The Fountainhead (13 page)

“But why does Mr. Stengel stand for it?”

“What can he do? No one will give him a start. You know how most people are, they stick to the beaten path, they pay three times the price for the same thing, just to have the trademark. Courage, Mrs. Dunlop, they lack courage. Stengel is a great artist, but there are so few discerning people to see it. He’s ready to go on his own, if only he could find some outstanding person like Mrs. Stuyvesant to give him a chance.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Dunlop. “How very interesting! Tell me more about it.”

He told her a great deal more about it. By the time they had finished the inspection of the works of Frederic Mawson, Mrs. Dunlop was shaking Keating’s hand and saying:

“It’s so kind, so very unusually kind of you. Are you sure that it won’t embarrass you with your office if you arrange for me to meet Mr. Stengel? I didn’t quite dare to suggest it and it was so kind of you not to be angry at me. It’s so unselfish of you and more than anyone else would have done in your position.”

When Keating approached Stengel with the suggestion of a proposed luncheon, the man listened to him without a word. Then he jerked his head and snapped:

“What’s in it for you?”

Before Keating could answer, Stengel threw his head back suddenly.

“Oh,” said Stengel. “Oh, I see.”

Then he leaned forward, his mouth drawn thin in contempt:

“Okay. I’ll go to that lunch.”

When Stengel left the firm of Francon & Heyer to open his own office and proceed with the construction of the Dunlop house, his first commission, Guy Francon smashed a ruler against the edge of his desk and roared to Keating:

“The bastard! The abysmal bastard! After all I’ve done for him.”

“What did you expect?” said Keating, sprawled in a low armchair before him. “Such is life.”

“But what beats me is how did that little skunk ever hear of it? To snatch it right from under our nose!”

“Well, I’ve never trusted him anyway.” Keating shrugged. “Human nature ...”

The bitterness in his voice was sincere. He had received no gratitude from Stengel. Stengel’s parting remark to him had been only: “You’re a worse bastard than I thought you were. Good luck. You’ll be a great architect some day.”

Thus Keating achieved the position of chief designer for Francon & Heyer.

Francon celebrated the occasion with a modest little orgy at one of the quieter and costlier restaurants. “In a coupla years,” he kept repeating, “in a coupla years you’ll see things happenin’, Pete.... You’re a good boy and I like you and I’ll do things for you.... Haven’t I done things for you? ... You’re going places, Pete ... in a coupla years....” “Your tie’s crooked, Guy,” said Keating dryly, “and you’re spilling brandy all over your vest....”

Facing his first task of designing, Keating thought of Tim Davis, of Stengel, of many others who had wanted it, had struggled for it, had tried, had been beaten—by him. It was a triumphant feeling. It was a tangible affirmation of his greatness. Then he found himself suddenly in his glass-enclosed office, looking down at a blank sheet of paper—alone. Something rolled in his throat down to his stomach, cold and empty, his old feeling of the dropping hole. He leaned against the table, closing his eyes. It had never been quite real to him before that this was the thing actually expected of him—to fill a sheet of paper, to create something on a sheet of paper.

It was only a small residence. But instead of seeing it rise before him, he saw it sinking; he saw its shape as a pit in the ground; and as a pit within him; as emptiness, with only Davis and Stengel rattling uselessly within it. Francon had said to him about the building: “It must have dignity, you know, dignity ... nothing freaky ... a structure of elegance ... and stay within the budget,” which was Francon’s conception of giving his designer ideas and letting him work them out. Through a cold stupor, Keating thought of the clients laughing in his face; he heard the thin, omnipotent voice of Ellsworth Toohey calling his attention to the opportunities open to him in the field of plumbing. He hated every piece of stone on the face of the earth. He hated himself for having chosen to be an architect.

When he began to draw, he tried not to think of the job he was doing; he thought only that Francon had done it, and Stengel, even Heyer, and all the others, and that he could do it, if they could.

He spent many days on his preliminary sketches. He spent long hours in the library of Francon & Heyer, selecting from Classic photographs the appearance of his house. He felt the tension melting in his mind. It was right and it was good, that house growing under his hand, because men were still worshiping the masters who had done it before him. He did not have to wonder, to fear or to take chances; it had been done for him.

When the drawings were ready, he stood looking at them uncertainly. Were he to be told that this was the best or the ugliest house in the world, he would agree with either. He was not sure. He had to be sure. He thought of Stanton and of what he had relied upon when working on his assignments there. He telephoned Cameron’s office and asked for Howard Roark.

He came to Roark’s room, that night, and spread before him the plans, the elevations, the perspective of his first building. Roark stood over it, his arms spread wide, his hands holding the edge of the table, and he said nothing for a long time.

Keating waited anxiously; he felt anger growing with his anxiety—because he could see no reason for being so anxious. When he couldn’t stand it, he spoke:

“You know, Howard, everybody says Stengel’s the best designer in town, and I don’t think he was really ready to quit, but I made him and I took his place. I had to do some pretty fine thinking to work that, I ...”

He stopped. It did not sound bright and proud, as it would have sounded anywhere else. It sounded like begging.

Roark turned and looked at him. Roark’s eyes were not contemptuous; only a little wider than usual, attentive and puzzled. He said nothing and turned back to the drawings.

Keating felt naked. Davis, Stengel, Francon meant nothing here. People were his protection against people. Roark had no sense of people. Others gave Keating a feeling of his own value. Roark gave him nothing. He thought that he should seize his drawings and run. The danger was not Roark. The danger was that he, Keating, remained.

Roark turned to him.

“Do you enjoy doing this sort of thing, Peter?” he asked.

“Oh, I know,” said Keating, his voice shrill, “I know you don’t approve of it, but this is business, I just want to know what you think of this
practically,
not philosophically, not ...”

“No, I’m not going to preach to you. I was only wondering.”

“If you could help me, Howard, if you could just help me with it a little. It’s my first house, and it means so much to me at the office, and I’m not sure. What do you think? Will you help me, Howard?”

“All right.”

Roark threw aside the sketch of the graceful façade with the fluted pilasters, the broken pediments, the Roman fasces over the windows and the two eagles of Empire by the entrance. He picked up the plans. He took a sheet of tracing paper, threw it over the plan and began to draw. Keating stood watching the pencil in Roark’s hand. He saw his imposing entrance foyer disappearing, his twisted corridors, his lightless corners; he saw an immense living room growing in the space he had thought too limited; a wall of giant windows facing the garden, a spacious kitchen. He watched for a long time.

“And the façade?” he asked, when Roark threw the pencil down.

“I can’t help you with that. If you must have it Classic, have it good Classic at least. You don’t need three pilasters where one will do. And take those ducks off the door, it’s too much.”

Keating smiled at him gratefully, when he was leaving, his drawings under his arm; he descended the stairs, hurt and angry; he worked for three days making new plans from Roark’s sketches, and a new, simpler elevation; and he presented his house to Francon with a proud gesture that looked like a flourish.

“Well,” said Francon, studying it, “well, I declare! ... What an imagination you have, Peter ... I wonder ... It’s a bit daring, but I wonder ...” He coughed and added: “It’s just what I had in mind.”

“Of course,” said Keating. “I studied your buildings, and I tried to think of what you’d do, and if it’s good, it’s because I think I know how to catch your ideas.”

Francon smiled. And Keating thought suddenly that Francon did not really believe it and knew that Keating did not believe it, and yet they were both contented, bound tighter together by a common method and a common guilt.

 

The letter on Cameron’s desk informed him regretfully that after earnest consideration, the board of directors of the Security Trust Company had not been able to accept his plans for the building to house the new Astoria branch of the Company and that the commission had been awarded to the firm of Gould & Pettingill. A check was attached to the letter, in payment for his preliminary drawings, as agreed; the amount was not enough to cover the expense of making those drawings.

The letter lay spread out on the desk. Cameron sat before it, drawn back, not touching the desk, his hands gathered in his lap, the back of one in the palm of the other, the fingers tight. It was only a small piece of paper, but he sat huddled and still, because it seemed to be a supernatural thing, like radium, sending forth rays that would hurt him if he moved and exposed his skin to them.

For three months, he had awaited the commission of the Security Trust Company. One after another, the chances that had loomed before him at rare intervals, in the last two years, had vanished, looming in vague promises, vanishing in firm refusals. One of his draftsmen had had to be discharged long ago. The landlord had asked questions, politely at first, then dryly, then rudely and openly. But no one in the office had minded that nor the usual arrears in salaries: there had been the commission of the Security Trust Company. The vice-president, who had asked Cameron to submit drawings, had said: “I know, some of the directors won’t see it as I do. But go ahead, Mr. Cameron. Take the chance with me and I’ll fight for you.”

Cameron had taken the chance. He and Roark had worked savagely -to have the plans ready on time, before time, before Gould & Pettingill could submit theirs. Pettingill was a cousin of the Bank president’s wife and a famous authority on the ruins of Pompeii; the Bank president was an ardent admirer of Julius Caesar and had once, while in Rome, spent an hour and a quarter in reverent inspection of the Colosseum.

Cameron and Roark and a pot of black coffee had lived in the office from dawn till frozen dawn for many days, and Cameron had thought involuntarily of the electric bill, but made himself forget it. The lights still burned in the drafting room in the early hours when he sent Roark out for sandwiches, and Roark found gray morning in the streets while it was still night in the office, in the windows facing a high brick wall. On the last day, it was Roark who had ordered Cameron home after midnight, because Cameron’s hands were jerking and his knees kept seeking the tall drafting stool for support, leaning against it with a slow, cautious, sickening precision. Roark had taken him down to a taxi and in the light of a street lamp Cameron had seen Roark’s face, drawn, the eyes kept wide artificially, the lips dry. The next morning Cameron had entered the drafting room, and found the coffee pot on the floor, on its side over a black puddle, and Roark’s hand in the puddle, palm up, fingers half closed, Roark’s body stretched out on the floor, his head thrown back, fast asleep. On the table, Cameron had found the plans, finished....

He sat looking at the letter on his desk. The degradation was that he could not think of those nights behind him, he could not think of the building that should have risen in Astoria and of the building that would now take its place; it was that he thought only of the bill unpaid to the electric company....

In these last two years Cameron had disappeared from his office for weeks at a time, and Roark had not found him at home, and had known what was happening, but could only wait, hoping for Cameron’s safe return. Then, Cameron had lost even the shame of his agony, and had come to his office reeling, recognizing no one, openly drunk and flaunting it before the walls of the only place on earth he had respected.

Roark learned to face his own landlord with the quiet statement that he could not pay him for another week; the landlord was afraid of him and did not insist. Peter Keating heard of it somehow, as he always heard everything he wanted to know. He came to Roark’s unheated room, one evening, and sat down, keeping his overcoat on. He produced a wallet, pulled out five ten-dollar bills, and handed them to Roark. “You need it, Howard. I know you need it. Don’t start protesting now. You can pay me back any time.” Roark looked at him, astonished, took the money, saying: “Yes, I need it. Thank you, Peter.” Then Keating said: “What in hell are you doing, wasting yourself on old Cameron? What do you want to live like this for? Chuck it, Howard, and come with us. All I have to do is say so. Francon’ll be delighted. We’ll start you at sixty a week.” Roark took the money out of his pocket and handed it back to him. “Oh, for God’s sake, Howard! I ... I didn’t mean to offend you.” “I didn’t either.” “But please, Howard, keep it anyway.” “Good night, Peter.”

Roark was thinking of that when Cameron entered the drafting room, the letter from the Security Trust Company in his hand. He gave the letter to Roark, said nothing, turned and walked back to his office. Roark read the letter and followed him. Whenever they lost another commission Roark knew that Cameron wanted to see him in the office, but not to speak of it; just to see him there, to talk of other things, to lean upon the reassurance of his presence.

On Cameron’s desk Roark saw a copy of the New York
Banner.

It was the leading newspaper of the great Wynand chain. It was a paper he would have expected to find in a kitchen, in a barbershop, in a third-rate drawing room, in the subway; anywhere but in Cameron’s office. Cameron saw him looking at it and grinned.