II
A SIGN HUNG OVER THE ENTRANCE DOOR, A REPRODUCTION OF THE paper’s masthead:
THE NEW YORK BANNER
The sign was small, a statement of fame and power that needed no emphasis; it was like a fine, mocking smile that justified the building’s bare ugliness; the building was a factory scornful of all ornament save the implications of that masthead.
The entrance lobby looked like the mouth of a furnace; elevators drew a stream of human fuel and spat it out. The men did not hurry, but they moved with subdued haste, the propulsion of purpose; nobody loitered in that lobby. The elevator doors clicked like valves, a pulsating rhythm in their sound. Drops of red and green light flashed on a wall board, signaling the progress of cars high in space.
It looked as if everything in that building were run by such control boards in the hands of an authority aware of every motion, as if the building were flowing with channeled energy, functioning smoothly, soundlessly, a magnificent machine that nothing could destroy. Nobody paid any attention to the redheaded man who stopped in the lobby for a moment.
Howard Roark looked up at the tiled vault. He had never hated anyone. Somewhere in this building was its owner, the man who had made him feel his nearest approach to hatred.
Gail Wynand glanced at the small clock on his desk. In a few minutes he had an appointment with an architect. The interview, he thought, would not be difficult; he had held many such interviews in his life; he merely had to speak, he knew what he wanted to say, and nothing was required of the architect except a few sounds signifying understanding.
His glance went from the clock back to the sheets of proofs on his desk. He read an editorial by Alvah Scarret on the public feeding of squirrels in Central Park, and a column by Ellsworth Toohey on the great merits of an exhibition of paintings done by the workers of the City Department of Sanitation. A buzzer rang on his desk, and his secretary’s voice said: “Mr. Howard Roark, Mr. Wynand.”
“Okay,” said Wynand, flicking the switch off. As his hand moved back, he noticed the row of buttons at the edge of his desk, bright little knobs with a color code of their own, each representing the end of a wire that stretched to some part of the building, each wire controlling some man, each man controlling many men under his orders, each group of men contributing to the final shape of words on paper to go into millions of homes, into millions of human brains—these little knobs of colored plastic, there under his fingers. But he had no time to let the thought amuse him, the door of his office was opening, he moved his hand away from the buttons.
Wynand was not certain that he missed a moment, that he did not rise at once as courtesy demanded, but remained seated, looking at the man who entered; perhaps he had risen immediately and it only seemed to him that a long time preceded his movement. Roark was not certain that he stopped when he entered the office, that he did not walk forward, but stood looking at the man behind the desk; perhaps there had been no break in his steps and it only seemed to him that he had stopped. But there had been a moment when both forgot the terms of immediate reality, when Wynand forgot his purpose in summoning this man, when Roark forgot that this man was Dominique’s husband, when no door, desk or stretch of carpet existed, only the total awareness, for each, of the man before him, only two thoughts meeting in the middle of the room—“This is Gail Wynand”—“This is Howard Roark.”
Then Wynand rose, his hand motioned in simple invitation to the chair beside his desk, Roark approached and sat down, and they did not notice that they had not greeted each other.
Wynand smiled, and said what he had never intended to say. He said very simply:
“I don’t think you’ll want to work for me.”
“I want to work for you,” said Roark, who had come here prepared to refuse.
“Have you seen the kind of things I’ve built?”
“Yes.”
Wynand smiled. “This is different. It’s not for my public. It’s for me.”
“You’ve never built anything for yourself before?”
“No—if one doesn’t count the cage I have up on a roof and this old printing factory here. Can you tell me why I’ve never built a structure of my own, with the means of erecting a city if I wished? I don’t know. I think you’d know.” He forgot that he did not allow men he hired the presumption of personal speculation upon him.
“Because you’ve been unhappy,” said Roark.
He said it simply, without insolence; as if nothing but total honesty were possible to him here. This was not the beginning of an interview, but the middle; it was like a continuation of something begun long ago. Wynand said:
“Make that clear.”
“I think you understand.”
“I want to hear you explain it.”
“Most people build as they live—as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If he doesn’t build, when he has the means, it’s because his life has not been what he wanted.”
“You don’t think it’s preposterous to say that to me of all people?”
“No.”
“I don’t either.” Roark smiled. “But you and I are the only two who’d say it. Either part of it: that I didn’t have what I wanted or that I could be included among the few expected to understand any sort of great symbols. You don’t want to retract that either?”
“No.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“I owned most of the papers I have now—when I was thirty-six.” He added: “I didn’t mean that as any kind of a personal remark. I don’t know why I said that. I just happened to think of it.”
“What do you wish me to build for you?”
“My home.”
Wynand felt that the two words had some impact on Roark apart from any normal meaning they could convey; he sensed it without reason; he wanted to ask: “What’s the matter?” but couldn’t, since Roark had really shown nothing.
“You were right in your diagnosis,” said Wynand, “because you see, now I do want to build a house of my own. Now I’m not afraid of a visible shape for my life. If you want it said directly, as you did, now I’m happy.”
“What kind of a house?”
“In the country. I’ve purchased the site. An estate in Connecticut, five hundred acres. What kind of a house? You’ll decide that.”
“Did Mrs. Wynand choose me for the job?”
“No. Mrs. Wynand knows nothing about this. It was I who wanted to move out of the city, and she agreed. I did ask her to select the architect -my wife is the former Dominique Francon; she was once a writer on architecture. But she preferred to leave the choice to me. You want to know why I picked you? I took a long time to decide. I felt rather lost, at first. I had never heard of you. I didn’t know any architects at all. I mean this literally—and I’m not forgetting the years I’ve spent in real estate, the things I’ve built and the imbeciles who built them for me. This is not a Stoneridge, this is—what did you call it?—a statement of my life? Then I saw Monadnock. It was the first thing that made me remember your name. But I gave myself a long test. I went around the country, looking at homes, hotels, all sort of buildings. Every time I saw one I liked and asked who had designed it, the answer was always the same: Howard Roark. So I called you.” He added: “Shall I tell you how much I admire your work?”
“Thank you,” said Roark. He closed his eyes for an instant.
“You know, I didn’t want to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Have you heard about my art gallery?”
“Yes.”
“I never meet the men whose work I love. The work means too much to me. I don’t want the men to spoil it. They usually do. They’re an anticlimax to their own talent. You’re not. I don’t mind talking to you. I told you this only because I want you to know that I respect very little in life, but I respect the things in my gallery, and your buildings, and man’s capacity to produce work like that. Maybe it’s the only religion I’ve ever had.” He shrugged. “I think I’ve destroyed, perverted, corrupted just about everything that exists. But I’ve never touched that. Why are you looking at me like this?”
“I’m sorry. Please tell me about the house you want.”
“I want it to be a palace—only I don’t think palaces are very luxurious. They’re so big, so promiscuously public. A small house is the true luxury. A residence for two people only—for my wife and me. It won’t be necessary to allow for a family, we don’t intend to have children. Nor for visitors, we don’t intend to entertain. One guest room—in case we should need it—but not more than that. Living room, dining room, library, two studies, one bedroom. Servants’ quarters, garage. That’s the general idea. I’ll give you the details later. The cost—whatever you need. The appearance—” he smiled, shrugging. “I’ve seen your buildings. The man who wants to tell you what a house should look like must either be able to design it better—or shut up. I’ll say only that I want my house to have the Roark quality.”
“What is that?”
“I think you understand.”
“I want to hear you explain it.”
“I think some buildings are cheap show-offs, all front, and some are cowards, apologizing for themselves in every brick, and some are the eternal unfit, botched, malicious and false. Your buildings have one sense above all—a sense of joy. Not a placid joy. A difficult, demanding kind of joy. The kind that makes one feel as if it were an achievement to experience it. One looks and thinks: I’m a better person if I can feel that.”
Roark said slowly, not in the tone of an answer:
“I suppose it was inevitable.”
“What?”
“That you would see that.”
“Why do you say it as if you ... regretted my being able to see it?”
“I don’t regret it.”
“Listen, don’t hold it against me—the things I’ve built before.”
“I don’t.”
“It’s all those Stoneridges and Noyes-Belmont Hotels—and Wynand papers—that made it possible for me to have a house by you. Isn’t that a luxury worth achieving? Does it matter how? They were the means. You’re the end.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me.”
“I wasn’t jus ... Yes, I think that’s what I was doing.”
“You don’t need to. I wasn’t thinking of what you’ve built.”
“What were you thinking?”
“That I’m helpless against anyone who sees what you saw in my buildings.”
“You felt you wanted help against me?”
“No. Only I don’t feel helpless as a rule.”
“I’m not prompted to justify myself as a rule, either. Then—it’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I must tell you much more about the house I want. I suppose an architect is like a father confessor—he must know everything about the people who are to live in his house, since what he gives them is more personal than their clothes or food. Please consider it in that spirit—and forgive me if you notice that this is difficult for me to say—I’ve never gone to confession. You see, I want this house because I’m very desperately in love with my wife.... What’s the matter? Do you think it’s an irrelevant statement?”
“No. Go on.”
“I can’t stand to see my wife among other people. It’s not jealousy. It’s much more and much worse. I can’t stand to see her walking down the streets of a city. I can’t share her, not even with shops, theaters, taxicabs or sidewalks. I must take her away. I must put her out of reach—where nothing can touch her, not in any sense. This house is to be a fortress. My architect is to be my guard.”
Roark sat looking straight at him. He had to keep his eyes on Wynand in order to be able to listen. Wynand felt the effort in that glance; he did not recognize it as effort, only as strength; he felt himself supported by the glance; he found that nothing was hard to confess.
“This house is to be a prison. No, not quite that. A treasury—a vault to guard things too precious for sight. But it must be more. It must be a separate world, so beautiful that we’ll never miss the one we left. A prison only by the power of its own perfection. Not bars and ramparts -but your talent standing as a wall between us and the world. That’s what I want of you. And more. Have you ever built a temple?”
For a moment, Roark had no strength to answer; but he saw that the question was genuine; Wynand didn’t know.
“Yes,” said Roark.
“Then think of this commission as you would think of a temple. A temple to Dominique Wynand.... I want you to meet her before you design it.”
“I met Mrs. Wynand some years ago.”
“You have? Then you understand.”
“I do.”
Wynand saw Roark’s hand lying on the edge of his desk, the long fingers pressed to the glass, next to the proofs of the Banner. The proofs were folded carelessly; he saw the heading “One Small Voice” inside the page. He looked at Roark’s hand. He thought he would like to have a bronze paperweight made of it and how beautiful it would look on his desk.
“Now you know what I want. Go ahead. Start at once. Drop anything else you’re doing. I’ll pay whatever you wish. I want that house by summer.... Oh, forgive me. Too much association with bad architects. I haven’t asked whether you want to do it.”
Roark’s hand moved first; he took it off the desk.
“Yes,” said Roark. “I’ll do it.”
Wynand saw the prints of the fingers left on the glass, distinct as if the skin had cut grooves in the surface and the grooves were wet.
“How long will it take you?” Wynand asked.
“You’ll have it by July.”
“Of course you must see the site. I want to show it to you myself. Shall I drive you down there tomorrow morning?”
“If you wish.”
“Be here at nine.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to draw up a contract? I have no idea how you prefer to work. As a rule, before I deal with a man in any matter, I make it a point to know everything about him from the day of his birth or earlier. I’ve never checked up on you. I simply forgot. It didn’t seem necessary.”
“I can answer any question you wish.”
Wynand smiled and shook his head:
“No. There’s nothing I need to ask you. Except about the business arrangements.”
“I never make any conditions, except one: if you accept the preliminary drawings of the house, it is to be built as I designed it, without any alterations of any kind.”
“Certainly. That’s understood. I’ve heard you don’t work otherwise. But will you mind if I don’t give you any publicity on this house? I know it would help you professionally, but I want this building kept out of the newspapers.”
“I won’t mind that.”
“Will you promise not to release pictures of it for publication?”
“I promise.”
“Thank you. I’ll make up for it. You may consider the Wynand papers as your personal press service. I’ll give you all the plugging you wish on any other work of yours.”
“I don’t want any plugging.”
Wynand laughed aloud. “What a thing to say in what a place! I don’t think you have any idea how your fellow architects would have conducted this interview. I don’t believe you were actually conscious at any time that you were speaking to Gail Wynand.”
“I was,” said Roark.
“This was my way of thanking you. I don’t always like being Gail Wynand.”
“I know that.”
“I’m going to change my mind and ask you a personal question. You said you’d answer anything.”
“I will.”
“Have you always liked being Howard Roark?”
Roark smiled. The smile was amused, astonished, involuntarily contemptuous.
“You’ve answered,” said Wynand.
Then he rose and said: “Nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” extending his hand.
When Roark had gone, Wynand sat behind his desk, smiling. He moved his hand toward one of the plastic buttons—and stopped. He realized that he had to assume a different manner, his usual manner, that he could not speak as he had spoken in the last half-hour. Then he understood what had been strange about the interview: for the first time in his life he had spoken to a man without feeling the reluctance, the sense of pressure, the need of disguise he had always experienced when he spoke to people; there had been no strain and no need of strain; as if he had spoken to himself.
He pressed the button and said to his secretary:
“Tell the morgue to send me everything they have on Howard Roark.”
“Guess what,” said Alvah Scarret, his voice begging to be begged for his information.
Ellsworth Toohey waved a hand impatiently in a brushing-off motion, not raising his eyes from his desk.
“Go ’way, Alvah. I’m busy.”
“No, but this is interesting, Ellsworth. Really, it’s interesting. I know you’ll want to know.”
Toohey lifted his head and looked at him, the faint contraction of boredom in the corners of his eyes letting Scarret understand that this moment of attention was a favor; he drawled in a tone of emphasized patience:
“All right. What is it?”
Scarret saw nothing to resent in Toohey’s manner. Toohey had treated him like that for the last year or longer. Scarret had not noticed the transition in their relationship; by the time he noticed the change, it was too late to resent it—it had become normal to them both.
Scarret smiled like a bright pupil who expects the teacher to praise him for discovering an error in the teacher’s own textbook.
“Ellsworth, your private F.B.I. is slipping.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Bet you don’t know what Gail’s been doing—and you always make such a point of keeping yourself informed.”
“What don’t I know?”
“Guess who was in his office today.”
“My dear Alvah, I have no time for quiz games.”
“You wouldn’t guess in a thousand years.”
“Very well, since the only way to get rid of you is to play the vaudeville stooge, I shall ask the proper question: Who was in dear Gail’s office today?”
“Howard Roark.”
Toohey turned to him full face, forgetting to dole out his attention, and said incredulously:
“No!”
“Yes!” said Scarret, proud of the effect.
“Well!” said Toohey and burst out laughing.
Scarret half smiled tentatively, puzzled, anxious to join in, but not quite certain of the cause for amusement.
“Yes, it’s funny. But ... just exactly why, Ellsworth?”
“Oh, Alvah, it would take so long to tell you.”
“I had an idea it might ...”
“Haven’t you any sense of the spectacular, Alvah? Don’t you like fireworks? If you want to know what to expect, just think that the worst wars are religious wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the same race.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“Oh, dear, I have so many followers. I brush them out of my hair.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re so cheerful about it, but I thought it’s bad.”
“Of course it’s bad. But not for us.”
“But look: you know how we’ve gone out on a limb, you particularly, on how this Roark is just about the worst architect in town, and if now our own boss hires him—isn’t it going to be embarrassing?”
“Oh that? ... Oh, maybe ...”
“Well, I’m glad you take it that way.”
“What was he doing in Wynand’s office? Is it a commission?”
“That’s what I don’t know. Can’t find out. Nobody knows.”
“Have you heard of Mr. Wynand planning to build anything lately?”
“No. Have you?”
“No. I guess my F.B.I. is slipping. Oh, well, one does the best one can.”
“But you know, Ellsworth, I had an idea. I had an idea where this might be very helpful to us indeed.”
“What idea?” “Ellsworth, Gail’s been impossible lately.”
Scarret uttered it solemnly, with the air of imparting a discovery. Toohey sat half smiling.
“Well, of course, you predicted it, Ellsworth. You were right. You’re always right. I’ll be damned if I can figure out just what’s happening to him, whether it’s Dominique or some sort of a change of life or what, but something’s happening. Why does he get fits suddenly and start reading every damn line of every damn edition and raise hell for the silliest reasons? He’s killed three of my best editorials lately—and he’s never done that to me before. Never. You know what he said to me? He said: ‘Motherhood is wonderful, Alvah, but for God’s sake go easy on the bilge. There’s a limit even for intellectual depravity.’ What depravity? That was the sweetest Mother’s Day editorial I ever put together. Honest, I was touched myself. Since when has he learned to talk about depravity? The other day, he called Jules Fougler a bargain-basement mind, right to his face, and threw his Sunday piece into the wastebasket. A swell piece, too—on the Workers’ theater. Jules Fougler, our best writer! No wonder Gail hasn’t got a friend left in the place. If they hated his guts before, you ought to hear them now!”
“I’ve heard them.”
“He’s losing his grip, Ellsworth. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for you and the swell bunch of people you picked. They’re practically our whole actual working staff, those youngsters of yours, not our old sacred cows who’re writing themselves out anyway. Those bright kids will keep the Banner going. But Gail ... Listen, last week he fired Dwight Carson. Now you know, I think that was significant. Of course Dwight was just a deadweight and a damn nuisance, but he was the first one of those special pets of Gail’s, the boys who sold their souls. So, in a way, you see, I liked having Dwight around, it was all right, it was healthy, it was a relic of Gail’s best days. I always said it was Gail’s safety valve. And when he suddenly let Carson go—I didn’t like it, Ellsworth. I didn’t like it at all.”
“What is this, Alvah? Are you telling me things I don’t know, or is this just in the nature of letting off steam—do forgive the mixed metaphor—on my shoulder?”
“I guess so. I don’t like to knock Gail, but I’ve been so damn mad for so long I’m fit to be tied. But here’s what I’m driving at: This Howard Roark, what does he make you think of?”
“I could write a volume on that, Alvah. This is hardly the time to launch into such an undertaking.”
“No, but I mean, what’s the one thing we know about him? That he’s a crank and a freak and a fool, all right, but what else? That he’s one of those fools you can’t budge with love or money or a sixteen-inch gun. He’s worse than Dwight Carson, worse than the whole lot of Gail’s pets put together. Well? Get my point? What’s Gail going to do when he comes up against that kind of a man?”
“One of several possible things.”
“One thing only, if I know Gail, and I know Gail. That’s why I feel kind of hopeful. This is what he’s needed for a long time. A swig of his old medicine. The safety valve. He’ll go out to break that guy’s spine—and it will be good for Gail. The best thing in the world. Bring him back to normal.... That was my idea, Ellsworth.” He waited, saw no complimentary enthusiasm on Toohey’s face and finished lamely: “Well, I might be wrong.... I don’t know.... It might mean nothing at all. ... I just thought that was psychology....”
“That’s what it was, Alvah.”
“Then you think it’ll work that way?”
“It might. Or it might be much worse than anything you imagine. But it’s of no importance to us any more. Because you see, Alvah, as far as the Banner is concerned, if it came to a showdown between us and our boss, we don’t have to be afraid of Mr. Gail Wynand any longer.”
 
When the boy from the morgue entered, carrying a thick envelope of clippings, Wynand looked up from his desk and said:
“That much? I didn’t know he was so famous.”
“Well, it’s the Stoddard trial, Mr. Wynand.”
The boy stopped. There was nothing wrong—only the ridges on Wynand’s forehead, and he did not know Wynand well enough to know what these meant. He wondered what made him feel as if he should be afraid. After a moment, Wynand said:
“All right. Thank you.”
The boy deposited the envelope on the glass surface of the desk, and walked out.
Wynand sat looking at the bulging shape of yellow paper. He saw it reflected in the glass, as if the bulk had eaten through the surface and grown roots to his desk. He looked at the walls of his office and he wondered whether they contained a power which could save him from opening that envelope.
Then he pulled himself erect, he put both forearms in a straight line along the edge of the desk, his fingers stretched and meeting, he looked down, past his nostrils, at the surface of the desk, he sat for a moment, grave, proud, collected, like the angular mummy of a Pharaoh, then he moved one hand, pulled the envelope forward, opened it and began to read.
“Sacrilege” by Ellsworth M. Toohey—“The Churches of our Childhood” by Alvah Scarret—editorials, sermons, speeches, statements, letters to the editor, the Banner unleashed full-blast, photographs, cartoons, interviews, resolutions of protest, letters to the editor.
He read every word, methodically, his hands on the edge of the desk, fingers meeting, not lifting the clippings, not touching them, reading them as they lay on top of the pile, moving a hand only to turn a clipping over and read the one beneath, moving the hand with a mechanical perfection of timing, the fingers rising as his eyes took the last word, not allowing the clipping to remain in sight a second longer than necessary. But he stopped for a long time to look at the photographs of the Stoddard Temple. He stopped longer to look at one of Roark’s pictures, the picture of exultation captioned “Are you happy, Mr. Superman?” He tore it from the story it illustrated, and slipped it into his desk drawer. Then he continued reading.
The trial—the testimony of Ellsworth M. Toohey—of Peter Keating -of Ralston Holcombe—of Gordon L. Prescott—no quotations from the testimony of Dominique Francon, only a brief report. “The defense rests.” A few mentions in “One Small Voice”—then a gap—the next clipping dated three years later—Monadnock Valley.
It was late when he finished reading. His secretaries had left. He felt the sense of empty rooms and halls around him. But he heard the sound of the presses: a low, rumbling vibration that went through every room. He had always liked that—the sound of the building’s heart, beating. He listened. They were running off tomorrow’s Banner. He sat without moving for a long time.