The Fountainhead (37 page)

Those around him were saying: “Isn’t he witty? And such courage!”

Peter Keating smiled radiantly. He felt the attention and admiration flowing toward him from every part of the ballroom. He looked at the people, all these trim, perfumed, silk-rustling people lacquered with light, dripping with light, as they had all been dripping with shower water a few hours ago, getting ready to come here and stand in homage before a man named Peter Keating. There were moments when he forgot that he was Peter Keating and he glanced at a mirror, at his own figure, he wanted to join in the general admiration for it.

Once the current left him face to face with Ellsworth Toohey. Keating smiled like a boy emerging from a stream on a summer day, glowing, invigorated, restless with energy. Toohey stood looking at him; Toohey’s hands had slipped negligently into his trouser pockets, making his jacket flare out over his thin hips; he seemed to teeter faintly on his small feet; his eyes were attentive in enigmatic appraisal.

“Now this, Ellsworth ... this ... isn’t it a wonderful evening?” said Keating, like a child to a mother who would understand, and a little like a drunk.

“Being happy, Peter? You’re quite the sensation tonight. Little Peter seems to have crossed the line into a big celebrity. It happens like this, one can never tell exactly when or why ... There’s someone here, though, who seems to be ignoring you quite flagrantly, doesn’t she?”

Keating winced. He wondered when and how Toohey had had the time to notice that.

“Oh, well,” said Toohey, “the exception proves the rule. Regrettable, however. I’ve always had the absurd idea that it would take a most unusual man to attract Dominique Francon. So of course I thought of you. Just an idle thought. Still, you know, the man who’ll get her will have something you won’t be able to match. He’ll beat you there.”

“No one’s got her,” snapped Keating.

“No, undoubtedly not. Not yet. That’s rather astonishing. Oh, I suppose it will take an extraordinary kind of man.”

“Look here, what in hell are you doing? You don’t like Dominique Francon. Do you?”

“I never said I did.”

A little later Keating heard Toohey saying solemnly in the midst of some earnest discussion: “Happiness? But that is so middle-class. What is happiness? There are so many things in life so much more important than happiness.”

Keating made his way slowly toward Dominique. She stood leaning back, as if the air were a support solid enough for her thin, naked shoulder blades. Her evening gown was the color of glass. He had the feeling that he should be able to see the wall behind her, through her body. She seemed too fragile to exist; and that very fragility spoke of some frightening strength which held her anchored to existence with a body insufficient for reality.

When he approached, she made no effort to ignore him; she turned to him, she answered; but the monotonous precision of her answers stopped him, made him helpless, made him leave her in a few moments.

When Roark and Heller entered, Kiki Holcombe met them at the door. Heller presented Roark to her, and she spoke as she always did, her voice like a shrill rocket sweeping all opposition aside by sheer speed.

“Oh, Mr. Roark, I’ve been so eager to meet you! We’ve all heard so much about you! Now I must warn you that my husband doesn’t approve of you—oh, purely on artistic grounds, you understand—but don’t let that worry you, you have an ally in this household, an enthusiastic ally!”

“It’s very kind, Mrs. Holcombe,” said Roark. “And perhaps unnecessary.”

“Oh, I
adore
your Enright House! of course, I can’t say that it represents my own esthetic convictions, but people of culture must keep their minds open to anything, I mean, to include any viewpoint in creative art, we must be broad-minded above all, don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know,” said Roark. “I’ve never been broad-minded.”

She was certain that he intended no insolence; it was not in his voice nor his manner; but insolence had been her first impression of him. He wore evening clothes and they looked well on his tall, thin figure, but somehow it seemed that he did not belong in them; the orange hair looked preposterous with formal dress; besides, she did not like his face; that face suited a work gang or an army, it had no place in her drawing room. She said:

“We’ve all been so interested in your work. Your first building?”

“My fifth.”

“Oh, indeed? Of course. How interesting.”

She clasped her hands, and turned to greet a new arrival. Heller said:

“Whom do you want to meet first? ... There’s Dominique Francon looking at us. Come on.”

Roark turned; he saw Dominique standing alone across the room. There was no expression on her face, not even an effort to avoid expression; it was strange to see a human face presenting a bone structure and an arrangement of muscles, but no meaning, a face as a simple anatomical feature, like a shoulder or an arm, not a mirror of sensate perception any longer. She looked at them as they approached. Her feet stood posed oddly, two small triangles pointed straight and parallel, as if there were no floor around her but the few square inches under her soles and she were safe so long as she did not move or look down. He felt a violent pleasure, because she seemed too fragile to stand the brutality of what he was doing; and because she stood it so well.

“Miss Francon, may I present Howard Roark?” said Heller.

He had not raised his voice to pronounce the name; he wondered why it had sounded so stressed; then he thought that the silence had caught the name and held it still; but there had been no silence: Roark’s face was politely blank and Dominique was saying correctly:

“How do you do, Mr. Roark.”

Roark bowed: “How do you do, Miss Francon.”

She said: “The Enright House ...”

She said it as if she had not wanted to pronounce these three words; and as if they named, not a house, but many things beyond it.

Roark said: “Yes, Miss Francon.”

Then she smiled, the correct, perfunctory smile with which one greets an introduction. She said:

“I know Roger Enright. He is almost a friend of the family.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting many friends of Mr. Enright.”

“I remember once Father invited him to dinner. It was a miserable dinner. Father is called a brilliant conversationalist, but he couldn’t bring a sound out of Mr. Enright. Roger just sat there. One must know Father to realize what a defeat it was for him.”

“I have worked for your father”—her hand had been moving and it stopped in mid-air—“a few years ago, as a draftsman.”

Her hand dropped. “Then you can see that Father couldn’t possibly get along with Roger Enright.”

“No. He couldn’t.”

“I think Roger almost liked me, though, but he’s never forgiven me for working on a Wynand paper.”

Standing between them, Heller thought that he had been mistaken; there was nothing strange in this meeting; in fact, there simply was nothing. He felt annoyed that Dominique did not speak of architecture, as one would have expected her to do; he concluded regretfully that she disliked this man, as she disliked most people she met.

Then Mrs. Gillespie caught hold of Heller and led him away. Roark and Dominique were left alone. Roark said:

“Mr. Enright reads every paper in town. They are all brought to his office—with the editorial pages cut out.”

“He’s always done that. Roger missed his real vocation. He should have been a scientist. He has such a love for facts and such contempt for commentaries.”

“On the other hand, do you know Mr. Fleming?” he asked.

“No.”

“He’s a friend of Heller’s. Mr. Fleming never reads anything but editorial pages. People like to hear him talk.”

She watched him. He was looking straight at her, very politely, as any man would have looked, meeting her for the first time. She wished she could find some hint in his face, if only a hint of his old derisive smile; even mockery would be an acknowledgment and a tie; she found nothing. He spoke as a stranger. He allowed no reality but that of a man introduced to her in a drawing room, flawlessly obedient to every convention of deference. She faced this respectful formality, thinking that her dress had nothing to hide from him, that he had used her for a need more intimate than the use of the food he ate—while he stood now at a distance of a few feet from her, like a man who could not possibly permit himself to come closer. She thought that this was his form of mockery, after what he had not forgotten and would not acknowledge. She thought that he wanted her to be first to name it, he would bring her to the humiliation of accepting the past—by being first to utter the word recalling it to reality; because he knew that she could not leave it unrecalled.

“And what does Mr. Fleming do for a living?” she asked.

“He’s a manufacturer of pencil sharpeners.”

“Really? A friend of Austen’s?”

“Austen knows many people. He says that’s his business.”

“Is he successful?”

“Who, Miss Francon? I’m not sure about Austen, but Mr. Fleming is very successful. He has branch factories in New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island.”

“You’re wrong about Austen, Mr. Roark. He’s very successful. In his profession and mine you’re successful if it leaves you untouched.”

“How does one achieve that?”

“In one of two ways: by not looking at people at all or by looking at everything about them.”

“Which is preferable, Miss Francon?”

“Whichever is hardest.”

“But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself.”

“Of course, Mr. Roark. But it’s the least offensive form of confession.”

“If the weakness is there to be confessed at all.”

Then someone came flying through the crowd, and an arm fell about Roark’s shoulders. It was John Erik Snyte.

“Roark, well of all people to see here!” he cried. “So glad, so glad! Ages, hasn’t it been? Listen, I want to talk to you! Let me have him for a moment, Dominique.”

Roark bowed to her, his arms at his sides, a strand of hair falling forward, so that she did not see his face, but only the orange head bowed courteously for a moment, and he followed Snyte into the crowd.

Snyte was saying: “God, how you’ve come up these last few years! Listen, do you know whether Enright’s planning to go into real estate in a big way, I mean; any other buildings up his sleeve?”

It was Heller who forced Snyte away and brought Roark to Joel Sutton. Joel Sutton was delighted. He felt that Roark’s presence here removed the last of his doubts; it was a stamp of safety on Roark’s person. Joel Sutton’s hand closed about Roark’s elbow, five pink, stubby fingers on the black sleeve. Joel Sutton gulped confidentially:

“Listen, kid, it’s all settled. You’re it. Now don’t squeeze the last pennies out of me, all you architects are cutthroats and highway robbers, but I’ll take a chance on you, you’re a smart boy, snared old Rog, didn’t you? So here you’ve got me swindled too, just about almost, that is, I’ll give you a ring in a few days and we’ll have a dogfight over the contract!”

Heller looked at them and thought that it was almost indecent to see them together: Roark’s tall, ascetic figure, with that proud cleanliness peculiar to long-lined bodies, and beside him the smiling ball of meat whose decision could mean so much.

Then Roark began to speak about the future building, but Joel Sutton looked up at him, astonished and hurt. Joel Sutton had not come here to talk about buildings; parties were given for the purpose of enjoying oneself, and what greater joy could there be but to forget the important things of one’s life? So Joel Sutton talked about badminton; that was his hobby; it was a patrician hobby, he explained, he was not being common like other men who wasted time on golf. Roark listened politely. He had nothing to say.

“You do play badminton, don’t you?” Joel Sutton asked suddenly.

“No,” said Roark.

“You don’t?” gulped Joel Sutton. “You don’t? Well, what a pity, oh what a rotten pity! I thought sure you did, with that lanky frame of yours you’d be good, you’d be a wow, I thought sure we’d beat the pants off of old Tompkins anytime while that building’s being put up.”

“While that building’s being put up, Mr. Sutton, I wouldn’t have the time to play anyway.”

“What d’you mean, wouldn’t have the time? What’ve you got draftsmen for? Hire a couple extra, let them worry, I’ll be paying you enough, won’t I? But then, you don’t play, what a rotten shame, I thought sure ... The architect who did my building down on Canal Street was a whiz at badminton, but he died last year, got himself cracked up in an auto accident, damn him, was a fine architect, too. And here you don’t play.”

“Mr. Sutton, you’re not really upset about it, are you?”

“I’m very seriously disappointed, my boy.”

“But what are you actually hiring me for?”

“What am I what?”

“Hiring me for?”

“Why, to do a building of course.”

“Do you really think it would be a better building if I played badminton?”

“Well, there’s business and there’s fun, there’s the practical and there’s the human end of it, oh, I don’t mind, still I thought with a skinny frame like yours you’d surely ... but all right, all right, we can’t have everything....”

When Joel Sutton left him, Roark heard a bright voice saying: “Congratulations, Howard,” and turned to find Peter Keating smiling at him radiantly and derisively.

“Hello, Peter. What did you say?”

“I said, congratulations on landing Joel Sutton. Only, you know, you didn’t handle that very well.”

“What?”

“Old Joel. Oh, of course, I heard most of it—why shouldn’t I?—it was very entertaining. That’s no way to go about it, Howard. You know what I would have done? I’d have sworn I’d played badminton since I was two years old and how it’s the game of kings and earls and it takes a soul of rare distinction to appreciate it and by the time he’d put me to the test I’d have made it my business to play like an earl, too. What would it cost you?”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“It’s a secret, Howard. A rare one. I’ll give it to you free of charge with my compliments: always be what people want you to be. Then you’ve got them where you want them. I’m giving it free because you’ll never make use of it. You’ll never know how. You’re brilliant in some respects, Howard, I’ve always said that—and terribly stupid in others.”