The Fountainhead (68 page)

“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 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, the spiritual food he sought in coming 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.

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 a 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, to pull it back into the common jungle.

The jungle found its words.

In “One Small Voice,” sub-titled “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 Modem 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.

“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 required a Roman portico on every house, so the era of humanity requires 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 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.

VII

W
HEN 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.

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 would 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.”

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 the 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.

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 knew 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; 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 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 boys 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?”

“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 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.”

“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.