build his fortune. He had
+forgotten nothing of his childhood. He remembered the things he had thought,
+standing as a bootblack at the rail of a ferryboat--the chances offered by a
+growing city. He bought real estate where no one expected it to become valuable,
+he built against all advice--and he ran hundreds into thousands. He bought his
+way into a great many enterprises of all kinds. Sometimes they crashed, ruining
+everybody concerned, save Gail Wynand. He staged a crusade against a shady
+streetcar monopoly and caused it to lose its franchise; the franchise was
+granted to a shadier group, controlled by Gail Wynand. He exposed a vicious
+attempt to corner the beef market in the Middle West--and left the field clear
+for another gang, operating under his orders.
+He was helped by a great many people who discovered that young Wynand was a
+bright fellow, worth using. He exhibited a charming complaisance about being
+used. In each case, the people found that they had been used instead--like the
+men who bought the Gazette for Gail Wynand.
+Sometimes he lost money on his investments, coldly and with full intention.
+Through a series of untraceable steps he ruined many powerful men: the president
+of a bank, the head of an insurance company, the owner of a steamship line, and
+others. No one could discover his motives. The men were not his competitors and
+he gained nothing from their destruction.
+"Whatever that bastard Wynand is after," people said, "it’s not after money."
+Those who denounced him too persistently were run out of their professions: some
+in a few weeks, others many years later. There were occasions when he let
+insults pass unnoticed; there were occasions when he broke a man for an
+innocuous remark. One could never tell what he would avenge and what he would
+forgive.
+356
+
+One day he noticed the brilliant work of a young reporter on another paper and
+sent for him. The boy came, but the salary Wynand mentioned had no effect on
+him. "I can’t work for you, Mr. Wynand," he said with desperate earnestness,
+"because you...you have no ideals." Wynand’s thin lips smiled. "You can’t escape
+human depravity, kid," he said gently. "The boss you work for may have ideals,
+but he has to beg money and take orders from many contemptible people. I have no
+ideals--but I don’t beg. Take your choice. There’s no other." The boy went back
+to his paper. A year later he came to Wynand and asked if his offer were still
+open. Wynand said that it was. The boy had remained on the Banner ever since. He
+was the only one on the staff who loved Gail Wynand.
+Alvah Scarret, sole survivor of the original Gazette, had risen with Wynand. But
+one could not say that he loved Wynand--he merely clung to his boss with the
+automatic devotion of a rug under Wynand’s feet. Alvah Scarret had never hated
+anything, and so was incapable of love. He was shrewd, competent and
+unscrupulous in the innocent manner of one unable to grasp the conception of a
+scruple. He believed everything he wrote and everything written in the Banner.
+He could hold a belief for all of two weeks. He was invaluable to Wynand--as a
+barometer of public reaction.
+No one could say whether Gail Wynand had a private life. His hours away from the
+office had assumed the style of the Banner’s front page--but a style raised to a
+grand plane, as if he were still playing circus, only to a gallery of kings. He
+bought out the entire house for a great opera performance--and sat alone in the
+empty auditorium with his current mistress. He discovered a beautiful play by an
+unknown playwright and paid him a huge sum to have the play performed once and
+never again; Wynand was the sole spectator at the single performance; the script
+was burned next morning. When a distinguished society woman asked him to
+contribute to a worthy charity cause, Wynand handed her a signed blank
+check--and laughed, confessing that the amount she dared to fill in was less
+than he would have given otherwise. He bought some kind of Balkan throne for a
+penniless pretender whom he met in a speakeasy and never bothered to see
+afterward; he often referred to "my valet, my chauffeur and my king."
+At night, dressed in a shabby suit bought for nine dollars, Wynand would often
+ride the subways and wander through the dives of slum districts, listening to
+his public. Once, in a basement beer joint, he heard a truck driver denouncing
+Gail Wynand as the worst exponent of capitalistic evils, in a language of
+colorful accuracy. Wynand agreed with him and helped him out with a few
+expressions of his own, from his Hell’s Kitchen vocabulary. Then Wynand picked
+up a copy of the Banner left by someone on a table, tore his own photograph from
+page 3, clipped it to a hundred-dollar bill, handed it to the truck driver and
+walked out before anyone could utter a word.
+The succession of his mistresses was so rapid that it ceased to be gossip. It
+was said that he never enjoyed a woman unless he had bought her--and that she
+had to be the kind who could not be bought.
+He kept the details of his life secret by making it glaringly public as a whole.
+He had delivered himself to the crowd; he was anyone’s property, like a monument
+in a park, like a bus stop sign, like the pages of the Banner. His photographs
+appeared in his papers more often than pictures of movie stars. He had been
+photographed in all kinds of clothes, on every imaginable occasion. He had never
+been photographed naked, but his readers felt as if he had. He derived no
+pleasure from personal publicity; it was merely a matter of policy to which he
+submitted. Every corner of his penthouse had been reproduced in his papers and
+magazines. "Every bastard in the country knows the inside of my icebox and
+bathtub," he said.
+357
+
+One phase of his life, however, was little known and never mentioned. The top
+floor of the building under his penthouse was his private art gallery. It was
+locked. He had never admitted anyone, except the caretaker. A few people knew
+about it. Once a French ambassador asked him for permission to visit it. Wynand
+refused. Occasionally, not often, he would descend to his gallery and remain
+there for hours. The things he collected were chosen by standards of his own. He
+had famous masterpieces; he had canvases by unknown artists; he rejected the
+works of immortal names for which he did not care. The estimates set by
+collectors and the matter of great signatures were of no concern to him. The art
+dealers whom he patronized reported that his judgment was that of a master.
+One night his valet saw Wynand returning from the art gallery below and was
+shocked by the expression of his face; it was a look of suffering, yet the face
+seemed ten years younger. "Are you ill, sir?" he asked. Wynand looked at him
+indifferently and said: "Go to bed."
+"We could make a swell spread for the Sunday scandal sheet out of your art
+gallery," said Alvah Scarret wistfully. "No," said Wynand. "But why, Gail?"
+"Look, Alvah. Every man on earth has a soul of his own that nobody can stare at.
+Even the convicts in a penitentiary and the freaks in a side show. Everybody but
+me. My soul is spread in your Sunday scandal sheet--in three-color process. So I
+must have a substitute--even if it’s only a locked room and a few objects not to
+be pawed."
+It was a long process and there had been premonitory signs, but Scarret did not
+notice a certain new trait in Gail Wynand’s character until Wynand was
+forty-five. Then it became apparent to many. Wynand lost interest in breaking
+industrialists and financiers. He found a new kind of victim. People could not
+tell whether it was a sport, a mania or a systematic pursuit. They thought it
+was horrible, because it seemed so vicious and pointless.
+It began with the case of Dwight Carson. Dwight Carson was a talented young
+writer who had achieved the spotless reputation of a man passionately devoted to
+his convictions. He upheld the cause of the individual against the masses. He
+wrote for magazines of great prestige and small circulation, which were no
+threat to Wynand. Wynand bought Dwight Carson. He forced Carson to write a
+column in the Banner, dedicated to preaching the superiority of the masses over
+the man of genius. It was a bad column, dull and unconvincing; it made many
+people angry. It was a waste of space and of a big salary. Wynand insisted on
+continuing it.
+Even Alvah Scarret was shocked by Carson’s apostasy. "Anybody else, Gail," he
+said, "but, honest, I didn’t expect it of Carson." Wynand laughed; he laughed
+too long, as if he could not stop it; his laughter had an edge of hysteria.
+Scarret frowned; he did not like the sight of Wynand being unable to control an
+emotion; it contradicted everything he knew of Wynand; it gave Scarret a funny
+feeling of apprehension, like the sight of a tiny crack in a solid wall; the
+crack could not possibly endanger the wall--except that it had no business being
+there.
+A few months later Wynand bought a young writer from a radical magazine, a man
+known for his honesty, and put him to work on a series of articles glorifying
+exceptional men and damning the masses. That, too, made a great many of his
+readers angry. He continued it. He seemed not to care any longer about the
+delicate signs of effect on circulation.
+He hired a sensitive poet to cover baseball games. He hired an art expert to
+358
+
+handle financial news. He got a socialist to defend factory owners and a
+conservative to champion labor. He forced an atheist to write on the glories of
+religion. He made a disciplined scientist proclaim the superiority of mystical
+intuition over the scientific method. He gave a great symphony conductor a
+munificent yearly income, for no work at all, on the sole condition that he
+never conduct an orchestra again.
+Some of these men had refused, at first. But they surrendered when they found
+themselves on the edge of bankruptcy through a series of untraceable
+circumstances within a few years. Some of the men were famous, others obscure.
+Wynand showed no interest in the previous standing of his prey. He showed no
+interest in men of glittering success who had commercialized their careers and
+held no particular beliefs of any kind. His victims had a single attribute in
+common: their immaculate integrity.
+Once they were broken, Wynand continued to pay them scrupulously. But he felt no
+further concern for them and no desire to see them again. Dwight Carson became a
+dipsomaniac. Two men became drug addicts. One committed suicide. This last was
+too much for Scarret. "Isn’t it going too far, Gail?" he asked. "That was
+practically murder."
+"Not at all," said Wynand, "I was merely an outside circumstance. The cause was
+in him. If lightning strikes a rotten tree and it collapses, it’s not the fault
+of the lightning."
+"But what do you call a healthy tree?"
+"They don’t exist, Alvah," said Wynand cheerfully, "they don’t exist."
+Alvah Scarret never asked Wynand for an explanation of this new pursuit. By some
+dim instinct Scarret guessed a little of the reason behind it. Scarret shrugged
+and laughed, telling people that it was nothing to worry about, it was just "a
+safety valve." Only two men understood Gail Wynand: Alvah Scarret--partially;
+Ellsworth Toohey--completely.
+Ellsworth Toohey--who wished, above all, to avoid a quarrel with Wynand at that
+time--could not refrain from a feeling of resentment, because Wynand had not
+chosen him as a victim. He almost wished Wynand would try to corrupt him, no
+matter what the consequences. But Wynand seldom noticed his existence.
+Wynand had never been afraid of death. Through the years the thought of suicide
+had occurred to him, not as an intention, but as one of the many possibilities
+among the chances of life. He examined it indifferently, with polite curiosity,
+as he examined any possibility--and then forgot it. He had known moments of
+blank exhaustion when his will deserted him. He had always cured himself by a
+few hours in his art gallery.
+Thus he reached the age of fifty-one, and a day when nothing of consequence
+happened to him, yet the evening found him without desire to take a step
+farther.
+#
+Gail Wynand sat on the edge of the bed, slumped forward, his elbows on his
+knees, the gun on the palm of his hand.
+Yes, he told himself, there’s an answer there somewhere. But I don’t want to
+know it. I don’t want to know it.
+And because he felt a pang of dread at the root of this desire not to examine
+359
+
+his life further, he knew that he would not die tonight. As long as he still
+feared something, he had a foothold on living; even if it meant only moving
+forward to an unknown disaster. The thought of death gave him nothing. The
+thought of living gave him a slender alms--the hint of fear.
+He moved his hand, weighing the gun. He smiled, a faint smile of derision. No,
+he thought, that’s not for you. Not yet. You still have the sense of not wanting
+to die senselessly. You were stopped by that. Even that is a remnant--of
+something.
+He tossed the gun aside on the bed, knowing that the moment was past and the
+thing was of no danger to him any longer. He got up. He felt no elation; he felt
+tired; but he was back in his normal course. There were no problems, except to
+finish this day quickly and go to sleep. He went down to his study to get a
+drink. When he switched on the light in the study, he saw Toohey’s present. It
+was a huge, vertical crate, standing by his desk. He had seen it earlier in the
+evening. He had thought "What the hell," and forgotten all about it.
+He poured himself a drink and stood sipping it slowly. The crate was too large
+to escape his field of vision, and as he drank he tried to guess what it could
+possibly contain. It was too tall and slender for a piece of furniture. He could
+not imagine what material property Toohey could wish to send him; he had
+expected something less tangible--a small envelope containing a hint at some
+sort of blackmail; so many people had tried to blackmail him so unsuccessfully;
+he did think Toohey would have more sense than that.
+By the time he finished his drink, he had found no plausible explanation for the
+crate. It annoyed him, like a stubborn crossword puzzle. He had a kit of tools
+somewhere in a drawer of his desk. He found it and broke the crate open.
+It was Steven Mallory’s statue of Dominique Francon. Gail Wynand walked to his
+desk and put down the pliers he held as if they were of fragile crystal. Then he
+turned and looked at the statue again. He stood looking at it for an hour. Then
+he went to the telephone and dialed Toohey’s number. "Hello?" said Toohey’s
+voice, its hoarse impatience confessing that he had been awakened out of sound
+sleep. "All right. Come over," said Wynand and hung up. Toohey arrived half an
+hour later. It was his first visit to Wynand’s home. Wynand himself answered the
+doorbell, still dressed in his pyjamas. He said nothing and walked into the
+study, Toohey following.
+The naked marble body, its head thrown back in exaltation, made the room look
+like a place that did not exist any longer: like the Stoddard Temple. Wynand’s
+eyes rested on Toohey expectantly, a heavy glance of suppressed anger.
+"You want, of course, to know the name of the model?" Toohey asked, with just a
+hint of triumph in his voice.
+"Hell, no," said Wynand. "I want to know the name of the sculptor."
+He wondered why Toohey did not like the question; there was something more than
+disappointment in Toohey’s face.
+"The sculptor?" said Toohey. "Wait...let me see...I think I did know it....It’s
+Steven...or Stanley...Stanley something or other....Honestly, I don’t remember."
+"If you knew enough to buy this, you knew enough to ask the name and never
+forget it."
+"I’ll look it up, Mr. Wynand."
+360
+
+"Where did you get this?"
+"In some art shop, you know, one of those places on Second Avenue."
+"How did it get there?"
+"I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I bought it because I knew the model."
+"You’re lying about that. If that were all you saw in it, you wouldn’t have
+taken the chance you took. You know that I’ve never let anyone see my gallery.
+Did you think I’d allow you the presumption of contributing to it? Nobody has
+ever dared offer me a gift of that kind. You wouldn’t have risked it, unless you
+were sure, terribly sure, of how great a work of art this is. Sure that I’d have
+to accept it. That you’d beat me. And you have."
+"I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Wynand."
+"If you wish to enjoy that, I’ll tell you also that I hate seeing this come from
+you. I hate your having been able to appreciate it. It doesn’t fit you. Though I
+was obviously wrong about you: you’re a greater art expert than I thought you
+were."
+"Such as it is, I’ll have to accept this as a compliment and thank you, Mr.
+Wynand."
+"Now what was it you wanted? You intended me to understand that you won’t let me
+have this unless I grant an interview to Mrs. Peter Keating?"
+"Why, no, Mr. Wynand. I’ve made you a present of it. I intended you only to
+understand that this is Mrs. Peter Keating."
+Wynand looked at the statue, then back at Toohey.
+"Oh you damn fool!" said Wynand softly.
+Toohey stared at him, bewildered.
+"So you really did use this as a red lamp in a window?" Wynand seemed relieved;
+he did not find it necessary to hold Toohey’s glance now. "That’s better,
+Toohey. You’re not as smart as I thought for a moment."
+"But, Mr. Wynand, what...?"
+"Didn’t you realize that this statue would be the surest way to kill any
+possible appetite I might have for your Mrs. Keating?"
+"You haven’t seen her, Mr. Wynand."
+"Oh, she’s probably beautiful. She might be more beautiful than this. But she
+can’t have what that sculptor has given her. And to see that same face, but
+without any meaning, like a dead caricature--don’t you think one would hate the
+woman for that?"
+"You haven’t seen her."
+"Oh, all right, I’ll see her. I told you you should be allowed to get away with
+your stunt completely or not at all. I didn’t promise you to lay her, did I?
+Only to see her."
+361
+
+"That is all I wanted, Mr. Wynand."
+"Have her telephone my office and make an appointment."
+"Thank you, Mr. Wynand."
+"Besides, you’re lying about not knowing the name of that sculptor. But it’s too
+much bother to make you tell me. She’ll tell me."
+"I’m sure she’ll tell you. Though why should I lie?"
+"God knows. By the way, if it had been a lesser sculptor, you’d have lost your
+job over this."
+"But, after all, Mr. Wynand, I have a contract."
+"Oh, save that for your labor unions, Elsie! And now I think you should wish me
+a good night and get out of here."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand. I wish you a good night."
+Wynand accompanied him to the hall. At the door Wynand said:
+"You’re a poor businessman, Toohey. I don’t know why you’re so anxious to have
+me meet Mrs. Keating. I don’t know what your racket is in trying to get a
+commission for that Keating of yours. But whatever it is, it can’t be so
+valuable that you should have been willing to part with a thing like this in
+exchange."
+
+2.
+"WHY didn’t you wear your emerald bracelet?" asked Peter Keating. "Gordon
+Prescott’s so-called fiancee had everybody gaping at her star sapphire."
+"I’m sorry, Peter. I shall wear it next time," said Dominique.
+"It was a nice party. Did you have a good time?"
+"I always have a good time."
+"So did I...Only...Oh God, do you want to know the truth?"
+"No."
+"Dominique, I was bored to death. Vincent Knowlton is a pain in the neck. He’s
+such a damn snob. I can’t stand him." He added cautiously: "I didn’t show it,
+did I?"
+"No. You behaved very well. You laughed at all his jokes--even when no one else
+did."
+"Oh, you noticed that? It always works."
+"Yes, I noticed that."
+362
+
+"You think I shouldn’t, don’t you?"
+"I haven’t said that."
+"You think it’s...low, don’t you?"
+"I don’t think anything is low."
+He slumped farther in his armchair; it made his chin press uncomfortably against
+his chest; but he did not care to move again. A fire crackled in the fireplace
+of his living room. He had turned out all the lights, save one lamp with a
+yellow silk shade; but it created no air of intimate relaxation, it only made
+the place look deserted, like a vacant apartment with the utilities shut off.
+Dominique sat at the other end of the room, her thin body fitted obediently to
+the contours of a straight-backed chair; she did not look stiff, only too poised
+for comfort. They were alone, but she sat like a lady at a public function; like
+a lovely dress dummy in a public show window--a window facing a busy
+intersection. They had come home from a tea party at the house of Vincent
+Knowlton, a prominent young society man, Keating’s new friend. They had had a
+quiet dinner together, and now their evening was free. There were no other
+social engagements till tomorrow.
+"You shouldn’t have laughed at theosophy when you spoke to Mrs. Marsh," he said.
+"She believes in it."
+"I’m sorry. I shall be more careful."
+He waited to have her open a subject of conversation. She said nothing. He
+thought suddenly that she had never spoken to him first--in the twenty months of
+their marriage. He told himself that that was ridiculous and impossible; he
+tried to recall an occasion when she had addressed him. Of course she had; he
+remembered her asking him: ’"What time will you get back tonight?" and "Do you
+wish to include the Dixons for Tuesday’s dinner?" and many things like that.
+He glanced at her. She did not look bored or anxious to ignore him. She sat
+there, alert and ready, as if his company held her full interest; she did not
+reach for a book, she did not stare at some distant thought of her own. She
+looked straight at him, not past him, as if she were waiting for a conversation.
+He realized that she had always looked straight at him, like this; and now he
+wondered whether he liked it. Yes, he did, it allowed him no cause to be
+jealous, not even of her hidden thoughts. No, he didn’t, not quite, it allowed
+no escape, for either one of them.
+"I’ve just finished The Gallant Gallstone," he said. "It’s a swell book. It’s
+the product of a scintillating brain, a Puck with tears streaming down his face,
+a golden-hearted clown holding for a moment the throne of God."
+"I read the same book review. In the Sunday Banner."
+"I read the book itself. You know I did."
+"That was nice of you."
+"Huh?" He heard approval and it pleased him.
+"It was considerate toward the author. I’m sure she likes to have people read
+her book. So it was kind to take the time--when you knew in advance what you’d
+think of it."
+363
+
+"I didn’t know. But I happened to agree with the reviewer."
+"The Banner has the best reviewers."
+"That’s true. Of course. So there’s nothing wrong in agreeing with them, is
+there?"
+"Nothing whatever. I always agree."
+"With whom?"
+"With everybody."
+"Are you making fun of me, Dominique?"
+"Have you given me reason to?"
+"No. I don’t see how. No, of course I haven’t."
+"Then I’m not."
+He waited. He heard a truck rumbling past, in the street below, and that filled
+a few seconds; "but when the sound died, he had to speak again:
+"Dominique, I’d like to know what you think."
+"Of what?"
+"Of...of..." He searched for an important subject and ended with: "...of Vincent
+Knowlton."
+"I think he’s a man worth kissing the backside of."
+"For Christ’s sake, Dominique!"
+"I’m sorry. That’s bad English and bad manners. It’s wrong, of course. Well,
+let’s see: Vincent Knowlton is a man whom it’s pleasant to know. Old families
+deserve a great deal of consideration, and we must have tolerance for the
+opinions of others, because tolerance is the greatest virtue, therefore it would
+be unfair to force your views on Vincent Knowlton, and if you just let him
+believe what he pleases, he will be glad to help you too, because he’s a very
+human person."
+"Now, that’s sensible," said Keating; he felt at home in recognizable language.
+"I think tolerance is very important, because..." He stopped. He finished, in an
+empty voice: "You said exactly the same thing as before."
+"Did you notice that," she said. She said it without question mark,
+indifferently, as a simple fact. It was not sarcasm; he wished it were; sarcasm
+would have granted him a personal recognition--the desire to hurt him. But her
+voice had never carried any personal relation to him--not for twenty months.
+He stared into the fire. That was what made a man happy--to sit looking dreamily
+into a fire, at his own hearth, in his own home; that’s what he had always heard
+and read. He stared at the flames, unblinking, to force himself into a complete
+obedience to an established truth. Just one more minute of it and I will feel
+happy, he thought, concentrating. Nothing happened.
+He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make
+364
+
+them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn’t he convince himself? He
+had everything he’d ever wanted. He had wanted superiority--and for the last
+year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted
+fame--and he had five thick albums of clippings. He had wanted wealth--and he
+had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He had everything anyone
+ever wanted. How many people struggled and suffered to achieve what he had
+achieved? How many dreamed and bled and died for this, without reaching it?
+"Peter Keating is the luckiest fellow on earth." How often had he heard that?
+This last year had been the best of his life. He had added the impossible to his
+possessions--Dominique Francon. It had been such a joy to laugh casually when
+friends repeated to him: "Peter, how did you ever do it?" It had been such a
+pleasure to introduce her to strangers, to say lightly: "My wife," and to watch
+the stupid, uncontrolled look of envy in their eyes. Once at a large party an
+elegant drunk had asked him, with a wink declaring unmistakable intentions:
+"Say, do you know that gorgeous creature over there?"
+"Slightly," Keating had answered, gratified, "she’s my wife."
+He often told himself gratefully that their marriage had turned out much better
+than he had expected. Dominique had become an ideal wife. She devoted herself
+completely to his interests: pleasing his clients, entertaining his friends,
+running his home. She changed nothing in his existence: not his hours, not his
+favorite menus, not even the arrangement of his furniture. She had brought
+nothing with her, except her clothes; she had not added a single book or ash
+tray to his house. When he expressed his views on any subject, she did not
+argue--she agreed with him. Graciously, as a matter of natural course, she took
+second place, vanishing in his background.
+He had expected a torrent that would lift him and smash him against some unknown
+rocks. He had not found even a brook joining his peaceful river. It was more as
+if the river went on and someone came to swim quietly in his wake; no, not even
+to swim--that was a cutting, forceful action--but just to float behind him with
+the current. Had he been offered the power to determine Dominique’s attitude
+after their marriage, he would have asked that she behave exactly as she did.
+Only their nights left him miserably unsatisfied. She submitted whenever he
+wanted her. But it was always as on their first night: an indifferent body in
+his arms, without revulsion, without answer. As far as he was concerned, she was
+still a virgin: he had never made her experience anything. Each time, burning
+with humiliation, he decided never to touch her again. But his desire returned,
+aroused by the constant presence of her beauty. He surrendered to it, when he
+could resist no longer; not often.
+It was his mother who stated the thing he had not admitted to himself about his
+marriage. "I can’t stand it," his mother said, six months after the wedding. "If
+she’d just get angry at me once, call me names, throw things at me, it would be
+all right. But I can’t stand this."
+"What, Mother?" he asked, feeling a cold hint of panic. "It’s no use, Peter,"
+she answered. His mother, whose arguments, opinions, reproaches he had never
+been able to stop, would not say another word about his marriage. She took a
+small apartment of her own and moved out of his house. She came to visit him
+often and she was always polite to Dominique, with a strange, beaten air of
+resignation. He told himself that he should be glad to be free of his mother;
+but he was not glad. Yet he could not grasp what Dominique had done to inspire
+that mounting dread within him. He could find no word or gesture for which to
+reproach her. But for twenty months it had been like tonight: he could not bear
+to remain alone with her--yet he did not want to escape her and she did not want
+365
+
+to avoid him.
+"Nobody’s coming tonight?" he asked tonelessly, turning away from the fire.
+"No," she said, and smiled, the smile serving as connection to her next words:
+"Shall I leave you alone, Peter?"
+"No!" It was almost a cry. I must not sound so desperate, he thought, while he
+was saying aloud: "Of course not. I’m glad to have an evening with my wife all
+to myself."
+He felt a dim instinct telling him that he must solve this problem, must learn
+to make their moments together endurable, that he dare not run from it, for his
+own sake more than hers.
+"What would you like to do tonight, Dominique?"
+"Anything you wish."
+"Want to go to a movie?"
+"Do you?"
+"Oh, I don’t know. It kills time."
+"All right. Let’s kill time.’"
+"No. Why should we? That sounds awful."
+"Does it?"
+"Why should we run from our own home? Let’s stay here."
+"Yes, Peter."
+He waited. But the silence, he thought, is a flight too, a worse kind of flight.
+"Want to play a hand of Russian Bank?" he asked.
+"Do you like Russian Bank?"
+"Oh, it kills ti--" He stopped. She smiled.
+"Dominique," he said, looking at her, "you’re so beautiful. You’re always
+so...so utterly beautiful. I always want to tell you how I feel about it."
+"I’d like to hear how you feel about it. Peter."
+"I love to look at you. I always think of what Gordon Prescott said. He said
+that you are God’s perfect exercise in structural mathematics. And Vincent
+Knowlton said you’re a spring morning. And Ellsworth--Ellsworth said you’re a
+reproach to every other female shape on earth."
+"And Ralston Holcombe?" she asked.
+"Oh, never mind!" he snapped, and turned back to the fire.
+I know why I can’t stand the silence, he thought. It’s because it makes no
+difference to her at all whether I speak or not; as if I didn’t exist and never
+366
+
+had existed...the thing more inconceivable than one’s death--never to have been
+born....He felt a sudden, desperate desire which he could identify--a desire to
+be real to her.
+"Dominique, do you know what I’ve been thinking?" he asked eagerly.
+"No. What have you been thinking?"
+"I’ve thought of it for some time--all by myself--I haven’t mentioned it to
+anyone. And nobody suggested it. It’s my own idea."
+"Why, that’s fine. What is it?"
+"I think I’d like to move to the country and build a house of our own. Would you
+like that?"
+"I’d like it very much. Just as you would. You want to design a home for
+yourself?"
+"Hell, no. Bennett will dash one off for me. He does all our country homes. He’s
+a whiz at it."
+"Will you like commuting?"
+"No, I think that will be quite an awful nuisance. But you know, everybody
+that’s anybody commutes nowadays. I always feel like a damn proletarian when I
+have to admit that I live in the city."
+"Will you like to see trees and a garden and the earth around you?"
+"Oh, that’s a lot of nonsense. When will I have the time? A tree’s a tree. When
+you’ve seen a newsreel of the woods in spring, you’ve seen it all."
+"Will you like to do some gardening? People say it’s very nice, working the soil
+yourself."
+"Good God, no! What kind of grounds do you think we’d have? We can afford a
+gardener, and a good one--so the place will be something for the neighbors to
+admire."
+"Will you like to take up some sport?"
+"Yes, I’ll like that."
+"Which one?"
+"I think I’ll do better with my golf. You know, belonging to a country club
+right where you’re one of the leading citizens in the community is different
+from occasional week ends. And the people you meet are different. Much higher
+class. And the contacts you make..." He caught himself, and added angrily:
+"Also, I’ll take up horseback riding."
+"I like horseback riding. Do you?"
+"I’ve never had much time for it. Well, it does shake your insides unmercifully.
+But who the hell is Gordon Prescott to think he’s the only he-man on earth and
+plaster his photo in riding clothes right in his reception room?"
+"I suppose you will want to find some privacy?"
+367
+
+"Well, I don’t believe in that desert-island stuff. I think the house should
+stand in sight of a major highway, so people would point out, you know, the
+Keating estate. Who the hell is Claude Stengel to have a country home while I
+live in a rented flat? He started out about the same time I did, and look where
+he is and where I am, why, he’s lucky if two and a half men ever heard of him,
+so why should he park himself in Westchester and..."
+And he stopped. She sat looking at him, her face serene.
+"Oh God damn it!" he cried. "If you don’t want to move to the country, why don’t
+you just say so?"
+"I want very much to do anything you want, Peter. To follow any idea you get all
+by yourself."
+He remained silent for a long time.
+"What do we do tomorrow night?" he asked, before he could stop himself.
+She rose, walked to a desk and picked up her calendar.
+"We have the Palmers for dinner tomorrow night," she said.
+"Oh, Christ!" he moaned. "They’re such awful bores! Why do we have to have
+them?"
+She stood holding the calendar forward between the tips of her fingers, as if
+she were a photograph with the focus on the calendar and her own figure blurred
+in its background.
+"We have to have the Palmers," she said, "so that we can get the commission for
+their new store building. We have to get that commission so that we can
+entertain the Eddingtons for dinner on Saturday. The Eddingtons have no
+commissions to give, but they’re in the Social Register. The Palmers bore you
+and the Eddingtons snub you. But you have to flatter people whom you despise in
+order to impress other people who despise you."
+"Why do you have to say things like that?"
+"Would you like to look at this calendar, Peter?"
+"Well, that’s what everybody does. That’s what everybody lives for."
+"Yes, Peter. Almost everybody."
+"If you don’t approve, why don’t you say so?"
+"Have I said anything about not approving?"
+He thought back carefully. "No," he admitted. "No, you haven’t....But it’s the
+way you put things."
+"Would you rather I put it in a more involved way--as I did about Vincent
+Knowlton?"
+"I’d rather..." Then he cried: "I’d rather you’d express an opinion, God damn
+it, just once!"
+368
+
+She asked, in the same level monotone: "Whose opinion, Peter? Gordon Prescott’s?
+Ralston Holcombe’s? Ellsworth Toohey’s?"
+He turned to her, leaning on the arm of his chair, half rising, suddenly tense.
+The thing between them was beginning to take shape. He had a first hint of words
+that would name it.
+"Dominique," he said softly, reasonably, "that’s it. Now I know. I know what’s
+been the matter all the time."
+"Has anything been the matter?"
+"Wait. This is terribly important. Dominique, you’ve never said, not once, what
+you thought. Not about anything. You’ve never expressed a desire. Not of any
+kind."
+"What’s wrong about that?"
+"But it’s...it’s like death. You’re not real. You’re only a body. Look,
+Dominique, you don’t know it, I’ll try to explain. You understand what death is?
+When a body can’t move any more, when it has no...no will, no meaning. You
+understand? Nothing. The absolute nothing. Well, your body moves--but that’s
+all. The other, the thing inside you, your--oh, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not
+talking religion, but there’s no other word for it, so I’ll say: your soul--your
+soul doesn’t exist. No will, no meaning. There’s no real you any more."
+"What’s the real me?" she asked. For the first time, she looked attentive; not
+compassionate; but, at least, attentive.
+"What’s the real anyone?" he said, encouraged. "It’s not just the body.
+It’s...it’s the soul."
+"What is the soul?"
+"It’s--you. The thing inside you."
+"The thing that thinks and values and makes decisions?"
+"Yes! Yes, that’s it. And the thing that feels. You’ve--you’ve given it up."
+"So there are two things that one can’t give up: One’s thoughts and one’s
+desires?"
+"Yes! Oh, you do understand! So you see, you’re like a corpse to everybody
+around you. A kind of walking death. That’s worse than any active crime.
+It’s..."
+"Negation?"
+"Yes. Just blank negation. You’re not here. You’ve never been here. If you’d
+tell me that the curtains in this room are ghastly and if you’d rip them off and
+put up some you like--something of you would be real, here, in this room. But
+you never have. You’ve never told the cook what dessert you liked for dinner.
+You’re not here, Dominique. You’re not alive. Where’s your I?"
+"Where’s yours, Peter?" she asked quietly.
+He sat still, his eyes wide. She knew that his thoughts, in this moment, were
+clear and immediate like visual perception, that the act of thinking was an act
+369
+
+of seeing a procession of years behind him.
+"It’s not true," he said at last, his voice hollow. "It’s not true."
+"What is not true?"
+"What you said."
+"I’ve said nothing. I asked you a question."
+His eyes were begging her to speak, to deny. She rose, stood before him, and the
+taut erectness of her body was a sign of life, the life he had missed and begged
+for, a positive quality of purpose, but the quality of a judge.
+"You’re beginning to see, aren’t you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You’ve
+never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want
+to show it. You wanted an act to help your act--a beautiful, complicated act,
+all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn’t like what I said about
+Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of
+virtuous sentiments. You didn’t want me to believe. You only wanted me to
+convince you that I believed. My real soul, Peter? It’s real only when it’s
+independent--you’ve discovered that, haven’t you? It’s real only when it chooses
+curtains and desserts--you’re right about that--curtains, desserts and
+religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you’ve never wanted that. You
+wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them
+while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from
+two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more
+vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No
+beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I
+became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy
+being--only with the trimmings. I didn’t go around spouting book reviews to hide
+my emptiness of judgment--I said I had no judgment. I didn’t borrow designs to
+hide my creative impotence--I created nothing. I didn’t say that equality is a
+noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind--I just agreed with
+everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death--I’ve imposed it on you
+and on everyone around us. But you--you haven’t done that. People are
+comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You’ve spared
+them the blank death. Because you’ve imposed it--on yourself."
+He said nothing. She walked away from him, and sat down again, waiting.
+He got up. He made a few steps toward her. He said: "Dominique..." Then he was
+on his knees before her, clutching her, his head buried against her legs.
+"Dominique, it’s not true--that I never loved you. I love you, I always have, it
+was not...just to show the others--that was not all--I loved you. There were two
+people--you and another person, a man, who always made me feel the same
+thing--not fear exactly, but like a wall, a steep wall to climb--like a command
+to rise--I don’t know where--but a feeling going up--I’ve always hated that
+man--but you, I wanted you--always--that’s why I married you--when I knew you
+despised me--so you should have forgiven me that marriage--you shouldn’t have
+taken your revenge like this--not like this, Dominique--Dominique, I can’t fight
+back, I--"
+"Who is the man you hated, Peter?"
+"It doesn’t matter."
+"Who is he?"
+370
+
+"Nobody. I..."
+"Name him."
+"Howard Roark."
+She said nothing for a long time. Then she put her hand on his hair. The gesture
+had the form of gentleness.
+"I never wanted to take a revenge on you, Peter," she said softly.
+"Then--why?"
+"I married you for my own reasons. I acted as the world demands one should act.
+Only I can do nothing halfway. Those who can, have a fissure somewhere inside.
+Most people have many. They lie to themselves--not to know that. I’ve never lied
+to myself. So I had to do what you all do--only consistently and completely.
+I’ve probably destroyed you. If I could care, I’d say I’m sorry. That was not my
+purpose."
+"Dominique, I love you. But I’m afraid. Because you’ve changed something in me,
+ever since our wedding, since I said yes to you--even if I were to lose you now,
+I couldn’t go back to what I was before--you took something I had..."
+"No. I took something you never had. I grant you that’s worse."
+"What?"
+"It’s said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect.
+But that’s not true. Self-respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst
+thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it."
+"Dominique, I...I don’t want to talk."
+She looked down at his face resting against her knees, and he saw pity in her
+eyes, and for one moment he knew what a dreadful thing true pity is, but he kept
+no knowledge of it, because he slammed his mind shut before the words in which
+he was about to preserve it.
+She bent down and kissed his forehead. It was the first kiss she had ever given
+him.
+"I don’t want you to suffer, Peter," she said gently. "This, now, is real--it’s
+I--it’s my own words--I don’t want you to suffer--I can’t feel anything
+else--but I feel that much."
+He pressed his lips to her hand.
+When he raised his head, she looked at him as if, for a moment, he was her
+husband. She said: "Peter, if you could hold on to it--to what you are now--"
+"I love you," he said.
+They sat silently together for a long time. He felt no strain in the silence.
+The telephone rang.
+It was not the sound that destroyed the moment; it was the eagerness with which
+371
+
+Keating jumped up and ran to answer it. She heard his voice through the open
+door, a voice indecent in its relief:
+"Hello?...Oh, hello, Ellsworth!...No, not a thing....Free as a lark....Sure,
+come over, come right over!...Okey-doke!"
+"It’s Ellsworth," he said, returning to the living room. His voice was gay and
+it had a touch of insolence. "He wants to drop in."
+She said nothing.
+He busied himself emptying ash trays that contained a single match or one butt,
+gathering newspapers, adding a log to the fire that did not need it, lighting
+more lamps. He whistled a tune from a screen operetta.
+He ran to open the door when he heard the bell.
+"How nice," said Toohey, coming in. "A fire and just the two of you. Hello,
+Dominique. Hope I’m not intruding."
+"Hello, Ellsworth," she said.
+"You’re never intruding," said Keating. "I can’t tell you how glad I am to see
+you." He pushed a chair to the fire. "Sit down here, Ellsworth. What’ll you
+have? You know, when I heard your voice on the phone...well, I wanted to jump
+and yelp like a pup."
+"Don’t wag your tail, though," said Toohey. "No, no drinks, thanks. How have you
+been, Dominique?"
+"Just as I was a year ago," she said.
+"But not as you were two years ago?"
+"No."
+"What did we do two years ago this time?" Keating asked idly.
+"You weren’t married," said Toohey. "Prehistorical period. Let me see--what
+happened then? I think the Stoddard Temple was just being completed."
+"Oh that," said Keating.
+Toohey asked: "Hear anything about your friend, Roark...Peter?"
+"No. I don’t think he’s worked for a year or more. He’s finished, this time."
+"Yes, I think so....What have you been doing, Peter?"
+"Nothing much....Oh, I’ve just read The Gallant Gallstone."
+"Liked it?"
+"Yes! You know, I think it’s a very important book. Because it’s true that
+there’s no such thing as free will. We can’t help what we are or what we do.
+It’s not our fault. Nobody’s to blame for anything. It’s all in your background
+and...and your glands. If you’re good, that’s no achievement of yours--you were
+lucky in your glands. If you’re rotten, nobody should punish you--you were
+unlucky, that’s all." He was saying it defiantly, with a violence inappropriate
+372
+
+to a literary discussion. He was not looking at Toohey nor at Dominique, but
+speaking to the room and to what that room had witnessed.
+"Substantially correct," said Toohey. "To be logical, however, we should not
+think of punishment for those who are rotten. Since they suffered through no
+fault of their own, since they were unlucky and underendowed, they should
+deserve a compensation of some sort--more like a reward."
+"Why--yes!" cried Keating. "That’s...that’s logical."
+"And just," said Toohey.
+"Got the Banner pretty much where you want it, Ellsworth?" asked Dominique.
+"What’s that in reference to?"
+"The Gallant Gallstone."
+"Oh. No, I can’t say I have. Not quite. There are always the--imponderables."
+"What are you talking about?" asked Keating. "Professional gossip," said Toohey.
+He stretched his hands to the fire and flexed his fingers playfully. "By the
+way, Peter, are you doing anything about Stoneridge?"
+"God damn it," said Keating. "What’s the matter?"
+"You know what’s the matter. You know the bastard better than I do. To have a
+project like that going up, now, when it’s manna in the desert, and of all
+people to have that son of a bitch Wynand doing it!"
+"What’s the matter with Mr. Wynand?"
+"Oh come, Ellsworth! You know very well if it were anyone else, I’d get that
+commission just like that"--he snapped his fingers--"I wouldn’t even have to
+ask, the owner’d come to me. Particularly when he knows that an architect like
+me is practically sitting on his fanny now, compared to the work our office
+could handle. But Mr. Gail Wynand! You’d think he was a holy Lama who’s just
+allergic to the air breathed by architects!"
+"I gather you’ve tried?"
+"Oh, don’t talk about it. It makes me sick. I think I’ve spent three hundred
+dollars feeding lunches and pouring liquor into all sorts of crappy people who
+said they could get me to meet him. All I got is hangovers. I think it’d be
+easier to meet the Pope."
+"I gather you do want to get Stoneridge?"
+"Are you baiting me, Ellsworth? I’d give my right arm for it."
+"That wouldn’t be advisable. You couldn’t make any drawings then--or pretend to.
+It would be preferable to give up something less tangible."
+"I’d give my soul."
+"Would you, Peter?" asked Dominique. "What’s on your mind, Ellsworth?" Keating
+snapped. "Just a practical suggestion," said Toohey. "Who has been your most
+effective salesman in the past and got you some of your best commissions?"
+373
+
+"Why--Dominique I guess."
+"That’s right. And since you can’t get to Wynand and it wouldn’t do you any good
+if you did, don’t you think Dominique is the one who’ll be able to persuade
+him?" Keating stared at him. "Are you crazy, Ellsworth?" Dominique leaned
+forward. She seemed interested.
+"From what I’ve heard," she said, "Gail Wynand does not do favors for a woman,
+unless she’s beautiful. And if she’s beautiful, he doesn’t do it as a favor."
+Toohey looked at her, underscoring the fact that he offered no denial.
+"It’s silly," snapped Keating angrily. "How would Dominique ever get to see
+him?"
+"By telephoning his office and making an appointment," said Toohey.
+"Who ever told you he’d grant it?"
+"He did."
+"When?!"
+"Late last night. Or early this morning, to be exact."
+"Ellsworth!" gasped Keating. He added: "I don’t believe it."
+"I do," said Dominique, "or Ellsworth wouldn’t have started this conversation."
+She smiled at Toohey. "So Wynand promised you to see me?"
+"Yes, my dear."
+"How did you work that?"
+"Oh, I offered him a convincing argument. However, it would be advisable not to
+delay it. You should telephone him tomorrow--if you wish to do it."
+"Why can’t she telephone now?" said Keating. "Oh, I guess it’s too late. You’ll
+telephone first thing in the morning."
+She looked at him, her eyes half closed, and said nothing.
+"It’s a long time since you’ve taken any active interest in Peter’s career,"
+said Toohey. "Wouldn’t you like to undertake a difficult feat like that--for
+Peter’s sake?"
+"If Peter wants me to."
+"If I want you to?" cried Keating. "Are you both crazy? It’s the chance of a
+lifetime, the..." He saw them both looking at him curiously. He snapped: "Oh,
+rubbish!"
+"What is rubbish, Peter?" asked Dominique.
+"Are you going to be stopped by a lot of fool gossip? Why, any other architect’s
+wife’d crawl on her hands and knees for a chance like that to..."
+"No other architect’s wife would be offered the chance," said Toohey. "No other
+architect has a wife like Dominique. You’ve always been so proud of that,
+374
+
+Peter."
+"Dominique can take care of herself in any circumstances."
+"There’s no doubt about that."
+"All right, Ellsworth," said Dominique. "I’ll telephone Wynand tomorrow."
+"Ellsworth, you’re wonderful!" said Keating, not looking at her.
+"I believe I’d like a drink now," said Toohey. "We should celebrate."
+When Keating hurried out to the kitchen, Toohey and Dominique looked at each
+other. He smiled. He glanced at the door through which Keating had gone, then
+nodded to her faintly, amused.
+"You expected it," said Dominique.
+"Of course."
+"Now what’s the real purpose, Ellsworth?"
+"Why, I want to help you get Stoneridge for Peter. It’s really a terrific
+commission."
+"Why are you so anxious to have me sleep with Wynand?"
+"Don’t you think it would be an interesting experience for all concerned?"
+"You’re not satisfied with the way my marriage has turned out, are you,
+Ellsworth?"
+"Not entirely. Just about fifty percent. Well, nothing’s perfect in this world.
+One gathers what one can and then one tries further."
+"You were very anxious to have Peter marry me. You knew what the result would
+be, better than Peter or I."
+"Peter didn’t know it at all."
+"Well, it worked--fifty percent. You got Peter Keating where you wanted him--the
+leading architect of the country who’s now mud clinging to your galoshes."
+"I’ve never liked your style of expression, but it’s always been accurate. I
+should have said: who’s now a soul wagging its tail. Your style is gentler."
+"But the other fifty percent, Ellsworth? A failure?"
+"Approximately total. My fault. I should have known better than to expect anyone
+like Peter Keating, even in the role of husband, to destroy you."
+"Well, you’re frank."
+"I told you once it’s the only method that will work with you. Besides, surely
+it didn’t take you two years to discover what I wanted of that marriage?"
+"So you think Gail Wynand will finish the job?"
+"Might. What do you think?"
+375
+
+"I think I’m only a side issue again. Didn’t you call it ’gravy’ once? What have
+you got against Wynand?"
+He laughed; the sound betrayed that he had not expected the question. She said
+contemptuously: "Don’t show that you’re shocked, Ellsworth."
+"All right. We’re taking it straight. I have nothing specific against Mr. Gail
+Wynand. I’ve been planning to have him meet you, for a long time. If you want
+minor details, he did something that annoyed me yesterday morning. He’s too
+observant. So I decided the time was right."
+"And there was Stoneridge."
+"And there was Stoneridge. I knew that part of it would appeal to you. You’d
+never sell yourself to save your country, your soul or the life of a man you
+loved. But you’ll sell yourself to get a commission he doesn’t deserve for Peter
+Keating. See what will be left of you afterward. Or of Gail Wynand. I’ll be
+interested to see it, too."
+"Quite correct, Ellsworth."
+"All of it? Even the part about a man you loved--if you did?"
+"Yes."
+"You wouldn’t sell yourself for Roark? Though, of course, you don’t like to hear
+that name pronounced."
+"Howard Roark," she said evenly.
+"You have a great deal of courage, Dominique."
+Keating returned, carrying a tray of cocktails. His eyes were feverish and he
+made too many gestures.
+Toohey raised his glass. He said:
+"To Gail Wynand and the New York Banner!"
+
+3.
+GAIL WYNAND rose and met her halfway across his office.
+"How do you do, Mrs. Keating," he said.
+"How do you do, Mr. Wynand," said Dominique.
+He moved a chair for her, but when she sat down he did not cross to sit behind
+his desk, he stood studying her professionally, appraisingly. His manner implied
+a self-evident necessity, as if his reason were known to her and there could be
+nothing improper in this behavior.
+"You look like a stylized version of your own stylized version," he said. "As a
+rule seeing the models of art works tends to make one atheistic. But this time
+it’s a close one between that sculptor and God."
+376
+
+"What sculptor?"
+"The one who did that statue of you."
+He had felt that there was some story behind the statue and he became certain of
+it now, by something in her face, a tightening that contradicted, for a second,
+the trim indifference of her self-control.
+"Where and when did you see that statue, Mr. Wynand?"
+"In my art gallery, this morning."
+"Where did you get it?"
+It was his turn to show perplexity. "But don’t you know that?"
+"No."
+"Your friend Ellsworth Toohey sent it to me. As a present."
+"To get this appointment for me?"
+"Not through as direct a motivation as I believe you’re thinking. But in
+substance--yes."
+"He hasn’t told me that."
+"Do you mind my having that statue?"
+"Not particularly."
+"I expected you to say that you were delighted."--"I’m not."
+He sat down, informally, on the outer edge of his desk, his legs stretched out,
+his ankles crossed. He asked:
+"I gather you lost track of that statue and have been trying to find it?"
+"For two years."
+"You can’t have it." He added, watching her: "You might have Stoneridge."
+"I shall change my mind. I’m delighted that Toohey gave it to you."
+He felt a bitter little stab of triumph--and of disappointment, in thinking that
+he could read her mind and that her mind was obvious, after all. He asked:
+"Because it gave you this interview?"
+"No. Because you’re the person before last in the world whom I’d like to have
+that statue. But Toohey is last."
+He lost the triumph; it was not a thing which a woman intent on Stoneridge
+should have said or thought. He asked:
+"You didn’t know that Toohey had it?"
+"No."
+377
+
+"We should get together on our mutual friend, Mr. Ellsworth Toohey. I don’t like
+being a pawn and I don’t think you do or could ever be made to. There are too
+many things Mr. Toohey chose not to tell. The name of that sculptor, for
+instance."
+"He didn’t tell you that?"
+"No."
+"Steven Mallory."
+"Mallory?...Not the one who tried to..." He laughed aloud.
+"What’s the matter?"
+"Toohey told me he couldn’t remember the name. That name."
+"Does Mr. Toohey still astonish you?"
+"He has, several times, in the last few days. There’s a special kind of subtlety
+in being as blatant as he’s been. A very difficult kind. I almost like his
+artistry."
+"I don’t share your taste."
+"Not in any field? Not in sculpture--or architecture?"
+"I’m sure not in architecture."
+"Isn’t that the utterly wrong thing for you to say?"
+"Probably."
+He looked at her. He said: "You’re interesting."
+"I didn’t intend to be."
+"That’s your third mistake."
+"Third?"
+"The first was about Mr. Toohey. In the circumstances, one would expect you to
+praise him to me. To quote him. To lean on his great prestige in matters of
+architecture."
+"But one would expect you to know Ellsworth Toohey. That should disqualify any
+quotations."
+"I intended to say that to you--had you given me the chance you won’t give me."
+"That should make it more entertaining."
+"You expected to be entertained?"
+"I am."
+"About the statue?" It was the only point of weakness he had discovered.
+378
+
+"No." Her voice was hard. "Not about the statue."
+"Tell me, when was it made and for whom?"
+"Is that another thing Mr. Toohey forgot?"
+"Apparently."
+"Do you remember a scandal about a building called the Stoddard Temple? Two
+years ago. You were away at the time."
+"The Stoddard Temple....How do you happen to know where I was two years
+ago?...Wait, the Stoddard Temple. I remember: a sacrilegious church or some such
+object that gave the Bible brigade a howling spree."
+"Yes."
+"There was..." He stopped. His voice sounded hard and reluctant--like hers.
+"There was the statue of a naked woman involved."
+"Yes."
+"I see."
+He was silent for a moment. Then he said, his voice harsh, as if he were holding
+back some anger whose object she could not guess:
+"I was somewhere around Bali at the time. I’m sorry all New York saw that statue
+before I did. But I don’t read newspapers when I’m sailing. There’s a standing
+order to fire any man who brings a Wynand paper around the yacht."
+"Have you ever seen pictures of the Stoddard Temple?"
+"No. Was the building worthy of the statue?"
+"The statue was almost worthy of the building."
+"It has been destroyed, hasn’t it?"
+"Yes. With the help of the Wynand papers."
+He shrugged. "I remember Alvah Scarret had a good time with it. A big story.
+Sorry I missed it. But Alvah did very well. Incidentally, how did you know that
+I was away and why has the fact of my absence remained in your memory?"
+"It was the story that cost me my job with you."
+"Your job? With me?"
+"Didn’t you know that my name was Dominique Francon?"
+Under the trim jacket his shoulders made a sagging movement forward; it was
+surprise--and helplessness. He stared at her, quite simply. After a while, he
+said: "No."
+She smiled indifferently. She said: "It appears that Toohey wanted to make it as
+difficult for both of us as he could."
+"To hell with Toohey. This has to be understood. It doesn’t make sense. You’re
+379
+
+Dominique Francon?"
+"I was."
+"You worked here, in this building, for years?"
+"For six years."
+"Why haven’t I met you before?"
+"I’m sure you don’t meet every one of your employees."
+"I think you understand what I mean."
+"Do you wish me to state it for you?"
+"Yes."
+"Why haven’t I tried to meet you before?"
+"Yes."
+"I had no desire to."
+"That, precisely, doesn’t make sense."
+"Shall I let this go by or understand it?"
+"I’ll spare you the choice. With the kind of beauty you possess and with
+knowledge of the kind of reputation I am said to possess--why didn’t you attempt
+to make a real career for yourself on the Banner!"
+"I never wanted a real career on the Banner."
+"Why?"
+"Perhaps for the same reason that makes you forbid Wynand papers on your yacht."
+"It’s a good reason," he said quietly. Then he asked, his voice casual again:
+"Let’s see, what was it you did to get fired? You went against our policy, I
+believe?"
+"I tried to defend the Stoddard Temple."
+"Didn’t you know better than to attempt sincerity on the Banner?"
+"I intended to say that to you--if you’d given me the chance."
+"Are you being entertained?"
+"I wasn’t, then. I liked working here."
+"You’re the only one who’s ever said that in this building."
+"I must be one of two."
+"Who’s the other?"
+"Yourself, Mr. Wynand."
+380
+
+"Don’t be too sure of that." Lifting his head, he saw the hint of amusement in
+her eyes and asked: "You said it just to trap me into that kind of a statement?"
+"Yes, I think so," she answered placidly. "Dominique Francon..." he repeated,
+not addressing her. "I used to like your stuff. I almost wish you were here to
+ask for your old job."
+"I’m here to discuss Stoneridge."
+"Ah, yes, of course." He settled back, to enjoy a long speech of persuasion. He
+thought it would be interesting to hear what arguments she’d choose and how
+she’d act in the role of petitioner. "Well, what do you wish to tell me about
+that?"
+"I should like you to give that commission to my husband. I understand, of
+course, that there’s no reason why you should do so--unless I agree to sleep
+with you in exchange. If you consider that a sufficient reason--I am willing to
+do it."
+He looked at her silently, allowing no hint of personal reaction in his face.
+She sat looking up at him, faintly astonished by his scrutiny, as if her words
+had deserved no special attention. He could not force on himself, though he was
+seeking it fiercely, any other impression of her face than the incongruous one
+of undisturbed purity.
+He said:
+"That is what I was to suggest. But not so crudely and not on our first
+meeting."
+"I have saved you time and lies."
+"You love your husband very much?"
+"I despise him."
+"You have a great faith in his artistic genius?"
+"I think he’s a third-rate architect."
+"Then why are you doing this?"
+"It amuses me."
+"I thought I was the only who acted on such motives."
+"You shouldn’t mind. I don’t believe you’ve ever found originality a desirable
+virtue, Mr. Wynand."
+"Actually, you don’t care whether your husband gets Stoneridge or not?"
+"No."
+"And you have no desire to sleep with me?"
+"None at all."
+"I could admire a woman who’d put on an act like that. Only it’s not an act."
+381
+
+"It’s not. Please don’t begin admiring me. I have tried to avoid it."
+Whenever he smiled no obvious movement was required of his facial muscles; the
+hint of mockery was always there and it merely came into sharper focus for a
+moment, to recede imperceptibly again. The focus was sharper now.
+"As a matter of fact," he said, "your chief motive is I, after all. The desire
+to give yourself to me." He saw the glance she could not control and added: "No,
+don’t enjoy the thought that I have fallen into so gross an error. I didn’t mean
+it in the usual sense. But in its exact opposite. Didn’t you say you considered
+me the person before last in the world? You don’t want Stoneridge. You want to
+sell yourself for the lowest motive to the lowest person you can find."
+"I didn’t expect you to understand that," she said simply.
+"You want--men do that sometimes, not women--to express through the sexual act
+your utter contempt for me."
+"No, Mr. Wynand. For myself."
+The thin line of his mouth moved faintly, as if his lips had caught the first
+hint of a personal revelation--an involuntary one and, therefore, a
+weakness--and were holding it tight while he spoke:
+"Most people go to very to very great lengths in order to convince themselves of
+their self-respect."
+"Yes."
+"And, of course, a quest for self-respect is proof of its lack."
+"Yes."
+"Do you see the meaning of a quest for self-contempt?"
+"That I lack it?"
+"And that you’ll never achieve it."
+"I didn’t expect you to understand that either."
+"I won’t say anything else--or I’ll stop being the person before last in the
+world and I’ll become unsuitable to your purpose." He rose. "Shall I tell you
+formally that I accept your offer?"
+She inclined her head in agreement.
+"As a matter of fact," he said, "I don’t care whom I choose to build Stoneridge.
+I’ve never hired a good architect for any of the things I’ve built. I give the
+public what it wants. I was stuck for a choice this time, because I’m tired of
+the bunglers who’ve worked for me, and it’s hard to decide without standards or
+reason. I’m sure you don’t mind my saying this. I’m really grateful to you for
+giving me a much better motive than any I could hope to find."
+"I’m glad you didn’t say that you’ve always admired the work of Peter Keating."
+"You didn’t tell me how glad you were to join the distinguished list of Gail
+Wynand’s mistresses."
+382
+
+"You may enjoy my admitting it, if you wish, but I think we’ll get along very
+well together."
+"Quite likely. At least, you’ve given me a new experience: to do what I’ve
+always done--but honestly. Shall I now begin to give you my orders? I won’t
+pretend they’re anything else."
+"If you wish."
+"You’ll go with me for a two months’ cruise on my yacht. We’ll sail in ten days.
+When we come back, you’ll be free to return to your husband--with the contract
+for Stoneridge."
+"Very well."
+"I should like to meet your husband. Will you both have dinner with me Monday
+night?"
+"Yes, if you wish."
+When she rose to leave, he asked:
+"Shall I tell you the difference between you and your statue?"
+"No."
+"But I want to. It’s startling to see the same elements used in two compositions
+with opposite themes. Everything about you in that statue is the theme of
+exaltation. But your own theme is suffering."
+"Suffering? I’m not conscious of having shown that."
+"You haven’t. That’s what I meant. No happy person can be quite so impervious to
+pain."
+#
+Wynand telephoned his art dealer and asked him to arrange a private showing of
+Steven Mallory’s work. He refused to meet Mallory in person; he never met those
+whose work he liked. The art dealer executed the order in great haste. Wynand
+bought five of the pieces he saw--and paid more than the dealer had hoped to
+ask. "Mr. Mallory would like to know," said the dealer, "what brought him to
+your attention."
+"I saw one of his works."
+"Which one?"
+"It doesn’t matter."
+Toohey had expected Wynand to call for him after the interview with Dominique.
+Wynand had not called. But a few days later, meeting Toohey by chance in the
+city room, Wynand asked aloud:
+"Mr. Toohey, have so many people tried to kill you that you can’t remember their
+names?"
+Toohey smiled and said: "I’m sure quite so many would like to."
+383
+
+"You flatter your fellow men," said Wynand, walking away.
+#
+Peter Keating stared at the brilliant room of the restaurant. It was the most
+exclusive place in town, and the most expensive. Keating gloated, chewing the
+thought that he was here as the guest of Gail Wynand.
+He tried not to stare at the gracious elegance of Wynand’s figure across the
+table. He blessed Wynand for having chosen to give this dinner in a public
+place. People were gaping at Wynand--discreetly and with practiced camouflage,
+but gaping nevertheless--and their attention included the two guests at Wynand’s
+table.
+Dominique sat between the two men. She wore a white silk dress with long sleeves
+and a cowl neck, a nun’s garment that acquired the startling effect of an
+evening gown only by being so flagrantly unsuited to that purpose. She wore no
+jewelry. Her gold hair looked like a hood. The dull white silk moved in angular
+planes with the movements of her body, revealing it in the manner of cold
+innocence, the body of a sacrificial object publicly offered, beyond the need of
+concealment or desire. Keating found it unattractive. He noticed that Wynand
+seemed to admire it.
+Someone at a distant table stared in their direction insistently, someone tall
+and bulky. Then the big shape rose to its feet--and Keating recognized Ralston
+Holcombe hurrying toward them.
+"Peter, my boy, so glad to see you," boomed Holcombe, shaking his hand, bowing
+to Dominique, conspicuously ignoring Wynand. "Where have you been hiding? Why
+don’t we see you around any more?" They had had luncheon together three days
+ago.
+Wynand had risen and stood leaning forward a little, courteously. Keating
+hesitated; then, with obvious reluctance, said:
+"Mr. Wynand--Mr. Holcombe."
+"Not Mr. Gail Wynand?" said Holcombe with splendid innocence.
+"Mr. Holcombe, if you saw one of the cough-drop Smith brothers in real life,
+would you recognize him?" asked Wynand.
+"Why--I guess so," said Holcombe, blinking.
+"My face, Mr. Holcombe, is just as much of a public bromide."
+Holcombe muttered a few benevolent generalities and escaped.
+Wynand smiled affectionately. "You didn’t have to be afraid of introducing Mr.
+Holcombe to me, Mr. Keating, even though he is an architect."
+"Afraid, Mr. Wynand?"
+"Unnecessarily, since it’s all settled. Hasn’t Mrs. Keating told you that
+Stoneridge is yours?"
+"I...no, she hasn’t told me...I didn’t know...." Wynand was smiling, but the
+smile remained fixed, and Keating felt compelled to go on talking until some
+sign stopped him. "I hadn’t quite hoped...not so soon...of course, I thought
+this dinner might be a sign...help you to decide..." He blurted out
+384
+
+involuntarily: "Do you always throw surprises like that--just like that?"
+"Whenever I can," said Wynand gravely.
+"I shall do my best to deserve this honor and live up to your expectations, Mr.
+Wynand."
+"I have no doubt about that," said Wynand.
+He had said little to Dominique tonight. His full attention seemed centered on
+Keating.
+"The public has been kind to my past endeavors," said Keating, "but I shall make
+Stoneridge my best achievement."
+"That is quite a promise, considering the distinguished list of your works."
+"I had not hoped that my works were of sufficient importance to attract your
+attention, Mr. Wynand."
+"But I know them quite well. The Cosmo-Slotnick Building, which is pure
+Michelangelo." Keating’s face spread in incredulous pleasure; he knew that
+Wynand was a great authority on art and would not make such comparisons lightly.
+"The Prudential Bank Building, which is genuine Palladio. The Slottern
+Department Store, which is snitched Christopher Wren." Keating’s face had
+changed. "Look what an illustrious company I get for the price of one. Isn’t it
+quite a bargain?"
+Keating smiled, his face tight, and said:
+"I’ve heard about your brilliant sense of humor, Mr. Wynand."
+"Have you heard about my descriptive style?"
+"What do you mean?"
+Wynand half turned in his chair and looked at Dominique, as if he were
+inspecting an inanimate object.
+"Your wife has a lovely body, Mr. Keating. Her shoulders are too thin, but
+admirably in scale with the rest of her. Her legs are too long, but that gives
+her the elegance of line you’ll find in a good yacht. Her breasts are beautiful,
+don’t you think?"
+"Architecture is a crude profession, Mr. Wynand," Keating tried to laugh. "It
+doesn’t prepare one for the superior sort of sophistication."
+"You don’t understand me, Mr. Keating?"
+"If I didn’t know you were a perfect gentleman, I might misunderstand it, but
+you can’t fool me."
+"That is just what I am trying not to do."
+"I appreciate compliments, Mr. Wynand, but I’m not conceited enough to think
+that we must talk about my wife."
+"Why not, Mr. Keating? It is considered good form to talk of the things one
+has--or will have--in common."
+385
+
+"Mr. Wynand, I...I don’t understand."
+"Shall I be more explicit?"
+"No, I..."
+"No? Shall we drop the subject of Stoneridge?"
+"Oh, let’s talk about Stoneridge! I..."
+"But we are, Mr. Keating."
+Keating looked at the room about them. He thought that things like this could
+not be done in such a place; the fastidious magnificence made it monstrous; he
+wished it were a dank cellar. He thought: blood on paving stones--all right, but
+not blood on a drawing-room rug....
+"Now I know this is a joke, Mr. Wynand," he said.
+"It is my turn to admire your sense of humor, Mr. Keating."
+"Things like...like this aren’t being done..."
+"That’s not what you mean at all, Mr. Keating. You mean, they’re being done all
+the time, but not talked about."
+"I didn’t think..."
+"You thought it before you came here. You didn’t mind. I grant you I’m behaving
+abominably. I’m breaking all the rules of charity. It’s extremely cruel to be
+honest."
+"Please, Mr. Wynand, let’s...drop it. I don’t know what...I’m supposed to do."
+"That’s simple. You’re supposed to slap my face." Keating giggled. "You were
+supposed to do that several minutes ago."
+Keating noticed that his palms were wet and that he was trying to support his
+weight by holding on to the napkin on his lap. Wynand and Dominique were eating,
+slowly and graciously, as if they were at another table. Keating thought that
+they were not human bodies, either one of them; something had vanished; the
+light of the crystal fixtures in the room was the radiance of X-rays that ate
+through, not the bones, but deeper; they were souls, he thought, sitting at a
+dinner table, souls held with evening clothes, lacking the intermediate shape of
+flesh, terrifying in naked revelation--terrifying, because he expected to see
+torturers, but saw a great innocence. He wondered what they saw, what his own
+clothes contained if his physical shape had gone.
+"No?" said Wynand. "You don’t want to do that, Mr. Keating? But of course you
+don’t have to. Just say that you don’t want any of it. I won’t mind. There’s Mr.
+Ralston Holcombe across the room. He can build Stoneridge as well as you could."
+"I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Wynand," whispered Keating. His eyes were fixed
+upon the tomato aspic on his salad plate; it was soft and shivering; it made him
+sick.
+Wynand turned to Dominique.
+386
+
+"Do you remember our conversation about a certain quest, Mrs. Keating? I said it
+was a quest at which you would never succeed. Look at your husband. He’s an
+expert--without effort. That is the way to go about it. Match that, sometime.
+Don’t bother to tell me that you can’t. I know it. You’re an amateur, my dear."
+Keating thought that he must speak again, but he couldn’t, not as long as that
+salad was there before him. The terror came from that plate, not from the
+fastidious monster across the table; the rest of the room was warm and safe. He
+lurched forward and his elbow swept the plate off the table.
+He made a kind of sound expressing regrets. Somebody’s shape came up, there were
+polite voices of apology, and the mess vanished from the carpet.
+Keating heard a voice saying: "Why are you doing this?" saw two faces turned to
+him and knew that he had said it.
+"Mr. Wynand is not doing it to torture you, Peter," said Dominique calmly. "He’s
+doing it for me. To see how much I can take."
+"That’s true, Mrs. Keating," said Wynand. "Partly true. The other part is: to
+justify myself."
+"In whose eyes?"
+"Yours. And my own, perhaps."
+"Do you need to?"
+"Sometimes. The Banner is a contemptible paper, isn’t it? Well, I have paid with
+my honor for the privilege of holding a position where I can amuse myself by
+observing how honor operates in other men."
+His own clothes, thought Keating, contained nothing now, because the two faces
+did not notice him any longer. He was safe; his place at that table was empty.
+He wondered, from a great, indifferent distance, why the two were looking at
+each other quietly, not like enemies, not like fellow executioners, but like
+comrades.
+#
+Two days before they were to sail, Wynand telephoned Dominique late in the
+evening.
+"Could you come over right now?" he asked, and hearing a moment’s silence,
+added: "Oh, not what you’re thinking. I live up to my agreements. You’ll be
+quite safe. I just would like to see you tonight."
+"All right," she said, and was astonished to hear a quiet: "Thank you."
+When the elevator door slid open in the private lobby of his penthouse, he was
+waiting there, but did not let her step out. He joined her in the elevator.
+"I don’t want you to enter my house," he said. "We’re going to the floor below."
+The elevator operator looked at him, amazed.
+The car stopped and opened before a locked door. Wynand unlocked it and let her
+step out first, following her into the art gallery. She remembered that this was
+the place no outsider ever entered. She said nothing. He offered no explanation.
+387
+
+Four hours she walked silently through the vast rooms, looking at the incredible
+treasures of beauty. There was a deep carpet and no sound of steps, no sounds
+from the city outside, no windows. He followed her, stopping when she stopped.
+His eyes went with hers from object to object. At times his glance moved to her
+face. She passed, without stopping, by the statue from the Stoddard Temple.
+He did not urge her to stay nor to hurry, as if he had turned the place over to
+her. She decided when she wished to leave, and he followed her to the door. Then
+she asked:
+"Why did you want me to see this? It won’t make me think better of you. Worse,
+perhaps."
+"Yes, I’d expect that," he said quietly, "if I had thought of it that way. But I
+didn’t. I just wanted you to see it."
+
+4.
+THE SUN had set when they stepped out of the car. In the spread of sky and sea,
+a green sky over a sheet of mercury, tracings of fire remained at the edges of
+the clouds and in the brass fittings of the yacht. The yacht was like a white
+streak of motion, a sensitive body strained against the curb of stillness.
+Dominique looked at the gold letters--I Do--on the delicate white bow.
+"What does that name mean?" she asked.
+"It’s an answer," said Wynand, "to people long since dead. Though perhaps they
+are the only immortal ones. You see, the sentence I heard most often in my
+childhood was ’You don’t run things around here.’"
+She remembered hearing that he had never answered this question before. He had
+answered her at once; he had not seemed conscious of making an exception. She
+felt a sense of calm in his manner, strange and new to him, an air of quiet
+finality.
+When they went aboard, the yacht started moving, almost as if Wynand’s steps on
+deck had served as contact. He stood at the rail, not touching her, he looked at
+the long, brown shore that rose and fell against the sky, moving away from them.
+Then he turned to her. She saw no new recognition in his eyes, no beginning, but
+only the continuation of a glance--as if he had been looking at her all the
+time.
+When they went below he walked with her into her cabin. He said: "Please let me
+know if there’s anything you wish," and walked out through an inside door. She
+saw that it led to his bedroom. He closed the door and did not return.
+She moved idly across the cabin. A smear of reflection followed her on the
+lustrous surfaces of the pale satinwood paneling. She stretched out in a low
+armchair, her ankles crossed, her arms thrown behind her head, and watched the
+porthole turning from green to a dark blue. She moved her hand, switched on a
+light; the blue vanished and became a glazed black circle.
+The steward announced dinner. Wynand knocked at her door and accompanied her to
+the dining salon. His manner puzzled her: it was gay, but the sense of calm in
+the gaiety suggested a peculiar earnestness.
+388
+
+She asked, when they were seated at the table:
+"Why did you leave me alone?"
+"I thought you might want to be alone."
+"To get used to the idea?"
+"If you wish to put it that way."
+"I was used to it before I came to your office."
+"Yes, of course. Forgive me for implying any weakness in you. I know better. By
+the way, you haven’t asked me where we’re going."
+"That, too, would be weakness."
+"True. I’m glad you don’t care. Because I never have any definite destination.
+This ship is not for going to places, but for getting away from them. When I
+stop at a port, it’s only for the sheer pleasure of leaving it. I always think:
+Here’s one more spot that can’t hold me."
+"I used to travel a great deal. I always felt just like that. I’ve been told
+it’s because I’m a hater of mankind."
+"You’re not foolish enough to believe that, are you?"
+"I don’t know."
+"Surely you’ve seen through that particular stupidity. I mean the one that
+claims the pig is the symbol of love for humanity--the creature that accepts
+anything. As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home
+everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form
+of depravity can outrage him."
+"You mean the person who says that there’s some good in the worst of us?"
+"I mean the person who has the filthy insolence to claim that he loves equally
+the man who made that statue of you and the man who makes a Mickey Mouse balloon
+to sell on street corners. I mean the person who loves the men who prefer the
+Mickey Mouse to your statue--and there are many of that kind. I mean the person
+who loves Joan of Arc and the salesgirls in dress shops on Broadway--with an
+equal fervor. I mean the person who loves your beauty and the women he sees in a
+subway--the kind that can’t cross their knees and show flesh hanging publicly
+over their garters--with the same sense of exaltation. I mean the person who
+loves the clean, steady, unfrightened eyes of man looking through a telescope
+and the white stare of an imbecile--equally, I mean quite a large, generous,
+magnanimous company. Is it you who hate mankind, Mrs. Keating?"
+"You’re saying all the things that--since I can remember--since I began to see
+and think--have been..." She stopped.
+"Have been torturing you. Of course. One can’t love man without hating most of
+the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It’s one or the other. One doesn’t
+love God and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn’t know that sacrilege
+has been committed. Because one doesn’t know God."
+"What will you say if I give you the answer people usually give me--that love is
+389
+
+forgiveness?"
+"I’ll say it’s an indecency of which you’re not capable--even though you think
+you’re an expert in such matters."
+"Or that love is pity."
+"Oh, keep still. It’s bad enough to hear things like that. To hear them from you
+is revolting--even as a joke."
+"What’s your answer?"
+"That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a
+bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most
+promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble
+stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they
+call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it--the
+total passion for the total height--you’re incapable of anything less."
+"As--you and I--know it?"
+"It’s what we feel when we look at a thing like your statue. There’s no
+forgiveness in that, and no pity. And I’d want to kill the man who claims that
+there should be. But, you see, when he looks at your statue--he feels nothing.
+That--or a dog with a broken paw--it’s all the same to him. He even feels that
+he’s done something nobler by bandaging the dog’s paw than by looking at your
+statue. So if you seek a glimpse of greatness, if you want exaltation, if you
+ask for God and refuse to accept the washing of wounds as substitute--you’re
+called a hater of humanity, Mrs. Keating, because you’ve committed the crime of
+knowing a love humanity has not learned to deserve."
+"Mr. Wynand, have you read what I got fired for?"
+"No. I didn’t then. I don’t dare to now "
+"Why?"
+He ignored the question. He said, smiling: "And so, you came to me and said
+’You’re the vilest person on earth--take me so that I’ll learn self-contempt. I
+lack that which most people live by. They find life endurable, while I can’t.’
+Do you see now what you’ve shown?"
+"I didn’t expect it to be seen."
+"No. Not by the publisher of the New York Banner, of course. That’s all right. I
+expected a beautiful slut who was a friend of Ellsworth Toohey."
+They laughed together. She thought it was strange that they could talk without
+strain--as if he had forgotten the purpose of this journey. His calm had become
+a contagious sense of peace between them.
+She watched the unobtrusively gracious way their dinner was served, she looked
+at the white tablecloth against the deep red of the mahogany walls. Everything
+on the yacht had an air that made her think it was the first truly luxurious
+place she had ever entered: the luxury was secondary, a background so proper to
+him that it could be ignored. The man humbled his own wealth. She had seen
+people of wealth, stiff and awed before that which represented their ultimate
+goal. The splendor of this place was not the aim, not the final achievement of
+the man who leaned casually across the table. She wondered what his aim had
+390
+
+been.
+"This ship is becoming to you," she said.
+She saw a look of pleasure in his eyes--and of gratitude.
+"Thank you....Is the art gallery?"
+"Yes. Only that’s less excusable."
+"I don’t want you to make excuses for me." He said it simply, without reproach.
+They had finished dinner. She waited for the inevitable invitation. It did not
+come. He sat smoking, talking about the yacht and the ocean.
+Her hand came to rest accidentally on the tablecloth, close to his. She saw him
+looking at it. She wanted to jerk her hand away, but forced herself to let it
+lie still. Now, she thought.
+He got up. "Let’s go on deck," he said.
+They stood at the rail and looked at a black void. Space was not to be seen,
+only felt by the quality of the air against their faces. A few stars gave
+reality to the empty sky. A few sparks of white fire in the water gave life to
+the ocean.
+He stood, slouched carelessly, one arm raised, grasping a stanchion. She saw the
+sparks flowing, forming the edges of waves, framed by the curve of his body.
+That, too, was becoming to him.
+She said:
+"May I name another vicious bromide you’ve never felt?"
+"Which one?"
+"You’ve never felt how small you were when looking at the ocean."
+He laughed. "Never. Nor looking at the planets. Nor at mountain peaks. Nor at
+the Grand Canyon. Why should I? When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness
+of man, I think of man’s magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer
+all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and
+dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes."
+"Yes. And that particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in
+contemplating nature--I’ve never received it from nature, only from..." She
+stopped.
+"From what?"
+"Buildings," she whispered. "Skyscrapers."
+"Why didn’t you want to say that?"
+"I...don’t know."
+"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s
+skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The
+shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man
+391
+
+made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about
+pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a
+crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some
+leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense
+of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson,
+look and kneel. When I see the city from my window--no, I don’t feel how small I
+am--but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself
+into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."
+"Gail, I don’t know whether I’m listening to you or to myself."
+"Did you hear yourself just now?"
+She smiled. "Actually not. But I won’t take it back, Gail."
+"Thank you--Dominique." His voice was soft and amused. "But we weren’t talking
+about you or me. We were talking about other people." He leaned with both
+forearms on the rail, he spoke watching the sparks in the water. "It’s
+interesting to speculate on the reasons that make men so anxious to debase
+themselves. As in that idea of feeling small before nature. It’s not a bromide,
+it’s practically an institution. Have you noticed how self-righteous a man
+sounds when he tells you about it? Look, he seems to say, I’m so glad to be a
+pygmy, that’s how virtuous I am. Have you heard with what delight people quote
+some great celebrity who’s proclaimed that he’s not so great when he looks at
+Niagara Falls? It’s as if they were smacking their lips in sheer glee that their
+best is dust before the brute force of an earthquake. As if they were sprawling
+on all fours, rubbing their foreheads in the mud to the majesty of a hurricane.
+But that’s not the spirit that leashed fire, steam, electricity, that crossed
+oceans in sailing sloops, that built airplanes and dams...and skyscrapers. What
+is it they fear? What is they hate so much, those who love to crawl? And why?"
+"When I find the answer to that," she said, "I’ll make my peace with the world."
+He went on talking--of his travels, of the continents beyond the darkness around
+them, the darkness that made of space a soft curtain pressed against their
+eyelids. She waited. She stopped answering. She gave him a chance to use the
+brief silences for ending this, for saying the words she expected. He would not
+say them.
+"Are you tired, my dear?" he asked.
+"No."
+"I’ll get you a deck chair, if you want to sit down."
+"No. I like standing here."
+"It’s a little cold. But by tomorrow we’ll be far south and then you’ll see the
+ocean on fire, at night. It’s very beautiful."
+He was silent. She heard the ship’s speed in the sound of the water, the
+rustling moan of protest against the thing that cut a long wound across the
+water’s surface.
+"When are we going below?" she asked.
+"We’re not going below."
+He had said it quietly, with an odd kind of simplicity, as if he were standing
+392
+
+helpless before a fact he could not alter.
+"Will you marry me?" he asked.
+She could not hide the shock; he had seen it in advance, he was smiling quietly,
+understanding.
+"It would be best to say nothing else." He spoke carefully. "But you prefer to
+hear it stated--because that kind of silence between us is more than I have a
+right to expect. You don’t want to tell me much, but I’ve spoken for you
+tonight, so let me speak for you again. You’ve chosen me as the symbol of your
+contempt for men. You don’t love me. You wish to grant me nothing. I’m only your
+tool of self-destruction I know all that, I accept it and I want you to marry
+me. If you wish to commit an unspeakable act as your revenge against the world,
+such an act is not to sell yourself to your enemy, but to marry him. Not to
+match your worst against his worst, but your worst against his best. You’ve
+tried that once, but your victim wasn’t worthy of your purpose. You see, I’m
+pleading my case on your own terms. What mine are, what I want to find in that
+marriage is of no importance to you and I shall regard it in that manner. You
+don’t have to know about it. You don’t have to consider it. I exact no promises
+and impose no obligations on you. You’ll be free to leave me whenever you wish.
+Incidentally--since it is of no concern to you--I love you."
+She stood, one arm stretched behind her, fingertips pressed to the rail. She
+said:
+"I did not want that."
+"I know. But if you’re curious about it, I’ll tell you that you’ve made a
+mistake. You let me see the cleanest person I’ve ever seen."
+"Isn’t that ridiculous, after the way we met?"
+"Dominique, I’ve spent my life pulling the strings of the world. I’ve seen all
+of it. Do you think I could believe any purity--unless it came to me twisted in
+some such dreadful shape as the one you chose? But what I feel must not affect
+your decision."
+She stood looking at him, looking incredulously at all the hours past. Her mouth
+had the shape of gentleness. He saw it. She thought that every word he said
+today had been of her language, that this offer and the form he gave it were of
+her own world--and that he had destroyed his purpose by it, taken away from her
+the motive he suggested, made it impossible to seek degradation with a man who
+spoke as he did. She wanted suddenly to reach for him, to tell him everything,
+to find a moment’s release in his understanding, then ask him never to see her
+again.
+Then she remembered.
+He noticed the movement of her hand. Her fingers were not clinging tensely
+against the rail, betraying a need of support, giving importance to the moment;
+they relaxed and closed about the rail; as if she had taken hold of some reins,
+carelessly, because the occasion required no earnest effort any longer.
+She remembered the Stoddard Temple. She thought of the man before her, who spoke
+about the total passion for the total height and about protecting skyscrapers
+with his body--and she saw a picture on a page of the New York Banner, the
+picture of Howard Roark looking up at the Enright House, and the caption: "Are
+you happy, Mr. Superman?"
+393
+
+She raised her face to him. She asked:
+"To marry you? To become Mrs. Wynand-Papers?"
+She heard the effort in his voice as he answered: "If you wish to call it
+that--yes."
+"I will marry you."
+"Thank you, Dominique."
+She waited indifferently.
+When he turned to her, he spoke as he had spoken all day, a calm voice with an
+edge of gaiety.
+"We’ll cut the cruise short. We’ll take just a week--I want to have you here for
+a while. You’ll leave for Reno the day after we return. I’ll take care of your
+husband. He can have Stoneridge and anything else he wants and may God damn him.
+We’ll be married the day you come back."
+"Yes, Gail. Now let’s go below."
+"Do you want it?"
+"No. But I don’t want our marriage to be important."
+"I want it to be important, Dominique. That’s why I won’t touch you tonight. Not
+until we’re married. I know it’s a senseless gesture. I know that a wedding
+ceremony has no significance for either one of us. But to be conventional is the
+only abnormality possible between us. That’s why I want it. I have no other way
+of making an exception."
+"As you wish, Gail."
+Then he pulled her to him and he kissed her mouth. It was the completion of his
+words, the finished statement, a statement of such intensity that she tried to
+stiffen her body, not to respond, and felt her body responding, forced to forget
+everything but the physical fact of a man who held her.
+He let her go. She knew he had noticed. He smiled and said:
+"You’re tired, Dominique. Shall I say good night? I want to remain here for a
+while."
+She turned obediently and walked alone down to her cabin.
+
+5.
+"WHAT’S the matter? Don’t I get Stoneridge?" snapped Peter Keating.
+Dominique walked into the living room. He followed, waiting in the open door.
+The elevator boy brought in her luggage, and left. She said, removing her
+gloves:
+394
+
+"You’ll get Stoneridge, Peter. Mr. Wynand will tell you the rest himself. He
+wants to see you tonight. At eight-thirty. At his home."
+"Why in hell?"
+"He’ll tell you."
+She slapped her gloves softly against her palm, a small gesture of finality,
+like a period at the end of a sentence. She turned to leave the room. He stood
+in her way.
+"I don’t care," he said. "I don’t give a damn. I can play it your way. You’re
+great, aren’t you?--because you act like truck drivers, you and Mr. Gail Wynand?
+To hell with decency, to hell with the other fellow’s feelings? Well, I can do
+that too. I’ll use you both and I’ll get what I can out of it--and that’s all I
+care. How do you like it? No point when the worm refuses to be hurt? Spoils the
+fun?"
+"I think that’s much better, Peter. I’m glad." He found himself unable to
+preserve this attitude when he entered Wynand’s study that evening. He could not
+escape the awe of being admitted into Gail Wynand’s home. By the time he crossed
+the room to the seat facing the desk he felt nothing but a sense of weight, and
+he wondered whether his feet had left prints on the soft carpet; like the leaded
+feet of a deep-sea diver. "What I have to tell you, Mr. Keating, should never
+have needed to be said or done," said Wynand. Keating had never heard a man
+speak in a manner so consciously controlled. He thought crazily that it sounded
+as if Wynand held his fist closed over his voice and directed each syllable.
+"Any extra word I speak will be offensive, so I shall be brief. I am going to
+marry your wife. She is leaving for Reno tomorrow. Here is the contract for
+Stoneridge. I have signed it. Attached is a check for two hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars. It is in addition to what you will receive for your work under
+the contract. I’ll appreciate it if you will now make no comment of any kind. I
+realize that I could have had your consent for less, but I wish no discussion.
+It would be intolerable if we were to bargain about it. Therefore, will you
+please take this and consider the matter settled?"
+He extended the contract across the desk. Keating saw the pale blue rectangle of
+the check held to the top of the page by a paper clip. The clip flashed silver
+in the light of the desk lamp.
+Keating’s hand did not reach to meet the paper. He said, his chin moving
+awkwardly to frame the words: "I don’t want it. You can have my consent for
+nothing." He saw a look of astonishment--and almost of kindness--on Wynand’s
+face.
+"You don’t want it? You don’t want Stoneridge either?"
+"I want Stoneridge!" Keating’s hand rose and snatched the paper. "I want it all!
+Why should you get away with it? Why should I care?"
+Wynand got up. He said, relief and regret in his voice: "Right, Mr. Keating. For
+a moment, you had almost justified your marriage. Let it remain what it was.
+Good night."
+Keating did not go home. He walked to the apartment of Neil Dumont, his new
+designer and best friend. Neil Dumont was a lanky, anemic society youth, with
+shoulders stooped under the burden of too many illustrious ancestors. He was not
+a good designer, but he had connections; he was obsequious to Keating in the
+office, and Keating was obsequious to him after office hours.
+395
+
+He found Dumont at home. Together, they got Gordon Prescott and Vincent
+Knowlton, and started out to make a wild night of it. Keating did not drink
+much. He paid for everything. He paid more than necessary. He seemed anxious to
+find things to pay for. He gave exorbitant tips. He kept asking: "We’re
+friends--aren’t we friends?--aren’t we?" He looked at the glasses around him and
+he watched the lights dancing in the liquid. He looked at the three pairs of
+eyes; they were blurred, but they turned upon him occasionally with contentment.
+They were soft and comforting.
+#
+That evening, her bags packed and ready in her room, Dominique went to see
+Steven Mallory.
+She had not seen Roark for twenty months. She had called on Mallory once in a
+while. Mallory knew that these visits were breakdowns in a struggle she would
+not name; he knew that she did not want to come, that her rare evenings with him
+were time torn out of her life. He never asked any questions and he was always
+glad to see her. They talked quietly, with a feeling of companionship such as
+that of an old married couple; as if he had possessed her body, and the wonder
+of it had long since been consumed, and nothing remained but an untroubled
+intimacy. He had never touched her body, but he had possessed it in a deeper
+kind of ownership when he had done her statue, and they could not lose the
+special sense of each other it had given them.
+He smiled when he opened the door and saw her.
+"Hello, Dominique."
+"Hello, Steve. Interrupting you?"
+"No. Come in."
+He had a studio, a huge, sloppy place in an old building. She noticed the change
+since her last visit. The room had an air of laughter, like a breath held too
+long and released. She saw second-hand furniture, an Oriental rug of rare
+texture and sensuous color, jade ash trays, pieces of sculpture that came from
+historical excavations, anything he had wished to seize, helped by the sudden
+fortune of Wynand’s patronage. The walls looked strangely bare above the gay
+clutter. He had bought no paintings. A single sketch hung over his
+studio--Roark’s original drawing of the Stoddard Temple.
+She looked slowly about her, noting every object and the reason for its
+presence. He kicked two chairs toward the fireplace and they sat down, one at
+each side of the fire.
+He said, quite simply:
+"Clayton, Ohio."
+"Doing what?"
+"A new building for Janer’s Department Store. Five stories. On Main Street."
+"How long has he been there?"
+"About a month."
+It was the first question he answered whenever she came here, without making her
+396
+
+ask it. His simple ease spared her the necessity of explanation or pretense; his
+manner included no comment.
+"I’m going away tomorrow, Steve."
+"For long?"
+"Six weeks. Reno."
+"I’m glad."
+"I’d rather not tell you now what I’ll do when I come back. You won’t be glad."
+"I’ll try to be--if it’s what you want to do."
+"It’s what I want to do."
+One log still kept its shape on the pile of coals in the fireplace; it was
+checkered into small squares and it glowed without flame, like a solid string of
+lighted windows. He reached down and threw a fresh log on the coals. It cracked
+the string of windows in half and sent sparks shooting up against the sooted
+bricks.
+He talked about his own work. She listened, as if she were an emigrant hearing
+her homeland’s language for a brief while.
+In a pause, she asked:
+"How is he, Steve?"
+"As he’s always been. He doesn’t change, you know."
+He kicked the log. A few coals rolled out. He pushed them back. He said:
+"I often think that he’s the only one of us who’s achieved immortality. I don’t
+mean in the sense of fame and I don’t mean that he won’t die some day. But he’s
+living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people
+long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them,
+they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of
+themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict--and they call it growth. At
+the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had
+never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an
+unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a
+single moment? But Howard--one can imagine him existing forever."
+She sat looking at the fire. It gave a deceptive semblance of life to her face.
+After a while he asked: "How do you like all the new things I got?"
+"I like them. I like your having them."
+"I didn’t tell you what happened to me since I saw you last. The completely
+incredible. Gail Wynand..."
+"Yes, I know about that."
+"You do? Wynand, of all people--what on earth made him discover me?"
+"I know that too. I’ll tell you when I come back."
+397
+
+"He has an amazing judgment. Amazing for him. He bought the best."
+"Yes, he would."
+Then she asked, without transition, yet he knew that she was not speaking of
+Wynand:
+"Steve, has he ever asked you about me?"
+"No."
+"Have you told him about my coming here?"
+"No."
+"Is that--for my sake, Steve?"
+"No. For his."
+He knew he had told her everything she wanted to know.
+She said, rising:
+"Let’s have some tea. Show me where you keep your stuff. I’ll fix it."
+#
+Dominique left for Reno early in the morning. Keating was still asleep and she
+did not awaken him to say good-bye.
+When he opened his eyes, he knew that she was gone, before he looked at the
+clock, by the quality of the silence in the house. He thought he should say
+"Good riddance," but he did not say it and he did not feel it. What he felt was
+a vast, flat sentence without subject--"It’s no use"--related neither to himself
+nor to Dominique. He was alone and there was no necessity to pretend anything.
+He lay in bed, on his back, his arms flung out helplessly. His face looked
+humble and his eyes bewildered. He felt that it was an end and a death, but he
+did not mean the loss of Dominique.
+He got up and dressed. In the bathroom he found a hand towel she had used and
+discarded. He picked it up, he pressed his face to it and held it for a long
+time, not in sorrow, but in nameless emotion, not understanding, knowing only
+that he had loved her twice--on that evening when Toohey telephoned, and now.
+Then he opened his fingers and let the towel slip down to the floor, like a
+liquid running between his fingers.
+He went to his office and worked as usual. Nobody knew of his divorce and he
+felt no desire to inform anyone. Neil Dumont winked at him and drawled: "I say,
+Pete, you look peaked." He shrugged and turned his back. The sight of Dumont
+made him sick today.
+He left the office early. A vague instinct kept pulling at him, like hunger, at
+first, then taking shape. He had to see Ellsworth Toohey. He had to reach
+Toohey. He felt like the survivor of a shipwreck swimming toward a distant
+light.
+That evening he dragged himself to Ellsworth Toohey’s apartment. When he
+entered, he felt dimly glad of his self-control, because Toohey seemed to notice
+nothing in his face.
+398
+
+"Oh, hello, Peter," said Toohey airily. "Your sense of timing leaves much to be
+desired. You catch me on the worst possible evening. Busy as all hell. But don’t
+let that bother you. What are friends for but to inconvenience one? Sit down,
+sit down, I’ll be with you in a minute."
+"I’m sorry, Ellsworth. But...I had to."
+"Make yourself at home. Just ignore me for a minute, will you?"
+Keating sat down and waited. Toohey worked, making notes on sheets of
+typewritten copy. He sharpened a pencil, the sound grating like a saw across
+Keating’s nerves. He bent over his copy again, rustling the pages once in a
+while.
+Half an hour later he pushed the papers aside and smiled at Keating. "That’s
+that," he said. Keating made a small movement forward. "Sit tight," said Toohey,
+"just one telephone call I’ve got to make."
+He dialed the number of Gus Webb. "Hello, Gus," he said gaily. "How are you, you
+walking advertisement for contraceptives?" Keating had never heard that tone of
+loose intimacy from Toohey, a special tone of brotherhood that permitted
+sloppiness. He heard Webb’s piercing voice say something and laugh in the
+receiver. The receiver went on spitting out rapid sounds from deep down in its
+tube, like a throat being cleared. The words could not be recognized, only their
+quality; the quality of abandon and insolence, with high shrieks of mirth once
+in a while.
+Toohey leaned back in his chair, listening, half smiling. "Yes," he said
+occasionally, "uh-huh....You said it, boy....Surer’n hell...." He leaned back
+farther and put one foot in a shining, pointed shoe on the edge of the desk.
+"Listen, boy, what I wanted to tell you is go easy on old Bassett for a while.
+Sure he likes your work, but don’t shock hell out of him for the time being. No
+roughhouse, see? Keep that big facial cavity of yours buttoned up....You know
+damn well who I am to tell you....That’s right....That’s the stuff, kid....Oh,
+he did? Good, angel-face....Well, bye-bye--oh, say, Gus, have you heard the one
+about the British lady and the plumber?" There followed a story. The receiver
+yelled raucously at the end. "Well, watch your step and your digestion,
+angel-face. Nighty-night."
+Toohey dropped the receiver, said: "Now, Peter," stretched, got up, walking to
+Keating and stood before him, rocking a little on his small feet, his eyes
+bright and kindly.
+"Now, Peter, what’s the matter? Has the world crashed about your nose?"
+Keating reached into his inside pocket and produced a yellow check, crumpled,
+much handled. It bore his signature and the sum of ten thousand dollars, made
+out to Ellsworth M. Toohey. The gesture with which he handed it to Toohey was
+not that of a donor, but of a beggar.
+"Please, Ellsworth...here...take this...for a good cause...for the Workshop of
+Social Study...or for anything you wish...you know best...for a good cause..."
+Toohey held the check with the tips of his fingers, like a soiled penny, bent
+his head to one side, pursing his lips in appreciation, and tossed the check on
+his desk.
+"Very handsome of you, Peter. Very handsome indeed. What’s the occasion?"
+399
+
+"Ellsworth, you remember what you said once--that it doesn’t matter what we are
+or do, if we help others? That’s all that counts? That’s good, isn’t it? That’s
+clean?"
+"I haven’t said it once. I’ve said it a million times."
+"And it’s really true?"
+"Of course it’s true. If you have the courage to accept it."
+"You’re my friend, aren’t you? You’re the only friend I’ve got. I...I’m not even
+friendly with myself, but you are. With me, I mean, aren’t you, Ellsworth?"
+"But of course. Which is of more value than your own friendship with yourself--a
+rather queer conception, but quite valid."
+"You understand. Nobody else does. And you like me."
+"Devotedly. Whenever I have the time."
+"Ah?"
+"Your sense of humor, Peter, where’s your sense of humor? What’s the matter? A
+bellyache? Or a soul-indigestion?"
+"Ellsworth, I..."
+"Yes?"
+"I can’t tell you. Even you."
+"You’re a coward, Peter."
+Keating stared helplessly: the voice had been severe and gentle, he did not know
+whether he should feel pain, insult or confidence.
+"You come here to tell me that it doesn’t matter what you do--and then you go to
+pieces over something or other you’ve done. Come on, be a man and say it doesn’t
+matter. Say you’re not important. Mean it. Show some guts. Forget your little
+ego."
+"I’m not important, Ellsworth. I’m not important. Oh God, if only everybody’d
+say it like you do! I’m not important. I don’t want to be important."
+"Where did that money come from?"
+"I sold Dominique."
+"What are you talking about? The cruise?"
+"Only it seems as if it’s not Dominique that I sold."
+"What do you care if..."
+"She’s gone to Reno."
+"What?"
+He could not understand the violence of Toohey’s reaction, but he was too tired
+400
+
+to wonder. He told everything, as it had happened to him; it had not taken long
+to happen or to tell.
+"You damn fool! You shouldn’t have allowed it."
+"What could I do? Against Wynand?"
+"But to let him marry her!"
+"Why not, Ellsworth? It’s better than..."
+"I didn’t think he’d ever...but...Oh, God damn it, I’m a bigger fool than you
+are!"
+"But it’s better for Dominique if..."
+"To hell with your Dominique! It’s Wynand I’m thinking about!"
+"Ellsworth, what’s the matter with you?...Why should you care?"
+"Keep still, will you? Let me think."
+In a moment, Toohey shrugged, sat down beside Keating and slipped his arm about
+his shoulders.
+"I’m sorry, Peter," he said. "I apologize. I’ve been inexcusably rude to you. It
+was just the shock. But I understand how you feel. Only you mustn’t take it too
+seriously. It doesn’t matter." He spoke automatically. His mind was far away.
+Keating did not notice that. He heard the words. They were the spring in the
+desert. "It doesn’t matter. You’re only human. That’s all you want to be. Who’s
+any better? Who has the right to cast the first stone? We’re all human. It
+doesn’t matter."
+#
+"My God!" said Alvah Scarret. "He can’t! Not Dominique Francon!"
+"He will," said Toohey. "As soon as she returns."
+Scarret had been surprised that Toohey should invite him to lunch, but the news
+he heard wiped out the surprise in a greater and more painful one.
+"I’m fond of Dominique," said Scarret, pushing his plate aside, his appetite
+gone. "I’ve always been very fond of her. But to have her as Mrs. Gail Wynand!"
+"These, exactly, are my own sentiments," said Toohey.
+"I’ve always advised him to marry. It helps. Lends an air. An insurance of
+respectability, sort of, and he could do with one. He’s always skated on pretty
+thin ice. Got away with it, so far. But Dominique!"
+"Why do you find such a marriage unsuitable?"
+"Well...well, it’s not...Damn it, you know it’s not right!"
+"I know it. Do you?"
+"Look, she’s a dangerous kind of woman."
+"She is. That’s your minor premise. Your major premise, however, is: he’s a
+401
+
+dangerous kind of man."
+"Well...in some ways...yes."
+"My esteemed editor, you understand me quite well. But there are times when it’s
+helpful to formulate things. It tends toward future-co-operation. You and I have
+a great deal in common-though you have been somewhat reluctant to admit it. We
+are two variations on the same theme, shall we say? Or we play two ends against
+the same middle, if you prefer your own literary style. But our dear boss is
+quite another tune. A different leitmotif entirely-don’t you think so, Alvah?
+Our dear boss is an accident in our midst. Accidents are unreliable phenomena.
+You’ve been sitting on the edge of your seat for years-haven’t you?-watching Mr.
+Gail Wynand. So you know exactly what I’m talking about. You know also that Miss
+Dominique Francon is not our tune either. And you do not wish to see that
+particular influence enter the life of our boss. Do I have to state the issue
+any plainer?"
+"You’re a smart man, Ellsworth," said Scarret heavily.
+"That’s been obvious for years."
+"I’ll talk to him. You’d better not-he hates your guts, if you’ll excuse me. But
+I don’t think I’d do much good either. Not if he’s made up his mind."
+"I don’t expect you to. You may try, if you wish, though it’s useless. We can’t
+stop that marriage. One of my good points is the fact that I admit defeat when
+it has to be admitted."
+"But then, why did you--"
+"Tell you this? In the nature of a scoop, Alvah. Advance information."
+"I appreciate it, Ellsworth. I sure do."
+"It would be wise to go on appreciating it. The Wynand papers, Alvah, are not to
+be given up easily. In unity there is strength. Your style."
+"What do you mean?"
+"Only that we’re in for a difficult time, my friend. So we’d do better to stick
+together."
+"Why, I’m with you, Ellsworth. I’ve always been."
+"Inaccurate, but we’ll let it pass. We’re concerned only with the present. And
+the future. As a token of mutual understanding, how about getting rid of Jimmy
+Kearns at the first opportunity?"
+"I thought you’ve been driving at that for months! What’s the matter with Jimmy
+Kearns? He’s a bright kid. The best drama critic in town. He’s got a mind. Smart
+as a whip. Most promising."
+"He’s got a mind--of his own. I don’t think you want any whips around the
+place--except the one you hold. I think you want to be careful about what the
+promise promises."
+"Whom’ll I stick in his spot?"
+"Jules Fougler."
+402
+
+"Oh, hell, Ellsworth!"
+"Why not?"
+"That old son of a...We can’t afford him."
+"You can if you want to. And look at the name he’s got."
+"But he’s the most impossible old..."
+"Well, you don’t have to take him. We’ll discuss it some other time. Just get
+rid of Jimmy Kearns."
+"Look, Ellsworth, I don’t play favorites; it’s all the same to me. I’ll give
+Jimmy the boot if you say so. Only I don’t see what difference it makes and what
+it’s got to do with what we were talking about."
+"You don’t," said Toohey. "You will."
+#
+"Gail, you know that I want you to be happy," said Alvah Scarret, sitting in a
+comfortable armchair in the study of Wynand’s penthouse that evening. "You know
+that. I’m thinking of nothing else."
+Wynand lay stretched out on a couch, one leg bent, with the foot resting on the
+knee of the other. He smoked and listened silently.
+"I’ve known Dominique for years," said Scarret. "Long before you ever heard of
+her. I love her. I love her, you might say, like a father. But you’ve got to
+admit that she’s not the kind of woman your public would expect to see as Mrs.
+Gail Wynand."
+Wynand said nothing.
+"Your wife is a public figure, Gail. Just automatically. A public property. Your
+readers have a right to demand and expect certain things of her. A symbol value,
+if you know what I mean. Like the Queen of England, sort of. How do you expect
+Dominique to live up to that? How do you expect her to preserve any appearances
+at all? She’s the wildest person I know. She has a terrible reputation. But
+worst of all--think Gail!--a divorcee! And here we spend tons of good print,
+standing for the sanctity of the home and the purity of womanhood! How are you
+going to make your public swallow that one? How am I going to sell your wife to
+them?"
+"Don’t you think this conversation had better be stopped, Alvah?"
+"Yes, Gail," said Scarret meekly.
+Scarret waited, with a heavy sense of aftermath, as if after a violent quarrel,
+anxious to make up.
+"I know, Gail!" he cried happily. "I know what we can do. We’ll put Dominique
+back on the paper and we’ll have her write a column--a different one--a
+syndicated column on the home. You know, household hints, kitchen, babies and
+all that. It’ll take the curse off. Show what a good little homebody she really
+is, her youthful mistakes notwithstanding. Make the women forgive her. We’ll
+have a special department--’Mrs. Gail Wynand’s recipes.’ A few pictures of her
+will help--you know, gingham dresses and aprons and her hair done up in a more
+403
+
+conventional way."
+"Shut up, Alvah, before I slap your face," said Wynand without raising his
+voice.
+"Yes, Gail."
+Scarret made a move to get up.
+"Sit still. I haven’t finished."
+Scarret waited obediently.
+"Tomorrow morning," said Wynand, "you will send a memo to every one of our
+papers. You will tell them to look through their files and find any pictures of
+Dominique Francon they might have in connection with her old column. You will
+tell them to destroy the pictures. You will tell them that henceforward any
+mention of her name or the use of her picture in any of my papers will cost the
+job of the entire editorial staff responsible. When the proper time comes, you
+will have an announcement of my marriage appear in all our papers. That cannot
+be avoided. The briefest announcement you can compose. No commentaries. No
+stories. No pictures. Pass the word around and make sure it’s understood. It’s
+any man’s job, yours included, if this is disobeyed."
+"No stories--when you marry her?"
+"No stories, Alvah."
+"But good God! That’s news! The other papers..."
+"I don’t care what the other papers do about it."
+"But--why, Gail?"
+"You wouldn’t understand."
+#
+Dominique sat at the window, listening to the train wheels under the floor. She
+looked at the countryside of Ohio flying past in the fading daylight. Her head
+lay back against the seat and her hands lay limply at each side of her on the
+seat cushion. She was one with the structure of the car, she was carried forward
+just as the window frame, the floor, the walls of the compartment were carried
+forward. The corners blurred, gathering darkness; the window remained luminous,
+evening light rising from the earth. She let herself rest in that faint
+illumination; it entered the car and ruled it, so long as she did not turn on
+the light to shut it out.
+She had no consciousness of purpose. There was no goal to this journey, only the
+journey itself, only the motion and the metal sound of motion around her. She
+felt slack and empty, losing her identity in a painless ebb, content to vanish
+and let nothing remain defined save that particular earth in the window.
+When she saw, in the slowing movement beyond the glass, the name "Clayton" on a
+faded board under the eaves of a station building, she knew what she had been
+expecting. She knew why she had taken this train, not a faster one, why she had
+looked carefully at the timetable of its stops--although it had been just a
+column of meaningless names to her then. She seized her suitcase, coat and hat.
+She ran. She could not take time to dress, afraid that the floor under her feet
+would carry her away from here. She ran down the narrow corridor of the car,
+404
+
+down the steps. She leaped to the station platform, feeling the shock of winter
+cold on her bare throat. She stood looking at the station building. She heard
+the train moving behind her, clattering away.
+Then she put on her coat and hat. She walked across the platform, into the
+waiting room, across a wooden floor studded with lumps of dry chewing gum,
+through the heavy billows of heat from an iron stove, to the square beyond the
+station.
+She saw a last band of yellow in the sky above the low roof lines. She saw a
+pitted stretch of paving bricks, and small houses leaning against one another; a
+bare tree with twisted branches, skeletons of weeds at the doorless opening of
+an abandoned garage, dark shop fronts, a drugstore still open on a corner, its
+lighted window dim, low over the ground.
+She had never been here before, but she felt this place proclaiming its
+ownership of her, closing in about her with ominous intimacy. It was as if every
+dark mass exercised a suction like the pull of the planets in space, prescribing
+her orbit. She put her hand on a fire hydrant and felt the cold seeping through
+her glove into her skin. This was the way the town told her, a direct
+penetration which neither her clothes nor her mind could stop. The peace of the
+inevitable remained. Only now she had to act, but the actions were simple, set
+in advance. She asked a passer-by: "Where is the site of the new building of
+Janer’s Department Store?"
+She walked patiently through the dark streets. She walked past desolate winter
+lawns and sagging porches; past vacant lots where weeds rustled against tin
+cans; past closed grocery stores and a steaming laundry; past an uncurtained
+window where a man in shirt sleeves sat by a fire, reading a paper. She turned
+corners and crossed streets, with the feel of cobblestones under the thin soles
+of her pumps. Rare passersby looked, astonished, at her air of foreign elegance.
+She noticed it; she felt an answering wonder. She wanted to say: But don’t you
+understand?--I belong here more than you do. She stopped, once in a while,
+closing her eyes; she found it difficult to breathe.
+She came to Main Street and walked slower. There were a few lights, cars parked
+diagonally at the curb, a movie theater, a store window displaying pink
+underwear among kitchen utensils. She walked stiffly, looking ahead.
+She saw a glare of light on the side of an old building, on a blind wall of
+yellow bricks showing the sooted floor lines of the neighboring structure that
+had been torn down. The light came from an excavation pit. She knew this was the
+site. She hoped it was not. If they worked late, he would be here. She did not
+want to see him tonight. She had wanted only to see the place and the building;
+she was not ready for more; she had wanted to see him tomorrow. But she could
+not stop now. She walked to the excavation. It lay on a corner, open to the
+street, without fence. She heard the grinding clatter of iron, she saw the arm
+of a derrick, the shadows of men on the slanting sides of fresh earth, yellow in
+the light. She could not see the planks that led up to the sidewalk, but she
+heard the sound of steps and then she saw Roark coming up to the street. He was
+hatless, he had a loose coat hanging open.
+He stopped. He looked at her. She thought that she was standing straight; that
+it was simple and normal, she was seeing the gray eyes and the orange hair as
+she had always seen them. She was astonished that he moved toward her with a
+kind of urgent haste, that his hand closed over her elbow too firmly and he
+said: "You’d better sit down."
+Then she saw she could not have stood up without that hand on her elbow. He took
+405
+
+her suitcase. He led her across the dark side street and made her sit down on
+the steps of a vacant house. She leaned back against a closed door. He sat down
+beside her. He kept his hand tight on her elbow, not a caress, but an impersonal
+hold of control over both of them.
+After a while he dropped his hand. She knew that she was safe now. She could
+speak.
+"That’s your new building?"
+"Yes. You walked here from the station?"
+"Yes."
+"It’s a long walk."
+"I think it was."
+She thought that they had not greeted each other and that it was right. This was
+not a reunion, but just one moment out of something that had never been
+interrupted. She thought how strange it would be if she ever said "Hello" to
+him; one did not greet oneself each morning.
+"What time did you get up today?" she asked.
+"At seven."
+"I was in New York then. In a cab, going to Grand Central. Where did you have
+breakfast?"
+"In a lunch wagon."
+"The kind that stays open all night?"
+"Yes. Mostly for truck drivers."
+"Do you go there often?"
+"Whenever I want a cup of coffee."
+"And you sit at a counter? And there are people around, looking at you?"
+"I sit at a counter when I have the time. There are people around. I don’t think
+they look at me much."
+"And afterward? You walk to work?"
+"Yes."
+"You walk every day? Down any of these streets? Past any window? So that if one
+just wanted to reach and open the window..."
+"People don’t stare out of windows here."
+From the vantage of the high stoop they could see the excavation across the
+street, the earth, the workmen, the rising steel columns in a glare of harsh
+light. She thought it was strange to see fresh earth in the midst of pavement
+and cobblestones; as if a piece had been torn from the clothing of a town,
+showing naked flesh. She said:
+406
+
+"You’ve done two country homes in the last two years."
+"Yes. One in Pennsylvania and one near Boston."
+"They were unimportant houses."
+"Inexpensive, if that’s what you mean. But very interesting to do."
+"How long will you remain here?"
+"Another month."
+"Why do you work at night?"
+"It’s a rush job."
+Across the street the derrick was moving, balancing a long girder in the air.
+She saw him watching it, and she knew he was not thinking of it, but there was
+the instinctive response in his eyes, something physically personal, intimacy
+with any action taken for his building.
+"Roark..."
+They had not pronounced each other’s names. It had the sensuous pleasure of a
+surrender long delayed--to pronounce the name and to have him hear it.
+"Roark, it’s the quarry again."
+He smiled. "If you wish. Only it isn’t."
+"After the Enright House? After the Cord Building?"
+"I don’t think of it that way."
+"How do you think of it?"
+"I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable."
+He was looking across the street. He had not changed. There was the old sense of
+lightness in him, of ease in motion, in action, in thought. She said, her
+sentence without beginning or end:
+"...doing five-story buildings for the rest of your life..."
+"If necessary. But I don’t think it will be like that."
+"What are you waiting for?"
+"I’m not waiting."
+She closed her eyes, but she could not hide her mouth; her mouth held
+bitterness, anger and pain.
+"Roark, if you’d been in the city, I wouldn’t have come to see you."
+"I know it."
+"But it was you--in another place--in some nameless hole of a place like this. I
+407
+
+had to see it. I had to see the place."
+"When are you going back?"
+"You know I haven’t come to remain?"
+"Yes."
+"Why?"
+"You’re still afraid of lunch wagons and windows."
+"I’m not going back to New York. Not at once."
+"No?"
+"You haven’t asked me anything, Roark. Only whether I walked from the station."
+"What do you want me to ask you?"
+"I got off the train when I saw the name of the station," she said, her voice
+dull. "I didn’t intend coming here. I was on my way to Reno."
+"And after that?"
+"I will marry again."
+"Do I know your fiancé?"
+"You’ve heard of him. His name is Gail Wynand."
+She saw his eyes. She thought she should want to laugh; she had brought him at
+last to a shock she had never expected to achieve. But she did not laugh. He
+thought of Henry Cameron; of Cameron saying: I have no answer to give them,
+Howard. I’m leaving you to face them. You’ll answer them. All of them, the
+Wynand papers and what makes the Wynand papers possible and what lies behind
+that.
+"Roark."
+He didn’t answer.
+"That’s worse than Peter Keating, isn’t it?" she asked.
+"Much worse."
+"Do you want to stop me?"
+"No."
+He had not touched her since he had released her elbow, and that had been only a
+touch proper in an ambulance. She moved her hand and let it rest against his. He
+did not withdraw his fingers and he did not pretend indifference. She bent over,
+holding his hand, not raising it from his knee, and she pressed her lips to his
+hand. Her hat fell off, he saw the blond head at his knees, he felt her mouth
+kissing his hand again and again. His fingers held hers, answering, but that was
+the only answer.
+She raised her head and looked at the street. A lighted window hung in the
+408
+
+distance, behind a grillwork of bare branches. Small houses stretched off into
+the darkness, and trees stood by the narrow sidewalks.
+She noticed her hat on the steps below and bent to pick it up. She leaned with
+her bare hand flat against the steps. The stone was old, worn smooth, icy. She
+felt comfort in the touch. She sat for a moment, bent over, palm pressed to the
+stone; to feel these steps--no matter how many feet had used them--to feel them
+as she had felt the fire hydrant.
+"Roark, where do you live?"
+"In a rooming house."
+"What kind of a room?"
+"Just a room."
+"What’s in it? What kind of walls?"
+"Some sort of wallpaper. Faded."
+"What furniture?"
+"A table, chairs, a bed."
+"No, tell me in detail."
+"There’s a clothes closet, then a chest of drawers, the bed in the corner by the
+window, a large table at the other side--"
+"By the wall?"
+"No, I put it across the corner, to the window--I work there. Then there’s a
+straight chair, an armchair with a bridge lamp and a magazine rack I never use.
+I think that’s all."
+"No rugs? Or curtains?"
+"I think there’s something at the window and some kind of rug. The floor is
+nicely polished, it’s beautiful old wood."
+"I want to think of your room tonight--on the train."
+He sat looking across the street. She said:
+"Roark, let me stay with you tonight."
+"No."
+She let her glance follow his to the grinding machinery below. After a while she
+asked:
+"How did you get this store to design?"
+"The owner saw my buildings in New York and liked them."
+A man in overalls stepped out of the excavation pit, peered into the darkness at
+them and called: "Is that you up there, boss?"
+409
+
+"Yes," Roark called back.
+"Come here a minute, will you?"
+Roark walked to him across the street. She could not hear their conversation,
+but she heard Roark saying gaily: "That’s easy," and then they both walked down
+the planks to the bottom. The man stood talking, pointing up, explaining. Roark
+threw his head back, to glance up at the rising steel frame; the light was full
+on his face, and she saw his look of concentration, not a smile, but an
+expression that gave her a joyous feeling of competence, of disciplined reason
+in action. He bent, picked up a piece of board, took a pencil from his pocket.
+He stood with one foot on a pile of planks, the board propped on his knee, and
+drew rapidly, explaining something to the man who nodded, pleased. She could not
+hear the words, but she felt the quality of Roark’s relation to that man, to all
+the other men in that pit, an odd sense of loyalty and of brotherhood, but not
+the kind she had ever heard named by these words. He finished, handed the board
+to the man, and they both laughed at something. Then he came back and sat down
+on the steps beside her.
+"Roark," she said. "I want to remain here with you for all the years we might
+have."
+He looked at her, attentively, waiting.
+"I want to live here." Her voice had the sound of pressure against a dam. "I
+want to live as you live. Not to touch my money--I’ll give it away, to anyone,
+to Steve Mallory, if you wish, or to one of Toohey’s organizations, it doesn’t
+matter. We’ll take a house here--like one of these--and I’ll keep it for
+you--don’t laugh, I can--I’ll cook, I’ll wash your clothes, I’ll scrub the
+floor. And you’ll give up architecture."
+He had not laughed. She saw nothing but an unmoving attention prepared to listen
+on.
+"Roark, try to understand, please try to understand. I can’t bear to see what
+they’re doing to you, what they’re going to do. It’s too great--you and building
+and what you feel about it. You can’t go on like that for long. It won’t last.
+They won’t let you. You’re moving to some terrible kind of disaster. It can’t
+end any other way. Give it up. Take some meaningless job--like the quarry. We’ll
+live here. We’ll have little and we’ll give nothing. We’ll live only for what we
+are and for what we know."
+He laughed. She heard, in the sound of it, a surprising touch of consideration
+for her--the attempt not to laugh; but he couldn’t stop it.
+"Dominique." The way he pronounced the name remained with her and made it easier
+to hear the words that followed: "I wish I could tell you that it was a
+temptation, at least for a moment. But it wasn’t." He added: "If I were very
+cruel, I’d accept it. Just to see how soon you’d beg me to go back to building."
+"Yes...Probably..."
+"Marry Wynand and stay married to him. It will be better than what you’re doing
+to yourself right now."
+"Do you mind...if we just sit here for a little while longer...and not talk
+about that...but just talk, as if everything were right...just an armistice for
+half an hour out of years....Tell me what you’ve done every day you’ve been
+here, everything you can remember...."
+410
+
+Then they talked, as if the stoop of the vacant house were an airplane hanging
+in space, without sight of earth or sky; he did not look across the street.
+Then he glanced at his wrist watch and said:
+"There’s a train for the West in an hour. Shall I go with you to the station?"
+"Do you mind if we walk there?"
+"All right."
+She stood up. She asked:
+"Until--when, Roark?"
+His hand moved over the streets. "Until you stop hating all this, stop being
+afraid of it, learn not to notice it."
+They walked together to the station. She listened to the sound of his steps with
+hers in the empty streets. She let her glance drag along the walls they passed,
+like a clinging touch. She loved this place, this town and everything that was
+part of it.
+They were walking past a vacant lot. The wind blew an old sheet of newspaper
+against her legs. It clung to her with a tight insistence that seemed conscious,
+like the peremptory caress of a cat. She thought, anything of this town had that
+intimate right to her. She bent, picked up the paper and began folding it, to
+keep it
+"What are you doing?" he asked.
+"Something to read on the train," she said stupidly.
+He snatched the paper from her, crumpled it and flung it away into the weeds.
+She said nothing and they walked on.
+A single light bulb hung over the empty station platform. They waited. He stood
+looking up the tracks, where the train was to appear. When the tracks rang,
+shuddering, when the white ball of a headlight spurted out of the distance and
+stood still in the sky, not approaching, only widening, growing in furious
+speed, he did not move or turn to her. The rushing beam flung his shadow across
+the platform, made it sweep over the planks and vanish. For an instant she saw
+the tall, straight line of his body against the glare. The engine passed them
+and the car rattled, slowing down. He looked at the windows rolling past. She
+could not see his face, only the outline of his cheekbone.
+When the train stopped, he turned to her. They did not shake hands, they did not
+speak. They stood straight, facing each other for a moment, as if at attention;
+it was almost like a military salute. Then she picked up her suitcase and went
+aboard the train. The train started moving a minute later.
+
+6.
+"CHUCK: And why not a muskrat? Why should man imagine himself superior to a
+muskrat? Life beats in all the small creatures of field and wood. Life singing
+411
+
+of eternal sorrow. An old sorrow. The Song of Songs. We don’t understand--but
+who cares about understanding? Only public accountants and chiropodists. Also
+mailmen. We only love. The Sweet Mystery of Love. That’s all there is to it.
+Give me love and shove all your philosophers up your stovepipe. When Mary took
+the homeless muskrat, her heart broke open and life and love rushed in. Muskrats
+make good imitation mink coats, but that’s not the point. Life is the point.
+"Jake: (rushing in) Say, folks, who’s got a stamp with a picture of George
+Washington on it?
+"Curtain."
+Ike slammed his manuscript shut and took a long swig of air. His voice was
+hoarse after two hours of reading aloud and he had read the climax of his play
+on a single long breath. He looked at his audience, his mouth smiling in
+self-mockery, his eyebrows raised insolently, but his eyes pleading.
+Ellsworth Toohey, sitting on the floor, scratched his spine against a chair leg
+and yawned. Gus Webb, stretched out on his stomach in the middle of the room,
+rolled over on his back. Lancelot Clokey, the foreign correspondent, reached for
+his highball glass and finished it off. Jules Fougler, the new drama critic of
+the Banner, sat without moving; he had not moved for two hours. Lois Cook,
+hostess, raised her arms, twisting them, stretching, and said:
+"Jesus, Ike, it’s awful."
+Lancelot Clokey drawled, "Lois, my girl, where do you keep your gin? Don’t be
+such a damn miser. You’re the worst hostess I know."
+Gus Webb said, "I don’t understand literature. It’s nonproductive and a waste of
+time. Authors will be liquidated."
+Ike laughed shrilly. "A stinker, huh?" He waved his script. "A real
+super-stinker. What do you think I wrote it for? Just show me anyone who can
+write a bigger flop. Worst play you’ll ever hear in your life."
+It was not a formal meeting of the Council of American Writers, but an
+unofficial gathering. Ike had asked a few of his friends to listen to his latest
+work. At twenty-six he had written eleven plays, but had never had one produced.
+"You’d better give up the theater, Ike," said Lancelot Clokey. "Writing is a
+serious business and not for any stray bastard that wants to try it." Lancelot
+Clokey’s first book--an account of his personal adventures in foreign
+countries--was in its tenth week on the best-seller list.
+"Why isn’t it, Lance?" Toohey drawled sweetly.
+"All right," snapped Clokey, "all right. Give me a drink."
+"It’s awful," said Lois Cook, her head lolling wearily from side to side. "It’s
+perfectly awful. It’s so awful it’s wonderful."
+"Balls," said Gus Webb. "Why do I ever come here?"
+Ike flung his script at the fireplace. It struck against the wire screen and
+landed, face down, open, the thin pages crushed.
+"If Ibsen can write plays, why can’t I?" he asked. "He’s good and I’m lousy, but
+that’s not a sufficient reason."
+412
+
+"Not in the cosmic sense," said Lancelot Clokey. "Still, you’re lousy."
+"You don’t have to say it. I said so first."
+"This is a great play," said a voice.
+The voice was slow, nasal and bored. It had spoken for the first time that
+evening, and they all turned to Jules Fougler. A cartoonist had once drawn a
+famous picture of him; it consisted of two sagging circles, a large one and a
+small one: the large one was his stomach, the small one--his lower lip. He wore
+a suit, beautifully tailored, of a color to which he referred as "merde d’oie."
+He kept his gloves on at all times and he carried a cane. He was an eminent
+drama critic.
+Jules Fougler stretched out his cane, caught the playscript with the hook of the
+handle and dragged it across the floor to his feet. He did not pick it up, but
+he repeated, looking down at it:
+"This is a great play."
+"Why?" asked Lancelot Clokey.
+"Because I say so," said Jules Fougler.
+"Is that a gag, Jules?" asked Lois Cook.
+"I never gag," said Jules Fougler. "It is vulgar."
+"Send me a coupla seats to the opening," sneered Lancelot Clokey.
+"Eight-eighty for two seats to the opening," said Jules Fougler. "It will be the
+biggest hit of the season."
+Jules Fougler turned and saw Toohey looking at him. Toohey smiled but the smile
+was not light or careless; it was an approving commentary upon something he
+considered as very serious indeed. Fougler’s glance was contemptuous when turned
+to the others, but it relaxed for a moment of understanding when it rested on
+Toohey.
+"Why don’t you join the Council of American Writers, Jules?" asked Toohey.
+"I am an individualist," said Fougler. "I don’t believe in organizations.
+Besides, is it necessary?"
+"No, not necessary at all," said Toohey cheerfully. "Not for you, Jules. There’s
+nothing I can teach you."
+"What I like about you, Ellsworth, is that it’s never necessary to explain
+myself to you."
+"Hell, why explain anything here? We’re six of a kind."
+"Five," said Fougler. "I don’t like Gus Webb."
+"Why don’t you?" asked Gus. He was not offended.
+"Because he doesn’t wash his ears," answered Fougler, as if the question had
+been asked by a third party.
+413
+
+"Oh, that," said Gus.
+Ike had risen and stood staring at Fougler, not quite certain whether he should
+breathe.
+"You like my play, Mr. Fougler?" he asked at last, his voice small.
+"I haven’t said I liked it," Fougler answered coldly. "I think it smells. That
+is why it’s great."
+"Oh," said Ike. He laughed. He seemed relieved. His glance went around the faces
+in the room, a glance of sly triumph.
+"Yes," said Fougler, "my approach to its criticism is the same as your approach
+to its writing. Our motives are identical."
+"You’re a grand guy, Jules."
+"Mr. Fougler, please."
+"You’re a grand guy and the swellest bastard on earth, Mr. Fougler."
+Fougler turned the pages of the script at his feet with the tip of his cane.
+"Your typing is atrocious, Ike," he said.
+"Hell, I’m not a stenographer. I’m a creative artist."
+"You will be able to afford a secretary after this show opens. I shall be
+obliged to praise it--if for no other reason than to prevent any further abuse
+of a typewriter, such as this. The typewriter is a splendid instrument, not to
+be outraged."
+"All right, Jules," said Lancelot Clokey, "it’s all very witty and smart and
+you’re sophisticated and brilliant as all get-out--but what do you actually want
+to praise that crap for?"
+"Because it is--as you put it--crap."
+"You’re not logical, Lance," said Ike. "Not in the cosmic sense, you aren’t. To
+write a good play and to have it praised is nothing. Anybody can do that.
+Anybody with talent--and talent is only a glandular accident. But to write a
+piece of crap and have it praised--well, you match that."
+"He has," said Toohey.
+"That’s a matter of opinion," said Lancelot Clokey. He upturned his empty glass
+over his mouth and sucked at a last piece of ice.
+"Ike understands things much better than you do, Lance," said Jules Fougler. "He
+has just proved himself to be a real thinker--in that little speech of his.
+Which, incidentally, was better than his whole play."
+"I’ll write my next play about that," said Ike.
+"Ike has stated his reasons," Fougler continued. "And mine. And also yours,
+Lance. Examine my case, if you wish. What achievement is there for a critic in
+praising a good play? None whatever. The critic is then nothing but a kind of
+414
+
+glorified messenger boy between author and public. What’s there in that for me?
+I’m sick of it. I have a right to wish to impress my own personality upon
+people. Otherwise, I shall become frustrated--and I do not believe in
+frustration. But if a critic is able to put over a perfectly worthless play--ah,
+you do perceive the difference! Therefore, I shall make a hit out of--what’s the
+name of your play, Ike?"
+"No skin off your ass," said Ike.
+"I beg your pardon?"
+"That’s the title."
+"Oh, I see. Therefore, I shall make a hit out of No Skin Off Your Ass."
+Lois Cook laughed loudly.
+"You all make too damn much fuss about everything," said Gus Webb, lying flat,
+his hands entwined under his head.
+"Now if you wish to consider your own case, Lance," Fougler went on. "What
+satisfaction is there for a correspondent in reporting on world events? The
+public reads about all sorts of international crises and you’re lucky if they
+ever notice your by-line. But you’re every bit as good as any general, admiral
+or ambassador. You have a right to make people conscious of yourself. So you’ve
+done the wise thing. You’ve written a remarkable collection of bilge--yes,
+bilge--but morally justified. A clever book. World catastrophes used as a
+backdrop for your own nasty little personality. How Lancelot Clokey got drunk at
+an international conference. What beauties slept with Lancelot Clokey during an
+invasion. How Lancelot Clokey got dysentery in a land of famine. Well, why not,
+Lance? It went over, didn’t it? Ellsworth put it over, didn’t he?"
+"The public appreciates good human-interest stuff," said Lancelot Clokey,
+looking angrily into his glass.
+"Oh, can the crap, Lance!" cried Lois Cook. "Who’re you acting for here? You
+know damn well it wasn’t any kind of a human interest, but plain Ellsworth
+Toohey."
+"I don’t forget what I owe Ellsworth," said Clokey sullenly. "Ellsworth’s my
+best friend. Still, he couldn’t have done it if he didn’t have a good book to do
+it with."
+Eight months ago Lancelot Clokey had stood with a manuscript in his hand before
+Ellsworth Toohey, as Ike stood before Fougler now, not believing it when Toohey
+told him that his book would top the bestseller list. But two hundred thousand
+copies sold had made it impossible for Clokey ever to recognize any truth again
+in any form.
+"Well, he did it with The Gallant Gallstone," said Lois Cook placidly, "and a
+worse piece of trash never was put down on paper. I ought to know. But he did
+it."
+"And almost lost my job doing it," said Toohey indifferently.
+"What do you do with your liquor, Lois?" snapped Clokey. "Save it to take a bath
+in?"
+"All right, blotter," said Lois Cook, rising lazily.
+415
+
+She shuffled across the room, picked somebody’s unfinished drink off the floor,
+drank the remnant, walked out and came back with an assortment of expensive
+bottles. Clokey and Ike hurried to help themselves.
+"I think you’re unfair to Lance, Lois," said Toohey. "Why shouldn’t he write an
+autobiography?"
+"Because his life wasn’t worth living, let alone recording."
+"Ah, but that is precisely why I made it a bestseller."
+"You’re telling me?"
+"I like to tell someone."
+There were many comfortable chairs around him, but Toohey preferred to remain on
+the floor. He rolled over to his stomach, propping his torso upright on his
+elbows, and he lolled, pleasurably, switching his weight from elbow to elbow,
+his legs spread out in a wide fork on the carpet. He seemed to enjoy
+unrestraint.
+"I like to tell someone. Next month I’m pushing the autobiography of a
+small-town dentist who’s really a remarkable person--because there’s not a
+single remarkable day in his life nor sentence in his book. You’ll like it,
+Lois. Can you imagine a solid bromide undressing his soul as if it were a
+revelation?"
+"The little people," said Ike tenderly. "I love the little people. We must love
+the little people of this earth."
+"Save that for your next play," said Toohey.
+"I can’t," said Ike. "It’s in this one."
+"What’s the big idea, Ellsworth?" snapped Clokey.
+"Why, it’s simple, Lance. When the fact that one is a total nonentity who’s done
+nothing more outstanding than eating, sleeping and chatting with neighbors
+becomes a fact worthy of pride, of announcement to the world and of diligent
+study by millions of readers--the fact that one has built a cathedral becomes
+unrecordable and unannounceable. A matter of perspectives and relativity. The
+distance permissible between the extremes of any particular capacity is limited.
+The sound perception of an ant does not include thunder."
+"You talk like a decadent bourgeois, Ellsworth," said Gus Webb.
+"Pipe down, Sweetie-pie," said Toohey without resentment.
+"It’s all very wonderful," said Lois Cook, "except that you’re doing too well,
+Ellsworth. You’ll run me out of business. Pretty soon if I still want to be
+noticed, I’ll have to write something that’s actually good."
+"Not in this century, Lois," said Toohey. "And perhaps not in the next. It’s
+later than you think."
+"But you haven’t said...!" Ike cried suddenly, worried.
+"What haven’t I said?"
+416
+
+"You haven’t said who’s going to produce my play!"
+"Leave that to me," said Jules Fougler.
+"I forgot to thank you, Ellsworth," said Ike solemnly. "So now I thank you.
+There are lots of bum plays, but you picked mine. You and Mr. Fougler."
+"Your bumness is serviceable, Ike."
+"Well, that’s something."
+"It’s a great deal."
+"How--for instance?"
+"Don’t talk too much, Ellsworth," said Gus Webb. "You’ve got a talking jag."
+"Shut your face, Kewpie-doll. I like to talk. For instance, Ike? Well, for
+instance, suppose I didn’t like Ibsen--"
+"Ibsen is good," said Ike.
+"Sure he’s good, but suppose I didn’t like him. Suppose I wanted to stop people
+from seeing his plays. It would do me no good whatever to tell them so. But if I
+sold them the idea that you’re just as great as Ibsen--pretty soon they wouldn’t
+be able to tell the difference."
+"Jesus, can you?"
+"It’s only an example, Ike."
+"But it would be wonderful!"
+"Yes. It would be wonderful. And then it wouldn’t matter what they went to see
+at all. Then nothing would matter--neither the writers nor those for whom they
+wrote."
+"How’s that Ellsworth?"
+"Look, Ike, there’s no room in the theater for both Ibsen and you. You do
+understand that, don’t you?"
+"In a manner of speaking--yes."
+"Well, you do want me to make room for you, don’t you?"
+"All of this useless discussion has been covered before and much better," said
+Gus Webb. "Shorter. I believe in functional economy."
+"Where’s it covered, Gus?" asked Lois Cook.
+"’Who had been nothing shall be all,’ sister."
+"Gus is crude, but deep," said Ike. "I like him."
+"Go to hell," said Gus.
+Lois Cook’s butler entered the room. He was a stately, elderly man and he wore
+417
+
+full-dress evening clothes. He announced Peter Keating.
+"Pete?" said Lois Cook gaily. "Why, sure, shove him in, shove him right in."
+Keating entered and stopped, startled, when he saw the gathering.
+"Oh...hello, everybody," he said bleakly. "I didn’t know you had company, Lois."
+"That’s not company. Come in, Pete, sit down, grab yourself a drink, you know
+everybody."
+"Hello, Ellsworth," said Keating, his eyes resting on Toohey for support.
+Toohey waved his hand, scrambled to his feet and settled down in an armchair,
+crossing his legs gracefully. Everybody in the room adjusted himself
+automatically to a sudden control: to sit straighter, to bring knees together,
+to pull in a relaxed mouth. Only Gus Webb remained stretched as before.
+Keating looked cool and handsome, bringing into the unventilated room the
+freshness of a walk through cold streets. But he was pale, and his movements
+were slow, tired.
+"Sorry if I intrude, Lois," he said. "Had nothing to do and felt so damn lonely,
+thought I’d drop in." He slurred over the word "lonely," throwing it away with a
+self-deprecatory smile. "Damn tired of Neil Dumont and the bunch. Wanted more
+uplifting company--sort of spiritual food, huh?"
+"I’m a genius," said Ike. "I’ll have a play on Broadway. Me and Ibsen. Ellsworth
+said so."
+"Ike has just read his new play to us," said Toohey. "A magnificent piece of
+work."
+"You’ll love it, Peter," said Lancelot Clokey. "It’s really great."
+"It is a masterpiece," said Jules Fougler. "I hope you will prove yourself
+worthy of it, Peter. It is the kind of play that depends upon what the members
+of the audience are capable of bringing with them into the theater. If you are
+one of those literal-minded people, with a dry soul and a limited imagination,
+it is not for you. But if you are a real human being with a big, big heart full
+of laughter, who has preserved the uncorrupted capacity of his childhood for
+pure emotion--you will find it an unforgettable experience."
+"Except as ye become as little children ye shall not enter the Kingdom of
+Heaven," said Ellsworth Toohey.
+"Thanks, Ellsworth," said Jules Fougler. "That will be the lead of my review."
+Keating looked at Ike, at the others, his eyes eager. They all seemed remote and
+pure, far above him in the safety of their knowledge, but their faces had hints
+of smiling warmth, a benevolent invitation extended downward.
+Keating drank the sense of their greatness, that spiritual food he sought in
+common here, and felt himself rising through them. They saw their greatness made
+real by him. A circuit was established in the room and the circle closed.
+Everybody was conscious of that, except Peter Keating.
+#
+Ellsworth Toohey came out in support of the cause of modern architecture.
+418
+
+In the past ten years, while most of the new residences continued to be built as
+faithful historical copies, the principles of Henry Cameron had won the field of
+commercial structures: the factories, the office buildings, the skyscrapers. It
+was a pale, distorted victory; a reluctant compromise that consisted of omitting
+columns and pediments, allowing a few stretches of wall to remain naked,
+apologizing for a shape--good through accident--by finishing it off with an edge
+of simplified Grecian volutes. Many stole Cameron’s forms; few understood his
+thinking. The sole part of his argument irresistible to the owners of new
+structures was financial economy; he won to that extent.
+In the countries of Europe, most prominently in Germany, a new school of
+building had been growing for a long time: it consisted of putting up four walls
+and a flat top over them, with a few openings. This was called new architecture.
+The freedom from arbitrary rules, for which Cameron had fought, the freedom that
+imposed a great new responsibility on the creative builder, became mere
+elimination of all effort, even the effort of mastering historical styles. It
+became a rigid set of new rules--the discipline of conscious incompetence,
+creative poverty made into a system, mediocrity boastfully confessed.
+"A building creates its own beauty, and its ornament is derived from the rules
+of its theme and its structure," Cameron had said. "A building needs no beauty,
+no ornament and no theme," said the new architects. It was safe to say it.
+Cameron and a few men had broken the path and paved it with their lives. Other
+men, of whom there were greater numbers, the men who had been safe in copying
+the Parthenon, saw the danger and found a way to security: to walk Cameron’s
+path and make it lead them to a new Parthenon, an easier Parthenon in the shape
+of a packing crate of glass and concrete. The palm tree had broken through; the
+fungus came to feed on it, to deform it, to hide it, to pull it back into the
+common jungle.
+The jungle found its words.
+In "One Small Voice," subtitled "I Swim with the Current," Ellsworth Toohey
+wrote:
+#
+"We have hesitated for a long time to acknowledge the powerful phenomenon known
+as Modern Architecture. Such caution is requisite in anyone who stands in the
+position of mentor to the public taste. Too often, isolated manifestations of
+anomaly can be mistaken for a broad popular movement, and one should be careful
+not to ascribe to them a significance they do not deserve. But Modern
+Architecture has stood the test of time, has answered a demand of the masses,
+and we are glad to salute it.
+"It is not amiss to offer a measure of recognition to the pioneers of this
+movement, such as the late Henry Cameron. Premonitory echoes of the new grandeur
+can be found in some of his work. But like all pioneers he was still bound by
+the inherited prejudices of the past, by the sentimentality of the middle class
+from which he came. He succumbed to the superstition of beauty and ornament,
+even though the ornament was of his own devising, and, consequently, inferior to
+that of established historical forms.
+"It remained for the power of a broad, collective movement to bring Modern
+Architecture to its full and true expression. Now it can be seen--growing
+throughout the world--not as a chaos of individual fancies, but as a cohesive,
+organized discipline which makes severe demands upon the artist, among them the
+demand to subordinate himself to the collective nature of his craft.
+419
+
+"The rules of this new architecture have been formulated by the vast process of
+popular creation. They are as strict as the rules of Classicism. They demand
+unadorned simplicity--like the honesty of the unspoiled common man. Just as in
+the passing age of international bankers every building had to have an
+ostentatious cornice, so now the coming age ordains that every building have a
+flat roof. Just as the imperialist era of humanity required that every house
+have corner windows--symbol of the sunshine distributed equally to all.
+"The discriminating will see the social significance eloquent in the forms of
+this new architecture. Under the old system of exploitation, the most useful
+social elements--the workers--were never permitted to realize their importance;
+their practical functions were kept hidden and disguised; thus a master had his
+servants dressed up in fancy gold-braided livery. This was reflected in the
+architecture of the period: the functional elements of a building--its doors,
+windows, stairways--were hidden under the scrolls of pointless ornamentation.
+But in a modern building, it is precisely these useful elements--symbols of
+toil--that come starkly in the open. Do we not hear in this the voice of a new
+world where the worker shall come into his own?
+"As the best example of Modern Architecture in America, we call to your
+attention the new plant of the Bassett Brush Company, soon to be completed. It
+is a small building, but in its modest proportions it embodies all the grim
+simplicity of the new discipline and presents an invigorating example of the
+Grandeur of the Little. It was designed by Augustus Webb, a young architect of
+great promise."
+#
+Meeting Toohey a few days later, Peter Keating asked, disturbed:
+"Say, Ellsworth, did you mean it?"
+"What?"
+"About modern architecture."
+"Of course I meant it. How did you like my little piece?"
+"Oh, I thought it was very beautiful. Very convincing. But say, Ellsworth,
+why...why did you pick Gus Webb? After all, I’ve done some modernistic things in
+the last few years. The Palmer Building was quite bare, and the Mowry Building
+was nothing but roof and windows, and the Sheldon Warehouse was..."
+"Now, Peter, don’t be a hog. I’ve done pretty well by you, haven’t I? Let me
+give somebody else a boost once in a while."
+At a luncheon where he had to speak on architecture, Peter Keating stated:
+"In reviewing my career to date, I came to the conclusion that I have worked on
+a true principle: the principle that constant change is a necessity of life.
+Since buildings are an indispensable part of life, it follows that architecture
+must change constantly. I have never developed any architectural prejudices for
+myself, but insisted on keeping my mind open to all the voices of the times. The
+fanatics who went around preaching that all structures must be modern were just
+as narrow-minded as the hidebound conservatives who demanded that we employ
+nothing but historical styles. I do not apologize for those of my buildings
+which were designed in the Classical tradition. They were an answer to the need
+of their era. Neither do I apologize for the buildings which I designed in the
+modern style. They represent the coming better world. It is my opinion that in
+the humble realization of this principle lies the reward and the joy of being an
+420
+
+architect."
+There was gratifying publicity, and many flattering comments of envy in
+professional circles, when the news of Peter Keating’s selection to build
+Stoneridge was made public. He tried to recapture his old pleasure in such
+manifestations. He failed. He still felt something that resembled gladness, but
+it was faded and thin.
+The effort of designing Stoneridge seemed a load too vast to lift. He did not
+mind the circumstances through which he had obtained it; that, too, had become
+pale and weightless in his mind, accepted and almost forgotten. He simply could
+not face the task of designing the great number of houses that Stoneridge
+required. He felt very tired. He felt tired when he awakened in the morning, and
+he found himself waiting all day for the time when he would be able to go back
+to bed.
+He turned Stoneridge over to Neil Dumont and Bennett. "Go ahead," he said
+wearily, "do what you want."
+"What style, Pete?" Dumont asked. "Oh, make it some sort of period--the small
+home owners won’t go for it otherwise. But trim it down a little--for the press
+comments. Give it historical touches and a modern feeling. Any way you wish. I
+don’t care."
+Dumont and Bennett went ahead. Keating changed a few roof lines on their
+sketches, a few windows. The preliminary drawings were approved by Wynand’s
+office. Keating did not know whether Wynand had approved in person. He did not
+see Wynand again.
+Dominique had been away a month, when Guy Francon announced his retirement.
+Keating had told him about the divorce, offering no explanation. Francon had
+taken the news calmly. He had said: "I expected it. It’s all right, Peter. It’s
+probably not your fault nor hers." He had not mentioned it since. Now he gave no
+explanation of his retirement, only: "I told you it was coming, long ago. I’m
+tired. Good luck, Peter."
+The responsibility of the firm on his lonely shoulders and the prospect of his
+solitary name on the office door left Keating uneasy. He needed a partner. He
+chose Neil Dumont. Neil had grace and distinction. He was another Lucius Heyer.
+The firm became Peter Keating & Cornelius Dumont. Some sort of drunken
+celebration of the event was held by a few friends, but Keating did not attend
+it. He had promised to attend, but he forgot about it, went for a solitary
+weekend in the snowbound country, and did not remember the celebration until the
+morning after it was held, when he was walking alone down a frozen country road.
+Stoneridge was the last contract signed by the firm of Francon & Keating.
+
+7.
+WHEN Dominique stepped off the train in New York, Wynand was there to meet her.
+She had not written to him nor heard from him during the weeks of her residence
+in Reno; she had notified no one of her return. But his figure standing on the
+platform, standing calmly, with an air of finality, told her that he had kept in
+touch with her lawyers, had followed every step of the divorce proceedings, had
+known the date when the decree was granted, the hour when she took the train and
+the number of her compartment.
+421
+
+He did not move forward when he saw her. It was she who walked to him, because
+she knew that he wanted to see her walking, if only the short space between
+them. She did not smile, but her face had the lovely serenity that can become a
+smile without transition.
+"Hello, Gail."
+"Hello, Dominique."
+She had not thought of him in his absence, not sharply, not with a personal
+feeling of his reality, but now she felt an immediate recognition, a sense of
+reunion with someone known and needed.
+He said: "Give me your baggage checks, I’ll have it attended to later; my car is
+outside."
+She handed him the checks and he slipped them into his pocket. They knew they
+must turn and walk up the platform to the exit, but the decisions both had made
+in advance broke down in the same instant, because they did not turn, but
+remained standing, looking at each other.
+He made the first effort to correct the breach. He smiled lightly.
+"If I had the right to say it, I’d say that I couldn’t have endured the waiting
+had I known that you’d look as you do. But since I have no such right, I’m not
+going to say it."
+She laughed. "All right, Gail. That was a form of pretense, too--our being too
+casual. It makes things more important, not less, doesn’t it? Let’s say whatever
+we wish."
+"I love you," he said, his voice expressionless, as if the words were a
+statement of pain and not addressed to her.
+"I’m glad to be back with you, Gail. I didn’t know I would be, but I’m glad."
+"In what way, Dominique?"
+"I don’t know. In a way of contagion from you, I think. In a way of finality and
+peace."
+Then they noticed that this was said in the middle of a crowded platform, with
+people and baggage racks hurrying past.
+They walked out to the street, to his car. She did not ask where they were
+going; and did not care. She sat silently beside him. She felt divided, most of
+her swept by a wish not to resist, and a small part of her left to wonder about
+it. She felt a desire to let him carry her--a feeling of confidence without
+appraisal, not a happy confidence, but confidence. After a while, she noticed
+that her hand lay in his, the length of her gloved fingers held to the length of
+his, only the spot of her bare wrist pressed to his skin. She had not noticed
+him take her hand; it seemed so natural and what she had wanted from the moment
+of seeing him. But she could not allow herself to want it.
+"Where are we going, Gail?" she asked.
+"To get the license. Then to the judge’s office. To be married."
+422
+
+She sat up slowly, turning to face him. She did not withdraw her hand, but her
+fingers became rigid, conscious, taken away from him.
+"No," she said.
+She smiled and held the smile too long, in deliberate, fixed precision. He
+looked at her calmly.
+"I want a real wedding, Gail. I want it at the most ostentatious hotel in town.
+I want engraved invitations, guests, mobs of guests, celebrities, flowers, flash
+bulbs and newsreel cameras. I want the kind of wedding the public expects of
+Gail Wynand."
+He released her fingers, simply, without resentment. He looked abstracted for a
+moment, as if he were calculating a problem in arithmetic, not too difficult.
+Then he said:
+"All right. That will take a week to arrange. I could have it done tonight, but
+if it’s engraved invitations, we must give the guests a week’s notice at the
+least. Otherwise it would look abnormal and you want a normal Gail Wynand
+wedding. I’ll have to take you to a hotel now, where you can live for a week. I
+had not planned for this, so I’ve made no reservations. Where would you like to
+stay?"
+"At your penthouse."
+"No."
+"The Nordland, then."
+He leaned forward and said to the chauffeur:
+"The Nordland, John."
+In the lobby of the hotel, he said to her:
+"I will see you a week from today, Tuesday, at the Noyes-Belmont, at four
+o’clock in the afternoon. The invitations will have to be in the name of your
+father. Let him know that I’ll get in touch with him. I’ll attend to the rest."
+He bowed, his manner unchanged, his calm still holding the same peculiar quality
+made of two things: the mature control of a man so certain of his capacity for
+control that it could seem casual, and a childlike simplicity of accepting
+events as if they were subject to no possible change.
+She did not see him during that week. She found herself waiting impatiently.
+She saw him again when she stood beside him, facing a judge who pronounced the
+words of the marriage ceremony over the silence of six hundred people in the
+floodlighted ballroom of the Noyes-Belmont Hotel.
+The background she had wished was set so perfectly that it became its own
+caricature, not a specific society wedding, but an impersonal prototype of
+lavish, exquisite vulgarity. He had understood her wish and obeyed scrupulously;
+he had refused himself the relief of exaggeration, he had not staged the event
+crudely, but made it beautiful in the exact manner Gail Wynand, the publisher,
+would have chosen had he wished to be married in public. But Gail Wynand did not
+wish to be married in public.
+423
+
+He made himself fit the setting, as if he were part of the bargain, subject to
+the same style. When he entered, she saw him looking at the mob of guests as if
+he did not realize that such a mob was appropriate to a Grand Opera premiere or
+a royal rummage sale, not to the solemn climax of his life. He looked correct,
+incomparably distinguished.
+Then she stood with him, the mob becoming a heavy silence and a gluttonous stare
+behind him, and they faced the judge together. She wore a long, black dress with
+a bouquet of fresh jasmine, his present, attached by a black band to her wrist.
+Her face in the halo of a black lace hat was raised to the judge who spoke
+slowly, letting his words hang one by one in the air.
+She glanced at Wynand. He was not looking at her nor at the judge. Then she saw
+that he was alone in that room. He held this moment and he made of it, of the
+glare, of the vulgarity, a silent height of his own. He had not wished a
+religious ceremony, which he did not respect, and he could have less respect for
+the state’s functionary reciting a formula before him--but he made the rite an
+act of pure religion. She thought, if she were being married to Roark in such a
+setting, Roark would stand like this.
+Afterward, the mockery of the monster reception that followed left him immune.
+He posed with her for the battery of press cameras and he complied gracefully
+with all the demands of the reporters, a special, noisier mob within the mob. He
+stood with her in the receiving line, shaking an assembly belt of hands that
+unrolled past them for hours. He looked untouched by the lights, the haystacks
+of Easter lilies, the sounds of a string orchestra, the river of people flowing
+on and breaking into a delta when it reached the champagne; untouched by these
+guests who had come here driven by boredom, by an envious hatred, a reluctant
+submission to an invitation bearing his dangerous name, a scandal-hungry
+curiosity. He looked as if he did not know that they took his public immolation
+as their rightful due, that they considered their presence as the indispensable
+seal of sacrament upon the occasion, that of all the hundreds he and his bride
+were the only ones to whom the performance was hideous.
+She watched him intently. She wanted to see him take pleasure in all this, if
+only for a moment. Let him accept and join, just once, she thought, let him show
+the soul of the New York Banner in its proper element. She saw no acceptance.
+She saw a hint of pain, at times; but even the pain did not reach him
+completely. And she thought of the only other man she knew who had spoken about
+suffering that went down only to a certain point.
+When the last congratulations had drifted past them, they were free to leave by
+the rules of the occasion. But he made no move to leave. She knew he was waiting
+for her decision. She walked away from him into the currents of guests; she
+smiled, bowed and listened to offensive nonsense, a glass of champagne in her
+hand.
+She saw her father in the throng. He looked proud and wistful; he seemed
+bewildered. He had taken the announcement of her marriage quietly; he had said:
+"I want you to be happy, Dominique. I want it very much. I hope he’s the right
+man." His tone had said that he was not certain.
+She saw Ellsworth Toohey in the crowd. He noticed her looking at him and turned
+away quickly. She wanted to laugh aloud; but the matter of Ellsworth Toohey
+caught off guard did not seem important enough to laugh about now.
+Alvah Scarret pushed his way toward her. He was making a poor effort at a
+suitable expression, but his face looked hurt and sullen. He muttered something
+rapid about his wishes for her happiness, but then he said distinctly and with a
+424
+
+lively anger:
+"But why, Dominique? Why?"
+She could not quite believe that Alvah Scarret would permit himself the
+crudeness of what the question seemed to mean. She asked coldly:
+"What are you talking about, Alvah?"
+"The veto, of course."
+"What veto?"
+"You know very well what veto. Now I ask you, with every sheet in the city here,
+every damn one of them, the lousiest tabloid included, and the wire services
+too--everything but the Banner! Everything but the Wynand papers! What am I to
+tell people? How am I to explain? Is that a thing for you to do to a former
+comrade of the trade?"
+"You’d better repeat that, Alvah."
+"You mean you didn’t know that Gail wouldn’t allow a single one of our guys
+here? That we won’t have any stories tomorrow, not a spread, not a picture,
+nothing but two lines on page eighteen?"
+"No," she said, "I didn’t know it."
+He wondered at the sudden jerk of her movement as she turned away from him. She
+handed the champagne glass to the first stranger in sight, whom she mistook for
+a waiter. She made her way through the crowd to Wynand.
+"Let’s go, Gail."
+"Yes, my dear."
+She stood, incredulously, in the middle of the drawing room of his penthouse,
+thinking that this place was now her home and how right it looked to be her
+home.
+He watched her. He showed no desire to speak or touch her, only to observe her
+here, in his house, brought here, lifted high over the city; as if the
+significance of the moment were not to be shared, not even with her.
+She moved slowly across the room, took off her hat, leaned against the edge of a
+table. She wondered why her normal desire to say little, to hold things closed,
+broke down before him, why she felt compelled to simple frankness, such as she
+could offer no one else.
+"You’ve had your way after all, Gail. You were married as you wanted to be
+married."
+"Yes, I think so."
+"It was useless to try to torture you."
+"Actually, yes. But I didn’t mind it too much."
+"You didn’t?"
+425
+
+"No. If that’s what you wanted it was only a matter of keeping my promise."
+"But you hated it, Gail."
+"Utterly. What of it? Only the first moment was hard--when you said it in the
+car. Afterward, I was rather glad of it." He spoke quietly, matching her
+frankness; she knew he would leave her the choice--he would follow her
+manner--he would keep silent or admit anything she wished to be admitted.
+"Why?"
+"Didn’t you notice your own mistake--if it was a mistake? You wouldn’t have
+wanted to make me suffer if you were completely indifferent to me."
+"No. It was not a mistake."
+"You’re a good loser, Dominique."
+"I think that’s also contagion from you, Gail. And there’s something I want to
+thank you for."
+"What?"
+"That you barred our wedding from the Wynand papers." He looked at her, his eyes
+alert in a special way for a moment, then he smiled.
+"It’s out of character--your thanking me for that."
+"It was out of character for you to do it."
+"I had to. But I thought you’d be angry."
+"I should have been. But I wasn’t. I’m not. I thank you."
+"Can one feel gratitude for gratitude? It’s a little hard to express, but that’s
+what I feel, Dominique."
+She looked at the soft light on the walls around her. That lighting was part of
+the room, giving the walls a special texture of more than material or color. She
+thought that there were other rooms beyond these walls, rooms she had never seen
+which were hers now. And she found that she wanted them to be hers.
+"Gail, I haven’t asked you what we are to do now. Are we going away? Are we
+having a honeymoon? Funny, I haven’t even wondered about it. I thought of the
+wedding and nothing beyond. As if it stopped there and you took over from then
+on. Also out of character, Gail."
+"But not in my favor, this time. Passivity is not a good sign. Not for you."
+"It might be--if I’m glad of it."
+"Might. Though it won’t last. No, we’re not going anywhere. Unless you wish to
+go."
+"No."
+"Then we stay here. Another peculiar manner of making an exception. The proper
+manner for you and me. Going away has always been running--for both of us. This
+time, we don’t run."
+426
+
+"Yes, Gail."
+When he held her and kissed her, her arm lay bent, pressed between her body and
+his, her hand at her shoulder--and she felt her cheek touching the faded jasmine
+bouquet on her wrist, its perfume still intact, still a delicate suggestion of
+spring.
+When she entered his bedroom, she found that it was not the place she had seen
+photographed in countless magazines. The glass cage had been demolished. The
+room built in its place was a solid vault without a single window. It was
+lighted and air-conditioned, but neither light nor air came from the outside.
+She lay in his bed and she pressed her palms to the cold, smooth sheet at her
+sides, not to let her arms move and touch him. But her rigid indifference did
+not drive him to helpless anger. He understood. He laughed. She heard him
+say--his voice rough, without consideration, amused--"It won’t do, Dominique."
+And she knew that this barrier would not be held between them, that she had no
+power to hold it. She felt the answer in her body, an answer of hunger, of
+acceptance, of pleasure. She thought that it was not a matter of desire, not
+even a matter of the sexual act, but only that man was the life force and woman
+could respond to nothing else; that this man had the will of life, the prime
+power, and this act was only its simplest statement, and she was responding not
+to the act nor to the man, but to that force within him.
+#
+"Well?" asked Ellsworth Toohey. "Now do you get the point?"
+He stood leaning informally against the back of Scarret’s chair, and Scarret sat
+staring down at a hamper full of mail by the side of his desk.
+"Thousands," sighed Scarret, "thousands, Ellsworth. You ought to see what they
+call him. Why didn’t he print the story of his wedding? What’s he ashamed of?
+What’s he got to hide? Why didn’t he get married in church, like any decent man?
+How could he marry a divorcee? That’s what they’re all asking. Thousands. And he
+won’t even look at the letters. Gail Wynand, the man they called the seismograph
+of public opinion."
+"That’s right," said Toohey. "That kind of a man."
+"Here’s a sample," Scarret picked up a letter from his desk and read aloud:
+"’I’m a respectable woman and mother of five children and I certainly don’t
+think I want to bring up my children with your newspaper. Have taken same for
+fourteen years, but now that you show that you’re the kind of man that has no
+decency and making a mockery of the holy institution of marriage which is to
+commit adultery with a fallen woman also another man’s wife who gets married in
+a black dress as she jolly well ought to, I won’t read your newspaper any more
+as you’re not a man fit for children, and I’m certainly disappointed in you.
+Very truly yours. Mrs. Thomas Parker.’ I read it to him. He just laughed."
+"Uh-huh," said Toohey.
+"What’s got into him?"
+"It’s nothing that got into him, Alvah. It’s something that got out at last."
+"By the way, did you know that many papers dug up their old pictures of
+Dominique’s nude statue from that goddamn temple and ran it right with the
+wedding story--to show Mrs. Wynand’s interest in art, the bastards! Are they
+427
+
+glad to get back at Gail! Are they giving it to him, the lice! Wonder who
+reminded them of that one."
+"I wouldn’t know."
+"Well, of course, it’s just one of those storms in a teacup. They’ll forget all
+about it in a few weeks. I don’t think it will do much harm."
+"No. Not this incident alone. Not by itself."
+"Huh? Are you predicting something?"
+"Those letters predict it, Alvah. Not the letters as such. But that he wouldn’t
+read them."
+"Oh, it’s no use getting too silly either. Gail knows where to stop and when.
+Don’t make a mountain out of a mo--" He glanced up at Toohey and his voice
+switched to: "Christ, yes, Ellsworth, you’re right. What are we going to do?"
+"Nothing, my friend, nothing. Not for a long time yet." Toohey sat down on the
+edge of Scarret’s desk and let the tip of his pointed shoe play among the
+envelopes in the hamper, tossing them up, making them rustle. He had acquired a
+pleasant habit of dropping in and out of Scarret’s office at all hours. Scarret
+had come to depend on him.
+"Say, Ellsworth," Scarret asked suddenly, "are you really loyal to the Banner!"
+"Alvah, don’t talk in dialect. Nobody’s really that stuffy,"
+"No, I mean it....Well, you know what I mean."
+"Haven’t the faintest idea. Who’s ever disloyal to his bread and butter?"
+"Yeah, that’s so....Still, you know, Ellsworth, I like you a lot, only I’m never
+sure when you’re just talking my language or when it’s really yours."
+"Don’t go getting yourself into psychological complexities. You’ll get all
+tangled up. What’s on your mind?"
+"Why do you still write for the New Frontiers!"
+"For money."
+"Oh, come, that’s chicken feed to you."
+"Well, it’s a prestige magazine. Why shouldn’t I write for them? You haven’t got
+an exclusive on me."
+"No, and I don’t care who you write for on the side. But the New Frontiers has
+been damn funny lately."
+"About what?"
+"About Gail Wynand."
+"Oh, rubbish, Alvah!"
+"No sir, this isn’t rubbish. You just haven’t noticed, guess you don’t read it
+close enough, but I’ve got an instinct about things like that and I know. I know
+428
+
+when it’s just some smart young punk taking potshots or when a magazine means
+business."
+"You’re nervous, Alvah, and you’re exaggerating. The New Frontiers is a liberal
+magazine and they’ve always sniped at Gail Wynand. Everybody has. He’s never
+been any too popular in the trade, you know. Hasn’t hurt him, though, has it?"
+"This is different. I don’t like it when there’s a system behind it, a kind of
+special purpose, like a lot of little trickles dribbling along, all innocently,
+and pretty soon they make a little stream, and it all fits pat, and pretty
+soon..."
+"Getting a persecution mania, Alvah?"
+"I don’t like it. It was all right when people took cracks at his yachts and
+women and a few municipal election scandals--which were never proved," he added
+hastily. "But I don’t like it when it’s that new intelligentsia slang that
+people seem to be going for nowadays: Gail Wynand, the exploiter, Gail Wynand,
+the pirate of capitalism, Gail Wynand, the disease of an era. It’s still crap,
+Ellsworth, only there’s dynamite in that kind of crap."
+"It’s just the modern way of saying the same old things, nothing more. Besides,
+I can’t be responsible for the policy of a magazine just because I sell them an
+article once in a while."
+"Yeah, but...That’s not what I hear."
+"What do you hear?"
+"I hear you’re financing the damn thing."
+"Who, me? With what?"
+"Well, not you yourself exactly. But I hear it was you who got young Ronny
+Pickering, the booze hound, to give them a shot in the arm to the tune of one
+hundred thousand smackers, just about when New Frontiers was going the way of
+all frontiers."
+"Hell, that was just to save Ronny from the town’s more expensive gutters. The
+kid was going to the dogs. Gave him a sort of higher purpose in life. And put
+one hundred thousand smackers to better use than the chorus cuties who’d have
+got it out of him anyway."
+"Yeah, but you could’ve attached a little string to the gift, slipped word to
+the editors that they’d better lay off Gail or else."
+"The New Frontiers is not the Banner, Alvah. It’s a magazine of principles. One
+doesn’t attach strings to its editors and one doesn’t tell them ’or else.’"
+"In this game, Ellsworth? Whom are you kidding?"
+"Well, if it will set your mind at rest, I’ll tell you something you haven’t
+heard. It’s not supposed to be known--it was done through a lot of proxies. Did
+you know that I just got Mitchell Layton to buy a nice fat chunk of the Banner?"
+"No!"
+"Yes."
+429
+
+"Christ, Ellsworth, that’s great! Mitchell Layton? We can use a reservoir like
+that and...Wait a minute. Mitchell Layton?"
+"Yes. What’s wrong with Mitchell Layton?"
+"Isn’t he the little boy who couldn’t digest grandpaw’s money?"
+"Grandpaw left him an awful lot of money."
+"Yeah, but he’s a crackpot. He’s the one who’s been a Yogi, then a vegetarian,
+then a Unitarian, then a nudist--and now he’s gone to build a palace of the
+proletariat in Moscow."
+"So what?"
+"But Jesus!--a Red among our stockholders?"
+"Mitch isn’t a Red. How can one be a Red with a quarter of a billion dollars?
+He’s just a pale tea-rose. Mostly yellow. But a nice kid at heart."
+"But--on the Banner!"
+"Alvah, you’re an ass. Don’t you see? I’ve made him put some dough into a good,
+solid, conservative paper. That’ll cure him of his pink notions and set him in
+the right direction. Besides, what harm can he do? Your dear Gail controls his
+papers, doesn’t he?"
+"Does Gail know about this?"
+"No. Dear Gail hasn’t been as watchful in the last five years as he used to be.
+And you’d better not tell him. You see the way Gail’s going. He’ll need a little
+pressure. And you’ll need the dough. Be nice to Mitch Layton. He can come in
+handy."
+"That’s so."
+"It is. You see? My heart’s in the right place. I’ve helped a puny little
+liberal mag like the New Frontiers, but I’ve also brought a much more
+substantial hunk of cash to a big stronghold of arch-conservatism such as the
+New York Banner."
+"So you have. Damn decent of you, too, considering that you’re a kind of radical
+yourself."
+"Now are you going to talk about any disloyalty?"
+"Guess not. Guess you’ll stand by the old Banner."
+"Of course I will. Why, I love the Banner. I’d do anything for it. Why, I’d give
+my life for the New York Banner."
+
+8.
+WALKING the soil of a desert island holds one anchored to the rest of the earth;
+but in their penthouse, with the telephone disconnected, Wynand and Dominique
+had no feeling of the fifty-seven floors below them, of steel shafts braced
+430
+
+against granite--and it seemed to them that their home was anchored in space,
+not an island, but a planet. The city became a friendly sight, an abstraction
+with which no possible communication could be established, like the sky, a
+spectacle to be admired, but of no direct concern in their lives.
+For two weeks after their wedding they never left the penthouse. She could have
+pressed the button of the elevator and broken these weeks any time she wished;
+she did not wish it. She had no desire to resist, to wonder, to question. It was
+enchantment and peace.
+He sat talking to her for hours when she wanted. He was content to sit silently,
+when she preferred, and look at her as he looked at the objects in his art
+gallery, with the same distant, undisturbing glance. He answered any question
+she put to him. He never asked questions. He never spoke of what he felt. When
+she wished to be alone, he did not call for her. One evening she sat reading in
+her room and saw him standing at the frozen parapet of the dark roof garden
+outside, not looking back at the house, only standing in the streak of light
+from her window.
+When the two weeks ended, he went back to his work, to the office of the Banner.
+But the sense of isolation remained, like a theme declared and to be preserved
+through all their future days. He came home in the evening and the city ceased
+to exist. He had no desire to go anywhere. He invited no guests.
+He never mentioned it, but she knew that he did not want her to step out of the
+house, neither with him nor alone. It was a quiet obsession which he did not
+expect to enforce. When he came home, he asked: "Have you been out?"--never:
+"Where have you been?" It was not jealousy--the "where" did not matter. When she
+wanted to buy a pair of shoes, he had three stores send a collection of shoes
+for her choice--it prevented her visit to a store. When she said she wanted to
+see a certain picture, he had a projection room built on the roof.
+She obeyed, for the first few months. When she realized that she loved their
+isolation, she broke it at once. She made him accept invitations and she invited
+guests to their house. He complied without protest.
+But he maintained a wall she could not break--the wall he had erected between
+his wife and his newspapers. Her name never appeared in their pages. He stopped
+every attempt to draw Mrs. Gail Wynand into public life--to head committees,
+sponsor charity drives, endorse crusades. He did not hesitate to open her
+mail--if it bore an official letterhead that betrayed its purpose--to destroy it
+without answer and to tell her that he had destroyed it. She shrugged and said
+nothing.
+Yet he did not seem to share her contempt for his papers. He did not allow her
+to discuss them. She could not discover what he thought of them, nor what he
+felt. Once, when she commented on an offensive editorial, he said coldly:
+"I’ve never apologized for the Banner. I never will."
+"But this is really awful, Gail."
+"I thought you married me as the publisher of the Banner."
+"I thought you didn’t like to think of that."
+"What I like or dislike doesn’t concern you. Don’t expect me to change the
+Banner or sacrifice it. I wouldn’t do that for anyone on earth."
+431
+
+She laughed. "I wouldn’t ask it, Gail."
+He did not laugh in answer.
+In his office in the Banner Building, he worked with a new energy, a kind of
+elated, ferocious drive that surprised the men who had known him in his most
+ambitious years. He stayed in the office all night when necessary, as he had not
+done for a long time. Nothing changed in his methods and policy. Alvah Scarret
+watched him with satisfaction. "We were wrong about him, Ellsworth," said
+Scarret to his constant companion, "it’s the same old Gail, God bless him.
+Better than ever."
+"My dear Alvah," said Toohey, "nothing is ever as simple as you think--nor as
+fast."
+"But he’s happy. Don’t you see that he’s happy?"
+"To be happy is the most dangerous thing that could have happened to him. And,
+as a humanitarian for once, I mean this for his own sake."
+Sally Brent decided to outwit her boss. Sally Brent was one of the proudest
+possessions of the Banner, a stout, middle-aged woman who dressed like a model
+for a style show of the twenty-first century and wrote like a chambermaid. She
+had a large personal following among the readers of the Banner. Her popularity
+made her overconfident.
+Sally Brent decided to do a story on Mrs. Gail Wynand. It was just her type of
+story and there it was, simply going to waste. She gained admittance to Wynand’s
+penthouse, using the tactics of gaining admittance to places where one is not
+wanted which she had been taught as a well-trained Wynand employee. She made her
+usual dramatic entrance, wearing a black dress with a fresh sunflower on her
+shoulder--her constant ornament that had become a personal trade-mark--and she
+said to Dominique breathlessly: "Mrs. Wynand, I’ve come here to help you deceive
+your husband!"
+Then she winked at her own naughtiness and explained: "Our dear Mr. Wynand has
+been unfair to you, my dear, depriving you of your rightful fame, for some
+reason which I just simply can’t understand. But we’ll fix him, you and I. What
+can a man do when we girls get together? He simply doesn’t know what good copy
+you are. So just give me your story, and I’ll write it, and it will be so good
+that he just simply won’t be able not to run it."
+Dominique was alone at home, and she smiled in a manner which Sally Brent had
+never seen before, so the right adjectives did not occur to Sally’s usually
+observant mind. Dominique gave her the story. She gave the exact kind of story
+Sally had dreamed about.
+"Yes, of course I cook his breakfast," said Dominique. "Ham and eggs is his
+favorite dish, just plain ham and eggs...Oh yes, Miss Brent, I’m very happy. I
+open my eyes in the morning and I say to myself, it can’t be true, it’s not poor
+little me who’s become the wife of the great Gail Wynand who had all the
+glamorous beauties of the world to choose from. You see, I’ve been in love with
+him for years. He was just a dream to me, a beautiful, impossible dream. And now
+it’s like a dream come true....Please, Miss Brent, take this message from me to
+the women of America: Patience is always rewarded and romance is just around the
+corner. I think it’s a beautiful thought and perhaps it will help other girls as
+it has helped me....Yes, all I want of life is to make Gail happy, to share his
+joys and sorrows, to be a good wife and mother."
+432
+
+Alvah Scarret read the story and liked it so much that he lost all caution. "Run
+it off, Alvah," Sally Brent urged him, "just have a proof run off and leave it
+on his desk. He’ll okay it, see if he won’t." That evening Sally Brent was
+fired. Her costly contract was bought off--it had three more years to run--and
+she was told never to enter the Banner Building again for any purpose
+whatsoever.
+Scarret protested in panic: "Gail, you can’t fire Sally! Not Sally!"
+"When I can’t fire anyone I wish on my paper, I’ll close it and blow up the
+God-damn building," said Wynand calmly.
+"But her public! We’ll lose her public!"
+"To hell with her public."
+That night, at dinner, Wynand took from his pocket a crumpled wad of paper--the
+proof cut of the story--and threw it, without a word, at Dominique’s face across
+the table. It hit her cheek and fell to the floor. She picked it up, unrolled
+it, saw what it was and laughed aloud.
+Sally Brent wrote an article on Gail Wynand’s love life. In a gay, intellectual
+manner, in the terms of sociological study, the article presented material such
+as no pulp magazine would have accepted. It was published in the New Frontiers.
+#
+Wynand bought Dominique a necklace designed at his special order. It was made of
+diamonds without visible settings, spaced wide apart in an irregular pattern,
+like a handful scattered accidentally, held together by platinum chains made
+under a microscope, barely noticeable. When he clasped it about her neck, it
+looked like drops of water fallen at random.
+She stood before a mirror. She slipped her dressing gown off her shoulders and
+let the raindrops glitter on her skin. She said:
+"That life story of the Bronx housewife who murdered her husband’s young
+mistress is pretty sordid, Gail. But I think there’s something dirtier--the
+curiosity of the people who like to read about it. And then there’s something
+dirtier still--the people who pander to that curiosity. Actually, it was that
+housewife--she has piano legs and such a baggy neck in her pictures--who made
+this necklace possible. It’s a beautiful necklace. I shall be proud to wear it."
+He smiled; the sudden brightness of his eyes had an odd quality of courage.
+"That’s one way of looking at it," he said. "There’s another. I like to think
+that I took the worst refuse of the human spirit--the mind of that housewife and
+the minds of the people who like to read about her--and I made of it this
+necklace on your shoulders. I like to think that I was an alchemist capable of
+performing so great a purification."
+She saw no apology, no regret, no resentment as he looked at her. It was a
+strange glance; she had noticed it before; a glance of simple worship. And it
+made her realize that there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper
+himself an object of reverence.
+She was sitting before her mirror when he entered her dressing room on the
+following night. He bent down, he pressed his lips to the back of her neck--and
+he saw a square of paper attached to the corner of her mirror. It was the
+decoded copy of the cablegram that had ended her career on the Banner. FIRE THE
+433
+
+BITCH. G W
+He lifted his shoulders, to stand erect behind her. He asked:
+"How did you get that?"
+"Ellsworth Toohey gave it to me. I thought it was worth preserving. Of course, I
+didn’t know it would ever become so appropriate."
+He inclined his head gravely, acknowledging the authorship, and said nothing
+else.
+She expected to find the cablegram gone next morning. But he had not touched it.
+She would not remove it. It remained on display on the corner of her mirror.
+When he held her in his arms, she often saw his eyes move to that square of
+paper. She could not tell what he thought.
+#
+In the spring, a publishers’ convention took him away from New York for a week.
+It was their first separation. Dominique surprised him by coming to meet him at
+the airport when he returned. She was gay and gentle; her manner held a promise
+he had never expected, could not trust, and found himself trusting completely.
+When he entered the drawing room of their penthouse and slumped down, half
+stretching on a couch, she knew that he wanted to lie still here, to feel the
+recaptured safety of his own world. She saw his eyes, open, delivered to her,
+without defense. She stood straight, ready. She said:
+"You’d better dress, Gail. We’re going to the theater tonight."
+He lifted himself to a sitting posture. He smiled, the slanting ridges standing
+out on his forehead. She had a cold feeling of admiration for him: the control
+was perfect, all but these ridges. He said:
+"Fine. Black tie or white?"
+"White. I have tickets for No Skin Off Your Nose. They were very hard to get."
+It was too much; it seemed too ludicrous to be part of this moment’s contest
+between them. He broke down by laughing frankly, in helpless disgust.
+"Good God, Dominique, not that one!"
+"Why, Gail, it’s the biggest hit in town. Your own critic, Jules Fougler"--he
+stopped laughing. He understood--"said it was the great play of our age.
+Ellsworth Toohey said it was the fresh voice of the coming new world. Alvah
+Scarret said it was not written in ink, but in the milk of human kindness. Sally
+Brent--before you fired her--said it made her laugh with a lump in her throat.
+Why, it’s the godchild of the Banner. I thought you would certainly want to see
+it."
+"Yes, of course," he said.
+He got up and went to dress.
+No Skin Off Your Nose had been running for many months. Ellsworth Toohey had
+mentioned regretfully in his column that the title of the play had had to be
+changed slightly--"as a concession to the stuffy prudery of the middle class
+which still controls our theater. It is a crying example of interference with
+434
+
+the freedom of the artist. Now don’t let’s hear any more of that old twaddle
+about ours being a free society. Originally, the title of this beautiful play
+was an authentic line drawn from the language of the people, with the brave,
+simple eloquence of folk expression."
+Wynand and Dominique sat in the center of the fourth row, not looking at each
+other, listening to the play. The things being done on the stage were merely
+trite and crass; but the undercurrent made them frightening. There was an air
+about the ponderous inanities spoken, which the actors had absorbed like an
+infection; it was in their smirking faces, in the slyness of their voices; in
+their untidy gestures. It was an air of inanities uttered as revelations and
+insolently demanding acceptance as such; an air, not of innocent presumption,
+but of conscious effrontery; as if the author knew the nature of his work and
+boasted of his power to make it appear sublime in the minds of his audience and
+thus destroy the capacity for the sublime within them. The work justified the
+verdict of its sponsors: it brought laughs, it was amusing; it was an indecent
+joke, acted out not on the stage but in the audience. It was a pedestal from
+which a god had been torn, and in his place there stood, not Satan with a sword,
+but a corner lout sipping a bottle of Coca-Cola.
+There was silence in the audience, puzzled and humble. When someone laughed, the
+rest joined in, with relief, glad to learn that they were enjoying themselves.
+Jules Fougler had not tried to influence anybody; he had merely made clear--well
+in advance and through many channels--that anyone unable to enjoy this play was,
+basically, a worthless human being. "It’s no use asking for explanations," he
+had said. "Either you’re fine enough to like it or you aren’t."
+In the intermission Wynand heard a stout woman saying: "It’s wonderful. I don’t
+understand it, but I have the feeling that it’s something very important."
+Dominique asked him: "Do you wish to go, Gail?" He said: "No. We’ll stay to the
+end."
+He was silent in the car on their way home. When they entered their drawing
+room, he stood waiting, ready to hear and accept anything. For a moment she felt
+the desire to spare him. She felt empty and very tired. She did not want to hurt
+him; she wanted to seek his help.
+Then she thought again what she had thought in the theater. She thought that
+this play was the creation of the Banner, this was what the Banner had forced
+into life, had fed, upheld, made to triumph. And it was the Banner that had
+begun and ended the destruction of the Stoddard Temple....The New York Banner,
+November 2, 1930--"One Small Voice"--"Sacrilege" by Ellsworth M. Toohey--"The
+Churches of our Childhood" by Alvah Scarret--"Are you happy, Mr.
+Superman?"...And now that destruction was not an event long since past--this was
+not a comparison between two mutually unmeasurable entities, a building and a
+play--it was not an accident, nor a matter of persons, of Ike, Fougler, Toohey,
+herself...and Roark. It was a contest without time, a struggle of two
+abstractions, the thing that had created the building against the things that
+made the play possible--two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple
+statement--two forces that had fought since the world began--and every religion
+had known of them--and there had always been a God and a Devil--only men had
+been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil--he was not single and big, he
+was many and smutty and small. The Banner had destroyed the Stoddard Temple in
+order to make room for this play--it could not do otherwise--there was no middle
+choice, no escape, no neutrality--it was one or the other--it had always
+been--and the contest had many symbols, but no name and no statement....Roark,
+she heard herself screaming inside, Roark...Roark...Roark...
+"Dominique...what’s the matter?"
+435
+
+She heard Wynand’s voice. It was soft and anxious. He had never allowed himself
+to betray anxiety. She grasped the sound as a reflection of her own face, of
+what he had seen in her face.
+She stood straight, and sure of herself, and very silent inside.
+"I’m thinking of you, Gail," she said.
+He waited.
+"Well, Gail? The total passion for the total height?" She laughed, letting her
+arms swing sloppily in the manner of the actors they had seen. "Say, Gail, have
+you got a two-cent stamp with a picture of George Washington on it?...How old
+are you, Gail? How hard have you worked? Your life is more than half over, but
+you’ve seen your reward tonight. Your crowning achievement. Of course, no man is
+ever quite equal to his highest passion. Now if you strive and make a great
+effort, some day you’ll rise to the level of that play!"
+He stood quietly, hearing it, accepting.
+"I think you should take a manuscript of that play and place it on a stand in
+the center of your gallery downstairs. I think you should rechristen your yacht
+and call her No Skin Off Your Nose. I think you should take me--"
+"Keep still."
+"--and put me in the cast and make me play the role of Mary every evening. Mary
+who adopts the homeless muskrat and..."
+"Dominique, keep still."
+"Then talk. I want to hear you talk."
+"I’ve never justified myself to anyone."
+"Well, boast then. That would do just as well."
+"If you want to hear it, it made me sick, that play. As you knew it would. That
+was worse than the Bronx housewife."
+"Much worse."
+"But I can think of something worse still. Writing a great play and offering it
+for tonight’s audience to laugh at. Letting oneself be martyred by the kind of
+people we saw frolicking tonight."
+He saw that something had reached her; he could not tell whether it was an
+answer of surprise or of anger. He did not know how well she recognized these
+words. He went on:
+"It did make me sick. But so have a great many things which the Banner has done.
+It was worse tonight, because there was a quality about it that went beyond the
+usual. A special kind of malice. But if this is popular with fools, it’s the
+Banner’s legitimate province. The Banner was created for the benefit of fools.
+What else do you want me to admit?"
+"What you felt tonight."
+436
+
+"A minor kind of hell. Because you sat there with me. That’s what you wanted,
+wasn’t it? To make me feel the contrast. Still, you miscalculated. I looked at
+the stage and I thought, this is what people are like, such are their spirits,
+but I--I’ve found you, I have you--and the contrast was worth the pain. I did
+suffer tonight, as you wanted, but it was a pain that went only down to a
+certain point and then..."
+"Shut up!" she screamed. "Shut up, God damn you!"
+They stood for a moment, both astonished. He moved first; he knew she needed his
+help; he grasped her shoulders. She tore herself away. She walked across the
+room, to the window; she stood looking at the city, at the great buildings
+spread in black and fire below her.
+After a while she said, her voice toneless:
+"I’m sorry, Gail."
+He did not answer.
+"I had no right to say those things to you." She did not turn, her arms raised,
+holding the frame of the window. "We’re even, Gail. I’m paid back, if that will
+make it better for you. I broke first."
+"I don’t want you to be paid back." He spoke quietly. "Dominique, what was it?"
+"Nothing."
+"What did I make you think of? It wasn’t what I said. It was something else.
+What did the words mean to you?"
+"Nothing."
+"A pain that went only down to a certain point. It was that sentence. Why?" She
+was looking at the city. In the distance she could see the shaft of the Cord
+Building. "Dominique, I’ve seen what you can take. It must be something very
+terrible if it could do that to you. I must know. There’s nothing impossible. I
+can help you against it, whatever it is." She did not answer. "At the theater,
+it was not just that fool play. There was something else for you tonight. I saw
+your face. And then it was the same thing again here. What is it?"
+"Gail," she said softly, "will you forgive me?"
+He let a moment pass; he had not been prepared for that.
+"What have I to forgive you?"
+"Everything. And tonight."
+"That was your privilege. The condition on which you married me. To make me pay
+for the Banner."
+"I don’t want to make you pay for it."
+"Why don’t you want it any more?"
+"It can’t be paid for."
+In the silence she listened to his steps pacing the room behind her.
+437
+
+"Dominique. What was it?"
+"The pain that stops at a certain point? Nothing. Only that you had no right to
+say it. The men who have, pay for that right, a price you can’t afford. But it
+doesn’t matter now. Say it if you wish. I have no right to say it either."
+"That wasn’t all."
+"I think we have a great deal in common, you and I. We’ve committed the same
+treason somewhere. No, that’s a bad word....Yes, I think it’s the right word.
+It’s the only one that has the feeling of what I mean."
+"Dominique, you can’t feel that." His voice sounded strange. She turned to him.
+"Why?"
+"Because that’s what I felt tonight. Treason."
+"Toward whom?"
+"I don’t know. If I were religious, I’d say ’God.’ But I’m not religious."
+"That’s what I meant, Gail."
+"Why should you feel it? The Banner is not your child."
+"There are other forms of the same guilt."
+Then he walked to her across the long room, he held her in his arms, he said:
+"You don’t know the meaning of the kind of words you use. We have a great deal
+in common, but not that. I’d rather you went on spitting at me than trying to
+share my offenses."
+She let her hand rest against the length of his cheek, her fingertips at his
+temple.
+He asked:
+"Will you tell me--now--what it was?"
+"Nothing. I undertook more than I could carry. You’re tired, Gail. Why don’t you
+go on upstairs? Leave me here for a little while. I just want to look at the
+city. Then I’ll join you and I’ll be all right."
+
+9.
+DOMINIQUE stood at the rail of the yacht, the deck warm under her flat sandals,
+the sun on her bare legs, the wind blowing her thin white dress. She looked at
+Wynand stretched in a deck chair before her.
+She thought of the change she noticed in him again aboard ship. She had watched
+him through the months of their summer cruise. She had seen him once running
+down a companionway; the picture remained in her mind; a tall white figure
+thrown forward in a streak of speed and confidence; his hand grasped a railing,
+438
+
+risking deliberately the danger of a sudden break, gaining a new propulsion. He
+was not the corrupt publisher of a popular empire. He was an aristocrat aboard a
+yacht. He looked, she thought, like what one believes aristocracy to be when one
+is young: a brilliant kind of gaiety without guilt.
+She looked at him in the deck chair. She thought that relaxation was attractive
+only in those for whom it was an unnatural state; then even limpness acquired
+purpose. She wondered about him; Gail Wynand, famous for his extraordinary
+capacity; but this was not merely the force of an ambitious adventurer who had
+created a chain of newspapers; this--the quality she saw in him here--the thing
+stretched out under the sun like an answer--this was greater, a first cause, a
+faculty out of universal dynamics.
+"Gail," she said suddenly, involuntarily.
+He opened his eyes to look at her.
+"I wish I had taken a recording of that," he said lazily. "You’d be startled to
+hear what it sounded like. Quite wasted here. I’d like to play it back in a
+bedroom."
+"I’ll repeat it there, if you wish."
+"Thank you, dearest. And I promise not to exaggerate or presume too much. You’re
+not in love with me. You’ve never loved anyone."
+"Why do you think that?"
+"If you loved a man, it wouldn’t be just a matter of a circus wedding and an
+atrocious evening in the theater. You’d put him through total hell."
+"How do you know that, Gail?"
+"Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I’m not the Gail
+Wynand you’d heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If
+you were in love you’d want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because
+that’s the impossible, the inconceivable for you in your relations with people.
+That would be the one gift, the great exception you’d want to offer the man you
+loved. But it wouldn’t be easy for you."
+"If that’s true, then you..."
+"Then I become gentle and humble--to your great astonishment--because I’m the
+worst scoundrel living."
+"I don’t believe that, Gail."
+"No? I’m not the person before last any more?"
+"Not any more."
+"Well, dearest, as a matter of fact, I am."
+"Why do you want to think that?"
+"I don’t want to. But I like to be honest. That has been my only private luxury.
+Don’t change your mind about me. Go on seeing me as you saw me before we met."
+"Gail, that’s not what you want."
+439
+
+"It doesn’t matter what I want. I don’t want anything--except to own you.
+Without any answer from you. It has to be without answer. If you begin to look
+at me too closely, you’ll see things you won’t like at all."
+"What things?"
+"You’re so beautiful, Dominique. It’s such a lovely accident on God’s part that
+there’s one person who matches inside and out."
+"What things, Gail?"
+"Do you know what you’re actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The
+clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work
+of art. That’s the only field where it can be found--art. But you want it in the
+flesh. You’re in love with it. Well, you see, I’ve never had any integrity."
+"How sure are you of that, Gail?"
+"Have you forgotten the Banner?"
+"To hell with the Banner."
+"All right, to hell with the Banner. It’s nice to hear you say that. But the
+Banner’s not the major symptom. That I’ve never practiced any sort of integrity
+is not so important. What’s important is that I’ve never felt any need for it. I
+hate the conception of it. I hate the presumptuousness of the idea."
+"Dwight Carson..." she said. He heard the sound of disgust in her voice.
+He laughed. "Yes, Dwight Carson. The man I bought. The individualist who’s
+become a mob-glorifier and, incidentally, a dipsomaniac. I did that. That was
+worse than the Banner, wasn’t it? You don’t like to be reminded of that?"
+"No."
+"But surely you’ve heard enough screaming about it. All the giants of the spirit
+whom I’ve broken. I don’t think anybody ever realized how much I enjoyed doing
+it. It’s a kind of lust. I’m perfectly indifferent to slugs like Ellsworth
+Toohey or my friend Alvah, and quite willing to leave them in peace. But just
+let me see a man of slightly higher dimension--and I’ve got to make a sort of
+Toohey out of him. I’ve got to. It’s like a sex urge."
+"Why?"
+"I don’t know."
+"Incidentally, you misunderstand Ellsworth Toohey."
+"Possibly. You don’t expect me to waste mental effort to untangle that snail’s
+shell?"
+"And you contradict yourself."
+"Where?"
+"Why didn’t you set out to destroy me?"
+"The exception-making, Dominique. I love you. I had to love you. God help you if
+440
+
+you were a man."
+"Gail--why?"
+"Why have I done all that?"
+"Yes."
+"Power, Dominique. The only thing I ever wanted. To know that there’s not a man
+living whom I can’t force to do--anything. Anything I choose. The man I couldn’t
+break would destroy me. But I’ve spent years finding out how safe I am. They say
+I have no sense of honor, I’ve missed something in life. Well, I haven’t missed
+very much, have I? The thing I’ve missed--it doesn’t exist."
+He spoke in a normal tone of voice, but he noticed suddenly that she was
+listening with the intent concentration needed to hear a whisper of which one
+can afford to lose no syllable.
+"What’s the matter, Dominique? What are you thinking about?"
+"I’m listening to you, Gail."
+She did not say she was listening to his words and to the reason behind them. It
+was suddenly so clear to her that she heard it as an added clause to each
+sentence, even though he had no knowledge of what he was confessing.
+"The worst thing about dishonest people is what they think of as honesty," he
+said. "I know a woman who’s never held to one conviction for three days running,
+but when I told her she had no integrity, she got very tight-lipped and said her
+idea of integrity wasn’t mine; it seems she’d never stolen any money. Well,
+she’s one that’s in no danger from me whatever. I don’t hate her. I hate the
+impossible conception you love so passionately, Dominique."
+"Do you?"
+"I’ve had a lot of fun proving it."
+She walked to him and sat down on the deck beside his chair, the planks smooth
+and hot under her bare legs. He wondered why she looked at him so gently. He
+frowned. She knew that some reflection of what she had understood remained in
+her eyes--and she looked away from him.
+"Gail, why tell me all that? It’s not what you want me to think of you."
+"No. It isn’t. Why tell you now? Want the truth? Because it has to be told.
+Because I want to be honest with you. Only with you and with myself. But I
+wouldn’t have the courage to tell you anywhere else. Not at home. Not ashore.
+Only here--because here it doesn’t seem quite real. Does it?"
+"No."
+"I think I hoped that here you’d accept it--and still think of me as you did
+when you spoke my name in that way I wanted to record."
+She put her head against his chair, her face pressed to his knees, her hand
+dropped, fingers half-curled, on the glistening planks of the deck. She did not
+want to show what she had actually heard him saying about himself today.
+#
+441
+
+On a night of late fall they stood together at the roof-garden parapet, looking
+at the city. The long shafts made of lighted windows were like streams breaking
+out of the black sky, flowing down in single drops to feed the great pool of
+fire below.
+"There they are, Dominique--the great buildings. The skyscrapers. Do you
+remember? They were the first link between us. We’re both in love with them, you
+and I."
+She thought she should resent his right to say it. But she felt no resentment.
+"Yes, Gail. I’m in love with them."
+She looked at the vertical threads of light that were the Cord Building, she
+raised her fingers off the parapet, just enough to touch the place of its unseen
+form on the distant sky. She felt no reproach from it.
+"I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper," he said. "It makes
+him no bigger than an ant--isn’t that the correct bromide for the occasion? The
+God-damn fools! It’s man who made it--the whole incredible mass of stone and
+steel. It doesn’t dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals
+his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique,
+is the creative faculty, the heroic in man."
+"Do you love the heroic in man, Gail?"
+"I love to think of it. I don’t believe it."
+She leaned against the parapet and watched the green lights stretched in a long
+straight line far below. She said:
+"I wish I could understand you."
+"I thought I should be quite obvious. I’ve never hidden anything from you."
+He watched the electric signs that flashed in disciplined spasms over the black
+river. Then he pointed to a blurred light, far to the south, a faint reflection
+of blue.
+"That’s the Banner Building. See, over there?--that blue light. I’ve done so
+many things, but I’ve missed one, the most important. There’s no Wynand Building
+in New York. Some day I’ll build a new home for the Banner. It will be the
+greatest structure of the city and it will bear my name. I started in a
+miserable dump, and the paper was called the Gazette. I was only a stooge for
+some very filthy people. But I thought, then, of the Wynand Building that would
+rise some day. I’ve thought of it all the years since."
+"Why haven’t you built it?"
+"I wasn’t ready for it."
+"Why?"
+"I’m not ready for it now. I don’t know why. I know only that it’s very
+important to me. It will be the final symbol. I’ll know the right time when it
+comes."
+He turned to look out to the west, to a path of dim scattered lights. He
+pointed:
+442
+
+"That’s where I was born. Hell’s Kitchen." She listened attentively; he seldom
+spoke of his beginning. "I was sixteen when I stood on a roof and looked at the
+city, like tonight. And decided what I would be."
+The quality of his voice became a line underscoring the moment, saying: Take
+notice, this is important. Not looking at him, she thought this was what he had
+waited for, this should give her the answer, the key to him. Years ago, thinking
+of Gail Wynand, she had wondered how such a man faced his life and his work; she
+expected boasting and a hidden sense of shame, or impertinence flaunting its own
+guilt. She looked at him. His head lifted, his eyes level on the sky before him,
+he conveyed none of the things she had expected; he conveyed a quality
+incredible in this connection: a sense of gallantry.
+She knew it was a key, but it made the puzzle greater. Yet something within her
+understood, knew the use of that key and made her speak.
+"Gail, fire Ellsworth Toohey."
+He turned to her, bewildered.
+"Why?"
+"Gail, listen." Her voice had an urgency she had never shown in speaking to him.
+"I’ve never wanted to stop Toohey. I’ve even helped him. I thought he was what
+the world deserved. I haven’t tried to save anything from him...or anyone. I
+never thought it would be the Banner--the Banner which he fits best--that I’d
+want to save from him."
+"What on earth are you talking about?"
+"Gail, when I married you, I didn’t know I’d come to feel this kind of loyalty
+to you. It contradicts everything I’ve done, it contradicts so much more than I
+can tell you--it’s a sort of catastrophe for me, a turning point--don’t ask me
+why--it will take me years to understand--I know only that this is what I owe
+you. Fire Ellsworth Toohey. Get him out before it’s too late. You’ve broken many
+much less vicious men and much less dangerous. Fire Toohey, go after him and
+don’t rest until you’ve destroyed every last bit of him."
+"Why? Why should you think of him just now?"
+"Because I know what he’s after."
+"What is he after?"
+"Control of the Wynand papers."
+He laughed aloud; it was not derision or indignation; just pure gaiety greeting
+the point of a silly joke.
+"Gail..." she said helplessly.
+"Oh for God’s sake, Dominique! And here I’ve always respected your judgment."
+"You’ve never understood Toohey."
+"And I don’t care to. Can you see me going after Ellsworth Toohey? A tank to
+eliminate a bedbug? Why should I fire Elsie? He’s the kind that makes money for
+me. People love to read his twaddle. I don’t fire good booby-traps like that.
+443
+
+He’s as valuable to me as a piece of flypaper."
+"That’s the danger. Part of it."
+"His wonderful following? I’ve had bigger and better sob-sisters on my payroll.
+When a few of them had to be kicked out, that was the end of them. Their
+popularity stopped at the door of the Banner. But the Banner went on."
+"It’s not his popularity. It’s the special nature of it. You can’t fight him on
+his terms. You’re only a tank--and that’s a very clean, innocent weapon. An
+honest weapon that goes first, out in front, and mows everything down or takes
+every counterblow. He’s a corrosive gas. The kind that eats lungs out. I think
+there really is a secret to the core of evil and he has it. I don’t know what it
+is. I know how he uses it and what he’s after."
+"Control of the Wynand papers?"
+"Control of the Wynand papers--as one of the means to an end."
+"What end?"
+"Control of the world."
+He said with patient disgust: "What is this, Dominique? What sort of gag and
+what for?"
+"I’m serious, Gail. I’m terribly serious."
+"Control of the world, my dear, belongs to men like me. The Tooheys of this
+earth wouldn’t know how to dream about it."
+"I’ll try to explain. It’s very difficult. The hardest thing to explain is the
+glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see. But if you’ll
+listen..."
+"I won’t listen. You’ll forgive me, but discussing the idea of Ellsworth Toohey
+as a threat to me is ridiculous. Discussing it seriously is offensive."
+"Gail, I..."
+"No. Darling, I don’t think you really understand much about the Banner. And I
+don’t want you to. I don’t want you to take any part in it. Forget it. Leave the
+Banner to me."
+"Is it a demand, Gail?"
+"It’s an ultimatum."
+"All right."
+"Forget it. Don’t go acquiring horror complexes about anyone as big as Ellsworth
+Toohey. It’s not like you."
+"All right, Gail. Let’s go in. It’s too cold for you here without an overcoat."
+He chuckled softly--it was the kind of concern she had never shown for him
+before. He took her hand and kissed her palm, holding it against his face.
+#
+444
+
+For many weeks, when left alone together, they spoke little and never about each
+other. But it was not a silence of resentment; it was the silence of an
+understanding too delicate to limit by words. They would be in a room together
+in the evening, saying nothing, content to feel each other’s presence. They
+would look at each other suddenly--and both would smile, the smile like hands
+clasped.
+Then, one evening, she knew he would speak. She sat at her dressing-table. He
+came in and stood leaning against the wall beside her. He looked at her hands,
+at her naked shoulders, but she felt as if he did not see her; he was looking at
+something greater than the beauty of her body, greater than his love for her; he
+was looking at himself--and this, she knew, was the one incomparable tribute.
+"I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival...I’ve
+given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need..." She
+heard Roark’s words, Roark’s voice speaking for Gail Wynand--and she felt no
+sense of treason to Roark in using the words of his love for the love of another
+man.
+"Gail," she said gently, "some day I’ll have to ask your forgiveness for having
+married you."
+He shook his head slowly, smiling. She said:
+"I wanted you to be my chain to the world. You’ve become my defense, instead.
+And that makes my marriage dishonest."
+"No. I told you I would accept any reason you chose."
+"But you’ve changed everything for me. Or was it I that changed it? I don’t
+know. We’ve done something strange to each other. I’ve given you what I wanted
+to lose. That special sense of living I thought this marriage would destroy for
+me. The sense of life as exaltation. And you--you’ve done all the things I would
+have done. Do you know how much alike we are?"
+"I knew that from the first."
+"But it should have been impossible. Gail, I want to remain with you now--for
+another reason. To wait for an answer. I think when I learn to understand what
+you are, I’ll understand myself. There is an answer. There is a name for the
+thing we have in common. I don’t know it. I know it’s very important."
+"Probably. I suppose I should want to understand it. But I don’t. I can’t care
+about anything now. I can’t even be afraid."
+She looked up at him and said very calmly:
+"I am afraid, Gail."
+"Of what, dearest?"
+"Of what I’m doing to you."
+"Why?"
+"I don’t love you, Gail."
+"I can’t care even about that."
+445
+
+She dropped her head and he looked down at the hair that was like a pale helmet
+of polished metal.
+"Dominique."
+She raised her face to him obediently.
+"I love you, Dominique. I love you so much that nothing can matter to me--not
+even you. Can you understand that? Only my love--not your answer. Not even your
+indifference. I’ve never taken much from the world. I haven’t wanted much. I’ve
+never really wanted anything. Not in the total, undivided way, not with the kind
+of desire that becomes an ultimatum, ’yes’ or ’no,’ and one can’t accept the
+’no’ without ceasing to exist. That’s what you are to me. But when one reaches
+that stage, it’s not the object that matters, it’s the desire. Not you, but I.
+The ability to desire like that. Nothing less is worth feeling or honoring. And
+I’ve never felt that before. Dominique, I’ve never known how to say ’mine’ about
+anything. Not in the sense I say it about you. Mine. Did you call it a sense of
+life as exaltation? You said that. You understand. I can’t be afraid. I love
+you, Dominique--I love you--you’re letting me say it now--I love you."
+She reached over and took the cablegram off her mirror. She crumpled it, her
+fingers twisting slowly in a grinding motion against her palm. He stood
+listening to the crackle of the paper. She leaned forward, opened her hand over
+the wastebasket, and let the paper drop. Her hand remained still for a moment,
+the fingers extended, slanting down, as they had opened.
+
+Part Four: HOWARD ROARK
+
+1.
+THE LEAVES streamed down, trembling in the sun. They were not green; only a few,
+scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of a green so bright
+and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the
+substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked as if the
+forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this color, this green
+rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, bending
+over the road, and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the
+branches, like a conscious caress. The young man hoped he would not have to die.
+Not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope
+and the promise like a voice, with leaves, tree trunks and rocks instead of
+words. But he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no
+sign of men for hours; he was alone, riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail
+through the hills of Pennsylvania where he had never been before, where he could
+feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world.
+He was a very young man. He had just graduated from college--in this spring of
+the year 1935--and he wanted to decide whether life was worth living. He did not
+know that this was the question in his mind. He did not think of dying. He
+thought only that he wished to find joy and reason and meaning in life--and that
+none had been offered to him anywhere.
+He had not liked the things taught to him in college. He had been taught a great
+446
+
+deal about social responsibility, about a life of service and self-sacrifice.
+Everybody had said it was beautiful and inspiring. Only he had not felt
+inspired. He had felt nothing at all.
+He could not name the thing he wanted of life. He felt it here, in this wild
+loneliness. But he did not face nature with the joy of a healthy animal--as a
+proper and final setting; he faced it with the joy of a healthy man--as a
+challenge; as tools, means and material. So he felt anger that he should find
+exultation only in the wilderness, that this great sense of hope had to be lost
+when he would return to men and men’s work. He thought that this was not right;
+that man’s work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, not a
+degradation. He did not want to despise men; he wanted to love and admire them.
+But he dreaded the sight of the first house, poolroom and movie poster he would
+encounter on his way.
+He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the
+thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the
+first phrases of Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto--or the last movement of
+Rachmaninoff’s Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the
+thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man
+on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that
+music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final,
+the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don’t help me or serve me, but let me see it
+once, because I need it. Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers--show me
+yours--show me that it is possible--show me your achievement--and the knowledge
+will give me courage for mine.
+He saw a blue hole ahead, where the road ended on the crest of a ridge. The blue
+looked cool and clean like a film of water stretched in the frame of green
+branches. It would be funny, he thought, if I came to the edge and found nothing
+but that blue beyond; nothing but the sky ahead, above and below. He closed his
+eyes and went on, suspending the possible for a moment, granting himself a
+dream, a few instants of believing that he would reach the crest, open his eyes
+and see the blue radiance of the sky below.
+His foot touched the ground, breaking his motion; he stopped and opened his
+eyes. He stood still.
+In the broad valley, far below him, in the first sunlight of early morning, he
+saw a town. Only it was not a town. Towns did not look like that. He had to
+suspend the possible for a while longer, to seek no questions or explanations,
+only to look.
+There were small houses on the ledges of the hill before him, flowing down to
+the bottom. He knew that the ledges had not been touched, that no artifice had
+altered the unplanned beauty of the graded steps. Yet some power had known how
+to build on these ledges in such a way that the houses became inevitable, and
+one could no longer imagine the hills as beautiful without them--as if the
+centuries and the series of chances that produced these ledges in the struggle
+of great blind forces had waited for their final expression, had been only a
+road to a goal--and the goal was these buildings, part of the hills, shaped by
+the hills, yet ruling them by giving them meaning.
+The houses were plain field stone--like the rocks jutting from the green
+hillsides--and of glass, great sheets of glass used as if the sun were invited
+to complete the structures, sunlight becoming part of the masonry. There were
+many houses, they were small, they were cut off from one another, and no two of
+them were alike. But they were like variations of a single theme, like a
+symphony played by an inexhaustible imagination, and one could still hear the
+447
+
+laughter of the force that had been let loose on them, as if that force had run,
+unrestrained, challenging itself to be spent, but had never reached its end.
+Music, he thought, the promise of the music he had invoked, the sense of it made
+real--there it was before his eyes--he did not see it--he heard it in chords--he
+thought that there was a common language of thought, sight and sound--was it
+mathematics?--the discipline of reason--music was mathematics--and architecture
+was music in stone--he knew he was dizzy because this place below him could not
+be real.
+He saw trees, lawns, walks twisting up the hillsides, steps cut in the stone, he
+saw fountains, swimming pools, tennis courts--and not a sign of life. The place
+was uninhabited.
+It did not shock him, not as the sight of it had shocked him. In a way, it
+seemed proper; this was not part of known existence. For the moment he had no
+desire to know what it was.
+After a long time he glanced about him--and then he saw that he was not alone.
+Some steps away from him a man sat on a boulder, looking down at the valley. The
+man seemed absorbed in the sight and had not heard his approach. The man was
+tall and gaunt and had orange hair.
+He walked straight to the man, who turned his eyes to him; the eyes were gray
+and calm; the boy knew suddenly that they felt the same thing, and he could
+speak as he would not speak to a stranger anywhere else.
+"That isn’t real, is it?" the boy asked, pointing down.
+"Why, yes, it is, now," the man answered.
+"It’s not a movie set or a trick of some kind?"
+"No. It’s a summer resort. It’s just been completed. It will be opened in a few
+weeks."
+"Who built it?"
+"I did."
+"What’s your name?"
+"Howard Roark."
+"Thank you," said the boy. He knew that the steady eyes looking at him
+understood everything these two words had to cover. Howard Roark inclined his
+head, in acknowledgment.
+Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope of
+the hill to the valley and the houses below. Roark looked after him. He had
+never seen that boy before and he would never see him again. He did not know
+that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime.
+#
+Roark had never understood why he was chosen to build the summer resort at
+Monadnock Valley.
+It had happened a year and a half ago, in the fall of 1933. He had heard of the
+project and gone to see Mr. Caleb Bradley, the head of some vast company that
+had purchased the valley and was doing a great deal of loud promotion. He went
+448
+
+to see Bradley as a matter of duty, without hope, merely to add another refusal
+to his long list of refusals. He had built nothing in New York since the
+Stoddard Temple.
+When he entered Bradley’s office, he knew that he must forget Monadnock Valley
+because this man would never give it to him. Caleb Bradley was a short, pudgy
+person with a handsome face between rounded shoulders. The face looked wise and
+boyish, unpleasantly ageless; he could have been fifty or twenty; he had blank
+blue eyes, sly and bored.
+But it was difficult for Roark to forget Monadnock Valley. So he spoke of it,
+forgetting that speech was useless here. Mr. Bradley listened, obviously
+interested, but obviously not in what Roark was saying. Roark could almost feel
+some third entity present in the room. Mr. Bradley said little, beyond promising
+to consider it and to get in touch with him. But then he said a strange thing.
+He asked, in a voice devoid of all clue to the purpose of the question, neither
+in approval nor scorn: "You’re the architect who built the Stoddard Temple,
+aren’t you, Mr. Roark?" "Yes," said Roark. "Funny that I hadn’t thought of you
+myself," said Mr. Bradley. Roark went away, thinking that it would have been
+funny if Mr. Bradley had thought of him.
+Three days later, Bradley telephoned and invited him to his office. Roark came
+and met four other men--the Board of the Monadnock Valley Company. They were
+well-dressed men, and their faces were as closed as Mr. Bradley’s. "Please tell
+these gentlemen what you told me, Mr. Roark," Bradley said pleasantly.
+Roark explained his plan. If what they wished to build was an unusual summer
+resort for people of moderate incomes--as they had announced--then they should
+realize that the worst curse of poverty was the lack of privacy; only the very
+rich or the very poor of the city could enjoy their summer vacations; the very
+rich, because they had private estates; the very poor, because they did not mind
+the feel and smell of one another’s flesh on public beaches and public dance
+floors; the people of good taste and small income had no place to go, if they
+found no rest or pleasure in herds. Why was it assumed that poverty gave one the
+instincts of cattle? Why not offer these people a place where, for a week or a
+month, at small cost, they could have what they wanted and needed? He had seen
+Monadnock Valley. It could be done. Don’t touch those hillsides, don’t blast and
+level them down. Not one huge ant pile of a hotel--but small houses hidden from
+one another, each a private estate, where people could meet or not, as they
+pleased. Not one fish-market tank of a swimming pool--but many private swimming
+pools, as many as the company wished to afford--he could show them how it could
+be done cheaply. Not one stock-farm corral of tennis courts for
+exhibitionists--but many private tennis courts. Not a place where one went to
+meet "refined company" and land a husband in two weeks--but a resort for people
+who enjoyed their own presence well enough and sought only a place where they
+would be left free to enjoy it.
+The men listened to him silently. He saw them exchanging glances once in a
+while. He felt certain that they were the kind of glances people exchange when
+they cannot laugh at the speaker aloud. But it could not have been that--because
+he signed a contract to build the Monadnock Valley summer resort, two days
+later.
+He demanded Mr. Bradley’s initials on every drawing that came out of his
+drafting rooms; he remembered the Stoddard Temple. Mr. Bradley initialed,
+signed, okayed; he agreed to everything; he approved everything. He seemed
+delighted to let Roark have his way. But this eager complaisance had a peculiar
+undertone--as if Mr. Bradley were humoring a child.
+449
+
+He could learn little about Mr. Bradley. It was said that the man had made a
+fortune in real estate, in the Florida boom. His present company seemed to
+command unlimited funds, and the names of many wealthy backers were mentioned as
+shareholders. Roark never met them. The four gentlemen of the Board did not
+appear again, except on short visits to the construction site, where they
+exhibited little interest. Mr. Bradley was in full charge of everything--but
+beyond a close watch over the budget he seemed to like nothing better than to
+leave Roark in full charge.
+In the eighteen months that followed, Roark had no time to wonder about Mr.
+Bradley. Roark was building his greatest assignment.
+For the last year he lived at the construction site, in a shanty hastily thrown
+together on a bare hillside, a wooden enclosure with a bed, a stove and a large
+table. His old draftsmen came to work for him again, some abandoning better jobs
+in the city, to live in shacks and tents, to work in naked plank barracks that
+served as architect’s office. There was so much to build that none of them
+thought of wasting structural effort on their own shelters. They did not
+realize, until much later, that they had lacked comforts; and then they did not
+believe it--because the year at Monadnock Valley remained in their minds as the
+strange time when the earth stopped turning and they lived through twelve months
+of spring. They did not think of the snow, the frozen clots of earth, wind
+whistling through the cracks of planking, thin blankets over army cots, stiff
+fingers stretched over coal stoves in the morning, before a pencil could be held
+steadily. They remembered only the feeling which is the meaning of spring--one’s
+answer to the first blades of grass, the first buds on tree branches, the first
+blue of the sky--the singing answer, not to grass, trees and sky, but to the
+great sense of beginning, of triumphant progression, of certainty in an
+achievement that nothing will stop. Not from leaves and flowers, but from wooden
+scaffoldings, from steam shovels, from blocks of stone and sheets of glass
+rising out of the earth they received the sense of youth, motion, purpose,
+fulfillment.
+They were an army and it was a crusade. But none of them thought of it in these
+words, except Steven Mallory. Steven Mallory did the fountains and all the
+sculpture work of Monadnock Valley. But he came to live at the site long before
+he was needed. Battle, thought Steven Mallory, is a vicious concept. There is no
+glory in war, and no beauty in crusades of men. But this was a battle, this was
+an army and a war--and the highest experience in the life of every man who took
+part in it. Why? Where was the root of the difference and the law to explain it?
+He did not speak of it to anyone. But he saw the same feeling in Mike’s face,
+when Mike arrived with the gang of electricians. Mike said nothing, but he
+winked at Mallory in cheerful understanding. "I told you not to worry," Mike
+said to him once, without preamble, "at the trial that was. He can’t lose,
+quarries or no quarries, trials or no trials. They can’t beat him, Steve, they
+just can’t, not the whole goddamn world."
+But they had really forgotten the world, thought Mallory. This was a new earth,
+their own. The hills rose to the sky around them, as a wall of protection. And
+they had another protection--the architect who walked among them, down the snow
+or the grass of the hillsides, over the boulders and the piled planks, to the
+drafting tables, to the derricks, to the tops of rising walls--the man who had
+made this possible--the thought in the mind of that man--and not the content of
+that thought, nor the result, not the vision that had created Monadnock Valley,
+nor the will that had made it real--but the method of his thought, the rule of
+its function--the method and rule which were not like those of the world beyond
+the hills. That stood on guard over the valley and over the crusaders within it.
+And then he saw Mr. Bradley come to visit the site, to smile blandly and depart
+450
+
+again. Then Mallory felt anger without reason--and fear. "Howard," Mallory said
+one night, when they sat together at a fire of dry branches on the hillside over
+the camp, "it’s the Stoddard Temple again."
+"Yes," said Roark. "I think so. But I can’t figure out in just what way or what
+they’re after."
+He rolled over on his stomach and looked down at the panes of glass scattered
+through the darkness below; they caught reflections from somewhere and looked
+like phosphorescent, self-generated springs of light rising out of the ground.
+He said:
+"It doesn’t matter, Steve, does it? Not what they do about it nor who comes to
+live here. Only that we’ve made it. Would you have missed this, no matter what
+price they make you pay for it afterward?"
+"No," said Mallory.
+#
+Roark had wanted to rent one of the houses for himself and spend the summer
+there, the first summer of Monadnock Valley’s existence. But before the resort
+was open, he received a wire from New York.
+"I told you I would, didn’t I? It took five years to get rid of my friends and
+brothers, but the Aquitania is now mine--and yours. Come to finish it. Kent
+Lansing."
+So he went back to New York--to see the rubble and cement dust cleared away from
+the hulk of the Unfinished Symphony, to see derricks swing girders high over
+Central Park, to see the gaps of windows filled, the broad decks spread over the
+roofs of the city, the Aquitania Hotel completed, glowing at night in the Park’s
+skyline.
+He had been very busy in the last two years. Monadnock Valley had not been his
+only commission. From different states, from unexpected parts of the country,
+calls had come for him: private homes, small office buildings, modest shops. He
+had built them--snatching a few hours of sleep on trains and planes that carried
+him from Monadnock Valley to distant small towns. The story of every commission
+he received was the same: "I was in New York and I liked the Enright House." "I
+saw the Cord Building." "I saw a picture of that temple they tore down." It was
+as if an underground stream flowed through the country and broke out in sudden
+springs that shot to the surface at random, in unpredictable places. They were
+small, inexpensive jobs--but he was kept working.
+That summer, with Monadnock Valley completed, he had no time to worry about its
+future fate. But Steven Mallory worried about it. "Why don’t they advertise it,
+Howard? Why the sudden silence? Have you noticed? There was so much talk about
+their grand project, so many little items in print--before they started. There
+was less and less while we were doing it. And now? Mr. Bradley and company have
+gone deaf-mute. Now, when you’d expect them to stage a press agent’s orgy. Why?"
+"I wouldn’t know," said Roark. "I’m an architect, not a rental agent. Why should
+you worry? We’ve done our job, let them do theirs in their own way."
+"It’s a damn queer way. Did you see their ads--the few they’ve let dribble out?
+They say all the things you told them, about rest, peace and privacy--but how
+they say it! Do you know what those ads amount to in effect? ’Come to Monadnock
+Valley and be bored to death.’ It sounds--it actually sounds as if they were
+trying to keep people away."
+451
+
+"I don’t read ads, Steve."
+But within a month of its opening every house in Monadnock Valley was rented.
+The people who came were a strange mixture: society men and women who could have
+afforded more fashionable resorts, young writers and unknown artists, engineers
+and newspapermen and factory workers. Suddenly, spontaneously, people were
+talking about Monadnock Valley. There was a need for that kind of a resort, a
+need no one had tried to satisfy. The place became news, but it was private
+news; the papers had not discovered it. Mr. Bradley had no press agents; Mr.
+Bradley and his company had vanished from public life. One magazine,
+unsolicited, printed four pages of photographs of Monadnock Valley, and sent a
+man to interview Howard Roark. By the end of summer the houses were leased in
+advance for the following year. In October, early one morning, the door of
+Roark’s reception room flew open and Steven Mallory rushed in, making straight
+for Roark’s office. The secretary tried to stop him; Roark was working and no
+interruptions were allowed. But Mallory shoved her aside and tore into the
+office, slamming the door behind. She noticed that he held a newspaper in his
+hand.
+Roark glanced up at him, from the drafting table, and dropped his pencil. He
+knew that this was the way Mallory’s face had looked when he shot at Ellsworth
+Toohey.
+"Well, Howard? Do you want to know why you got Monadnock Valley?"
+He threw the newspaper down on the table. Roark saw the heading of a story on
+the third page: "Caleb Bradley arrested."
+"It’s all there," said Mallory. "Don’t read it. It will make you sick."
+"All right, Steve, what is it?"
+"They sold two hundred percent of it."
+"Who did? Of what?"
+"Bradley and his gang. Of Monadnock Valley." Mallory spoke with a forced,
+vicious, self-torturing precision. "They thought it was worthless--from the
+first. They got the land practically for nothing--they thought it was no place
+for a resort at all--out of the way, with no bus lines or movie theaters
+around--they thought the time wasn’t right and the public wouldn’t go for it.
+They made a lot of noise and sold snares to a lot of wealthy suckers--it was
+just a huge fraud. They sold two hundred percent of the place. They got twice
+what it cost them to build it. They were certain it would fail. They wanted it
+to fail. They expected no profits to distribute. They had a nice scheme ready
+for how to get out of it when the place went bankrupt. They were prepared for
+anything--except for seeing it turn into the kind of success it is. And they
+couldn’t go on--because now they’d have to pay their backers twice the amount
+the place earned each year. And it’s earning plenty. And they thought they had
+arranged for certain failure. Howard, don’t you understand? They chose you as
+the worst architect they could find!"
+Roark threw his head back and laughed.
+"God damn you, Howard! It’s not funny!"
+"Sit down, Steve. Stop shaking. You look as if you’d just seen a whole field of
+butchered bodies."
+452
+
+"I have. I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen the root. I’ve seen what makes such fields
+possible. What do the damn fools think of as horror? Wars, murders, fires,
+earthquakes? To hell with that! This is horror--that story in the paper. That’s
+what men should dread and fight and scream about and call the worst shame on
+their record. Howard, I’m thinking of all the explanations of evil and all the
+remedies offered for it through the centuries. None of them worked. None of them
+explained or cured anything. But the root of evil--my drooling beast--it’s
+there. Howard, in that story. In that--and in the souls of the smug bastards
+who’ll read it and say: ’Oh well, genius must always struggle, it’s good for
+’em’--and then go and look for some village idiot to help, to teach him how to
+weave baskets. That’s the drooling beast in action. Howard, think of Monadnock.
+Close your eyes and see it. And then think that the men who ordered it, believed
+it was the worst thing they could build! Howard, there’s something wrong,
+something very terribly wrong in the world if you were given your greatest
+job--as a filthy joke!"
+"When will you stop thinking about that? About the world and me? When will you
+learn to forget it? When will Dominique..."
+He stopped. They had not mentioned that name in each other’s presence for five
+years. He saw Mallory’s eyes, intent and shocked. Mallory realized that his
+words had hurt Roark, hurt him enough to force this admission. But Roark turned
+to him and said deliberately:
+"Dominique used to think just as you do."
+Mallory had never spoken of what he guessed about Roark’s past. Their silence
+had always implied that Mallory understood, that Roark knew it, and that it was
+not to be discussed. But now Mallory asked:
+"Are you still waiting for her to come back? Mrs. Gail Wynand--God damn her!"
+Roark said without emphasis:
+"Shut up, Steve."
+Mallory whispered: "I’m sorry."
+Roark walked to his table and said, his voice normal again:
+"Go home, Steve, and forget about Bradley. They’ll all be suing one another now,
+but we won’t be dragged in and they won’t destroy Monadnock. Forget it, and get
+out, I have to work."
+He brushed the newspaper off the table, with his elbow, and bent over the sheets
+of drafting paper.
+#
+There was a scandal over the revelations of the financing methods behind
+Monadnock Valley, there was a trial, a few gentlemen sentenced to the
+penitentiary, and a new management taking Monadnock over for the shareholders.
+Roark was not involved. He was busy, and he forgot to read the accounts of the
+trial in the papers. Mr. Bradley admitted--in apology to his partners--that he
+would be damned if he could have expected a resort built on a crazy, unsociable
+plan ever to become successful. "I did all I could--I chose the worst fool I
+could find."
+Then Austen Heller wrote an article about Howard Roark and Monadnock Valley. He
+453
+
+spoke of all the buildings Roark had designed, and he put into words the things
+Roark had said in structure. Only they were not Austen Heller’s usual quiet
+words--they were a ferocious cry of admiration and of anger. "And may we be
+damned if greatness must reach us through fraud!"
+The article started a violent controversy in art circles.
+"Howard," Mallory said one day, some months later, "you’re famous."
+"Yes," said Roark, "I suppose so."
+"Three-quarters of them don’t know what it’s all about, but they’ve heard the
+other one-quarter fighting over your name and so now they feel they must
+pronounce it with respect. Of the fighting quarter, four-tenths are those who
+hate you, three-tenths are those who feel they must express an opinion in any
+controversy, two-tenths are those who play safe and herald any ’discovery,’ and
+one-tenth are those who understand. But they’ve all found out suddenly that
+there is a Howard Roark and that he’s an architect. The A.G.A. Bulletin refers
+to you as a great but unruly talent--and the Museum of the Future has hung up
+photographs of Monadnock, the Enright House, the Cord Building and the
+Aquitania, under beautiful glass--next to the room where they’ve got Gordon L.
+Prescott. And still--I’m glad."
+Kent Lansing said, one evening: "Heller did a grand job. Do you remember,
+Howard, what I told you once about the psychology of a pretzel? Don’t despise
+the middleman. He’s necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make a
+very great career: the man who is great, and the man--almost rarer--who is great
+enough to see greatness and say so."
+Ellsworth Toohey wrote: "The paradox in all this preposterous noise is the fact
+that Mr. Caleb Bradley is the victim of a grave injustice. His ethics are open
+to censure, but his esthetics were unimpeachable. He exhibited sounder judgment
+in matters of architectural merit than Mr. Austen Heller, the outmoded
+reactionary who has suddenly turned art critic. Mr. Caleb Bradley was martyred
+by the bad taste of his tenants. In the opinion of this column his sentence
+should have been commuted in recognition of his artistic discrimination.
+Monadnock Valley is a fraud--but not merely a financial one."
+There was little response to Roark’s fame among the solid gentlemen of wealth
+who were the steadiest source of architectural commissions. The men who had
+said: "Roark? Never heard of him," now said: "Roark? He’s too sensational."
+But there were men who were impressed by the simple fact that Roark had built a
+place which made money for owners who didn’t want to make money; this was more
+convincing than abstract artistic discussions. And there was the one-tenth who
+understood. In the year after Monadnock Valley Roark built two private homes in
+Connecticut, a movie theater in Chicago, a hotel in Philadelphia.
+In the spring of 1936 a western city completed plans for a World’s Fair to be
+held next year, an international exposition to be known as "The March of the
+Centuries." The committee of distinguished civic leaders in charge of the
+project chose a council of the country’s best architects to design the fair. The
+civic leaders wished to be conspicuously progressive. Howard Roark was one of
+the eight architects chosen.
+When he received the invitation, Roark appeared before the committee and
+explained that he would be glad to design the fair--alone.
+"But you can’t be serious, Mr. Roark," the chairman declared. "After all, with a
+454
+
+stupendous undertaking of this nature, we want the best that can be had. I mean,
+two heads are better than one, you know, and eight heads...why, you can see for
+yourself--the best talents of the country, the brightest names--you know,
+friendly consultation, co-operation and collaboration--you know what makes great
+achievements."
+"I do."
+"Then you realize..."
+"If you want me, you’ll have to let me do it all, alone. I don’t work with
+councils."
+"You wish to reject an opportunity like this, a shot in history, a chance of
+world fame, practically a chance of immortality..."
+"I don’t work with collectives. I don’t consult, I don’t cooperate, I don’t
+collaborate."
+There was a great deal of angry comment on Roark’s refusal, in architectural
+circles. People said: "The conceited bastard!" The indignation was too sharp and
+raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal
+insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any
+man living.
+"The incident illustrates to perfection," wrote Ellsworth Toohey, "the
+antisocial nature of Mr. Howard Roark’s egotism, the arrogance of the unbridled
+individualism which he has always personified."
+Among the eight chosen to design "The March of the Centuries" were Peter
+Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, Ralston Holcombe. "I won’t work with Howard Roark,"
+said Peter Keating, when he saw the list of the council, "you’ll have to choose.
+It’s he or I." He was informed that Mr. Roark had declined. Keating assumed
+leadership over the council. The press stories about the progress of the fair’s
+construction referred to "Peter Keating and his associates."
+Keating had acquired a sharp, intractable manner in the last few years. He
+snapped orders and lost his patience before the smallest difficulty; when he
+lost his patience, he screamed at people: he had a vocabulary of insults that
+carried a caustic, insidious, almost feminine malice; his face was sullen.
+In the fall of 1936 Roark moved his office to the top floor of the Cord
+Building. He had thought when he designed that building, that it would be the
+place of his office some day. When he saw the inscription: "Howard Roark,
+Architect," on his new door, he stopped for a moment; then he walked into the
+office. His own room, at the end of a long suite, had three walls of glass, high
+over the city. He stopped in the middle of the room. Through the broad panes, he
+could see the Fargo Store, the Enright House, the Aquitania Hotel. He walked to
+the windows facing south and stood there for a long time. At the tip of
+Manhattan, far in the distance, he could see the Dana Building by Henry Cameron.
+On an afternoon of November, returning to his office after a visit to the site
+of a house under construction on Long Island, Roark entered the reception room,
+shaking his drenched raincoat, and saw a look of suppressed excitement on the
+face of his secretary; she had been waiting impatiently for his return.
+"Mr. Roark, this is probably something very big," she said. "I made an
+appointment for you for three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. At his office."
+455
+
+"Whose office?"
+"He telephoned half an hour ago. Mr. Gail Wynand."
+
+2.
+A SIGN hung over the entrance door, a reproduction of the paper’s masthead:
+#
+THE NEW YORK BANNER
+#
+The sign was small, a statement of fame and power that needed no emphasis; it
+was like a fine, mocking smile that justified the building’s bare ugliness; the
+building was a factory scornful of all ornament save the implications of that
+masthead.
+The entrance lobby looked like the mouth of a furnace; elevators drew a stream
+of human fuel and spat it out. The men did not hurry, but they moved with
+subdued haste, the propulsion of purpose; nobody loitered in that lobby. The
+elevator doors clicked like valves, a pulsating rhythm in their sound. Drops of
+red and green light flashed on a wall board, signaling the progress of cars high
+in space.
+It looked as if everything in that building were run by such control boards in
+the hands of an authority aware of every motion, as if the building were flowing
+with channeled energy, functioning smoothly, soundlessly, a magnificent machine
+that nothing could destroy. Nobody paid any attention to the redheaded man who
+stopped in the lobby for a moment.
+Howard Roark looked up at the tiled vault. He had never hated anyone. Somewhere
+in this building was its owner, the man who had made him feel his nearest
+approach to hatred.
+Gail Wynand glanced at the small clock on his desk. In a few minutes he had an
+appointment with an architect. The interview, he thought, would not be
+difficult; he had held many such interviews in his life; he merely had to speak,
+he knew what he wanted to say, and nothing was required of the architect except
+a few sounds signifying understanding.
+His glance went from the clock back to the sheets of proofs on his desk. He read
+an editorial by Alvah Scarret on the public feeding of squirrels in Central
+Park, and a column by Ellsworth Toohey on the great merits of an exhibition of
+paintings done by the workers of the City Department of Sanitation. A buzzer
+rang on his desk, and his secretary’s voice said: "Mr. Howard Roark, Mr.
+Wynand."
+"Okay," said Wynand, flicking the switch off. As his hand moved back, he noticed
+the row of buttons at the edge of his desk, bright little knobs with a color
+code of their own, each representing the end of a wire that stretched to some
+part of the building, each wire controlling some man, each man controlling many
+men under his orders, each group of men contributing to the final shape of words
+on paper to go into millions of homes, into millions of human brains--these
+little knobs of colored plastic, there under his fingers. But he had no time to
+let the thought amuse him, the door of his office was opening, he moved his hand
+away from the buttons.
+456
+
+Wynand was not certain that he missed a moment, that he did not rise at once as
+courtesy demanded, but remained seated, looking at the man who entered; perhaps
+he had risen immediately and it only seemed to him that a long time preceded his
+movement. Roark was not certain that he stopped when he entered the office, that
+he did not walk forward, but stood looking at the man behind the desk; perhaps
+there had been no break in his steps and it only seemed to him that he had
+stopped. But there had been a moment when both forgot the terms of immediate
+reality, when Wynand forgot his purpose in summoning this man, when Roark forgot
+that this man was Dominique’s husband, when no door, desk or stretch of carpet
+existed, only the total awareness, for each, of the man before him, only two
+thoughts meeting in the middle of the room--"This is Gail Wynand"--"This is
+Howard Roark."
+Then Wynand rose, his hand motioned in simple invitation to the chair beside his
+desk, Roark approached and sat down, and they did not notice that they had not
+greeted each other.
+Wynand smiled, and said what he had never intended to say. He said very simply:
+"I don’t think you’ll want to work for me."
+"I want to work for you," said Roark, who had come here prepared to refuse.
+"Have you seen the kind of things I’ve built?"
+"Yes."
+Wynand smiled. "This is different. It’s not for my public. It’s for me."
+"You’ve never built anything for yourself before?"
+"No--if one doesn’t count the cage I have up on a roof and this old printing
+factory here. Can you tell me why I’ve never built a structure of my own, with
+the means of erecting a city if I wished? I don’t know. I think you’d know." He
+forgot that he did not allow men he hired the presumption of personal
+speculation upon him.
+"Because you’ve been unhappy," said Roark.
+He said it simply, without insolence; as if nothing but total honesty were
+possible to him here. This was not the beginning of an interview, but the
+middle; it was like a continuation of something begun long ago. Wynand said:
+"Make that clear."
+"I think you understand."
+"I want to hear you explain it."
+"Most people build as they live--as a matter of routine and senseless accident.
+But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and
+existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it
+in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a
+statement of his life. If he doesn’t build, when he has the means, it’s because
+his life has not been what he wanted."
+"You don’t think it’s preposterous to say that to me of all people?"
+"No."
+457
+
+"I don’t either." Roark smiled. "But you and I are the only two who’d say it.
+Either part of it: that I didn’t have what I wanted or that I could be included
+among the few expected to understand any sort of great symbols. You don’t want
+to retract that either?"
+"No."
+"How old are you?"
+"Thirty-six."
+"I owned most of the papers I have now--when I was thirty-six." He added: "I
+didn’t mean that as any kind of a personal remark. I don’t know why I said that.
+I just happened to think of it."
+"What do you wish me to build for you?"
+"My home."
+Wynand felt that the two words had some impact on Roark apart from any normal
+meaning they could convey; he sensed it without reason; he wanted to ask:
+"What’s the matter?" but couldn’t, since Roark had really shown nothing.
+"You were right in your diagnosis," said Wynand, "because you see, now I do want
+to build a house of my own. Now I’m not afraid of a visible shape for my life.
+If you want it said directly, as you did, now I’m happy."
+"What kind of house?"
+"In the country. I’ve purchased the site. An estate in Connecticut, five hundred
+acres. What kind of a house? You’ll decide that."
+"Did Mrs. Wynand choose me for the job?"
+"No. Mrs. Wynand knows nothing about this. It was I who wanted to move out of
+the city, and she agreed. I did ask her to select the architect--my wife is the
+former Dominique Francon; she was once a writer on architecture. But she
+preferred to leave the choice to me. You want to know why I picked you? I took a
+long time to decide. I felt rather lost, at first. I had never heard of you. I
+didn’t know any architects at all. I mean this literally--and I’m not forgetting
+the years I’ve spent in real estate, the things I’ve built and the imbeciles who
+built them for me. This is not a Stoneridge, this is--what did you call it?--a
+statement of my life? Then I saw Monadnock. It was the first thing that made me
+remember your name. But I gave myself a long test. I went around the country,
+looking at homes, hotels, all sorts of buildings. Every time I saw one I liked
+and asked who had designed it, the answer was always the same: Howard Roark. So
+I called you." He added: "Shall I tell you how much I admire your work?"
+"Thank you," said Roark. He closed his eyes for an instant.
+"You know, I didn’t want to meet you."
+"Why?"
+"Have you heard about my art gallery?"
+"Yes."
+458
+
+"I never meet the men whose work I love. The work means too much to me. I don’t
+want the men to spoil it. They usually do. They’re an anticlimax to their own
+talent. You’re not. I don’t mind talking to you. I told you this only because I
+want you to know that I respect very little in life, but I respect the things in
+my gallery, and your buildings, and man’s capacity to produce work like that.
+Maybe it’s the only religion I’ve ever had." He shrugged. "I think I’ve
+destroyed, perverted, corrupted just about everything that exists. But I’ve
+never touched that. Why are you looking at me like this?"
+"I’m sorry. Please tell me about the house you want."
+"I want it to be a palace--only I don’t think palaces are very luxurious.
+They’re so big, so promiscuously public. A small house is the true luxury. A
+residence for two people only--for my wife and me. It won’t be necessary to
+allow for a family, we don’t intend to have children. Nor for visitors, we don’t
+intend to entertain. One guest room--in case we should need it--but not more
+than that. Living room, dining room, library, two studies, one bedroom.
+Servants’ quarters, garage. That’s the general idea. I’ll give you the details
+later. The cost--whatever you need. The appearance--" He smiled, shrugging.
+"I’ve seen your buildings. The man who wants to tell you what a house should
+look like must either be able to design it better--or shut up. I’ll say only
+that I want my house to have the Roark quality."
+"What is that?"
+"I think you understand."
+"I want to hear you explain it."
+"I think some buildings are cheap show-offs, all front, and some are cowards,
+apologizing for themselves in every brick, and some are the eternal unfit,
+botched, malicious and false. Your buildings have one sense above all--a sense
+of joy. Not a placid joy. A difficult, demanding kind of joy. The kind that
+makes one feel as if it were an achievement to experience it. One looks and
+thinks: I’m a better person if I can feel that."
+Roark said slowly, not in the tone of an answer:
+"I suppose it was inevitable."
+"What?"
+"That you would see that."
+"Why do you say it as if you...regretted my being able to see it?"
+"I don’t regret it."
+"Listen, don’t hold it against me--the things I’ve built before."
+"I don’t."
+"It’s all those Stoneridges and Noyes-Belmont Hotels--and Wynand papers--that
+made it possible for me to have a house by you. Isn’t that a luxury worth
+achieving? Does it matter how? They were the means. You’re the end."
+"You don’t have to justify yourself to me."
+"I wasn’t jus...Yes, I think that’s what I was doing."
+459
+
+"You don’t need to. I wasn’t thinking of what you’ve built."
+"What were you thinking?"
+"That I’m helpless against anyone who sees what you saw in my buildings."
+"You felt you wanted help against me?"
+"No. Only I don’t feel helpless as a rule."
+"I’m not prompted to justify myself as a rule, either. Then--it’s all right,
+isn’t it?"
+"Yes."
+"I must tell you much more about the house I want. I suppose an architect is
+like a father confessor--he must know everything about the people who are to
+live in his house, since what he gives them is more personal than their clothes
+or food. Please consider it in that spirit--and forgive me if you notice that
+this is difficult for me to say--I’ve never gone to confession. You see, I want
+this house because I’m very desperately in love with my wife....What’s the
+matter? Do you think it’s an irrelevant statement?"
+"No. Go on."
+"I can’t stand to see my wife among other people. It’s not jealousy. It’s much
+more and much worse. I can’t stand to see her walking down the streets of a
+city. I can’t share her, not even with shops, theaters, taxicabs or sidewalks. I
+must take her away. I must put her out of reach--where nothing can touch her,
+not in any sense. This house is to be a fortress. My architect is to be my
+guard."
+Roark sat looking straight at him. He had to keep his eyes on Wynand in order to
+be able to listen. Wynand felt the effort in that glance; he did not recognize
+it as effort, only as strength; he felt himself supported by the glance; he
+found that nothing was hard to confess.
+"This house is to be a prison. No, not quite that. A treasury--a vault to guard
+things too precious for sight. But it must be more. It must be a separate world,
+so beautiful that we’ll never miss the one we left. A prison only by the power
+of its own perfection. Not bars and ramparts--but your talent standing as a wall
+between us and the world. That’s what I want of you. And more. Have you ever
+built a temple?"
+For a moment, Roark had no strength to answer; but he saw that the question was
+genuine; Wynand didn’t know.
+"Yes," said Roark.
+"Then think of this commission as you would think of a temple. A, temple to
+Dominique Wynand....I want you to meet her before you design it."
+"I met Mrs. Wynand some years ago."
+"You have? Then you understand."
+"I do."
+460
+
+Wynand saw Roark’s hand lying on the edge of his desk, the long fingers pressed
+to the glass, next to the proofs of the Banner. The proofs were folded
+carelessly; he saw the heading "One Small Voice" inside the page. He looked at
+Roark’s hand. He thought he would like to have a bronze paperweight made of it
+and how beautiful it would look on his desk.
+"Now you know what I want. Go ahead. Start at once. Drop anything else you’re
+doing. I’ll pay whatever you wish. I want that house by summer....Oh, forgive
+me. Too much association with bad architects. I haven’t asked whether you want
+to do it."
+Roark’s hand moved first; he took it off the desk.
+"Yes," said Roark. "I’ll do it."
+Wynand saw the prints of the fingers left on the glass, distinct as if the skin
+had cut grooves in the surface and the grooves were
+wet.
+"How long will it take you?" Wynand asked.
+"You’ll have it by July."
+"Of course you must see the site. I want to show it to you myself. Shall I drive
+you down there tomorrow morning?"
+"If you wish."
+"Be here at nine."
+"Yes."
+"Do you want me to draw up a contract? I have no idea how you prefer to work. As
+a rule, before I deal with a man in any matter, I make it a point to know
+everything about him from the day of his birth or earlier. I’ve never checked up
+on you. I simply forgot. It didn’t seem necessary."
+"I can answer any question you wish."
+Wynand smiled and shook his head:
+"No. There’s nothing I need to ask you. Except about the business arrangements."
+"I never make any conditions, except one: if you accept the preliminary drawings
+of the house, it is to be built as I designed it, without any alterations of any
+kind."
+"Certainly. That’s understood. I’ve heard you don’t work otherwise. But will you
+mind if I don’t give you any publicity on this house? I know it would help you
+professionally, but I want this building kept out of the newspapers."
+"I won’t mind that."
+"Will you promise not to release pictures of it for publication?"
+"I promise."
+"Thank you. I’ll make up for it. You may consider the Wynand papers as your
+461
+
+personal press service. I’ll give you all the plugging you wish on any other
+work of yours."
+"I don’t want any plugging."
+Wynand laughed aloud. "What a thing to say in what a place! I don’t think you
+have any idea how your fellow architects would have conducted this interview. I
+don’t believe you were actually conscious at any time that you were speaking to
+Gail Wynand."
+"I was," said Roark.
+"This was my way of thanking you. I don’t always like being Gail Wynand."
+"I know that."
+"I’m going to change my mind and ask you a personal question. You said you’d
+answer anything."
+"I will."
+"Have you always liked being Howard Roark?"
+Roark smiled. The smile was amused, astonished, involuntarily contemptuous.
+"You’ve answered," said Wynand.
+Then he rose and said: "Nine o’clock tomorrow morning," extending his hand.
+When Roark had gone, Wynand sat behind his desk, smiling. He moved his hand
+toward one of the plastic buttons--and stopped. He realized that he had to
+assume a different manner, his usual manner, that he could not speak as he had
+spoken in the last half-hour. Then he understood what had been strange about the
+interview: for the first time in his life he had spoken to a man without feeling
+the reluctance, the sense of pressure, the need of disguise he had always
+experienced when he spoke to people; there had been no strain and no need of
+strain; as if he had spoken to himself.
+He pressed the button and said to his secretary:
+"Tell the morgue to send me everything they have on Howard Roark."
+#
+"Guess what," said Alvah Scarret, his voice begging to be begged for his
+information.
+Ellsworth Toohey waved a hand impatiently in a brushing-off motion, not raising
+his eyes from his desk.
+"Go ’way, Alvah. I’m busy."
+"No, but this is interesting, Ellsworth. Really, it’s interesting. I know you’ll
+want to know."
+Toohey lifted his head and looked at him, the faint contraction of boredom in
+the corners of his eyes letting Scarret understand that this moment of attention
+was a favor; he drawled in a tone of emphasized patience:
+"All right. What is it?"
+462
+
+Scarret saw nothing to resent in Toohey’s manner. Toohey had treated him like
+that for the last year or longer. Scarret had not noticed the change, it was too
+late to resent it--it had become normal to them both.
+Scarret smiled like a bright pupil who expects the teacher to praise him for
+discovering an error in the teacher’s own textbook.
+"Ellsworth, your private F.B.I. is slipping."
+"What are you talking about?"
+"Bet you don’t know what Gail’s been doing--and you always make such a point of
+keeping yourself informed."
+"What don’t I know?"
+"Guess who was in his office today."
+"My dear Alvah, I have no time for quiz games."
+"You wouldn’t guess in a thousand years."
+"Very well, since the only way to get rid of you is to play the vaudeville
+stooge, I shall ask the proper question: Who was in dear Gail’s office today?"
+"Howard Roark."
+Toohey turned to him full face, forgetting to dole out his attention, and said
+incredulously:
+"No!"
+"Yes!" said Scarret, proud of the effect.
+"Well!" said Toohey and burst out laughing.
+Scarret half smiled tentatively, puzzled, anxious to join in, but not quite
+certain of the cause for amusement.
+"Yes, it’s funny. But...just exactly why, Ellsworth?"
+"Oh, Alvah, it would take so long to tell you!"
+"I had an idea it might..."
+"Haven’t you any sense of the spectacular, Alvah? Don’t you like fireworks? If
+you want to know what to expect, just think that the worst wars are religious
+wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the
+same race."
+"I don’t quite follow you."
+"Oh, dear, I have so many followers. I brush them out of my hair."
+"Well, I’m glad you’re so cheerful about it, but I thought it’s
+bad."
+463
+
+"Of course it’s bad. But not for us."
+"But look: you know bow we’ve gone out on a limb, you particularly, on how this
+Roark is just about the worst architect in town, and if now our own boss hires
+him--isn’t it going to be embarrassing?"
+"Oh that?...Oh, maybe..."
+"Well, I’m glad you take it that way."
+"What was he doing in Wynand’s office? Is it a commission?"
+"That’s what I don’t know. Can’t find out. Nobody knows."
+"Have you heard of Mr. Wynand planning to build anything lately?"
+"No. Have you?"
+"No. I guess my F.B.I. is slipping. Oh, well, one does the best one can."
+"But you know, Ellsworth, I had an idea. I had an idea where this might be very
+helpful to us indeed."
+"What idea?"
+"Ellsworth, Gail’s been impossible lately."
+Scarret uttered it solemnly, with the air of imparting a discovery. Toohey sat
+half smiling.
+"Well, of course, you predicted it, Ellsworth. You were right. You’re always
+right. I’ll be damned if I can figure out just what’s happening to him, whether
+it’s Dominique or some sort of a change of life or what, but something’s
+happening. Why does he get fits suddenly and start reading every damn line of
+every damn edition and raise hell for the silliest reasons? He’s killed three of
+my best editorials lately--and he’s never done that to me before. Never. You
+know what he said to me? He said: ’Motherhood is wonderful, Alvah, but for God’s
+sake go easy on the bilge. There’s a limit even for intellectual depravity.’
+What depravity? That was the sweetest Mother’s Day editorial I ever put
+together. Honest, I was touched myself. Since when has he learned to talk about
+depravity? The other day, he called Jules Fougler a bargain-basement mind, right
+to his face, and threw his Sunday piece into the wastebasket. A swell piece,
+too--on the Workers’ Theater. Jules Fougler, our best writer! No wonder Gail
+hasn’t got a friend left in the place. If they hated his guts before, you ought
+to hear them now!"
+"I’ve heard them."
+"He’s losing his grip, Ellsworth. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for you
+and the swell bunch of people you picked. They’re practically our whole actual
+working staff, those youngsters of yours, not our old sacred cows who’re writing
+themselves out anyway. Those bright kids will keep the Banner going. But
+Gail...Listen, last week he fired Dwight Carson. Now you know, I think that was
+significant. Of course Dwight was just a deadweight and a damn nuisance, but he
+was the first one of those special pets of Gail’s, the boys who sold their
+souls. So, in a way, you see, I liked having Dwight around, it was all right, it
+was healthy, it was a relic of Gail’s best days. I always said it was Gail’s
+safety valve. And when he suddenly let Carson go--I didn’t like it, Ellsworth. I
+didn’t like it at all."
+464
+
+"What is this, Alvah? Are you telling me things I don’t know, or is this just in
+the nature of letting off steam--do forgive the mixed metaphor--on my shoulder?"
+"I guess so. I don’t like to knock Gail, but I’ve been so damn mad for so long
+I’m fit to be tied. But here’s what I’m driving at: This Howard Roark, what does
+he make you think of?"
+"I could write a volume on that, Alvah. This is hardly the time to launch into
+such an undertaking."
+"No, but I mean, what’s the one thing we know about him? That’s he’s a crank and
+a freak and a fool, all right, but what else? That he’s one of those fools you
+can’t budge with love or money or a sixteen-inch gun. He’s worse than Dwight
+Carson, worse than the whole lot of Gall’s pets put together. Well? Get my
+point? What’s Gail going to do when he comes up against that kind of a man?"
+"One of several possible things."
+"One thing only, if I know Gail, and I know Gail. That’s why I feel kind of
+hopeful. This is what he’s needed for a long time. A swig of his old medicine.
+The safety valve. He’ll go out to break that guy’s spine--and it will be good
+for Gail. The best thing in the world. Bring him back to normal....That was my
+idea, Ellsworth." He waited, saw no complementary enthusiasm on Toohey’s face
+and finished lamely: "Well, I might be wrong....I don’t know....It might mean
+nothing at all....I just thought that was psychology...."
+"That’s what it was, Alvah."
+"Then you think it’ll work that way?"
+"It might. Or it might be much worse than anything you imagine. But it’s of no
+importance to us any more. Because you see, Alvah, as far as the Banner is
+concerned, if it came to a showdown between us and our boss, we don’t have to be
+afraid of Mr. Gail Wynand any longer."
+#
+When the boy from the morgue entered, carrying a thick envelope of clippings,
+Wynand looked up from his desk and said:
+"That much? I didn’t know he was so famous."
+"Well, it’s the Stoddard trial, Mr. Wynand."
+The boy stopped. There was nothing wrong--only the ridges on Wynand’s forehead,
+and he did not know Wynand well enough to know what these meant. He wondered
+what made him feel as if he should be afraid. After a moment, Wynand said:
+"All right. Thank you."
+The boy deposited the envelope on the glass surface of the desk, and walked out.
+Wynand sat looking at the bulging shape of yellow paper. He saw it reflected in
+the glass, as if the bulk had eaten through the surface and grown roots to his
+desk. He looked at the walls of his office and he wondered whether they
+contained a power which could save him from opening that envelope.
+Then he pulled himself erect, he put both forearms in a straight line along the
+edge of the desk, his fingers stretched and meeting, he looked down, past his
+465
+
+nostrils, at the surface of the desk, he sat for a moment, grave, proud,
+collected, like the angular mummy of a Pharaoh, then he moved one hand, pulled
+the envelope forward, opened it and began to read.
+"Sacrilege" by Ellsworth M. Toohey--"The Churches of our Childhood" by Alvah
+Scarret--editorials, sermons, speeches, statements, letters to the editor, the
+Banner unleashed full-blast, photographs, cartoons, interviews, resolutions of
+protest, letters to the editor.
+He read every word, methodically, his hands on the edge of the desk, fingers
+meeting, not lifting the clippings, not touching them, reading them as they lay
+on top of the pile, moving a hand only to turn a clipping over and read the one
+beneath, moving the hand with a mechanical perfection of timing, the fingers
+rising as his eyes took the last word, not allowing the clipping to remain in
+sight a second longer than necessary. But he stopped for a long time to look at
+the photographs of the Stoddard Temple. He stopped longer to look at one of
+Roark’s pictures, the picture of exaltation captioned "Are you happy, Mr.
+Superman?" He tore it from the story it illustrated, and slipped it into his
+desk drawer. Then he continued reading.
+The trial--the testimony of Ellsworth M. Toohey--of Peter Keating--of Ralston
+Holcombe--of Gordon L. Prescott--no quotations from the testimony of Dominique
+Francon, only a brief report. "The defense rests." A few mentions in "One Small
+Voice"--then a gap--the next clipping dated three years later--Monadnock Valley.
+It was late when he finished reading. His secretaries had left. He felt the
+sense of empty rooms and halls around him. But he heard the sound of presses: a
+low, rumbling vibration that went through every room. He had always liked
+that--the sound of the building’s heart, beating. He listened. They were running
+off tomorrow’s Banner. He sat without moving for a long time.
+
+3.
+ROARK and Wynand stood on the top of a hill, looking over a spread of land that
+sloped away in a long gradual curve. Bare trees rose on the hilltop and
+descended to the shore of a lake, their branches geometrical compositions cut
+through the air. The color of the sky, a clear, fragile blue-green, made the air
+colder. The cold washed the colors of the earth, revealing that they were not
+colors but only the elements from which color was to come, the dead brown not a
+full brown but a future green, the tired purple an overture to flame, the gray a
+prelude to gold. The earth was like the outline of a great story, like the steel
+frame of a building--to be filled and finished, holding all the splendor of the
+future in naked simplification.
+"Where do you think the house should stand?" asked Wynand.
+"Here," said Roark.
+"I hoped you’d choose this."
+Wynand had driven his car from the city, and they had walked for two hours down
+the paths of his new estate, through deserted lanes, through a forest, past the
+lake, to the hill. Now Wynand waited, while Roark stood looking at the
+countryside spread under his feet. Wynand wondered what reins this man was
+gathering from all the points of the landscape into his hand.
+466
+
+When Roark turned to him, Wynand asked:
+"May I speak to you now?"
+"Of course," Roark smiled, amused by the deference which he
+had not requested.
+Wynand’s voice sounded clear and brittle, like the color of the sky above them,
+with the same quality of ice-green radiance: "Why did you accept this
+commission?"
+"Because I’m an architect for hire."
+"You know what I mean."
+"I’m not sure I do."
+"Don’t you hate my guts?"
+"No. Why should I?"
+"You want me to speak of it first?"
+"Of what?"
+"The Stoddard Temple."
+Roark smiled. "So you did check up on me since yesterday."
+"I read our clippings." He waited, but Roark said nothing. "All of them." His
+voice was harsh, half defiance, half plea. "Everything we said about you." The
+calm of Roark’s face drove him to fury. He went on, giving slow, full value to
+each word: "We called you an incompetent fool, a tyro, a charlatan, a swindler,
+an egomaniac..."
+"Stop torturing yourself."
+Wynand closed his eyes, as if Roark had struck him. In a moment, he said:
+"Mr. Roark, you don’t know me very well. You might as well learn this: I don’t
+apologize. I never apologize for any of my actions."
+"What made you think of apology? I haven’t asked for it."
+"I stand by every one of those descriptive terms. I stand by every word printed
+in the Banner."
+"I haven’t asked you to repudiate it."
+"I know what you think. You understood that I didn’t know about the Stoddard
+Temple yesterday. I had forgotten the name of the architect involved. You
+concluded it wasn’t I who led that campaign against you. You’re right, it wasn’t
+I, I was away at the time. But you don’t understand that the campaign was in the
+true and proper spirit of the Banner. It was in strict accordance with the
+Banner’s function. No one is responsible for it but me. Alvah Scarret was doing
+only what I taught him. Had I been in town, I would have done the same."
+"That’s your privilege."
+467
+
+"You don’t believe I would have done it?"
+"No."
+"I haven’t asked you for compliments and I haven’t asked you for pity."
+"I can’t do what you’re asking for."
+"What do you think I’m asking?"
+"That I slap your face."
+"Why don’t you?"
+"I can’t pretend an anger I don’t feel," said Roark. "It’s not pity. It’s much
+more cruel than anything I could do. Only I’m not doing it in order to be cruel.
+If I slapped your face, you’d forgive me for the Stoddard Temple."
+"Is it you who should seek forgiveness?"
+"No. You wish I did. You know that there’s an act of forgiveness involved.
+You’re not clear about the actors. You wish I would forgive you--or demand
+payment, which is the same thing--and you believe that that would close the
+record. But, you see, I have nothing to do with it. I’m not one of the actors.
+It doesn’t matter what I do or feel about it now. You’re not thinking of me. I
+can’t help you. I’m not the person you’re afraid of just now."
+"Who is?"
+"Yourself."
+"Who gave you the right to say all this?"
+"You did."
+"Well, go on."
+"Do you wish the rest?"
+"Go on."
+"I think it hurts you to know that you’ve made me suffer. You wish you hadn’t.
+And yet there’s something that frightens you more. The knowledge that I haven’t
+suffered at all."
+"Go on."
+"The knowledge that I’m neither kind nor generous now, but simply indifferent.
+It frightens you, because you know that things like the Stoddard Temple always
+require payment--and you see that I’m not paying for it. You were astonished
+that I accepted this commission. Do you think my acceptance required courage?
+You needed far greater courage to hire me. You see, this is what I think of the
+Stoddard Temple. I’m through with it. You’re not."
+Wynand let his fingers fall open, palms out. His shoulders sagged a little,
+relaxing. He said very simply:
+"All right. It’s true. All of it."
+468
+
+Then he stood straight, but with a kind of quiet resignation, as if his body
+were consciously made vulnerable.
+"I hope you know you’ve given me a beating in your own way," he said.
+"Yes. And you’ve taken it. So you’ve accomplished what you wanted. Shall we say
+we’re even and forget the Stoddard Temple?"
+"You’re very wise or I’ve been very obvious. Either is your achievement.
+Nobody’s ever caused me to become obvious before."
+"Shall I still do what you want?"
+"What do you think I want now?"
+"Personal recognition from me. It’s my turn to give in, isn’t it?"
+"You’re appallingly honest, aren’t you?"
+"Why shouldn’t I be? I can’t give you the recognition of having made me suffer.
+But you’ll take the substitute of having given me pleasure, won’t you? All
+right, then. I’m glad you like me. I think you know this is as much an exception
+for me as your taking a beating. I don’t usually care whether I’m liked or not.
+I do care this time. I’m glad."
+Wynand laughed aloud. "You’re as innocent and presumptuous as an emperor. When
+you confer honors you merely exalt yourself. What in hell made you think I liked
+you?"
+"Now you don’t want any explanations of that. You’ve reproached me once for
+causing you to be obvious."
+Wynand sat down on a fallen tree trunk. He said nothing; but his movement was an
+invitation and a demand. Roark sat down beside him; Roark’s face was sober, but
+the trace of a smile remained, amused and watchful, as if every word he heard
+were not a disclosure but a confirmation.
+"You’ve come up from nothing, haven’t you?" Wynand asked. "You came from a poor
+family."
+"Yes. How did you know that?"
+"Just because it feels like a presumption--the thought of handing you anything:
+a compliment, an idea or a fortune. I started at the bottom, too. Who was your
+father?"
+"A steel puddler."
+"Mine was a longshoreman. Did you hold all sorts of funny jobs when you were a
+child?"
+"All sorts. Mostly in the building trades."
+"I did worse than that. I did just about everything. What job did you like
+best?"
+"Catching rivets, on steel structures."
+469
+
+"I liked being a bootblack on a Hudson ferry. I should have hated that, but I
+didn’t. I don’t remember the people at all. I remember the city. The
+city--always there, on the shore, spread out, waiting, as if I were tied to it
+by a rubber band. The band would stretch and carry me away, to the other shore,
+but it would always snap back and I would return. It gave me the feeling that
+I’d never escaped from that city--and it would never escape from me."
+Roark knew that Wynand seldom spoke of his childhood, by the quality of his
+words; they were bright and hesitant, untarnished by usage, like coins that had
+not passed through many hands.
+"Were you ever actually homeless and starving?" Wynand asked.
+"A few times."
+"Did you mind that?"
+"No."
+"I didn’t either. I minded something else. Did you want to scream, when you were
+a child, seeing nothing but fat ineptitude around you, knowing how many things
+could be done and done so well, but having no power to do them? Having no power
+to blast the empty skulls around you? Having to take orders--and that’s bad
+enough--but to take orders from your inferiors! Have you felt that?"
+"Yes."
+"Did you drive the anger back inside of you, and store it, and decide to let
+yourself be torn to pieces if necessary, but reach the day when you’d rule those
+people and all people and everything around you?"
+"No."
+"You didn’t? You let yourself forget?"
+"No. I hate incompetence. I think it’s probably the only thing I do hate. But it
+didn’t make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want
+to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary."
+"And you were?"
+"No. Not in any way that counts."
+"You don’t mind looking back? At anything?"
+"No."
+"I do. There was one night. I was beaten and I crawled to a door--I remember the
+pavement--it was right under my nostrils--I can still see it--there were veins
+in the stone and white spots--I had to make sure that that pavement moved--I
+couldn’t feel whether I was moving or not--but I could tell by the pavement--I
+had to see that those veins and spots changed--I had to reach the next pattern
+or the crack six inches away--it took a long time--and I knew it was blood under
+my stomach..."
+His voice had no tone of self-pity; it was simple, impersonal, with a faint
+sound of wonder. Roark said: "I’d like to help you."
+Wynand smiled slowly, not gaily. "I believe you could. I even believe that it
+470
+
+would be proper. Two days ago I would have murdered anyone who’d think of me as
+an object for help....You know, of course, that that night’s not what I hate in
+my past. Not what I dread to look back on. It was only the least offensive to
+mention. The other things can’t be talked about."
+"I know. I meant the other things."
+"What are they? You name them."
+"The Stoddard Temple."
+"You want to help me with that?"
+"Yes."
+"You’re a damn fool. Don’t you realize..."
+"Don’t you realize I’m doing it already?"
+"How?"
+"By building this house for you."
+Roark saw the slanting ridges on Wynand’s forehead. Wynand’s eyes seemed whiter
+than usual, as if the blue had ebbed from the iris, two white ovals, luminous on
+his face. He said:
+"And getting a fat commission check for it."
+He saw Roark’s smile, suppressed before it appeared fully. The smile would have
+said that this sudden insult was a declaration of surrender, more eloquent than
+the speeches of confidence; the suppression said that Roark would not help him
+over this particular moment.
+"Why, of course," said Roark calmly.
+Wynand got up. "Let’s go. We’re wasting time. I have more important things to do
+at the office."
+They did not speak on their way back to the city. Wynand drove his car at ninety
+miles an hour. The speed made two solid walls of blurred motion on the sides of
+the road; as if they were flying down a long, closed, silent corridor.
+He stopped at the entrance to the Cord Building and let Roark out. He said:
+"You’re free to go back to that site as often as you wish, Mr. Roark. I don’t
+have to go with you. You can get the surveys and all the information you need
+from my office. Please do not call on me again until it is necessary. I shall be
+very busy. Let me know when the first drawings are ready."
+#
+When the drawings were ready, Roark telephoned Wynand’s office. He had not
+spoken to Wynand for a month. "Please hold the wire, Mr. Roark," said Wynand’s
+secretary. He waited. The secretary’s voice came back and informed him that Mr.
+Wynand wished the drawings brought to his office that afternoon; she gave the
+hour, Wynand would not answer in person.
+When Roark entered the office, Wynand said: "How do you do, Mr. Roark," his
+voice gracious and formal. No memory of intimacy remained on his blank,
+471
+
+courteous face.
+Roark handed him the plans of the house and a large perspective drawing. Wynand
+studied each sheet. He held the drawing for a long time. Then he looked up.
+"I am very much impressed, Mr. Roark." The voice was offensively correct. "I
+have been quite impressed by you from the first. I have thought it over and I
+want to make a special deal with you."
+His glance was directed at Roark with a soft emphasis, almost with tenderness;
+as if he were showing that he wished to treat Roark cautiously, to spare him
+intact for a purpose of his own. He lifted the sketch and held it up between two
+fingers, letting all the light hit it straight on; the white sheet glowed as a
+reflector for a moment, pushing the black pencil lines eloquently forward.
+"You want to see this house erected?" Wynand asked softly. "You want it very
+much?"
+"Yes," said Roark.
+Wynand did not move his hand, only parted his fingers and let the cardboard drop
+face down on the desk.
+"It will be erected, Mr. Roark. Just as you designed it. Just as it stands on
+this sketch. On one condition."
+Roark sat leaning back, his hands in his pockets, attentive, waiting.
+"You don’t want to ask me what condition, Mr. Roark? Very well, I’ll tell you. I
+shall accept this house on condition that you accept the deal I offer you. I
+wish to sign a contract whereby you will be sole architect for any building I
+undertake to erect in the future. As you realize, this would be quite an
+assignment. I venture to say I control more structural work than any other
+single person in the country. Every man in your profession has wanted to be
+known as my exclusive architect. I am offering it to you. In exchange, you will
+have to submit yourself to certain conditions. Before I name them, I’d like to
+point out some of the consequences, should you refuse. As you may have heard, I
+do not like to be refused. The power I hold can work two ways. It would be easy
+for me to arrange that no commission be available to you anywhere in this
+country. You have a small following of your own, but no prospective employer can
+withstand the kind of pressure I am in a position to exert. You have gone
+through wasted periods of your life before. They were nothing, compared to the
+blockade I can impose. You might have to go back to a granite quarry--oh yes, I
+know about that, summer of 1928, the Francon quarry in
+Connecticut--how?--private detectives, Mr. Roark--you might have to go back to a
+granite quarry, only I shall see to it that the quarries also will be closed to
+you. Now I’ll tell you what I want of you."
+In all the gossip about Gail Wynand, no one had ever mentioned the expression of
+his face as it was in this moment. The few men who had seen it did not talk
+about it. Of these men, Dwight Carson had been the first. Wynand’s lips were
+parted, his eyes brilliant. It was an expression of sensual pleasure derived
+from agony--the agony of his victim or his own, or both.
+"I want you to design all my future commercial structures--as the public wishes
+commercial structures to be designed. You’ll build Colonial houses, Rococo
+hotels and semi-Grecian office buildings. You’ll exercise your matchless
+ingenuity within forms chosen by the taste of the people--and you’ll make money
+for me. You’ll take your spectacular talent and make it obedient Originality and
+472
+
+subservience together. They call it harmony. You’ll create in your sphere what
+the Banner is in mine. Do you think it took no talent to create the Banner? Such
+will be your future career. But the house you’ve designed for me shall be
+erected as you designed it. It will be the last Roark building to rise on earth.
+Nobody will have one after mine. You’ve read about ancient rulers who put to
+death the architect of their palace, that no others might equal the glory he had
+given them. They killed the architect or cut his eyes out. Modern methods are
+different. For the rest of your life you’ll obey the will of the majority. I
+shan’t attempt to offer you any arguments. I am merely stating an alternative.
+You’re the kind of man who can understand plain language. You have a simple
+choice: if you refuse, you’ll never build anything again; if you accept, you’ll
+build this house which you want so much to see erected, and a great many other
+houses which you won’t like, but which will make money for both of us. For the
+rest of your life you’ll design rental developments, such as Stoneridge. That is
+what I want."
+He leaned forward, waiting for one of the reactions he knew well and enjoyed: a
+look of anger, or indignation, or ferocious pride.
+"Why, of course," said Roark gaily. "I’ll be glad to do it. That’s easy."
+He reached over, took a pencil and the first piece of paper he saw on Wynand’s
+desk--a letter with an imposing letterhead. He drew rapidly on the back of the
+letter. The motion of his hand was smooth and confident. Wynand looked at his
+face bent over the paper; he saw the unwrinkled forehead, the straight line of
+the eyebrows, attentive, but untroubled by effort.
+Roark raised his head and threw the paper to Wynand across the desk.
+"Is this what you want?"
+Wynand’s house stood drawn on the paper--with Colonial porches, a gambrel roof,
+two massive chimneys, a few little pilasters, a few porthole windows. It was not
+a parody, it was a serious job of adaptation in what any professor would have
+called excellent taste.
+"Good God, no!" The gasp was instinctive and immediate.
+"Then shut up," said Roark, "and don’t ever let me hear any architectural
+suggestions."
+Wynand slumped down in his chair and laughed. He laughed for a long time, unable
+to stop. It was not a happy sound.
+Roark shook his head wearily. "You knew better than that. And it’s such an old
+one to me. My antisocial stubbornness is so well known that I didn’t think
+anyone would waste time trying to tempt me again."
+"Howard. I meant it. Until I saw this."
+"I knew you meant it. I didn’t think you could be such a fool."
+"You knew you were taking a terrible kind of chance?"
+"None at all. I had an ally I could trust."
+"What? Your integrity?"
+"Yours, Gail."
+473
+
+Wynand sat looking down at the surface of his desk. After a while he said:
+"You’re wrong about that."
+"I don’t think so."
+Wynand lifted his head; he looked tired; he sounded indifferent.
+"It was your method of the Stoddard trial again, wasn’t it? "The defense
+rests.’...I wish I had been in the courtroom to hear that sentence....You did
+throw the trial back at me again, didn’t you?"
+"Call it that."
+"But this time, you won. I suppose you know I’m not glad that you won."
+"I know you’re not."
+"Don’t think it was one of those temptations when you tempt just to test your
+victim and are happy to be beaten, and smile and say, well, at last, here’s the
+kind of man I want. Don’t imagine that. Don’t make that excuse for me."
+"I’m not. I know what you wanted."
+"I wouldn’t have lost so easily before. This would have been only the beginning.
+I know I can try further. I don’t want to try. Not because you’d probably hold
+out to the end. But because I wouldn’t hold out. No, I’m not glad and I’m not
+grateful to you for this....But it doesn’t matter...."
+"Gail, how much lying to yourself are you actually capable of?"
+"I’m not lying. Everything I just told you is true. I thought you understood
+it."
+"Everything you just told me--yes. I wasn’t thinking of that."
+"You’re wrong in what you’re thinking. You’re wrong in remaining here."
+"Do you wish to throw me out?"
+"You know I can’t."
+Wynand’s glance moved from Roark to the drawing of the house lying face down on
+his desk. He hesitated for a moment, looking at the blank cardboard, then turned
+it over. He asked softly:
+"Shall I tell you now what I think of this?"
+"You’ve told me."
+"Howard, you spoke about a house as a statement of my life. Do you think my life
+deserves a statement like this?"
+"Yes."
+"Is this your honest judgment?"
+"My honest judgment, Gail. My most sincere one. My final one. No matter what
+474
+
+might happen between us in the future."
+Wynand put the drawing down and sat studying the plans for a long time. When he
+raised his head, he looked calm and normal.
+"Why did you stay away from here?" he asked. "You were busy with private
+detectives." Wynand laughed. "Oh that? I couldn’t resist my old bad habits and I
+was curious. Now I know everything about you--except the women in your life.
+Either you’ve been very discreet or there haven’t been many. No information
+available on that anywhere."
+"There haven’t been many."
+"I think I missed you. It was a kind of substitute--gathering the details of
+your past. Why did you actually stay away?"
+"You told me to."
+"Are you always so meek about taking orders?"
+"When I find it advisable."
+"Well, here’s an order--hope you place it among the advisable ones: come to have
+dinner with us tonight. I’ll take this drawing home to show my wife. I’ve told
+her nothing about the house so far."
+"You haven’t told her?"
+"No. I want her to see this. And I want you to meet her. I know she hasn’t been
+kind to you in the past--I read what she wrote about you. But it’s so long ago.
+I hope it doesn’t matter now."
+"No, it doesn’t matter."
+"Then will you come?"
+"Yes."
+
+4.
+DOMINIQUE stood at the glass door of her room. Wynand saw the starlight on the
+ice sheets of the roof garden outside. He saw its reflection touching the
+outline of her profile, a faint radiance on her eyelids, on the planes of her
+cheeks. He thought that this was the illumination proper to her face. She turned
+to him slowly, and the light became an edge around the pale straight mass of her
+hair. She smiled as she had always smiled at him, a quiet greeting of
+understanding.
+"What’s the matter, Gail?"
+"Good evening, dear. Why?"
+"You look happy. That’s not the word. But it’s the nearest."
+"’Light’ is nearer. I feel light, thirty years lighter. Not that I’d want to be
+what I was thirty years ago. One never does. What the feeling means is only a
+475
+
+sense of being carried back intact, as one is now, back to the beginning. It’s
+quite illogical and impossible and wonderful."
+"What the feeling usually means is that you’ve met someone. A woman as a rule."
+"I have. Not a woman. A man. Dominique, you’re very beautiful tonight. But I
+always say that. It’s not what I wanted to say. It’s this: I am very happy
+tonight that you’re so beautiful."
+"What is it, Gail?"
+"Nothing. Only a feeling of how much is unimportant and how easy it is to live."
+He took her hand and held it to his lips.
+"Dominique, I’ve never stopped thinking it’s a miracle that our marriage has
+lasted. Now I believe that it won’t be broken. By anything or anyone." She
+leaned back against the glass pane. "I have a present for you--don’t remind me
+it’s the sentence I use more often than any other. I will have a present for you
+by the end of this summer. Our house."
+"The house? You haven’t spoken of it for so long, I thought you had forgotten."
+"I’ve thought of nothing else for the last six months. You haven’t changed your
+mind? You do want to move out of the city?"
+"Yes, Gail, if you want it so much. Have you decided on an architect?"
+"I’ve done more than that. I have the drawing of the house to show you."
+"Oh, I’d like to see it."
+"It’s in my study. Come on. I want you to see it."
+She smiled and closed her fingers over his wrist, a brief pressure, like a
+caress of encouragement, then she followed him. He threw the door of his study
+open and let her enter first. The light was on and the drawing stood propped on
+his desk, facing the door.
+She stopped, her hands behind her, palms flattened against the doorjamb. She was
+too far away to see the signature, but she knew the work and the only man who
+could have designed that house.
+Her shoulders moved, describing a circle, twisting slowly, as if she were tied
+to a pole, had abandoned hope of escape, and only her body made a last,
+instinctive gesture of protest.
+She thought, were she lying in bed in Roark’s arms in the sight of Gail Wynand,
+the violation would be less terrible; this drawing, more personal than Roark’s
+body, created in answer to a matching force that came from Gail Wynand, was a
+violation of her, of Roark, of Wynand--and yet, she knew suddenly that it was
+the inevitable.
+"No," she whispered, "things like that are never a coincidence."
+"What?"
+But she held up her hand, softly pushing back all conversation, and she walked
+to the drawing, her steps soundless on the carpet. She saw the sharp signature
+476
+
+in the corner--"Howard Roark." It was less terrifying than the shape of the
+house; it was a thin point of support, almost a greeting.
+"Dominique?"
+She turned her face to him. He saw her answer. He said:
+"I knew you’d like it. Forgive the inadequacy. We’re stuck for words tonight."
+She walked to the davenport and sat down; she let her back press against the
+cushions; it helped to sit straight. She kept her eyes on Wynand. He stood
+before her, leaning on the mantelpiece, half turned away, looking at the
+drawing. She could not escape that drawing; Wynand’s face was like a mirror of
+it.
+"You’ve seen him, Gail?"
+"Whom?"
+"The architect."
+"Of course I’ve seen him. Not an hour ago."
+"When did you first meet him?"
+"Last month."
+"You knew him all this time?...Every evening...when you came home...at the
+dinner table..."
+"You mean, why didn’t I tell you? I wanted to have the sketch to show you. I saw
+the house like this, but I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t think anyone would ever
+understand what I wanted and design it. He did."
+"Who?"
+"Howard Roark."
+She had wanted to hear the name pronounced by Gail Wynand.
+"How did you happen to choose him, Gail?"
+"I looked all over the country. Every building I liked had been done by him."
+She nodded slowly.
+"Dominique, I take it for granted you don’t care about it any more, but I know
+that I picked the one architect you spent all your time denouncing when you were
+on the Banner."
+"You read that?"
+"I read it. You had an odd way of doing it. It was obvious that you admired his
+work and hated him personally. But you defended him at the Stoddard trial."
+"Yes."
+"You even worked for him once. That statue, Dominique, it was made for his
+temple."
+477
+
+"Yes."
+"It’s strange. You lost your job on the Banner for defending him. I didn’t know
+it when I chose him. I didn’t know about that trial. I had forgotten his name.
+Dominique, in a way, it’s he who gave you to me. That statue--from his temple.
+And now he’s going to give me this house. Dominique, why did you hate him?"
+"I didn’t hate him....It was so long ago..."
+"I suppose none of that matters now, does it?" He pointed to the drawing.
+"I haven’t seen him for years."
+"You’re going to see him in about an hour. He’s coming here for dinner."
+She moved her hand, tracing a spiral on the arm of the davenport, to convince
+herself that she could.
+"Here?"
+"Yes."
+"You’ve asked him for dinner?"
+He smiled; he remembered his resentment against the presence of guests in their
+house. He said: "This is different. I want him here. I don’t think you remember
+him well--or you wouldn’t be astonished."
+She got up.
+"All right, Gail. I’ll give the orders. Then I’ll get dressed."
+#
+They faced each other across the drawing room of Gail Wynand’s penthouse. She
+thought how simple it was. He had always been here. He had been the motive power
+of every step she had taken in these rooms. He had brought her here and now he
+had come to claim this place. She was looking at him. She was seeing him as she
+had seen him on the morning when she awakened in his bed for the last time. She
+knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living
+intactness of that memory. She thought this had been inevitable from the first,
+from the instant when she had looked down at him on the ledge of a quarry--it
+had to come like this, in Gail Wynand’s house--and now she felt the peace of
+finality, knowing that her share of decision had ended; she had been the one who
+acted, but he would act from now on.
+She stood straight, her head level; the planes of her face had a military
+cleanliness of precision and a feminine fragility; her hands hung still,
+composed by her sides, parallel with the long straight lines of her black dress.
+"How do you do, Mr. Roark."
+"How do you do, Mrs. Wynand."
+"May I thank you for the house you have designed for us? It is the most
+beautiful of your buildings."
+"It had to be, by the nature of the assignment, Mrs. Wynand."
+478
+
+She turned her head slowly.
+"How did you present the assignment to Mr. Roark, Gail?"
+"Just as I spoke of it to you."
+She thought of what Roark had heard from Wynand, and had accepted. She moved to
+sit down; the two men followed her example. Roark said:
+"If you like the house, the first achievement was Mr. Wynand’s conception of
+it."
+She asked: "Are you sharing the credit with a client?"
+"Yes, in a way."
+"I believe this contradicts what I remember of your professional convictions."
+"But supports my personal ones."
+"I’m not sure I ever understood that."
+"I believe in conflict, Mrs. Wynand."
+"Was there a conflict involved in designing this house?"
+"The desire not to be influenced by my client."
+"In what way?"
+"I have liked working for some people and did not like working for others. But
+neither mattered. This time, I knew that the house would be what it became only
+because it was being done for Mr. Wynand. I had to overcome this. Or rather, I
+had to work with it and against it. It was the best way of working. The house
+had to surpass the architect, the client and the future tenant. It did."
+"But the house--it’s you, Howard," said Wynand. "It’s still you."
+It was the first sign of emotion on her face, a quiet shock, when she heard the
+"Howard." Wynand did not notice it. Roark did. He glanced at her--his first
+glance of personal contact. She could read no comment in it--only a conscious
+affirmation of the thought that had shocked her.
+"Thank you for understanding that, Gail," he answered.
+She was not certain whether she had heard him stressing the name.
+"It’s strange," said Wynand. "I am the most offensively possessive man on earth.
+I do something to things. Let me pick up an ash tray from a dime-store counter,
+pay for it and put it in my pocket--and it becomes a special kind of ash tray,
+unlike any on earth, because it’s mine. It’s an extra quality in the thing, like
+a sort of halo. I feel that about everything I own. From my overcoat--to the
+oldest linotype in the composing room--to the copies of the Banner on
+newsstands--to this penthouse--to my wife. And I’ve never wanted to own anything
+as much as I want this house you’re going to build for me, Howard. I will
+probably be jealous of Dominique living in it--I can be quite insane about
+things like that. And yet--I don’t feel that I’ll own it, because no matter what
+I do or say, it’s still yours. It will always be yours."
+479
+
+"It has to be mine," said Roark. "But in another sense, Gail, you own that house
+and everything else I’ve built. You own every structure you’ve stopped before
+and heard yourself answering."
+"In what sense?"
+"In the sense of that personal answer. What you feel in the presence of a thing
+you admire is just one word--’Yes.’ The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of
+admittance. And that ’Yes’ is more than an answer to one thing, it’s a kind of
+’Amen’ to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created
+it, to yourself for being able to see it. But the ability to say ’Yes’ or ’No’
+is the essence of all ownership. It’s your ownership of your own ego. Your soul,
+if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function--the act of valuing. ’Yes’ or
+’No,’ ’I wish’ or ’I do not wish.’ You can’t say ’Yes’ without saying ’I.’
+There’s no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to
+which you grant your love is yours."
+"In this sense, you share things with others?"
+"No. It’s not sharing. When I listen to a symphony I love, I don’t get from it
+what the composer got. His ’Yes’ was different from mine. He could have no
+concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to
+each man But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.
+I’m alone when I design a house, Gail, and you can never know the way in which I
+own it. But if you said you own ’Amen’ to it--it’s also yours. And I’m glad it’s
+yours."
+Wynand said, smiling:
+"I like to think that. That I own Monadnock and the Enright House and the Cord
+Building..."
+"And the Stoddard Temple," said Dominique.
+She had listened to them. She felt numb. Wynand had never spoken like this to
+any guest in their house; Roark had never spoken like this to any client. She
+knew that the numbness would break into anger, denial, indignation later; now it
+was only a cutting sound in her voice, a sound to destroy what she had heard.
+She thought that she succeeded. Wynand answered, the word dropping heavily:
+"Yes."
+"Forget the Stoddard Temple, Gail," said Roark. There was such a simple,
+careless gaiety in his voice that no solemn dispensation could have been more
+effective.
+"Yes, Howard," said Wynand, smiling.
+She saw Roark’s eyes turned to her.
+"I have not thanked you, Mrs. Wynand, for accepting me as your architect. I know
+that Mr. Wynand chose me and you could have refused my services. I wanted to
+tell you that I’m glad you didn’t."
+She thought, I believe it because none of this can be believed; I’ll accept
+anything tonight; I’m looking at him.
+She said, courteously indifferent: "Wouldn’t it be a reflection on my judgment
+480
+
+to suppose that I would wish to reject a house you had designed, Mr. Roark?" She
+thought that nothing she said aloud could matter tonight.
+Wynand asked:
+"Howard, that ’Yes’--once granted, can it be withdrawn?"
+She wanted to laugh in incredulous anger. It was Wynand’s voice that had asked
+this; it should have been hers. He must look at me when he answers, she thought;
+he must look at me.
+"Never," Roark answered, looking at Wynand.
+"There’s so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all
+emotions," said Wynand. "I’ve always thought that a feeling which changes never
+existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I
+still like them."
+The butler entered, carrying a tray of cocktails. Holding her glass, she watched
+Roark take his off the tray. She thought: At this moment the glass stem between
+his fingers feels just like the one between mine; we have this much in
+common....Wynand stood, holding a glass, looking at Roark with a strange kind of
+incredulous wonder, not like a host, like an owner who cannot quite believe his
+ownership of his prize possession....She thought: I’m not insane. I’m only
+hysterical, but it’s quite all right, I’m saying something, I don’t know what it
+is, but it must be all right, they are both listening and answering, Gail is
+smiling, I must be saying the proper things....
+Dinner was announced and she rose obediently; she led the way to the dining
+room, like a graceful animal given poise by conditioned reflexes. She sat at the
+head of the table, between the two men facing each other at her sides. She
+watched the silverware in Roark’s fingers, the pieces of polished metal with the
+initials "D W." She thought: I have done this so many times--I am the gracious
+Mrs. Gail Wynand--there were Senators, judges, presidents of insurance
+companies, sitting at dinner in that place at my right--and this is what I was
+being trained for, this is why Gail has been rising through tortured years to
+the position of entertaining Senators and judges at dinner--for the purpose of
+reaching an evening when the guest facing him would be Howard Roark.
+Wynand spoke about the newspaper business; he showed no reluctance to discuss it
+with Roark, and she pronounced a few sentences when it seemed necessary. Her
+voice had a luminous simplicity; she was being carried along, unresisting, any
+personal reaction would be superfluous, even pain or fear. She thought, if in
+the flow of conversation Wynand’s next sentence should be: "You’ve slept with
+him," she would answer: "Yes, Gail, of course," just as simply. But Wynand
+seldom looked at her; when he did, she knew by his face that hers was normal.
+Afterward, they were in the drawing room again, and she saw Roark standing at
+the window, against the lights of the city. She thought: Gail built this place
+as a token of his own victory--to have the city always before him--the city
+where he did run things at last. But this is what it had really been built
+for--to have Roark stand at that window--and I think Gail knows it
+tonight--Roark’s body blocking miles out of that perspective, with only a few
+dots of fire and a few cubes of lighted glass left visible around the outline of
+his figure. He was smoking and she watched his cigarette moving slowly against
+the black sky, as he put it between his lips, then held it extended in his
+fingers, and she thought: they are only sparks from his cigarette, those points
+glittering in space behind him.
+481
+
+She said softly: "Gail always liked to look at the city at night. He was in love
+with skyscrapers."
+Then she noticed she had used the past tense, and wondered why.
+She did not remember what she said when they spoke about the new house. Wynand
+brought the drawings from his study, spread the plans on a table, and the three
+of them stood bent over the plans together. Roark’s pencil moved, pointing,
+across the hard geometrical patterns of thin black lines on white sheets. She
+heard his voice, close to her, explaining. They did not speak of beauty and
+affirmation, but of closets, stairways, pantries, bathrooms. Roark asked her
+whether she found the arrangements convenient. She thought it was strange that
+they all spoke as if they really believed she would ever live in this house.
+When Roark had gone, she heard Wynand asking her:
+"What do you think of him?"
+She felt something angry and dangerous, like a single, sudden twist within her,
+and she said, half in fear, half in deliberate invitation:
+"Doesn’t he remind you of Dwight Carson?"
+"Oh, forget Dwight Carson!"
+Wynand’s voice, refusing earnestness, refusing guilt, had sounded exactly like
+the voice that had said: "Forget the Stoddard Temple."
+#
+The secretary in the reception room looked, startled, at the patrician gentleman
+whose face she had seen so often in the papers.
+"Gail Wynand," he said, inclining his head in self-introduction. "I should like
+to see Mr. Roark. If he is not busy. Please do not disturb him if he is. I had
+no appointment."
+She had never expected Wynand to come to an office unannounced and to ask
+admittance in that tone of grave deference.
+She announced the visitor. Roark came out into the reception room, smiling, as
+if he found nothing unusual in this call.
+"Hello, Gail. Come in."
+"Hello, Howard."
+He followed Roark to the office. Beyond the broad windows the darkness of late
+afternoon dissolved the city; it was snowing; black specks whirled furiously
+across the lights.
+"I don’t want to interrupt if you’re busy, Howard. This is not important." He
+had not seen Roark for five days, since the dinner.
+"I’m not busy. Take your coat off. Shall I have the drawings
+brought in?"
+"No. I don’t want to talk about the house. Actually, I came without any reason
+at all. I was down at my office all day, got slightly sick of it, and felt like
+482
+
+coming here. What are you grinning about?"
+"Nothing. Only you said that it wasn’t important."
+Wynand looked at him, smiled and nodded.
+He sat down on the edge of Roark’s desk, with an ease which he had never felt in
+his own office, his hands in his pockets, one leg swinging.
+"It’s almost useless to talk to you, Howard. I always feel as if I were reading
+to you a carbon copy of myself and you’ve already seen the original. You seem to
+hear everything I say a minute in advance. We’re unsynchronized."
+"You call that unsynchronized?"
+"All right. Too well synchronized." His eyes were moving slowly over the room.
+"If we own the things to which we say ’Yes,’ then I own this office?"
+"Then you own it."
+"You know what I feel here? No, I won’t say I feel at home--I don’t think I’ve
+ever felt at home anywhere. And I won’t say I feel as I did in the palaces I’ve
+visited or in the great European cathedrals. I feel as I did when I was still in
+Hell’s Kitchen--in the best days I had there--there weren’t many. But
+sometimes--when I sat like this--only it was some piece of broken wall by the
+wharf--and there were a lot of stars above and dump heaps around me and the
+river smelt of rotting shells....Howard, when you look back, does it seem to you
+as if all your days had rolled forward evenly, like a sort of typing exercise,
+all alike? Or were there stops-points reached--and then the typing rolled on
+again?"
+"There were stops."
+"Did you know them at the time--did you know that that’s what they were?"
+"Yes."
+"I didn’t. I knew afterward. But I never knew the reasons. There was one
+moment--I was twelve and I stood behind a wall, waiting to be killed. Only I
+knew I wouldn’t be killed. Not what I did afterward, not the fight I had, but
+just that one moment when I waited. I don’t know why that was a stop to be
+remembered or why I feel proud of it. I don’t know why I have to think of it
+here."
+"Don’t look for the reason."
+"Do you know it?"
+"I said don’t look for it."
+"I have been thinking about my past--ever since I met you. And I had gone for
+years without thinking of it. No, no secret conclusions for you to draw from
+that. It doesn’t hurt me to look back this way, and it doesn’t give me pleasure.
+It’s just looking. Not a quest, not even a journey. Just a kind of walk at
+random, like wandering through the countryside in the evening, when one’s a
+little tired....If there’s any connection to you at all, it’s only one thought
+that keeps coming back to me. I keep thinking that you and I started in the same
+way. From the same point. From nothing. I just think that. Without any comment.
+I don’t seem to find any particular meaning in it at all. Just ’we started in
+483
+
+the same way’...Want to tell me what it means?"
+"No."
+Wynand glanced about the room--and noticed a newspaper on top of a filing
+cabinet.
+"Who the hell reads the Banner around here?"
+"I do."
+"Since when?"
+"Since about a month ago."
+"Sadism?"
+"No. Just curiosity."
+Wynand rose, picked up the paper and glanced through the pages. He stopped at
+one and chuckled. He held it up: the page that bore photographed drawings of the
+buildings for "The March of the Centuries" exposition.
+"Awful, isn’t it?" said Wynand. "It’s disgusting that we have to plug that
+stuff. But I feel better about it when I think of what you did to those eminent
+civic leaders." He chuckled happily. "You told them you don’t co-operate or
+collaborate."
+"But it wasn’t a gesture, Gail. It was plain common sense. One can’t collaborate
+on one’s own job. I can co-operate, if that’s what they call it, with the
+workers who erect my buildings. But I can’t help them to lay bricks and they
+can’t help me to design the house."
+"It was the kind of gesture I’d like to make. I’m forced to give those civic
+leaders free space in my papers. But it’s all right. You’ve slapped their faces
+for me." He tossed the paper aside, without anger. "It’s like that luncheon I
+had to attend today. A national convention of advertisers. I must give them
+publicity--all wiggling, wriggling and drooling. I got so sick of it I thought
+I’d run amuck and bash somebody’s skull. And then I thought of you. I thought
+that you weren’t touched by any of it. Not in any way. The national convention
+of advertisers doesn’t exist as far as you’re concerned. It’s in some sort of
+fourth dimension that can never establish any communication with you at all. I
+thought of that--and I felt a peculiar kind of relief."
+He leaned against the filing cabinet, letting his feet slide forward, his arms
+crossed, and he spoke softly:
+"Howard I had a kitten once. The damn thing attached itself to me--a flea-bitten
+little beast from the gutter, just fur, mud and bones--followed me home, I fed
+it and kicked it out, but the next day there it was again, and finally I kept
+it. I was seventeen then, working for the Gazette, just learning to work in the
+special way I had to learn for life. I could take it all right, but not all of
+it. There were times when it was pretty bad. Evenings, usually. Once I wanted to
+kill myself. Not anger--anger made me work harder. Not fear. But disgust,
+Howard. The kind of disgust that made it seem as if the whole world were under
+water and the water stood still, water that had backed up out of the sewers and
+ate into everything, even the sky, even my brain. And then I looked at that
+kitten. And I thought that it didn’t know the things I loathed, it could never
+know. It was clean--clean in the absolute sense, because it had no capacity to
+484
+
+conceive of the world’s ugliness. I can’t tell you what relief there was in
+trying to imagine the state of consciousness inside that little brain, trying to
+share it, a living consciousness, but clean and free. I would lie down on the
+floor and put my face on that cat’s belly, and hear the beast purring. And then
+I would feel better....There, Howard. I’ve called your office a rotting wharf
+and yourself an alley cat. That’s my way of paying homage."
+Roark smiled. Wynand saw that the smile was grateful. "Keep still," Wynand said
+sharply. "Don’t say anything." He walked to a window and stood looking out. "I
+don’t know why in hell I should speak like that. These are the first happy years
+of my life. I met you because I wanted to build a monument to my happiness. I
+come here to find rest, and I find it, and yet these are the things I talk
+about....Well, never mind....Look, at the filthy weather. Are you through with
+your work here? Can you call it a day?"
+"Yes. Just about."
+"Let’s go and have dinner together somewhere close by."
+"All right."
+"May I use your phone? I’ll tell Dominique not to expect me for dinner."
+He dialed the number. Roark moved to the door of the drafting room--he had
+orders to give before leaving. But he stopped at the door. He had to stop and
+hear it.
+"Hello, Dominique?...Yes....Tired?...No, you just sounded like it....I won’t be
+home for dinner, will you excuse me, dearest?...I don’t know, it might be
+late....I’m eating downtown....No. I’m having dinner with Howard Roark....Hello,
+Dominique?...Yes....What?...I’m calling from his office....So long, dear." He
+replaced the receiver.
+In the library of the penthouse Dominique stood with her hand on the telephone,
+as if some connection still remained.
+For five days and nights, she had fought a single desire--to go to him. To see
+him alone--anywhere--his home or his office or the street--for one word or only
+one glance--but alone. She could not go. Her share of action was ended. He would
+come to her when he wished. She knew he would come, and that he wanted her to
+wait. She had waited, but she had held on to one thought--of an address, an
+office in the Cord Building.
+She stood, her hand closed over the stem of the telephone receiver. She had no
+right to go to that office. But Gail Wynand had.
+#
+When Ellsworth Toohey entered Wynand’s office, as summoned, he made a few steps,
+then stopped. The walls of Wynand’s office--the only luxurious room in the
+Banner Building--were made of cork and copper paneling and had never borne any
+pictures. Now, on the wall facing Wynand’s desk, he saw an enlarged photograph
+under glass: the picture of Roark at the opening of the Enright House; Roark
+standing at the parapet of the river, his head thrown back.
+Toohey turned to Wynand. They looked at each other.
+Wynand indicated a chair and Toohey sat down. Wynand spoke, smiling:
+"I never thought I would come to agree with some of your social theories, Mr.
+485
+
+Toohey, but I find myself forced to do so. You have always denounced the
+hypocrisy of the upper caste and preached the virtue of the masses. And now I
+find that I regret the advantages I enjoyed in my former proletarian state. Were
+I still in Hell’s Kitchen, I would have begun this interview by saying: Listen,
+louse!--but since I am an inhibited capitalist, I shall not do so."
+Toohey waited, he looked curious.
+"I shall begin by saying: Listen, Mr. Toohey. I do not know what makes you tick.
+I do not care to dissect your motives. I do not have the stomach required of
+medical students. So I shall ask no questions and I wish to hear no
+explanations. I shall merely tell you that from now on there is a name you will
+never mention in your column again." He pointed to the photograph. "I could make
+you reverse yourself publicly and I would enjoy it, but I prefer to forbid the
+subject to you entirely. Not a word, Mr. Toohey. Not ever again. Now don’t
+mention your contract or any particular clause of it. It would not be advisable.
+Go on writing your column, but remember its title and devote it to commensurate
+subjects. Keep it small, Mr. Toohey. Very small."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey easily. "I don’t have to write about Mr. Roark at
+present."
+"That’s all."
+Toohey rose. "Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+
+5.
+GAIL WYNAND sat at his desk in his office and read the proofs of an editorial on
+the moral value of raising large families. Sentences like used chewing gum,
+chewed and rechewed, spat out and picked up again, passing from mouth to mouth
+to pavement to shoe sole to mouth to brain....He thought of Howard Roark and
+went on reading the Banner; it made things easier.
+"Daintiness is a girl’s greatest asset. Be sure to launder your undies every
+night, and learn to talk on some cultured subject, and you will have all the
+dates you want." "Your horoscope for tomorrow shows a beneficent aspect.
+Application and sincerity will bring rewards in the fields of engineering,
+public accounting and romance." "Mrs. Huntington-Cole’s hobbies are gardening,
+the opera and early American sugar-bowls. She divides her time between her
+little son ’Kit’ and her numerous charitable activities." "I’m jus’ Millie, I’m
+jus’ a orphan." "For the complete diet send ten cents and a self-addressed,
+stamped envelope."...He turned the pages, thinking of Howard Roark.
+He signed the advertising contract with Kream-O Pudding--for five years, on the
+entire Wynand chain, two full pages in every paper every Sunday. The men before
+his desk sat like triumphal arches in flesh, monuments to victory, to evenings
+of patience and calculation, restaurant tables, glasses emptied into throats,
+months of thought, his energy, his living energy flowing like the liquid in the
+glasses into the opening of heavy lips, into stubby fingers, across a desk, into
+two full pages every Sunday, into drawings of yellow molds trimmed with
+strawberries and yellow molds trimmed with butterscotch sauce. He looked, over
+the heads of the men, at the photograph on the wall of his office: the sky, the
+river and a man’s face, lifted.
+But it hurts me, he thought. It hurts me every time I think of him. It makes
+486
+
+everything easier--the people, the editorials, the contracts--but easier because
+it hurts so much. Pain is a stimulant also. I think I hate that name. I will go
+on repeating it. It is a pain I wish to bear.
+Then he sat facing Roark in the study of his penthouse--and he felt no pain;
+only a desire to laugh without malice.
+"Howard, everything you’ve done in your life is wrong according to the stated
+ideals of mankind. And here you are. And somehow it seems a huge joke on the
+whole world."
+Roark sat in an armchair by the fireplace. The glow of the fire moved over the
+study; the light seemed to curve with conscious pleasure about every object in
+the room, proud to stress its beauty, stamping approval upon the taste of the
+man who had achieved this setting for himself. They were alone. Dominique had
+excused herself after dinner. She had known that they wanted to be alone.
+"A joke on all of us," said Wynand. "On every man in the street. I always look
+at the men in the street. I used to ride in the subways just to see how many of
+them carried the Banner. I used to hate them and, sometimes, to be afraid. But
+now I look at every one of them and I want to say: ’Why, you poor fool!’ That’s
+all."
+He telephoned Roark’s office one morning. "Can you have lunch with me,
+Howard?...Meet me at the Nordland in half an hour."
+He shrugged, smiling, when he faced Roark across the restaurant table.
+"Nothing at all, Howard. No special reason. Just spent a revolting half-hour and
+wanted to take the taste of it out of my mouth."
+"What revolting half-hour?"
+"Had my pictures taken with Lancelot Clokey."
+"Who’s Lancelot Clokey?"
+Wynand laughed aloud, forgetting his controlled elegance, forgetting the
+startled glance of the waiter.
+"That’s it, Howard. That’s why I had to have lunch with you. Because you can say
+things like that."
+"Now what’s the matter?"
+"Don’t you read books? Don’t you know that Lancelot Clokey is ’our most
+sensitive observer of the international scene’? That’s what the critic said--in
+my own Banner. Lancelot Clokey has just been chosen author of the year or
+something by some organization or other. We’re running his biography in the
+Sunday supplement, and I had to pose with my arm around his shoulders. He wears
+silk shirts and smells of gin. His second book is about his childhood and how it
+helped him to understand the international scene. It sold a hundred thousand
+copies. But you’ve never heard of him. Go on, eat your lunch, Howard. I like to
+see you eating. I wish you were broke, so that I could feed you this lunch and
+know you really needed it."
+At the end of a day, he would come, unannounced, to Roark’s office or to his
+home. Roark had an apartment in the Enright House, one of the crystal-shaped
+units over the East River: a workroom, a library, a bedroom. He had designed the
+487
+
+furniture himself. Wynand could not understand for a long time why the place
+gave him an impression of luxury, until he saw that one did not notice the
+furniture at all: only a clean sweep of space and the luxury of an austerity
+that had not been simple to achieve. In financial value it was the most modest
+home that Wynand had entered as a guest in twenty-five years.
+"We started in the same way, Howard," he said, glancing about Roark’s room.
+"According to my judgment and experience, you should have remained in the
+gutter. But you haven’t. I like this room. I like to sit here."
+"I like to see you here."
+"Howard, have you ever held power over a single human being?"
+"No. And I wouldn’t take it if it were offered to me."
+"I can’t believe that."
+"It was offered to me once, Gail. I refused it."
+Wynand looked at him with curiosity; it was the first time that he heard effort
+in Roark’s voice.
+"Why?"
+"I had to."
+"Out of respect for the man?"
+"It was a woman."
+"Oh, you damn fool! Out of respect for a woman?"
+"Out of respect for myself."
+"Don’t expect me to understand. We’re as opposite as two men can be."
+"I thought that once. I wanted to think that."
+"And now you don’t?"
+"No."
+"Don’t you despise every act I’ve ever committed?"
+"Just about every one I know of."
+"And you still like to see me here?"
+"Yes. Gail, there was a man who considered you the symbol of the special evil
+that destroyed him and would destroy me. He left me his hatred. And there was
+another reason. I think I hated you, before I saw you."
+"I knew you did. What made you change your mind?"
+"I can’t explain that to you."
+They drove together to the estate in Connecticut where the walls of the house
+were rising out of the frozen ground. Wynand followed Roark through the future
+488
+
+rooms, he stood aside and watched Roark giving instructions. Sometimes, Wynand
+came alone. The workers saw the black roadster twisting up the road to the top
+of the hill, saw Wynand’s figure standing at a distance, looking at the
+structure. His figure always carried with it all the implications of his
+position; the quiet elegance of his overcoat, the angle of his hat, the
+confidence of his posture, tense and casual together, made one think of the
+Wynand empire; of the presses thundering from ocean to ocean, of the papers, the
+lustrous magazine covers, the light rays trembling through newsreels, the wires
+coiling over the world, the power flowing into every palace, every capital,
+every secret, crucial room, day and night, through every costly minute of this
+man’s life. He stood still against a sky gray as laundry water, and snowflakes
+fluttered lazily past the brim of his hat.
+On a day in April he drove alone to Connecticut after an absence of many weeks.
+The roadster flew across the countryside, not an object, but a long streak of
+speed. He felt no jolting motion inside his small cube of glass and leather; it
+seemed to him that his car stood still, suspended over the ground, while the
+control of his hands on the wheel made the earth fly past him, and he merely had
+to wait until the place he desired came rolling to him. He loved the wheel of a
+car as he loved his desk in the office of the Banner: both gave him the same
+sense of a dangerous monster let loose under the expert direction of his
+fingers.
+Something tore past across his vision, and he was a mile away before he thought
+how strange it was that he should have noticed it, because it had been only a
+clump of weeds by the road; a mile later he realized that it was stranger still:
+the weeds were green. Not in the middle of winter, he thought, and then he
+understood, surprised, that it was not winter any longer. He had been very busy
+in the last few weeks; he had not had time to notice. Now he saw it, hanging
+over the fields around him, a hint of green, like a whisper. He heard three
+statements in his mind, in precise succession, like interlocking gears: It’s
+spring--I wonder if I have many left to see--I am fifty-five years old.
+They were statements, not emotions; he felt nothing, neither eagerness nor fear.
+But he knew it was strange that he should experience a sense of time; he had
+never thought of his age in relation to any measure, he had never defined his
+position on a limited course, he had not thought of a course nor of limits. He
+had been Gail Wynand and he had stood still, like this car, and the years had
+sped past him, like this earth, and the motor within him had controlled the
+flight of the years.
+No, he thought, I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no
+questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of
+emptiness, even the unanswered--and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in
+my life. But I loved it.
+If it were true, that old legend about appearing before a supreme judge and
+naming one’s record, I would offer, with all my pride, not any act I committed,
+but one thing I have never done on this earth: that I never sought an outside
+sanction. I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed
+every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful
+fact of existence and seeking justification beyond myself. This is my pride:
+that now, thinking of the end, I do not cry like all the men of my age: but what
+was the use and the meaning? I was the use and meaning, I, Gail Wynand. That I
+lived and that I acted.
+He drove to the foot of the hill and slammed the brakes on, startled, looking
+up. In his absence the house had taken shape; it could be recognized now--it
+looked like the drawing. He felt a moment of childish wonder that it had really
+489
+
+come out just as on the sketch, as if he had never quite believed it. Rising
+against the pale blue sky, it still looked like a drawing, unfinished, the
+planes of masonry like spreads of watercolor filled in, the naked scaffolding
+like pencil lines; a huge drawing on a pale blue sheet of paper.
+He left the car and walked to the top of the hill. He saw Roark among the men.
+He stood outside and watched the way Roark walked through the structure, the way
+he turned his head or raised his hand, pointing. He noticed Roark’s manner of
+stopping: his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted; an
+instinctive pose of confidence, of energy held under effortless control a moment
+that gave to his body the structural cleanliness of his own building. Structure,
+thought Wynand, is a solved problem of tension, of balance, of security in
+counterthrusts.
+He thought: There’s no emotional significance in the act of erecting a building;
+it’s just a mechanical job, like laying sewers or making an automobile. And he
+wondered why he watched Roark, feeling what he felt in his art gallery. He
+belongs in an unfinished building, thought Wynand, more than in a completed one,
+more than at a drafting table, it’s his right setting; it’s becoming to him--as
+Dominique said a yacht was becoming to me.
+Afterward Roark came out and they walked together along the crest of the hill,
+among the trees. They sat down on a fallen tree trunk, they saw the structure in
+the distance through the stems of the brushwood. The stems were dry and naked,
+but there was a quality of spring in the cheerful insolence of their upward
+thrust, the stirring of a self-assertive purpose.
+Wynand asked:
+"Howard, have you ever been in love?"
+Roark turned to look straight at him and answer quietly:
+"I still am."
+"But when you walk through a building, what you feel is greater than that?"
+"Much greater, Gail."
+"I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look
+how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it.
+Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can
+anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but his own joy? Every one
+of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder
+why. They whine and say they don’t understand the meaning of life. There’s a
+particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher
+purpose or ’universal goal,’ who don’t know what to live for, who moan that they
+must ’find themselves.’ You hear it all around us. That seems to be the official
+bromide of our century. Every book you open. Every drooling self-confession. It
+seems to be the noble thing to confess. I’d think it would be the most shameful
+one."
+"Look, Gail." Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it
+in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed
+against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. "Now I can make
+what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That’s the meaning of
+life."
+"Your strength?"
+490
+
+"Your work." He tossed the branch aside. "The material the earth offers you and
+what you make of it...What are you thinking of, Gail?"
+"The photograph on the wall of my office."
+#
+To remain controlled, as he wished, to be patient, to make of patience an active
+duty executed consciously each day, to stand before Roark and let her serenity
+tell him: "This is the hardest you could have demanded of me, but I’m glad, if
+it’s what you want"--such was the discipline of Dominique’s existence.
+She stood by, as a quiet spectator of Roark and Wynand. She watched them
+silently. She had wanted to understand Wynand. This was the answer.
+She accepted Roark’s visits to their house and the knowledge that in the hours
+of these evenings he was Wynand’s property, not hers. She met him as a gracious
+hostess, indifferent and smiling, not a person but an exquisite fixture of
+Wynand’s home, she presided at the dinner table, she left them in the study
+afterward.
+She sat alone in the drawing room, with the lights turned off and the door open;
+she sat erect and quiet, her eyes on the slit of light under the door of the
+study across the hall. She thought: This is my task, even when alone, even in
+the darkness, within no knowledge but my own, to look at that door as I looked
+at him here, without complaint....Roark, if it’s the punishment you chose for
+me, I’ll carry it completely, not as a part to play in your presence, but as a
+duty to perform alone--you know that violence is not hard for me to bear, only
+patience is, you chose the hardest, and I must perform it and offer it to
+you...my...dearest one...
+When Roark looked at her, there was no denial of memory in his eyes. The glance
+said simply that nothing had changed and nothing was needed to state it. She
+felt as if she heard him saying: Why are you shocked? Have we ever been parted?
+Your drawing room, your husband and the city you dread beyond the windows, are
+they real now, Dominique? Do you understand? Are you beginning to understand?
+"Yes," she would say suddenly, aloud, trusting that the word would fit the
+conversation of the moment, knowing that Roark would hear it as his answer.
+It was not a punishment he had chosen for her. It was a discipline imposed on
+both of them, the last test. She understood his purpose when she found that she
+could feel her love for him proved by the room, by Wynand, even by his love for
+Wynand and hers, by the impossible situation, by her enforced silence--the
+barriers proving to her that no barriers could exist.
+She did not see him alone. She waited.
+She would not visit the site of construction. She had said to Wynand: "I’ll see
+the house when it’s finished." She never questioned him about Roark. She let her
+hands lie in sight on the arms of her chair, so that the relief of any violent
+motion would be denied her, her hands as her private barometer of endurance,
+when Wynand came home late at night and told her that he had spent the evening
+at Roark’s apartment, the apartment she had never seen.
+Once she broke enough to ask:
+"What is this, Gail? An obsession?"
+"I suppose so." He added: "It’s strange that you don’t like him."
+491
+
+"I haven’t said that."
+"I can see it. I’m not really surprised. It’s your way. You would dislike
+him--precisely because he’s the type of man you should like....Don’t resent my
+obsession."
+"I don’t resent it."
+"Dominique, would you understand it if I told you that I love you more since
+I’ve met him? Even--I want to say this--even when you lie in my arms, it’s more
+than it was. I feel a greater right to you."
+He spoke with the simple confidence they had given each other in the last three
+years. She sat looking at him as she always did; her glance had tenderness
+without scorn and sadness without pity.
+"I understand, Gail."
+After a moment she asked:
+"What is he to you, Gail? In the nature of a shrine?"
+"In the nature of a hair shirt," said Wynand.
+When she had gone upstairs, he walked to a window and stood looking up at the
+sky. His head thrown back, he felt the pull of his throat muscles and he
+wondered whether the peculiar solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from
+what one contemplates, but from that uplift of one’s head.
+
+6.
+"THE BASIC trouble with the modern world," said Ellsworth Toohey, "is the
+intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the
+gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental
+confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and
+compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple illustration. Traffic lights
+restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint
+gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck. If you were assigned to a
+job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your
+career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment. Whenever a
+new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two
+are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total
+freedom."
+"That’s right!" shrieked Mitchell Layton.
+It was an actual shriek, thin and high. It had come with the startling
+suddenness of a fire siren. His guests looked at Mitchell Layton.
+He sat in a tapestry armchair of his drawing room, half lying, legs and stomach
+forward, like an obnoxious child flaunting his bad posture. Everything about the
+person of Mitchell Layton was almost and not quite, just short of succeeding:
+his body had started out to be tall, but changed its mind, leaving him with a
+long torso above short, stocky legs; his face had delicate bones, but the flesh
+had played a joke on them, puffing out, not enough to achieve obesity, just
+492
+
+enough to suggest permanent mumps. Mitchell Layton pouted. It was not a
+temporary expression nor a matter of facial arrangement. It was a chronic
+attribute, pervading his entire person. He pouted with his whole body.
+Mitchell Layton had inherited a quarter of a billion dollars and had spent the
+thirty-three years of his life trying to make amends for it.
+Ellsworth Toohey, in dinner clothes, stood lounging against a cabinet. His
+nonchalance had an air of gracious informality and a touch of impertinence, as
+if the people around him did not deserve the preservation of rigid good manners.
+His eyes moved about the room. The room was not exactly modern, not quite
+Colonial and just a little short of French Empire; the furnishings presented
+straight planes and swan-neck supports, black mirrors and electric hurricane
+lamps, chromium and tapestry; there was unity in a single attribute: in the
+expensiveness of everything.
+"That’s right," said Mitchell Layton belligerently, as if he expected everyone
+to disagree and was insulting them in advance. "People make too damn much fuss
+about freedom. What I mean is it’s a vague, overabused word. I’m not even sure
+it’s such a God-damn blessing. I think people would be much happier in a
+regulated society that had a definite pattern and a unified form--like a folk
+dance. You know how beautiful a folk dance is. And rhythmic too. That’s because
+it took generations to work it out and they don’t let just any chance fool come
+along to change it. That’s what we need. Pattern, I mean, and rhythm. Also
+beauty."
+"That’s an apt comparison, Mitch," said Ellsworth Toohey. "I’ve always told you
+that you had a creative mind."
+"What I mean is, what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too
+much," said Mitchell Layton. "Having to decide, always to decide, torn every
+which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe.
+Nobody would come to him all the time pestering him to do something. Nobody
+would have to do anything. What I mean is, of course, except working for the
+common good."
+"It’s spiritual values that count," said Homer Slottern. "Got to be up to date
+and keep up with the world. This is a spiritual century."
+Homer Slottern had a big face with drowsy eyes. His shirt studs were made of
+rubies and emeralds combined, like gobs of salad dripping down his starched
+white shirt front. He owned three department stores.
+"There ought to be a law to make everybody study the mystical secrets of the
+ages," said Mitchell Layton. "It’s all been written out in the pyramids in
+Egypt."
+"That’s true, Mitch," Homer Slottern agreed. "There’s a lot to be said for
+mysticism. On the one hand. On the other hand, dialectic materialism..."
+"It’s not a contradiction," Mitchell Layton drawled contemptuously. "The world
+of the future will combine both."
+"As a matter of fact," said Ellsworth Toohey, "the two are superficially varied
+manifestations of the same thing. Of the same intention." His eyeglasses gave a
+spark, as if lighted from within; he seemed to relish his particular statement
+in his own way.
+493
+
+"All I know is, unselfishness is the only moral principle," said Jessica Pratt,
+"the noblest principle and a sacred duty and much more important than freedom.
+Unselfishness is the only way to happiness. I would have everybody who refused
+to be unselfish shot. To put them out of their misery. They can’t be happy
+anyway.
+Jessica Pratt spoke wistfully. She had a gentle, aging face; her powdery skin,
+innocent of make-up, gave the impression that a finger touching it would be left
+with a spot of white dust.
+Jessica Pratt had an old family name, no money, and a great passion: her love
+for her younger sister Renée. They had been left orphaned at an early age, and
+she had dedicated her life to Renee’s upbringing. She had sacrificed everything;
+she had never married; she had struggled, plotted, schemed, defrauded through
+the years--and achieved the triumph of Renee’s marriage to Homer Slottern.
+Renee Slottern sat curled up on a footstool, munching peanuts. Once in a while
+she reached up to the crystal dish on a side table and took another. She
+exhibited no further exertion. Her pale eyes stared placidly out of her pale
+face.
+"That’s going too far, Jess," said Homer Slottern. "You can’t expect everybody
+to be a saint."
+"I don’t expect anything," said Jessica Pratt meekly. "I’ve given up expecting
+long ago. But it’s education that we all need. Now I think Mr. Toohey
+understands. If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education,
+we’d have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be
+happy."
+"This is a perfectly useless discussion," said Eve Layton. "No intelligent
+person believes in freedom nowadays. It’s dated. The future belongs to social
+planning. Compulsion is a law of nature. That’s that. It’s self-evident."
+Eve Layton was beautiful. She stood under the light of a chandelier, her smooth
+black hair clinging to her skull, the pale green satin of her gown alive like
+water about to stream off and expose the rest of her soft, tanned skin. She had
+the special faculty of making satin and perfume appear as modern as an aluminum
+table top. She was Venus rising out of a submarine hatch.
+Eve Layton believed that her mission in life was to be the vanguard--it did not
+matter of what. Her method had always been to take a careless leap and land
+triumphantly far ahead of all others. Her philosophy consisted of one
+sentence--"I can get away with anything." In conversation she paraphrased it to
+her favorite line: "I? I’m the day after tomorrow." She was an expert
+horsewoman, a racing driver, a stunt pilot, a swimming champion. When she saw
+that the emphasis of the day had switched to the realm of ideas, she took
+another leap, as she did over any ditch. She landed well in front, in the
+latest. Having landed, she was amazed to find that there were people who
+questioned her feat. Nobody had ever questioned her other achievements. She
+acquired an impatient anger against all those who disagreed with her political
+views. It was a personal issue. She had to be right, since she was the day after
+tomorrow.
+Her husband, Mitchell Layton, hated her.
+"It’s a perfectly valid discussion," he snapped. "Everybody can’t be as
+competent as you, my dear. We must help the others. It’s the moral duty of
+intellectual leaders. What I mean is we ought to lose that bugaboo of being
+494
+
+scared of the word compulsion. It’s not compulsion when it’s for a good cause.
+What I mean is in the name of love. But I don’t know how we can make this
+country understand it. Americans are so stuffy."
+He could not forgive his country because it had given him a quarter of a billion
+dollars and then refused to grant him an equal amount of reverence. People would
+not take his views on art, literature, history, biology, sociology and
+metaphysics as they took his checks. He complained that people identified him
+with his money too much; he hated them because they did not identify him enough.
+"There’s a great deal to be said for compulsion," stated Homer Slottern.
+"Provided it’s democratically planned. The common good must always come first,
+whether we like it or not."
+Translated into language, Homer Slottern’s attitude consisted of two parts, they
+were contradictory parts, but this did not trouble him, since they remained
+untranslated in his mind. First, he felt that abstract theories were nonsense,
+and if the customers wanted this particular kind, it was perfectly safe to give
+it to them, and good business, besides. Second, he felt uneasy that he had
+neglected whatever it was people called spiritual life, in the rush of making
+money; maybe men like Toohey had something there. And what if his stores were
+taken away from him? Wouldn’t it really be easier to live as manager of a
+State-owned Department Store? Wouldn’t a manager’s salary give him all the
+prestige and comfort he now enjoyed, without the responsibility of ownership?
+"Is it true that in the future society any woman will sleep with any man she
+wants," asked Renee Slottern. It had started as a question, but it petered out.
+She did not really want to know. She merely felt a vapid wonder about how it
+felt to have a man one really wanted and how one went about wanting.
+"It’s stupid to talk about personal choice," said Eve Layton. "It’s
+old-fashioned. There’s no such thing as a person. There’s only a collective
+entity. It’s self-evident."
+Ellsworth Toohey smiled and said nothing.
+"Something’s got to be done about the masses," Mitchell Layton declared.
+"They’ve got to be led. They don’t know what’s good for them. What I mean is, I
+can’t understand why people of culture and position like us understand the great
+ideal of collectivism so well and are willing to sacrifice our personal
+advantages, while the working man who has everything to gain from it remains so
+stupidly indifferent. I can’t understand why the workers in this country have so
+little sympathy with collectivism."
+"Can’t you?" said Ellsworth Toohey. His glasses sparkled.
+"I’m bored with this," snapped Eve Layton, pacing the room, light streaming off
+her shoulders.
+The conversation switched to art and its acknowledged leaders of the day in
+every field.
+"Lois Cook said that words must be freed from the oppression of reason. She said
+the stranglehold of reason upon words is like the exploitation of the masses by
+the capitalists. Words must be permitted to negotiate with reason through
+collective bargaining. That’s what she said. She’s so amusing and refreshing."
+"Dee--what’s his name again?--says that the theater is an instrument of love.
+It’s all wrong, he says, about a play taking place on the stage--it takes place
+495
+
+in the hearts of the audience."
+"Jules Fougler said in last Sunday’s Banner that in the world of the future the
+theater will not be necessary at all. He says that the daily life of the common
+man is as much a work of art in itself as the best Shakespearean tragedy. In the
+future there will be no need for a dramatist. The critic will simply observe the
+life of the masses and evaluate its artistic points for the public. That’s what
+Jules Fougler said. Now I don’t know whether I agree with him, but he’s got an
+interesting fresh angle there."
+"Lancelot Clokey says the British Empire is doomed. He says there will be no
+war, because the workers of the world won’t allow it, it’s international bankers
+and munitions markers who start wars and they’ve been kicked out of the saddle.
+Lancelot Clokey says that the universe is a mystery and that his mother is his
+best friend. He says the Premier of Bulgaria eats herring for breakfast."
+"Gordon Prescott says that four walls and a ceiling is all there is to
+architecture. The floor is optional. All the rest is capitalistic ostentation.
+He says nobody should be allowed to build anything anywhere until every
+inhabitant of the globe has a roof over his head...Well, what about the
+Patagonians? It’s our job to teach them to want a roof. Prescott calls it
+dialectic trans-spatial interdependence."
+Ellsworth Toohey said nothing. He stood smiling at the vision of a huge
+typewriter. Each famous name he heard was a key of its keyboard, each
+controlling a special field, each hitting, leaving its mark, and the whole
+making connected sentences on a vast blank sheet. A typewriter, he thought,
+presupposes the hand that punches its keys.
+He snapped to attention when he heard Mitchell Layton’s sulking voice say:
+"Oh, yes, the Banner, God damn it!"
+"I know," said Homer Slottern.
+"It’s slipping," said Mitchell Layton. "It’s definitely slipping A swell
+investment it turned out to be for me. It’s the only time Ellsworth’s been
+wrong."
+"Ellsworth is never wrong," said Eve Layton.
+"Well, he was, that time. It was he who advised me to buy a piece of that lousy
+sheet." He saw Toohey’s eyes, patient as velvet, and he added hastily: "What I
+mean is, I’m not complaining, Ellsworth. It’s all right. It may even help me to
+slice something off my damned income tax. But that filthy reactionary rag is
+sure going downhill."
+"Have a little patience, Mitch," said Toohey.
+"You don’t think I should sell and get out from under?"
+"No, Mitch, I don’t."
+"Okay, if you say so. I can afford it. I can afford anything."
+"But I jolly well can’t!" Homer Slottern cried with surprising vehemence. "It’s
+coming to where one can’t afford to advertise in the Banner. It’s not their
+circulation--that’s okay--but there’s a feeling around--a funny kind of
+feeling....Ellsworth, I’ve been thinking of dropping my contract."
+496
+
+"Why?"
+"Do you know about the ’We Don’t Read Wynand’ movement?"
+"I’ve heard about it."
+"It’s run by somebody named Gus Webb. They paste stickers on parked windshields
+and in public privies. They hiss Wynand newsreels in theaters. I don’t think
+it’s a large group, but...Last week an unappetizing female threw a fit in my
+store--the one on Fifty Avenue--calling us enemies of labor because we
+advertised in the Banner. You can ignore that, but it becomes serious when one
+of our oldest customers, a mild little old lady from Connecticut and a
+Republican for three generations, calls us to say that perhaps maybe she should
+cancel her charge account, because somebody told her that Wynand is a dictator."
+"Gail Wynand knows nothing about politics except of the most primitive kind,"
+said Toohey. "He still thinks in terms of the Democratic Club of Hell’s Kitchen.
+There was a certain innocence about the political corruption of those days,
+don’t you think so?"
+"I don’t care. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, the Banner is becoming
+a kind of liability. It hurts business. One’s got to be so careful nowadays. You
+get tied up with the wrong people and first thing you know there’s a smear
+campaign going on and you get splashed too. I can’t afford that sort of thing."
+"It’s not entirely an unjustified smear."
+"I don’t care. I don’t give a damn whether it’s true or not. Who am I to stick
+my neck out for Gail Wynand? If there’s a public sentiment against him, my job
+is to get as far away as I can, pronto. And I’m not the only one. There’s a
+bunch of us who’re thinking the same. Jim Ferris of Ferris & Symes, Billy Shultz
+of Vimo Flakes, Bud Harper of Toddler Togs, and...hell, you know them all,
+they’re all your friends, our bunch, the liberal businessmen. We all want to
+yank our ads out of the Banner."
+"Have a little patience, Homer. I wouldn’t hurry. There’s a proper time for
+everything. There’s such a thing as a psychological moment."
+"Okay, I’ll take your word for it. But there’s--there’s a kind of feeling in the
+air. It will become dangerous some day."
+"It might. I’ll tell you when it will."
+"I thought Ellsworth worked on the Banner," said Renee Slottern vacantly,
+puzzled.
+The others turned to her with indignation and pity.
+"You’re naive, Renee," shrugged Eve Layton.
+"But what’s the matter with the Banner?"
+"Now, child, don’t you bother with dirty politics," said Jessica Pratt. "The
+Banner is a wicked paper. Mr. Wynand is a very evil man. He represents the
+selfish interests of the rich."
+"I think he’s good-looking," said Renee. "I think he has sex appeal."
+497
+
+"Oh, for Christ’s sake!" cried Eve Layton.
+"Now, after all, Renee is entitled to express her opinion," Jessica Pratt said
+with immediate rage.
+"Somebody told me Ellsworth is the president of the Union of Wynand Employees,"
+drawled Renee.
+"Oh dear me, no, Renee. I’m never president of anything. I’m just a
+rank-and-file member. Like any copy boy."
+"Do they have a Union of Wynand Employees?" asked Homer Slottern.
+"It was just a club, at first," said Toohey. "It became a union last year."
+"Who organized it?"
+"How can one tell? It was more or less spontaneous. Like all mass movements."
+"I think Wynand is a bastard," declared Mitchell Layton. "Who does he think he
+is anyway? I come to a meeting of stockholders and he treats us like flunkies.
+Isn’t my money as good as his? Don’t I own a hunk of his damn paper? I could
+teach him a thing or two about journalism. I have ideas. What’s he so damn
+arrogant about? Just because he made that fortune himself? Does he have to be
+such a damn snob just because he came from Hell’s Kitchen? It isn’t other
+people’s fault if they weren’t lucky enough to be born in Hell’s Kitchen to rise
+out of! Nobody understands what a terrible handicap it is to be born rich.
+Because people just take for granted that because you were born that way you’d
+just be no good if you weren’t What I mean is if I’d had Gail Wynand’s breaks,
+I’d be twice as rich as he is by now and three times as famous. But he’s so
+conceited he doesn’t realize this at all!"
+Nobody said a word. They heard the rising inflection of hysteria in Mitchell
+Layton’s voice. Eve Layton looked at Toohey, silently appealing for help. Toohey
+smiled and made a step forward.
+"I’m ashamed of you, Mitch," he said.
+Homer Slottern gasped. One did not rebuke Mitchell Layton on this subject; one
+did not rebuke Mitchell Layton on any subject.
+Mitchell Layton’s lower lip vanished.
+"I’m ashamed of you, Mitch," Toohey repeated sternly, "for comparing yourself to
+a man as contemptible as Gail Wynand."
+Mitchell Layton’s mouth relaxed in the equivalent of something almost as gentle
+as a smile.
+"That’s true," he said humbly.
+"No, you would never be able to match Gail Wynand’s career. Not with your
+sensitive spirit and humanitarian instincts. That’s what’s holding you down,
+Mitch, not your money. Who cares about money? The age of money is past. It’s
+your nature that’s too fine for the brute competition of our capitalistic
+system. But that, too, is passing."
+"It’s self-evident," said Eve Layton.
+498
+
+It was late when Toohey left. He felt exhilarated and he decided to walk home.
+The streets of the city lay gravely empty around him, and the dark masses of the
+buildings rose to the sky, confident and unprotected. He remembered what he had
+said to Dominique once: "A complicated piece of machinery, such as our
+society...and by pressing your little finger against one spot...the center of
+all its gravity...you can make the thing crumble into a worthless heap of scrap
+iron..." He missed Dominique. He wished she could have been with him to hear
+this evening’s conversation.
+The unshared was boiling up within him. He stopped in the middle of a silent
+street, threw his head back and laughed aloud, looking at the tops of
+skyscrapers.
+A policeman tapped him on the shoulder, asking: "Well, Mister?"
+Toohey saw buttons and blue cloth tight over a broad chest, a stolid face, hard
+and patient; a man as set and dependable as the buildings around them.
+"Doing your duty, officer?" Toohey asked, the echoes of laughter like jerks in
+his voice. "Protecting law and order and decency and human lives?" The policeman
+scratched the back of his head. "You ought to arrest me, officer."
+"Okay, pal, okay," said the policeman. "Run along. We all take one too many once
+in a while."
+
+7.
+IT WAS only when the last painter had departed that Peter Keating felt a sense
+of desolation and a numb weakness in the crook of his elbows. He stood in the
+hall, looking up at the ceiling. Under the harsh gloss of paint he could still
+see the outline of the square where the stairway had been removed and the
+opening closed over. Guy Francon’s old office was gone. The firm Keating &
+Dumont had a single floor left now.
+He thought of the stairway and how he had walked up its red-plushed steps for
+the first time, carrying a drawing on the tips of his fingers. He thought of Guy
+Francon’s office with the glittering butterfly reflections. He thought of the
+four years when that office had been his own.
+He had known what was happening to his firm, in these last years; he had known
+it quite well while men in overalls removed the stairway and closed the gap in
+the ceiling. But it was that square under the white paint that made it real to
+him, and final.
+He had resigned himself to the process of going down, long ago. He had not
+chosen to resign himself--that would have been a positive decision--it had
+merely happened and he had let it happen. It had been simple and almost
+painless, like drowsiness carrying one down to nothing more sinister than a
+welcome sleep. The dull pain came from wishing to understand why it had
+happened.
+There was "The March of the Centuries" exposition, but that alone could not have
+mattered. "The March of the Centuries" had opened in May. It was a flop. What’s
+the use, thought Keating, why not say the right word? Flop. It was a ghastly
+flop. "The title of this venture would be most appropriate," Ellsworth Toohey
+had written, "if we assumed that the centuries had passed by on horseback."
+499
+
+Everything else written about the architectural merits of the exposition had
+been of the same order.
+Keating thought, with wistful bitterness, of how conscientiously they had
+worked, he and the seven other architects, designing those buildings. It was
+true that he had pushed himself forward and hogged the publicity, but he
+certainly had not done that as far as designing was concerned. They had worked
+in harmony, through conference after conference, each giving in to the others,
+in true collective spirit, none trying to impose his personal prejudices or
+selfish ideas. Even Ralston Holcombe had forgotten Renaissance. They had made
+the buildings modern, more modem than anything ever seen, more modern than the
+show windows of Slottern’s Department Store. He did not think that the buildings
+looked like "coils of toothpaste when somebody steps on the tube or stylized
+versions of the lower intestine," as one critic had said. But the public seemed
+to think it, if the public thought at all. He couldn’t tell. He knew only that
+tickets to "The March of the Centuries" were being palmed off at Screeno games
+in theaters, and that the sensation of the exposition, the financial savior, was
+somebody named Juanita Fay who danced with a live peacock as sole garment.
+But what if the Fair did flop? It had not hurt the other architects of its
+council. Gordon L. Prescott was going stronger than ever. It wasn’t that,
+thought Keating. It had begun before the Fair. He could not say when.
+There could be so many explanations. The depression had hit them all; others had
+recovered to some extent, Keating & Dumont had not. Something had gone out of
+the firm and out of the circles from which it drew its clients, with the
+retirement of Guy Francon. Keating realized that there had been art and skill
+and its own kind of illogical energy in the career of Guy Francon, even if the
+art consisted only of his social charm and the energy was directed at snaring
+bewildered millionaires. There had been a twisted sort of sense in people’s
+response to Guy Francon.
+He could see no hint of rationality in the things to which people responded now.
+The leader of the profession--on a mean scale, there was no grand scale left in
+anything--was Gordon L. Prescott, Chairman of the Council of American Builders;
+Gordon L. Prescott who lectured on the transcendental pragmatism of architecture
+and social planning, who put his feet on tables in drawing rooms, attended
+formal dinners in knickerbockers and criticized the soup aloud. Society people
+said they liked an architect who was a liberal. The A.G.A. still existed, in
+stiff, hurt dignity, but people referred to it as the Old Folks’ Home. The
+Council of American Builders ruled the profession and talked about a closed
+shop, though no one had yet devised a way of achieving that. Whenever an
+architect’s name appeared in Ellsworth Toohey’s column, it was always that of
+Augustus Webb. At thirty-nine, Keating heard himself described as old-fashioned.
+He had given up trying to understand. He knew dimly that the explanation of the
+change swallowing the world was of a nature he preferred not to know. In his
+youth he had felt an amicable contempt for the works of Guy Francon or Ralston
+Holcombe, and emulating them had seemed no more than innocent quackery. But he
+knew that Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb represented so impertinent, so vicious
+a fraud that to suspend the evidence of his eyes was beyond his elastic
+capacity. He had believed that people found greatness in Holcombe and there had
+been a reasonable satisfaction in borrowing his borrowed greatness. He knew that
+no one saw anything whatever in Prescott. He felt something dark and leering in
+the manner with which people spoke of Prescott’s genius; as if they were not
+doing homage to Prescott, but spitting upon genius. For once, Keating could not
+follow people; it was too clear, even to him, that public favor had ceased being
+a recognition of merit, that it had become almost a brand of shame.
+500
+
+He went on, driven by inertia. He could not afford his large floor of offices
+and he did not use half the rooms, but he kept them and paid the deficit out of
+his own pocket. He had to go on. He had lost a large part of his personal
+fortune in careless stock speculation; but he had enough left to insure some
+comfort for the rest of his life. This did not disturb him; money had ceased to
+hold his attention as a major concern. It was inactivity he dreaded; it was the
+question mark looming beyond, if the routine of his work were to be taken away
+from him.
+He walked slowly, his arms pressed to his body, his shoulders hunched, as if
+drawn against a permanent chill. He was gaining weight. His face was swollen; he
+kept it down, and the pleat of a second chin was flattened against the knot of
+his necktie. A hint of his beauty remained and made him look worse; as if the
+lines of his face had been drawn on a blotter and had spread, blurring. The gray
+threads on his temples were becoming noticeable. He drank often, without joy.
+He had asked his mother to come back to live with him. She had come back. They
+sat through long evenings together in the living room, saying nothing; not in
+resentment, but seeking reassurance from each other. Mrs. Keating offered no
+suggestions, no reproaches. There was, instead, a new, panic-shaped tenderness
+in her manner toward her son. She would cook his breakfast, even though they had
+a maid; she would prepare his favorite dish--French pancakes, the kind he had
+liked so much when he was nine years old and sick with the measles. If he
+noticed her efforts and made some comment of pleasure, she nodded, blinking,
+turning away, asking herself why it should make her so happy and if it did, why
+should her eyes fill with tears.
+She would ask suddenly, after a silence: "it will be all right, Petey? Won’t
+it?" And he would not ask what she meant, but answer quietly: "Yes, Mother, it
+will be all right," putting the last of his capacity for pity into an effort to
+make his voice sound convincing.
+Once, she asked him: "You’re happy, Petey? Aren’t you?" He looked at her and saw
+that she was not laughing at him; her eyes were wide and frightened. And as he
+could not answer, she cried: "But you’ve got to be happy! Petey, you’ve got to!
+Else what have I lived for?" He wanted to get up, gather her in his arms and
+tell her that it was all right--and then he remembered Guy Francon saying to him
+on his wedding day: "I want you to feel proud of me, Peter....I want to feel
+that it had some meaning." Then he could not move. He felt himself in the
+presence of something he must not grasp, must never allow into his mind. He
+turned away from his mother.
+One evening, she said without preamble. "Petey, I think you should get married.
+I think it would be much better if you were married." He found no answer, and
+while he groped for something gay to utter, she added: "Petey, why don’t
+you...why don’t you marry Catherine Halsey?" He felt anger filling his eyes, he
+felt pressure on his swollen lids, while he was turning slowly to his mother;
+then he saw her squat little figure before him, stiff and defenseless, with a
+kind of desperate pride, offering to take any blow he wished to deliver,
+absolving him in advance--and he knew that it had been the bravest gesture she
+had ever attempted. The anger went, because he felt her pain more sharply than
+the shock of his own, and he lifted one hand, to let it fall limply, to let the
+gesture cover everything, saying only: "Mother, don’t let’s ,.."
+On weekends, not often, but once or twice a month, he vanished out of town. No
+one knew where he went. Mrs. Keating worried about it, but asked no questions.
+She suspected that there was a woman somewhere, and not a nice one, or he would
+not be so glumly silent on the subject Mrs. Keating found herself hoping that he
+had fallen into the clutches of the worst, greediest slut who would have sense
+501
+
+enough to make him marry her.
+He went to a shack he had rented in the hills of an obscure village. He kept
+paints, brushes and canvas in the shack. He spent his days in the hills,
+painting. He could not tell why he had remembered that unborn ambition of his
+youth, which his mother had drained and switched into the channel of
+architecture. He could not tell by what process the impulse had become
+irresistible; but he had found the shack and tie liked going there.
+He could not say that he liked to paint. It was neither pleasure nor relief, it
+was self-torture, but somehow, that didn’t matter. He sat on a canvas stool
+before a small easel and he looked at an empty sweep of hills, at the woods and
+the sky. He had a quiet pain as sole conception of what he wanted to express, a
+humble, unbearable tenderness for the sight of the earth around him--and
+something tight, paralyzed, as sole means to express it. He went on. He tried.
+He looked at his canvases and knew that nothing was captured in their childish
+crudeness. It did not matter. No one was to see them. He stacked them carefully
+in a corner of the shack, and he locked the door before he returned to town.
+There was no pleasure in it, no pride, no solution; only--while he sat alone
+before the easel--a sense of peace.
+He tried not to think of Ellsworth Toohey. A dim instinct told him that he could
+preserve a precarious security of spirit so long as he did not touch upon that
+subject. There could be but one explanation of Toohey’s behavior toward him--and
+he preferred not to formulate it.
+Toohey had drifted away from him. The intervals between their meetings had grown
+longer each year. He accepted it and told himself that Toohey was busy. Toohey’s
+public silence about him was baffling. He told himself that Toohey had more
+important things to write about. Toohey’s criticism of "The March of the
+Centuries" had been a blow. He told himself that his work had deserved it. He
+accepted any blame. He could afford to doubt himself. He could not afford to
+doubt Ellsworth Toohey.
+It was Neil Dumont who forced him to think of Toohey again. Neil spoke
+petulantly about the state of the world, about crying over spilt milk, change as
+a law of existence, adaptability, and the importance of getting in on the ground
+floor. Keating gathered, from a long, confused speech, that business, as they
+had known it, was finished, that government would take over whether they liked
+it or not, that the building trade was dying and the government would soon be
+the sole builder and they might as well get in now, if they wanted to get in at
+all. "Look at Gordon Prescott," said Neil Dumont, "and what a sweet little
+monopoly he’s got himself in housing projects and post offices. Look at Gus Webb
+muscling in on the racket."
+Keating did not answer. Neil Dumont was throwing his own unconfessed thoughts at
+him; he had known that he would have to face this soon and he had tried to
+postpone the moment.
+He did not want to think of Cortlandt Homes.
+Cortlandt Homes was a government housing project to be built in Astoria, on the
+shore of the East River. It was planned as a gigantic experiment in low-rent
+housing, to serve as model for the whole country; for the whole world. Keating
+had heard architects talking about it for over a year. The appropriation had
+been approved and the site chosen; but not the architect. Keating would not
+admit to himself how desperately he wanted to get Cortlandt and how little
+chance he had of getting it.
+502
+
+"Listen, Pete, we might as well call a spade a spade," said Neil Dumont. "We’re
+on the skids, pal, and you know it. All right, we’ll last another year or two,
+coasting on your reputation. And then? It’s not our fault. It’s just that
+private enterprise is dead and getting deader. It’s a historical process. The
+wave of the future. So we might as well get our surfboard while we can. There’s
+a good, sturdy one waiting for the boy who’s smart enough to grab it. Cortlandt
+Homes."
+Now he had heard it pronounced. Keating wondered why the name had sounded like
+the muffled stroke of a bell; as if the sound had opened and closed a sequence
+which he would not be able to stop.
+"What do you mean, Neil?"
+"Cortlandt Homes. Ellsworth Toohey. Now you know what I mean."
+"Neil, I..."
+"What’s the matter with you, Pete? Listen, everybody’s laughing about it.
+Everybody’s saying that if they were Toohey’s special pet, like you are, they’d
+get Cortlandt Homes like that"--he snapped his manicured fingers--"just like
+that, and nobody can understand what you’re waiting for. You know it’s friend
+Ellsworth who’s running this particular housing show."
+"It’s not true. He is not. He has no official position. He never has any
+official position."
+"Whom are you kidding? Most of the boys that count in every office are his boys.
+Damned if I know how he got them in, but he did. What’s the matter, Pete? Are
+you afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey for a favor?"
+This was it, thought Keating; now there was no retreat. He could not admit to
+himself that he was afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey.
+"No," he said, his voice dull, "I’m not afraid, Neil. I’ll...All right, Neil.
+I’ll speak to Ellsworth."
+#
+Ellsworth Toohey sat spread out on a couch, wearing a dressing gown. His body
+had the shape of a sloppy letter X-arms stretched over his head, along the edge
+of the back pillows, legs open in a wide fork. The dressing gown was made of
+silk, bearing the trademarked pattern of Coty’s face powder, white puffs on an
+orange background; it looked daring and gay, supremely elegant through sheer
+silliness. Under the gown, Toohey wore sleeping pyjamas of pistachio-green
+linen, crumpled. The trousers floated about the thin sticks of his ankles.
+This was just like Toohey, thought Keating; this pose amidst the severe
+fastidiousness of his living room; a single canvas by a famous artist on the
+wall behind him--and the rest of the room unobtrusive like a monk’s cell; no,
+thought Keating, like the retreat of a king in exile, scornful of material
+display.
+Toohey’s eyes were warm, amused, encouraging. Toohey had answered the telephone
+in person; Toohey had granted him the appointment at once. Keating thought: It’s
+good to be received like this, informally. What was I afraid of? What did I
+doubt? We’re old friends.
+"Oh dear me," said Toohey, yawning, "one gets so tired! There comes a moment
+into every man’s day when he gets the urge to relax like a stumble bum. I got
+503
+
+home and just felt I couldn’t keep my clothes on another minute. Felt like a
+damn peasant--just plain itchy--and had to get out. You don’t mind, do you,
+Peter? With some people it’s necessary to be stiff and formal, but with you it’s
+not necessary at all."
+"No, of course not."
+"Think I’ll take a bath after a while. There’s nothing like a good hot bath to
+make one feel like a parasite. Do you like hot baths, Peter?"
+"Why...yes...I guess so..."
+"You’re gaining weight, Peter. Pretty soon you’ll look revolting in a bathtub.
+You’re gaining weight and you look peaked. That’s a bad combination. Absolutely
+wrong aesthetically. Fat people should be happy and jolly."
+"I...I’m all right, Ellsworth. It’s only that..."
+"You used to have a nice disposition. You mustn’t lose that. People will get
+bored with you."
+"I haven’t changed, Ellsworth." Suddenly he stressed the words. "I haven’t
+really changed at all. I’m just what I was when I designed the Cosmo-Slotnick
+Building."
+He looked at Toohey hopefully. He thought this was a hint crude enough for
+Toohey to understand; Toohey understood things much more delicate than that. He
+waited to be helped out. Toohey went on looking at him, his eyes sweet and
+blank.
+"Why, Peter, that’s an unphilosophical statement. Change is the basic principle
+of the universe. Everything changes. Seasons, leaves, flowers, birds, morals,
+men and buildings. The dialectic process, Peter."
+"Yes, of course. Things change, so fast, in such a funny way. You don’t even
+notice how, and suddenly one morning there it is. Remember, just a few years
+ago, Lois Cook and Gordon Prescott and Ike and Lance--they were nobody at all.
+And now--why, Ellsworth, they’re on top and they’re all yours. Anywhere I look,
+any big name I hear--it’s one of your boys. You’re amazing, Ellsworth. How
+anybody can do that--in just a few years--"
+"It’s much simpler than it appears to you, Peter. That’s because you think in
+terms of personalities. You think it’s done piecemeal. But dear me, the
+lifetimes of a hundred press agents wouldn’t be enough. It can be done much
+faster. This is the age of time-saving devices. If you want something to grow,
+you don’t nurture each seed separately. You just spread a certain fertilizer.
+Nature will do the rest. I believe you think I’m the only one responsible. But
+I’m not. Goodness, no. I’m just one figure out of many, one lever in a very vast
+movement. Very vast and very ancient. It just so happened that I chose the field
+that interests you--the field of art--because I thought that it focused the
+decisive factors in the task we had to accomplish."
+"Yes, of course, but I mean, I think you were so clever. I mean, that you could
+pick young people who had talent, who had a future. Damned if I know how you
+guessed in advance. Remember the awful loft we had for the Council of American
+Builders? And nobody took us seriously. And people used to laugh at you for
+wasting time on all kinds of silly organizations."
+"My dear Peter, people go by so many erroneous assumptions. For instance, that
+504
+
+old one--divide and conquer. Well, it has its applications. But it remained for
+our century to discover a much more potent formula. Unite and rule."
+"What do you mean?"
+"Nothing that you could possibly grasp. And I must not overtax your strength.
+You don’t look as if you had much to spare."
+"Oh, I’m all right. I might look a little worried, because..."
+"Worry is a waste of emotional reserves. Very foolish. Unworthy of an
+enlightened person. Since we are merely the creatures of our chemical metabolism
+and of the economic factors of our background, there’s not a damn thing we can
+do about anything whatever. So why worry? There are, of course, apparent
+exceptions. Merely apparent. When circumstances delude us into thinking that
+free action is indicated. Such, for instance, as your coming here to talk about
+Cortlandt Homes."
+Keating blinked, then smiled gratefully. He thought it was just like Toohey to
+guess and spare him the embarrassing preliminaries.
+"That’s right, Ellsworth. That’s just what I wanted to talk to you about. You’re
+wonderful. You know me like a book."
+"What kind of a book, Peter? A dime novel? A love story? A crime thriller? Or
+just a plagiarized manuscript? No, let’s say: like a serial. A good, long,
+exciting serial--with the last installment missing. The last installment got
+mislaid somewhere. There won’t be any last installment. Unless, of course, it’s
+Cortlandt Homes. Yes, that would be a fitting closing chapter." Keating waited,
+eyes intent and naked, forgetting to think of shame, of pleading that should be
+concealed. "A tremendous project, Cortlandt Homes. Bigger than Stoneridge. Do
+you remember Stoneridge, Peter?"
+He’s just relaxed with me, thought Keating, he’s tired, he can’t be tactful all
+the time, he doesn’t realize what he...
+"Stoneridge. The great residential development by Gail Wynand. Have you ever
+thought of Gail Wynand’s career, Peter? From wharf rat to Stoneridge--do you
+know what a step like that means? Would you care to compute the effort, the
+energy, the suffering with which Gail Wynand has paid for every step of his way?
+And here I am, and I hold a project much bigger than Stoneridge in the palm of
+my hand, without any effort at all." He dropped his hand and added: "If I do
+hold it. Might be only a figure of speech. Don’t take me literally, Peter."
+"I hate Wynand," said Keating, looking down at the floor, his voice thick. "I
+hate him more than any man living."
+"Wynand? He’s a very naive person. He’s naive enough to think that men are
+motivated primarily by money."
+"You aren’t, Ellsworth. You’re a man of integrity. That’s why I believe in you.
+It’s all I’ve got. If I stopped believing in you, there would be
+nothing...anywhere."
+"Thank you. Peter. That’s sweet of you. Hysterical, but sweet."
+"Ellsworth...you know how I feel about you."
+"I have a fair idea."
+505
+
+"You see, that’s why I can’t understand."
+"What?"
+He had to say it. He had decided, above all, never to say it, but he had to.
+"Ellsworth, why have you dropped me? Why don’t you ever write anything about me
+any more? Why is it always--in your column and everywhere--and on any commission
+you have a chance to swing--why is it always Gus Webb?"
+"But, Peter, why shouldn’t it be?"
+"But...I..."
+"I’m sorry to see that you haven’t understood me at all. In all these years,
+you’ve learned nothing of my principles. I don’t believe in individualism,
+Peter. I don’t believe that any one man is any one thing which everybody else
+can’t be. I believe we’re all equal and interchangeable. A position you hold
+today can be held by anybody and everybody tomorrow. Egalitarian rotation.
+Haven’t I always preached that to you? Why do you suppose I chose you? Why did I
+put you where you were? To protect the field from men who would become
+irreplaceable. To leave a chance for the Gus Webbs of this world. Why do you
+suppose I fought against--for instance--Howard Roark?"
+Keating’s mind was a bruise. He thought it would be a bruise, because it felt as
+if something flat and heavy had smashed against it, and it would be black and
+blue and swollen later; now he felt nothing except a sweetish numbness. Such
+chips of thought as he could distinguish told him that the ideas he heard were
+of a high moral order, the ones he had always accepted, and therefore no evil
+could come to him from that, no evil could be intended. Toohey’s eyes looked
+straight at him, dark, gentle, benevolent. Maybe later...he would know
+later...But one thing had pierced through and remained caught on some fragment
+of his brain. He had understood that. The name.
+And while his sole hope of grace rested in Toohey, something inexplicable
+twisted within him, he leaned forward, knowing that this would hurt, wishing it
+to hurt Toohey, and his lips curled incredibly into a smile, baring his teeth
+and gums:
+"You failed there, didn’t you, Ellsworth? Look where he is now--Howard Roark."
+"Oh dear me, how dull it is to discuss things with minds devoted to the obvious.
+You are utterly incapable of grasping principles, Peter. You think only in terms
+of persons. Do you really suppose that I have no mission in life save to worry
+over the specific fate of your Howard Roark? Mr. Roark is merely one detail out
+of many. I have dealt with him when it was convenient. I am still dealing with
+him--though not directly. I do grant you, however, that Mr. Howard Roark is a
+great temptation to me. At times I feel it would be a shame if I never came up
+against him personally again. But it might not be necessary at all. When you
+deal in principles, Peter, it saves you the trouble of individual encounters."
+"What do you mean?"
+"I mean that you can follow one of two procedures. You can devote your life to
+pulling out each single weed as it comes up--and then ten lifetimes won’t be
+enough for the job. Or you can prepare your soil in such a manner--by spreading
+a certain chemical, let us say--that it will be impossible for weeds to grow.
+This last is faster. I say ’weed’ because it is the conventional symbolism and
+506
+
+will not frighten you. The same technique, of course, holds true in the case of
+any other living plant you may wish to eliminate: buckwheat, potatoes, oranges,
+orchids or morning glories."
+"Ellsworth, I don’t know what you’re talking about."
+"But of course you don’t. That’s my advantage I say these things publicly every
+single day--and nobody knows what I’m talking about."
+"Have you heard that Howard Roark is doing a house, his own home, for Gail
+Wynand?"
+"My dear Peter, did you think I had to wait to learn it from you?"
+"Well, how do you like that?"
+"Why should it concern me one way or another?"
+"Have you heard that Roark and Wynand are the best of friends? And what
+friendship, from what I hear! Well? You know what Wynand can do. You know what
+he can make of Roark. Try and stop Roark now! Try and stop him! Try..."
+He choked on a gulp and kept still. He found himself staring at Toohey’s bare
+ankle between the pyjama trouser and the rich fur of a sheepskin-lined slipper.
+He had never visualized Toohey’s nudity; somehow, he had never thought of Toohey
+as possessing a physical body. There was something faintly indecent about that
+ankle: Just skin, too bluish-white, stretched over bones that looked too
+brittle. It made him think of chicken bones left on a plate after dinner, dried
+out; if one touches them, it takes no effort at all, they just snap. He found
+himself wishing to reach out, to take that ankle between thumb and forefinger,
+and just twist the pads of his fingertips.
+"Ellsworth, I came here to talk about Cortlandt Homes!" He could not take his
+eyes off the ankle. He hoped the words would release him.
+"Don’t shout like that. What’s the matter?...Cortlandt Homes? Well, what did you
+want to say about it?"
+He had to lift his eyes now, in astonishment. Toohey waited innocently.
+"I want to design Cortlandt Homes," he said, his voice coming like a paste
+strained through a cloth. "I want you to give it to me."
+"Why should I give it to you?"
+There was no answer. If he were to say now: Because you’ve written that I’m the
+greatest architect living, the reminder would prove that Toohey believed it no
+longer. He dared not face such proof, nor Toohey’s possible reply. He was
+staring at two long black hairs on the bluish knob of Toohey’s ankle; he could
+see them quite clearly; one straight, the other twisted into a curlicue. After a
+long time, he answered:
+"Because I need it very badly, Ellsworth."
+"I know you do."
+There was nothing further to say. Toohey shifted his ankle, raised his foot and
+put it flat upon the arm of the couch, spreading his legs comfortably.
+507
+
+"Sit up, Peter. You look like a gargoyle."
+Keating did not move.
+"What made you assume that the selection of an architect for Cortlandt Homes was
+up to me?"
+Keating raised his head; it was a stab of relief. He had presumed too much and
+offended Toohey; that was the reason; that was the only reason.
+"Why, I understand...it’s being said...I was told that you have a great deal of
+influence on this particular project...with those people...and in
+Washington...and places..."
+"Strictly in an unofficial capacity. As something of an expert in architectural
+matters. Nothing else."
+"Yes, of course...That’s...what I meant."
+"I can recommend an architect. That’s all. I can guarantee nothing. My word is
+not final."
+"That’s all I wanted, Ellsworth. A word of recommendation from you..."
+"But, Peter, if I recommend someone, I must give a reason. I can’t use such
+influence as I might have, just to push a friend, can I?"
+Keating stared at the dressing gown, thinking: powder puffs, why powder puffs?
+That’s what’s wrong with me, if he’d only take the thing off.
+"Your professional standing is not what it used to be, Peter."
+"You said to ’push a friend,’ Ellsworth..." It was a whisper.
+"Well, of course I’m your friend. I’ve always been your friend. You’re not
+doubting that, are you?"
+"No...I can’t, Ellsworth..."
+"Well, cheer up, then. Look, I’ll tell you the truth. We’re stuck on that damn
+Cortlandt. There’s a nasty little sticker involved. I’ve tried to get it for
+Gordon Prescott and Gus Webb--I thought it was more in their line, I didn’t
+think you’d be so interested. But neither of them could make the grade. Do you
+know the big problem in housing? Economy, Peter. How to design a decent modern
+unit that could rent for fifteen dollars a month. Ever tried to figure out that
+one? Well, that’s what’s expected of the architect who’ll do Cortlandt--if they
+ever find him. Of course, tenant selection helps, they stagger the rents, the
+families who make twelve hundred a year pay more for the same apartment to help
+carry the families who make six hundred a year--you know, underdog milked to
+help somebody underdoggier--but still, the cost of the building and the upkeep
+must be as low as humanly possible. The boys in Washington don’t want another
+one of those--you heard about it, a little government development where the
+homes cost ten thousand dollars apiece, while a private builder could have put
+them up for two thousand. Cortlandt is to be a model project. An example for the
+whole world. It must be the most brilliant, the most efficient exhibit of
+planning ingenuity and structural economy ever achieved anywhere. That’s what
+the big boys demand. Gordon and Gus couldn’t do it. They tried and were turned
+down. You’d be surprised to know how many people have tried. Peter, I couldn’t
+sell you to them even at the height of your career. What can I tell them about
+508
+
+you? All you stand for is plush, gilt and marble, old Guy Francon, the
+Cosmo-Slotnick Building, the Frink National Bank, and that little abortion of
+the Centuries that will never pay for itself. What they want is a millionaire’s
+kitchen for a sharecropper’s income. Think you can do it?"
+"I...I have ideas, Ellsworth. I’ve watched the field...I’ve...studied new
+methods....I could..."
+"If you can, it’s yours. If you can’t, all my friendship won’t help you. And God
+knows I’d like to help you. You look like an old hen in the rain. Here’s what
+I’ll do for you, Peter: come to my office tomorrow, I’ll give you all the dope,
+take it home and see if you wish to break your head over it. Take a chance, if
+you care to. Work me out a preliminary scheme. I can’t promise anything. But if
+you come anywhere near it, I’ll submit it to the right people and I’ll push it
+for all I’m worth. That’s all I can do for you. It’s not up to me. It’s really
+up to you."
+Keating sat looking at him. Keating’s eyes were anxious, eager and hopeless.
+"Care to try, Peter?"
+"Will you let me try?"
+"Of course I’ll let you. Why shouldn’t I? I’d be delighted if you, of all
+people, turned out to be the one to turn the trick."
+"About the way I look, Ellsworth," he said suddenly, "about the way I
+look...it’s not because I mind so much that I’m a failure...it’s because I can’t
+understand why I slipped like that...from the top...without any reason at
+all..."
+"Well, Peter, that could be terrifying to contemplate. The inexplicable is
+always terrifying. But it wouldn’t be so frightening if you stopped to ask
+yourself whether there’s ever been any reason why you should have been at the
+top....Oh, come, Peter, smile, I’m only kidding. One loses everything when one
+loses one’s sense of humor."
+On the following morning Keating came to his office after a visit to Ellsworth
+Toohey’s cubbyhole in the Banner Building. He brought with him a briefcase
+containing the data on the Cortlandt Homes project. He spread the papers on a
+large table in his office and locked the door. He asked a draftsman to bring him
+a sandwich at noon, and he ordered another sandwich at dinner time. "Want me to
+help, Pete?" asked Neil Dumont. "We could consult and discuss it and..." Keating
+shook his head.
+He sat at his table all night. After a while he stopped looking at the papers;
+he sat still, thinking. He was not thinking of the charts and figures spread
+before him. He had studied them. He had understood what he could not do.
+When he noticed that it was daylight, when he heard steps behind his locked
+door, the movement of men returning to work, and knew that office hours had
+begun, here and everywhere else in the city--he rose, walked to his desk and
+reached for the telephone book. He dialed the number.
+"This is Peter Keating speaking. I should like to make an appointment to see Mr.
+Roark."
+Dear God, he thought while waiting, don’t let him see me. Make him refuse. Dear
+God, make him refuse and I will have the right to hate him to the end of my
+509
+
+days. Don’t let him see me.
+"Will four o’clock tomorrow afternoon be convenient for you, Mr. Keating?" said
+the calm, gentle voice of the secretary. "Mr. Roark will see you then."
+
+8.
+ROARK knew that he must not show the shock of his first glance at Peter
+Keating--and that it was too late: he saw a faint smile on Keating’s lips,
+terrible in its resigned acknowledgment of disintegration.
+"Are you only two years younger than I am, Howard?" was the first thing Keating
+asked, looking at the face of the man he had not seen for six years.
+"I don’t know, Peter, I think so. I’m thirty-seven."
+"I’m thirty-nine--that’s all."
+He moved to the chair in front of Roark’s desk, groping for it with his hand. He
+was blinded by the band of glass that made three walls of Roark’s office. He
+stared at the sky and the city. He had no feeling of height here, and the
+buildings seemed to lie under his toes, not a real city, but miniatures of
+famous landmarks, incongruously close and small; he felt he could bend and pick
+any one of them up in his hand. He saw the black dashes which were automobiles
+and they seemed to crawl, it took them so long to cover a block the size of his
+finger. He saw the stone and plaster of the city as a substance that had soaked
+up light and was throwing it back, row upon row of flat, vertical planes grilled
+with dots of windows, each plane a reflector, rose-colored, gold and purple--and
+jagged streaks of smoke-blue running among them, giving them shape, angles and
+distance. Light streamed from the buildings into the sky and made of the clear
+summer blue a humble second thought, a spread of pale water over living fire. My
+God, thought Keating, who are the men that made all this?--and then remembered
+that he had been one of them.
+He saw Roark’s figure for an instant, straight and gaunt against the angle of
+two glass panes behind the desk, then Roark sat down facing him.
+Keating thought of men lost in the desert and of men perishing at sea, when, in
+the presence of the silent eternity of the sky, they have to speak the truth.
+And now he had to speak the truth, because he was in the presence of the earth’s
+greatest city.
+"Howard, is this the terrible thing they meant by turning the other cheek--your
+letting me come here?’
+He did not think of his voice. He did not know that it had dignity.
+Roark looked at him silently for a moment; this was a greater change than the
+swollen face.
+"I don’t know, Peter. No, if they meant actual forgiveness. Had I been hurt, I’d
+never forgive it. Yes, if they meant what I’m doing. I don’t think a man can
+hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him. I have
+really nothing to forgive you."
+"It would be better if you felt you had. It would be less cruel."
+510
+
+"I suppose so."
+"You haven’t changed, Howard."
+"I guess not."
+"If this is the punishment I must take--I want you to know that I’m taking it
+and that I understand. At one time I would have thought I was getting off easy."
+"You have changed, Peter."
+"I know I have."
+"I’m sorry if it has to be punishment."
+"I know you are. I believe you. But it’s all right. It’s only the last of it. I
+really took it night before last."
+"When you decided to come here?"
+"Yes."
+"Then don’t be afraid now. What is it?"
+Keating sat straight, calm, not as he had sat facing a man in a dressing gown
+three days ago, but almost in confident repose. He spoke slowly and without
+pity:
+"Howard, I’m a parasite. I’ve been a parasite all my life. You designed my best
+projects at Stanton. You designed the first house I ever built. You designed the
+Cosmo-Slotnick Building. I have fed on you and on all the men like you who lived
+before we were born. The men who designed the Parthenon, the Gothic cathedrals,
+the first skyscrapers. If they hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t have known how to put
+stone on stone. In the whole of my life, I haven’t added a new doorknob to what
+men have done before me. I have taken that which was not mine and given nothing
+in return. I had nothing to give. This is not an act, Howard, and I’m very
+conscious of what I’m saying. And I came here to ask you to save me again. If
+you wish to throw me out, do it now."
+Roark shook his head slowly, and moved one hand in silent permission to
+continue.
+"I suppose you know that I’m finished as an architect. Oh, not actually
+finished, but near enough. Others could go on like this for quite a few years,
+but I can’t, because of what I’ve been. Or was thought to have been. People
+don’t forgive a man who’s slipping. I must live up to what they thought. I can
+do it only in the same way I’ve done everything else in my life. I need a
+prestige I don’t deserve for an achievement I didn’t accomplish to save a name I
+haven’t earned the right to bear. I’ve been given a last chance. I know it’s my
+last chance. I know I can’t do it. I won’t try to bring you a mess and ask you
+to correct it. I’m asking you to design it and let me put my name on it."
+"What’s the job?"
+"Cortlandt Homes."
+"The housing project?"
+511
+
+"Yes. You’ve heard about it?"
+"I know everything about it."
+"You’re interested in housing projects, Howard?"
+"Who offered it to you? On what conditions?"
+Keating explained, precisely, dispassionately, relating his conversation with
+Toohey as if it were the summary of a court transcript he had read long ago. He
+pulled the papers out of his briefcase, put them down on the desk and went on
+speaking, while Roark looked at them. Roark interrupted him once. "Wait a
+moment, Peter. Keep still." He waited for a long time. He saw Roark’s hand
+moving the papers idly, but he knew that Roark was not looking at the papers.
+Roark said: "Go on," and Keating continued obediently, allowing himself no
+questions.
+"I suppose there’s no reason why you should do it for me," he concluded. "If you
+can solve their problem, you can go to them and do it on your own."
+Roark smiled. "Do you think I could get past Toohey?"
+"No. No, I don’t think you could."
+"Who told you I was interested in housing projects?"
+"What architect isn’t?"
+"Well, I am. But not in the way you think."
+He got up. It was a swift movement, impatient and tense. Keating allowed himself
+his first opinion: he thought it was strange to see suppressed excitement in
+Roark.
+"Let me think this over. Peter. Leave that here. Come to my house tomorrow
+night. I’ll tell you then."
+"You’re not...turning me down?"
+"Not yet."
+"You might...after everything that’s happened...?"
+"To hell with that."
+"You’re going to consider..."
+"I can’t say anything now, Peter. I must think it over. Don’t count on it. I
+might want to demand something impossible of you."
+"Anything you ask, Howard. Anything."
+"We’ll talk about it tomorrow."
+"Howard, I...how can I try to thank you, even for..."
+"Don’t thank me. If I do it, I’ll have my own purpose. I’ll expect to gain as
+much as you will. Probably more. Just remember that I don’t do things on any
+other terms."
+512
+
+#
+Keating came to Roark’s house on the following evening. He could not say whether
+he had waited impatiently or not. The bruise had spread. He could act; he could
+weigh nothing.
+He stood in the middle of Roark’s room and looked about slowly. He had been
+grateful for all the things Roark had not said to him. But he gave voice to the
+things himself when he asked:
+"This is the Enright House, isn’t it?"
+"Yes."
+"You built it?"
+Roark nodded, and said: "Sit down, Peter," understanding too well.
+Keating had brought his briefcase; he put it down on the floor, propping it
+against his chair. The briefcase bulged and looked heavy; he handled it
+cautiously. Then he spread his hands out and forgot the gesture, holding it,
+asking:
+"Well?"
+"Peter, can you think for a moment that you’re alone in the world?"
+"I’ve been thinking that for three days."
+"No. That’s not what I mean. Can you forget what you’ve been taught to repeat,
+and think, think hard, with your own brain? There are things I’ll want you to
+understand. It’s my first condition. I’m going to tell you what I want. If you
+think of it as most people do, you’ll say it’s nothing. But if you say that, I
+won’t be able to do it. Not unless you understand completely, with your whole
+mind, how important it is."
+"I’ll try, Howard. I was...honest with you yesterday."
+"Yes. If you hadn’t been, I would have turned you down yesterday. Now I think
+you might be able to understand and do your part of it."
+"You want to do it?"
+"I might. If you offer me enough."
+"Howard--anything you ask. Anything. I’d sell my soul..."
+"That’s the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the
+easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life.
+If I asked you to keep your soul--would you understand why that’s much harder?"
+"Yes...Yes, I think so."
+"Well? Go on. I want you to give me a reason why I should wish to design
+Cortlandt. I want you to make me an offer."
+"You can have all the money they pay me. I don’t need it. You can have twice the
+money. I’ll double their fee."
+513
+
+"You know better than that, Peter. Is that what you wish to tempt me with?"
+"You would save my life."
+"Can you think of any reason why I should want to save your life?"
+"No."
+"Well?"
+"It’s a great public project, Howard. A humanitarian undertaking. Think of the
+poor people who live in slums. If you can give them decent comfort within their
+means, you’ll have the satisfaction of performing a noble deed."
+"Peter, you were more honest than that yesterday."
+His eyes dropped, his voice low, Keating said:
+"You will love designing it."
+"Yes, Peter. Now you’re speaking my language."
+"What do you want?"
+"Now listen to me. I’ve been working on the problem of low-rent housing for
+years. I never thought of the poor people in slums. I thought of the
+potentialities of our modern world. The new materials, the means, the chances to
+take and use. There are so many products of man’s genius around us today. There
+are such great possibilities to exploit. To build cheaply, simply,
+intelligently. I’ve had a lot of time to study. I didn’t have much to do after
+the Stoddard Temple. I didn’t expect results. I worked because I can’t look at
+any material without thinking: What could be done with it? And the moment I
+think that, I’ve got to do it. To find the answer, to break the thing. I’ve
+worked on it for years. I loved it. I worked because it was a problem I wanted
+to solve. You wish to know how to build a unit to rent for fifteen dollars a
+month? I’ll show you how to build it for ten." Keating made an involuntary
+movement forward. "But first, I want you to think and tell me what made me give
+years to this work. Money? Fame? Charity? Altruism?" Keating shook his head
+slowly. "All right. You’re beginning to understand. So whatever we do, don’t
+let’s talk about the poor people in the slums. They have nothing to do with it,
+though I wouldn’t envy anyone the job of trying to explain that to fools. You
+see, I’m never concerned with my clients, only with their architectural
+requirements. I consider these as part of my building’s theme and problem, as my
+building’s material--just as I consider bricks and steel. Bricks and steel are
+not my motive. Neither are the clients. Both are only the means of my work.
+Peter, before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can
+get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the
+secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any
+possible object of your charity. I’ll be glad if people who need it find a
+better manner of living in a house I designed. But that’s not the motive of my
+work. Nor my reason. Nor my reward."
+He walked to a window and stood looking out at the lights of the city trembling
+in the dark river.
+"You said yesterday: What architect isn’t interested in housing? I hate the
+whole blasted idea of it. I think it’s a worthy undertaking--to provide a decent
+apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week. But not at the expense of
+other men. Not if it raises the taxes, raises all the other rents and makes the
+514
+
+man who earns forty live in a rat hole. That’s what’s happening in New York.
+Nobody can afford a modern apartment--except the very rich and the paupers. Have
+you seen the converted brownstones in which the average self-supporting couple
+has to live? Have you seen their closet kitchens and their plumbing? They’re
+forced to live like that--because they’re not incompetent enough. They make
+forty dollars a week and wouldn’t be allowed into a housing project. But they’re
+the ones who provide the money for the damn project. They pay the taxes. And the
+taxes raise their own rent. And they have to move from a converted brownstone
+into an unconverted one and from that into a railroad flat. I’d have no desire
+to penalize a man because he’s worth only fifteen dollars a week. But I’ll be
+damned if I can see why a man worth forty must be penalized--and penalized in
+favor of the one who’s less competent. Sure, there are a lot of theories on the
+subject and volumes of discussion. But just look at the results. Still,
+architects are all for government housing. And have you ever seen an architect
+who wasn’t screaming for planned cities? I’d like to ask him how he can be so
+sure that the plan adopted will be his own. And if it is, what right has he to
+impose it on the others? And if it isn’t, what happens to his work? I suppose
+he’ll say that he wants neither. He wants a council, a conference, co-operation
+and collaboration. And the result will be "The March of the Centuries.’ Peter,
+every single one of you on that committee has done better work alone than the
+eight of you produced collectively. Ask yourself why, sometime."
+"I think I know it...But Cortlandt..."
+"Yes. Cortlandt. Well, I’ve told you all the things in which I don’t believe, so
+that you’ll understand what I want and what right I have to want it. I don’t
+believe in government housing. I don’t want to hear anything about its noble
+purposes. I don’t think they’re noble. But that, too, doesn’t matter. That’s not
+my first concern. Not who lives in the house nor who orders it built. Only the
+house itself. If it has to be built, it might as well be built right."
+"You...want to build it?"
+"In all the years I’ve worked on this problem, I never hoped to see the results
+in practical application. I forced myself not to hope. I knew I couldn’t expect
+a chance to show what could be done on a large scale. Your government housing,
+among other things, has made all building so expensive that private owners can’t
+afford such projects, nor any type of low-rent construction. And I will never be
+given any job by any government. You’ve understood that much yourself. You said
+I couldn’t get past Toohey. He’s not the only one. I’ve never been given a job
+by any group, board, council or committee, public or private, unless some man
+fought for me, like Kent Lansing. There’s a reason for that, but we don’t have
+to discuss it now. I want you to know only that I realize in what manner I need
+you, so that what we’ll do will be a fair exchange."
+"You need me?"
+"Peter, I love this work. I want to see it erected. I want to make it real,
+living, functioning, built. But every living thing is integrated. Do you know
+what that means? Whole, pure, complete, unbroken. Do you know what constitutes
+an integrating principle? A thought. The one thought, the single thought that
+created the thing and every part of it. The thought which no one can change or
+touch. I want to design Cortlandt. I want to see it built. I want to see it
+built exactly as I design it."
+"Howard...I won’t say ’It’s nothing.’"
+"You understand?"
+515
+
+"Yes."
+"I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like
+to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to
+have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn’t matter too much. The only
+thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself.
+My work done my way. Peter, there’s nothing in the world that you can offer me,
+except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I’ve got to give. My work
+done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That’s the
+only way I function. That’s all I am."
+"Yes, Howard. I understand. With my whole mind."
+"Then here’s what I’m offering you: I’ll design Cortlandt. You’ll put your name
+on it. You’ll keep all the fees. But you’ll guarantee that it will be built
+exactly as I design it."
+Keating looked at him and held the glance deliberately, quietly, for a moment.
+"All right, Howard." He added: "I waited, to show you that I know exactly what
+you’re asking and what I’m promising."
+"You know it won’t be easy?"
+"I know it will be very terribly difficult."
+"It will. Because it’s such a large project. Most particularly because it’s a
+government project. There will be so many people involved, each with authority,
+each wanting to exercise it in some way or another. You’ll have a hard battle.
+You will have to have the courage of my convictions."
+"I’ll try to live up to that, Howard."
+"You won’t be able to, unless you understand that I’m giving you a trust which
+is more sacred--and nobler, if you like the word--than any altruistic purpose
+you could name. Unless you understand that this is not a favor, that I’m not
+doing it for you nor for the future tenants, but for myself, and that you have
+no right to it except on these terms."
+"Yes, Howard."
+"You’ll have to devise your own way of accomplishing it. You’ll have to get
+yourself an ironclad contract with your bosses and then fight every bureaucrat
+that comes along every five minutes for the next year or more. I will have no
+guarantee except your word. Wish to give it to me?"
+"I give you my word."
+Roark took two typewritten sheets of paper from his pocket and handed them to
+him. "Sign it."
+"What’s that?"
+"A contract between us, stating the terms of our agreement A copy for each of
+us. It would probably have no legal validity whatever. But I can hold it over
+your head. I couldn’t sue you But I could make this public. If it’s prestige you
+want, you can’t allow this to become known. If your courage fails you at any
+point, remember that you’ll lose everything by giving in. But if you’ll keep
+your word--I give you mine--it’s written there--that I’ll never betray this to
+516
+
+anyone. Cortlandt will be yours. On the day when it’s finished, I’ll send this
+paper back to you and you can burn it if you wish."
+"All right, Howard."
+Keating signed, handed the pen to him, and Roark signed.
+Keating sat looking at him for a moment, then said slowly, as if trying to
+distinguish the dim form of some thought of his own:
+"Everybody would say you’re a fool....Everybody would say I’m getting
+everything...."
+"You’ll get everything society can give a man. You’ll keep all the money. You’ll
+take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You’ll accept such gratitude
+as the tenants might feel. And I--I’ll take what nobody can give a man, except
+himself. I will have built Cortlandt."
+"You’re getting more than I am, Howard."
+"Peter!" The voice was triumphant. "You understand that?"
+"Yes...."
+Roark leaned back against a table, and laughed softly; it was the happiest sound
+Keating had ever heard.
+"This will work, Peter. It will work. It will be all right. You’ve done
+something wonderful. You haven’t spoiled everything by thanking me."
+Keating nodded silently.
+"Now relax, Peter. Want a drink? We won’t discuss any details tonight. Just sit
+there and get used to me. Stop being afraid of me. Forget everything you said
+yesterday. This wipes it off. We’re starting from the beginning. We’re partners
+now. You have your share to do. It’s a legitimate share. This is my idea of
+cooperation, by the way. You’ll handle people. I’ll do the building. We’ll each
+do the job we know best, as honestly as we can."
+He walked to Keating and extended his hand.
+Sitting still, not raising his head, Keating took the hand. His fingers
+tightened on it for a moment.
+When Roark brought him a drink, Keating swallowed three long gulps and sat
+looking at the room. His fingers were closed firmly about the glass, his arm
+steady; but the ice tinkled in the liquid once in a while, without apparent
+motion.
+His eyes moved heavily over the room, over Roark’s body. He thought, it’s not
+intentional, not just to hurt me, he can’t help it, he doesn’t even know it--but
+it’s in his whole body, that look of a creature glad to be alive. And he
+realized he had never actually believed that any living thing could be glad of
+the gift of existence.
+"You’re...so young, Howard....You’re so young...Once I reproached you for being
+too old and serious...Do you remember when you worked for me at Francon’s?"
+"Drop it, Peter. We’ve done so well without remembering."
+517
+
+"That’s because you’re kind. Wait, don’t frown. Let me talk. I’ve got to talk
+about something. I know, this is what you didn’t want to mention. God, I didn’t
+want you to mention it! I had to steel myself against it, that night--against
+all the things you could throw at me. But you didn’t. If it were reversed now
+and this were my home--can you imagine what I’d do or say? You’re not conceited
+enough."
+"Why, no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don’t make
+comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse
+to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist."
+"Yes. You are. But egotists are not kind. And you are. You’re the most
+egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn’t make sense."
+"Maybe the concepts don’t make sense. Maybe they don’t mean what people have
+been taught to think they mean. But let’s drop that now. If you’ve got to talk
+of something, let’s talk of what we’re going to do." He leaned out to look
+through the open window. "It will stand down there. That dark stretch--that’s
+the site of Cortlandt. When it’s done, I’ll be able to see it from my window.
+Then it will be part of the city. Peter, have I ever told you how much I love
+this city?"
+Keating swallowed the rest of the liquid in his glass.
+"I think I’d rather go now, Howard. I’m...no good tonight."
+"I’ll call you in a few days. We’d better meet here. Don’t come to my office.
+You don’t want to be seen there--somebody might guess. By the way, later, when
+my sketches are done, you’ll have to copy them yourself, in your own manner.
+Some people would recognize my way of drawing."
+"Yes....All right...."
+Keating rose and stood looking uncertainly at his briefcase for a moment, then
+picked it up. He mumbled some vague words of patting, he took his hat, he walked
+to the door, then stopped and looked down at his briefcase.
+"Howard...I brought something I wanted to show you."
+He walked back into the room and put the briefcase on the table.
+"I haven’t shown it to anyone." His fingers fumbled, opening the straps. "Not to
+Mother or Ellsworth Toohey...I just want you to tell me if there’s any..."
+He handed to Roark six of his canvases.
+Roark looked at them, one after another. He took a longer time than he needed.
+When he could trust himself to lift his eyes, he shook his head in silent answer
+to the word Keating had not pronounced.
+"It’s too late, Peter," he said gently.
+Keating nodded. "Guess I...knew that."
+When Keating had gone, Roark leaned against the door, closing his eyes. He was
+sick with pity.
+He had never felt this before--not when Henry Cameron collapsed in the office at
+518
+
+his feet, not when he saw Steven Mallory sobbing on a bed before him. Those
+moments had been clean. But this was pity--this complete awareness of a man
+without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There
+was shame in this feeling--his own shame that he should have to pronounce such
+judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of
+respect.
+This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that
+there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous
+feeling is called a virtue.
+
+9.
+THEY sat on the shore of the lake--Wynand slouched on a boulder--Roark stretched
+out on the ground--Dominique sitting straight, her body rising stiffly from the
+pale blue circle of her skirt on the grass.
+The Wynand house stood on the hill above them. The earth spread out in terraced
+fields and rose gradually to make the elevation of the hill. The house was a
+shape of horizontal rectangles rising toward a slashing vertical projection; a
+group of diminishing setbacks, each a separate room, its size and form making
+the successive steps in a series of interlocking floor lines. It was as if from
+the wide living room on the first level a hand had moved slowly, shaping the
+next steps by a sustained touch, then had stopped, had continued in separate
+movements, each shorter, brusquer, and had ended, torn off, remaining somewhere
+in the sky. So that it seemed as if the slow rhythm of the rising fields had
+been picked up, stressed, accelerated and broken into the staccato chords of the
+finale.
+"I like to look at it from here," said Wynand. "I spent all day here yesterday,
+watching the light change on it. When you design a building, Howard, do you know
+exactly what the sun will do to it at any moment of the day from any angle? Do
+you control the sun?"
+"Sure," said Roark without raising his head. "Unfortunately, I can’t control it
+here. Move over, Gail. You’re in my way. I like the sun on my back."
+Wynand let himself flop down into the grass. Roark lay stretched on his stomach,
+his face buried on his arm, the orange hair on the white shirt sleeve, one hand
+extended before him, palm pressed to the ground. Dominique looked at the blades
+of grass between his fingers. The fingers moved once in a while, crushing the
+grass with lazy, sensuous pleasure.
+The lake spread behind them, a flat sheet darkening at the edges, as if the
+distant trees were moving in to enclose it for the evening. The sun cut a
+glittering band across the water. Dominique looked up at the house and thought
+that she would like to stand there at a window and look down and see this one
+white figure stretched on a deserted shore, his hand on the ground, spent,
+emptied, at the foot of that hill.
+She had lived in the house for a month. She had never thought she would. Then
+Roark had said: "The house will be ready for you in ten days, Mrs. Wynand," and
+she had answered: "Yes, Mr. Roark."
+She accepted the house, the touch of the stair railings under her hand, the
+walls that enclosed the air she breathed. She accepted the light switches she
+519
+
+pressed in the evening, and the light firm wires he had laid out through the
+walls; the water that ran when she turned a tap, from conduits he had planned;
+the warmth of an open fire on August evenings, before a fireplace built stone by
+stone from his drawing. She thought: Every moment...every need of my
+existence...She thought: Why not? It’s the same with my body--lungs, blood
+vessels, nerves, brain--under the same control. She felt one with the house.
+She accepted the nights when she lay in Wynand’s arms and opened her eyes to see
+the shape of the bedroom Roark had designed, and she set her teeth against a
+racking pleasure that was part answer, part mockery of the unsatisfied hunger in
+her body, and surrendered to it, not knowing what man gave her this, which one
+of them, or both.
+Wynand watched her as she walked across a room, as she descended the stairs, as
+she stood at a window. She had heard him saying to her: "I didn’t know a house
+could be designed for a woman, like a dress. You can’t see yourself here as I
+do, you can’t see how completely this house is yours. Every angle, every part of
+every room is a setting for you. It’s scaled to your height, to your body. Even
+the texture of the walls goes with the texture of your skin in an odd way. It’s
+the Stoddard Temple, but built for a single person, and it’s mine. This is what
+I wanted. The city can’t touch you here. I’ve always felt that the city would
+take you away from me. It gave me everything I have. I don’t know why I feel at
+times that it will demand payment some day. But here you’re safe and you’re
+mine." She wanted to cry: Gail, I belong to him here as I’ve never belonged to
+him.
+Roark was the only guest Wynand allowed in their new home. She accepted Roark’s
+visits to them on week ends. That was the hardest to accept. She knew he did not
+come to torture her, but simply because Wynand asked him and he liked being with
+Wynand. She remembered saying to him in the evening, her hand on the stair
+railing, on the steps of the stairs leading up to her bedroom: "Come down to
+breakfast whenever you wish, Mr. Roark. Just press the button in the dining
+room."
+"Thank you. Mrs. Wynand. Good night."
+Once, she saw him alone, for a moment. It was early morning; she had not slept
+all night, thinking of him in a room across the hall; she had come out before
+the house was awake. She walked down the hill and she found relief in the
+unnatural stillness of the earth around her, the stillness of full light without
+sun, of leaves without motion, of a luminous, waiting silence. She heard steps
+behind her, she stopped, she leaned against a tree trunk. He had a bathing suit
+thrown over his shoulder, he was going down to swim in the lake. He stopped
+before her, and they stood still with the rest of the earth, looking at each
+other. He said nothing, turned, and went on. She remained leaning against the
+tree, and after a while she walked back to the house.
+Now, sitting by the lake, she heard Wynand saying to him:
+"You look like the laziest creature in the world, Howard."
+"I am."
+"I’ve never seen anyone relax like that."
+"Try staying awake for three nights in succession."
+"I told you to get here yesterday."
+520
+
+"Couldn’t."
+"Are you going to pass out right here?"
+"I’d like to. This is wonderful." He lifted his head, his eyes laughing, as if
+he had not seen the building on the hill, as if he were not speaking of it.
+"This is the way I’d like to die, stretched out on some shore like this, just
+close my eyes and never come back."
+She thought: He thinks what I’m thinking--we still have that together--Gail
+wouldn’t understand--not he and Gail, for this once--he and I.
+Wynand said: "You damn fool. This is not like you, not even as a joke. You’re
+killing yourself over something. What?"
+"Ventilator shafts, at the moment. Very stubborn ventilator shafts."
+"For whom?"
+"Clients....I have all sorts of clients right now."
+"Do you have to work nights?"
+"Yes--for these particular people. Very special work. Can’t even bring it into
+the office."
+"What are you talking about?"
+"Nothing. Don’t pay any attention. I’m half asleep."
+She thought: This is the tribute to Gail, the confidence of surrender--he
+relaxes like a cat--and cats don’t relax except with people they like.
+"I’ll kick you upstairs after dinner and lock the door," said Wynand, "and leave
+you there to sleep twelve hours."
+"All right."
+"Want to get up early? Let’s go for a swim before sunrise."
+"Mr. Roark is tired, Gail," said Dominique, her voice sharp.
+Roark raised himself on an elbow to look at her. She saw his eyes, direct,
+understanding.
+"You’re acquiring the bad habits of all commuters, Gail," she said, "imposing
+your country hours on guests from the city who are not used to them." She
+thought: Let it be mine--that one moment when you were walking to the
+lake--don’t let Gail take that also, like everything else. "You can’t order Mr.
+Roark around as if he were an employee of the Banner."
+"I don’t know anyone on earth I’d rather order around than Mr. Roark," said
+Wynand gaily, "whenever I can get away with it."
+"You’re getting away with it."
+"I don’t mind taking orders, Mrs. Wynand," said Roark. "Not from a man as
+capable as Gail."
+521
+
+Let me win this time, she thought, please let me win this time--it means nothing
+to you--it’s senseless and it means nothing at all--but refuse him, refuse him
+for the sake of the memory of a moment’s pause that had not belonged to him.
+"I think you should rest, Mr. Roark. You should sleep late tomorrow. I’ll tell
+the servants not to disturb you."
+"Why, no, thanks, I’ll be all right in a few hours, Mrs. Wynand. I like to swim
+before breakfast. Knock at the door when you’re ready, Gail, and we’ll go down
+together."
+She looked over the spread of lake and hills, with not a sign of men, not
+another house anywhere, just water, trees and sun, a world of their own, and she
+thought he was right--they belonged together--the three of them.
+#
+The drawings of Cortlandt Homes presented six buildings, fifteen stories high,
+each made in the shape of an irregular star with arms extending from a central
+shaft. The shafts contained elevators, stairways, heating systems and all the
+utilities. The apartments radiated from the center in the form of extended
+triangles. The space between the arms allowed light and air from three sides.
+The ceilings were pre-cast; the inner walls were of plastic tile that required
+no painting or plastering; all pipes and wires were laid out in metal ducts at
+the edge of the floors, to be opened and replaced, when necessary, without
+costly demolition; the kitchens and bathrooms were prefabricated as complete
+units; the inner partitions were of light metal that could be folded into the
+walls to provide one large room or pulled out to divide it; there were few halls
+or lobbies to clean, a minimum of cost and labor required for the maintenance of
+the place. The entire plan was a composition in triangles. The buildings, of
+poured concrete, were a complex modeling of simple structural features; there
+was no ornament; none was needed; the shapes had the beauty of sculpture.
+Ellsworth Toohey did not look at the plans which Keating had spread out on his
+desk. He stared at the perspective drawings. He stared, his mouth open.
+Then he threw his head back and howled with laughter.
+"Peter," he said, "you’re a genius."
+He added: "I think you know exactly what I mean." Keating looked at him blankly,
+without curiosity. "You’ve succeeded in what I’ve spent a lifetime trying to
+achieve, in what centuries of men and bloody battles behind us have tried to
+achieve. I take my hat off to you, Peter, in awe and admiration."
+"Look at the plans," said Keating listlessly. "It will rent for ten dollars a
+unit."
+"I haven’t the slightest doubt that it will. I don’t have to look. Oh yes,
+Peter, this will go through. Don’t worry. This will be accepted. My
+congratulations, Peter."
+#
+"You God-damn fool!" said Gail Wynand. "What are you up to?"
+He threw to Roark a copy of the Banner, folded at an inside page. The page bore
+a photograph captioned: "Architects’ drawing of Cortlandt Homes, the $15,000,000
+Federal Housing Project to be built in Astoria, L. I., Keating & Dumont,
+architects."
+522
+
+Roark glanced at the photograph and asked: "What do you mean?"
+"You know damn well what I mean. Do you think I picked the things in my art
+gallery by their signatures? If Peter Keating designed this, I’ll eat every copy
+of today’s Banner."
+"Peter Keating designed this, Gail."
+"You fool. What are you after?"
+"If I don’t want to understand what you’re talking about, I won’t understand it,
+no matter what you say."
+"Oh, you might, if I run a story to the effect that a certain housing project
+was designed by Howard Roark, which would make a swell exclusive story and a
+joke on one Mr. Toohey who’s the boy behind the boys on most of those damn
+projects."
+"You publish that and I’ll sue hell out of you."
+"You really would?"
+"I would. Drop it, Gail. Don’t you see I don’t want to discuss it?"
+Later, Wynand showed the picture to Dominique and asked:
+"Who designed this?"
+She looked at it. "Of course," was all she answered.
+#
+"What kind of ’changing world,’ Alvah? Changing to what? From what? Who’s doing
+the changing?"
+Parts of Alvah Scarret’s face looked anxious, but most of it was impatient, as
+he glanced at the proofs of his editorial on "Motherhood in a Changing World,"
+which lay on Wynand’s desk.
+"What the hell, Gail," he muttered indifferently.
+"That’s what I want to know--what the hell?" He picked up the proof and read
+aloud: "’The world we have known is gone and done for and it’s no use kidding
+ourselves about it. We cannot go back, we must go forward. The mothers of today
+must set the example by broadening their own emotional view and raising their
+selfish love for their own children to a higher plane, to include everybody’s
+little children. Mothers must love every kid in their block, in their street, in
+their city, county, state, nation and the whole wide, wide world--just exactly
+as much as their own little Mary or Johnny.’" Wynand wrinkled his nose
+fastidiously. "Alvah?...It’s all right to dish out crap. But--this kind of
+crap?"
+Alvah Scarret would not look at him.
+"You’re out of step with the times, Gail," he said. His voice was low; it had a
+tone of warning--as of something baring its teeth, tentatively, just for future
+reference.
+This was so odd a behavior for Alvah Scarret that Wynand lost all desire to
+pursue the conversation. He drew a line across the editorial, but the blue
+523
+
+pencil stroke seemed tired and ended in a blur. He said: "Go and bat out
+something else, Alvah."
+Scarret rose, picked up the strip of paper, turned and left the room without a
+word.
+Wynand looked after him, puzzled, amused and slightly sick.
+He had known for several years the trend which his paper had embraced gradually,
+imperceptibly, without any directive from him. He had noticed the cautious
+"slanting" of news stories, the half-hints, the vague allusions, the peculiar
+adjectives peculiarly placed, the stressing of certain themes, the insertion of
+political conclusions where none was needed. If a story concerned a dispute
+between employer and employee, the employer was made to appear guilty, simply
+through wording, no matter what the facts presented. If a sentence referred to
+the past, it was always "our dark past" or "our dead past." If a statement
+involved someone’s personal motive, it was always "goaded by selfishness" or
+"egged by greed." A crossword puzzle gave the definition of "obsolescent
+individuals" and the word came out as "capitalists."
+Wynand had shrugged about it, contemptuously amused. His staff, he thought, was
+well trained: if this was the popular slang of the day, his boys assumed it
+automatically. It meant nothing at all. He kept it off the editorial page and
+the rest did not matter. It was no more than a fashion of the moment--and he had
+survived many changing fashions.
+He felt no concern over the "We Don’t Read Wynand" campaign. He obtained one of
+their men’s-room stickers, pasted it on the windshield of his own Lincoln, added
+the words: "We don’t either," and kept it there long enough to be discovered and
+snapped by a photographer from a neutral paper. In the course of his career he
+had been fought, damned, denounced by the greatest publishers of his time, by
+the shrewdest coalitions of financial power. He could not summon any
+apprehension over the activities of somebody named Gus Webb.
+He knew that the Banner was losing some of its popularity. "A temporary fad," he
+told Scarret, shrugging. He would run a limerick contest, or a series of coupons
+for victrola records, see a slight spurt of circulation and promptly forget the
+matter.
+He could not rouse himself to full action. He had never felt a greater desire to
+work. He entered his office each morning with important eagerness. But within an
+hour he found himself studying the joints of the paneling on the walls and
+reciting nursery rhymes in his mind. It was not boredom, not the satisfaction of
+a yawn, but more like the gnawing pull of wishing to yawn and not quite making
+it. He could not say that he disliked his work. It had merely become
+distasteful; not enough to force a decision; not enough to make him clench his
+fists; just enough to contract his nostrils.
+He thought dimly that the cause lay in that new trend of the public taste. He
+saw no reason why he should not follow it and play on it as expertly as he had
+played on all other fads. But he could not follow. He felt no moral scruples. It
+was not a positive stand rationally taken; not defiance in the name of a cause
+of importance; just a fastidious feeling, something pertaining almost to
+chastity: the hesitation one feels before putting one’s foot down into muck. He
+thought: It doesn’t matter--it will not last--I’ll be back when the wave swings
+on to another theme--I think I’d rather sit this one out.
+He could not say why the encounter with Alvah Scarret gave him a feeling of
+uneasiness, sharper than usual. He thought it was funny that Alvah should have
+524
+
+switched to that line of tripe. But there had been something else; there had
+been a personal quality in Alvah’s exit; almost a declaration that he saw no
+necessity to consider the boss’s opinion any longer.
+I ought to fire Alvah, he thought--and then laughed at himself, aghast: fire
+Alvah Scarret?--one might as well think of stopping the earth--or--of the
+unthinkable--of closing the Banner.
+But through the months of that summer and fall, there were days when he loved
+the Banner. Then he sat at this desk, with his hand on the pages spread before
+him, fresh ink smearing his palm, and he smiled as he saw the name of Howard
+Roark in the pages of the Banner.
+The word had come down from his office to every department concerned: Plug
+Howard Roark. In the art section, the real-estate section, the editorials, the
+columns, mentions of Roark and his buildings began to appear regularly. There
+were not many occasions when one could give publicity to an architect, and
+buildings had little news value, but the Banner managed to throw Roark’s name at
+the public under every kind of ingenious pretext. Wynand edited every word of
+it. The material was startling on the pages of the Banner: it was written in
+good taste. There were no sensational stories, no photographs of Roark at
+breakfast, no human interest, no attempts to sell a man; only a considered,
+gracious tribute to the greatness of an artist.
+He never spoke of it to Roark, and Roark never mentioned it. They did not
+discuss the Banner.
+Coming home to his new house in the evening, Wynand saw the Banner on the living
+room table every night. He had not allowed it in his home since his marriage. He
+smiled, when he saw it for the first time, and said nothing.
+Then he spoke of it, one evening. He turned the pages until he came to an
+article on the general theme of summer resorts, most of which was a description
+of Monadnock Valley. He raised his head to glance at Dominique across the room;
+she sat on the floor by the fireplace. He said:
+"Thank you, dear."
+"For what, Gail?"
+"For understanding when I would be glad to see the Banner in my house."
+He walked to her and sat down on the floor beside her. He held her thin
+shoulders in the curve of his arm. He said:
+"Think of all the politicians, movie stars, visiting grand dukes and sash weight
+murderers whom the Banner has trumpeted all these years. Think of my great
+crusades about street-car companies, red-light districts and home-grown
+vegetables. For once, Dominique, I can say what I believe."
+"Yes, Gail..."
+"All this power I wanted, reached and never used.,. Now they’ll see what I can
+do. I’ll force them to recognize him as he should be recognized. I’ll give him
+the fame he deserves. Public opinion? Public opinion is what I make it."
+"Do you think he wants this?"
+"Probably not. I don’t care. He needs it and he’s going to get it. I want him to
+525
+
+have it. As an architect, he’s public property. He can’t stop a newspaper from
+writing about him if it wants to."
+"All that copy on him--do you write it yourself?"
+"Most of it."
+"Gail, what a great journalist you could have been."
+The campaign brought results, of a kind he had not expected. The general public
+remained blankly indifferent. But in the intellectual circles, in the art world,
+in the profession, people were laughing at Roark. Comments were reported to
+Wynand: "Roark? Oh yes, Wynand’s pet."
+"The Banner’s glamour boy."
+"The genius of the yellow press."
+"The Banner is now selling art--send two box tops or a reasonable facsimile."
+"Wouldn’t you know it? That’s what I’ve always thought of Roark--the kind of
+talent fit for the Wynand papers."
+"We’ll see," said Wynand contemptuously--and continued his private crusade.
+He gave Roark every commission of importance whose owners were open to pressure.
+Since spring, he had brought to Roark’s office the contracts for a yacht club on
+the Hudson, an office building, two private residences. "I’ll get you more than
+you can handle," he said. "I’ll make you catch up with all the years they’ve
+made you waste."
+Austen Heller said to Roark one evening: "If I may be so presumptuous, I think
+you need advice, Howard. Yes, of course, I mean this preposterous business of
+Mr. Gail Wynand. You and he as inseparable friends upsets every rational concept
+I’ve ever held. After all, there are distinct classes of humanity--no, I’m not
+talking Toohey’s language--but there are certain boundary lines among men which
+cannot be crossed."
+"Yes, there are. But nobody has ever given the proper statement of where they
+must be drawn."
+"Well, the friendship is your own business. But there’s one aspect of it that
+must be stopped--and you’re going to listen to me for once."
+"I’m listening."
+"I think it’s fine, all those commissions he’s dumping on you. I’m sure he’ll be
+rewarded for that and lifted several rungs in hell, where he’s certain to go.
+But he must stop that publicity he’s splashing you with in the Banner. You’ve
+got to make him stop. Don’t you know that the support of the Wynand papers is
+enough to discredit anyone?" Roark said nothing. "It’s hurting you
+professionally, Howard."
+"I know it is."
+"Are you going to make him stop?"
+"No."
+526
+
+"But why in blazes?"
+"I said I’d listen, Austen. I didn’t say I’d speak about him."
+Late one afternoon in the fall Wynand came to Roark’s office, as he often did at
+the end of a day, and when they walked out together, he said: "It’s a nice
+evening. Let’s go for a walk, Howard. There’s a piece of property I want you to
+see."
+He led the way to Hell’s Kitchen. They walked around a great rectangle--two
+blocks between Ninth Avenue and Eleventh, five blocks from north to south. Roark
+saw a grimy desolation of tenements, sagging hulks of what had been red brick,
+crooked doorways, rotting boards, strings of gray underclothing in narrow air
+shafts, not as a sign of life, but as a malignant growth of decomposition.
+"You own that?" Roark said.
+"All of it."
+"Why show it to me? Don’t you know that making an architect look at that is
+worse than showing him a field of unburied corpses?"
+Wynand pointed to the white-tiled front of a new diner across the street: "Let’s
+go in there."
+They sat by the window, at a clean metal table, and Wynand ordered coffee. He
+seemed as graciously at home as in the best restaurants of the city; his
+elegance had an odd quality here--it did not insult the place, but seemed to
+transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes
+a palace of any house he enters. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table,
+watching Roark through the steam of the coffee, his eyes narrowed, amused. He
+moved one finger to point across the
+street.
+"That’s the first piece of property I ever bought, Howard. It was a long time
+ago. I haven’t touched it since."
+"What were you saving it for?"
+"You."
+Roark raised the heavy white mug of coffee to his lips, his eyes holding
+Wynand’s, narrowed and mocking in answer. He knew that Wynand wanted eager
+questions and he waited patiently instead.
+"You stubborn bastard," Wynand chuckled, surrendering. "All right. Listen. This
+is where I was born. When I could begin to think of buying real estate, I bought
+this piece. House by house. Block by block. It took a long time. I could have
+bought better property and made money fast, as I did later, but I waited until I
+had this. Even though I knew I would make no use of it for years. You see, I had
+decided then that this is where the Wynand Building would stand some day....All
+right, keep still all you want--I’ve seen what your face looked like just now."
+"Oh, God, Gail!..."
+"What’s the matter? Want to do it? Want it pretty badly?"
+"I think I’d almost give my life for it--only then I couldn’t build it. Is that
+527
+
+what you wanted to hear?"
+"Something like that. I won’t demand your life. But it’s nice to shock the
+breath out of you for once. Thank you for being shocked. It means you understood
+what the Wynand Building implies. The highest structure in the city. And the
+greatest."
+"I know that’s what you’d want."
+"I won’t build it yet. But I’ve waited for it all these years. And now you’ll
+wait with me. Do you know that I really like to torture you, in a way? That I
+always want to?"
+"I know."
+"I brought you here only to tell you that it will be yours when I build it. I
+have waited, because I felt I was not ready for it. Since I met you, I knew I
+was ready--and I don’t mean because you’re an architect. But we’ll have to wait
+a little longer, just another year or two, till the country gets back on its
+feet. This is the wrong time for building. Of course, everybody says that the
+day of the skyscraper is past. That it’s obsolete. I don’t give a damn about
+that. I’ll make it pay for itself. The Wynand Enterprises have offices scattered
+all over town. I want them all in one building. And I hold enough over the heads
+of enough important people to force them to rent all the rest of the space.
+Perhaps, it will be the last skyscraper built in New York. So much the better.
+The greatest and the last."
+Roark sat looking across the street, at the streaked ruins.
+"To be torn down, Howard. All of it. Razed off. The place where I did not run
+things. To be supplanted by a park and the Wynand Building....The best
+structures of New York are wasted because they can’t be seen, squeezed against
+one another in blocks. My building will be seen. It will reclaim the whole
+neighborhood. Let the others follow. Not the right location, they’ll say? Who
+makes right locations? They’ll see. This might become the new center of the
+city--when the city starts living again. I planned it when the Banner was
+nothing but a fourth-rate rag. I haven’t miscalculated, have I? I knew what I
+would become...A monument to my life, Howard. Remember what you said when you
+came to my office for the first time? A statement of my life. There were things
+in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will
+remain. After I am gone that building will be Gail Wynand....I knew I’d find the
+right architect when the time came. I didn’t know he would be much more than
+just an architect I hired. I’m glad it happened this way. It’s a kind of reward.
+It’s as if I had been forgiven. My last and greatest achievement will also be
+your greatest. It will be not only my monument but the best gift I could offer
+to the man who means most to me on earth. Don’t frown, you know that’s what you
+are to me. Look at that horror across the street. I want to sit here and watch
+you looking at it. That’s what we’re going to destroy--you and I. That’s what it
+will rise from--the Wynand Building by Howard Roark. I’ve waited for it from the
+day I was born. From the day you were born, you’ve waited for your one great
+chance. There it is, Howard, across the street. Yours--from me."
+
+10.
+IT HAD stopped raining, but Peter Keating wished it would start again. The
+pavements glistened, there were dark blotches on the walls of buildings, and
+528
+
+since it did not come from the sky, it looked as if the city were bathed in cold
+sweat. The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old
+age, and there were yellow puddles of light in windows. Keating had missed the
+rain, but he felt wet, from his bones out.
+He had left his office early, and he walked home. The office seemed unreal to
+him, as it had for a long time. He could find reality only in the evenings, when
+he slipped furtively up to Roark’s apartment. He did not slip and it was not
+furtive, he told himself angrily--and knew that it was; even though he walked
+through the lobby of the Enright House and rode up in an elevator, like any man
+on a legitimate errand. It was the vague anxiety,’ the impulse to glance around
+at every face, the fear of being recognized; it was a load of anonymous guilt,
+not toward any person, but the more frightening sense of guilt without a victim.
+He took from Roark rough sketches for every detail of Cortlandt--to have them
+translated into working drawings by his own staff. He listened to Roark’s
+instructions. He memorized arguments to offer his employers against every
+possible objection. He absorbed like a recording machine. Afterward, when he
+gave explanations to his draftsmen, his voice sounded like a disk being played.
+He did not mind. He questioned nothing.
+Now he walked slowly, through the streets full of rain that would not come. He
+looked up and saw empty space where the towers of familiar buildings had been;
+it did not look like fog or clouds, but like a solid spread of gray sky that had
+worked a gigantic, soundless destruction. That sight of buildings vanishing
+through the sky had always made him uneasy. He walked on, looking down.
+It was the shoes that he noticed first. He knew that he must have seen the
+woman’s face, that the instinct of self-preservation had jerked his glance away
+from it and let his conscious perception begin with the shoes. They were flat,
+brown oxfords, offensively competent, too well shined on the muddy pavement,
+contemptuous of rain and of beauty. His eyes went to the brown skirt, to the
+tailored jacket, costly and cold like a uniform, to the hand with a hole in the
+finger of an expensive glove, to the lapel that bore a preposterous ornament--a
+bow-legged Mexican with red-enameled pants--stuck there in a clumsy attempt at
+pertness; to the thin lips, to the glasses, to the eyes.
+"Katie," he said.
+She stood by the window of a bookstore; her glance hesitated halfway between
+recognition and a book title she had been examining; then, with recognition
+evident in the beginning of a smile, the glance went back to the book title, to
+finish and make an efficient note of it. Then her eyes returned to Keating. Her
+smile was pleasant; not as an effort over bitterness, and not as welcome; just
+pleasant.
+"Why, Peter Keating," she said. "Hello, Peter."
+"Katie..." He could not extend his hand or move closer to her.
+"Yes, imagine running into you like this, why, New York is just like any small
+town, though I suppose without the better features." There was no strain in her
+voice.
+"What are you doing here? I thought...I heard..." He knew she had a good job in
+Washington and had moved there two years ago.
+"Just a business trip. Have to dash right back tomorrow. Can’t say that I mind
+it, either. New York seems so dead, so slow."
+529
+
+"Well, I’m glad you like your job...if you mean...isn’t that what you mean?"
+"Like my job? What a silly thing to say. Washington is the only grownup place in
+the country. I don’t see how people can live anywhere else. What have you been
+doing, Peter? I saw your name in the paper the other day, it was something
+important."
+"I...I’m working....You haven’t changed much, Katie, not really, have you?--I
+mean, your face--you look like you used to--in a way..."
+"It’s the only face I’ve got. Why do people always have to talk about changes if
+they haven’t seen each other for a year or two? I ran into Grace Parker
+yesterday and she had to go into an inventory of my appearance. I could just
+hear every word before she said it--’You look so nice--not a day older, really,
+Catherine.’ People are provincial."
+"But...you do look nice....It’s...it’s nice to see you..."
+"I’m glad to see you, too. How is the building industry?"
+"I don’t know....What you read about must have been Cortlandt...I’m doing
+Cortlandt Homes, a housing..."
+"Yes, of course. That was it. I think it’s very good for you, Peter. To do a
+job, not just for private profit and a fat fee, but with a social purpose. I
+think architects should stop money grubbing and give a little time to government
+work and broader objectives."
+"Why, most of them would grab it if they could get it, it’s one of the hardest
+rackets to break into, it’s a closed..."
+"Yes, yes, I know. It’s simply impossible to make the laymen understand our
+methods of working, and that’s why all we hear are all those stupid, boring
+complaints. You mustn’t read the Wynand papers, Peter."
+"I never read the Wynand papers. What on earth has it got to do with...Oh, I...I
+don’t know what we’re talking about. Katie."
+He thought that she owed him nothing, or every kind of anger and scorn she could
+command; and yet there was a human obligation she still had toward him: she owed
+him an evidence of strain in this meeting. There was none.
+"We really should have a great deal to talk about, Peter." The words would have
+lifted him, had they not been pronounced so easily. "But we can’t stand here all
+day." She glanced at her wrist watch. "I’ve got an hour or so, suppose you take
+me somewhere for a cup of tea, you could use some hot tea, you look frozen."
+That was her first comment on his appearance; that, and a glance without
+reaction. He thought, even Roark had been shocked, had acknowledged the change.
+"Yes, Katie. That will be wonderful. I..." He wished she had not been the one to
+suggest it; it was the right thing for them to do; he wished she had not been
+able to think of the right thing; not so quickly. "Let’s find a nice, quiet
+place..."
+"We’ll go to Thorpe’s. There’s one around the corner. They have the nicest
+watercress sandwiches."
+530
+
+It was she who took his arm to cross the street, and dropped it again on the
+other side. The gesture had been automatic. She had not noticed it.
+There was a counter of pastry and candy inside the door of Thorpe’s. A large
+bowl of sugar-coated almonds, green and white, glared at Keating. The place
+smelled of orange icing. The lights were dim, a stuffy orange haze; the odor
+made the light seem sticky. The tables were too small, set close together.
+He sat, looking down at a paper lace doily on a black glass table top. But when
+he lifted his eyes to Catherine, he knew that no caution was necessary: she did
+not react to his scrutiny; her expression remained the same, whether he studied
+her face or that of the woman at the next table; she seemed to have no
+consciousness of her own person.
+It was her mouth that had changed most, he thought; the lips were drawn in, with
+only a pale edge of flesh left around the imperious line of their opening; a
+mouth to issue orders, he thought, but not big orders or cruel orders; just mean
+little ones--about plumbing and disinfectants. He saw the fine wrinkles at the
+corners of her eyes--a skin like paper that had been crumpled and then smoothed
+out.
+She was telling him about her work in Washington, and he listened bleakly. He
+did not hear the words, only the tone of her voice, dry and crackling.
+A waitress in a starched orchid uniform came to take their orders. Catherine
+snapped:
+"The tea sandwiches special. Please."
+Keating said:
+"A cup of coffee." He saw Catherine’s eyes on him, and in a sudden panic of
+embarrassment, feeling he must not confess that he couldn’t swallow a bite of
+food now, feeling that the confession would anger her, he added: "A ham and
+swiss on rye, I guess."
+"Peter, what ghastly food habits! Wait a minute, waitress. You don’t want that,
+Peter. It’s very bad for you. You should have a fresh salad. And coffee is bad
+at this time of the day. Americans drink too much coffee."
+"All right," said Keating.
+"Tea and a combination salad, waitress ... And--oh, waitress!--no bread
+with the salad--you’re gaining weight, Peter--some diet crackers. Please."
+Keating waited until the orchid uniform had moved away, and then he said,
+hopefully:
+"I have changed, haven’t I, Katie? I do look pretty awful?" Even a disparaging
+comment would be a personal link.
+"What? Oh, I guess so. It isn’t healthy. But Americans know nothing whatever
+about the proper nutritional balance. Of course, men do make too much fuss over
+mere appearance. They’re much vainer than women. It’s really women who’re taking
+charge, of all productive work now, and women will build a better world."
+"How does one build a better world, Katie?"
+"Well, if you consider the determining factor, which is, of course, economic..."
+531
+
+"No, I...I didn’t ask it that way....Katie, I’ve been very unhappy."
+"I’m sorry to hear that. One hears so many people say that nowadays. That’s
+because it’s a transition period and people feel rootless. But you’ve always had
+a bright disposition, Peter."
+"Do you...do you remember what I was like?"
+"Goodness, Peter, you talk as if it had been sixty-five years ago."
+"But so many things happened. I..." He took the plunge; he had to take it; the
+crudest way seemed the easiest. "I was married. And divorced."
+"Yes, I read about that. I was glad when you were divorced." He leaned forward.
+"If your wife was the kind of woman who could marry Gail Wynand, you were lucky
+to get rid of her."
+The tone of chronic impatience that ran words together had not altered to
+pronounce this. He had to believe it: this was all the subject meant to her.
+"Katie, you’re very tactful and kind...but drop the act," he said, knowing in
+dread that it was not an act. "Drop it....Tell me what you thought of me
+then....Say everything...I don’t mind....I want to hear it....Don’t you
+understand? I’ll feel better if I hear it."
+"Surely, Peter, you don’t want me to start some sort of recriminations? I’d say
+it was conceited of you, if it weren’t so childish."
+"What did you feel--that day--when I didn’t come--and then you heard I was
+married?" He did not know what instinct drove him, through numbness, to be
+brutal as the only means left to him. "Katie, you suffered then?"
+"Yes, of course I suffered. All young people do in such situations. It seems
+foolish afterward. I cried, and I screamed some dreadful things at Uncle
+Ellsworth, and he had to call a doctor to give me a sedative, and then weeks
+afterward I fainted on the street one day without any reason, which was really
+disgraceful. All the conventional things, I suppose, everybody goes through
+them, like measles. Why should I have expected to be exempt?--as Uncle Ellsworth
+said." He thought that he had not known there was something worse than a living
+memory of pain: a dead one. "And of course we knew it was for the best. I can’t
+imagine myself married to you."
+"You can’t imagine it, Katie?"
+"That is, nor to anyone else. It wouldn’t have worked, Peter. I’m
+temperamentally unsuited to domesticity. It’s too selfish and narrow. Of course,
+I understand what you feel just now and I appreciate it. It’s only human that
+you should feel something like remorse, since you did what is known as jilted
+me." He winced. "You see how stupid those things sound. It’s natural for you to
+be a little contrite--a normal reflex--but we must look at it objectively, we’re
+grownup, rational people, nothing is too serious, we can’t really help what we
+do, we’re conditioned that way, we just charge it off to experience and go on
+from there."
+"Katie! You’re not talking some fallen girl out of her problem. You’re speaking
+about yourself."
+"Is there any essential difference? Everybody’s problems are the same, just like
+532
+
+everybody’s emotions."
+He saw her nibbling a thin strip of bread with a smear of green, and noticed
+that his order had been served. He moved his fork about in his salad bowl, and
+he made himself bite into a gray piece of diet cracker. Then he discovered how
+strange it was when one lost the knack of eating automatically and had to do it
+by full conscious effort; the cracker seemed inexhaustible; he could not finish
+the process of chewing; he moved his jaws without reducing the amount of gritty
+pulp in his mouth.
+"Katie...for six years...I thought of how I’d ask your forgiveness some day. And
+now I have the chance, but I won’t ask it. It seems...it seems beside the point.
+I know it’s horrible to say that, but that’s how it seems to me. It was the
+worst thing I ever did in my life--but not because I hurt you. I did hurt you,
+Katie, and maybe more than you know yourself. But that’s not my worst
+guilt....Katie, I wanted to marry you. It was the only thing I ever really
+wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven--that I hadn’t done what I
+wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about
+insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain--and
+wasted pain....Katie, why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do
+what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest
+thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of
+courage. I mean, what we really want. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to
+sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those
+things--they’re not even desires--they’re things people do to escape from
+desires--because it’s such a big responsibility, really to want something."
+"Peter, what you’re saying is very ugly and selfish."
+"Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve always had to tell you the truth. About everything.
+Even if you didn’t ask. I had to."
+"Yes. You did. It was a commendable trait. You were a charming boy, Peter."
+It was the bowl of sugar-coated almonds on the counter that hurt him, he thought
+in a dull anger. The almonds were green and white; they had no business being
+green and white at this time of the year; the colors of St. Patrick’s Day--then
+there was always candy like that in all the store windows--and St. Patrick’s Day
+meant spring--no, better than spring, that moment of wonderful anticipation just
+before spring is to begin.
+"Katie, I won’t say that I’m still in love with you. I don’t know whether I am
+or not. I’ve never asked myself. It wouldn’t matter now. I’m not saying this
+because I hope for anything or think of trying or...I know only that I loved
+you, Katie, I loved you, whatever I made of it, even if this is how I’ve got to
+say it for the last time, I loved you, Katie."
+She looked at him--and she seemed pleased. Not stirred, not happy, not pitying;
+but pleased in a casual way. He thought: If she were completely the spinster,
+the frustrated social worker, as people think of those women, the kind who would
+scorn sex in the haughty conceit of her own virtue, that would still be
+recognition, if only in hostility. But this--this amused tolerance seemed to
+admit that romance was only human, one had to take it, like everybody else, it
+was a popular weakness of no great consequence--she was gratified as she would
+have been gratified by the same words from any other man--it was like that
+red-enamel Mexican on her lapel, a contemptuous concession to people’s demand of
+vanity.
+"Katie...Katie, let’s say that this doesn’t count--this, now--it’s past counting
+533
+
+anyway, isn’t it? This can’t touch what it was like, can it, Katie?...People
+always regret that the past is so final, that nothing can change it--but I’m
+glad it’s so. We can’t spoil it. We can think of the past, can’t we? Why
+shouldn’t we? I mean, as you said, like grownup people, not fooling ourselves,
+not trying to hope, but only to look back at it....Do you remember when I came
+to your house in New York for the first time? You looked so thin and small, and
+your hair hung every which way. I told you I would never love anyone else. I
+held you on my lap, you didn’t weigh anything at all, and I told you I would
+never love anyone else. And you said you knew it."
+"I remember."
+"When we were together...Katie, I’m ashamed of so many things, but not of one
+moment when we were together. When I asked you to marry me--no, I never asked
+you to marry me--I just said we were engaged--and you said ’yes’--it was on a
+park bench--it was snowing..."
+"Yes."
+"You had funny woolen gloves. Like mittens. I remember--there were drops of
+water in the fuzz--round--like crystal--they flashed--it was because a car
+passed by."
+"Yes, I think it’s agreeable to look back occasionally. But one’s perspective
+widens. One grows richer spiritually with the years."
+He kept silent for a long time. Then he said, his voice flat:
+"I’m sorry."
+"Why? You’re very sweet, Peter. I’ve always said men are the sentimentalists."
+He thought: It’s not an act--one can’t put on an act like that--unless it’s an
+act inside, for oneself, and then there is no limit, no way out, no reality....
+She went on talking to him, and after a while it was about Washington again. He
+answered when it was necessary.
+He thought that he had believed it was a simple sequence, the past and the
+present, and if there was loss in the past one was compensated by pain in the
+present, and pain gave it a form of immortality--but he had not known that one
+could destroy like this, kill retroactively--so that to her it had never
+existed.
+She glanced at her wrist watch and gave a little gasp of impatience,
+"I’m late already. I must run along."
+He said heavily:
+"Do you mind if I don’t go with you, Katie? It’s not rudeness. I just think it’s
+better."
+"But of course. Not at all. I’m quite able to find my way in the streets and
+there’s no need for formalities among old friends." She added, gathering her bag
+and gloves, crumpling a paper napkin into a ball, dropping it neatly into her
+teacup: "I’ll give you a ring next time I’m in town and we’ll have a bite
+together again. Though I can’t promise when that will be. I’m so busy, I have to
+go so many places, last month it was Detroit and next week I’m flying to St.
+534
+
+Louis, but when they shoot me out to New York again, I’ll ring you up, so long,
+Peter, it was ever so nice."
+
+11.
+GAIL WYNAND looked at the shining wood of the yacht deck. The wood and a brass
+doorknob that had become a smear of fire gave him a sense of everything around
+him: the miles of space filled with sun, between the burning spreads of sky and
+ocean. It was February, and the yacht lay still, her engines idle, in the
+southern Pacific.
+He leaned on the rail and looked down at Roark in the water. Roark floated on
+his back, his body stretched into a straight line, arms spread, eyes closed. The
+tan of his skin implied a month of days such as this. Wynand thought that this
+was the way he liked to apprehend space and time: through the power of his
+yacht, through the tan of Roark’s skin or the sunbrown of his own arms folded
+before him on the rail.
+He had not sailed his yacht for several years. This time he had wanted Roark to
+be his only guest. Dominique was left behind.
+Wynand had said: "You’re killing yourself, Howard. You’ve been going at a pace
+nobody can stand for long. Ever since Monadnock, isn’t it? Think you’d have the
+courage to perform the feat most difficult for you--to rest?"
+He was astonished when Roark accepted without argument. Roark laughed:
+"I’m not running away from my work, if that’s what surprises you. I know when to
+stop--and I can’t stop, unless it’s completely. I know I’ve overdone it. I’ve
+been wasting too much paper lately and doing awful stuff."
+"Do you ever do awful stuff?"
+"Probably more of it than any other architect and with less excuse. The only
+distinction I can claim is that my botches end up in my own wastebasket."
+"I warn you, we’ll be away for months. If you begin to regret it and cry for
+your drafting table in a week, like all men who’ve never learned to loaf, I
+won’t take you back. I’m the worst kind of dictator aboard my yacht. You’ll have
+everything you can imagine, except paper or pencils. I won’t even leave you any
+freedom of speech. No mention of girders, plastics or reinforced concrete once
+you step on board. I’ll teach you to eat, sleep and exist like the most
+worthless millionaire."
+"I’d like to try that."
+The work in the office did not require Roark’s presence for the next few months.
+His current jobs were being completed. Two new commissions were not to be
+started until spring.
+He had made all the sketches Keating needed for Cortlandt. The construction was
+about to begin. Before sailing, on a day in late December, Roark went to take a
+last look at the site of Cortlandt. An anonymous spectator in a group of the
+idle curious, he stood and watched the steam shovels biting the earth, breaking
+the way for future foundations. The East River was a broad band of sluggish
+black water; and beyond, in a sparse haze of snowflakes, the towers of the city
+535
+
+stood softened, half suggested in watercolors of orchid and blue.
+Dominique did not protest when Wynand told her that he wanted to sail on a long
+cruise with Roark. "Dearest, you understand that it’s not running away from you?
+I just need some time taken out of everything. Being with Howard is like being
+alone with myself, only more at peace."
+"Of course, Gail. I don’t mind."
+But he looked at her, and suddenly he laughed, incredulously pleased.
+"Dominique, I believe you’re jealous. It’s wonderful, I’m more grateful to him
+than ever--if it could make you jealous of me."
+She could not tell him that she was jealous or of whom.
+The yacht sailed at the end of December. Roark watched, grinning, Wynand’s
+disappointment when Wynand found that he needed to enforce no discipline. Roark
+did not speak of buildings, lay for hours stretched out on deck in the sun, and
+loafed like an expert. They spoke little. There were days when Wynand could not
+remember what sentences they had exchanged. It would have seemed possible to him
+that they had not spoken at all. Their serenity was their best means of
+communication.
+Today they had dived together to swim and Wynand had climbed back first. As he
+stood at the rail, watching Roark in the water, he thought of the power he held
+in this moment: he could order the yacht to start moving, sail away and leave
+that redheaded body to sun and ocean. The thought gave him pleasure: the sense
+of power and the sense of surrender to Roark in the knowledge that no
+conceivable force could make him exercise that power. Every physical
+instrumentality was on his side: a few contractions of his vocal cords giving
+the order and someone’s hand opening a valve--and the obedient machine would
+move away. He thought: It’s not just a moral issue, not the mere horror of the
+act, one could conceivably abandon a man if the fate of a continent depended on
+it. But nothing would enable him to abandon this man. He, Gail Wynand, was the
+helpless one in this moment, with the solid planking of the deck under his feet.
+Roark, floating like a piece of driftwood, held a power greater than that of the
+engine in the belly of the yacht. Wynand thought: Because that is the power from
+which the engine has come.
+Roark climbed back on deck; Wynand looked at Roark’s body, at the threads of
+water running down the angular planes. He said:
+"You made a mistake on the Stoddard Temple, Howard. That statue should have
+been, not of Dominique, but of you."
+"No. I’m too egotistical for that."
+"Egotistical? An egotist would have loved it. You use words in the strangest
+way."
+"In the exact way. I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself."
+#
+Stretched in a deck chair, Wynand glanced up with satisfaction at the lantern, a
+disk of frosted glass on the bulkhead behind him: it cut off the black void of
+the ocean and gave him privacy within solid walls of light. He heard the sound
+of the yacht’s motion, he felt the warm night air on his face, he saw nothing
+but the stretch of deck around him, enclosed and final.
+536
+
+Roark stood before him at the rail; a tall white figure leaning back against
+black space, his head lifted as Wynand had seen it lifted in an unfinished
+building. His hands clasped the rail. The short shirt sleeves left his arms in
+the light; vertical ridges of shadow stressed the tensed muscles of his arms and
+the tendons of his neck. Wynand thought of the yacht’s engine, of skyscrapers,
+of transatlantic cables, of everything man had made.
+"Howard, this is what I wanted. To have you here with me."
+"I know."
+"Do you know what it really is? Avarice. I’m a miser about two things on earth:
+you and Dominique. I’m a millionaire who’s never owned anything. Do you remember
+what you said about ownership? I’m like a savage who’s discovered the idea of
+private property and run amuck on it. It’s funny. Think of Ellsworth Toohey."
+"Why Ellsworth Toohey?"
+"I mean, the things he preaches, I’ve been wondering lately whether he really
+understands what he’s advocating. Selflessness in the absolute sense? Why,
+that’s what I’ve been. Does he know that I’m the embodiment of his ideal? Of
+course, he wouldn’t approve of my motive, but motives never alter facts. If it’s
+true selflessness he’s after, in the philosophical sense--and Mr. Toohey is a
+philosopher--in a sense much beyond matters of money, why, let him look at me.
+I’ve never owned anything. I’ve never wanted anything. I didn’t give a damn--in
+the most cosmic way Toohey could ever hope for. I made myself into a barometer
+subject to the pressure of the whole world. The voice of his masses pushed me up
+and down. Of course, I collected a fortune in the process. Does that change the
+intrinsic reality of the picture? Suppose I gave away every penny of it. Suppose
+I had never wished to take any money at all, but had set out in pure altruism to
+serve the people. What would I have to do? Exactly what I’ve done. Give the
+greatest pleasure to the greatest number. Express the opinions, the desires, the
+tastes of the majority. The majority that voted me its approval and support
+freely, in the shape of a three-cent ballot dropped at the corner newsstand
+every morning. The Wynand papers? For thirty-one years they have represented
+everybody except Gail Wynand. I erased my ego out of existence in a way never
+achieved by any saint in a cloister. Yet people call me corrupt. Why? The saint
+in a cloister sacrifices only material things. It’s a small price to pay for the
+glory of his soul. He hoards his soul and gives up the world. But I--I took
+automobiles, silk pyjamas, a penthouse, and gave the world my soul in exchange.
+Who’s sacrificed more--if sacrifice is the test of virtue? Who’s the actual
+saint?"
+"Gail...I didn’t think you’d ever admit that to yourself."
+"Why not? I knew what I was doing. I wanted power over a collective soul and I
+got it. A collective soul. It’s a messy kind of concept, but if anyone wishes to
+visualize it concretely, let him pick up a copy of the New York Banner."
+"Yes..."
+"Of course, Toohey would tell me that this is not what he means by altruism. He
+means I shouldn’t leave it up to the people to decide what they want I should
+decide it. I should determine, not what I like nor what they like, but what I
+think they should like, and then ram it down their throats. It would have to be
+rammed, since their voluntary choice is the Banner. Well, there are several such
+altruists in the world today."
+"You realize that?"
+537
+
+"Of course. What else can one do if one must serve the people? If one must live
+for others? Either pander to everybody’s wishes and be called corrupt; or impose
+on everybody by force your own idea of everybody’s good. Can you think of any
+other way?"
+"No."
+"What’s left then? Where does decency start? What begins where altruism ends? Do
+you see what I’m in love with?"
+"Yes, Gail." Wynand had noticed that Roark’s voice had a reluctance that sounded
+almost like sadness.
+"What’s the matter with you? Why do you sound like that?"
+"I’m sorry. Forgive me. It’s just something I thought. I’ve been thinking of
+this for a long time. And particularly all these days when you’ve made me lie on
+deck and loaf."
+"Thinking about me?"
+"About you--among many other things."
+"What have you decided?"
+"I’m not an altruist, Gail. I don’t decide for others."
+"You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve sold myself, but I’ve held no illusions
+about it. I’ve never become an Alvah Scarret. He really believes whatever the
+public believes. I despise the public. That’s my only vindication. I’ve sold my
+life, but I got a good price. Power. I’ve never used it. I couldn’t afford a
+personal desire. But now I’m free. Now I can use it for what I want. For what I
+believe. For Dominique. For you."
+Roark turned away. When he looked back at Wynand, he said only:
+"I hope so, Gail."
+"What have you been thinking about these past weeks?"
+"The principle behind the dean who fired me from Stanton."
+"What principle?"
+"The thing that is destroying the world. The thing you were talking about.
+Actual selflessness."
+"The ideal which they say does not exist?"
+"They’re wrong. It does exist--though not in the way they imagine. It’s what I
+couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live
+within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating."
+"You look at him. I hate his guts."
+"I’ve looked at him--at what’s left of him--and it’s helped me to understand.
+He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he’s
+been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What
+538
+
+was his aim in life? Greatness--in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration,
+envy--all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which
+he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others
+were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to
+be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He
+borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your
+actual selflessness. It’s his ego he’s betrayed and given up. But everybody
+calls him selfish."
+"That’s the pattern most people follow."
+"Yes! And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but
+precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but
+preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others
+think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The
+man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself
+to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who
+professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to
+establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make
+money. Now I don’t see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is
+only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose--to invest in
+his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury--he’s completely
+moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is
+a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to
+entertain, to impress others. They’re second-handers. Look at our so-called
+cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all
+that means nothing at all to him--and the people who listen and don’t give a
+damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a
+lecture by a famous name. All second-handers."
+"If I were Ellsworth Toohey, I’d say: aren’t you making out a case against
+selfishness? Aren’t they all acting on a selfish motive--to be noticed, liked,
+admired?"
+"--by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest
+importance--the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought--they place
+others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish
+man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it."
+"I think Toohey understands that. That’s what helps him spread his vicious
+nonsense. Just weakness and cowardice. It’s so easy to run to others. It’s so
+hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You
+can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is the strictest judge. They run from
+it. They spend their lives running. It’s easier to donate a few thousand to
+charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards
+of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence--such
+easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for
+competence."
+"That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for
+facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: ’Is this
+true?’ They ask: ’Is this what others think is true?’ Not to judge, but to
+repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show.
+Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world
+without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don’t
+think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When
+you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To
+stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality.
+Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one
+539
+
+human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation--anchored to nothing.
+That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people. That’s what stopped me
+whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational
+process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The
+second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other
+living person. It’s everywhere and nowhere and you can’t reason with him. He’s
+not open to reason. You can’t speak to him--he can’t hear. You’re tried by an
+empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose.
+Steve Mallory couldn’t define the monster, but he knew. That’s the drooling
+beast he fears. The second-hander."
+"I think your second-handers understand this, try as they might not to admit it
+to themselves. Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone.
+They recognize him at once. By instinct. There’s a special, insidious kind of
+hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and
+violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They’ve got to
+force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The
+independent man kills them--because they don’t exist within him and that’s the
+only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment
+against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an
+independent man. Look back at your own life, Howard, and at the people you’ve
+met. They know. They’re afraid. You’re a reproach."
+"That’s because some sense of dignity always remains in them. They’re still
+human beings. But they’ve been taught to seek themselves in others. Yet no man
+can achieve the kind of absolute humility that would need no self-esteem in any
+form. He wouldn’t survive. So after centuries of being pounded with the doctrine
+that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it
+could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand.
+And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful
+form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn’t have conceived. And now,
+to cure a world perishing from selflessness, we’re asked to destroy the self.
+Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You’ve
+wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man
+stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d
+find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his
+ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for
+material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion--prestige. A stamp of
+approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has
+succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ’This is what I wanted because I
+wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.’ Then he wonders why
+he’s unhappy. Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are
+personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or
+precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we
+are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To
+seek joy in meeting halls. We haven’t even got a word for the quality I
+mean--for the self-sufficiency of man’s spirit. It’s difficult to call it
+selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they’ve come to mean
+Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing
+your prime concern within other men. I’ve always demanded a certain quality in
+the people I liked. I’ve always recognized it at once--and it’s the only quality
+I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A
+self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters."
+"I’m glad you admit that you have friends."
+"I even admit that I love them. But I couldn’t love them if they were my chief
+reason for living. Do you notice that Peter Keating hasn’t a single friend left?
+Do you see why? If one doesn’t respect oneself one can have neither love nor
+540
+
+respect for others."
+"To hell with Peter Keating. I’m thinking of you--and your friends."
+Roark smiled. "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I’d give my life to save you.
+Not because it’s any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and
+standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t live for
+you."
+"Howard, what were the reasons and standards?" Roark looked at him and realized
+that he had said all the things he had tried not to say to Wynand. He answered:
+"That you weren’t born to be a second-hander." Wynand smiled. He heard the
+sentence--and nothing else. Afterward, when Wynand had gone below to his cabin,
+Roark remained alone on deck. He stood at the rail, staring out at the ocean, at
+nothing.
+He thought: I haven’t mentioned to him the worst second-hander of all--the man
+who goes after power.
+
+12.
+IT WAS April when Roark and Wynand returned to the city. The skyscrapers looked
+pink against the blue sky, an incongruous shade of porcelain on masses of stone.
+There were small tufts of green on the trees in the streets.
+Roark went to his office. His staff shook hands with him and he saw the strain
+of smiles self-consciously repressed, until a young boy burst out: "What the
+hell! Why can’t we say how glad we are to see you back, boss?" Roark laughed.
+"Go ahead. I can’t tell you how damn glad I am to be back." Then he sat on a
+table in the drafting room, while they all reported to him on the past three
+months, interrupting one another; he played with a ruler in his hands, not
+noticing it, like a man with the feel of his farm’s soil under his fingers,
+after an absence.
+In the afternoon, alone at his desk, he opened a newspaper. He had not seen a
+newspaper for three months. He noticed an item about the construction of
+Cortlandt Homes. He saw the line: "Peter Keating, architect. Gordon L. Prescott
+and Augustus Webb, associate designers." He sat very still.
+That evening he went to see Cortlandt. The first building was almost completed.
+It stood alone on the large, empty tract. The workers had left for the day; a
+small light showed in the shack of the night watchman. The building had the
+skeleton of what Roark had designed, with the remnants of ten different breeds
+piled on the lovely symmetry of the bones. He saw the economy of plan preserved,
+but the expense of incomprehensible features added; the variety of modeled
+masses gone, replaced by the monotony of brutish cubes; a new wing added, with a
+vaulted roof, bulging out of a wall like a tumor, containing a gymnasium;
+strings of balconies added, made of metal stripes painted a violent blue; comer
+windows without purpose; an angle cut off for a useless door, with a round metal
+awning supported by a pole, like a haberdashery in the Broadway district; three
+vertical bands of brick, leading from nowhere to nowhere; the general style of
+what the profession called "Bronx Modern"; a panel of bas-relief over the main
+entrance, representing a mass of muscle which could be discerned as either three
+or four bodies, one of them with an arm raised, holding a screwdriver.
+There were white crosses on the fresh panes of glass in the windows, and it
+541
+
+looked appropriate, like an error X-ed out of existence. There was a band of red
+in the sky, to the west, beyond Manhattan, and the buildings of the city rose
+straight and black against it.
+Roark stood across the space of the future road before the first house of
+Cortlandt. He stood straight, the muscles of his throat pulled, his wrists held
+down and away from his body, as he would have stood before a firing squad.
+#
+No one could tell how it had happened. There had been no deliberate intention
+behind it. It had just happened.
+First, Toohey told Keating one morning that Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb
+would be put on the payroll as associate designers. "What do you care, Peter? It
+won’t come out of your fee. It won’t cut your prestige at all, since you’re the
+big boss. They won’t be much more than your draftsmen. All I want is to give the
+boys a boost. It will help their reputation, to be tagged with this project in
+some way. I’m very interested in building up their reputation."
+"But what for? There’s nothing for them to do. It’s all done."
+"Oh, any kind of last-minute drafting. Save time for your own staff. You can
+share the expense with them. Don’t be a hog."
+Toohey had told the truth; he had no other purpose in mind.
+Keating could not discover what connections Prescott and Webb possessed, with
+whom, in what office, on what terms--among the dozens of officials involved in
+the project. The entanglement of responsibility was such that no one could be
+quite certain of anyone’s authority. It was clear only that Prescott and Webb
+had friends, and that Keating could not keep them off the job.
+The changes began with the gymnasium. The lady in charge of tenant selection
+demanded a gymnasium. She was a social worker and her task was to end with the
+opening of the project. She acquired a permanent job by getting herself
+appointed Director of Social Recreation for Cortlandt. No gymnasium had been
+provided in the original plans; there were two schools and a Y.M.C.A. within
+walking distance. She declared that this was an outrage against the children of
+the poor, Prescott and Webb supplied the gymnasium. Other changes followed, of a
+purely esthetic nature. Extras piled on the cost of construction so carefully
+devised for economy. The Director of Social Recreation departed for Washington
+to discuss the matter of a Little Theater and a Meeting Hall she wished added to
+the next two buildings of Cortlandt.
+The changes in the drawings came gradually, a few at a time. The others okaying
+the changes came from headquarters. "But we’re ready to start!" cried Keating.
+"What the hell," drawled Gus Webb, "set ’em back just a coupla thousand bucks
+more, that’s all."
+"Now as to the balconies," said Gordon L. Prescott, "they lend a certain modern
+style. You don’t want the damn thing to look so bare. It’s depressing. Besides,
+you don’t understand psychology. The people who’ll live here are used to sitting
+out on fire-escapes. They love it. They’ll miss it. You gotta give ’em a place
+to sit on in the fresh air....The cost? Hell, if you’re so damn worried about
+the cost, I’ve got an idea where we can save plenty. We’ll do without closet
+doors. What do they need doors for on closets? It’s old-fashioned." All the
+closet doors were omitted.
+Keating fought. It was the kind of battle he had never entered, but he tried
+542
+
+everything possible to him, to the honest limit of his exhausted strength. He
+went from office to office, arguing, threatening, pleading. But he had no
+influence, while his associate designers seemed to control an underground river
+with interlocking tributaries. The officials shrugged and referred him to
+someone else. No one cared about an issue of esthetics. "What’s the difference?"
+"It doesn’t come out of your pocket, does it?" "Who are you to have it all your
+way? Let the boys contribute something."
+He appealed to Ellsworth Toohey, but Toohey was not interested. He was busy with
+other matters and he had no desire to provoke a bureaucratic quarrel. In all
+truth, he had not prompted his protégés to their artistic endeavor, but he saw
+no reason for attempting to stop them. He was amused by the whole thing. "But
+it’s awful, Ellsworth! You know it’s awful!" "Oh, I suppose so. What do you
+care, Peter? Your poor but unwashed tenants won’t be able to appreciate the
+finer points of architectural art. See that the plumbing works."
+"But what for? What for? What for?" Keating cried to his associate designers.
+"Well, why shouldn’t we have any say at all?" asked Gordon L. Prescott. "We want
+to express our individuality too."
+When Keating invoked his contract, he was told: "All right, go ahead, try to sue
+the government. Try it." At times, he felt a desire to kill. There was no one to
+kill. Had he been granted the privilege, he could not have chosen a victim.
+Nobody was responsible. There was no purpose and no cause. It had just happened.
+Keating came to Roark’s house on the evening after Roark’s return. He had not
+been summoned. Roark opened the door and said: "Good evening, Peter," but
+Keating could not answer. They walked silently into the work room. Roark sat
+down, but Keating remained standing in the middle of the floor and asked his
+voice dull:
+"What are you going to do?"
+"You must leave that up to me now."
+"I couldn’t help it, Howard....I couldn’t help it!"
+"I suppose not."
+"What can you do now? You can’t sue the government."
+"No."
+Keating thought that he should sit down, but the distance to a chair seemed too
+great. He felt he would be too conspicuous if he moved.
+"What are you going to do to me, Howard?"
+"Nothing."
+"Want me to confess the truth to them? To everybody?"
+"No."
+After a while Keating whispered:
+"Will you let me give you the fee...everything...and..."
+Roark smiled.
+543
+
+"I’m sorry..." Keating whispered, looking away.
+He waited, and then the plea he knew he must not utter came out as:
+"I’m scared, Howard..."
+Roark shook his head.
+"Whatever I do, it won’t be to hurt you, Peter. I’m guilty, too. We both are."
+"You’re guilty?"
+"It’s I who’ve destroyed you, Peter. From the beginning. By helping you. There
+are matters in which one must not ask for help nor give it. I shouldn’t have
+done your projects at Stanton. I shouldn’t have done the Cosmo-Slotnick
+Building. Nor Cortlandt. I loaded you with more than you could carry. It’s like
+an electric current too strong for the circuit. It blows the fuse. Now we’ll
+both pay for it. It will be hard on you, but it will be harder on me."
+"You’d rather...I went home now, Howard?"
+"Yes."
+At the door Keating said:
+"Howard! They didn’t do it on purpose."
+"That’s what makes it worse."
+#
+Dominique heard the sound of the car rising up the hill road. She thought it was
+Wynand coming home. He had worked late in the city every night of the two weeks
+since his return.
+The motor filled the spring silence of the countryside. There was no sound in
+the house; only the small rustle of her hair as she leaned her head back against
+a chair cushion. In a moment she was not conscious of hearing the car’s
+approach, it was so familiar at this hour, part of the loneliness and privacy
+outside.
+She heard the car stop at the door. The door was never locked; there were no
+neighbors or guests to expect. She heard the door opening, and steps in the hall
+downstairs. The steps did not pause, but walked with familiar certainty up the
+stairs. A hand turned the knob of her door.
+It was Roark. She thought, while she was rising to her feet, that he had never
+entered her room before; but he knew every part of this house; as he knew
+everything about her body. She felt no moment of shock, only the memory of one,
+a shock in the past tense, the thought: I must have been shocked when I saw him,
+but not now. Now, by the time she was standing before him, it seemed very
+simple.
+She thought: The most important never has to be said between us. It has always
+been said like this. He did not want to see me alone. Now he’s here. I waited
+and I’m ready.
+"Good evening, Dominique."
+544
+
+She heard the name pronounced to fill the space of five years. She said quietly:
+"Good evening, Roark."
+"I want you to help me."
+She was standing on the station platform of Clayton, Ohio, on the witness stand
+of the Stoddard trial, on the ledge of a quarry, to let herself--as she had been
+then--share this sentence she heard now.
+"Yes, Roark."
+He walked across the room he had designed for her, he sat down, facing her, the
+width of the room between them. She found herself seated too, not conscious of
+her own movements, only of his, as if his body contained two sets of nerves, his
+own and hers.
+"Next Monday night, Dominique, exactly at eleven-thirty, I want you to drive up
+to the site of Cortlandt Homes."
+She noticed that she was conscious of her eyelids; not painfully, but just
+conscious; as if they had tightened and would not move again. She had seen the
+first building of Cortlandt. She knew what she was about to hear.
+"You must be alone in your car and you must be on your way home from some place
+where you had an appointment to visit, made in advance. A place that can be
+reached from here only by driving past Cortlandt. You must be able to prove that
+afterward. I want your car to run out of gas in front of Cortlandt, at
+eleven-thirty. Honk your horn. There’s an old night watchman there. He will come
+out. Ask him to help you and send him to the nearest garage, which is a mile
+away."
+She said steadily, "Yes, Roark."
+"When he’s gone, get out of your car. There’s a big stretch of vacant land by
+the road, across from the building, and a kind of trench beyond. Walk to that
+trench as fast as you can, get to the bottom and lie down on the ground. Lie
+flat. After a while, you can come back to the car. You will know when to come
+back. See that you’re found in the car and that your condition matches its
+condition--approximately."
+"Yes, Roark."
+"Have you understood?"
+"Yes."
+"Everything?"
+"Yes. Everything."
+They were standing. She saw only his eyes and that he was smiling.
+She heard him say: "Good night, Dominique," he walked out and she heard his car
+driving away. She thought of his smile.
+She knew that he did not need her help for the thing he was going to do, he
+could find other means to get rid of the watchman; that he had let her have a
+part in this, because she would not survive what was to follow if he hadn’t;
+545
+
+that this had been the test.
+He had not wanted to name it; he had wanted her to understand and show no fear.
+She had not been able to accept the Stoddard trial, she had run from the dread
+of seeing him hurt by the world, but she had agreed to help him in this. Had
+agreed in complete serenity. She was free and he knew it.
+#
+The road ran flat across the dark stretches of Long Island, but Dominique felt
+as if she were driving uphill. That was the only abnormal sensation: the
+sensation of rising, as if her car were speeding vertically. She kept her eyes
+on the road, but the dashboard on the rim of her vision looked like the panel of
+an airplane. The clock on the dashboard said 11:10.
+She was amused, thinking: I’ve never learned to fly a plane and now I know how
+it feels; just like this, the unobstructed space and no effort. And no weight.
+That’s supposed to happen in the stratosphere--or is it the interplanetary
+space?--where one begins to float and there’s no law of gravity. No law of any
+kind of gravity at all. She heard herself laughing aloud.
+Just the sense of rising....Otherwise, she felt normal. She had never driven a
+car so well. She thought: It’s a dry, mechanical job, to drive a car, so I know
+I’m very clearheaded; because driving seemed easy, like breathing or swallowing,
+an immediate function requiring no attention. She stopped for red lights that
+hung in the air over crossings of anonymous streets in unknown suburbs, she
+turned corners, she passed other cars, and she was certain that no accident
+could happen to her tonight; her car was directed by remote control--one of
+those automatic rays she’d read about--was it a beacon or a radio beam?--and she
+only sat at the wheel.
+It left her free to be conscious of nothing but small matters, and to feel
+careless and...unserious, she thought; so completely unserious. It was a kind of
+clarity, being more normal than normal, as crystal is more transparent than
+empty air. Just small matters: the thin silk of her short, black dress and the
+way it was pulled over her knee, the flexing of her toes inside her pump when
+she moved her foot, "Danny’s Diner" in gold letters on a dark window that
+flashed past.
+She had been very gay at the dinner given by the wife of some banker, important
+friends of Gail’s, whose names she could not quite remember now. It had been a
+wonderful dinner in a huge Long Island mansion. They had been so glad to see her
+and so sorry that Gail could not come. She had eaten everything she had seen
+placed before her. She had had a splendid appetite--as on rare occasions of her
+childhood when she came running home after a day spent in the woods and her
+mother was so pleased, because her mother was afraid that she might grow up to
+be anemic.
+She had entertained the guests at the dinner table with stories of her
+childhood, she had made them laugh, and it had been the gayest dinner party her
+hosts could remember. Afterward, in the drawing room with the windows open wide
+to a dark sky--a moonless sky that stretched out beyond the trees, beyond the
+towns, all the way to the banks of the East River--she had laughed and talked,
+she had smiled at the people around her with a warmth that made them all speak
+freely of the things dearest to them, she had loved those people, and they had
+known they were loved, she had loved every person anywhere on earth, and some
+woman had said: "Dominique, I didn’t know you could be so wonderful!" and she
+had answered: "I haven’t a care in the world."
+But she had really noticed nothing except the watch on her wrist and that she
+546
+
+must be out of that house by 10:50. She had no idea of what she would say to
+take her leave, but by 10:45 it had been said, correctly and convincingly, and
+by 10:50 her foot was on the accelerator.
+It was a closed roadster, black with red leather upholstery. She thought how
+nicely John, the chauffeur, had kept that red leather polished. There would be
+nothing left of the car, and it was proper that it should look its best for its
+last ride. Like a woman on her first night. I never dressed for my first
+night--I had no first night--only something ripped off me and the taste of
+quarry dust in my teeth.
+When she saw black vertical strips with dots of light filling the glass of the
+car’s side window, she wondered what had happened to the glass. Then she
+realized that she was driving along the East River and that this was New York,
+on the other side. She laughed and thought: No, this is not New York, this is a
+private picture pasted to the window of my car, all of it, here, on one small
+pane, under my hand, I own it, it’s mine now--she ran one hand across the
+buildings from the Battery to Queensboro Bridge--Roark, it’s mine and I’m giving
+it to you.
+#
+The figure of the night watchman was now fifteen inches tall in the distance.
+When it gets to be ten inches, I’ll start, thought Dominique. She stood by the
+side of her car and wished the watchman would walk faster.
+The building was a black mass that propped the sky in one spot. The rest of the
+sky sagged, intimately low over a flat stretch of ground. The closest streets
+and houses were years away, far on the rim of space, irregular little dents,
+like the teeth of a broken saw.
+She felt a large pebble under the sole of her pump; it was uncomfortable, but
+she would not move her foot; it would make a sound. She was not alone. She knew
+that he was somewhere in that building, the width of a street away from her.
+There was no sound and no light in the building; only white crosses on black
+windows. He would need no light; he knew every hall, every stairwell.
+The watchman had shrunk away. She jerked the door of her car open. She threw her
+hat and bag inside, and flung the door shut. She heard the slam of sound when
+she was across the road, running over the empty tract, away from the building.
+She felt the silk of her dress clinging to her legs, and it served as a tangible
+purpose of flight, to push against that, to tear past that barrier as fast as
+she could. There were pits and dry stubble on the ground. She fell once, but she
+noticed it only when she was running again.
+She saw the trench in the darkness. Then she was on her knees, at the bottom,
+and then stretched flat on her stomach, face down, her mouth pressed to the
+earth.
+She felt the pounding of her thighs and she twisted her body once in a long
+convulsion, to feel the earth with her legs, her breasts, the skin of her arms.
+It was like lying in Roark’s bed.
+The sound was the crack of a fist on the back of her head. She felt the thrust
+of the earth against her, flinging her up to her feet, to the edge of the
+trench. The upper part of the Cortlandt building had tilted and hung still while
+a broken streak of sky grew slowly across it. As if the sky were slicing the
+building in half. Then the streak became turquoise blue light. Then there was no
+upper part, but only window frames and girders flying through the air, the
+547
+
+building spreading over the sky, a long, thin tongue of red shooting from the
+center, another blow of a fist, and then another, a blinding flash and the glass
+panes of the skyscrapers across the river glittering like spangles.
+She did not remember that he had ordered her to lie flat, that she was standing,
+that glass and twisted iron were raining around her. In the flash when walls
+rose outward and a building opened like a sunburst, she thought of him there,
+somewhere beyond, the builder who had to destroy, who knew every crucial point
+of that structure, who had made the delicate balance of stress and support; she
+thought of him selecting these key spots, placing the blast, a doctor turned
+murderer, expertly cracking heart, brain and lungs at once. He was there, he saw
+it and what it did to him was worse than what it did to the building. But he was
+there and he welcomed it.
+She saw the city enveloped in light for half a second, she could see window
+ledges and cornices miles away, she thought of dark rooms and ceilings licked by
+this fire, she saw the peaks of towers lighted against the sky, her city now and
+his. "Roark!" she screamed. "Roark! Roark!" She did not know she screamed. She
+could not hear her voice in the blast.
+Then she was running across the field to the smoking ruin, running over broken
+glass, planting her feet down full with each step, because she enjoyed the pain.
+There was no pain left ever to be felt by her again. A spread of dust stood over
+the field like an awning. She heard the shriek of sirens starting far away.
+It was still a car, though the rear wheels were crushed under a piece of furnace
+machinery, and an elevator door lay over the hood. She crawled to the seat. She
+had to look as if she had not moved from here. She gathered handfuls of glass
+off the floor and poured it over her lap, over her hair. She took a sharp
+splinter and slashed the skin of her neck, her legs, her arms. What she felt was
+not pain. She saw blood shooting out of her arm, running down on her lap,
+soaking the black silk, trickling between her thighs. Her head fell back, mouth
+open, panting. She did not want to stop. She was free. She was invulnerable. She
+did not know she had cut an artery. She felt so light. She was laughing at the
+law of gravity.
+When she was found by the men of the first police car to reach the scene, she
+was unconscious, a few minutes’ worth of life left in her body.
+
+13.
+DOMINIQUE glanced about the bedroom of the penthouse. It was her first contact
+with surroundings she was ready to recognize. She knew she had been brought here
+after many days in a hospital. The bedroom seemed lacquered with light. It’s
+that clarity of crystal over everything, she thought; that has remained; it will
+remain forever. She saw Wynand standing by her bed. He was watching her. He
+looked amused.
+She remembered seeing him at the hospital. He had not looked amused then. She
+knew the doctor had told him she would not survive, that first night. She had
+wanted to tell them all that she would, that she had no choice now but to live;
+only it did not seem important to tell people anything, ever.
+Now she was back. She could feel bandages on her throat, her legs, her left arm.
+But her hands lay before her on the blanket, and the gauze had been removed;
+there were only a few thin red scars left.
+548
+
+"You blasted little fool!" said Wynand happily. "Why did you have to make such a
+good job of it?"
+Lying on the white pillow, with her smooth gold hair and a white, high-necked
+hospital gown, she looked younger than she had ever looked as a child. She had
+the quiet radiance presumed and never found in childhood: the full consciousness
+of certainty, of innocence, of peace.
+"I ran out of gas," she said, "and I was waiting there in my car when
+suddenly..."
+"I’ve already told that story to the police. So has the night watchman. But
+didn’t you know that glass must be handled with discretion?"
+Gail looks rested, she thought, and very confident. It has changed everything
+for him, too; in the same way.
+"It didn’t hurt," she said.
+"Next time you want to play the innocent bystander, let me coach you."
+"They believe it though, don’t they?"
+"Oh yes, they believe it. They have to. You almost died. I don’t see why he had
+to save the watchman’s life and almost take yours."
+"Who?"
+"Howard, my dear. Howard Roark."
+"What has he to do with it?"
+"Darling, you’re not being questioned by the police. You will be, though, and
+you’ll have to be more convincing than that. However, I’m sure you’ll succeed.
+They won’t think of the Stoddard trial."
+"Oh."
+"You did it then and you’ll always do it. Whatever you think of him, you’ll
+always feel what I feel about his work."
+"Gail, you’re glad I did it?"
+"Yes."
+She saw him looking down at her hand that lay on the edge of the bed. Then he
+was on his knees, his lips pressed to her hand, not raising it, not touching it
+with his fingers, only with his mouth. That was the sole confession he would
+permit himself of what her days in the hospital had cost him. She lifted her
+other hand and moved it over his hair. She thought: It will be worse for you
+than if I had died, Gail, but it will be all right, it won’t hurt you, there’s
+no pain left in the world, nothing to compare with the fact that we exist: he,
+you and I--you’ve understood all that matters, though you don’t know you’ve lost
+me.
+He lifted his head and got up.
+"I didn’t intend to reproach you in any way. Forgive me."
+549
+
+"I won’t die, Gail. I feel wonderful."
+"You look it."
+"Have they arrested him?"
+"He’s out on bail."
+"You’re happy?"
+"I’m glad you did it and that it was for him. I’m glad he did it. He had to."
+"Yes. And it will be the Stoddard trial again."
+"Not quite."
+"You’ve wanted another chance, Gail? All these years?"
+"Yes."
+"May I see the papers?"
+"No. Not until you’re up."
+"Not even the Banner!"
+"Particularly not the Banner."
+"I love you, Gail. If you stick to the end..."
+"Don’t offer me any bribes. This is not between you and me. Not even between him
+and me."
+"But between you and God?"
+"If you want to call it that. But we won’t discuss it. Not until after it’s
+over. You have a visitor waiting for you downstairs. He’s been here every day."
+"Who?"
+"Your lover. Howard Roark. Want to let him thank you now?"
+The gay mockery, the tone of uttering the most preposterous thing he could think
+of, told her how far he was from guessing the rest. She said:
+"Yes. I want to see him. Gail, if I decide to make him my lover?"
+"I’ll kill you both. Now don’t move, lie flat, the doctor said you must take it
+easy, you’ve got twenty-six assorted stitches all over you."
+He walked out and she heard him descending the stairs.
+#
+When the first policeman had reached the scene of the explosion, he had found,
+behind the building, on the shore of the river, the plunger that had set off the
+dynamite. Roark stood by the plunger, his hands in his pockets, looking at the
+remnants of Cortlandt.
+550
+
+"What do you know about this, buddy?" the policeman asked.
+"You’d better arrest me," said Roark. "I’ll talk at the trial."
+He had not added another word in reply to all the official questions that
+followed.
+It was Wynand who got him released on bail, in the early hours of the morning.
+Wynand had been calm at the emergency hospital where he had seen Dominique’s
+wounds and had been told she would not live. He had been calm while he
+telephoned, got a county judge out of bed and arranged Roark’s bail. But when he
+stood in the warden’s office of a small county jail, he began to shake suddenly.
+"You bloody fools!" he said through his teeth and there followed every obscenity
+he had learned on the waterfront. He forgot all the aspects of the situation
+save one: Roark being held behind bars. He was Stretch Wynand of Hell’s Kitchen
+again and this was the kind of fury that had shattered him in sudden flashes in
+those days, the fury he had felt when standing behind a crumbling wall, waiting
+to be killed. Only now he knew that he was also Gail Wynand, the owner of an
+empire, and he couldn’t understand why some sort of legal procedure was
+necessary, why he didn’t smash this jail, with his fists or through his papers,
+it was all one to him at the moment, he wanted to kill, he had to kill, as that
+night behind the wall, in defense of his life.
+He managed to sign papers, he managed to wait until Roark was brought out to
+him. They walked out together, Roark leading him by the wrist, and by the time
+they reached the car, Wynand was calm. In the car, Wynand asked:
+"You did it, of course?"
+"Of course."
+"We’ll fight it out together."
+"If you want to make it your battle."
+"At the present estimate, my personal fortune amounts to forty million dollars.
+That should be enough to hire any lawyer you wish or the whole profession."
+"I won’t use a lawyer."
+"Howard! You’re not going to submit photographs again?"
+"No. Not this time."
+#
+Roark entered the bedroom and sat down on a chair by the bed. Dominique lay
+still, looking at him. They smiled at each other. Nothing has to be said, not
+this time either, she thought.
+She asked:
+"You were in jail?"
+"For a few hours."
+"What was it like?"
+"Don’t start acting about it as Gail did."
+551
+
+"Gail took it very badly?"
+"Very."
+"I won’t."
+"I might have to go back to a cell for years. You knew that when you agreed to
+help me."
+"Yes. I knew that."
+"I’m counting on you to save Gail, if I go."
+"Counting on me?’
+He looked at her and shook his head. "Dearest..." It sounded
+like a reproach.
+"Yes?" she whispered.
+"Don’t you know by now that it was a trap I set for you?"
+"How?"
+"What would you do if I hadn’t asked you to help me?"
+"I’d be with you, in your apartment, at the Enright House, right now, publicly
+and openly."
+"Yes. But now you can’t. You’re Mrs. Gail Wynand, you’re above suspicion, and
+everyone believes you were at the scene by accident. Just let it be known what
+we are to each other--and it will be a confession that I did it."
+"I see."
+"I want you to keep quiet. If you had any thoughts of wanting to share my fate,
+drop them. I won’t tell you what I intend to do, because that’s the only way I
+have of controlling you until the trial. Dominique, if I’m convicted, I want you
+to remain with Gail. I’m counting on that, I want you to remain with him, and
+never tell him about us, because he and you will need each other."
+"And if you’re acquitted?"
+"Then..." He glanced about the room, Wynand’s bedroom. "I don’t want to say it
+here. But you know it."
+"You love him very much?"
+"Yes."
+"Enough to sacrifice..."
+He smiled. "You’ve been afraid of that ever since I came here for the first
+time?"
+"Yes."
+He looked straight at her. "Did you think that possible?"
+552
+
+"No."
+"Not my work nor you, Dominique. Not ever. But I can do this much for him: I can
+leave it to him if I have to go."
+"You’ll be acquitted."
+"That’s not what I want to hear you say."
+"If they convict you--if they lock you in jail or put you in a chain gang--if
+they smear your name in every filthy headline--if they never let you design
+another building--if they never let me see you again--it will not matter. Not
+too much. Only down to a certain point."
+"That’s what I’ve waited to hear for seven years, Dominique." He took her hand,
+he raised it and held it to his lips, and she felt his lips where Wynand’s had
+been. Then he got up.
+"I’ll wait," she said. "I’ll keep quiet. I won’t come near you. I promise."
+He smiled and nodded. Then he left.
+#
+"It happens, upon rare occasions, that world forces too great to comprehend
+become focused in a single event, like rays gathered by a lens to one point of
+superlative brightness, for all of us to see. Such an event is the outrage of
+Cortlandt. Here, in a microcosm, we can observe the evil that has crushed our
+poor planet from the day of its birth in cosmic ooze. One man’s Ego against all
+the concepts of mercy, humanity and brotherhood. One man destroying the future
+home of the disinherited. One man condemning thousands to the horror of the
+slums, to filth, disease and death. When an awakening society, with a new sense
+of humanitarian duty, made a mighty effort to rescue the underprivileged, when
+the best talents of society united to create a decent home for them--the egotism
+of one man blew the achievement of others to pieces. And for what? For some
+vague matter of personal vanity, for some empty conceit. I regret that the laws
+of our state allow nothing more than a prison sentence for this crime. That man
+should forfeit his life. Society needs the right to rid itself of men such as
+Howard Roark."
+Thus spoke Ellsworth M. Toohey in the pages of the New Frontiers.
+Echoes answered him from all over the country. The explosion of Cortlandt had
+lasted half a minute. The explosion of public fury went on and on, with a cloud
+of powdered plaster filling the air, with rust and refuse raining out of the
+cloud.
+Roark had been indicted by a grand jury, had pleaded "Not guilty" and had
+refused to make any other statement. He had been released on a bond furnished by
+Gail Wynand, and he awaited trial.
+There were many speculations on his motive. Some said it was professional
+jealousy. Others declared that there was a certain similarity between the design
+of Cortlandt and Roark’s style of building, that Keating, Prescott and Webb
+might have borrowed a little from Roark--"a legitimate adaptation"--"there’s no
+property rights on ideas"--"in a democracy, art belongs to all the people"--and
+that Roark had been prompted by the vengeance lust of an artist who had believed
+himself plagiarized.
+553
+
+None of it was too clear, but nobody cared too much about the motive. The issue
+was simple: one man against many. He had no right to a motive.
+A home, built in charity, for the poor. Built upon ten thousand years in which
+men had been taught that charity and self-sacrifice are an absolute not to be
+questioned, the touchstone of virtue, the ultimate ideal. Ten thousand years of
+voices speaking of service and sacrifice--sacrifice is the prime rule of
+life--serve or be served--crush or get crushed--sacrifice is noble--make what
+you can of it, at the one end or the other--serve and sacrifice--serve and serve
+and serve...
+Against that--one man who wished neither to serve nor to rule. And had thereby
+committed the only unforgivable crime.
+It was a sensational scandal, and there was the usual noise and the usual lust
+of righteous anger, such as is proper to all lynchings. But there was a fierce,
+personal quality in the indignation of every person who spoke about it.
+"He’s just an egomaniac devoid of all moral sense"---said the society woman dressing for a charity bazaar, who dared not
+contemplate what means of self-expression would be left to her and how she could
+impose her ostentation on her friends, if charity were not the all-excusing
+virtue---said the social worker who had found no aim in life and could generate no
+aim from within the sterility of his soul, but basked in virtue and held an
+unearned respect from all, by grace of his fingers on the wounds of others---said the novelist who had nothing to say if the subject of service and
+sacrifice were to be taken away from him, who sobbed in the hearing of attentive
+thousands that he loved them and loved them and would they please love him a
+little in return---said the lady columnist who had just bought a country mansion because she
+wrote so tenderly about the little people---said all the little people who wanted to hear of love, the great love, the
+unfastidious love, the love that embraced everything, forgave everything and
+permitted them everything---said every second-hander who could not exist except as a leech on the
+souls of others.
+Ellsworth Toohey sat back, watched, listened and smiled.
+Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb were entertained at dinners and cocktail
+parties; they were treated with tender, curious solicitude, like survivors of
+disaster. They said that they could not understand what possible motive Roark
+could have had, and they demanded justice.
+Peter Keating went nowhere. He refused to see the press. He refused to see
+anyone. But he issued a written statement that he believed Roark was not guilty.
+His statement contained one curious sentence, the last. It said: "Leave him
+alone, please can’t you leave him alone?"
+Pickets from the Council of American Builders paced in front of the Cord
+Building. It served no purpose, because there was no work in Roark’s office. The
+commissions he was to start had been canceled.
+This was solidarity. The debutante having her toenails pedicured--the housewife
+buying carrots from a pushcart--the bookkeeper who had wanted to be a pianist,
+but had the excuse of a sister to support--the businessman who hated his
+business--the worker who hated his work--the intellectual who hated
+everybody--all were united as brothers in the luxury of common anger that cured
+554
+
+boredom and took them out of themselves, and they knew well enough what a
+blessing it was to be taken out of themselves. The readers were unanimous. The
+press was unanimous.
+Gail Wynand went against the current.
+"Gail!" Alvah Scarret had gasped. "We can’t defend a dynamiter!"
+"Keep still, Alvah," Wynand had said, "before I bash your teeth in."
+Gail Wynand stood alone in the middle of his office, his head thrown back, glad
+to be living, as he had stood on a wharf on a dark night facing the lights of a
+city.
+"In the filthy howling now going on all around us," said an editorial in the
+Banner, signed "Gail Wynand" in big letters, "nobody seems to remember that
+Howard Roark surrendered himself of his own free will. If he blew up that
+building--did he have to remain at the scene to be arrested? But we don’t wait
+to discover his reasons. We have convicted him without a hearing. We want him to
+be guilty. We are delighted with this case. What you hear is not
+indignation--it’s gloating. Any illiterate maniac, any worthless moron who
+commits some revolting murder, gets shrieks of sympathy from us and marshals an
+army of humanitarian defenders. But a man of genius is guilty by definition.
+Granted that it is vicious injustice to condemn a man simply because he is weak
+and small. To what level of depravity has a society descended when it condemns a
+man simply because he is strong and great? Such, however, is the whole moral
+atmosphere of our century--the century of the second-rater."
+"We hear it shouted," said another Wynand editorial, "that Howard Roark spends
+his career in and out of courtrooms. Well, that is true. A man like Roark is on
+trial before society all his life. Whom does that indict--Roark or society?"
+"We have never made an effort to understand what is greatness in man and how to
+recognize it," said another Wynand editorial. "We have come to hold, in a kind
+of mawkish stupor, that greatness is to be gauged by self-sacrifice.
+Self-sacrifice, we drool, is the ultimate virtue. Let’s stop and think for a
+moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His
+freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feelings? The
+independence of his thought? But these are a man’s supreme possessions. Anything
+he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They, however, are
+above sacrificing to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then,
+stop preaching dangerous and vicious nonsense? Self-sacrifice? But it is
+precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the
+unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all."
+This editorial was quoted in the New Frontiers and in many newspapers, reprinted
+in a box under the heading: "Look who’s talking!"
+Gail Wynand laughed. Resistance fed him and made him stronger. This was a war,
+and he had not engaged in a real war for years, not since the time when he laid
+the foundations of his empire amid cries of protest from the whole profession.
+He was granted the impossible, the dream of every man: the chance and intensity
+of youth, to be used with the wisdom of experience. A new beginning and a
+climax, together. I have waited and lived, he thought, for this.
+His twenty-two newspapers, his magazines, his newsreels were given the order:
+Defend Roark. Sell Roark to the public. Stem the lynching.
+"Whatever the facts," Wynand explained to his staff, "this is not going to be a
+555
+
+trial by facts. It’s a trial by public opinion. We’ve always made public
+opinion. Let’s make it. Sell Roark. I don’t care how you do it. I’ve trained
+you. You’re experts at selling. Now show me how good you are."
+He was greeted by silence, and his employees glanced at one another. Alvah
+Scarret mopped his forehead. But they obeyed.
+The Banner printed a picture of the Enright House, with the caption: "Is this
+the man you want to destroy?" A picture of Wynand’s home: "Match this, if you
+can." A picture of Monadnock Valley: "Is this the man who has contributed
+nothing to society?"
+The Banner ran Roark’s biography, under the byline of a writer nobody had ever
+heard of; it was written by Gail Wynand. The Banner ran a series on famous
+trials in which innocent men had been convicted by the majority prejudice of the
+moment. The Banner ran articles on man martyred by society: Socrates, Galileo,
+Pasteur, the thinkers, the scientists, a long, heroic line--each a man who stood
+alone, the man who defied men.
+"But, Gail, for God’s sake, Gail, it was a housing project!" wailed Alvah
+Scarret.
+Wynand looked at him helplessly: "I suppose it’s impossible to make you fools
+understand that that has nothing to do with it. All right. We’ll talk about
+housing projects."
+The Banner ran an expose on the housing racket: the graft, the incompetence, the
+structures erected at five times the cost a private builder would have needed,
+the settlements built and abandoned, the horrible performance accepted, admired,
+forgiven, protected by the sacred cow of altruism. "Hell is said to be paved
+with good intentions," said the Banner. "Could it be because we’ve never learned
+to distinguish what intentions constitute the good? Is it not time to learn?
+Never have there been so many good intentions so loudly proclaimed in the world.
+And look at it."
+The Banner editorials were written by Gail Wynand as he stood at a table in the
+composing room, written as always on a huge piece of print stock, with a blue
+pencil, in letters an inch high. He slammed the G W at the end, and the famous
+initials had never carried such an air of reckless pride.
+Dominique had recovered and returned to their country house. Wynand drove home
+late in the evening. He brought Roark along as often as he could. They sat
+together in the living room, with the windows open to the spring night. The dark
+stretches of the hill rolled gently down to the lake from under the walls of the
+house, and the lake glittered through the trees far below. They did not talk of
+the case or of the coming trial. But Wynand spoke of his crusade, impersonally,
+almost as if it did not concern Roark at all. Wynand stood in the middle of the
+room, saying: "All right, it was contemptible--the whole career of the Banner.
+But this will vindicate everything. Dominique, I know you’ve never been able to
+understand why I’ve felt no shame in my past. Why I love the Banner. Now you’ll
+see the answer. Power. I hold a power I’ve never tested. Now you’ll see the
+test. They’ll think what I want them to think. They’ll do as I say. Because it
+is my city and I do run things around here. Howard, by the time you come to
+trial, I’ll have them all twisted in such a way there won’t be a jury who’ll
+dare convict you."
+He could not sleep at night. He felt no desire to sleep. "Go on to bed," he
+would say to Roark and Dominique, "I’ll come up in a few minutes." Then,
+Dominique from the bedroom, Roark from the guest room across the hall, would
+556
+
+hear Wynand’s steps pacing the terrace for hours, a kind of joyous restlessness
+in the sound, each step like a sentence anchored, a statement pounded into the
+floor.
+Once, when Wynand dismissed them, late at night, Roark and Dominique went up the
+stairs together and stopped on the first landing; they heard the violent snap of
+a match in the living room below, a sound that carried the picture of a hand
+jerked recklessly, lighting the first of the cigarettes that would last till
+dawn, a small dot of fire crossing and recrossing the terrace to the pounding of
+steps.
+They looked down the stairs and then looked at each other.
+"It’s horrible," said Dominique.
+"It’s great," said Roark.
+"He can’t help you, no matter what he does."
+"I know he can’t. That’s not the point."
+"He’s risking everything he has to save you. He doesn’t know he’ll lose me if
+you’re saved."
+"Dominique, which will be worse for him--to lose you or to lose his crusade?"
+She nodded, understanding. He added: "You know that it’s not me he wants to
+save. I’m only the excuse."
+She lifted her hand. She touched his cheekbone, a faint pressure of her
+fingertips. She could allow herself nothing else. She turned and went on to her
+bedroom, and heard him closing the guestroom door.
+"Is it not appropriate," wrote Lancelot Clokey in a syndicated article, "that
+Howard Roark is being defended by the Wynand papers? If anyone doubts the moral
+issues involved in this appalling case, here is the proof of what’s what and who
+stands where. The Wynand papers--that stronghold of yellow journalism,
+vulgarity, corruption and muckraking, that organized insult to public taste and
+decency, that intellectual underworld ruled by a man who has less conception of
+principles than a cannibal--the Wynand papers are the proper champions of Howard
+Roark, and Howard Roark is their rightful hero. After a lifetime devoted to
+blasting the integrity of the press, it is only fit that Gail Wynand should now
+support a cruder fellow dynamiter."
+"All this fancy talk going ’round," said Gus Webb in a public speech, "is a lot
+of bull. Here’s the plain dope. That guy Wynand’s salted away plenty, and I mean
+plenty, by skinning suckers in the real-estate racket all these years. Does he
+like it when the government muscles in and shoves him out, so’s the little
+fellows can get a clean roof over their heads and a modern john for their kids?
+You bet your boots he don’t like it, not one bit. It’s a put-up job between the
+two of them, Wynand and that redheaded boy friend of his, and if you ask me the
+boy friend got a good hunk of cash out of Mr. Wynand for pulling the job."
+"We have it from an unimpeachable source," wrote a radical newspaper, "that
+Cortlandt was only the first step in a gigantic plot to blow up every housing
+project, every public power plant, post office and schoolhouse in the U.S.A. The
+conspiracy is headed by Gail Wynand--as we can see--and by other bloated
+capitalists of his kind, including some of our biggest moneybags."
+"Too little attention has been paid to the feminine angle of this case," wrote
+557
+
+Sally Brent in the New Frontiers. "The part played by Mrs. Gail Wynand is
+certainly highly dubious, to say the least. Isn’t it just the cutest coincidence
+that it was Mrs. Wynand who just so conveniently sent the watchman away at just
+the right time? And that her husband is now raising the roof to defend Mr.
+Roark? If we weren’t blinded by a stupid, senseless, old-fashioned sense of
+gallantry where a so-called beautiful woman is concerned, we wouldn’t allow that
+part of the case to be hushed up. If we weren’t overawed by Mrs. Wynand’s social
+position and the so-called prestige of her husband--who’s making an utter fool
+of himself--we’d ask a few question about the story that she almost lost her
+life in the disaster. How do we know she did? Doctors can be bought, just like
+anybody else, and Mr. Gail Wynand is an expert in such matters. If we consider
+all this, we might well see the outlines of something that looks like a most
+revolting ’design for living.’"
+"The position taken by the Wynand press," wrote a quiet, conservative newspaper,
+"is inexplicable and disgraceful."
+The circulation of the Banner dropped week by week, the speed accelerating in
+the descent, like an elevator out of control. Stickers and buttons inscribed "We
+Don’t Read Wynand" grew on walls, subway posts, windshields and coat lapels.
+Wynand newsreels were booed off the theater screens. The Banner vanished from
+corner newsstands; the news vendors had to carry it, but they hid it under their
+counters and produced it grudgingly, only upon request. The ground had been
+prepared, the pillars eaten through long ago; the Cortlandt case provided the
+final impact.
+Roark was almost forgotten in the storm of indignation against Gail Wynand. The
+angriest protests came from Wynand’s own public: from the Women’s Clubs, the
+ministers, the mothers, the small shopkeepers. Alvah Scarret had to be kept away
+from the room where hampers of letters to the editor were being filled each day;
+he started by reading the letters--and his friends on the staff undertook to
+prevent a repetition of the experience, fearing a stroke.
+The staff of the Banner worked in silence. There were no furtive glances, no
+whispered cuss words, no gossip in washrooms any longer. A few men resigned. The
+rest worked on, slowly, heavily, in the manner of men with life belts buckled,
+waiting for the inevitable.
+Gail Wynand noticed a kind of lingering tempo in every action around him. When
+he entered the Banner Building, his employees stopped at sight of him; when he
+nodded to them, their greeting came a second too late; when he walked on and
+turned, he found them staring after him. The "Yes, Mr. Wynand," that had always
+answered his orders without a moment’s cut between the last syllable of his
+voice and the first letter of the answer, now came late, and the pause had a
+tangible shape, so that the answer sounded like a sentence not followed but
+preceded by a question mark.
+"One Small Voice" kept silent about the Cortlandt case. Wynand had summoned
+Toohey to his office, the day after the explosion, and had said: "Listen, you.
+Not a word in your column. Understand? What you do or yell outside is none of my
+business--for the time being. But if you yell too much, I’ll take care of you
+when this is over."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+"As far as your column is concerned, you’re deaf, dumb and blind. You’ve never
+heard of any explosion. You’ve never heard of anyone named Roark. You don’t know
+what the word Cortlandt means. So long as you’re in this building."
+558
+
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+"And don’t let me see too much of you around here."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+Wynand’s lawyer, an old friend who had served him for years, tried to stop him.
+"Gail, what’s the matter? You’re acting like a child. Like a green amateur. Pull
+yourself together, man."
+"Shut up," said Wynand.
+"Gail, you are...you were the greatest newspaperman on earth. Do I have to tell
+you the obvious? An unpopular cause is a dangerous business for anyone. For a
+popular newspaper--it’s suicide."
+"If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll send you packing and get myself another
+shyster."
+Wynand began to argue about the case--with the prominent men he met at business
+luncheons and dinners. He had never argued before on any subject; he had never
+pleaded. He had merely tossed final statements to respectful listeners. Now he
+found no listeners. He found no indifferent silence, half boredom, half
+resentment. The men who had gathered every word he cared to drop about the stock
+market, real estate, advertising, politics, had no interest in his opinion on
+art, greatness and abstract justice.
+He heard a few answers:
+"Yes, Gail, yes, sure. But on the other hand, I think it was damn selfish of the
+man. And that’s the trouble with the world today--selfishness. Too much
+selfishness everywhere. That’s what Lancelot Clokey said in his book--swell
+book, all about his childhood, you read it, saw your picture with Clokey.
+Clokey’s been all over the world, he knows what he’s talking about."
+"Yes, Gail, but aren’t you kind of old-fashioned about it? What’s all that great
+man stuff? What’s great about a glorified bricklayer? Who’s great anyway? We’re
+all just a lot of glands and chemicals and whatever we ate for breakfast. I
+think Lois Cook explained it very well in that beautiful little--what’s its
+name?--yes, The Gallant Gallstone. Yes, sir. Your own Banner plugged like blazes
+for that little book."
+"But look, Gail, he should’ve thought of other people before he thought of
+himself. I think if a man’s got no love in his heart he can’t be much good. I
+heard that in a play last night--that was a grand play--the new one by Ike--what
+the hell’s his last name?--you ought to see it--your own Jules Fougler said it’s
+a brave and tender stage poem."
+"You make out a good case, Gail, and I wouldn’t know what to say against it, I
+don’t know where you’re wrong, but it doesn’t sound right to me, because
+Ellsworth Toohey--now don’t misunderstand me, I don’t agree with Toohey’s
+political views at all, I know he’s a radical, but on the other hand you’ve got
+to admit that he’s a great idealist with a heart as big as a house--well,
+Ellsworth Toohey said..."
+These were the millionaires, the bankers, the industrialists, the businessmen
+who could not understand why the world was going to hell, as they moaned in all
+their luncheon speeches.
+559
+
+One morning when Wynand stepped out of his car in front of the Banner Building,
+a woman rushed up to him as he crossed the sidewalk. She had been waiting by the
+entrance. She was fat and middle-aged. She wore a filthy cotton dress and a
+crushed hat. She had a pasty, sagging face, a shapeless mouth and black, round,
+brilliant eyes. She stood before Gail Wynand and she flung a bunch of rotted
+beet leaves at his face. There were no beets, just the leaves, soft and slimy,
+tied with a string. They hit his cheek and rolled down to the sidewalk.
+Wynand stood still. He looked at the woman. He saw the white flesh, the mouth
+hanging open in triumphs, the face of self-righteous evil. Passersby had seized
+the woman and she was screaming unspeakable obscenities. Wynand raised his hand,
+shook his head, gesturing for them to let the creature go, and walked into the
+Banner Building, a smear of greenish-yellow across his cheek.
+"Ellsworth, what are we going to do?" moaned Alvah Scarret. "What are we going
+to do?"
+Ellsworth Toohey sat perched on the edge of his desk, and smiled as if he wished
+he could kiss Alvah Scarret.
+"Why don’t they drop the damn thing, Ellsworth? Why doesn’t something break to
+take it off the front pages? Couldn’t we scare up an international situation or
+something? In all my born days I’ve never seen people go so wild over so little.
+A dynamiting job! Christ, Ellsworth, it’s a back-page story. We get them every
+month, practically with every strike, remember?--the furriers’ strike, the dry
+cleaners’ strike...oh what the hell! Why all this fury? Who cares? Why do they
+care?"
+"There are occasions, Alvah, when the issues at stake are not the ostensible
+facts at all. And the public reaction seems out of all proportion, but isn’t.
+You shouldn’t be so glum about it. I’m surprised at you. You should be thanking
+your stars. You see, this is what I meant by waiting for the right moment. The
+right moment always comes. Damned if I expected it to be handed to me on a
+platter like that, though. Cheer up, Alvah. This is where we take over."
+"Take over what?"
+"The Wynand papers."
+"You’re crazy, Ellsworth. Like all of them. You’re crazy. What do you mean? Gail
+holds fifty-one per cent of..."
+"Alvah, I love you. You’re wonderful, Alvah. I love you, but I wish to God you
+weren’t such a God-damn fool, so I could talk to you! I wish I could talk to
+somebody!"
+Ellsworth Toohey tried to talk to Gus Webb, one evening, but it was
+disappointing. Gus Webb drawled:
+"Trouble with you, Ellsworth, is you’re too romantic. Too God-damn metaphysical.
+What’s all the gloating about? There’s no practical value to the thing. Nothing
+to get your teeth into, except for a week or two. I wish he’d blasted it when it
+was full of people--a few children blown to pieces--then you’d have something.
+Then I’d love it. The movement could use it. But this? Hell, they’ll send the
+fool to the clink and that’s that. You--a realist? You’re an incurable specimen
+of the intelligentsia, Ellsworth, that’s all you are. You think you’re the man
+of the future? Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart. I am."
+560
+
+Toohey sighed. "You’re right, Gus," he said.
+
+14.
+"IT’S kind of you, Mr. Toohey," said Mrs. Keating humbly. "I’m glad you came. I
+don’t know what to do with Petey. He won’t see anyone. He won’t go to his
+office. I’m scared, Mr. Toohey. Forgive me, I mustn’t whine. Maybe you can help,
+pull him out of it. He thinks so much of you, Mr. Toohey."
+"Yes, I’m sure. Where is he?"
+"Right here. In his room. This way, Mr. Toohey."
+The visit was unexpected. Toohey had not been here for years. Mrs. Keating felt
+very grateful. She led the way down the hall and opened a door without knocking,
+afraid to announce the visitor, afraid of her son’s refusal. She said brightly:
+"Look, Petey, look what a guest I have for you!"
+Keating lifted his head. He sat at a littered table, bent under a squat lamp
+that gave a poor light; he was doing a crossword puzzle torn out of a newspaper.
+There was a full glass on the table with a dried red rim that had been tomato
+juice; a box containing a jigsaw puzzle; a deck of cards; a Bible.
+"Hello, Ellsworth," he said, smiling. He leaned forward to rise, but forgot the
+effort, halfway.
+Mrs. Keating saw the smile and stepped out hastily, relieved, closing the door.
+The smile went, not quite completed. It had been an instinct of memory. Then he
+remembered many things which he had tried not to understand.
+"Hello, Ellsworth," he repeated helplessly.
+Toohey stood before him, examining the room, the table, with curiosity.
+"Touching, Peter," he said. "Very touching. I’m sure he’d appreciate it if he
+saw it."
+"Who?"
+"Not very talkative these days, are you, Peter? Not very sociable?"
+"I wanted to see you, Ellsworth. I wanted to talk to you." Toohey grasped a
+chair by the back, swung it through the air, in a broad circle like a flourish,
+planted it by the table and sat down.
+"Well, that’s what I came here for," he said. "To hear you talk."
+Keating said nothing.
+"Well?"
+"You mustn’t think I didn’t want to see you, Ellsworth. It was only...what I
+told Mother about not letting anyone in...it was on account of the newspaper
+people. They won’t leave me alone."
+561
+
+"My, how times change, Peter. I remember when one couldn’t keep you away from
+newspaper people."
+"Ellsworth, I haven’t any sense of humor left. Not any at all."
+"That’s lucky. Or you’d die laughing."
+"I’m so tired, Ellsworth....I’m glad you came."
+The light glanced off Toohey’s glasses and Keating could not see his eyes; only
+two circles filled with a metallic smear, like the dead headlights of a car
+reflecting the approach of something from a distance.
+"Think you can get away with it?" asked Toohey.
+"With what?"
+"The hermit act. The great penance. The loyal silence."
+"Ellsworth, what’s the matter with you?"
+"So he’s not guilty, is he? So you want us to please leave him alone, do you?"
+Keating’s shoulders moved, more an intention than the reality of sitting up
+straight, but still an intention, and his jaw moved enough to ask:
+"What do you want?"
+"The whole story."
+"What for?"
+"Want me to make it easier for you? Want a good excuse, Peter? I could, you
+know. I could give you thirty-three reasons, all noble, and you’d swallow any
+one of them. But I don’t feel like making it easier for you. So I’ll just tell
+you the truth: to send him to the penitentiary, your hero, your idol, your
+generous friend, your guardian angel!"
+"I have nothing to tell you, Ellsworth."
+"While you’re being shocked out of the last of your wits you’d better hang on to
+enough to realize that you’re no match for me. You’ll talk if I want you to talk
+and I don’t feel like wasting time. Who designed Cortlandt?"
+"I did."
+"Do you know that I’m an architectural expert?"
+"I designed Cortlandt."
+"Like the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?"
+"What do you want from me?"
+"I want you on the witness stand, Petey. I want you to tell the story in court.
+Your friend isn’t as obvious as you are. I don’t know what he’s up to. That
+remaining at the scene was a bit too smart. He knew he’d be suspected and he’s
+playing it subtle. God knows what he intends to say in court. I don’t intend to
+562
+
+let him get away with it. The motive is what they’re all stuck on. I know the
+motive. Nobody will believe me if I try to explain it. But you’ll state it under
+oath. You’ll tell the truth. You’ll tell them who designed Cortlandt and why."
+"I designed it."
+"If you want to say that on the stand, you’d better do something about your
+muscular control. What are you shaking for?"
+"Leave me alone."
+"Too late, Petey. Ever read Faust?"
+"What do you want?"
+"Howard Roark’s neck."
+"He’s not my friend. He’s never been. You know what I think of him."
+"I know, you God-damn fool! I know you’ve worshipped him all your life. You’ve
+knelt and worshipped, while stabbing him in the back. You didn’t even have the
+courage of your own malice. You couldn’t go one way or the other. You hated
+me--oh, don’t you suppose I knew it?--and you followed me. You loved him and
+you’ve destroyed him. Oh, you’ve destroyed him all right, Petey, and now there’s
+no place to run, and you’ll have to go through with it!"
+"What’s he to you? What difference does it make to you?"
+"You should have asked that long ago. But you didn’t. Which means that you knew
+it. You’ve always known it. That’s what’s making you shake. Why should I help
+you lie to yourself? I’ve done that for ten years. That’s what you came to me
+for. That’s what they all come to me for. But you can’t get something for
+nothing. Ever. My socialistic theories to the contrary notwithstanding. You got
+what you wanted from me. It’s my turn now."
+"I won’t talk about Howard. You can’t make me talk about Howard."
+"No? Why don’t you throw me out of here? Why don’t you take me by the throat and
+choke me? You’re much stronger than I am. But you won’t. You can’t. Do you see
+the nature of power, Petey? Physical power? Muscle or guns or money? You and
+Gail Wynand should get together. You have a lot to tell him. Come on, Peter. Who
+designed Cortlandt?"
+"Leave me alone."
+"Who designed Cortlandt?"
+"Let me go!"
+"Who designed Cortlandt?"
+"It’s worse...what you’re doing...it’s much worse..."
+"Than what?"
+"Than what I did to Lucius Heyer."
+"What did you do to Lucius Heyer?"
+563
+
+"I killed him."
+"What are you talking about?"
+"That’s why it was better. Because I let him die."
+"Stop raving."
+"Why do you want to kill Howard?"
+"I don’t want to kill him. I want him in jail. You understand? In jail. In a
+cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped--and alive. He’ll get up when they
+tell him to. He’ll eat what they give him. He’ll move when he’s told to move and
+stop when he’s told. He’ll walk to the jute mill, when he’s told, and he’ll work
+as he’s told. They’ll push him, if he doesn’t move fast enough, and they’ll slap
+his face when they feel like it, and they’ll beat him with rubber hose if he
+doesn’t obey. And he’ll obey. He’ll take orders. He’ll take orders!"
+"Ellsworth!" Keating screamed. "Ellsworth!"
+"You make me sick. Can’t you take the truth? No, you want your sugar-coating.
+That’s why I prefer Gus Webb. There’s one who has no illusions."
+Mrs. Keating threw the door open. She had heard the scream. "Get out of here!"
+Toohey snapped at her. She backed out, and Toohey slammed the door. Keating
+raised his head. "You have no right to talk to Mother that way. She had nothing
+to do with you."
+"Who designed Cortlandt?"
+Keating got up. He dragged his feet to a dresser, opened a drawer, took out a
+crumpled piece of paper and handed it to Toohey. It was his contract with Roark.
+Toohey read it and chuckled once, a dry snap of sound. Then he looked at
+Keating.
+"You’re a complete success, Peter, as far as I’m concerned. But at times I have
+to want to turn away from the sight of my successes."
+Keating stood by the dresser, his shoulders slumped, his eyes empty.
+"I didn’t expect you to have it in writing like that, with his signature. So
+that’s what he’s done for you--and this is what you do in return....No, I take
+back the insults, Peter. You had to do it. Who are you to reverse the laws of
+history? Do you know what this paper is? The impossible perfect, the dream of
+the centuries, the aim of all of mankind’s great schools of thought. You
+harnessed him. You made him work for you. You took his achievement, his reward,
+his money, his glory, his name. We only thought and wrote about it. You gave a
+practical demonstration. Every philosopher from Plato up should thank you. Here
+it is, the philosopher’s stone--for turning gold into lead. I should be pleased,
+but I guess I’m human and I can’t help it, I’m not pleased, I’m just sick. The
+others, Plato and all the rest, they really thought it would turn lead into
+gold. I knew the truth from the first. I’ve been honest with myself, Peter, and
+that’s the hardest form of honesty. The one you all run from at any price. And
+right now I don’t blame you, it is the hardest one, Peter."
+He sat down wearily and held the paper by the corners in both hands. He said:
+"If you want to know how hard it is, I’ll tell you: right now I want to burn
+564
+
+this paper. Make what you wish of that. I don’t claim too great a credit,
+because I know that tomorrow I’ll send this to the district attorney. Roark will
+never know it--and it would make no difference to him if he knew--but in the
+truth of things, there was one moment when I wanted to burn this paper."
+He folded the paper cautiously and slipped it into his pocket. Keating followed
+his gestures, moving his whole head, like a kitten watching a ball on a string.
+"You make me sick," said Toohey. "God, how you make me sick, all you
+hypocritical sentimentalists! You go along with me, you spout what I teach you,
+you profit by it--but you haven’t the grace to admit to yourself what you’re
+doing. You turn green when you see the truth. I suppose that’s in the nature of
+your natures and that’s precisely my chief weapon--but God! I get tired of it. I
+must allow myself a moment free of you. That’s what I have to put on an act for
+all my life--for mean little mediocrities like you. To protect your
+sensibilities, your posturings, your conscience and the peace of the mind you
+haven’t got. That’s the price I pay for what I want--but at least I know that
+I’ve got to pay it. And I have no illusions about the price or the purchase."
+"What do you...want...Ellsworth?"
+"Power, Petey."
+There were steps in the apartment above, someone skipping gaily, a few sounds on
+the ceiling as of four or five tap beats. The light fixture jingled and
+Keating’s head moved up in obedience. Then it came back to Toohey. Toohey was
+smiling, almost indifferently.
+"You...always said..." Keating began thickly, and stopped.
+"I’ve always said just that. Clearly, precisely and openly. It’s not my fault if
+you couldn’t hear. You could, of course. You didn’t want to. Which was safer
+than deafness--for me. I said I intended to rule. Like all my spiritual
+predecessors. But I’m luckier than they were. I inherited the fruit of their
+efforts and I shall be the one who’ll see the great dream made real. I see it
+all around me today. I recognize it. I don’t like it. I didn’t expect to like
+it. Enjoyment is not my destiny. I shall find such satisfaction as my capacity
+permits. I shall rule."
+"Whom...?"
+"You. The world. It’s only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how
+to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It’s the soul,
+Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That’s why the Caesars,
+the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul,
+Peter, is that which can’t be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get
+your fingers on it--and the man is yours. You won’t need a whip--he’ll bring it
+to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse--and his own mechanism will do
+your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it’s done? See if I
+ever lied to you. See if you haven’t heard all this for years, but didn’t want
+to hear, and the fault is yours, not mine. There are many ways. Here’s one. Make
+man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity.
+That’s difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted
+way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it
+toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that
+he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one
+of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living
+instinct screams against it. But don’t you see what you accomplish? Man realizes
+that he’s incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue--and it gives
+565
+
+him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme
+ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration,
+all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he
+can’t practice. But one can’t be good halfway or honest approximately. To
+preserve one’s integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to
+be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You’ve got him. He’ll
+obey. He’ll be glad to obey--because he can’t trust himself, he feels uncertain,
+he feels unclean. That’s one way. Here’s another. Kill man’s sense of values.
+Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be
+ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny the conception of greatness.
+Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.
+Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most
+inept--and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop
+all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark and
+hold Peter Keating as a great architect. You’ve destroyed architecture. Build up
+Lois Cook and you’ve destroyed literature. Hail Ike and you’ve destroyed the
+theater. Glorify Lancelot Clokey and you’ve destroyed the press. Don’t set out
+to raze all shrines--you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity--and the shrines
+are razed. Then there’s another way. Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument
+of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer.
+It’s simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humor
+is an unlimited virtue. Don’t let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul--and
+his soul won’t be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in
+man. One doesn’t reverence with a giggle. He’ll obey and he’ll set no limits to
+his obedience--anything goes--nothing is too serious. Here’s another way. This
+is most important. Don’t allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and
+self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free
+men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them whatever is dear or
+important to them. Never let them have what they want. Make them feel that the
+mere fact of a personal desire is evil. Bring them to a state where saying I
+want’ is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is of
+great help in this. Unhappy men will come to you. They’ll need you. They’ll come
+for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man’s
+soul--and the space is yours to fill. I don’t see why you should look so
+shocked, Peter. This is the oldest one of all. Look back at history. Look at any
+great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn’t they all preach the sacrifice
+of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven’t they all had a
+single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven’t you been able to
+catch their theme song--’Give up, give up, give up, give up’? Look at the moral
+atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarettes to sex to ambition to
+the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing
+makes men happy--and you’ve damned it. That’s how far we’ve come. We’ve tied
+happiness to guilt. And we’ve got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born
+into a sacrificial furnace--lie on a bed of nails--go into the desert to mortify
+the flesh--don’t dance--don’t go to the movies on Sunday--don’t try to get
+rich--don’t smoke--don’t drink. It’s all the same line. The great line. Fools
+think that taboos of this nature are just nonsense. Something left over,
+old-fashioned. But there’s always a purpose in nonsense. Don’t bother to examine
+a folly--ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that
+preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course,
+you must dress it up. You must tell people that they’ll achieve a superior kind
+of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be
+too clear about it. Use big vague words. ’Universal Harmony’--’Eternal
+Spirit’--’Divine Purpose’--’Nirvana’--’Paradise’--’Racial Supremacy’--’The
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’ Internal corruption, Peter. That’s the oldest
+one of all. The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it.
+Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him
+speak of sacrifice--run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that
+where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where
+566
+
+there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of
+sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if
+ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it’s your natural
+right, that your first duty is to yourself--that will be the man who’s not after
+your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him
+come and you’ll scream your empty heads off, howling that he’s a selfish
+monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries. But here you might have
+noticed something. I said, ’It stands to reason.’ Do you see? Men have a weapon
+against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them. Cut the
+props from under it. But be careful. Don’t deny outright. Never deny anything
+outright, you give your hand away. Don’t say reason is evil--though some have
+gone that far and with astonishing success. Just say that reason is limited.
+That there’s something above it. What? You don’t have to be too clear about it
+either. The field’s inexhaustible.
+’Instinct’--’Feeling’--’Revelation’--’Divine Intuition’--’Dialectic
+Materialism.’ If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you
+that your doctrine doesn’t make sense--you’re ready for him. You tell him that
+there’s something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel.
+He must believe. Suspend reason and you play it deuces wild. Anything goes in
+any manner you wish whenever you need it. You’ve got him. Can you rule a
+thinking man? We don’t want any thinking men."
+Keating had sat down on the floor, by the side of the dresser; he had felt tired
+and he had simply folded his legs. He did not want to abandon the dresser; he
+felt safer, leaning against it; as if it still guarded the letter he had
+surrendered.
+"Peter, you’ve heard all this. You’ve seen me practicing it for ten years. You
+see it being practiced all over the world. Why are you disgusted? You have no
+right to sit there and stare at me with the virtuous superiority of being
+shocked. You’re in on it. You’ve taken your share and you’ve got to go along.
+You’re afraid to see where it’s leading. I’m not I’ll tell you. The world of the
+future. The world I want. A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the
+thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of
+the brain of his neighbor who’ll have no thought of his own but an attempt to
+guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no thought--and so on, Peter,
+around the globe. Since all must agree with all. A world where no man will hold
+a desire for himself, but will direct all his efforts to satisfy the desires of
+his neighbor who’ll have no desires except to satisfy the desires of the next
+neighbor who’ll have no desires--around the globe, Peter. Since all must serve
+all. A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money,
+but for that headless monster--prestige. The approval of his fellows--their good
+opinion--the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to hold no opinion. An octopus,
+all tentacles and no brain. Judgment, Peter! Not judgment, but public polls. An
+average drawn upon zeroes--since no individuality will be permitted. A world
+with its motor cut off and a single heart, pumped by hand. My hand--and the
+hands of a few, a very few other men like me. Those who know what makes you
+tick--you great, wonderful average, you who have not risen in fury when we
+called you the average, the little, the common, you who’ve liked and accepted
+those names. You’ll sit enthroned and enshrined, you, the little people, the
+absolute ruler to make all past rulers squirm with envy, the absolute, the
+unlimited, God and Prophet and King combined. Vox populi. The average, the
+common, the general. Do you know the proper antonym for Ego? Bromide, Peter. The
+rule of the bromide. But even the trite has to be originated by someone at some
+time. We’ll do the originating. Vox dei. We’ll enjoy unlimited submission--from
+men who’ve learned nothing except to submit. We’ll call it ’to serve.’ We’ll
+give out medals for service. You’ll fall over one another in a scramble to see
+who can submit better and more. There will be no other distinction to seek. No
+other form of personal achievement. Can you see Howard Roark in the picture? No?
+567
+
+Then don’t waste time on foolish questions. Everything that can’t be ruled, must
+go. And if freaks persist in being born occasionally, they will not survive
+beyond their twelfth year. When their brain begins to function, it will feel the
+pressure and it will explode. The pressure gauged to a vacuum. Do you know the
+fate of deep-sea creatures brought out to sunlight? So much for future Roarks.
+The rest of you will smile and obey. Have you noticed that the imbecile always
+smiles? Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch
+of thought. But we’ll have neither God nor thought. Only voting by smiles.
+Automatic levers--all saying yes...Now if you were a little more
+intelligent--like your ex-wife, for instance--you’d ask: What of us, the rulers?
+What of me, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey? And I’d say, Yes, you’re right. I’ll
+achieve no more than you will. I’ll have no purpose save to keep you contented.
+To lie, to flatter you, to praise you, to inflate your vanity. To make speeches
+about the people and the common good. Peter, my poor old friend, I’m the most
+selfless man you’ve every known. I have less independence than you, whom I just
+forced to sell your soul. You’ve used people at least for the sake of what you
+could get from them for yourself. I want nothing for myself. I use people for
+the sake of what I can do to them. It’s my only function and satisfaction. I
+have no private purpose. I want power. I want my world of the future. Let all
+live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and none enjoy.
+Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There’s equality in stagnation. All
+subjugated to the will of all. Universal slavery--without even the dignity of a
+master. Slavery to slavery. A great circle--and a total equality. The world of
+the future."
+"Ellsworth...you’re..."
+"Insane? Afraid to say it? There you sit and the world’s written all over you,
+your last hope. Insane? Look around you. Pick up any newspaper and read the
+headlines. Isn’t it coming? Isn’t it here? Every single thing I told you? Isn’t
+Europe swallowed already and we’re stumbling on to follow? Everything I said is
+contained in a single word--collectivism. And isn’t that the god of our century?
+To act together. To think--together. To feel--together. To unite, to agree, to
+obey. To obey, to serve, to sacrifice. Divide and conquer--first. But
+then--unite and rule. We’ve discovered that one at last. Remember the Roman
+Emperor who said he wished humanity had a single neck so he could cut it? People
+have laughed at him for centuries. But we’ll have the last laugh. We’ve
+accomplished what he couldn’t accomplish. We’ve taught men to unite. This makes
+one neck ready for one leash. We found the magic word. Collectivism. Look at
+Europe, you fool. Can’t you see past the guff and recognize the essence? One
+country is dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the
+collective is all. The individual held as evil, the mass--as God, No motive and
+no virtue permitted--except that of service to the proletariat. That’s one
+version. Here’s another. A country dedicated to the proposition that man has no
+rights, that the State is all. The individual held as evil, the race--as God. No
+motive and no virtue permitted--except that of service to the race. Am I raving
+or is this the cold reality of two continents already? Watch the pincer
+movement. If you’re sick of one version, we push you into the other. We get you
+coming and going. We’ve closed the doors. We’ve fixed the coin.
+Heads--collectivism, and tails--collectivism. Fight the doctrine which
+slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual. Give
+up your soul to a council--or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it
+up, give it up. My technique, Peter. Offer poison as food and poison as
+antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective. Give the
+fools a choice, let them have their fun--but don’t forget the only purpose you
+have to accomplish. Kill the individual. Kill man’s soul. The rest will follow
+automatically. Observe the state of the world as of the present moment. Do you
+still think I’m crazy, Peter?"
+568
+
+Keating sat on the floor, his legs spread out. He lifted one hand and studied
+his fingertips, then put it to his mouth and bit off a hangnail. But the
+movement was deceptive; the man was reduced to a single sense, the sense of
+hearing, and Toohey knew that no answer could be expected.
+Keating waited obediently; it seemed to make no difference; the sounds had
+stopped and it was now his function to wait until they started again.
+Toohey put his hands on the arms of his chair, then lifted his palms, from the
+wrists, and clasped the wood again, a little slap of resigned finality. He
+pushed himself up to his feet.
+"Thank you, Peter," he said gravely. "Honesty is a hard thing to eradicate. I
+have made speeches to large audiences all my life. This was the speech I’ll
+never have a chance to make."
+Keating lifted his head. His voice had the quality of a down payment on terror;
+it was not frightened, but it held the advance echoes of the next hour to come:
+"Don’t go, Ellsworth."
+Toohey stood over him, and laughed softly.
+"That’s the answer, Peter. That’s my proof. You know me for what I am, you know
+what I’ve done to you, you have no illusions of virtue left. But you can’t leave
+me and you’ll never be able to leave me. You’ve obeyed me in the name of ideals.
+You’ll go on obeying me without ideals. Because that’s all you’re good for
+now....Good night, Peter."
+
+15.
+"THIS is a test case. What we think of it will determine what we are. In the
+person of Howard Roark, we must crush the forces of selfishness and antisocial
+individualism--the curse of our modern world--here shown to us in ultimate
+consequences. As mentioned at the beginning of this column, the district
+attorney now has in his possession a piece of evidence--we cannot disclose its
+nature at this moment--which proves conclusively that Roark is guilty. We, the
+people, shall now demand justice."
+This appeared in "One Small Voice" on a morning late in May. Gail Wynand read it
+in his car, driving home from the airport. He had flown to Chicago in a last
+attempt to hold a national advertiser who had refused to renew a
+three-million-dollar contract. Two days of skillful effort had failed; Wynand
+lost the advertiser. Stepping off the plane in Newark, he picked up the New York
+papers. His car was waiting to take him to his country house. Then he read "One
+Small Voice."
+He wondered for a moment what paper he held. He looked at the name on the top of
+the page. But it was the Banner, and the column was there, in its proper place,
+column one, first page, second section.
+He leaned forward and told the chauffeur to drive to his office. He sat with the
+page spread open on his lap, until the car stopped before the Banner Building.
+He noticed it at once, when he entered the building. In the eyes of two
+reporters who emerged from an elevator in the lobby; in the pose of the elevator
+569
+
+man who fought a desire to turn and stare back at him; in the sudden immobility
+of all the men in his anteroom, in the break of a typewriter’s clicking on the
+desk of one secretary, in the lifted hand of another--he saw the waiting. Then
+he knew that all the implications of the unbelievable were understood by
+everyone on his paper.
+He felt a first dim shock; because the waiting around him contained wonder in
+anyone’s mind about the outcome of an issue between him and Ellsworth Toohey.
+But he had no time to take notice of his own reactions. He had no attention to
+spare for anything except a sense of tightness, a pressure against the bones of
+his face, his teeth, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose--and he knew he must
+press back against that, keep it down, hold it.
+He greeted no one and walked into his office. Alvah Scarret sat slumped in a
+chair before his desk. Scarret had a bandage of soiled white gauze on his
+throat, and his cheeks were flushed. Wynand stopped in the middle of the room.
+The people outside had felt relieved: Wynand’s face looked calm. Alvah Scarret
+knew better.
+"Gail, I wasn’t here," he gulped in a cracked whisper that was not a voice at
+all. "I haven’t been here for two days. Laryngitis, Gail. Ask my doctor. I
+wasn’t here. I just got out of bed, look at me, I’ve got a hundred and three,
+fever, I mean, the doctor didn’t want me to, but I...to get up, I mean, Gail, I
+wasn’t here, I wasn’t here!"
+He could not be certain that Wynand heard. But Wynand let him finish, then
+assumed the appearance of listening, as if the sounds were reaching him,
+delayed. After a moment, Wynand asked:
+"Who was on the copy desk?"
+"It...it went through Alien and Falk."
+"Fire Harding, Allen, Falk and Toohey. Buy off Harding’s contract. But not
+Toohey’s. Have them all out of the building in fifteen minutes."
+Harding was the managing editor; Falk, a copy reader; Alien, the slot man, head
+of the copy desk; all had worked on the Banner for more than ten years. It was
+as if Scarret had heard a news flash announcing the impeachment of a President,
+the destruction of New York City by a meteor and the sinking of California into
+the Pacific Ocean.
+"Gail!" he screamed. "We can’t!"
+"Get out of here."
+Scarret got out.
+Wynand pressed a switch on his desk and said in answer to the trembling voice of
+the woman outside:
+"Don’t admit anyone."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+He pressed a button and spoke to the circulation manager:
+"Stop every copy on the street."
+570
+
+"Mr. Wynand, it’s too late! Most of them are..."
+"Stop them."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+He wanted to put his head down on the desk, lie still and rest, only the form of
+rest he needed did not exist, greater than sleep, greater than death, the rest
+of having never lived. The wish was like a secret taunt against himself, because
+he knew that the splitting pressure in his skull meant the opposite, an urge to
+action, so strong that he felt paralyzed. He fumbled for some sheets of clean
+paper, forgetting where he kept them. He had to write the editorial that would
+explain and counteract. He had to hurry. He felt no right to any minute that
+passed with the thing unwritten.
+The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while
+his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who
+heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution,
+like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the
+scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens
+when a thought takes shape in words.
+He heard the rumble, the vibration in the walls of his office, in the floor. The
+presses were running off his afternoon paper, a small tabloid, the Clarion. He
+smiled at the sound. His hand went faster, as if the sound were energy pumped
+into his fingers.
+He had dropped his usual editorial "we." He wrote: "...And if my readers or my
+enemies wish to laugh at me over this incident, I shall accept it and consider
+it the payment of a debt incurred. I have deserved it."
+He thought: It’s the heart of this building, beating--what time is it?--do I
+really hear it or is it my own heart?--once, a doctor put the ends of his
+stethoscope into my ears and let me hear my own heartbeats--it sounded just like
+this--he said I was a healthy animal and good for many years--for
+many...years...
+"I have foisted upon my readers a contemptible blackguard whose spiritual
+stature is my only excuse. I had not reached a degree of contempt for society
+such as would have permitted me to consider him dangerous. I am still holding on
+to a respect for my fellow men sufficient to let me say that Ellsworth Toohey
+cannot be a menace."
+They say sound never dies, but travels on in space--what happens to a man’s
+heartbeats?--so many of them in fifty-six years--could they be gathered again,
+in some sort of condenser, and put to use once more? If they were re-broadcast,
+would the result be the beating of those presses?
+"But I have sponsored him under the masthead of my paper, and if public penance
+is a strange, humiliating act to perform in our modern age, such is the
+punishment I impose upon myself hereby."
+Not fifty-six years of those soft little drops of sound a man never hears, each
+single and final, not like a comma, but like a period, a long string of periods
+on a page, gathered to feed those presses--not fifty-six, but thirty-one, the
+other twenty-five went to make me ready--I was twenty-five when I raised the new
+masthead over the door--Publishers don’t change the name of a paper--This one
+does--The New York Banner--Gail Wynand’s Banner...
+571
+
+"I ask the forgiveness of every man who has ever read this paper."
+A healthy animal--and that which comes from me is healthy--I must bring that
+doctor here and have him listen to those presses--he’ll grin in his good, smug,
+satisfied way, doctors like a specimen of perfect health occasionally, it’s rare
+enough--I must give him a treat--the healthiest sound he ever heard--and he’ll
+say the Banner is good for many years....
+The door of his office opened and Ellsworth Toohey came in.
+Wynand let him cross the room and approach the desk, without a gesture of
+protest. Wynand thought that what he felt was curiosity--if curiosity could be
+blown into the dimensions of a thing from the abyss--like those drawings of
+beetles the size of a house advancing upon human figures in the pages of the
+Banner’s Sunday supplement--curiosity, because Ellsworth Toohey was still in the
+building, because Toohey had gained admittance past the orders given, and
+because Toohey was laughing.
+"I came to take my leave of absence, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey. His face was
+composed; it expressed no gloating; the face of an artist who knew that
+overdoing was defeat and achieved the supreme of offensiveness by remaining
+normal. "And to tell you that I’ll be back. On this job, on this column, in this
+building. In the interval you will have seen the nature of the mistake you’ve
+made. Do forgive me, I know this is in utterly bad taste, but I’ve waited for it
+for thirteen years and I think I can permit myself five minutes as a reward. So
+you were a possessive man, Mr. Wynand, and you loved your sense of property? Did
+you ever stop to think what it rested upon? Did you stop to secure the
+foundations? No, because you were a practical man. Practical men deal in bank
+accounts, real estate, advertising contracts and gilt-edged securities. They
+leave to the impractical intellectuals, like me, the amusements of putting the
+gilt edges through a chemical analysis to learn a few things about the nature
+and the source of gold. They hang on to Kream-O Pudding, and leave us such
+trivia as the theater, the movies, the radio, the schools, the book reviews and
+the criticism of architecture. Just a sop to keep us quiet if we care to waste
+our time playing with the inconsequentials of life, while you’re making money.
+Money is power. Is it, Mr. Wynand? So you were after power, Mr. Wynand? Power
+over men? You poor amateur! You never discovered the nature of your own ambition
+or you’d have known that you weren’t fit for it. You couldn’t use the methods
+required and you wouldn’t want the results. You’ve never been enough of a
+scoundrel. I don’t mind handing you that, because I don’t know which is worse:
+to be a great scoundrel or a gigantic fool. That’s why I’ll be back. And when I
+am, I’ll run this paper."
+Wynand said quietly:
+"When you are. Now get out of here."
+#
+The city room of the Banner walked out on strike.
+The Union of Wynand Employees walked out in a body. A great many others,
+non-members, joined them. The typographical staff remained.
+Wynand had never given a thought to the Union. He paid higher wages than any
+other publisher and no economic demands had ever been made upon him. If his
+employees wished to amuse themselves by listening to speeches, he saw no reason
+to worry about it. Dominique had tried to warn him once: "Gail, if people want
+to organize for wages, hours or practical demands, it’s their proper right. But
+572
+
+when there’s no tangible purpose, you’d better watch closely."
+"Darling, how many times do I have to ask you? Keep off the Banner."
+He had never taken the trouble to learn who belonged to the Union. He found now
+that the membership was small--and crucial; it included all his key men, not the
+big executives, but the rank below, expertly chosen, the active ones, the small,
+indispensable spark plugs: the best leg men, the general assignment men, the
+rewrite men, the assistant editors. He looked up their records: most of them had
+been hired in the last eight years; recommended by Mr. Toohey.
+Non-members walked out for various reasons: some, because they hated Wynand;
+others, because they were afraid to remain and it seemed easier than to analyze
+the issue. One man, a timid little fellow, met Wynand in the hall and stopped to
+shriek: "We’ll be back, sweetheart, and then it’ll be a different tune!" Some
+left, avoiding the sight of Wynand. Others played safe. "Mr. Wynand, I hate to
+do it, I hate it like hell, I had nothing to do with that Union, but a strike’s
+a strike and I can’t permit myself to be a scab." "Honest, Mr. Wynand, I don’t
+know who’s right or wrong, I do think Ellsworth pulled a dirty trick and Harding
+had no business letting him get away with it, but how can one be sure who’s
+right about anything nowadays? And one thing I won’t do is I won’t picket line.
+No, sir. The way I feel is, pickets right or wrong."
+The strikers presented two demands: the reinstatement of the four men who had
+been discharged; a reversal of the Banner’s stand on the Cortlandt case.
+Harding, the managing editor, wrote an article explaining his position; it was
+published in the New Frontiers. "I did ignore Mr. Wynand’s orders in a matter of
+policy, perhaps an unprecedented action for a managing editor to take. I did so
+with full realization of the responsibility involved. Mr. Toohey, Alien, Falk
+and I wished to save the Banner for the sake of its employees, its stockholders
+and its readers. We wished to bring Mr. Wynand to reason by peaceful means. We
+hoped he would give in with good grace, once he had seen the Banner committed to
+the stand shared by most of the press of the country. We knew the arbitrary,
+unpredictable and unscrupulous character of our employer, but we took the
+chance, willing to sacrifice ourselves to our professional duty. While we
+recognize an owner’s right to dictate the policy of his paper on political,
+sociological or economic issues, we believe that a situation has gone past the
+limits of decency when an employer expects self-respecting men to espouse the
+cause of a common criminal. We wish Mr. Wynand to realize that the day of
+dictatorial one-man rule is past. We must have some say in the running of the
+place where, we make our living. It is a fight for the freedom of the press.
+Mr. Harding was sixty years old, owned an estate on Long Island, and divided his
+spare time between skeet-shooting and breeding pheasants. His childless wife was
+a member of the Board of Directors of the Workshop for Social Study; Toohey, its
+star lecturer, had introduced her to the Workshop. She had written her husband’s
+article.
+The two men off the copy desk were not members of Toohey’s Union. Alien’s
+daughter was a beautiful young actress who starred in all of Ike’s plays. Falk’s
+brother was secretary to Lancelot Clokey.
+Gail Wynand sat at the desk in his office and looked down at a pile of paper. He
+had many things to do, but one picture kept coming back to him and he could not
+get rid of it and the sense of it clung to all his actions--the picture of a
+ragged boy standing before the desk of an editor: "Can you spell cat?"--"Can you
+spell anthropomorphology?" The identities cracked and became mixed, it seemed to
+him that the boy stood here, at his desk, waiting, and once he said aloud: "Go
+573
+
+away!" He caught himself in anger, he thought: You’re cracking, you fool, now’s
+not the time. He did not speak aloud again, but the conversation went on
+silently while he read, checked and signed papers: "Go away! We have no jobs
+here." I’ll hang around. Use me when you want to. You don’t have to pay me."
+"They’re paying you, don’t you understand, you little fool? They’re paying you."
+Aloud, his voice normal, he said into a telephone: ’Tell Manning that we’ll have
+to fill in with mat stuff....Send up the proofs as soon as you can....Send up a
+sandwich. Any kind."
+A few had remained With him: the old men and the copy boys. They came in, in the
+morning, often with cuts on their faces and blood on their collars; one stumbled
+in, his skull open, and had to be sent away in an ambulance. It was neither
+courage nor loyalty; it was inertia; they had lived too long with the thought
+that the world would end if they lost their jobs on the Banner. The old ones did
+not understand. The young ones did not care.
+Copy boys were sent out on reporter’s beats. Most of the stuff they sent in was
+of such quality that Wynand was forced past despair into howls of laughter: he
+had never read such highbrow English; he could see the pride of the ambitious
+youth who was a journalist at last. He did not laugh when the stories appeared
+in the Banner as written; there were not enough rewrite men.
+He tried to hire new men. He offered extravagant salaries. The people he wanted
+refused to work for him. A few men answered his call, and he wished they hadn’t,
+though he hired them. They were men who had not been employed by a reputable
+newspaper for ten years; the kind who would not have been allowed, a month ago,
+into the lobby of his building. Some of them had to be thrown out in two days;
+others remained. They were drunk most of the time. Some acted as if they were
+granting Wynand a favor. "Don’t you get huffy, Gail, old boy," said one--and was
+tossed bodily down two flights of stairs. He broke an ankle and sat on the
+bottom landing, looking up at Wynand with an air of complete astonishment.
+Others were subtler; they merely stalked about and looked at Wynand slyly,
+almost winking, implying that they were fellow criminals tied together in a
+dirty deal.
+He appealed to schools of journalism. No one responded. One student body sent
+him a resolution signed by all its members: "...Entering our careers with a high
+regard for the dignity of our profession, dedicating ourselves to uphold the
+honor of the press, we feel that none among us could preserve his self-respect
+and accept an offer such as yours."
+The news editor had remained at his desk; the city editor had gone. Wynand
+filled in as city editor, managing editor, wire man, rewrite man, copy boy. He
+did not leave the building. He slept on a couch in his office--as he had done in
+the first years of the Banner’s existence. Goalless, tieless, his shirt collar
+torn open, he ran up and down the stairs, his steps like the rattle of a machine
+gun. Two elevator boys had remained; the others had vanished, no one knew just
+when or why, whether prompted by sympathy for the strike, fear or plain
+discouragement.
+Alvah Scarret could not understand Wynand’s calm. The brilliant machine--and
+that, thought Scarret, was really the word which had always stood for Wynand in
+his mind--had never functioned better. His words were brief, his orders rapid,
+his decisions immediate. In the confusion of machines, lead, grease, ink, waste
+paper, unswept offices, untenanted desks, glass crashing in sudden showers when
+a brick was hurled from the street below, Wynand moved like a figure in
+double-exposure, superimposed on his background, out of place and scale. He
+doesn’t belong here, thought Scarret, because he doesn’t look modern--that’s
+574
+
+what it is--he doesn’t look modern, no matter what kind of pants he’s
+wearing--he looks like something out of a Gothic cathedral. The patrician head,
+held level, the fleshless face that had shrunk tighter together. The captain of
+a ship known by all, save the captain, to be sinking.
+Alvah Scarret had remained. He had not grasped that the events were real; he
+shuffled about in a stupor; he felt a fresh jolt of bewilderment each morning
+when he drove up to the building and saw the pickets. He suffered no injury
+beyond a few tomatoes hurled at his windshield. He tried to help Wynand; he
+tried to do his work and that of five other men, but he could not complete a
+normal day’s task. He was going quietly to pieces, his joints wrenched loose by
+a question mark. He wasted everybody’s time, interrupting anything to ask: "But
+why? Why? How, just like that all of a sudden?"
+He saw a nurse in white uniform walking down the hall--an emergency first-aid
+station had been established on the ground floor. He saw her carrying a
+wastebasket to the incinerator, with wadded clumps of gauze, bloodstained. He
+turned away; he felt sick. It was not the sight, but the greater terror of an
+implication grasped by his instinct: this civilized building--secure in the
+neatness of waxed floors, respectable with the strict grooming of modern
+business, a place where one dealt in such rational matters as written words and
+trade contracts, where one accepted ads for baby garments and chatted about
+golf--had become, in the span of a few days, a place where one carried bloody
+refuse through the halls. Why?--thought Alvah Scarret.
+"I can’t understand it," he droned in an accentless monotone to anyone around
+him, "I can’t understand how Ellsworth got so much power....And Ellsworth’s a
+man of culture, an idealist, not a dirty radical off a soapbox, he’s so friendly
+and witty, and what an erudition!--a man who jokes all the time is not a man of
+violence--Ellsworth didn’t mean this, he didn’t know what it would lead to, he
+loves people, I’d stake my shirt on Ellsworth Toohey."
+Once, in Wynand’s office, he ventured to say:
+"Gail, why don’t you negotiate? Why don’t you meet with them at least?"
+"Shut up."
+"But, Gail, there might be a bit of truth on their side, too. They’re
+newspapermen. You know what they say, the freedom of the press..."
+Then he saw the fit of fury he had expected for days and had thought safely
+sidetracked--the blue irises vanishing in a white smear, the blind, luminous
+eyeballs in a face that was all cavities, the trembling hands. But in a moment,
+he saw what he had never witnessed before: he saw Wynand break the fit, without
+sound, without relief. He saw the sweat of the effort on the hollow temples, and
+the fists on the edge of the desk.
+"Alvah...if I had not sat on the stairs of the Gazette for a week...where would
+be the press for them to be free on?"
+There were policemen outside, and in the halls of the building. It helped, but
+not much. One night acid was thrown at the main entrance. It burned the big
+plate glass of the ground floor windows and left leprous spots on the walls.
+Sand in the bearings stopped one of the presses. An obscure delicatessen owner
+got his shop smashed for advertising in the Banner. A great many small
+advertisers withdrew. Wynand delivery trucks were wrecked. One driver was
+killed. The striking Union of Wynand Employees issued a protest against acts of
+violence; the Union had not instigated them; most of its members did not know
+575
+
+who had. The New Frontiers said something about regrettable excesses, but
+ascribed them to "spontaneous outbursts of justifiable popular anger."
+Homer Slottern, in the name of a group who called themselves the liberal
+businessmen, sent Wynand a notice canceling their advertising contracts. "You
+may sue us if you wish. We feel we have a legitimate cause for cancellation. We
+signed to advertise in a reputable newspaper, not in a sheet that has become a
+public disgrace, brings pickets to our doors, ruins our business and is not
+being read by anybody." The group included most of the Banner’s wealthiest
+advertisers.
+Gail Wynand stood at the window of his office and looked at his city.
+"I have supported strikes at a time when it was dangerous to do so. I have
+fought Gail Wynand all my life. I had never expected to see the day or the issue
+when I would be forced to say--as I say now--that I stand on the side of Gail
+Wynand," wrote Austen Heller in the Chronicle.
+Wynand sent him a note: "God damn you, I didn’t ask you to defend me. G W
+The New Frontiers described Austen Heller as "A reactionary who has sold himself
+to Big Business." Intellectual society ladies said that Austin Heller was
+old-fashioned.
+Gail Wynand stood at a desk in the city room and wrote editorials as usual. His
+derelict staff saw no change in him; no haste, no outbursts of anger. There was
+nobody to notice that some of his actions were new: he would go to the pressroom
+and stand looking at the white stream shot out of the roaring giants, and listen
+to the sound. He would pick up a lead slug off the composing room floor, and
+finger it absently on the palm of his hand, like a piece of jade, and lay it
+carefully on a table, as if he did not want it to be wasted. He fought other
+forms of such waste, not noticing it, the gestures instinctive: he retrieved
+pencils, he spent a half-hour, while telephones shrieked unanswered, repairing a
+typewriter that had broken down. It was not a matter of economy; he signed
+checks without looking at the figures; Scarret was afraid to think of the
+amounts each passing day cost him. It was a matter of things that were part of
+the building where he loved every doorknob, things that belonged to the Banner
+that belonged to him.
+Late each afternoon he telephoned Dominique in the country. "Fine. Everything
+under control. Don’t listen to panic-mongers....No, to hell with it, you know I
+don’t want to talk about the damn paper. Tell me what the garden looks
+like....Did you go swimming today?...Tell me about the lake....What dress are
+you wearing?...Listen to WLX tonight, at eight, they’ll have your
+pet--Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto....Of course I have time to keep informed
+about everything....Oh, all right, I see one can’t fool an ex-newspaper woman, I
+did go over the radio page....Of course we have plenty of help, it’s just that I
+can’t quite trust some of the new boys and I had a moment to spare....Above all,
+don’t come to town. You promised me that....Good night, dearest...."
+He hung up and sat looking at the telephone, smiling. The thought of the
+countryside was like the thought of a continent beyond an ocean that could not
+be crossed; it gave him a sense of being locked in a besieged fortress and he
+liked that--not the fact, but the feeling. His face looked like a throwback to
+some distant ancestor who had fought on the ramparts of a castle.
+One evening he went out to the restaurant across the street; he had not eaten a
+complete meal for days. The streets were still light when he came back--the
+placid brown haze of summer, as if dulled sunrays remained stretched too
+576
+
+comfortably on the warm air to undertake a movement of withdrawal, even though
+the sun had long since gone; it made the sky look fresh and the street dirty;
+there were patches of brown and tired orange in the corners of old buildings. He
+saw pickets pacing in front of the Banner’s entrance. There were eight of them
+and they marched around and around in a long oval on the sidewalk. He recognized
+one boy--a police reporter, he had never seen any of the others. They carried
+signs: "Toohey, Harding, Alien, Falk..." "The Freedom of the Press..." "Gail
+Wynand Tramples Human Rights..."
+His eyes kept following one woman. Her hips began at her ankles, bulging over
+the tight straps of her shoes; she had square shoulders and a long coat of cheap
+brown tweed over a huge square body. She had small white hands, the kind that
+would drop things all over the kitchen. She had an incision of a mouth, without
+lips, and she waddled as she moved, but she moved with surprising briskness. Her
+steps defied the whole world to hurt her, with a malicious slyness that seemed
+to say she would like nothing better, because what a joke it would be on the
+world if it tried to hurt her, just try it and see, just try it. Wynand knew she
+had never been employed on the Banner; she never could be; it did not appear
+likely that she could be taught to read; her steps seemed to add that she jolly
+well didn’t have to. She carried a sign: "We demand..."
+He thought of the nights when he had slept on the couch in the old Banner
+Building, in the first years, because the new presses had to be paid for and the
+Banner had to be on the streets before its competitors, and he coughed blood one
+night and refused to see a doctor, but it turned out to be nothing, just
+exhaustion.
+He hurried into the building. The presses were rolling. He stood and listened
+for a while.
+At night the building was quiet. It seemed bigger, as if sound took space and
+vacated it; there were panels of light at open doors, between long stretches of
+dim hallways. A lone typewriter clicked somewhere, evenly, like a dripping
+faucet. Wynand walked through the halls. He thought that men had been willing to
+work for him when he plugged known crooks for municipal elections, when he
+glamorized red-light districts, when he ruined reputations by scandalous libel,
+when he sobbed over the mothers of gangsters. Talented men, respected men had
+been eager to work for him. Now he was being honest for the first time in his
+career. He was leading his greatest crusade--with the help of finks, drifters,
+drunkards, and humble drudges too passive to quit. The guilt, he thought, was
+not perhaps with those who now refused to work for him.
+#
+The sun hit the square crystal inkstand on his desk. It made Wynand think of a
+cool drink on a lawn, white clothes, the feel of grass under bare elbows. He
+tried not to look at the gay glitter and went on writing. It was a morning in
+the second week of the strike. He had retreated to his office for an hour and
+given orders not to be disturbed; he had an article to finish; he knew he wanted
+the excuse, one hour of not seeing what went on in the building.
+The door of his office opened without announcement, and Dominique came in. She
+had not been allowed to enter the Banner Building since their marriage.
+He got up, a kind of quiet obedience in his movement, permitting himself no
+questions. She wore a coral linen suit, she stood as if the lake were behind her
+and the sunlight rose from the surface to the folds of her clothes. She said:
+"Gail, I’ve come for my old job on the Banner."
+577
+
+He stood looking at her silently; then he smiled; it was a smile of
+convalescence.
+He turned to the desk, picked up the sheets he had written, handed them to her
+and said:
+"Take this to the back room. Pick up the wire flimsies and bring them to me.
+Then report to Manning at the city desk."
+The impossible, the not to be achieved in word, glance or gesture, the complete
+union of two beings in complete understanding, was done by a small stack of
+paper passing from his hand to hers. Their fingers did not touch. She turned and
+walked out of the office.
+Within two days, it was as if she had never left the staff of the Banner. Only
+now she did not write a column on houses, but kept busy wherever a competent
+hand was needed to fill a gap. "It’s quite all right, Alvah," she said to
+Scarret, "it’s a proper feminine job to be a seamstress. I’m here to slap on
+patches where necessary--and boy! is this cloth ripping fast! Just call me when
+one of your new journalists runs amuck more than usual."
+Scarret could not understand her tone, her manner or her presence. "You’re a
+lifesaver, Dominique," he mumbled sadly. "It’s like the old days, seeing you
+here--and oh! how I wish it were the old days! Only I can’t understand. Gail
+wouldn’t allow a photo of you in the place, when it was a decent, respectable
+place--and now when it’s practically as safe as a penitentiary during a convict
+riot, he lets you work here!"
+"Can the commentaries, Alvah. We haven’t the time."
+She wrote a brilliant review of a movie she hadn’t seen. She dashed off a report
+on a convention she hadn’t attended. She batted out a string of recipes for the
+"Daily Dishes" column, when the lady in charge failed to show up one morning. "I
+didn’t know you could cook," said Scarret. "I didn’t either," said Dominique.
+She went out one night to cover a dock fire, when it was found that the only man
+on duty had passed out on the floor of the men’s room. "Good job," Wynand told
+her when he read the story, "but try that again and you’ll get fired. If you
+want to stay, you’re not to step out of the building."
+This was his only comment on her presence. He spoke to her when necessary,
+briefly and simply, as to any other employee. He gave orders. There were days
+when they did not have time to see each other. She slept on a couch in the
+library. Occasionally, in the evening, she would come to his office, for a short
+rest, when they could take it, and then they talked, about nothing in
+particular, about small events of the day’s work, gaily, like any married couple
+gossiping about the normal routine of their common life.
+They did not speak of Roark or Cortlandt. She had noticed Roark’s picture on the
+wall of his office and asked: "When did you hang that up?"
+"Over a year ago." It had been their only reference to Roark. They did not
+discuss the growing public fury against the Banner. They did not speculate on
+the future. They felt relief in forgetting the question beyond the walls of the
+building; it could be forgotten because it stood no longer as a question between
+them; it was solved and answered; what remained was the peace of the simplified:
+they had a job to do--the job of keeping a newspaper going--and they were doing
+it together.
+She would come in, unsummoned, in the middle of the night, with a cup of hot
+578
+
+coffee, and he would snatch it gratefully, not pausing in his work. He would
+find fresh sandwiches left on his desk when he needed them badly. He had no time
+to wonder where she got things. Then he discovered that she had established an
+electric plate and a stock of supplies in a closet. She cooked breakfast for
+him, when he had to work all night, she came in carrying dishes on a piece of
+cardboard for a tray, with the silence of empty streets beyond the windows and
+the first light of morning on the rooftops.
+Once he found her, broom in hand, sweeping an office; the maintenance department
+had fallen apart, charwomen appeared and disappeared, no one had time to notice.
+"Is that what I’m paying you for?" he asked.
+"Well, we can’t work in a pigsty. I haven’t asked you what you’re paying me, but
+I want a raise."
+"Drop this thing, for God’s sake! It’s ridiculous."
+"What’s ridiculous? It’s clean now. It didn’t take me long. Is it a good job?"
+"It’s a good job."
+She leaned on the broom handle and laughed. "I believe you thought, like
+everybody else, that I’m just a kind of luxury object, a high-class type of kept
+woman, didn’t you, Gail?"
+"Is this the way you can keep going when you want to?"
+"This is the way I’ve wanted to keep going all my life--if I could find a reason
+for it."
+He learned that her endurance was greater than his. She never showed a sign of
+exhaustion. He supposed that she slept, but he could not discover when.
+At any time, in any part of the building, not seeing him for hours, she was
+aware of him, she knew when he needed her most. Once, he fell asleep, slumped
+across his desk. He awakened and found her looking at him. She had turned off
+the lights, she sat on a chair by the window, in the moonlight, her face turned
+to him, calm, watching. Her face was the first thing he saw. Lifting his head
+painfully from his arm, in the first moment, before he could return fully to
+control and reality, he felt a sudden wrench of anger, helplessness and
+desperate protest, not remembering what had brought them here, to this,
+remembering only that they were both caught in some vast, slow process of
+torture and that he loved her.
+She had seen it in his face, before he had completed the movement of
+straightening his body. She walked to him, she stood by his chair, she took his
+head and let it rest against her, she held him, and he did not resist, slumped
+in her arms, she kissed his hair, she whispered: "It will be all right, Gail, it
+will be all right."
+At the end of three weeks Wynand walked out of the building one evening, not
+caring whether there would be anything left of it when he returned, and went to
+see Roark.
+He had not telephoned Roark since the beginning of the siege. Roark telephoned
+him often; Wynand answered, quietly, just answering, originating no statement,
+refusing to prolong the conversation. He had warned Roark at the beginning:
+"Don’t try to come here. I’ve given orders. You won’t be admitted." He had to
+579
+
+keep out of his mind the actual form which the issue of his battle could take;
+he had to forget the fact of Roark’s physical existence; because the thought of
+Roark’s person brought the thought of the county jail.
+He walked the long distance to the Enright House; walking made the distance
+longer and safer; a ride in a cab would pull Roark too close to the Banner
+Building. He kept his glance slanted toward a point six feet ahead of him on the
+sidewalk; he did not want to look at the city.
+"Good evening, Gail," Roark said calmly when he came in.
+"I don’t know what’s a more conspicuous form of bad discipline," said Wynand,
+throwing his hat down on a table by the door, "to blurt things right out or to
+ignore them blatantly. I look like hell. Say it."
+"You do look like hell. Sit down, rest and don’t talk. Then I’ll run you a hot
+bath--no, you don’t look that dirty, but it will be good for you for a change.
+Then we’ll talk."
+Wynand shook his head and remained standing at the door.
+"Howard, the Banner is not helping you. It’s ruining you."
+It had taken him eight weeks to prepare himself to say that.
+"Of course," said Roark. "What of it?"
+Wynand would not advance into the room.
+"Gail, it doesn’t matter, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not counting on public
+opinion, one way or the other."
+"You want me to give in?"
+"I want you to hold out if it takes everything you own."
+He saw that Wynand understood, that it was the thing Wynand had tried not to
+face, and that Wynand wanted him to speak.
+"I don’t expect you to save me. I think I have a chance to win. The strike won’t
+make it better or worse. Don’t worry about me. And don’t give in. If you stick
+to the end--you won’t need me any longer."
+He saw the look of anger, protest--and agreement. He added:
+"You know what I’m saying. We’ll be better friends than ever--and you’ll come to
+visit me in jail, if necessary. Don’t wince, and don’t make me say too much. Not
+now. I’m glad of this strike. I knew that something like that had to happen,
+when I saw you for the first time. You knew it long before that."
+"Two months ago, I promised you...the one promise I wanted to keep..."
+"You’re keeping it."
+"Don’t you really want to despise me? I wish you’d say it now. I came here to
+hear it."
+"All right. Listen. You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be
+repeated. There was Henry Cameron who died for my own cause. And you’re the
+580
+
+publisher of filthy tabloids. But I couldn’t say this to him, and I’m saying it
+to you. There’s Steve Mallory who’s never compromised with his soul. And you’ve
+done nothing but sell yours in every known way. But I couldn’t say this to him
+and I’m saying it to you. Is that what you’ve always wanted to hear from me? But
+don’t give in."
+He turned away, and added: "That’s all. We won’t talk about your damn strike
+again. Sit down, I’ll get you a drink. Rest, get yourself out of looking like
+hell."
+Wynand returned to the Banner late at night. He took a cab. It did not matter.
+He did not notice the distance.
+Dominique said, "You’ve seen Roark."
+"Yes. How do you know?"
+"Here’s the Sunday makeup. It’s fairly lousy, but it’ll have to do. I sent
+Manning home for a few hours--he was going to collapse. Jackson quit, but we can
+do without him. Alvah’s column was a mess--he can’t even keep his grammar
+straight any more--I rewrote it, but don’t tell him, tell him you did."
+"Go to sleep. I’ll take Manning’s place. I’m good for hours."
+They went on, and the days passed, and in the mailing room the piles of returns
+grew, running over into the corridor, white stacks of paper like marble slabs.
+Fewer copies of the Banner were run off with every edition, but the stacks kept
+growing. The days passed, days of heroic effort to put out a newspaper that came
+back unbought and unread.
+
+16.
+IN THE glass-smooth mahogany of the long table reserved for the board of
+directors there was a monogram in colored wood--G W--reproduced from his
+signature. It had always annoyed the directors. They had no time to notice it
+now. But an occasional glance fell upon it--and then it was a glance of
+pleasure.
+The directors sat around the table. It was the first meeting in the board’s
+history that had not been summoned by Wynand. But the meeting had convened and
+Wynand had come. The strike was in its second month.
+Wynand stood by his chair at the head of the table. He looked like a drawing
+from a men’s magazine, fastidiously groomed, a white handkerchief in the breast
+pocket of his dark suit. The directors caught themselves in peculiar thoughts:
+some thought of British tailors, others--of the House of Lords--of the Tower of
+London--of the executed English King--or was it a Chancellor?--who had died so
+well.
+They did not want to look at the man before them. They leaned upon visions of
+the pickets outside--of the perfumed, manicured women who shrieked their support
+of Ellsworth Toohey in drawing-room discussions--of the broad, flat face of a
+girl who paced Fifth Avenue with a placard "We Don’t Read Wynand"--for support
+and courage to say what they were saying.
+Wynand thought of a crumbling wall on the edge of the Hudson. He heard steps
+581
+
+approaching blocks away. Only this time there were no wires in his hand to hold
+his muscles ready.
+"It’s gone beyond all sense. Is this a business organization or a charitable
+society for the defense of personal friends?"
+"Three hundred thousand dollars last week....Never mind how I know it, Gail, no
+secret about it, your banker told me. All right, it’s your money, but if you
+expect to get that back out of the sheet, let me tell you we’re wise to your
+smart tricks. You’re not going to saddle the corporation with that one, not a
+penny of it, you don’t get away with it this time, it’s too late, Gail, the
+day’s past for your bright stunts."
+Wynand looked at the fleshy lips of the man making sounds, and thought: You’ve
+run the Banner, from the beginning, you didn’t know it, but I know, it was you,
+it was your paper, there’s nothing to save now.
+"Yes, Slottern and his bunch are willing to come back at once, all they ask is
+that we accept the Union’s demands, and they’ll pick up the balance of their
+contracts, on the old terms, even without waiting for you to rebuild
+circulation--which will be some job, friend, let me tell you--and I think that’s
+pretty white of them. I spoke to Homer yesterday and he gave me his word--care
+to hear me name the sums involved, Wynand, or do you know it without my help?"
+"No, Senator Eldridge wouldn’t see you....Aw, skip it, Gail, we know you flew to
+Washington last week. What you don’t know is that Senator Eldridge is going
+around saying he wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole. And Boss Craig
+suddenly got called out to Florida, did he?--to sit up with a sick aunt? None of
+them will pull you out of this one, Gail. This isn’t a road-paving deal or a
+little watered-stock scandal. And you ain’t what you used to be."
+Wynand thought: I never used to be, I’ve never been here, why are you afraid to
+look at me? Don’t you know that I’m the least among you? The half-naked women in
+the Sunday supplement, the babies in the rotogravure section, the editorials on
+park squirrels, they were your souls given expression, the straight stuff of
+your souls--but where was mine?
+"I’ll be damned if I can see any sense to it. Now, if they were demanding a
+raise in wages, that I could understand, I’d say fight the bastards for all
+we’re worth. But what’s this--a God-damn intellectual issue of some kind? Are we
+losing our shirts for principles or something?"
+"Don’t you understand? The Banner’s a church publication now. Mr. Gail Wynand,
+the evangelist. We’re over a barrel, but we’ve got ideals."
+"Now if it were a real issue, a political issue--but some fool dynamiter who’s
+blown up some dump! Everybody’s laughing at us. Honest, Wynand, I’ve tried to
+read your editorials and if you want my honest opinion, it’s the lousiest stuff
+ever put in print. You’d think you were writing for college professors!"
+Wynand thought: I know you--you’re the one who’d give money to a pregnant slut,
+but not to a starving genius--I’ve seen your face before--I picked you and I
+brought you in--when in doubt about your work, remember that man’s face, you’re
+writing for him--but, Mr. Wynand, one can’t remember his face--one can, child,
+one can, it will come back to remind you--it will come back and demand
+payment--and I’ll pay--I signed a blank check long ago and now it’s presented
+for collection--but a blank check is always made out to the sum of everything
+you’ve got.
+582
+
+"The situation is medieval and a disgrace to democracy." The voice whined. It
+was Mitchell Layton speaking. "It’s about time somebody had some say around
+here. One man running all those papers as he damn pleases--what is this, the
+nineteenth century?" Layton pouted; he looked somewhere in the direction of a
+banker across the table. "Has anybody here ever bothered to inquire about my
+ideas? I’ve got ideas. We’ve all got to pool ideas. What I mean is teamwork, one
+big orchestra. It’s about time this paper had a modem, liberal, progressive
+policy! For instance, take the question of the sharecroppers..."
+"Shut up, Mitch," said Alvah Scarret. Scarret had drops of sweat running down
+his temples; he didn’t know why; he wanted the board to win; there was just
+something in the room...it’s too hot in here, he thought, I wish somebody’d open
+a window.
+"I won’t shut up!" shrieked Mitchell Layton. "I’m just as good as..."
+"Please, Mr. Layton," said the banker.
+"All right," said Layton, "all right. Don’t forget who holds the biggest hunk of
+stock next to Superman here." He jerked his thumb at Wynand, not looking at him.
+"Just don’t forget it. Just you guess who’s going to run things around here."
+"Gail," said Alvah Scarret, looking up at Wynand, his eyes strangely honest and
+tortured, "Gail, it’s no use. But we can save the pieces. Look, if we just admit
+that we were wrong about Cortlandt and...and if we just take Harding back, he’s
+a valuable man, and...maybe Toohey..."
+"No one is to mention the name of Toohey in this discussion," said Wynand.
+Mitchell Layton snapped his mouth open and dropped it shut again.
+"That’s it, Gail!" cried Alvah Scarret. "That’s great! We can bargain and make
+them an offer. We’ll reverse our policy on Cortlandt--that, we’ve got to, not
+for the damn Union, but we’ve got to rebuild circulation, Gail--so we’ll offer
+them that and we’ll take Harding, Alien and Falk, but not To...not Ellsworth. We
+give in and they give in. Saves everybody’s face. Is that it, Gail?"
+Wynand said nothing.
+"I think that’s it, Mr. Scarret," said the banker. "I think that’s the solution.
+After all, Mr. Wynand must be allowed to maintain his prestige. We can
+sacrifice...a columnist and keep peace among ourselves."
+"I don’t see it!" yelled Mitchell Layton. "I don’t see it at all! Why should we
+sacrifice Mr....a great liberal, just because..."
+"I stand with Mr. Scarret," said the man who had spoken of Senators, and the
+voices of the others seconded him, and the man who had criticized the editorials
+said suddenly, in the general noise: "I think Gail Wynand was a hell of a swell
+boss after all!" There was something about Mitchell Layton which he didn’t want
+to see. Now he looked at Wynand, for protection. Wynand did not notice him.
+"Gail?" asked Scarret. "Gail, what do you say?" There was no answer.
+"God damn it, Wynand, it’s now or never! This can’t go on!"
+"Make up your mind or get out!"
+"I’ll buy you out!" shrieked Layton. "Want to sell? Want to sell and get the
+583
+
+hell out of it?"
+"For God’s sake, Wynand, don’t be a fool!"
+"Gail, it’s the Banner..." whispered Scarret. "It’s our Banner...."
+"We’ll stand by you, Gail, we’ll all chip in, we’ll pull the old paper back on
+its feet, we’ll do as you say, you’ll be the boss--but for God’s sake, act like
+a boss now!"
+"Quiet, gentlemen, quiet! Wynand, this is final: we switch policy on Cortlandt,
+we take Harding, Alien and Falk back, and we save the wreck. Yes or no?"
+There was no answer.
+"Wynand, you know it’s that--or you have to close the Banner. You can’t keep
+this up, even if you bought us all out. Give in or close the Banner. You had
+better give in."
+Wynand heard that. He had heard it through all the speeches. He had heard it for
+days before the meeting. He knew it better than any man present. Close the
+Banner.
+He saw a single picture: the new masthead rising over the door of the Gazette.
+"You had better give in."
+He made a step back. It was not a wall behind him. It was only the side of his
+chair.
+He thought of the moment in his bedroom when he had almost pulled a trigger. He
+knew he was pulling it now.
+"All right," he said.
+#
+It’s only a bottle cap, thought Wynand looking down at a speck of glitter under
+his feet; a bottle cap ground into the pavement. The pavements of New York are
+full of things like that--bottle caps, safety pins, campaign buttons, sink
+chains; sometimes--lost jewels; it’s all alike now, flattened, ground in; it
+makes the pavements sparkle at night. The fertilizer of a city. Someone drank
+the bottle empty and threw the cap away. How many cars have passed over it?
+Could one retrieve it now? Could one kneel and dig with bare hands and tear it
+out again? I had no right to hope for escape. I had no right to kneel and seek
+redemption. Millions of years ago, when the earth was being born, there were
+living things like me: flies caught in resin that became amber, animals caught
+in ooze that became rock. I am a man of the twentieth century and I became a bit
+of tin in the pavements, for the trucks of New York to roll over.
+He walked slowly, the collar of his topcoat raised. The street stretched before
+him, empty, and the buildings ahead were like the backs of books lining a shelf,
+assembled without order, of all sizes. The comers he passed led to black
+channels; street lamps gave the city a protective cover, but it cracked in
+spots. He turned a corner when he saw a slant of light ahead; it was a goal for
+three or four blocks.
+The light came from the window of a pawnshop. The shop was closed, but a glaring
+bulb hung there to discourage looters who might be reduced to this. He stopped
+and looked at it. He thought, the most indecent sight on earth, a pawnshop
+584
+
+window. The things which had been sacred to men, and the things which had been
+precious, surrendered to the sight of all, to the pawing and the bargaining,
+trash to the indifferent eyes of strangers, the equality of a junk heap,
+typewriters and violins--the tools of dreams, old photographs and wedding
+rings--the tags of love, together with soiled trousers, coffee pots, ash trays,
+pornographic plaster figures; the refuse of despair, pledged, not sold, not cut
+off in clean finality, but hocked to a stillborn hope, never to be redeemed.
+"Hello, Gail Wynand," he said to the things in the window, and walked on.
+He felt an iron grate under his feet and an odor struck him in the face, an odor
+of dust, sweat and dirty clothing, worse than the smell of stockyards, because
+it had a homey, normal quality, like decomposition made routine. The grating of
+a subway. He thought, this is the residue of many people put together, of human
+bodies pressed into a mass, with no space to move, with no air to breathe. This
+is the sum, even though down there, among the packed flesh, one can find the
+smell of starched white dresses, of clean hair, of healthy young skin. Such is
+the nature of sums and of quests for the lowest common denominator. What, then,
+is the residue of many human minds put together, unaired, unspaced,
+undifferentiated? The Banner, he thought, and walked on.
+My city, he thought, the city I loved, the city I thought I ruled.
+He had walked out of the board meeting, he had said: "Take over, Alvah, until I
+come back." He had not stopped to see Manning drunk with exhaustion at the city
+desk, nor the people in the city room, still functioning, waiting, knowing what
+was being decided in the board room; nor Dominique. Scarret would tell them. He
+had walked out of the building and gone to his penthouse and sat alone in the
+bedroom without windows. Nobody had come to disturb him.
+When he left the penthouse, it was safe to go out: it was dark. He passed a
+newsstand and saw late editions of the afternoon papers announcing the
+settlement of the Wynand strike. The Union had accepted Scarret’s compromise. He
+knew that Scarret would take care of all the rest. Scarret would replate the
+front page of tomorrow’s Banner. Scarret would write the editorial that would
+appear on the front page. He thought, the presses are rolling right now.
+Tomorrow morning’s Banner will be out on the streets in an hour.
+He walked at random. He owned nothing, but he was owned by any part of the city.
+It was right that the city should now direct his way and that he should be moved
+by the pull of chance corners. Here I am, my masters, I am coming to salute you
+and acknowledge, wherever you want me, I shall go as I’m told. I’m the man who
+wanted power.
+That woman sitting on the stoop of an old brownstone house, her fat white knees
+spread apart--the man pushing the white brocade of his stomach out of a cab in
+front of a great hotel--the little man sipping root beer at a drugstore
+counter--the woman leaning over a stained mattress on the sill of a tenement
+window--the taxi driver parked on a corner--the lady with orchids, drunk at the
+table of a sidewalk cafe--the toothless woman selling chewing gum--the man in
+shirt sleeves, leaning against the door of a poolroom--they are my masters. My
+owners, my rulers without a face.
+Stand here, he thought, and count the lighted windows of a city. You cannot do
+it But behind each yellow rectangle that climbs, one over another, to the
+sky--under each bulb--down to there, see that spark over the river which is not
+a star?--there are people whom you will never see and who are your masters. At
+the supper tables, in the drawing rooms, in their beds and in their cellars, in
+their studies and in their bathrooms. Speeding in the subways under your feet.
+Crawling up in elevators through vertical cracks around you. Jolting past you in
+585
+
+every bus. Your masters, Gail Wynand. There is a net--longer than the cables
+that coil through the walls of this city, larger than the mesh of pipes that
+carry water, gas and refuse--there is another hidden net around you; it is
+strapped to you, and the wires lead to every hand in the city. They jerked the
+wires and you moved. You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only
+a rope with a noose at both ends.
+My masters, the anonymous, the unselected. They gave me a penthouse, an office,
+a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, I
+sold Howard Roark.
+He walked past an open marble court, a cave cut deep into a building, filled
+with light, spurting the sudden cold of air-conditioning. It was a movie theater
+and the marquee had letters made of rainbows: Romeo and Juliet. A placard stood
+by the glass column of the box office: "Bill Shakespeare’s immortal classic! But
+there’s nothing highbrow about it! Just a simple human love story. A boy from
+the Bronx meets a girl from Brooklyn. Just like the folks next door. Just like
+you and me."
+He walked past the door of a saloon. There was a smell of stale beer. A woman
+sat slumped, breasts flattened against the table top. A juke box played Wagner’s
+"Song to the Evening Star," adapted, in swing time.
+He saw the trees of Central Park. He walked, his eyes lowered. He was passing by
+the Aquitania Hotel.
+He came to a corner. He had escaped other corners like it, but this one caught
+him. It was a dim corner, a slice of sidewalk trapped between the wall of a
+closed garage and the pillars of an elevated station. He saw the rear end of a
+truck disappearing down the street. He had not seen the name on it, but he knew
+what truck it was. A newsstand crouched under the iron stairs of the elevated.
+He moved his eyes slowly. The fresh pile was there, spread out for him.
+Tomorrow’s Banner.
+He did not come closer. He stood, waiting. He thought, I still have a few
+minutes in which not to know.
+He saw faceless people stopping at the stand, one after another. They came for
+different papers, but they bought the Banner also, when they noticed its front
+page. He stood pressed to the wall, waiting. He thought, it is right that I
+should be the last to learn what I have said.
+Then he could delay no longer: no customers came, the stand stood deserted,
+papers spread in the yellow light of a bulb, waiting for him. He could see no
+vendor in the black hovel beyond the bulb. The street was empty. A long corridor
+filled by the skeleton of the elevated. Stone paving, blotched walls, the
+interlacing of iron pillars. There were lighted windows, but they looked as if
+no people moved inside the walls. A train thundered over his head, a long roll
+of clangor that went shuddering down the pillars into the earth. It looked like
+an aggregation of metal rushing without human driver through the night.
+He waited for the sound to die, then he walked to the stand. "The Banner," he
+said. He did not see who sold him the paper, whether it was a man or a woman. He
+saw only a gnarled brown hand pushing the copy forward.
+He started walking away, but stopped while crossing the street. There was a
+picture of Roark on the front page. It was a good picture. The calm face, the
+sharp cheekbones, the implacable mouth. He read the editorial, leaning against a
+pillar of the elevated.
+586
+
+"We have always endeavored to give our readers the truth without fear or
+prejudice...
+"...charitable consideration and the benefit of the doubt even to a man charged
+with an outrageous crime...
+"...but after conscientious investigation and in the light of new evidence
+placed before us, we find ourselves obliged honestly to admit that we might have
+been too lenient...
+"...A society awakened to a new sense of responsibility toward the
+underprivileged..."...We join the voice of public opinion..."...The past, the
+career, the personality of Howard Roark seem to support the widespread
+impression that he is a reprehensible character, a dangerous, unprincipled,
+antisocial type of man...
+"...If found guilty, as seems inevitable, Howard Roark must be made to bear the
+fullest penalty the law can impose on him." It was signed "Gail Wynand."
+When he looked up, he was in a brightly lighted street, on a trim sidewalk,
+looking at a wax figure exquisitely contorted on a satin chaise longue in a shop
+window; the figure wore a salmon-colored negligee, lucite sandals and a string
+of pearls suspended from one raised finger.
+He did not know when he had dropped the paper. It was not in his hands any
+longer. He glanced back. It would be impossible to find a discarded paper lying
+on some street he did not know he had passed. He thought, what for? There are
+other papers like it The city is full of them.
+"You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated..."
+Howard, I wrote that editorial forty years ago. I wrote it one night when I was
+sixteen and stood on the roof of a tenement
+He walked on. Another street lay before him, a sudden cut of long emptiness and
+a chain of green traffic lights strung out to the horizon. Like a rosary without
+end. He thought, now walk from green bead to green bead. He thought, these are
+not the words; but the words kept ringing with his steps: Mea culpa--mea
+culpa--mea maxima culpa.
+He went past a window of old shoes corroded by wear--past the door of a mission
+with a cross above it--past the peeling poster of a political candidate who ran
+two years ago--past a grocery store with barrels of rotting greens on the
+sidewalk. The streets were contracting, walls drawing closer together. He could
+smell the odor of the river, and there were wads of fog over the rare lights.
+He was in Hell’s Kitchen.
+The facades of the buildings around him were like the walls of secret backyards
+suddenly exposed: decay without reticence, past the need of privacy or shame. He
+heard shrieks coming from a saloon on a corner; he could not tell whether it was
+joy or brawling.
+He stood in the middle of a street. He looked slowly down the mouth of every
+dark crevice, up the streaked walls, to the windows, to the roofs.
+I never got out of here.
+587
+
+I never got out. I surrendered to the grocery man--to the deck hands on the
+ferryboat--to the owner of the poolroom. You don’t run things around here. You
+don’t run things around here. You’ve never run things anywhere, Gail Wynand.
+You’ve only added yourself to the things they ran.
+Then he looked up, across the city, to the shapes of the great skyscrapers. He
+saw a string of lights rising unsupported in black space, a glowing pinnacle
+anchored to nothing, a small, brilliant square hanging detached in the sky. He
+knew the famous buildings to which these belonged, he could reconstruct their
+forms in space. He thought, you’re my judges and witnesses. You rise,
+unhindered, above the sagging roofs. You shoot your gracious tension to the
+stars, out of the slack, the tired, the accidental. The eyes one mile out on the
+ocean will see none of this and none of this will matter, but you will be the
+presence and the city. As down the centuries, a few men stand in lonely
+rectitude that we may look and say, there is a human race behind us. One can’t
+escape from you; the streets change, but one looks up and there you stand,
+unchanged. You have seen me walking through the streets tonight. You have seen
+all my steps and all my years. It’s you that I’ve betrayed. For I was born to be
+one of you.
+He walked on. It was late. Circles of light lay undisturbed on the empty
+sidewalks under the lampposts. The horns of taxis shrieked once in a while like
+doorbells ringing through the corridors of a vacant interior. He saw discarded
+newspapers, as he passed: on the pavements, on park benches, in the wire
+trash-baskets on corners. Many of them were the Banner. Many copies of the
+Banner had been read in the city tonight. He thought, we’re building
+circulation, Alvah.
+He stopped. He saw a paper spread out in the gutter before him, front page up.
+It was the Banner. He saw Roark’s picture. He saw the gray print of a rubber
+heel across Roark’s face.
+He bent, his body folding itself down slowly, with both knees, both arms, and
+picked up the paper. He folded the front page and put it in his pocket. He
+walked on.
+An unknown rubber heel, somewhere in the city, on an unknown foot that I
+released to march.
+I released them all. I made every one of those who destroyed me. There is a
+beast on earth, dammed safely by its own impotence. I broke the dam. They would
+have remained helpless. They can produce nothing. I gave them the weapon. I gave
+them my strength, my energy, my living power. I created a great voice and let
+them dictate the words. The woman who threw the beet leaves in my face had a
+right to do it. I made it possible for her.
+Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the
+courage of their own greatness. Alvah Scarret can be forgiven. He had nothing to
+betray. Mitchell Layton can be forgiven. But not I. I was not born to be a
+second-hander.
+
+17.
+IT WAS a summer day, cloudless and cool, as if the sun were screened by an
+invisible film of water, and the energy of heat had been transformed into a
+sharper clarity, an added brilliance of outline for the buildings of the city.
+588
+
+In the streets, scattered like scraps of gray foam, there were a great many
+copies of the Banner. The city read, chuckling, the statement of Wynand’s
+renunciation.
+"That’s that," said Gus Webb, chairman of the "We Don’t Read Wynand" Committee.
+"It’s slick," said Ike. "I’d like one peek, just one peek, at the great Mr. Gail
+Wynand’s face today," said Sally Brent. "It’s about time," said Homer Slottern.
+"Isn’t it splendid? Wynand’s surrendered," said a tight-lipped woman; she knew
+little about Wynand and nothing about the issue, but she liked to hear of people
+surrendering. In a kitchen, after dinner, a fat woman scraped the remnants off
+the dishes onto a sheet of newspaper; she never read the front page, only the
+installments of a love serial in the second section; she wrapped onion peelings
+and lamb-chop bones in a copy of the Banner.
+"It’s stupendous," said Lancelot Clokey, "only I’m really sore at that Union,
+Ellsworth. How could they double-cross you like that?"
+"Don’t be a sap, Lance," said Ellsworth Toohey. "What do you mean?"
+"I told them to accept the terms."
+"You did?"
+"Yep."
+"But Jesus! ’One Small Voice’..."
+"You can wait for ’One Small Voice’ another month or so, can’t you? I’ve filed
+suit with the labor board today, to be reinstated in my job on the Banner. There
+are more ways than one to skin a cat, Lance. The skinning isn’t important once
+you’ve broken its spine."
+That evening Roark pressed the bell button at the door of Wynand’s penthouse.
+The butler opened the door and said: "Mr. Wynand cannot see you, Mr. Roark."
+From the sidewalk across the street Roark looked up and saw a square of light
+high over the roofs, in the window of Wynand’s study.
+In the morning Roark came to Wynand’s office in the Banner Building. Wynand’s
+secretary told him: "Mr. Wynand cannot see you, Mr. Roark." She added, her voice
+polite, disciplined: "Mr. Wynand has asked me to tell you that he does not wish
+ever to see you again."
+Roark wrote him a long letter: "...Gail, I know. I hoped you could escape it,
+but since it had to happen, start again from where you are. I know what you’re
+doing to yourself. You’re not doing it for my sake, it’s not up to me, but if
+this will help you I want to say that I’m repeating, now, everything I’ve ever
+said to you. Nothing has changed for me. You’re still what you were. I’m not
+saying that I forgive you, because there can be no such question between us. But
+if you can’t forgive yourself, will you let me do it? Let me say that it doesn’t
+matter, it’s not the final verdict on you. Give me the right to let you forget
+it. Go on just on my faith until you’ve recovered. I know it’s something no man
+can do for another, but if I am what I’ve been to you, you’ll accept it. Call it
+a blood transfusion. You need it. Take it. It’s harder than fighting that
+strike. Do it for my sake, if that will help you. But do it. Come back. There
+will be another chance. What you think you’ve lost can neither be lost nor
+found. Don’t let it go."
+The letter came back to Roark, unopened.
+589
+
+Alvah Scarret ran the Banner. Wynand sat in his office. He had removed Roark’s
+picture from the wall. He attended to advertising contracts, expenses, accounts.
+Scarret took care of the editorial policy. Wynand did not read the contents of
+the Banner.
+When Wynand appeared in any department of the building, the employees obeyed him
+as they had obeyed him before. He was still a machine and they knew that it was
+a machine more dangerous than ever: a car running downhill, without combustion
+or brakes.
+He slept in his penthouse. He had not seen Dominique. Scarret had told him that
+she had gone back to the country. Once Wynand ordered his secretary to telephone
+Connecticut. He stood by her desk while she asked the butler whether Mrs. Wynand
+was there. The butler answered that she was. The secretary hung up and Wynand
+went back to his office.
+He thought he would give himself a few days. Then he’d return to Dominique.
+Their marriage would be what she had wanted it to be at first--"Mrs.
+Wynand-Papers." He would accept it.
+Wait, he thought in an agony of impatience, wait. You must learn to face her as
+you are now. Train yourself to be a beggar. There must be no pretense at things
+to which you have no right. No equality, no resistance, no pride in holding your
+strength against hers. Only acceptance now. Stand before her as a man who can
+give her nothing, who will live on what she chooses to grant him. It will be
+contempt, but it will come from her and it will be a bond. Show her that you
+recognize this. There is a kind of dignity in a renunciation of dignity openly
+admitted. Learn it. Wait....He sat in the study of his penthouse, his head on
+the arm of his chair. There were no witnesses in the empty rooms around
+him....Dominique, he thought, I will have no claim to make except that I need
+you so much. And that I love you. I told you once not to consider it. Now I’ll
+use it as a tin cup. But I’ll use it. I love you....
+Dominique lay stretched out on the shore of the lake. She looked at the house on
+the hill, at the tree branches above her. Flat on her back, hands crossed under
+her head, she studied the motion of leaves against the sky. It was an earnest
+occupation, giving her full contentment. She thought, it’s a lovely kind of
+green, there’s a difference between the color of plants and the color of
+objects, this has light in it, this is not just green, but also the living force
+of the tree made visible, I don’t have to look down, I can see the branches, the
+trunk, the roots just by looking at that color. That fire around the edges is
+the sun, I don’t have to see it, I can tell what the whole countryside looks
+like today. The spots of light weaving in circles--that’s the lake, the special
+kind of light that comes refracted from water, the lake is beautiful today, and
+it’s better not to see it, just to guess by these spots. I have never been able
+to enjoy it before, the sight of the earth, it’s such great background, but it
+has no meaning except as a background, and I thought of those who owned it and
+then it hurt me too much. I can love it now. They don’t own it. They own
+nothing. They’ve never won. I have seen the life of Gail Wynand, and now I know.
+One cannot hate the earth in their name. The earth is beautiful. And it is a
+background, but not theirs.
+She knew what she had to do. But she would give herself a few days. She thought,
+I’ve learned to bear anything except happiness. I must learn how to carry it.
+How not to break under it. It’s the only discipline I’ll need from now on.
+#
+Roark stood at the window of his house in Monadnock Valley. He had rented the
+house for the summer; he went there when he wanted loneliness and rest. It was a
+590
+
+quiet evening. The window opened on a small ledge in a frame of trees, hanging
+against the sky. A strip of sunset light stretched above the dark treetops. He
+knew that there were houses below, but they could not be seen. He was as
+grateful as any other tenant for the way in which he had built this place.
+He heard the sound of a car approaching up the road at the other side. He
+listened, astonished. He expected no guests. The car stopped. He walked to open
+the door. He felt no astonishment when he saw Dominique.
+She came in as if she had left this house half an hour ago. She wore no hat, no
+stockings, just sandals and a dress intended for back country roads, a narrow
+sheath of dark blue linen with short sleeves, like a smock for gardening. She
+did not look as if she had driven across three states, but as if she were
+returning from a walk down the hill. He knew that this was to be the solemnity
+of the moment--that it needed no solemnity; it was not to be stressed and set
+apart, it was not this particular evening, but the completed meaning of seven
+years behind them.
+"Howard."
+He stood as if he were looking at the sound of his name in the room. He had all
+he had wanted.
+But there was one thought that remained as pain, even now. He said:
+"Dominique, wait till he recovers."
+"You know he won’t recover."
+"Have a little pity on him."
+"Don’t speak their language."
+"He had no choice."
+"He could have closed the paper."
+"It was his life."
+"This is mine."
+He did not know that Wynand had once said all love is exception-making; and
+Wynand would not know that Roark had loved him enough to make his greatest
+exception, one moment when he had tried to compromise. Then he knew it was
+useless, like all sacrifices. What he said was his signature under her decision:
+"I love you."
+She looked about the room, to let the ordinary reality of walls and chairs help
+her keep the discipline she had been learning for this moment. The walls he had
+designed, the chairs he used, a package of his cigarettes on a table, the
+routine necessities of life that could acquire splendor when life became what it
+was now.
+"Howard, I know what you intend to do at the trial. So it won’t make any
+difference if they learn the truth about us."
+"It won’t make any difference."
+591
+
+"When you came that night and told me about Cortlandt, I didn’t try to stop you.
+I knew you had to do it, it was your time to set the terms on which you could go
+on. This is my time. My Cortlandt explosion. You must let me do it my way. Don’t
+question me. Don’t protect me. No matter what I do."
+"I know what you’ll do."
+"You know that I have to?"
+"Yes."
+She bent one arm from the elbow, fingers lifted, in a short, backward jolt, as
+if tossing the subject over her shoulder. It was settled and not to be
+discussed.
+She turned away from him, she walked across the room, to let the casual ease of
+her steps make this her home, to state that his presence was to be the rule for
+ail her coming days and she had no need to do what she wanted most at this
+moment: stand and look at him. She knew also what she was delaying, because she
+was not ready and would never be ready. She stretched her hand out for his
+package of cigarettes on the table.
+His fingers closed over her wrist and he pulled her hand back. He pulled her
+around to face him, and then he held her and his mouth was on hers. She knew
+that every moment of seven years when she had wanted this and stopped the pain
+and thought she had won, was not past, had never been stopped, had lived on,
+stored, adding hunger to hunger, and now she had to feel it all, the touch of
+his body, the answer and the waiting together.
+She didn’t know whether her discipline had helped; not too well, she thought,
+because she saw that he had lifted her in his arms, carried her to a chair and
+sat down, holding her on his knees; he laughed without sound, as he would have
+laughed at a child, but the firmness of his hands holding her showed concern and
+a kind of steadying caution. Then it seemed simple, she had nothing to hide from
+him, she whispered: "Yes, Howard...that much..." and he said: "It was very hard
+for me--all these years." And the years were ended.
+She slipped down, to sit on the floor, her elbows propped on his knees, she
+looked up at him and smiled, she knew that she could not have reached this white
+serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
+"Howard...willingly, completely, and always...without reservations, without fear
+of anything they can do to you or me...in any way you wish...as your wife or
+your mistress, secretly or openly...here, or in a furnished room I’ll take in
+some town near a jail where I’ll see you through a wire net...it won’t
+matter....Howard, if you win the trial--even that won’t matter too much. You’ve
+won long ago....I’ll remain what I am, and I’ll remain with you--now and
+ever--in any way you want...."
+He held her hands in his, she saw his shoulders sagging down to her, she saw him
+helpless, surrendered to this moment, as she was--and she knew that even pain
+can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the
+witness, yet they could let each other see it without need of protection. It was
+growing dark, the room was indistinguishable, only the window remained and his
+shoulders against the sky in the window.
+She awakened with the sun in her eyes. She lay on her back, looking at the
+ceiling as she had looked at the leaves. Not to move, to guess by hints, to see
+everything through the greater intensity of implication. The broken triangles of
+light on the angular modeling of the ceiling’s plastic tiles meant that it was
+592
+
+morning and that this was a bedroom at Monadnock, the geometry of fire and
+structure above her designed by him. The fire was white--that meant it was very
+early and the rays came through clean country air, with nothing anywhere in
+space between this bedroom and the sun. The weight of the blanket, heavy and
+intimate on her naked body, was everything that had been last night. And the
+skin she felt against her arm was Roark asleep beside her.
+She slipped out of bed. She stood at the window, her arms raised, holding on to
+the frame at each side. She thought if she looked back she would see no shadow
+of her body on the floor, she felt as if the sunlight went straight through her,
+because her body had no weight.
+But she had to hurry before he awakened. She found his pyjamas in a dresser
+drawer and put them on. She went to the living room, closing the door carefully
+behind her. She picked up the telephone and asked for the nearest sheriff’s
+office.
+"This is Mrs. Gail Wynand," she said. "I am speaking from the house of Mr.
+Howard Roark at Monadnock Valley. I wish to report that my star-sapphire ring
+was stolen here last night....About five thousand dollars....It was a present
+from Mr. Roark....Can you get here within an hour?...Thank you."
+She went to the kitchen, made coffee and stood watching the glow of the electric
+coil under the coffee pot, thinking that it was the most beautiful light on
+earth.
+She set the table by the large window in the living room. He came out, wearing
+nothing but a dressing gown, and laughed at the sight of her in his pyjamas. She
+said: "Don’t dress. Sit down. Let’s have breakfast."
+They were finishing when they heard the sound of the car stopping outside. She
+smiled and walked to open the door.
+There were a sheriff, a deputy and two reporters from local papers.
+"Good morning," said Dominique. "Come in."
+"Mrs....Wynand?" said the sheriff.
+"That’s right. Mrs. Gail Wynand. Come in. Sit down."
+In the ludicrous folds of the pyjamas, with dark cloth bulging over a belt wound
+tightly, with sleeves hanging over her fingertips, she had all the poised
+elegance she displayed in her best hostess gown. She was the only one who seemed
+to find nothing unusual in the situation.
+The sheriff held a notebook as if he did not know what to do with it. She helped
+him to find the right questions and answered them precisely like a good
+newspaper woman.
+"It was a star-sapphire ring set in platinum. I took it off and left it here, on
+this table, next to my purse, before going to bed....It was about ten o’clock
+last night....When I got up this morning, it was gone....Yes, this window was
+open....No, we didn’t hear anything....No, it was not insured, I have not had
+the time, Mr. Roark gave it to me recently....No, there are no servants here and
+no other guests....Yes, please look through the house....Living room, bedroom,
+bathroom and kitchen....Yes, of course, you may look too, gentlemen. The press,
+I believe? Do you wish to ask me any questions?"
+593
+
+There were no questions to ask. The story was complete. The reporters had never
+seen a story of this nature offered in this manner.
+She tried not to look at Roark after her first glance at his face. But he kept
+his promise. He did not try to stop her or protect her. When questioned, he
+answered, enough to support her statements.
+Then the men departed. They seemed glad to leave. Even the sheriff knew that he
+would not have to conduct a search for that ring.
+Dominique said:
+"I’m sorry. I know it was terrible for you. But it was the only way to get it
+into the papers."
+"You should have told me which one of your star sapphires I gave you."
+"I’ve never had any. I don’t like star sapphires."
+"That was a more thorough job of dynamiting than Cortlandt."
+"Yes. Now Gail is blasted over to the side where he belongs. So he thinks you’re
+an ’unprincipled, antisocial type of man’? Now let him see the Banner smearing
+me also. Why should he be spared that? Sorry. Howard, I don’t have your sense of
+mercy. I’ve read that editorial. Don’t comment on this. Don’t say anything about
+self-sacrifice or I’ll break and...and I’m not quite as strong as that sheriff
+is probably thinking. I didn’t do it for you. I’ve made it worse for you--I’ve
+added scandal to everything else they’ll throw at you. But, Howard, now we stand
+together--against all of them. You’ll be a convict and I’ll be an adulteress.
+Howard, do you remember that I was afraid to share you with lunch wagons and
+strangers’ windows? Now I’m not afraid to have this past night smeared all over
+their newspapers. My darling, do you see why I’m happy and why I’m free?"
+He said:
+"I’ll never remind you afterward that you’re crying, Dominique."
+#
+The story, including the pyjamas, the dressing gown, the breakfast table and the
+single bed, was in all the afternoon papers of New York that day.
+Alvah Scarret walked into Wynand’s office and threw a newspaper down on his
+desk. Scarret had never discovered how much he loved Wynand, until now, and he
+was so hurt that he could express it only in furious abuse. He gulped:
+"God damn you, you blasted fool! It serves you right! It serves you right and
+I’m glad, damn your witless soul! Now what are we going to do?"
+Wynand read the story and sat looking at the paper. Scarret stood before the
+desk. Nothing happened. It was just an office, a man sat at a desk holding a
+newspaper. He saw Wynand’s hands, one at each side of the sheet, and the hands
+were still. No, he thought, normally a man would not be able to hold his hands
+like that, lifted and unsupported, without a tremor.
+Wynand raised his head. Scarret could discover nothing in his eyes, except a
+kind of mild astonishment, as if Wynand were wondering what Scarret was doing
+here. Then, in terror, Scarret whispered:
+"Gail, what are we going to do?"
+594
+
+"We’ll run it," said Wynand. "It’s news."
+"But...how?"
+"In any way you wish."
+Scarret’s voice leaped ahead, because he knew it was now or never, he would not
+have the courage to attempt this again; and because he was caught here, he was
+afraid to back toward the door.
+"Gail, you must divorce her." He found himself still standing there, and he went
+on, not looking at Wynand, screaming in order to get it said: "Gail, you’ve got
+no choice now! You’ve got to keep what’s left of your reputation! You’ve got to
+divorce her and it’s you who must file the suit!"
+"All right."
+"Will you? At once? Will you let Paul file the papers at once?"
+"All right."
+Scarret hurried out of the room. He rushed to his own office, slammed the door,
+seized the telephone and called Wynand’s lawyer. He explained and went on
+repeating: "Drop everything and file it now, Paul, now, today, hurry, Paul,
+before he changes his mind!"
+Wynand drove to his country house. Dominique was there, waiting for him.
+She stood up when he entered her room. She stepped forward, so that there would
+be no furniture between them; she wished him to see her whole body. He stood
+across the empty space and looked at her as if he were observing them both at
+once, an impartial spectator who saw Dominique and a man facing her, but no Gail
+Wynand.
+She waited, but he said nothing.
+"Well, I’ve given you a story that will build circulation, Gail."
+He had heard, but he looked as if nothing of the present were relevant. He
+looked like a bank teller balancing a stranger’s account that had been overdrawn
+and had to be closed. He said:
+"I would like only to know this, if you’ll tell me: that was the first time
+since our marriage?"
+"Yes."
+"But it was not the first time?"
+"No. He was the first man who had me."
+"I think I should have understood. You married Peter Keating. Right after the
+Stoddard trial."
+"Do you wish to ’know everything? I want to tell you. I met him when he was
+working in a granite quarry. Why not? You’ll put him in a chain gang or a jute
+mill. He was working in a quarry. He didn’t ask my consent. He raped me. That’s
+how it began. Want to use it? Want to run it in the Banner?"
+595
+
+"He loved you."
+"Yes."
+"Yet he built this house for us."
+"Yes."
+"I only wanted to know."
+He turned to leave.
+"God damn you!" she cried. "If you can take it like this, you had no right to
+become what you became!"
+"That’s why I’m taking it."
+He walked out of the room. He closed the door softly.
+Guy Francon telephoned Dominique that evening. Since his retirement he had lived
+alone on his country estate near the quarry town. She had refused to answer
+calls today, but she took the receiver when the maid told her that it was Mr.
+Francon. Instead of the fury she expected, she heard a gentle voice saying:
+"Hello, Dominique."
+"Hello, Father."
+"You’re going to leave Wynand now?"
+"Yes."
+"You shouldn’t move to the city. It’s not necessary. Don’t overdo it. Come and
+stay here with me. Until...the Cortlandt trial."
+The things he had not said and the quality of his voice, firm, simple and with a
+note that sounded close to happiness, made her answer, after a moment:
+"All right, Father." It was a girl’s voice, a daughter’s voice, with a tired,
+trusting, wistful gaiety. "I’ll get there about midnight. Have a glass of milk
+for me and some sandwiches."
+"Try not to speed as you always do. The roads aren’t too good."
+When she arrived, Guy Francon met her at the door. They both smiled, and she
+knew that there would be no questions, no reproaches. He led her to the small
+morning room where he had set the food on a table by a window open to a dark
+lawn. There was a smell of grass, candles on the table and a bunch of jasmine in
+a silver bowl.
+She sat, her fingers closed about a cold glass, and he sat across the table,
+munching a sandwich peacefully.
+"Want to talk, Father?"
+"No. I want you to drink your milk and go to bed."
+"All right."
+596
+
+He picked up an olive and sat studying it thoughtfully, twisting it on a colored
+toothpick. Then he glanced up at her.
+"Look, Dominique. I can’t attempt to understand it all. But I know this
+much--that it’s the right thing for you. This time, it’s the right man."
+"Yes, Father."
+"That’s why I’m glad."
+She nodded.
+"Tell Mr. Roark that he can come here any time he wants."
+She smiled. ’Tell whom, Father?"
+"Tell...Howard."
+Her arm lay on the table; her head dropped down on her arm. He looked at the
+gold hair in the candlelight. She said, because it was easier to control a
+voice: "Don’t let me fall asleep here. I’m tired."
+But he answered:
+"He’ll be acquitted, Dominique."
+#
+All the newspapers of New York were brought to Wynand’s office each day, as he
+had ordered. He read every word of what was written and whispered in town.
+Everybody knew that the story had been a self-frame-up; the wife of a
+multimillionaire would not report the loss of a five-thousand-dollar ring in the
+circumstances; but this did not prevent anyone from accepting the story as given
+and commenting accordingly. The most offensive comments were spread on the pages
+of the Banner.
+Alvah Scarret had found a crusade to which he devoted himself with the truest
+fervor he had ever experienced. He felt that it was his atonement for any
+disloyalty he might have committed toward Wynand in the past. He saw a way to
+redeem Wynand’s name. He set out to sell Wynand to the public as the victim of a
+great passion for a depraved woman; it was Dominique who had forced her husband
+to champion an immoral cause, against his better judgment; she had almost
+wrecked her husband’s paper, his standing, his reputation, the achievement of
+his whole life--for the sake of her lover. Scarret begged readers to forgive
+Wynand--a tragic, self-sacrificing love was his justification. It was an inverse
+ratio in Scarret’s calculations: every filthy adjective thrown at Dominique
+created sympathy for Wynand in the reader’s mind; this fed Scarret’s smear
+talent. It worked. The public responded, the Banner’s old feminine readers in
+particular. It helped in the slow, painful work of the paper’s reconstruction.
+Letters began to arrive, generous in their condolences, unrestrained in the
+indecency of their comment on Dominique Francon. "Like the old days, Gail," said
+Scarret happily, "just like the old days!" He piled all the letters on Wynand’s
+desk.
+Wynand sat alone in his office with the letters. Scarret could not suspect that
+this was the worst of the suffering Gail Wynand was to know. He made himself
+read every letter. Dominique, whom he had tried to save from the Banner...
+597
+
+When they met in the building, Scarret looked at him expectantly, with an
+entreating, tentative half-smile, an eager pupil waiting for the teacher’s
+recognition of a lesson well learned and well done. Wynand said nothing. Scarret
+ventured once:
+"It was clever, wasn’t it, Gail?"
+"Yes."
+"Have any idea on where we can milk it some more?"
+"It’s your job, Alvah."
+"She’s really the cause of everything, Gail. Long before all this. When you
+married her. I was afraid then. That’s what started it. Remember when you didn’t
+allow us to cover your wedding? That was a sign. She’s ruined the Banner. But
+I’ll be damned if I don’t rebuild it now right on her own body. Just as it was.
+Our old Banner."
+"Yes."
+"Got any suggestions, Gail? What else would you like me to do?"
+"Anything you wish, Alvah."
+
+18.
+A TREE BRANCH hung in the open window. The leaves moved against the sky,
+implying sun and summer and an inexhaustible earth to be used. Dominique thought
+of the world as background. Wynand thought of two hands bending a tree branch to
+explain the meaning of life. The leaves drooped, touching the spires of New
+York’s skyline far across the river. The skyscrapers stood like shafts of
+sunlight, washed white by distance and summer. A crowd filled the county
+courtroom, witnessing the trial of Howard Roark.
+Roark sat at the defense table. He listened calmly.
+Dominique sat in the third row of spectators. Looking at her, people felt as if
+they had seen a smile. She did not smile. She looked at the leaves in the
+window.
+Gail Wynand sat at the back of the courtroom. He had come in, alone, when the
+room was full. He had not noticed the stares and the flashbulbs exploding around
+him. He had stood in the aisle for a moment, surveying the place as if there
+were no reason why he should not survey it. He wore a gray summer suit and a
+panama hat with a drooping brim turned up at one side. His glance went over
+Dominique as over the rest of the courtroom. When he sat down, he looked at
+Roark. From the moment of Wynand’s entrance Roark’s eyes kept returning to him.
+Whenever Roark looked at him, Wynand turned away.
+"The motive which the State proposes to prove," the prosecutor was making his
+opening address to the jury, "is beyond the realm of normal human emotions. To
+the majority of us it will appear monstrous and inconceivable."
+Dominique sat with Mallory, Heller, Lansing, Enright, Mike--and Guy Francon, to
+the shocked disapproval of his friends. Across the aisle, celebrities formed a
+598
+
+comet: from the small point of Ellsworth Toohey, well in front, a tail of
+popular names stretched through the crowd: Lois Cook, Gordon L. Prescott, Gus
+Webb, Lancelot Clokey, Ike, Jules Fougler, Sally Brent, Homer Slottern, Mitchell
+Layton.
+"Even as the dynamite which swept a building away, his motive blasted all sense
+of humanity out of this man’s soul. We are dealing, gentlemen of the jury, with
+the most vicious explosive on earth--the egotist!"
+On the chairs, on the window sills, in the aisles, pressed against the walls,
+the human mass was blended like a monolith, except for the pale ovals of faces.
+The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the
+years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, honest or
+dishonest, but an attempt. It had left on all a single mark in common: on lips
+smiling with malice, on lips loose with renunciation, on lips tight with
+uncertain dignity--on all--the mark of suffering.
+"...In this day and age, when the world is torn by gigantic problems, seeking an
+answer to questions that hold the survival of man in the balance--this man
+attached to such a vague intangible, such an unessential as his artistic
+opinions sufficient importance to let it become his sole passion and the
+motivation of a crime against society."
+The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get
+material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to
+unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening
+clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire
+left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to
+days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But
+each of them had known some unforgotten moment--a morning when nothing had
+happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again,
+a stranger’s face seen in a bus--a moment when each had known a different sense
+of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an
+afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each
+had wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had
+not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer were
+necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had
+felt the need of an answer.
+"...a ruthless, arrogant egotist who wished to have his own way at any price..."
+Twelve men sat in the jury box. They listened, their faces attentive and
+emotionless. People had whispered that it was a tough-looking jury. There were
+two executives of industrial concerns, two engineers, a mathematician, a truck
+driver, a bricklayer, an electrician, a gardener and three factory workers. The
+impaneling of the jury had taken some time. Roark had challenged many talesmen.
+He had picked these twelve. The prosecutor had agreed, telling himself that this
+was what happened when an amateur undertook to handle his own defense; a lawyer
+would have chosen the gentlest types, those most likely to respond to an appeal
+for mercy; Roark had chosen the hardest faces.
+"...Had it been some plutocrat’s mansion, but a housing project, gentlemen of
+the jury, a housing project!"
+The judge sat erect on the tall bench. He had gray hair and the stern face of an
+army officer.
+"...a man trained to serve society, a builder who became a destroyer..."
+599
+
+The voice went on, practiced and confident. The faces filling the room listened
+with the response they granted to a good weekday dinner: satisfying and to be
+forgotten within an hour. They agreed with every sentence; they had heard it
+before, they had always heard it, this was what the world lived by; it was
+self-evident--like a puddle before one’s feet.
+The prosecutor introduced his witnesses. The policeman who had arrested Roark
+took the stand to tell how he had found the defendant standing by the electric
+plunger. The night watchman related how he had been sent away from the scene;
+his testimony was brief; the prosecutor preferred not to stress the subject of
+Dominique. The contractor’s superintendent testified about the dynamite missing
+from the stores on the site. Officials of Cortlandt, building inspectors,
+estimators took the stand to describe the building and the extent of the damage.
+This concluded the first day of the trial.
+Peter Keating was the first witness called on the following day.
+He sat on the stand, slumped forward. He looked at the prosecutor obediently.
+His eyes moved, once in a while. He looked at the crowd, at the jury, at Roark.
+It made no difference.
+"Mr. Keating, will you state under oath whether you designed the project
+ascribed to you, known as Cortlandt Homes?"
+"No. I didn’t."
+"Who designed it?"
+"Howard Roark."
+"At whose request?"
+"At my request."
+"Why did you call on him?"
+"Because I was not capable of doing it myself."
+There was no sound of honesty in the voice, because there was no sound of effort
+to pronounce a truth of such nature; no tone of truth or falsehood; only
+indifference.
+The prosecutor handed him a sheet of paper. "Is this the agreement you signed?"
+Keating held the paper in his hand. "Yes."
+"Is that Howard Roark’s signature?"
+"Yes."
+"Will you please read the terms of this agreement to the jury?"
+Keating read it aloud. His voice came evenly, well drilled. Nobody in the
+courtroom realized that this testimony had been intended as a sensation. It was
+not a famous architect publicly confessing incompetence; it was a man reciting a
+memorized lesson. People felt mat were he interrupted, he would not be able to
+pick up the next sentence, but would have to start all over again from the
+beginning.
+600
+
+He answered a great many questions. The prosecutor introduced in evidence
+Roark’s original drawings of Cortlandt, which Keating had kept; the copies which
+Keating had made of them; and photographs of Cortlandt as it had been built.
+"Why did you object so strenuously to the excellent structural changes suggested
+by Mr. Prescott and Mr. Webb?"
+"I was afraid of Howard Roark."
+"What did your knowledge of his character lead you to expect?’
+"Anything."
+"What do you mean?"
+"I don’t know. I was afraid. I used to be afraid."
+The questions went on. The story was unusual, but the audience felt bored. It
+did not sound like the recital of a participant. The other witnesses had seemed
+to have a more personal connection with the case.
+When Keating left the stand, the audience had the odd impression that no change
+had occurred in the act of a man’s exit; as if no person had walked out.
+"The prosecution rests," said the District Attorney.
+The judge looked at Roark.
+"Proceed," he said. His voice was gentle.
+Roark got up. "Your Honor, I shall call no witnesses. This will be my testimony
+and my summation."
+"Take the oath."
+Roark took the oath. He stood by the steps of the witness stand. The audience
+looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless
+resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for
+the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.
+The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a
+tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They
+remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the
+bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed
+him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one’s
+own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a
+murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without
+name--fear--need--dependence--hatred?
+Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But
+Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd--and they knew suddenly that no
+hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner
+of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone’s approval?--does it
+matter?--am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free--free enough to feel
+benevolence for every other man in the room.
+It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak.
+"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was
+601
+
+probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was
+considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But
+thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their
+caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness
+off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was
+probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered
+a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could
+travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he
+had opened the roads of the world.
+"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every
+legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a
+rock and torn by vultures--because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was
+condemned to suffer--because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
+Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that
+its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.
+"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads
+armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had
+this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed,
+and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the thinkers, the
+artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against the men of their
+time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was
+denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered
+impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered
+sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered
+and they paid. But they won.
+"No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers
+rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of
+their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to
+achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an
+airplane or a building--that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard,
+read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The
+creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it.
+The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things
+and against all men.
+"His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man’s spirit,
+however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel,
+to judge, to act are functions of the ego.
+"The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power--that it
+was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of
+energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He
+had lived for himself.
+"And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the
+glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.
+"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His
+brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no
+fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it.
+To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make
+weapons--a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest
+religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and
+everything we have comes from a single attribute of man--the function of his
+reasoning mind.
+602
+
+"But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a
+collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement
+reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many
+individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the process
+of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many
+men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to
+breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the
+functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
+"We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We
+make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane.
+But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product
+of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this
+product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty
+cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single,
+individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn
+from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can
+give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of
+survival.
+"Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And
+here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways--by
+the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of
+others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature
+alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.
+"The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the
+conquest of men.
+"The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is
+within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become
+his prime motive.
+"The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work
+under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to
+any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in
+motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.
+"The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to
+be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve
+others. He preaches altruism.
+"Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place
+others above self.
+"No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share
+his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation
+and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every
+precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
+"The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in
+motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing
+but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it
+in reality--the man who lives to serve others--is the slave. If physical slavery
+is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit?
+The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted
+and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself
+voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the
+dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence
+603
+
+of altruism.
+"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give.
+Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before
+distribution--or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator
+comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire
+the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made
+the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of
+achievement.
+"Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of
+others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give
+relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make
+suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others
+suffer--in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The
+creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the
+creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man’s body and
+spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever
+conceive.
+"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator
+is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with
+the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have
+been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man
+who stands alone.
+"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the
+ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the
+selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge, or act. These are
+functions of the self.
+"Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man
+has been left no alternative--and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was
+offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the
+sacrifice of others to self. Altruism--the sacrifice of self to others. This
+tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his
+own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake
+of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap
+was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal--under the threat
+that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever
+perpetrated on mankind.
+"This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as
+fundamentals of life.
+"The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or
+dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is
+the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the
+creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive.
+The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of
+survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that
+which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.
+"The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is
+the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not
+function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not
+in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in
+the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man--and he asks no
+other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual
+604
+
+respect possible between men.
+"Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree
+of a man’s independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines
+his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of
+human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or
+hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no
+standard of personal dignity except independence.
+"In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An
+architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes.
+They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him a commission. Men
+exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their
+personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not
+desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This
+is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a
+relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner.
+"No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job
+is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect
+requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not ask them to
+vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his
+proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others.
+But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches
+them. What he does with them is his individual product and his individual
+property. This is the only pattern for proper co-operation among men.
+"The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to
+himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of
+others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not
+depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative
+faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the
+gangster, the altruist and the dictator.
+"A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule--alone.
+Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They
+are the province of the second-hander.
+"Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely
+through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity
+of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the
+bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.
+"But men were taught to regard second-handers--tyrants, emperors, dictators--as
+exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego,
+themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or
+to harness them. Which is a synonym.
+"From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the
+creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the
+first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.
+"The creator--denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited--went on, moved forward and
+carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing
+to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the
+individual against the collective.
+"The ’common good’ of a collective--a race, a class, a state--was the claim and
+justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of
+605
+
+history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of
+selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does
+the fault lie in men’s hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most
+dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society
+reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their
+right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was
+accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the
+course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with
+declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and
+will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish.
+That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders
+of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.
+"The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their
+proper relationship is--Hands off!
+"Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism.
+This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of
+greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was
+not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of
+altruism. It was based on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own
+happiness. Not anyone else’s. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the
+results. Look into your own conscience.
+"It is an ancient conflict. Men have come close to the truth, but it was
+destroyed each time and one civilization fell after another. Civilization is the
+progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public,
+ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free
+from men.
+"Now, in our age, collectivism, the rule of the second-hander and second-rater,
+the ancient monster, has broken loose and is running amuck. It has brought men
+to a level of intellectual indecency never equaled on earth. It has reached a
+scale of horror without precedent. It has poisoned every mind. It has swallowed
+most of Europe. It is engulfing our country.
+"I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is
+built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live.
+"Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt.
+"I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it.
+"I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double
+monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was mutilated
+by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had
+not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by the general
+implication that the altruistic purpose of the building superseded all rights
+and that I had no claim to stand against it.
+"I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I designed
+it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I was not
+paid.
+"I do not blame Peter Keating. He was helpless. He had a contract with his
+employers. It was ignored. He had a promise that the structure he offered would
+be built as designed. The promise was broken. The love of a man for the
+integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are now considered a vague
+intangible and an unessential. You have heard the prosecutor say that. Why was
+606
+
+the building disfigured? For no reason. Such acts never have any reason, unless
+it’s the vanity of some second-handers who feel they have a right to anyone’s
+property, spiritual or material. Who permitted them to do it? No particular man
+among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit it or to stop it. No one
+was responsible. No one can be held to account. Such is the nature of all
+collective action.
+"I did not receive the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what
+they needed from me. They wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as
+cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could do it to their
+satisfaction. I could and did. They took the benefit of my work and made me
+contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. I do not contribute gifts of
+this nature.
+"It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten
+that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who
+were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned,
+in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants
+gave them a right to my work. That their need constituted a claim on my life.
+That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the
+second-hander’s credo now swallowing the world.
+"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my
+life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter
+who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.
+"I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.
+"It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
+"I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man’s creative work is of
+greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not
+understand this are the men who’re destroying the world.
+"I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.
+"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and
+to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give the ten years
+which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in
+memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of
+loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.
+"My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the
+force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of
+loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend--and to the battles
+he won. To every creator whose name is known--and to every creator who lived,
+struggled and perished unrecognized before he could achieve. To every creator
+who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To
+a man who doesn’t want to be named, but who is sitting in this courtroom and
+knows that I am speaking of him."
+Roark stood, his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted--as
+he stood in an unfinished building. Later, when he was seated again at the
+defense table, many men in the room felt as if they still saw him standing; one
+moment’s picture that would not be replaced.
+The picture remained in their minds through the long legal discussions that
+followed. They heard the judge state to the prosecutor that the defendant had,
+in effect, changed his plea: he had admitted his act, but had not pleaded guilty
+607
+
+of the crime; an issue of temporary legal insanity was raised; it was up to the
+jury to decide whether the defendant knew the nature and quality of his act, or,
+if he did, whether he knew that the act was wrong. The prosecutor raised no
+objection; there was an odd silence in the room; he felt certain that he had won
+his case already. He made his closing address. No one remembered what he said.
+The judge gave his instructions to the jury. The jury rose and left the
+courtroom.
+People moved, preparing to depart, without haste, in expectation of many hours
+of waiting. Wynand, at the back of the room, and Dominique, in the front, sat
+without moving.
+A bailiff stepped to Roark’s side to escort him out Roark stood by the defense
+table. His eyes went to Dominique, then to Wynand. He turned and followed the
+bailiff.
+He had reached the door when there was a sharp crack of sound, and a space of
+blank silence before people realized that it was a knock at the closed door of
+the jury room. The jury had reached a verdict.
+Those who had been on their feet remained standing, frozen, until the judge
+returned to the bench. The jury filed into the courtroom.
+"The prisoner will rise and face the jury," said the clerk of the court.
+Howard Roark stepped forward and stood facing the jury. At the back of the room,
+Gail Wynand got up and stood also.
+"Mr. Foreman, have you reached a verdict?"
+"We have."
+"What is your verdict?"
+"Not guilty."
+The first movement of Roark’s head was not to look at the city in the window, at
+the judge or at Dominique. He looked at Wynand.
+Wynand turned sharply and walked out. He was the first man to leave the
+courtroom.
+
+19.
+ROGER ENRIGHT bought the site, the plans and the ruins of Cortlandt from the
+government. He ordered every twisted remnant of foundations dug out to leave a
+clean hole in the earth. He hired Howard Roark to rebuild the project. Placing a
+single contractor in charge, observing the strict economy of the plans, Enright
+budgeted the undertaking to set low rentals with a comfortable margin of profit
+for himself. No questions were to be asked about the income, occupation,
+children or diet of the future tenants; the project was open to anyone who
+wished to move in and pay the rent, whether he could afford a more expensive
+apartment elsewhere or not.
+Late in August Gail Wynand was granted his divorce. The suit was not contested
+and Dominique was not present at the brief hearing. Wynand stood like a man
+608
+
+facing a court-martial and heard the cold obscenity of legal language describing
+the breakfast in a house of Monadnock Valley--Mrs. Gail Wynand--Howard Roark;
+branding his wife as officially dishonored, granting him lawful sympathy, the
+status of injured innocence, and a paper that was his passport to freedom for
+all the years before him, and for all the silent evenings of those years.
+Ellsworth Toohey won his case before the labor board. Wynand was ordered to
+reinstate him in his job.
+That afternoon Wynand’s secretary telephoned Toohey and told him that Mr. Wynand
+expected him back at work tonight, before nine o’clock. Toohey smiled, dropping
+the receiver.
+Toohey smiled, entering the Banner Building that evening. He stopped in the city
+room. He waved to people, shook hands, made witty remarks about some current
+movies, and bore an air of guileless astonishment, as if he had been absent just
+since yesterday and could not understand why people greeted him in the manner of
+a triumphal homecoming.
+Then he ambled on to his office. He stopped short. He knew, while stopping, that
+he must enter, must not show the jolt, and that he had shown it: Wynand stood in
+the open door of his office.
+"Good evening, Mr. Toohey," said Wynand softly. "Come in."
+"Hello, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey, his voice pleasant, reassured by feeling his
+face muscles manage a smile and his legs walking on.
+He entered and stopped uncertainly. It was his own office, unchanged, with his
+typewriter and a stack of fresh paper on the desk. But the door remained open
+and Wynand stood there silently, leaning against the jamb.
+"Sit down at your desk, Mr. Toohey. Go to work. We must comply with the law."
+Toohey gave a gay little shrug of acquiescence, crossed the room and sat down.
+He put his hands on the desk surface, palms spread solidly, then dropped them to
+his lap. He reached for a pencil, examined its point and dropped it
+Wynand lifted one wrist slowly to the level of his chest and held it still, the
+apex of a triangle made by his forearm and the long, drooping fingers of his
+hand; he was looking down at his wrist watch. He said:
+"It is ten minutes to nine. You are back on your job, Mr. Toohey."
+"And I’m happy as a kid to be back. Honestly, Mr. Wynand, I suppose I shouldn’t
+confess it, but I missed this place like all hell."
+Wynand made no movement to go. He stood, slouched as usual, his shoulder blades
+propped against the doorjamb, arms crossed on his chest, hands holding his
+elbows. A lamp with a square shade of green glass burned on the desk, but there
+was still daylight outside, streaks of tired brown on a lemon sky; the room held
+a dismal sense of evening in the illumination that seemed both premature and too
+feeble. The light made a puddle on the desk, but it could not shut out the
+brown, half-dissolved shapes of the street, and it could not reach the door to
+disarm Wynand’s presence.
+The lamp shade rattled faintly and Toohey felt the nimble under his shoe soles:
+the presses were rolling. He realized that he had heard them for some time. It
+was a comforting sound, dependable and alive. The pulse beat of a newspaper--the
+609
+
+newspaper that transmits to men the pulse beat of the world. A long, even flow
+of separate drops, like marbles rolling away in a straight line, like the sound
+of a man’s heart.
+Toohey moved a pencil over a sheet of paper, until he realized that the sheet
+lay in the lamplight and Wynand could see the pencil making a water lily, a
+teapot and a bearded profile. He dropped the pencil and made a self-mocking
+sound with his lips. He opened a drawer and looked attentively at a pile of
+carbons and paper clips. He did not know what he could possibly be expected to
+do: one did not start writing a column just like that. He had wondered why he
+should be asked to resume his duties at nine o’clock in the evening, but he had
+supposed that it was Wynand’s manner of softening surrender by overdoing it, and
+he had felt he could afford not to argue the point.
+The presses were rolling; a man’s heartbeats gathered and re-broadcast. He heard
+no other sound and he thought it was absurd to keep this up if Wynand had gone,
+but most inadvisable to look in his direction if he hadn’t.
+After a while he looked up. Wynand was still there. The light picked out two
+white spots of his figure: the long fingers of one hand closed over an elbow,
+and the high forehead. It was the forehead that Toohey wanted to see; no, there
+were no slanting ridges over the eyebrows. The eyes made two solid white ovals,
+faintly discernible in the angular shadows of the face. The ovals were directed
+at Toohey. But there was nothing in the face; no indication of purpose.
+After a while, Toohey said:
+"Really, Mr. Wynand, there’s no reason why you and I can’t get together."
+Wynand did not answer.
+Toohey picked up a sheet of paper and inserted it in the typewriter. He sat
+looking at the keys, holding his chin between two fingers, in the pose he knew
+he assumed when preparing to attack a paragraph. The rims of the keys glittered
+under the lamps, rings of bright nickel suspended in the dim room.
+The presses stopped.
+Toohey jerked back, automatically, before he knew why he had jerked: he was a
+newspaperman and it was a sound that did not stop like that.
+Wynand looked at his wrist watch. He said:
+"It’s nine o’clock. You’re out of a job, Mr. Toohey. The Banner has ceased to
+exist."
+The next incident of reality Toohey apprehended was his own hand dropping down
+on the typewriter keys: he heard the metal cough of the levers tangling and
+striking together, and the small jump of the carriage.
+He did not speak, but he thought his face was naked because he heard Wynand
+answering him:
+"Yes, you had worked here for thirteen years....Yes, I bought them all out,
+Mitchell Layton included, two weeks ago...." The voice was indifferent. "No, the
+boys in the city room didn’t know it. Only the boys in the pressroom...."
+Toohey turned away. He picked up a paper clip, held it on his palm, then turned
+his hand over and let the clip fall, observing with mild astonishment the
+610
+
+finality of the law mat had not permitted it to remain on his downturned palm.
+He got up. He stood looking at Wynand, a stretch of gray carpet between them.
+Wynand’s head moved, leaned slightly to one shoulder. Wynand’s face looked as if
+no barrier were necessary now, it looked simple, it held no anger, the closed
+lips were drawn in the hint of a smile of pain that was almost humble.
+Wynand said:
+"This was the end of the Banner....I think it’s proper that I should meet it
+with you."
+#
+Many newspapers bid for the services of Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. He selected
+the Courier, a paper of well-bred prestige and gently uncertain policy.
+In the evening of his first day on the new job Ellsworth Toohey sat on the edge
+of an associate editor’s desk and they talked about Mr. Talbot, the owner of the
+Courier, whom Toohey had met but a few times.
+"But Mr. Talbot as a man?" asked Ellsworth Toohey. "What’s his particular god?
+What would he go to pieces without?"
+In the radio room across the hall somebody was twisting a dial. "Time," blared a
+solemn voice, "marches on!"
+#
+Roark sat at the drafting table in his office, working. The city beyond the
+glass walls seemed lustrous, the air washed by the first cold of October.
+The telephone rang. He held his pencil suspended in a jerk of impatience; the
+telephone was never to ring when he was drawing. He walked to his desk and
+picked up the receiver.
+"Mr. Roark," said his secretary, the tense little note in her voice serving as
+apology for a broken order, "Mr. Gail Wynand wishes to know whether it would be
+convenient for you to come to his office at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon?"
+She heard the faint buzz of silence in the receiver at her ear and counted many
+seconds.
+"Is he on the wire?" asked Roark. She knew it was not the phone connection that
+made his voice sound like that.
+"No, Mr. Roark. It’s Mr. Wynand’s secretary."
+"Yes. Yes. Tell her yes."
+He walked to the drafting table and looked down at the sketches; it was the
+first desertion he had ever been forced to commit: he knew he would not be able
+to work today. The weight of hope and relief together was too great.
+When Roark approached the door of what had been the Banner Building, he saw that
+the sign, the Banner’s masthead, was gone. Nothing replaced it. A discolored
+rectangle was left over the door. He knew the building now contained the offices
+of the Clarion and floors of empty rooms. The Clarion, a third-rate afternoon
+tabloid, was the only representative of the Wynand chain in New York.
+611
+
+He walked to an elevator. He was glad to be the only passenger: he felt a
+sudden, violent possessiveness for the small cage of steel; it was his, found
+again, given back to him. The intensity of the relief told him the intensity of
+the pain it had ended; the special pain, like no other in his life.
+When he entered Wynand’s office, he knew that he had to accept that pain and
+carry it forever, mat there was to be no cure and no hope. Wynand sat behind his
+desk and rose when he entered, looking straight at him. Wynand’s face was more
+than the face of a stranger: a stranger’s face is an unapproached potentiality,
+to be opened if one makes the choice and effort; this was a face known, closed
+and never to be reached again. A face that held no pain of renunciation, but the
+stamp of the next step, when even pain is renounced. A face remote and quiet,
+with a dignity of its own, not a living attribute, but the dignity of a figure
+on a medieval tomb that speaks of past greatness and forbids a hand to reach out
+for the remains.
+"Mr. Roark, this interview is necessary, but very difficult for me. Please act
+accordingly."
+Roark knew that the last act of kindness he could offer was to claim no bond. He
+knew he would break what was left of the man before him if he pronounced one
+word: Gail. Roark answered: "Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+Wynand picked up four typewritten sheets of paper and handed them across the
+desk:
+"Please read this and sign it if it meets with your approval."
+"What is it?"
+"Your contract to design the Wynand Building." Roark put the sheets down. He
+could not hold them. He could not look at them.
+"Please listen carefully, Mr. Roark. This must be explained and understood. I
+wish to undertake the construction of the Wynand Building at once. I wish it to
+be the tallest structure of the city. Do not discuss with me the question of
+whether this is timely or economically advisable. I wish it built. It will be
+used--which is all that concerns you. It will house the Clarion and all the
+offices of the Wynand Enterprises now located in various parts of the city. The
+rest of the space will be rented. I have sufficient standing left to guarantee
+that. You need have no fear of erecting a useless structure. I shall send you a
+written statement on all details and requirements. The rest will be up to you.
+You will design the building as you wish. Your decisions will be final. They
+will not require my approval. You will have full charge and complete authority.
+This is stated in the contract. But I wish it understood that I shall not have
+to see you. There will be an agent to represent me in all technical and
+financial matters. You will deal with him. You will hold all further conferences
+with him. Let him know what contractors you prefer chosen for the job. If you
+find it necessary to communicate with me, you will do it through my agent. You
+are not to expect or attempt to see me. Should you do so, you will be refused
+admittance. I do not wish to speak to you. I do not wish ever to see you again.
+If you are prepared to comply with these conditions, please read the contract
+and sign it."
+Roark reached for a pen and signed without looking at the paper.
+"You have not read it," said Wynand.
+Roark threw the paper across the desk.
+612
+
+"Please sign both copies."
+Roark obeyed.
+"Thank you," said Wynand, signed the sheets and handed one to Roark. "This is
+your copy."
+Roark slipped the paper into his pocket.
+"I have not mentioned the financial part of the undertaking. It is an open
+secret that the so-called Wynand empire is dead. It is sound and doing as well
+as ever throughout the country, with the exception of New York City. It will
+last my lifetime. But it will end with me. I intend to liquidate a great part of
+it. You will, therefore, have no reason to limit yourself by any consideration
+of costs in your design of the building. You are free to make it cost whatever
+you find necessary. The building will remain long after the newsreels and
+tabloids are gone."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+"I presume you will want to make the structure efficiently economical in
+maintenance costs. But you do not have to consider the return of the original
+investment. There’s no one to whom it must return."
+"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
+"If you consider the behavior of the world at present and the disaster toward
+which it is moving you might find the undertaking preposterous. The age of the
+skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a
+prelude to the age of the cave. But you are not afraid of a gesture against the
+whole world. This will be the last skyscraper ever built in New York. It is
+proper that it should be so. The last achievement of man on earth before mankind
+destroys itself."
+"Mankind will never destroy itself, Mr. Wynand. Nor should it think of itself as
+destroyed. Not so long as it does things such as this."
+"As what?"
+"As the Wynand Building."
+"That is up to you. Dead things--such as the Banner--are only the financial
+fertilizer that will make it possible. It is their proper function."
+He picked up his copy of the contract, folded it and put it, with a precise
+gesture, into his inside coat pocket. He said, with no change in the tone of his
+voice:
+"I told you once that this building was to be a monument to my life. There is
+nothing to commemorate now. The Wynand Building will have nothing--except what
+you give it."
+He rose to his feet, indicating that the interview was ended. Roark got up and
+inclined his head in parting. He held his head down a moment longer than a
+formal bow required.
+At the door he stopped and turned. Wynand stood behind his desk without moving.
+They looked at each other.
+613
+
+Wynand said:
+"Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours...and could have been
+mine."
+
+20.
+ON A spring day, eighteen months later, Dominique walked to the construction
+site of the Wynand Building.
+She looked at the skyscrapers of the city. They rose from unexpected spots, out
+of the low roof lines. They had a kind of startling suddenness, as if they had
+sprung up the second before she saw them and she had caught the last thrust of
+the motion; as if, were she to turn away and look again fast enough, she would
+catch them in the act of springing.
+She turned a corner of Hell’s Kitchen and came to the vast cleared tract.
+Machines were crawling over the torn earth, grading the future park. From its
+center, the skeleton of the Wynand Building rose, completed, to the sky. The top
+part of the frame still hung naked, an intercrossed cage of steel. Glass and
+masonry had followed its rise, covering the rest of the long streak slashed
+through space.
+She thought: They say the heart of the earth is made of fire. It is held
+imprisoned and silent. But at times it breaks through the clay, the iron, the
+granite, and shoots out to freedom. Then it becomes a thing like this.
+She walked to the building. A wooden fence surrounded its lower stories. The
+fence was bright with large signs advertising the names of the firms who had
+supplied materials for the tallest structure in the world. "Steel by National
+Steel, Inc." "Glass by Ludlow." "Electrical Equipment by Wells-Clairmont."
+"Elevators by Kessler, Inc." "Nash & Dunning, Contractors."
+She stopped. She saw an object she had never noticed before. The sight was like
+the touch of a hand on her forehead, the hand of those figures in legend who had
+the power to heal. She had not known Henry Cameron and she had not heard him say
+it, but what she felt now was as if she were hearing it: "And I know that if you
+carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for
+you, but for something that should win, that moves the world--and never wins
+acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have
+suffered as you will suffer."
+She saw, on the fence surrounding New York’s greatest building, a small tin
+plate bearing the words:
+
+"Howard Roark, Architect"
+
+She walked to the superintendent’s shed. She had come here often to call for
+Roark, to watch the progress of construction. But there was a new man in the
+shed who did not know her. She asked for Roark.
+"Mr. Roark is way up on top by the water tank. Who’s calling, ma’am?"
+614
+
+"Mrs. Roark," she answered.
+The man found the superintendent who let her ride the outside hoist, as she
+always did--a few planks with a rope for a railing, that rose up the side of the
+building.
+She stood, her hand lifted and closed about a cable, her high heels poised
+firmly on the planks. The planks shuddered, a current of air pressed her skirt
+to her body, and she saw the ground dropping softly away from her.
+She rose above the broad panes of shop windows. The channels of streets grew
+deeper, sinking. She rose above the marquees of movie theaters, black mats held
+by spirals of color. Office windows streamed past her, long belts of glass
+running down. The squat hulks of warehouses vanished, sinking with the treasures
+they guarded. Hotel towers slanted, like the spokes of an opening fan, and
+folded over. The fuming matchsticks were factory stacks and the moving gray
+squares were cars. The sun made lighthouses of peaked summits, they reeled,
+flashing long white rays over the city. The city spread out, marching in angular
+rows to the rivers. It stood held between two thin black arms of water. It
+leaped across and rolled away to a haze of plains and sky.
+Flat roofs descended like pedals pressing the buildings down, out of the way of
+her flight. She went past the cubes of glass that held dining rooms, bedrooms
+and nurseries. She saw roof gardens float down like handkerchiefs spread on the
+wind. Skyscrapers raced her and were left behind. The planks under her feet shot
+past the antennae of radio stations.
+The hoist swung like a pendulum above the city. It sped against the side of the
+building. It had passed the line where the masonry ended behind her. There was
+nothing behind her now but steel ligaments and space. She felt the height
+pressing against her eardrums. The sun filled her eyes. The air beat against her
+raised chin.
+She saw him standing above her, on the top platform of the Wynand Building. He
+waved to her.
+The line of the ocean cut the sky. The ocean mounted as the city descended. She
+passed the pinnacles of bank buildings. She passed the crowns of courthouses.
+She rose above the spires of churches.
+Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.
+The End
+
+615
+
+
\ No newline at end of file