The Fountainhead Part 78

"Drop it, Peter. We've done so well without remembering."

"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. G.o.d, 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 gla.s.s.

"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 parting, 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 p.r.o.nounced.

"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 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 p.r.o.nounce 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.

IX

THEY SAT ON THE Sh.o.r.e 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 gra.s.s.

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 gra.s.s. 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 gra.s.s between his fingers. The fingers moved once in a while, crushing the gra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 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 weekends. 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 b.u.t.ton 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."

"Couldn't."

"Are you going to pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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 d.a.m.n 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." 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."

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 s.p.a.ce 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 part.i.tions 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 drawing. 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.d-d.a.m.n fool!" said Gail Wynand. "What are you up to?"

He threw to Roark a copy of the Banner, 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." 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."

Roark glanced at the photograph and asked: "What do you mean?"

"You know d.a.m.n 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." 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 d.a.m.n projects."

"You publish that and I'll sue h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l, Gail," he muttered indifferently.

"That's what I want to know-what the h.e.l.l?" 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 c.r.a.p. But-this kind of c.r.a.p?"

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.