V
“WHAT’S THE MATTER? DON’T I GET STONERIDGE?” SNAPPED Peter Keating.
Dominique walked into the living room. He followed, waiting in the open door. The elevator boy brought in her luggage, and left. She said, removing her gloves:
“You’ll get Stoneridge, Peter. Mr. Wynand will tell you the rest himself. He wants to see you tonight. At eight-thirty. At his home.”
“Why in hell?”
“He’ll tell you.”
She slapped her gloves softly against her palm, a small gesture of finality, like a period at the end of a sentence. She turned to leave the room. He stood in her way.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t give a damn. I can play it your way. You’re great, aren’t you?—because you act like truck drivers, you and Mr. Gail Wynand? To hell with decency, to hell with the other fellow’s feelings? Well, I can do that too. I’ll use you both and I’ll get what I can out of it—and that’s all I care. How do you like it? No point when the worm refuses to be hurt? Spoils the fun?”
“I think that’s much better, Peter. I’m glad.”
He found himself unable to preserve this attitude when he entered Wynand’s study that evening. He could not escape the awe of being admitted into Gail Wynand’s home. By the time he crossed the room to the seat facing the desk he felt nothing but a sense of weight, and he wondered whether his feet had left prints on the soft carpet; like the leaded feet of a deep-sea diver.
“What I have to tell you, Mr. Keating, should never have needed to be said or done,” said Wynand. Keating had never heard a man speak in a manner so consciously controlled. He thought crazily that it sounded as if Wynand held his fist closed over his voice and directed each syllable. “Any extra word I speak will be offensive, so I shall be brief. I am going to marry your wife. She is leaving for Reno tomorrow. Here is the contract for Stoneridge. I have signed it. Attached is a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It is in addition to what you will receive for your work under the contract. I’ll appreciate it if you will now make no comment of any kind. I realize that I could have had your consent for less, but I wish no discussion. It would be intolerable if we were to bargain about it. Therefore, will you please take this and consider the matter settled?”
He extended the contract across the desk. Keating saw the pale blue rectangle of the check held to the top of the page by a paper clip. The clip flashed silver in the light of the desk lamp.
Keating’s hand did not reach to meet the paper. He said, his chin moving awkwardly to frame the words:
“I don’t want it. You can have my consent for nothing.”
He saw a look of astonishment—and almost of kindness—on Wynand’s face.
“You don’t want it? You don’t want Stoneridge either?”
“I want Stoneridge!” Keating’s hand rose and snatched the paper. “I want it all! Why should you get away with it? Why should I care?”
Wynand got up. He said, relief and regret in his voice:
“Right, Mr. Keating. For a moment, you had almost justified your marriage. Let it remain what it was. Good night.”
Keating did not go home. He walked to the apartment of Neil Dumont, his new designer and best friend. Neil Dumont was a lanky, anemic society youth, with shoulders stooped under the burden of too many illustrious ancestors. He was not a good designer, but he had connections; he was obsequious to Keating in the office, and Keating was obsequious to him after office hours.
He found Dumont at home. Together, they got Gordon Prescott and Vincent Knowlton, and started out to make a wild night of it. Keating did not drink much. He paid for everything. He paid more than necessary. He seemed anxious to find things to pay for. He gave exorbitant tips. He kept asking: “We’re friends—aren’t we friends?—aren’t we?” He looked at the glasses around him and he watched the lights dancing in the liquid. He looked at the three pairs of eyes; they were blurred, but they turned upon him occasionally with contentment. They were soft and comforting.
That evening, her bags packed and ready in her room, Dominique went to see Steven Mallory.
She had not seen Roark for twenty months. She had called on Mallory once in a while. Mallory knew that these visits were breakdowns in a struggle she would not name; he knew that she did not want to come, that her rare evenings with him were time torn out of her life. He never asked any questions and he was always glad to see her. They talked quietly, with a feeling of companionship such as that of an old married couple; as if he had possessed her body, and the wonder of it had long since been consumed, and nothing remained but an untroubled intimacy. He had never touched her body, but he had possessed it in a deeper kind of ownership when he had done her statue, and they could not lose the special sense of each other it had given them.
He smiled when he opened the door and saw her.
“Hello, Dominique.”
“Hello, Steve. Interrupting you?”
“No. Come in.”
He had a studio, a huge, sloppy place in an old building. She noticed the change since her last visit. The room had an air of laughter, like a breath held too long and released. She saw second-hand furniture, an Oriental rug of rare texture and sensuous color, jade ash trays, pieces of sculpture that came from historical excavations, anything he had wished to seize, helped by the sudden fortune of Wynand’s patronage. The walls looked strangely bare above the gay clutter. He had bought no paintings. A single sketch hung over his studio—Roark’s original drawing of the Stoddard Temple.
She looked slowly about her, noting every object and the reason for its presence. He kicked two chairs toward the fireplace and they sat down, one at each side of the fire.
He said, quite simply:
“Clayton, Ohio.”
“Doing what?”
“A new building for Janer’s Department Store. Five stories. On Main Street.”
“How long has he been there?”
“About a month.”
It was the first question he answered whenever she came here, without making her ask it. His simple ease spared her the necessity of explanation or pretense; his manner included no comment.
“I’m going away tomorrow, Steve.”
“For long?”
“Six weeks. Reno.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’d rather not tell you now what I’ll do when I come back. You won’t be glad.”
“I’ll try to be—if it’s what you want to do.”
“It’s what I want to do.”
One log still kept its shape on the pile of coals in the fireplace; it was checkered into small squares and it glowed without flame, like a solid string of lighted windows. He reached down and threw a fresh log on the coals. It cracked the string of windows in half and sent sparks shooting up against the sooted bricks.
He talked about his own work. She listened, as if she were an emigrant hearing her homeland’s language for a brief while.
In a pause, she asked:
“How is he, Steve?”
“As he’s always been. He doesn’t change, you know.”
He kicked the log. A few coals rolled out. He pushed them back. He said:
“I often think that he’s the only one of us who’s achieved immortality. I don’t mean in the sense of fame and I don’t mean that he won’t die some day. But he’s living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict—and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been any entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment? But Howard—one can imagine him existing forever.”
She sat looking at the fire. It gave a deceptive semblance of life to her face. After a while he asked:
“How do you like all the new things I got?”
“I like them. I like your having them.”
“I didn’t tell you what happened to me since I saw you last. The completely incredible. Gail Wynand ...”
“Yes, I know about that.”
“You do? Wynand, of all people—what on earth made him discover me?”
“I know that too. I’ll tell you when I come back.”
“He has an amazing judgment. Amazing for him. He bought the best.”
“Yes, he would.”
Then she asked, without transition, yet he knew that she was not speaking of Wynand:
“Steve, has he ever asked you about me?”
“No.”
“Have you told him about my coming here?”
“No.”
“Is that—for my sake, Steve?”
“No. For his.”
He knew he had told her everything she wanted to know.
She said, rising:
“Let’s have some tea. Show me where you keep your stuff. I’ll fix it.”
Dominique left for Reno early in the morning. Keating was still asleep and she did not awaken him to say good-by.
When he opened his eyes, he knew that she was gone, before he looked at the clock, by the quality of the silence in the house. He thought he should say “Good riddance,” but he did not say it and he did not feel it. What he felt was a vast, flat sentence without subject—“It’s no use”—related neither to himself nor to Dominique. He was alone and there was no necessity to pretend anything. He lay in bed, on his back, his arms flung out helplessly. His face looked humble and his eyes bewildered. He felt that it was an end and a death, but he did not mean the loss of Dominique.
He got up and dressed. In the bathroom he found a hand towel she had used and discarded. He picked it up, he pressed his face to it and held it for a long time, not in sorrow, but in nameless emotion, not understanding, knowing only that he had loved her twice—on that evening when Toohey telephoned, and now. Then he opened his fingers and let the towel slip down to the floor, like a liquid running between his fingers.
He went to his office and worked as usual. Nobody knew of his divorce and he felt no desire to inform anyone. Neil Dumont winked at him and drawled: “I say, Pete, you look peaked.” He shrugged and turned his back. The sight of Dumont made him sick today.
He left the office early. A vague instinct kept pulling at him, like hunger, at first, then taking shape. He had to see Ellsworth Toohey. He had to reach Toohey. He felt like the survivor of a shipwreck swimming toward a distant light.
That evening he dragged himself to Ellsworth Toohey’s apartment. When he entered, he felt dimly glad of his self-control, because Toohey seemed to notice nothing in his face,
“Oh, hello, Peter,” said Toohey airily. “Your sense of timing leaves much to be desired. You catch me on the worst possible evening. Busy as all hell. But don’t let that bother you. What are friends for but to inconvenience one? Sit down, sit down, I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“I’m sorry, Ellsworth. But ... I had to.”
“Make yourself at home. Just ignore me for a minute, will you?”
Keating sat down and waited. Toohey worked, making notes on sheets of typewritten copy. He sharpened a pencil, the sound grating like a saw across Keating’s nerves. He bent over his copy again, rustling the pages once in a while.
Half an hour later he pushed the papers aside and smiled at Keating. “That’s that,” he said. Keating made a small movement forward. “Sit tight,” said Toohey, “just one telephone call I’ve got to make.”
He dialed the number of Gus Webb. “Hello, Gus,” he said gaily. “How are you, you walking advertisement for contraceptives?” Keating had never heard that tone of loose intimacy from Toohey, a special tone of brotherhood that permitted sloppiness. He heard Webb’s piercing voice say something and laugh in the receiver. The receiver went on spitting out rapid sounds from deep down in its tube, like a throat being cleared. The words could not be recognized, only their quality; the quality of abandon and insolence, with high shrieks of mirth once in a while.
Toohey leaned back in his chair, listening, half smiling. “Yes,” he said occasionally, “uh-huh.... You said it, boy.... Surer’n hell....” He leaned back farther and put one foot in a shining, pointed shoe on the edge of the desk. “Listen, boy, what I wanted to tell you is go easy on old Bassett for a while. Sure he liked your work, but don’t shock hell out of him for the time being. No rough-house, see? Keep that big facial cavity of yours buttoned up.... You know damn well who I am to tell you.... That’s right.... That’s the stuff, kid.... Oh, he did? Good, angel-face.... Well, bye-bye—oh, say, Gus, have you heard the one about the British lady and the plumber?” There followed a story. The receiver yelled raucously at the end. “Well, watch your step and your digestion, angel-face. Nighty-night.”
Toohey dropped the receiver, said: “Now, Peter,” stretched, got up, walked to Keating and stood before him, rocking a little on his small feet, his eyes bright and kindly.
“Now, Peter, what’s the matter? Has the world crashed about your nose?”
Keating reached into his inside pocket and produced a yellow check, crumpled, much handled. It bore his signature and the sum of ten thousand dollars, made out to Ellsworth M. Toohey. The gesture with which he handed it to Toohey was not that of a donor, but of a beggar.
“Please, Ellsworth ... here ... take this ... for a good cause ... for the Workshop of Social Study ... or for anything you wish ... you know best ... for a good cause ...”
Toohey held the check with the tips of his fingers, like a soiled penny, bent his head to one side, pursing his lips in appreciation, and tossed the check on his desk.
“Very handsome of you, Peter. Very handsome indeed. What’s the occasion?”
“Ellsworth, you remember what you said once—that it doesn’t matter what we are or do, if we help others? That’s all that counts? That’s good, isn’t it? That’s clean?”
“I haven’t said it once. I’ve said it a million times.”
“And it’s really true?”
“Of course it’s true. If you have the courage to accept it.”
“You’re my friend, aren’t you? You’re the only friend I’ve got. I ... I’m not even friendly with myself, but you are. With me, I mean, aren’t you, Ellsworth?”
“But of course. Which is of more value than your own friendship with yourself—a rather queer conception, but quite valid.”
“You understand. Nobody else does. And you like me.”
“Devotedly. Whenever I have the time.”
“Ah?”
“Your sense of humor, Peter, where’s your sense of humor? What’s the matter? A bellyache? Or a soul-indigestion?”
“Ellsworth, I ...”
“Yes?”
“I can’t tell you. Even you.”
“You’re a coward, Peter.”
Keating stared helplessly: the voice had been severe and gentle, he did not know whether he should feel pain, insult or confidence.
“You come here to tell me that it doesn’t matter what you do—and then you go to pieces over something or other you’ve done. Come on, be a man and say it doesn’t matter. Say you’re not important. Mean it. Show some guts. Forget your little ego.”
“I’m not important, Ellsworth. I’m not important. Oh God, if only everybody’d say it like you do! I’m not important. I don’t want to be important.”
“Where did that money come from?”
“I sold Dominique.”
“What are you talking about? The cruise?”
“Only it seems as if it’s not Dominique that I sold.”
“What do you care if ...”
“She’s gone to Reno.”
“What?”
He could not understand the violence of Toohey’s reaction, but he was too tired to wonder. He told everything, as it had happened to him; it had not taken long to happen or to tell.
“You damn fool! You shouldn’t have allowed it!”
“What could I do? Against Wynand?”
“But to let him marry her!”
“Why not, Ellsworth? It’s better than ...”
“I didn’t think he’d ever ... but ... Oh, God damn it, I’m a bigger fool than you are!”
“But it’s better for Dominique if ...”
“To hell with your Dominique! It’s Wynand I’m thinking about!”
“Ellsworth, what’s the matter with you? ... Why should you care?”
“Keep still, will you? Let me think.”
In a moment, Toohey shrugged, sat down beside Keating and slipped his arm about his shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Peter,” he said. “I apologize. I’ve been inexcusably rude to you. It was just the shock. But I understand how you feel. Only you mustn’t take it too seriously. It doesn’t matter.” He spoke automatically. His mind was far away. Keating did not notice that. He heard the words. They were the spring in the desert. “It doesn’t matter. You’re only human. That’s all you want to be. Who’s any better? Who has the right to cast the first stone? We’re all human. It doesn’t matter.”
“My God!” said Alvah Scarret. “He can’t! Not Dominique Francon!”
“He will,” said Toohey. “As soon as she returns.”
Scarret had been surprised that Toohey should invite him to lunch, but the news he heard wiped out the surprise in a greater and more painful one.
“I’m fond of Dominique,” said Scarret, pushing his plate aside, his appetite gone. “I’ve always been very fond of her. But to have her as Mrs. Gail Wynand!”
“These, exactly, are my own sentiments,” said Toohey.
“I’ve always advised him to marry. It helps. Lends an air. An insurance of respectability, sort of, and he could do with one. He’s always skated on pretty thin ice. Got away with it, so far. But Dominique!”
“Why do you find such a marriage unsuitable?”
“Well... well, it’s not ... Damn it, you know it’s not right!”
“I know it. Do you?”
“Look, she’s a dangerous kind of woman.”
“She is. That’s your minor premise. Your major premise, however, is: he’s a dangerous kind of man.”
“Well ... in some ways ... yes.”
“My esteemed editor, you understand me quite well. But there are times when it’s helpful to formulate things. It tends toward future—cooperation. You and I have a great deal in common—though you have been somewhat reluctant to admit it. We are two variations on the same theme, shall we say? Or we play two ends against the same middle, if you prefer your own literary style. But our dear boss is quite another tune. A different leitmotif entirely—don’t you think so, Alvah? Our dear boss is an accident in our midst. Accidents are unreliable phenomena. You’ve been sitting on the edge of your seat for years—haven’t you? —watching Mr. Gail Wynand. So you know exactly what I’m talking about. You know also that Miss Dominique Francon is not our tune either. And you do not wish to see that particular influence enter the life of our boss. Do I have to state the issue any plainer?”
“You’re a smart man, Ellsworth,” said Scarret heavily.
“That’s been obvious for years.”
“I’ll talk to him. You’d better not—he hates your guts, if you’ll excuse me. But I don’t think I’d do much good either. Not if he’s made up his mind.”
“I don’t expect you to. You may try, if you wish, though it’s useless. We can’t stop that marriage. One of my good points is the fact that I admit defeat when it has to be admitted.”
“But then, why did you——”
“Tell you this? In the nature of a scoop, Alvah. Advance information.”
“I appreciate it, Ellsworth. I sure do.”
“It would be wise to go on appreciating it. The Wynand papers, Alvah, are not to be given up easily. In unity there is strength. Your style.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only that we’re in for a difficult time, my friend. So we’d do better to stick together.”
“Why, I’m with you, Ellsworth. I’ve always been.”
“Inaccurate, but we’ll let it pass. We’re concerned only with the present. And the future. As a token of mutual understanding, how about getting rid of Jimmy Kearns at the first opportunity?”
“I thought you’ve been driving at that for months! What’s the matter with Jimmy Kearns? He’s a bright kid. The best drama critic in town. He’s got a mind. Smart as a whip. Most promising.”
“He’s got a mind—of his own. I don’t think you want any whips around the place—except the one you hold. I think you want to be careful about what the promise promises.”
“Whom’ll I stick in his spot?”
“Jules Fougler.”
“Oh, hell, Ellsworth!”
“Why not?”
“That old son of a ... We can’t afford him.”
“You can if you want to. And look at the name he’s got.”
“But he’s the most impossible old ...”
“Well, you don’t have to take him. We’ll discuss it some other time. Just get rid of Jimmy Kearns.”
“Look, Ellsworth, I don’t play favorites; it’s all the same to me. I’ll give Jimmy the boot if you say so. Only I don’t see what difference it makes and what it’s got to do with what we were talking about.”
“You don’t,” said Toohey. “You will.”
“Gail, you know that I want you to be happy,” said Alvah Scarret, sitting in a comfortable armchair in the study of Wynand’s penthouse that evening. “You know that. I’m thinking of nothing else.”
Wynand lay stretched out on a couch, one leg bent, with the foot resting on the knee of the other. He smoked and listened silently.
“I’ve known Dominique for years,” said Scarret. “Long before you even heard of her. I love her. I love her, you might say, like a father. But you’ve got to admit that she’s not the kind of woman your public would expect to see as Mrs. Gail Wynand.”
Wynand said nothing.
“Your wife is a public figure, Gail. Just automatically. A public property. Your readers have a right to demand and expect certain things of her. A symbol value, if you know what I mean. Like the Queen of England, sort of. How do you expect Dominique to live up to that? How do you expect her to preserve any appearances at all? She’s the wildest person I know. She has a terrible reputation. But worst of all—think, Gail!—a divorcee! And here we spend tons of good print, standing for the sanctity of the home and the purity of womanhood! How are you going to make your public swallow that one? How am I going to sell your wife to them?”
“Don’t you think this conversation had better be stopped, Alvah?”
“Yes, Gail,” said Scarret meekly.
Scarret waited, with a heavy sense of aftermath, as if after a violent quarrel, anxious to make up.
“I know, Gail!” he cried happily. “I know what we can do. We’ll put Dominique back on the paper and we’ll have her write a column—a different one—a syndicated column on the home. You know, household hints, kitchen, babies and all that. It’ll take the curse off. Show what a good little homebody she really is, her youthful mistakes notwithstanding. Make the women forgive her. We’ll have a special department—‘Mrs. Gail Wynand’s recipes.’ A few pictures of her will help—you know, gingham dresses and aprons and her hair done up in a more conventional way.”
“Shut up, Alvah, before I slap your face,” said Wynand without raising his voice.
“Yes, Gail.”
Scarret made a move to get up.
“Sit still. I haven’t finished.”
Scarret waited obediently.
“Tomorrow morning,” said Wynand, “you will send a memo to every one of our papers. You will tell them to look through their files and find any pictures of Dominique Francon they might have in connection with her old column. You will tell them to destroy the pictures. You will tell them that henceforward any mention of her name or the use of her picture in any of my papers will cost the job of the entire editorial staff responsible. When the proper time comes, you will have an announcement of my marriage appear in all our papers. That cannot be avoided. The briefest announcement you can compose. No commentaries. No stories. No pictures. Pass the word around and make sure it’s understood. It’s any man’s job, yours included, if this is disobeyed.”
“No stories—when you marry her?”
“No stories, Alvah.”
“But good God! That’s news! The other papers ...”
“I don’t care what the other papers do about it.”
“But—why, Gail?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Dominique sat at the window, listening to the train wheels under the floor. She looked at the countryside of Ohio flying past in the fading daylight. Her head lay back against the seat and her hands lay limply at each side of her on the seat cushion. She was one with the structure of the car, she was carried forward just as the window frame, the floor, the walls of the compartment were carried forward. The corners blurred, gathering darkness; the window remained luminous, evening light rising from the earth. She let herself rest in that faint illumination; it entered the car and ruled it, so long as she did not turn on the light to shut it out.
She had no consciousness of purpose. There was no goal to this journey, only the journey itself, only the motion and the metal sound of motion around her. She felt slack and empty, losing her identity in a painless ebb, content to vanish and let nothing remain defined save that particular earth in the window.
When she saw, in the slowing movement beyond the glass, the name “Clayton” on a faded board under the eaves of a station building, she knew what she had been expecting. She knew why she had taken this train, not a faster one, why she had looked carefully at the timetable of its stops—although it had been just a column of meaningless names to her then. She seized her suitcase, coat and hat. She ran. She could not take time to dress, afraid that the floor under her feet would carry her away from here. She ran down the narrow corridor of the car, down the steps. She leaped to the station platform, feeling the shock of winter cold on her bare throat. She stood looking at the station building. She heard the train moving behind her, clattering away.
Then she put on her coat and hat. She walked across the platform, into the waiting room, across a wooden floor studded with lumps of dry chewing gum, through the heavy billows of heat from an iron stove, to the square beyond the station.
She saw a last band of yellow in the sky above the low roof lines. She saw a pitted stretch of paving bricks, and small houses leaning against one another; a bare tree with twisted branches, skeletons of weeds at the doorless opening of an abandoned garage, dark shop fronts, a drugstore still open on a corner, its lighted window dim, low over the ground.
She had never been here before, but she felt this place proclaiming its ownership of her, closing in about her with ominous intimacy. It was as if every dark mass exercised a suction like the pull of the planets in space, prescribing her orbit. She put her hand on a fire hydrant and felt the cold seeping through her glove into her skin. This was the way the town held her, a direct penetration which neither her clothes nor her mind could stop. The peace of the inevitable remained. Only now she had to act, but the actions were simple, set in advance. She asked a passer-by: “Where is the site of the new building of Janer’s Department Store?”
She walked patiently through the dark streets. She walked past desolate winter lawns and sagging porches; past vacant lots where weeds rustled against tin cans; past closed grocery stores and a steaming laundry; past an uncurtained window where a man in shirtsleeves sat by a fire, reading a paper. She turned corners and crossed streets, with the feel of cobblestones under the thin soles of her pumps. Rare passers-by looked, astonished, at her air of foreign elegance. She noticed it; she felt an answering wonder. She wanted to say: But don’t you understand?—I belong here more than you do. She stopped, once in a while, closing her eyes; she found it difficult to breathe.
She came to Main Street and walked slower. There were a few lights, cars parked diagonally at the curb, a movie theater, a store window displaying pink underwear among kitchen utensils. She walked stiffly, looking ahead.
She saw a glare of light on the side of an old building, on a blind wall of yellow bricks showing the sooted floor lines of a neighboring structure that had been torn down. The light came from an excavation pit. She knew this was the site. She hoped it was not. If they worked late, he would be here. She did not want to see him tonight. She had wanted only to see the place and the building; she was not ready for more; she had wanted to see him tomorrow. But she could not stop now. She walked to the excavation. It lay on a corner, open to the street, without fence. She heard the grinding clatter of iron, she saw the arm of a derrick, the shadows of men on the slanting sides of fresh earth, yellow in the light. She could not see the planks that led up to the sidewalk, but she heard the sound of steps and then she saw Roark coming up to the street. He was hatless, he had a loose coat hanging open.
He stopped. He looked at her. She thought that she was standing straight; that it was simple and normal, she was seeing the gray eyes and the orange hair as she had always seen them. She was astonished that he moved toward her with a kind of urgent haste, that his hand closed over her elbow too firmly and he said: “You’d better sit down.”
Then she knew she could not have stood up without that hand on her elbow. He took her suitcase. He led her across the dark side street and made her sit down on the steps of a vacant house. She leaned back against a closed door. He sat down beside her. He kept his hand tight on her elbow, not a caress, but an impersonal hold of control over both of them.
After a while he dropped his hand. She knew that she was safe now. She could speak.
“That’s your new building?”
“Yes. You walked here from the station?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a long walk.”
“I think it was.”
She thought that they had not greeted each other and that it was right. This was not a reunion, but just one moment out of something that had never been interrupted. She thought how strange it would be if she ever said “Hello” to him; one did not greet oneself each morning.
“What time did you get up today?” she asked.
“At seven.”
“I was in New York then. In a cab, going to Grand Central. Where did you have breakfast?”
“In a lunch wagon.”
“The kind that stays open all night?”
“Yes. Mostly for truck drivers.”
“Do you go there often?”
“Whenever I want a cup of coffee.”
“And you sit at a counter? And there are people around, looking at you?”
“I sit at a counter when I have the time. There are people around. I don’t think they look at me much.”
“And afterward? You walk to work?”
“Yes.”
“You walk every day? Down any of these streets? Past any window? So that if one just wanted to reach and open the window ...”
“People don’t stare out of windows here.”
From the vantage of the high stoop they could see the excavation across the street, the earth, the workmen, the rising steel columns in a glare of harsh light. She thought it was strange to see fresh earth in the midst of pavements and cobblestones; as if a piece had been torn from the clothing of a town, showing naked flesh. She said:
“You’ve done two country homes in the last two years.”
“Yes. One in Pennsylvania and one near Boston.”
“They were unimportant houses.”
“Inexpensive, if that’s what you mean. But very interesting to do.”
“How long will you remain here?”
“Another month.”
“Why do you work at night?”
“It’s a rush job.”
Across the street the derrick was moving, balancing a long girder in the air. She saw him watching it, and she knew he was not thinking of it, but there was the instinctive response in his eyes, something physically personal, intimacy with any action taken for his building.
“Roark ...”
They had not pronounced each other’s names. It had the sensuous pleasure of a surrender long delayed—to pronounce the name and to have him hear it.
“Roark, it’s the quarry again.”
He smiled. “If you wish. Only it isn’t.”
“After the Enright House? After the Cord Building?”
“I don’t think of it that way.”
“How do you think of it?”
“I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”
He was looking across the street. He had not changed. There was the old sense of lightness in him, of ease in motion, in action, in thought. She said, her sentence without beginning or end:
“... doing five-story buildings for the rest of your life ...”
“If necessary. But I don’t think it will be like that.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“I’m not waiting.”
She closed her eyes, but she could not hide her mouth; her mouth held bitterness, anger and pain.
“Roark, if you’d been in the city, I wouldn’t have come to see you.”
“I know it.”
“But it was you—in another place—in some nameless hole of a place like this. I had to see it. I had to see the place.”
“When are you going back?”
“You know I haven’t come to remain?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’re still afraid of lunch wagons and windows.”
“I’m not going back to New York. Not at once.”
“No?”
“You haven’t asked me anything, Roark. Only whether I walked from the station.”
“What do you want me to ask you?”
“I got off the train when I saw the name of the station,” she said, her voice dull. “I didn’t intend coming here. I was on my way to Reno.”
“And after that?”
“I will marry again.”
“Do I know your fiancé?”
“You’ve heard of him. His name is Gail Wynand.”
She saw his eyes. She thought she should want to laugh; she had brought him at last to a shock she had never expected to achieve. But she did not laugh. He thought of Henry Cameron; of Cameron saying: “I have no answer to give them, Howard. I’m leaving you to face them. You’ll answer them. All of them, the Wynand papers and what makes the Wynand papers possible and what lies behind that.”
“Roark.”
He didn’t answer.
“That’s worse than Peter Keating, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Much worse.”
“Do you want to stop me?”
“No.”
He had not touched her since he had released her elbow, and that had been only a touch proper in an ambulance. She moved her hand and let it rest against his. He did not withdraw his fingers and he did not pretend indifference. She bent over, holding his hand, not raising it from his knee, and she pressed her lips to his hand. Her hat fell off, he saw the blond head at his knees, he felt her mouth kissing his hand again and again. His fingers held hers, answering, but that was the only answer.
She raised her head and looked at the street. A lighted window hung in the distance, behind a grillwork of bare branches. Small houses stretched off into the darkness, and trees stood by the narrow sidewalks.
She noticed her hat on the steps below and bent to pick it up. She leaned with her bare hand flat against the steps. The stone was old, worn smooth, icy. She felt comfort in the touch. She sat for a moment, bent over, palm pressed to the stone; to feel these steps—no matter how many feet had used them—to feel them as she had felt the fire hydrant.
“Roark, where do you live?”
“In a rooming house.”
“What kind of room?”
“Just a room.”
“What’s in it? What kind of walls?”
“Some sort of wallpaper. Faded.”
“What furniture?”
“A table, chairs, a bed.”
“No, tell me in detail.”
“There’s a clothes closet, then a chest of drawers, the bed in the corner by the window, a large table at the other side——”
“By the wall?”
“No, I put it across the corner, to the window—I work there. Then there’s a straight chair, an armchair with a bridge lamp and a magazine rack I never use. I think that’s all.”
“No rugs? Or curtains?”
“I think there’s something at the window and some kind of rug. The floor is nicely polished, it’s beautiful old wood.”
“I want to think of your room tonight—on the train.”
He sat looking across the street. She said:
“Roark, let me stay with you tonight.”
“No.”
She let her glance follow his to the grinding machinery below. After a while she asked:
“How did you get this store to design?”
“The owner saw my buildings in New York and liked them.”
A man in overalls stepped out of the excavation pit, peered into the darkness at them and called: “Is that you up there, boss?”
“Yes,” Roark called back.
“Come here a minute, will you?”
Roark walked to him across the street. She could not hear their conversation, but she heard Roark saying gaily: “That’s easy,” and then they both walked down the planks to the bottom. The man stood talking, pointing up, explaining. Roark threw his head back, to glance up at the rising steel frame; the light was full on his face, and she saw his look of concentration, not a smile, but an expression that gave her a joyous feeling of competence, of disciplined reason in action. He bent, picked up a piece of board, took a pencil from his pocket. He stood with one foot on a pile of planks, the board propped on his knee, and drew rapidly, explaining something to the man who nodded, pleased. She could not hear the words, but she felt the quality of Roark’s relation to that man, to all the other men in that pit, an odd sense of loyalty and of brotherhood, but not the kind she had ever heard named by these words. He finished, handed the board to the man, and they both laughed at something. Then he came back and sat down on the steps beside her.
“Roark,” she said, “I want to remain here with you for all the years we might have.”
He looked at her, attentively, waiting.
“I want to live here.” Her voice had the sound of pressure against a dam. “I want to live as you live. Not to touch my money—I’ll give it away, to anyone, to Steve Mallory, if you wish, or to one of Toohey’s organizations, it doesn’t matter. We’ll take a house here—like one of these—and I’ll keep it for you—don’t laugh, I can—I’ll cook, I’ll wash your clothes, I’ll scrub the floor. And you’ll give up architecture.”
He had not laughed. She saw nothing but an unmoving attention prepared to listen on.
“Roark, try to understand, please try to understand. I can’t bear to see what they’re doing to you, what they’re going to do. It’s too great—you and building and what you feel about it. You can’t go on like that for long. It won’t last. They won’t let you. You’re moving to some terrible kind of disaster. It can’t end any other way. Give it up. Take some meaningless job—like the quarry. We’ll live here. We’ll have little and we’ll give nothing. We’ll live only for what we are and for what we know.”
He laughed. She heard, in the sound of it, a surprising touch of consideration for her—the attempt not to laugh; but he couldn’t stop it.
“Dominique.” The way he pronounced the name remained with her and made it easier to hear the words that followed: “I wish I could tell you that it was a temptation, at least for a moment. But it wasn’t.” He added: “If I were very cruel, I’d accept it. Just to see how soon you’d beg me to go back to building.”
“Yes ... Probably ...”
“Marry Wynand and stay married to him. It will be better than what you’re doing to yourself right now.”
“Do you mind ... if we just sit here for a little while longer ... and not talk about that ... but just talk, as if everything were right ... just an armistice for half an hour out of years.... Tell me what you’ve done every day you’ve been here, everything you can remember....”
Then they talked, as if the stoop of the vacant house were an airplane hanging in space, without sight of earth or sky; he did not look across the street.
Then he glanced at his wrist watch and said:
“There’s a train for the West in an hour. Shall I go with you to the station?”
“Do you mind if we walk there?”
“All right.”
She stood up. She asked:
“Until—when, Roark?”
His hand moved over the streets. “Until you stop hating all this, stop being afraid of it, learn not to notice it.”
They walked together to the station. She listened to the sound of his steps with hers in the empty streets. She let her glance drag along the walls they passed, like a clinging touch. She loved this place, this town and everything that was part of it.
They were walking past a vacant lot. The wind blew an old sheet of newspaper against her legs. It clung to her with a tight insistence that seemed conscious, like the peremptory caress of a cat. She thought, anything of this town had that intimate right to her. She bent, picked up the paper and began folding it, to keep it.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Something to read on the train,” she said stupidly.
He snatched the paper from her, crumpled it and flung it away into the weeds. She said nothing and they walked on.
A single light bulb hung over the empty station platform. They waited. He stood looking up the tracks, where the train was to appear. When the tracks rang, shuddering, when the white ball of a headlight spurted out of the distance and stood still in the sky, not approaching, only widening, growing in furious speed, he did not move or turn to her. The rushing beam flung his shadow across the platform, made it sweep over the planks and vanish. For an instant she saw the tall, straight line of his body against the glare. The engine passed them and the cars rattled, slowing down. He looked at the windows rolling past. She could not see his face, only the outline of his cheekbone.
When the train stopped, he turned to her. They did not shake hands, they did not speak. They stood straight, facing each other for a moment, as if at attention; it was almost like a military salute. Then she picked up her suitcase and went aboard the train. The train started moving a minute later.