VII
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 of 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 assume that the centuries had passed by on horseback.” 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 modern 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.
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 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 he 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.
“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 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 esthetically. 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 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 naïve 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.”
“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. Equalitarian 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 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.
“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 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. share-cropper’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 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.”