XII
THE OPENING OF THE STODDARD TEMPLE WAS ANNOUNCED FOR THE afternoon of November first.
The press agent had done a good job. People talked about the event, about Howard Roark, about the architectural masterpiece which the city was to expect.
On the morning of October 31 Hopton Stoddard returned from his journey around the world. Ellsworth Toohey met him at the pier.
On the morning of November 1 Hopton Stoddard issued a brief statement announcing that there would be no opening. No explanation was given.
On the morning of November 2 the New York
Banner came out with the column “One Small Voice” by Ellsworth M. Toohey subtitled “Sacrilege.” It read as follows:
“The time has come, the walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of ships—and shoes—and Howard Roark—
And cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether Roark has wings.
“It is not our function—paraphrasing a philosopher whom we do not like—to be a fly swatter, but when a fly acquires delusions of grandeur, the best of us must stoop to do a little job of extermination.
“There has been a great deal of talk lately about somebody named Howard Roark. Since freedom of speech is our sacred heritage and includes the freedom to waste one’s time, there would have been no harm in such talk—beyond the fact that one could find so many endeavors more profitable than discussions of a man who seems to have nothing to his credit except a building that was begun and could not be completed. There would have been no harm, if the ludicrous had not become the tragic—and the fraudulent.
“Howard Roark—as most of you have not heard and are not likely to hear again—is an architect. A year ago he was entrusted with an assignment of extraordinary responsibility. He was commissioned to erect a great monument in the absence of the owner who believed in him and gave him complete freedom of action. If the terminology of our criminal law could be applied to the realm of art, we would have to say that what Mr. Roark delivered constitutes the equivalent of spiritual embezzlement.
“Mr. Hopton Stoddard, the noted philanthropist, had intended to present the City of New York with a Temple of Religion, a non-sectarian cathedral symbolizing the spirit of human faith. What Mr. Roark has built for him might be a warehouse—though it does not seem practical. It might be a brothel—which is more likely, if we consider some of its sculptural ornamentation. It is certainly not a temple.
“It seems as if a deliberate malice had reversed in this building every conception proper to a religious structure. Instead of being austerely enclosed, this alleged temple is wide open, like a western saloon. Instead of a mood of deferential sorrow, befitting a place where one contemplates eternity and realizes the insignificance of man, this building has a quality of loose, orgiastic elation. Instead of the soaring lines reaching for heaven, demanded by the very nature of a temple, as a symbol of man’s quest for something higher than his little ego, this building is flauntingly horizontal, its belly in the mud, thus declaring its allegiance to the carnal, glorifying the gross pleasures of the flesh above those of the spirit. The statue of a nude female in a place where men come to be uplifted speaks for itself and requires no further comment.
“A person entering a temple seeks release from himself. He wishes to humble his pride, to confess his unworthiness, to beg forgiveness. He finds fulfillment in a sense of abject humility. Man’s proper posture in a house of God is on his knees. Nobody in his right mind would kneel within Mr. Roark’s temple. The place forbids it. The emotions it suggests are of a different nature: arrogance, audacity, defiance, self-exaltation. It is not a house of God, but the cell of a megalomaniac. It is not a temple, but its perfect antithesis, an insolent mockery of all religion. We would call it pagan but for the fact that the pagans were notoriously good architects.
“This column is not the supporter of any particular creed, but simple decency demands that we respect the religious convictions of our fellow men. We felt we must explain to the public the nature of this deliberate attack on religion. We cannot condone an outrageous sacrilege.
“If we seem to have forgotten our function as a critic of purely architectural values, we can say only that the occasion does not call for it. It is a mistake to glorify mediocrity by an effort at serious criticism. We seem to recall something or other that this Howard Roark has built before, and it had the same ineptitude, the same pedestrian quality of an overambitious amateur. All God’s chillun may have wings, but, unfortunately, this is not true of all God’s geniuses.
“And that, my friends, is that. We are glad today’s chore is over. We really do not enjoy writing obituaries.”
On November 3 Hopton Stoddard filed suit against Howard Roark for breach of contract and malpractice, asking damages; he asked a sum sufficient to have the temple altered by another architect.
It had been easy to persuade Hopton Stoddard. He had returned from his journey, crushed by the universal spectacle of religion, most particularly by the various forms in which the promise of hell confronted him all over the earth. He had been driven to the conclusion that his life qualified him for the worst possible hereafter under any system of faith. It had shaken what remained of his mind. The ship stewards, on his return trip, had felt certain that the old gentleman was senile.
On the afternoon of his return Ellsworth Toohey took him to see the temple. Toohey said nothing. Hopton Stoddard stared, and Toohey heard Stoddard’s false teeth clicking spasmodically. The place did not resemble anything Stoddard had seen anywhere in the world; nor anything he had expected. He did not know what to think. When he turned a glance of desperate appeal upon Toohey, Stoddard’s eyes looked like Jello. He waited. In that moment, Toohey could have convinced him of anything. Toohey spoke and said what he said later in his column.
“But you told me this Roark was good!” Stoddard moaned in panic.
“I had expected him to be good,” Toohey answered coldly.
“But then—why?”
“I don’t know,” said Toohey—and his accusing glance gave Stoddard to understand that there was an ominous guilt behind it all, and that the guilt was Stoddard’s.
Toohey said nothing in the limousine, on their way back to Stoddard’s apartment, while Stoddard begged him to speak. He would not answer. The silence drove Stoddard to terror. In the apartment, Toohey led him to an armchair and stood before him, somber as a judge.
“Hopton, I know why it happened.”
“Oh, why?”
“Can you think of any reason why I should have lied to you?”
“No, of course not, you’re the greatest expert and the most honest man living, and I don’t understand, I just simply don’t understand at all!”
“I do. When I recommended Roark, I had every reason to expect—to the best of my honest judgment—that he would give you a masterpiece. But he didn’t. Hopton, do you know what power can upset all the calculations of men?”
“W-what power?”
“God has chosen this way to reject your offering. He did not consider you worthy of presenting Him with a shrine. I guess you can fool me, Hopton, and all men, but you can’t fool God. He knows that your record is blacker than anything I suspected.”
He went on speaking for a long time, calmly, severely, to a silent huddle of terror. At the end, he said:
“It seems obvious, Hopton, that you cannot buy forgiveness by starting at the top. Only the pure in heart can erect a shrine. You must go through many humbler steps of expiation before you reach that stage. You must atone to your fellow men before you can atone to God. This building was not meant to be a temple, but an institution of human charity. Such as a home for subnormal children.”
Hopton Stoddard would not commit himself to that. “Afterward, Ellsworth, afterward,” he moaned. “Give me time.” He agreed to sue Roark, as Toohey suggested, for recovery of the costs of alterations, and later to decide what these alterations would be.
“Don’t be shocked by anything I will say or write about this,” Toohey told him in parting. “I shall be forced to state a few things which are not quite true. I must protect my own reputation from a disgrace which is your fault, not mine. Just remember that you have sworn never to reveal who advised you to hire Roark.”
On the following day “Sacrilege” appeared in the Banner and set the fuse. The announcement of Stoddard’s suit lighted it.
Nobody would have felt an urge to crusade about a building; but religion had been attacked; the press agent had prepared the ground too well, the spring of public attention was wound, a great many people could make use of it.
The clamor of indignation that rose against Howard Roark and his temple astonished everyone, except Ellsworth Toohey. Ministers damned the building in sermons. Women’s clubs passed resolutions of protest. A Committee of Mothers made page eight of the newspapers, with a petition that shrieked something about the protection of their children. A famous actress wrote an article on the essential unity of all the arts, explained that the Stoddard Temple had no sense of structural diction, and spoke of the time when she had played Mary Magdalene in a great Biblical drama. A society woman wrote an article on the exotic shrines she had seen in her dangerous jungle travels, praised the touching faith of the savages and reproached modern man for cynicism; the Stoddard Temple, she said, was a symptom of softness and decadence; the illustration showed her in breeches, one slim foot on the neck of a dead lion. A college professor wrote a letter to the editor about his spiritual experiences and stated that he could not have experienced them in a place like the Stoddard Temple. Kiki Holcombe wrote a letter to the editor about her views on life and death.
The A.G.A. issued a dignified statement denouncing the Stoddard Temple as a spiritual and artistic fraud. Similar statements, with less dignity and more slang, were issued by the Councils of American Builders, Writers and Artists. Nobody had ever heard of them, but they were Councils and this gave weight to their voice. One man would say to another: “Do you know that the Council of American Builders has said this temple is a piece of architectural tripe?” in a tone suggesting intimacy with the best of the art world. The other wouldn’t want to reply that he had not heard of such a group, but would answer: “I expected them to say it. Didn’t you?”
Hopton Stoddard received so many letters of sympathy that he began to feel quite happy. He had never been popular before. Ellsworth, he thought, was right; his brother men were forgiving him; Ellsworth was always right.
The better newspapers dropped the story after a while. But the Banner kept it going. It had been a boon to the Banner. Gail Wynand was away, sailing his yacht through the Indian Ocean, and Alvah Scarret was stuck for a crusade. This suited him. Ellsworth Toohey needed to make no suggestions; Scarret rose to the occasion all by himself.
He wrote about the decline of civilization and deplored the loss of the simple faith. He sponsored an essay contest for high-school students on “Why I Go to Church.” He ran a series of illustrated articles on “The Churches of Our Childhood.” He ran photographs of religious sculpture through the ages—the Sphinx, gargoyles, totem poles—and gave great prominence to pictures of Dominique’s statue, with proper captions of indignation, but omitting the model’s name. He ran cartoons of Roark as a barbarian with bearskin and club. He wrote many clever things about the Tower of Babel that could not reach heaven and about Icarus who flopped on his wax wings.
Ellsworth Toohey sat back and watched. He made two minor suggestions : he found, in the Banner’s morgue, the photograph of Roark at the opening of the Enright House, the photograph of a man’s face in a moment of exaltation, and he had it printed in the Banner, over the caption: “Are you happy, Mr. Superman?” He made Stoddard open the Temple to the public while awaiting the trial of his suit. The Temple attracted crowds of people who left obscene drawings and inscriptions on the pedestal of Dominique’s statue.
There were a few who came, and saw, and admired the building in silence. But they were the kind who do not take part in public issues. Austen Heller wrote a furious article in defense of Roark and of the Temple. But he was not an authority on architecture or religion, and the article was drowned in the storm.
Howard Roark did nothing.
He was asked for a statement, and he received a group of reporters in his office. He spoke without anger. He said: “I can’t tell anyone anything about my building. If I prepared a hash of words to stuff into other people’s brains, it would be an insult to them and to me. But I am glad you came here. I do have something to say. I want to ask every man who is interested in this to go and see the building, to look at it and then to use the words of his own mind, if he cares to speak.”
The Banner printed the interview as follows: “Mr. Roark, who seems to be a publicity hound, received reporters with an air of swaggering insolence and stated that the public mind was hash. He did not choose to talk, but he seemed well aware of the advertising angles in the situation. All he cared about, he explained, was to have his building seen by as many people as possible.”
Roark refused to hire an attorney to represent him at the coming trial. He said he would handle his own defense and refused to explain how he intended to handle it, in spite of Austen Heller’s angry protests.
“Austen, there are some rules I’m perfectly willing to obey. I’m willing to wear the kind of clothes everybody wears, to eat the same food and use the same subways. But there are some things which I can’t do their way—and this is one of them.”
“What do you know about courtrooms and law? He’s going to win.”
“To win what?”
“His case.”
“Is the case of any importance? There’s nothing I can do to stop him from touching the building. He owns it. He can blast if off the face of the earth or make a glue factory out of it. He can do it whether I win that suit or lose it.”
“But he’ll take your money to do it with.”
“Yes. He might take my money.”
Steven Mallory made no comment on anything. But his face looked as it had looked on the night Roark met him for the first time.
“Steve, talk about if, if it will make it easier for you,” Roark said to him one evening.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mallory answered indifferently. “I told you I didn’t think they’d let you survive.”
“Rubbish. You have no right to be afraid for me.”
“I’m not afraid for you. What would be the use? It’s something else.”
Days later, sitting on the window sill in Roark’s room, looking out at the street, Mallory said suddenly:
“Howard, do you remember what I told you about the beast I’m afraid of? I know nothing about Ellsworth Toohey. I had never seen him before I shot at him. I had only read what he writes. Howard, I shot at him because I think he knows everything about that beast.”
Dominique came to Roark’s room on the evening when Stoddard announced his lawsuit. She said nothing. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a routine gesture here, in his room; she looked down at her fingers. Then she raised her head. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.
“You’re wrong,” he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. “I don’t feel that.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“I want you to know. What you’re thinking is much worse than the truth. I don’t believe it matters to me—that they’re going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so much that I don’t even know I’m hurt. But I don’t think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don’t carry more than I do. I’m not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain. You mustn’t look like that.”
“Where does it stop?”
“Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important.”
“You shouldn’t have built it. You shouldn’t have delivered it to the sort of thing they’re doing.”
“That doesn’t matter. Not even that they’ll destroy it. Only that it had existed.”
She shook her head. “Do you see what I was saving you from when I took commissions away from you? ... To give them no right to do this to you.... No right to live in a building of yours ... No right to touch you ... not in any way....”
When Dominique walked into Toohey’s office, he smiled, an eager smile of welcome, unexpectedly sincere. He forgot to control it while his eyebrows moved into a frown of disappointment; the frown and the smile remained ludicrously together for a moment. He was disappointed, because it was not her usual dramatic entrance; he saw no anger, no mockery; she entered like a bookkeeper on a business errand. She asked:
“What do you intend to accomplish by it?”
He tried to recapture the exhilaration of their usual feud. He said:
“Sit down, my dear. I’m delighted to see you. Quite frankly and helplessly delighted. It really took you too long. I expected you here much sooner. I’ve had so many compliments on that little article of mine, but, honestly, it was no fun at all, I wanted to hear what you’d say.”
“What do you intend to accomplish by it?”
“Look, darling, I do hope you didn’t mind what I said about that uplifting statue of yours. I thought you’d understand I just couldn’t pass up that one.”
“What is the purpose of that lawsuit?”
“Oh well, you want to make me talk. And I did so want to hear you. But half a pleasure is better than none. I want to talk. I’ve waited for you so impatiently. But I do wish you’d sit down, I’ll be more comfortable.... No? Well, as you prefer, so long as you don’t run away. The lawsuit? Well, isn’t it obvious?”
“How is it going to stop him?” she asked in the tone one would use to recite a list of statistics. “It will prove nothing, whether he wins or loses. The whole thing is just a spree for great numbers of louts, filthy but pointless. I did not think you wasted your time on stink bombs. All of it will be forgotten before next Christmas.”
“My God, but I must be a failure! I never thought of myself as such a poor teacher. That you should have learned so little in two years of close association with me! It’s really discouraging. Since you are the most intelligent woman I know, the fault must be mine. Well, let’s see, you did learn one thing: that I don’t waste my time. Quite correct. I don’t. Right, my dear, everything will be forgotten by next Christmas. And that, you see, will be the achievement. You can fight a live issue. You can’t fight a dead one. Dead issues, like all dead things, don’t just vanish, but leave some decomposing matter behind. A most unpleasant thing to carry on your name. Mr. Hopton Stoddard will be thoroughly forgotten. The Temple will be forgotten. The lawsuit will be forgotten. But here’s what will remain: ‘Howard Roark? Why, how could you trust a man like that? He’s an enemy of religion. He’s completely immoral. First thing you know, he’ll gyp you on your construction costs.’ ‘Roark? He’s no good—why, a client had to sue him because he made such a botch of a building.’ ‘Roark? Roark? Wait a moment, isn’t that the guy who got into all the papers over some sort of mess? Now what was it? Some rotten kind of scandal, the owner of the building—I think the place was a disorderly house—anyway the owner had to sue him. You don’t want to get involved with a notorious character like that. What for, when there are so many decent architects to choose from?’ Fight that, my dear. Tell me a way to fight it. Particularly when you have no weapons except your genius, which is not a weapon but a great liability.”
Her eyes were disappointing; they listened patiently, an unmoving glance that would not become anger. She stood before his desk, straight, controlled, like a sentry in a storm who knows that he has to take it and has to remain there even when he can take it no longer.
“I believe you want me to continue,” said Toohey. “Now you see the peculiar effectiveness of a dead issue. You can’t talk your way out of it, you can’t explain, you can’t defend yourself. Nobody wants to listen. It is difficult enough to acquire fame. It is impossible to change its nature once you’ve acquired it. No, you can never ruin an architect by proving that he’s a bad architect. But you can ruin him because he’s an atheist, or because somebody sued him, or because he slept with some woman, or because he pulls wings off bottleflies. You’ll say it doesn’t make sense? Of course it doesn’t. That’s why it works. Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy. But if you can make it become your ally—ah, my dear! ... Look, Dominique, I will stop talking the moment you show a sign of being frightened.”
“Go on,” she said.
“I think you should now ask me a question. Or perhaps you don’t like to be obvious and feel that I must guess the question myself? I think you’re right. The question is, why did I choose Howard Roark? Because -to quote my own article—it is not my function to be a fly swatter. I quote this now with a somewhat different meaning, but we’ll let that pass. Also, this has helped me to get something I wanted from Hopton Stoddard, but that’s only a minor side-issue, an incidental, just pure gravy. Principally, however, the whole thing was an experiment. Just a test skirmish, shall we say? The results are most gratifying. If you were not involved as you are, you’d be the one person who’d appreciate the spectacle. Really, you know, I’ve done very little when you consider the extent of what followed. Don’t you find it interesting to see a huge, complicated piece of machinery, such as our society, all levers and belts and interlocking gears, the kind that looks as if one would need an army to operate it—and you find that by pressing your little finger against one spot, the one vital spot, the center of all its gravity, you can make the thing crumble into a worthless heap of scrap iron? It can be done, my dear. But it takes a long time. It takes centuries. I have the advantage of many experts who came before me. I think I shall be the last and the successful one of the line, because—though not abler than they were—I see more clearly what we’re after. However, that’s abstraction. Speaking of concrete reality, don’t you find anything amusing in my little experiment? I do. For instance, do you notice that all the wrong people are on the wrong sides? Mr. Alvah Scarret, the college professors, the newspaper editors, the respectable mothers and the Chambers of Commerce should have come flying to the defense of Howard Roark—if they value their own lives. But they didn’t. They are upholding Hopton Stoddard. On the other hand I heard that some screwy bunch of cafeteria radicals called ‘The New League of Proletarian Art’ tried to enlist in support of Howard Roark—they said he was a victim of capitalism—when they should have known that Hopton Stoddard is their champion. Roark, by the way, had the good sense to decline. He understands. You do. I do. Not many others. Oh, well. Scrap iron has its uses.”
She turned to leave the room.
“Dominique, you’re not going?” He sounded hurt. “You won’t say anything? Not anything at all?”
“No.”
“Dominique, you’re letting me down. And how I waited for you! I’m a very self-sufficient person, as a rule, but I do need an audience once in a while. You’re the only person with whom I can be myself. I suppose it’s because you have such contempt for me that nothing I say can make any difference. You see, I know that, but I don’t care. Also, the methods I use on other people would never work on you. Strangely enough, only my honesty will. Hell, what’s the use of accomplishing a skillful piece of work if nobody knows that you’ve accomplished it? Had you been your old self, you’d tell me, at this point, that that is the psychology of a murderer who’s committed the perfect crime and then confesses because he can’t bear the idea that nobody knows it’s a perfect crime. And I’d answer that you’re right. I want an audience. That’s the trouble with victims—they don’t even know they’re victims, which is as it should be, but it does become monotonous and takes half the fun away. You’re such a rare treat—a victim who can appreciate the artistry of its own execution.... For God’s sake, Dominique, are you leaving when I’m practically begging you to remain?”
She put her hand on the doorknob. He shrugged and settled back in his chair.
“All right,” he said. “Incidentally, don’t try to buy Hopton Stoddard out. He’s eating out of my hand just now. He won’t sell.” She had opened the door, but she stopped and pulled it shut again. “Oh, yes, of course I know that you’ve tried. It’s no use. You’re not that rich. You haven’t enough to buy that temple and you couldn’t raise enough. Also, Hopton won’t accept any money from you to pay for the alterations. I know you’ve offered that, too. He wants it from Roark. By the way, I don’t think Roark would like it if I let him know that you’ve tried.”
He smiled in a manner that demanded a protest. Her face gave no answer. She turned to the door again.
“Just one more question, Dominique. Mr. Stoddard’s attorney wants. to know whether he can call you as a witness. An expert on architecture. You will testify for the plaintiff, of course?”
“Yes. I will testify for the plaintiff.”
The case of Hopton Stoddard versus Howard Roark opened in February of 1931.
The courtroom was so full that mass reactions could be expressed only by a slow motion running across the spread of heads, a sluggish wave like the ripple under the tight-packed skin of a sea lion.
The crowd, brown and streaked with subdued color, looked like a fruitcake of all the arts, with the cream of the A.G.A. rich and heavy on top. There were distinguished men and well-dressed, tight-lipped women; each woman seemed to feel an exclusive proprietorship of the art practiced by her escort, a monopoly guarded by resentful glances at the others. Almost everybody knew almost everybody else. The room had the atmosphere of a convention, an opening night and a family picnic. There was a feeling of “our bunch,” “our boys,” “our show.”
Steven Mallory, Austen Heller, Roger Enright, Kent Lansing and Mike sat together in one corner. They tried not to look around them. Mike was worried about Steven Mallory. He kept close to Mallory, insisted on sitting next to him and glanced at him whenever a particularly offensive bit of conversation reached them. Mallory noticed it at last, and said:
“Don’t worry, Mike. I won’t scream. I won’t shoot anyone.”
“Watch your stomach, kid,” said Mike, “just watch your stomach. A man can’t get sick just because he oughta.”
“Mike, do you remember the night when we stayed so late that it was almost daylight, and Dominique’s car was out of gas, and there were no busses, and we all decided to walk home, and there was sun on the rooftops by the time the first one of us got to his house?”
“That’s right. You think about that, and I’ll think about the granite quarry.”
“What granite quarry?”
“It’s something made me very sick once, but then it turned out it made no difference at all, in the long run.”
Beyond the windows the sky was white and flat like frosted glass. The light seemed to come from the banks of snow on roofs and ledges, an unnatural light that made everything in the room look naked.
The judge sat hunched on his high bench as if he were roosting. He had a small face, wizened into virtue. He kept his hands upright in front of his chest, the finger tips pressed together. Hopton Stoddard was not present. He was represented by his attorney, a handsome gentleman, tall and grave as an ambassador.
Roark sat alone at the defense table. The crowd had stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio. He took no notes; there were no papers on the table before him, only a large brown envelope. The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer. Some of them had come prepared to pity him; all of them hated him after the first few minutes.
The plaintiff’s attorney stated his case in a simple opening address: it was true, he admitted, that Hopton Stoddard had given Roark full freedom to design and build the Temple; the point was, however, that Mr. Stoddard had clearly specified and expected a temple; the building in question could not be considered a temple by any known standards; as the plaintiff proposed to prove with the help of the best authorities in the field.
Roark waived his privilege to make an opening statement to the jury.
Ellsworth Monkton Toohey was the first witness called by the plaintiff. He sat on the edge of the witness chair and leaned back, resting on the end of his spine: he lifted one leg and placed it horizontally across the other. He looked amused—but managed to suggest that his amusement was a well-bred protection against looking bored.
The attorney went through a long list of questions about Mr. Toohey’s professional qualifications, including the number of copies sold of his book Sermons in Stone. Then he read aloud Toohey’s column “Sacrilege” and asked him to state whether he had written it. Toohey replied that he had. There followed a list of questions in erudite terms on the architectural merits of the Temple. Toohey proved that it had none. There followed an historical review. Toohey, speaking easily and casually, gave a brief sketch of all known civilizations and of their outstanding religious monuments—from the Incas to the Phoenicians to the Easter Islanders—including, whenever possible, the dates when these monuments were begun and the dates when they were completed, the number of workers employed in the construction and the approximate cost in modern American dollars. The audience listened punch-drunk.
Toohey proved that the Stoddard Temple contradicted every brick, stone and precept of history. “I have endeavored to show,” he said in conclusion, “that the two essentials of the conception of a temple are a sense of awe and a sense of man’s humility. We have noted the gigantic proportions of religious edifices, the soaring lines, the horrible grotesques of monsterlike gods, or, later, gargoyles. All of it tends to impress upon man his essential insignificance, to crush him by sheer magnitude, to imbue him with that sacred terror which leads to the meekness of virtue. The Stoddard Temple is a brazen denial of our entire past, an insolent ‘No’ flung in the face of history. I may venture a guess as to the reason why this case has aroused such public interest. All of us have recognized instinctively that it involves a moral issue much beyond its legal aspects. This building is a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. It is one man’s ego defying the most sacred impulses of all mankind, of every man on the street, of every man in this courtroom!”
This was not a witness in court, but Ellsworth Toohey addressing a meeting—and the reaction was inevitable: the audience burst into applause. The judge struck his gavel and made a threat to have the courtroom cleared. Order was restored, but not to the faces of the crowd: the faces remained lecherously self-righteous. It was pleasant to be singled out and brought into the case as an injured party. Three-fourths of them had never seen the Stoddard Temple.
“Thank you, Mr. Toohey,” said the attorney, faintly suggesting a bow. Then he turned to Roark and said with delicate courtesy: “Your witness.”
“No questions,” said Roark.
Ellsworth Toohey raised one eyebrow and left the stand regretfully.
“Mr. Peter Keating!” called the attorney.
Peter Keating’s face looked attractive and fresh, as if he had had a good night’s sleep. He mounted the witness stand with a collegiate sort of gusto, swinging his shoulders and arms unnecessarily. He took the oath and answered the first questions gaily. His pose in the witness chair was strange: his torso slumped to one side with swaggering ease, an elbow on the chair’s arm; but his feet were planted awkwardly straight, and his knees were pressed tight together. He never looked at Roark.
“Will you please name some of the outstanding buildings which you have designed, Mr. Keating?” the attorney asked.
Keating began a list of impressive names; the first few came fast, the rest slower and slower, as if he wished to be stopped; the last one died in the air, unfinished.
“Aren’t you forgetting the most important one, Mr. Keating?” the attorney asked. “Didn’t you design the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?”
“Yes,” whispered Keating.
“Now, Mr. Keating, you attended the Stanton Institute of Technology at the same period as Mr. Roark?”
“Yes.”
“What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s record there?”
“He was expelled.”
“He was expelled because he was unable to live up to the Institute’s high standard of requirements?”
“Yes. Yes, that was it.”
The judge glanced at Roark. A lawyer would have objected to this testimony as irrelevant. Roark made no objection.
“At that time, did you think he showed any talent for the profession of architecture?”
“No.”
“Will you please speak a little louder, Mr. Keating?”
“I didn’t ... think he had any talent.”
Queer things were happening to Keating’s verbal punctuation: some words came out crisply, as if he dropped an exclamation point after each; others ran together, as if he would not stop to let himself hear them. He did not look at the attorney. He kept his eyes on the audience. At times, he looked like a boy out on a lark, a boy who has just drawn a mustache on the face of a beautiful girl on a subway tooth-paste ad. Then he looked as if he were begging the crowd for support—as if he were on trial before them.
“At one time you employed Mr. Roark in your office?”
“Yes.”
“And you found yourself forced to fire him?”
“Yes ... we did.”
“For incompetence?”
“Yes.”
“What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s subsequent career?”
“Well, you know, ‘career’ is a relative term. In volume of achievement any draftsman in our office has done more than Mr. Roark. We don’t call one or two buildings a career. We put up that many every month or so.”
“Will you give us your professional opinion of his work?”
“Well, I think it’s immature. Very startling, even quite interesting at times, but essentially—adolescent.”
“Then Mr. Roark cannot be called a full-fledged architect?”
“Not in the sense in which we speak of Mr. Ralston Holcombe, Mr. Guy Francon, Mr. Gordon Prescott—no. But, of course, I want to be fair. I think Mr. Roark had definite potentialities, particularly in problems of pure engineering. He could have made something of himself. I’ve tried to talk to him about it—I’ve tried to help him—I honestly did. But it was like talking to one of his pet pieces of reinforced concrete. I knew that he’d come to something like this. I wasn’t surprised when I heard that a client had had to sue him at last.”
“What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s attitude toward clients?”
“Well, that’s the point. That’s the whole point. He didn’t care what the clients thought or wished, what anyone in the world thought or wished. He didn’t even understand how other architects could care. He wouldn’t even give you that, not even understanding, not even enough to ... respect you a little just the same. I don’t see what’s so wrong with trying to please people. I don’t see what’s wrong with wanting to be friendly and liked and popular. Why is that a crime? Why should anyone sneer at you for that, sneer all the time, all the time, day and night, not giving you a moment’s peace, like the Chinese water torture, you know where they drop water on your skull drop by drop?”
People in the audience began to realize that Peter Keating was drunk. The attorney frowned; the testimony had been rehearsed; but it was getting off the rails.
“Well, now, Mr. Keating, perhaps you’d better tell us about Mr. Roark’s views on architecture.”
“I’ll tell you, if you want to know. He thinks you should take your shoes off and kneel, when you speak of architecture. That’s what he thinks. Now why should you? Why? It’s a business like any other, isn’t it? What’s so damn sacred about it? Why do we have to be all keyed up? We’re only human. We want to make a living. Why can’t things be simple and easy? Why do we have to be some sort of God-damn heroes?”
“Now, now, Mr. Keating, I think we’re straying slightly from the subject. We’re . . .”
“No, we’re not. I know what I’m talking about. You do, too. They all do. Every one of them here. I’m talking about the temple. Don’t you see? Why pick a fiend to build a temple? Only a very human sort of man should be chosen to do that. A man who understands ... and forgives. A man who forgives ... That’s what you go to church for—to be ... forgiven ...”
“Yes, Mr. Keating, but speaking of Mr. Roark ...”
“Well, what about Mr. Roark? He’s no architect. He’s no good. Why should I be afraid to say that he’s no good? Why are you all afraid of him?”
“Mr. Keating, if you’re not well and wish to be dismissed ...” Keating looked at him, as if awakening. He tried to control himself. After a while he said, his voice flat, resigned:
“No. I’m all right. I’ll tell you anything you want. What is it you want me to say?”
“Will you tell us—in professional terms—your opinion of the structure known as the Stoddard Temple?”
“Yes. Sure. The Stoddard Temple ... The Stoddard Temple has an improperly articulated plan, which leads to spatial confusion. There is no balance of masses. It lacks a sense of symmetry. Its proportions are inept.” He spoke in a monotone. His neck was stiff; he was making an effort not to let it drop forward. “It’s out of scale. It contradicts the elementary principles of composition. The total effect is that of ...”
“Louder please, Mr. Keating.”
“The total effect is that of crudeness and architectural illiteracy. It shows ... it shows no sense of structure, no instinct for beauty, no creative imagination, no ...” he closed his eyes, “... artistic integrity ...”
“Thank you, Mr. Keating. That is all.”
The attorney turned to Roark and said nervously:
“Your witness.”
“No questions,” said Roark.
This concluded the first day of the trial.
That evening Mallory, Heller, Mike, Enright and Lansing gathered in Roark’s room. They had not consulted one another, but they all came, prompted by the same feeling. They did not talk about the trial, but there was no strain and no conscious avoidance of the subject. Roark sat on his drafting table and talked to them about the future of the plastics industry. Mallory laughed aloud suddenly, without apparent reason. “What’s the matter, Steve?” Roark asked. “I just thought ... Howard, we all came here to help you, to cheer you up. But it’s you who’re helping us, instead. You’re supporting your supporters, Howard.”
That evening, Peter Keating lay half-stretched across a table in a speakeasy, one arm extended along the table top, his face on his arm.
In the next two days a succession of witnesses testified for the plaintiff. Every examination began with questions that brought out the professional achievements of the witness. The attorney gave them leads like an expert press agent. Austen Heller remarked that architects must have fought for the privilege of being called to the witness stand, since it was the grandest spree of publicity in a usually silent profession.
None of the witnesses looked at Roark. He looked at them. He listened to the testimony. He said: “No questions,” to each one.
Ralston Holcombe on the stand, with flowing tie and gold-headed cane, had the appearance of a Grand Duke or a beer-garden composer. His testimony was long and scholarly, but it came down to:
“It’s all nonsense. It’s all a lot of childish nonsense. I can’t say that I feel much sympathy for Mr. Hopton Stoddard. He should have known better. It is a scientific fact that the architectural style of the Renaissance is the only one appropriate to our age. If our best people, like Mr. Stoddard, refuse to recognize this, what can you expect from all sorts of parvenus, would-be architects and the rabble in general? It has been proved that Renaissance is the only permissible style for all churches, temples and cathedrals. What about Sir Christopher Wren? Just laugh that off. And remember the greatest religious monument of all time—St. Peter’s in Rome. Are you going to improve upon St. Peter’s? And if Mr. Stoddard did not specifically insist on Renaissance, he got just exactly what he deserved. It serves him jolly well right.”
Gordon L. Prescott wore a turtle-neck sweater under a plaid coat, tweed trousers and heavy golf shoes.
“The correlation of the transcendental to the purely spatial in the building under discussion is entirely screwy,” he said. “If we take the horizontal as the one-dimensional, the vertical as the two-dimensional, the diagonal as the three-dimensional, and the interpenetration of spaces as the fourth-dimensional-architecture being a fourth-dimensional art —we can see quite simply that this building is homaloidal, or—in the language of the layman—nat. The flowing life which comes from the sense of order in chaos, or, if you prefer, from unity in diversity, as well as vice versa, which is the realization of the contradiction inherent in architecture, is here absolutely absent. I am really trying to express myself as clearly as I can, but it is impossible to present a dialectic state by covering it up with an old fig leaf of logic just for the sake of the mentally lazy layman.”
John Erik Snyte testified modestly and unobtrusively that he had employed Roark in his office, that Roark had been an unreliable, disloyal and unscrupulous employee, and that Roark had started his career by stealing a client from him.
On the fourth day of the trial the plaintiff’s attorney called his last witness.
“Miss Dominique Francon,” he announced solemnly.
Mallory gasped, but no one heard it; Mike’s hand clamped down on his wrist and made him keep still.
The attorney had reserved Dominique for his climax, partly because he expected a great deal from her, and partly because he was worried: she was the only unrehearsed witness; she had refused to be coached. She had never mentioned the Stoddard Temple in her column; but he had looked up her earlier writings on Roark; and Ellsworth Toohey had advised him to call her.
Dominique stood for a moment on the elevation of the witness stand, looking slowly over the crowd. Her beauty was startling but too impersonal, as if it did not belong to her; it seemed present in the room as a separate entity. People thought of a vision that had not quite appeared, of a victim on a scaffold, of a person standing at night at the rail of an ocean liner.
“What is your name?”
“Dominique Francon.”
“And your occupation, Miss Francon?”
“Newspaper woman.”
“You are the author of the brilliant column ‘Your House’ appearing in the New York Banner?”
“I am the author of ‘Your House.’ ”
“Your father is Guy Francon, the eminent architect?”
“Yes. My father was asked to come here to testify. He refused. He said he did not care for a building such as the Stoddard Temple, but he did not think that we were behaving like gentlemen.”
“Well, now, Miss Francon, shall we confine our answers to our questions? We are indeed fortunate to have you with us, since you are our only woman witness, and women have always had the purest sense of religious faith. Being, in addition, an outstanding authority on architecture, you are eminently qualified to give us what I shall call, with all deference, the feminine angle on this case. Will you tell us in your own words what you think of the Stoddard Temple?”
“I think that Mr. Stoddard has made a mistake. There would have been no doubt about the justice of his case if he had sued, not for alteration costs, but for demolition costs.”
The attorney looked relieved. “Will you explain your reasons, Miss Francon?”
“You have heard them from every witness at this trial.”
“Then I take it that you agree with the preceding testimony?”
“Completely. Even more completely than the persons who testified. They were very convincing witnesses.”
“Will you ... clarify that, Miss Francon? Just what do you mean?”
“What Mr. Toohey said: that this temple is a threat to all of us.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Mr. Toohey understood the issue so well. Shall I clarify it—in my own words?”
“By all means.”
“Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one’s highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man’s birthright. He thought that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation. But Ellsworth Toohey said that this temple was a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. Ellsworth Toohey said that the essence of exaltation was to be scared out of your wits, to fall down and to grovel. Ellsworth Toohey said that man’s highest act was to realize his own worthlessness and to beg forgiveness. Ellsworth Toohey said it was depraved not to take for granted that man is something which needs to be forgiven. Ellsworth Toohey saw that this building was of man and of the earth—and Ellsworth Toohey said that this building had its belly in the mud. To glorify man, said Ellsworth Toohey, was to glorify the gross pleasures of the flesh, for the realm of the spirit is beyond the grasp of man. To enter that realm, said Ellsworth Toohey, man must come as a beggar, on his knees. Ellsworth Toohey is a lover of mankind.”
“Miss Francon, we are not really discussing Mr. Toohey, so if you will confine yourself to ...”
“I do not condemn Ellsworth Toohey. I condemn Howard Roark. A building, they say, must be part of its site. In what kind of world did Roark build his temple? For what kind of men? Look around you. Can you see a shrine becoming sacred by serving as a setting for Mr. Hopton Stoddard? For Mr. Ralston Holcombe? For Mr. Peter Keating? When you look at them all, do you hate Ellsworth Toohey—or do you damn Howard Roark for the unspeakable indignity which he did commit? Ellsworth Toohey is right, that temple is a sacrilege, though not in the sense he meant. I think Mr. Toohey knows that, however. When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return—it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and to let them become the occasion for a whole concert of grunting, transcribed by the court stenographer.”
“Miss Francon, I hardly think that this line of testimony is relevant or admissible ...”
“The witness must be allowed to testify,” the judge declared unexpectedly. He had been bored and he liked to watch Dominique’s figure. Besides, he knew that the audience was enjoying it, in the sheer excitement of scandal, even though their sympathies were with Hopton Stoddard.
“Your Honor, some misunderstanding seems to have occurred,” said the attorney. “Miss Francon, for whom are you testifying? For Mr. Roark or Mr. Stoddard?”
“For Mr. Stoddard, of course. I am stating the reasons why Mr. Stoddard should win this case. I have sworn to tell the truth.”
“Proceed,” said the judge.
“All the witnesses have told the truth. But not the whole truth. I am merely filling in the omissions. They spoke of a threat and of hatred. They were right. The Stoddard Temple is a threat to many things. If it were allowed to exist, nobody would dare to look at himself in the mirror. And that is a cruel thing to do to men. Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul. Well, they know best. They must have their reasons. They won’t say, of course, that they hate you. They will say that you hate them. It’s near enough, I suppose. They know the emotion involved. Such are men as they are. So what is the use of being a martyr to the impossible? What is the use of building for a world that does not exist?”
“Your Honor, I don’t see what possible bearing this can have on ...”
“I am proving your case for you. I am proving why you must go with Ellsworth Toohey, as you will anyway. The Stoddard Temple must be destroyed. Not to save men from it, but to save it from men. What’s the difference, however? Mr. Stoddard wins. I am in full agreement with everything that’s being done here, except for one point. I didn’t think we should be allowed to get away with that point. Let us destroy, but don’t let us pretend that we are committing an act of virtue. Let us say that we are moles and we object to mountain peaks. Or, perhaps, that we are lemmings, the animals who cannot help swimming out to self-destruction. I realize fully that at this moment I am as futile as Howard Roark. This is my Stoddard Temple—my first and my last.” She inclined her head to the judge. “That is all, Your Honor.”
“Your witness,” the attorney snapped to Roark.
“No questions,” said Roark.
Dominique left the stand.
The attorney bowed to the bench and said: “The plaintiff rests.”
The judge turned to Roark and made a vague gesture, inviting him to proceed.
Roark got up and walked to the bench, the brown envelope in hand. He took out of the envelope ten photographs of the Stoddard Temple and laid them on the judge’s desk. He said:
“The defense rests.”