The Fountainhead Part 46

Ellsworth Toohey had left the door of his study open. He had seen Keating pa.s.s 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!"

XIV

"WHO?" GASPED KEATING. "Miss Dominique Francon," the maid repeated. "You're drunk, you d.a.m.n 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.

"h.e.l.lo, Peter."

"Dominique! ... Dominique, how come?" In his anger, apprehension, curiosity and flattered pleasure, his first conscious thought was grat.i.tude to G.o.d 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, h.e.l.l, 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 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."

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 m.u.f.fler, 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 m.u.f.fler 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 b.u.t.ton 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 gla.s.s 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."

"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 unb.u.t.toning 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 b.u.t.ton 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s before him. But the road spread as the windshield flew forward. The road filled the gla.s.s, it ran over the edges, it tore apart to let them pa.s.s, 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."

"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 wh.o.r.e, 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."

"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.