text
stringlengths 0
169
|
---|
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鈥檛 know." |
He had said: "I don鈥檛 know." She had heard distinctly: "I don鈥檛 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鈥檚 a great day for me. When I think of how I skimped and slaved to put my boy |
through school. Not that I鈥檓 complaining. I鈥檓 not one to complain. Petey鈥檚 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鈥檓 not one to boast. Some mothers are lucky and others just aren鈥檛. |
We鈥檙e all in our rightful place. You just watch Petey from now on. I鈥檓 not one |
to want my boy to kill himself with work and I鈥檒l thank the Lord for any small |
success that comes his way. But if that boy isn鈥檛 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鈥檝e |
got to hurry and change and run along. The Dean鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檒l 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鈥檙e not going like this?" |