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RALSTON HOLCOMBE HAD NO VISIBLE NECK, BUT HIS CHIN TOOK care of that. His chin and jaws formed an unbroken arc, resting on his chest. His cheeks were pink, soft to the touch, with the irresilient softness of age, like the skin of a peach that has been scalded. His rich white hair rose over his forehead and fell to his shoulders in the sweep of a medieval mane. It left dandruff on the back of his collar.
He walked through the streets of New York, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, a dark business suit, a pale green satin shirt, a vest of white brocade, a huge black bow emerging from under his chin, and he carried a staff, not a cane, but a tall ebony staff surmounted by a bulb of solid gold. It was as if his huge body were resigned to the conventions of a prosaic civilization and to its drab garments, but the oval of his chest and stomach sallied forth, flying the colors of his inner soul.
These things were permitted to him, because he was a genius. He was also president of the Architects’ Guild of America.
Ralston Holcombe did not subscribe to the views of his colleagues in the organization. He was not a grubbing builder nor a businessman. He was, he stated firmly, a man of ideals.
He denounced the deplorable state of American architecture and the unprincipled eclecticism of its practitioners. In any period of history, he declared, architects built in the spirit of their own time, and did not pick designs from the past; we could be true to history only in heeding her law, which demanded that we plant the roots of our art firmly in the reality of our own life. He decried the stupidity of erecting buildings that were Greek, Gothic or Romanesque; let us, he begged, be modern and build in the style that belongs to our days. He had found that style. It was Renaissance.
He stated his reasons clearly. Inasmuch, he pointed out, as nothing of great historical importance had happened in the world since the Renaissance, we should consider ourselves still living in that period; and all the outward forms of our existence should remain faithful to the examples of the great masters of the sixteenth century.
He had no patience with the few who spoke of a modern architecture in terms quite different from his own; he ignored them; he stated only that men who wanted to break with all of the past were lazy ignoramuses, and that one could not put originality above Beauty. His voice trembled reverently on that last word.
He accepted nothing but stupendous commissions. He specialized in the eternal and the monumental. He built a great many memorials and capitols. He designed for International Expositions.
He built like a composer improvising under the spur of a mystic guidance. He had sudden inspirations. He would add an enormous dome to the flat roof of a finished structure, or encrust a long vault with gold-leaf mosaic, or rip off a façade of limestone to replace it with marble. His clients turned pale, stuttered—and paid. His imperial personality carried him to victory in any encounter with a client’s thrift; behind him stood the stern, unspoken, overwhelming assertion that he was an Artist. His prestige was enormous.
He came from a family listed in the Social Register. In his middle years he had married a young lady whose family had not made the Social Register, but made piles of money instead, in a chewing-gum empire left to an only daughter.
Ralston Holcombe was now sixty-five, to which he added a few years, for the sake of his friends’ compliments on his wonderful physique; Mrs. Ralston Holcombe was forty-two, from which she deducted considerably.
Mrs. Ralston Holcombe maintained a salon that met informally every Sunday afternoon. “Everybody who is anybody in architecture drops in on us,” she told her friends. “They’d better,” she added.
On a Sunday afternoon in March, Keating drove to the Holcombe mansion—a reproduction of a Florentine palazzo—dutifully, but a little reluctantly. He had been a frequent guest at these celebrated gatherings and he was beginning to be bored, for he knew everybody he could expect to find there. He felt, however, that he had to attend this time, because the occasion was to be in honor of the completion of one more capitol by Ralston Holcombe in some state or another.
A substantial crowd was lost in the marble ballroom of the Holcombes, scattered in forlorn islets through an expanse intended for court receptions. The guests stood about, self-consciously informal, working at being brilliant. Steps rang against the marble with the echoing sound of a crypt. The flames of tall candles clashed desolately with the gray of the light from the street; the light made the candles seem dimmer, the candles gave to the day outside a premonitory tinge of dusk. A scale model of the new state capitol stood displayed on a pedestal in the middle of the room, ablaze with tiny electric bulbs.
Mrs. Ralston Holcombe presided over the tea table. Each guest accepted a fragile cup of transparent porcelain, took two delicate sips and vanished in the direction of the bar. Two stately butlers went about collecting the abandoned cups.
Mrs. Ralston Holcombe, as an enthusiastic girl friend had described her, was “petite, but intellectual.” Her diminutive stature was her secret sorrow, but she had learned to find compensations. She could talk, and did, of wearing dresses size ten and of shopping in the junior departments. She wore high-school garments and short socks in summer, displaying spindly legs with hard blue veins. She adored celebrities. That was her mission in life. She hunted them grimly; she faced them with wide-eyed admiration and spoke of her own insignificance, of her humility before achievement; she shrugged, tight-lipped and rancorous, whenever one of them did not seem to take sufficient account of her own views on life after death, the theory of relativity, Aztec architecture, birth control and the movies. She had a great many poor friends and advertised the fact. If a friend happened to improve his financial position, she dropped him, feeling that he had committed an act of treason. She hated the wealthy in all sincerity: they shared her only badge of distinction. She considered architecture her private domain. She had been christened “Constance” and found it awfully clever to be known as “Kiki,” a nickname she had forced on her friends when she was well past thirty.
Keating had never felt comfortable in Mrs. Holcombe’s presence, because she smiled at him too insistently and commented on his remarks by winking and saying: “Why, Peter, how naughty of you!” when no such intention had been in his mind at all. He bowed over her hand, however, this afternoon as usual, and she smiled from behind the silver teapot. She wore a regal gown of emerald velvet, and a magenta ribbon in her bobbed hair with a cute little bow in front. Her skin was tanned and dry, with enlarged pores showing on her nostrils. She handed a cup to Keating, a square-cut emerald glittering on her finger in the candlelight.
Keating expressed his admiration for the capitol and escaped to examine the model. He stood before it for a correct number of minutes, scalding his lips with the hot liquid that smelled of cloves. Holcombe, who never looked in the direction of the model and never missed a guest stopping before it, slapped Keating’s shoulder and said something appropriate about young fellows learning the beauty of the style of the Renaissance. Then Keating wandered off, shook a few hands without enthusiasm, and glanced at his wrist watch, calculating the time when it would be permissible to leave. Then he stopped.
Beyond a broad arch, in a small library, with three young men beside her, he saw Dominique Francon.
She stood leaning against a column, a cocktail glass in her hand. She wore a suit of black velvet; the heavy cloth, which transmitted no light rays, held her anchored to reality by stopping the light that flowed too freely through the flesh of her hands, her neck, her face. A white spark of fire flashed like a cold metallic cross in the glass she held, as if it were a lens gathering the diffused radiance of her skin.
Keating tore forward and found Francon in the crowd.
“Well, Peter!” said Francon brightly. “Want me to get you a drink? Not so hot,” he added, lowering his voice, “but the Manhattans aren’t too bad.”
“No,” said Keating, “thanks.”
Entre nous,” said Francon, winking at the model of the capital, “it’s a holy mess, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Keating. “Miserable proportions.... That dome looks like Holcombe’s face imitating a sunrise on the roof....” They had stopped in full view of the library and Keating’s eyes were fixed on the girl in black, inviting Francon to notice it; he enjoyed having Francon in a trap.
“And the plan! The plan! Do you see that on the second floor ... oh,” said Francon, noticing.
He looked at Keating, then at the library, then at Keating again.
“Well,” said Francon at last, “don’t blame me afterward. You’ve asked for it. Come on.”
They entered the library together. Keating stopped, correctly, but allowing his eyes an improper intensity, while Francon beamed with unconvincing cheeriness:
“Dominique, my dear! May I present?—this is Peter Keating, my own right hand. Peter—my daughter.”
“How do you do,” said Keating, his voice soft.
Dominique bowed gravely.
“I have waited to meet you for such a long time, Miss Francon.”
“This will be interesting,” said Dominique. “You will want to be nice to me, of course, and yet that won’t be diplomatic.”
“What do you mean, Miss Francon?”
“Father would prefer you to be horrible with me. Father and I don’t get along at all.”
“Why, Miss Francon, I ...”
“I think it’s only fair to tell you this at the beginning. You may want to redraw some conclusions.” He was looking for Francon, but Francon had vanished. “No,” she said softly, “Father doesn’t do these things well at all. He’s too obvious. You asked him for the introduction, but he shouldn’t have let me notice that. However, it’s quite all right, since we both admit it. Sit down.”
She slipped into a chair and he sat down obediently beside her. The young men whom he did not know stood about for a few minutes, trying to be included in the conversation by smiling blankly, then wandered off. Keating thought with relief that there was nothing frightening about her; there was only a disquieting contrast between her words and the candid innocence of the manner she used to utter them; he did not know which to trust.
“I admit I asked for the introduction,” he said. “That’s obvious anyway, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t ask for it? But don’t you think that the conclusions I’ll draw may have nothing to do with your father?”
“Don’t say that I’m beautiful and exquisite and like no one you’ve ever met before and that you’re very much afraid that you’re going to fall in love with me. You’ll say it eventually, but let’s postpone it. Apart from that, I think we’ll get along very nicely.”
“But you’re trying to make it very difficult for me, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Father should have warned you.”
“He did.”
“You should have listened. Be very considerate of Father. I’ve met so many of his own right hands that I was beginning to be skeptical. But you’re the first one who’s lasted. And who looks like he’s going to last. I’ve heard a great deal about you. My congratulations.”
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for years. And I’ve been reading your column with so much ...” He stopped. He knew he shouldn’t have mentioned that; and, above all, he shouldn’t have stopped.
“So much ... ?” she asked gently.
“... so much pleasure,” he finished, hoping that she would let it go at that.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “The Ainsworth house. You designed it. I’m sorry. You just happened to be the victim of one of my rare attacks of honesty. I don’t have them often. As you know, if you’ve read my stuff yesterday.”
“I’ve read it. And—well, I’ll follow your example and I’ll be perfectly frank. Don’t take it as a complaint—one must never complain against one’s critics. But really that capitol of Holcombe’s is much worse in all those very things that you blasted us for. Why did you give him such a glowing tribute yesterday? Or did you have to?”
“Don’t flatter me. Of course I didn’t have to. Do you think anyone on the paper pays enough attention to a column on home decoration to care what I say in it? Besides, I’m not even supposed to write about capitols. Only I’m getting tired of home decorations.”
“Then why did you praise Holcombe?”
“Because that capitol of his is so awful that to pan it would have been an anticlimax. So I thought it would be amusing to praise it to the sky. It was.”
“Is that the way you go about it?”
“That’s the way I go about it. But no one reads my column, except housewives who can never afford to decorate their homes, so it doesn’t matter at all.”
“But what do you really like in architecture?”
“I don’t like anything in architecture.”
“Well, you know of course that I won’t believe that. Why do you write if you have nothing you want to say?”
“To have something to do. Something more disgusting than many other things I could do. And more amusing.”
“Come on, that’s not a good reason.”
“I never have any good reasons.”
“But you must be enjoying your work.”
“I am. Don’t you see that I am?”
“You know, I’ve actually envied you. Working for a magnificent enterprise like the Wynand papers. The largest organization in the country, commanding the best writing talent and ...”
“Look,” she said, leaning toward him confidentially, “let me help you. If you had just met Father, and he were working for the Wynand papers, that would be exactly the right thing to say. But not with me. That’s what I’d expect you to say and I don’t like to hear what I expect. It would be much more interesting if you said that the Wynand papers are a contemptible dump heap of yellow journalism and all their writers put together aren’t worth two bits.”
“Is that what you really think of them?”
“Not at all. But I don’t like people who try to say only what they think I think.”
“Thanks. I’ll need your help. I’ve never met anyone ... oh, no, of course, that’s what you didn’t want me to say. But I really meant it about your papers. I’ve always admired Gail Wynand. I’ve always wished I could meet him. What is he like?”
“Just what Austen Heller called him—an exquisite bastard.”
He winced. He remembered where he had heard Austen Heller say that. The memory of Catherine seemed heavy and vulgar in the presence of the thin white hand he saw hanging over the arm of the chair before him.
“But, I mean,” he asked, “what’s he like in person?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him.”
“You haven’t?”
“No.”
“Oh, I’ve heard he’s so interesting!”
“Undoubtedly. When I’m in a mood for something decadent I’ll probably meet him.”
“Do you know Toohey?”
“Oh,” she said. He saw what he had seen in her eyes before, and he did not like the sweet gaiety of her voice. “Oh, Ellsworth Toohey. Of course I know him. He’s wonderful. He’s a man I always enjoy talking to. He’s such a perfect blackguard.”
“Why, Miss Francon! You’re the first person who’s ever ...”
“I’m not trying to shock you. I meant all of it. I admire him. He’s so complete. You don’t meet perfection often in this world one way or the other, do you? And he’s just that. Sheer perfection in his own way. Everyone else is so unfinished, broken up into so many different pieces that don’t fit together. But not Toohey. He’s a monolith. Sometimes, when I feel bitter against the world, I find consolation in thinking that it’s all right, that I’ll be avenged, that the world will get what’s coming to it—because there’s Ellsworth Toohey.”
“What do you want to be avenged for?”
She looked at him, her eyelids lifted for a moment, so that her eyes did not seem rectangular, but soft and clear.
“That was very clever of you,” she said. “That was the first clever thing you’ve said.”
“Why?”
“Because you knew what to pick out of all the rubbish I uttered. So I’ll have to answer you. I’d like to be avenged for the fact that I have nothing to be avenged for. Now let’s go on about Ellsworth Toohey.”
“Well, I’ve always heard, from everybody, that he’s a sort of saint, the one pure idealist, utterly incorruptible and ...”
“That’s quite true. A plain grafter would be much safer. But Toohey is like a testing stone for people. You can learn about them by the way they take him.”
“Why? What do you actually mean?”
She leaned back in her chair, and stretched her arms down to her knees, twisting her wrists, palms out, the fingers of her two hands entwined. She laughed easily.
“Nothing that one should make a subject of discussion at a tea party. Kiki’s right. She hates the sight of me, but she’s got to invite me once in a while. And I can’t resist coming, because she’s so obvious about not wanting me. You know, I told Ralston tonight what I really thought of his capitol, but he wouldn’t believe me. He only beamed and said that I was a very nice little girl.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“A very nice little girl.”
“No. Not today. I’ve made you thoroughly uncomfortable. So I’ll make up for it. I’ll tell you what I think of you, because you’ll be worrying about that. I think you’re smart and safe and obvious and quite ambitious and you’ll get away with it. And I like you. I’ll tell Father that I approve of his right hand very much, so you see you have nothing to fear from the boss’s daughter. Though it would be better if I didn’t say anything to Father, because my recommendation would work the other way with him.”
“May I tell you only one thing that I think about you?”
“Certainly. Any number of them.”
“I think it would have been better if you hadn’t told me that you liked me. Then I would have had a better chance of its being true.”
She laughed.
“If you understand that,” she said, “then we’ll get along beautifully. Then it might even be true.”
Gordon L. Prescott appeared in the arch of the ballroom, glass in hand. He wore a gray suit and a turtle-neck sweater of silver wool. His boyish face looked freshly scrubbed, and he had his usual air of soap, tooth paste and the outdoors.
“Dominique, darling!” he cried, waving his glass. “Hello, Keating,” he added curtly. “Dominique, where have you been hiding yourself? I heard you were here and I’ve had a hell of a time looking for you!”
“Hello, Gordon,” she said. She said it quite correctly; there was nothing offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its indifference—as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around the melodic thread of her contempt.
Prescott had not heard. “Darling,” he said, “you look lovelier every time I see you. One wouldn’t think it were possible.”
“Seventh time,” said Dominique.
“What?”
“Seventh time that you’ve said it when meeting me, Gordon. I’m counting them.”
“You simply won’t be serious, Dominique. You’ll never be serious.”
“Oh, yes, Gordon. I was just having a very serious conversation here with my friend Peter Keating.”
A lady waved to Prescott and he accepted the opportunity, escaping, looking very foolish. And Keating delighted in the thought that she had dismissed another man for a conversation she wished to continue with her friend Peter Keating.
But when he turned to her, she asked sweetly: “What was it we were talking about, Mr. Keating?” And then she was staring with too great an interest across the room, at the wizened figure of a little man coughing over a whisky glass.
“Why,” said Keating, “we were ...”
“Oh, there’s Eugene Pettingill. My great favorite. I must say hello to Eugene.”
And she was up, moving across the room, her body leaning back as she walked, moving toward the most unattractive septuagenarian present.
Keating did not know whether he had been made to join the brotherhood of Gordon L. Prescott, or whether it had been only an accident.
He returned to the ballroom reluctantly. He forced himself to join groups of guests and to talk. He watched Dominique Francon as she moved through the crowd, as she stopped in conversation with others. She never glanced at him again. He could not decide whether he had succeeded with her or failed miserably.
He managed to be at the door when she was leaving.
She stopped and smiled at him enchantingly.
“No,” she said, before he could utter a word, “you can’t take me home. I have a car waiting. Thank you just the same.”
She was gone and he stood at the door, helpless and thinking furiously that he believed he was blushing.
He felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned to find Francon beside him.
“Going home, Peter? Let me give you a lift.”
“But I thought you had to be at the club by seven.”
“Oh, that’s all right, I’ll be a little late, doesn’t matter, I’ll drive you home, no trouble at all.” There was a peculiar expression of purpose on Francon’s face, quite unusual for him and unbecoming.
Keating followed him silently, amused, and said nothing when they were alone in the confortable twilight of Francon’s car.
“Well?” Francon asked ominously.
Keating smiled. “You’re a pig, Guy. You don’t know how to appreciate what you’ve got. Why didn’t you tell me? She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, yes,” said Francon darkly. “Maybe that’s the trouble.”
“What trouble? Where do you see any trouble?”
“What do you really think of her, Peter? Forget the looks. You’ll see how quickly you’ll forget that. What do you think?”
“Well, I think she has a great deal of character.”
“Thanks for the understatement.”
Francon was gloomily silent, and then he said with an awkward little note of something like hope in his voice:
“You know, Peter, I was surprised. I watched you, and you had quite a long chat with her. That’s amazing. I fully expected her to chase you away with one nice, poisonous crack. Maybe you could get along with her, after all. I’ve concluded that you just can’t tell anything about her. Maybe ... You know, Peter, what I wanted to tell you is this: Don’t pay any attention to what she said about my wanting you to be horrible with her.”
The heavy earnestness of that sentence was such a hint that Keating’s lips moved to shape a soft whistle, but he caught himself in time. Francon added heavily: “I don’t want you to be horrible with her at all.”
“You know, Guy,” said Keating, in a tone of patronizing reproach, “you shouldn’t have run away like that.”
“I never know how to speak to her.” He sighed. “I’ve never learned to. I can’t understand what in blazes is the matter with her, but something is. She just won’t behave like a human being. You know, she’s been expelled from two finishing schools. How she ever got through college I can’t imagine, but I can tell you that I dreaded to open my mail for four solid years, waiting for word of the inevitable. Then I thought, well, once she’s on her own I’m through and I don’t have to worry about it, but she’s worse than ever.”
“What do you find to worry about?”
“I don’t. I try not to. I’m glad when I don’t have to think of her at all. I can’t help it, I just wasn’t cut out for a father. But sometimes I get to feel that it’s my responsibility after all, though God knows I don’t want it, but still there it is, I should do something about it, there’s no one else to assume it.”
“You’ve let her frighten you, Guy, and really there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No.”
“Maybe you’re the man to handle her. I don’t regret your meeting her now, and you know that I didn’t want you to. Yes, I think you’re the one man who could handle her. You ... you’re quite determined—aren’t you, Peter?—when you’re after something?”
“Well,” said Keating, throwing one hand up in a careless gesture, “I’m not afraid very often.”
Then he leaned back against the cushions, as if he were tired, as if he had heard nothing of importance, and he kept silent for the rest of the drive. Francon kept silent also.
 
“Boys,” said John Erik Snyte, “don’t spare yourselves on this. It’s the most important thing we’ve had this year. Not much money, you understand, but the prestige, the connections! If we do land it, won’t some of those great architects turn green! You see, Austen Heller has told me frankly that we’re the third firm he’s approached. He would have none of what those big fellows tried to sell him. So it’s up to us, boys. You know, something different, unusual, but in good taste, and you know, different. Now do your best.”
His five designers sat in a semicircle before him. “Gothic” looked bored and “Miscellaneous” looked discouraged in advance; “Renaissance” was following the course of a fly on the ceiling. Roark asked:
“What did he actually say, Mr. Snyte?”
Snyte shrugged and looked at Roark with amusement, as if he and Roark shared a shameful secret about the new client, not worth mentioning.
“Nothing that makes great sense—quite between us, boys,” said Snyte. “He was somewhat inarticulate, considering his great command of the English language in print. He admitted he knew nothing about architecture. He didn’t say whether he wanted it modernistic or period or what. He said something to the effect that he wanted a house of his own, but he’s hesitated for a long time about building one because all houses look alike to him and they all look like hell and he doesn’t see how anyone can become enthusiastic about any house, and yet he has the idea that he wants a building he could love. ‘A building that would mean something’ is what he said, though he added that he ‘didn’t know what or how.’ There. That’s about all he said. Not much to go on, and I wouldn’t have undertaken to submit sketches if it weren’t Austen Heller. But I grant you that it doesn’t make sense.... What’s the matter, Roark? ”
“Nothing,” said Roark.
This ended the first conference on the subject of a residence for Austen Heller.
Later that day Snyte crowded his five designers into a train, and they went to Connecticut to see the site Heller had chosen. They stood on a lonely, rocky stretch of shore, three miles beyond an unfashionable little town; they munched sandwiches and peanuts, and they looked at a cliff rising in broken ledges from the ground to end in a straight, brutal, naked drop over the sea, a vertical shaft of rock forming a cross with the long, pale horizontal of the sea.
“There,” said Snyte. “That’s it.” He twirled a pencil in his hand. “Damnable, eh?” He sighed. “I tried to suggest a more respectable location, but he didn’t take it so well so I had to shut up.” He twirled the pencil. “That’s where he wants the house, right on the top of that rock.” He scratched the tip of his nose with the point of the pencil. “I tried to suggest setting it farther back from the shore and keeping the damn rock for a view, but that didn’t go so well either.” He bit the eraser between the tips of his teeth. “Just think of the blasting, the leveling one’s got to do on that top.” He cleaned his fingernail with the lead, leaving a black mark. “Well, that’s that.... Observe the grade, and the quality of the stone. The approach will be difficult.... I have all the surveys and the photographs in the office.... Well ... Who’s got a cigarette? ... Well, I think that’s about all.... I’ll help you with suggestions anytime.... Well ... What time is that damn train back?”
Thus the five designers were started on their task. Four of them proceeded immediately at their drawing boards. Roark returned alone to the site, many times.
Roark’s five months with Snyte stretched behind him like a blank. Had he wished to ask himself what he had felt, he would have found no answer, save in the fact that he remembered nothing of these months. He could remember each sketch he had made. He could, if he tried, remember what had happened to those sketches; he did not try.
But he had not loved any of them as he loved the house of Austen Heller. He stayed in the drafting room through evening after evening, alone with a sheet of paper and the thought of a cliff over the sea. No one saw his sketches until they were finished.
When they were finished, late one night, he sat at his table, with the sheets spread before him, sat for many hours, one hand propping his forehead, the other hanging by his side, blood gathering in the fingers, numbing them, while the street beyond the window became deep blue, then pale gray. He did not look at the sketches. He felt empty and very tired.
The house on the sketches had been designed not by Roark, but by the cliff on which it stood. It was as if the cliff had grown and completed itself and proclaimed the purpose for which it had been waiting. The house was broken into many levels, following the ledges of the rock, rising as it rose, in gradual masses, in planes flowing together up into one consummate harmony. The walls, of the same granite as the rock, continued its vertical lines upward; the wide, projecting terraces of concrete, silver as the sea, followed the line of the waves, of the straight horizon.
Roark was still sitting at his table when the men returned to begin their day in the drafting room. Then the sketches were sent to Snyte’s office.
Two days later, the final version of the house to be submitted to Austen Heller, the version chosen and edited by John Erik Snyte, executed by the Chinese artist, lay swathed in tissue paper on a table. It was Roark’s house. His competitors had been eliminated. It was Roark’s house, but its walls were now of red brick, its windows were cut to conventional size and equipped with green shutters, two of its projecting wings were omitted, the great cantilevered terrace over the sea was replaced by a little wrought-iron balcony, and the house was provided with an entrance of Ionic columns supporting a broken pediment, and with a little spire supporting a weather vane.
John Erik Snyte stood by the table, his two hands spread in the air over the sketch, without touching the virgin purity of its delicate colors.
“That is what Mr. Heller had in mind, I’m sure,” he said. “Pretty good ... Yes, pretty good ... Roark, how many times do I have to ask you not to smoke around a final sketch? Stand away. You’ll get ashes on it.”
Austen Heller was expected at twelve o’clock. But at half past eleven Mrs. Symington arrived unannounced and demanded to see Mr. Snyte immediately. Mrs. Symington was an imposing dowager who had just moved into her new residence, designed by Mr. Snyte; besides, Snyte expected a commission for an apartment house from her brother. He could not refuse to see her and he bowed her into his office, where she proceeded to state without reticence of expression that the ceiling of her library had cracked and the bay windows of her drawing room were hidden under a perpetual veil of moisture which she could not combat. Snyte summoned his chief engineer and they launched together into detailed explanations, apologies and damnations of contractors. Mrs. Symington showed no sign of relenting when a signal buzzed on Snyte’s desk and the reception clerk’s voice announced Austin Heller.
It would have been impossible to ask Mrs. Symington to leave or Austin Heller to wait. Snyte solved the problem by abandoning her to the soothing speech of his engineer and excusing himself for a moment. Then he emerged into the reception room, shook Heller’s hand and suggested: “Would you mind stepping into the drafting room, Mr. Heller? Better light in there, you know, and the sketch is all ready for you, and I didn’t want to take the chance of moving it.”
Heller did not seem to mind. He followed Snyte obediently into the drafting room, a tall, broad-shouldered figure in English tweeds, with sandy hair and a square face drawn in countless creases around the ironical calm of the eyes.
The sketch lay on the Chinese artist’s table, and the artist stepped aside diffidently, in silence. The next table was Roark’s. He stood with his back to Heller; he went on with his drawing, and did not turn. The employees had been trained not to intrude on the occasions when Snyte brought a client into the drafting room.
Snyte’s finger tips lifted the tissue paper, as if raising the veil of a bride. Then he stepped back and watched Heller’s face. Heller bent down and stood hunched, drawn, intent, saying nothing for a long time.
“Listen, Mr. Snyte,” he began at last. “Listen, I think ...” and stopped.
Snyte waited patiently, pleased, sensing the approach of something he didn’t want to disturb.
“This,” said Heller suddenly, loudly, slamming his fist down on the drawing, and Snyte winced, “this is the nearest anyone’s ever come to it!”
“I knew you’d like it, Mr. Heller,” said Snyte.
“I don’t,” said Heller.
Snyte blinked and waited.
“It’s so near somehow,” said Heller regretfully, “but it’s not right. I don’t know where, but it’s not. Do forgive me, if this sounds vague, but I like things at once or I don’t. I know that I wouldn’t be comfortable, for instance, with that entrance. It’s a lovely entrance, but you won’t even notice it because you’ve seen it so often.”
“Ah, but allow me to point out a few considerations, Mr. Heller. One wants to be modern, of course, but one wants to preserve the appearance of a home. A combination of stateliness and coziness, you understand, a very austere house like this must have a few softening touches. It is strictly correct architecturally.”
“No doubt,” said Heller. “I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never been strictly correct in my life.”
“Just let me explain this scheme and you’ll see that it’s ...”
“I know,” said Heller wearily. “I know. I’m sure you’re right. Only ...” His voice had a sound of the eagerness he wished he could feel. “Only, if it had some unity, some ... some central idea ... which is there and isn’t ... if it seemed to live ... which it doesn’t ... It lacks something and it has too much.... If it were cleaner, more clear-cut ... what’s the word I’ve heard used?—if it were integrated....”
Roark turned. He was at the other side of the table. He seized the sketch, his hand flashed forward and a pencil ripped across the drawing, slashing raw black lines over the untouchable water-color. The lines blasted off the Ionic columns, the pediment, the entrance, the spire, the blinds, the bricks; they flung up two wings of stone; they rent the windows wide; they splintered the balcony and hurled a terrace over the sea.
It was being done before the others had grasped the moment when it began. Then Snyte jumped forward, but Heller seized his wrist and stopped him. Roark’s hand went on razing walls, splitting, rebuilding in furious strokes.
Roark threw his head up once, for a flash of a second, to look at Heller across the table. It was all the introduction they needed; it was like a handshake. Roark went on, and when he threw the pencil down, the house—as he had designed it—stood completed in an ordered pattern of black streaks. The performance had not lasted five minutes.
Snyte made an attempt at a sound. As Heller said nothing, Snyte felt free to whirl on Roark and scream: “You’re fired, God damn you! Get out of here! You’re fired!”
“We’re both fired,” said Austen Heller, winking to Roark. “Come on. Have you had any lunch? Let’s go some place. I want to talk to you.”
Roark went to his locker to get his hat and coat. The drafting room witnessed a stupefying act and all work stopped to watch it: Austen Heller picked up the sketch, folded it over four times, cracking the sacred cardboard, and slipped it into his pocket.
“But, Mr. Heller ...” Snyte stammered, “let me explain ... It’s perfectly all right if that’s what you want, we’ll do the sketch over ... let me explain ...”
“Not now,” said Heller. “Not now.” He added at the door: “I’ll send you a check.”
Then Heller was gone, and Roark with him; and the door, as Heller swung it shut behind them, sounded like the closing paragraph in one of Heller’s articles.
Roark had not said a word.
In the softly lighted booth of the most expensive restaurant that Roark had ever entered, across the crystal and silver glittering between them, Heller was saying:
“... because that’s the house I want, because that’s the house I’ve always wanted. Can you build it for me, draw up the plans and supervise the construction?”
“Yes,” said Roark.
“How long will it take if we start at once?”
“About eight months.”
“I’ll have the house by late fall?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that sketch?”
“Just like that.”
“Look, I have no idea what kind of a contract one makes with an architect and you must know, so draw up one and let my lawyer okay it this afternoon, will you?”
“Yes.”
Heller studied the man who sat facing him. He saw the hand lying on the table before him. Heller’s awareness became focused on that hand. He saw the long fingers, the sharp joints, the prominent veins. He had the feeling that he was not hiring this man, but surrendering himself into his employment.
“How old are you,” asked Heller, “whoever you are?”
“Twenty-six. Do you want any references?”
“Hell, no. I have them, here in my pocket. What’s your name?”
“Howard Roark.”
Heller produced a checkbook, spread it open on the table and reached for his fountain pen.
“Look,” he said, writing, “I’ll give you five hundred dollars on account. Get yourself an office or whatever you have to get, and go ahead.”
He tore off the check and handed it to Roark, between the tips of two straight fingers, leaning forward on his elbow, swinging his wrist in a sweeping curve. His eyes were narrowed, amused, watching Roark quizzically. But the gesture had the air of a salute.
The check was made out to “Howard Roark, Architect.”