The Fountainhead (53 page)

He asked quietly:

“Is that all?”

She closed her eyes, and then she said, looking down at her hands:

“Yes ... except that I’m not the only one who’s like that. A lot of them are, most of the women I work with.... I don’t know how they got that way.... I don’t know how it happened to me.... I used to feel happy when I helped somebody. I remember once—I had lunch with Peter that day—and on my way back I saw an old organ-grinder and I gave him five dollars I had in my bag. It was all the money I had; I’d saved it to buy a bottle of ‘Christmas Night,’ I wanted ‘Christmas Night’ very badly, but afterward every time I thought of that organ-grinder I was happy.... I saw Peter often in those days.... I’d come home after seeing him and I’d want to kiss every ragged kid on our block.... I think I hate the poor now.... I think all the other women do, too.... But the poor don’t hate us, as they should. They only despise us.... You know, it’s funny: it’s the masters who despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters. I don’t know who is which. Maybe it doesn’t fit here. Maybe it does. I don’t know ...”

She raised her head with a last spurt of rebellion.

“Don’t you see what it is that I must understand? Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it’s making me rotten? I think it’s probably because I’m vicious by nature and incapable of leading a good life. That seems to be the only explanation. But ... but sometimes I think it doesn’t make sense that a human being is completely sincere in good will and yet the good is not for him to achieve. I can’t be as rotten as that. But ... but I’ve given up everything, I have no selfish desire left, I have nothing of my own—and I’m miserable. And so are the other women like me. And I don’t know a single selfless person in the world who’s happy—except you.”

She dropped her head and she did not raise it again; she seemed indifferent even to the answer she was seeking.

“Katie,” he said softly, reproachfully, “Katie darling.”

She waited silently.

“Do you really want me to tell you the answer?” She nodded. “Because, you know, you’ve given the answer yourself, in the things you said.” She lifted her eyes blankly. “What have you been talking about? What have you been complaining about? About the fact that you are unhappy. About Katie Halsey and nothing else. It was the most egotistical speech I’ve ever heard in my life.”

She blinked attentively, like a schoolchild disturbed by a difficult lesson.

“Don’t you see how selfish you have been? You chose a noble career, not for the good you could accomplish, but for the personal happiness you expected to find in it.”

“But I really wanted to help people.”

“Because you thought you’d be good and virtuous doing it.”

“Why—yes. Because I thought it was right. Is it vicious to want to do right?”

“Yes, if it’s your chief concern. Don’t you see how egotistical it is? To hell with everybody so long as I’m virtuous.”

“But if you have no ... no self-respect, how can you be anything?”

“Why must you be anything?”

She spread her hands out, bewildered.

“If your first concern is for what you are or think or feel or have or haven’t got—you’re still a common egotist.”

“But I can’t jump out of my own body.”

“No. But you can jump out of your narrow soul.”

“You mean, I must
want
to be unhappy?”

“No. You must stop wanting
anything.
You must forget how important Miss Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn’t. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you’ve found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It’s just growing pains. One can’t jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. A beautiful woman is usually a gawky adolescent first. All growth demands destruction. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean—anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul—only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you.”

“But, Uncle Ellsworth,” she whispered, “when the gates fall open, who is it that’s going to enter?”

He laughed aloud, crisply. It sounded like a laugh of appreciation. “My dear,” he said, “I never thought you could surprise me.”

Then his face became earnest again.

“It was a smart crack, Katie, but you know, I hope, that it was only a smart crack?”

“Yes,” she said uncertainly, “I suppose so. Still ...”

“We can’t be too literal when we deal in abstractions. Of course it’s you who’ll enter. You won’t have lost your identity—you will merely have acquired a broader one, an identity that will be part of everybody else and of the whole universe.”

“How? In what way? Part of what?”

“Now you see how difficult it is to discuss these things when our entire language is the language of individualism, with all its terms and superstitions. ‘Identity’—it’s an illusion, you know. But you can’t build a new house out of crumbling old bricks. You can’t expect to understand me completely through the medium of present-day conceptions. We are poisoned by the superstition of the ego. We cannot know what will be right or wrong in a selfless society, nor what we’ll feel, nor in what manner. We must destroy the ego first. That is why the mind is so unreliable. We must not think. We must believe. Believe, Katie, even if your mind objects. Don’t think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don’t think. Feel. Believe.”

She sat still, composed, but somehow she looked like something run over by a tank. She whispered obediently:

“Yes, Uncle Ellsworth ... I ... I didn’t think of it that way. I mean, I always thought that I must think ... But you’re right, that is, if right is the word I mean, if there is a word ... Yes, I will believe.... I’ll try to understand.... No, not to understand. To feel. To believe, I mean.... Only I’m so weak.... I always feel so small after talking to you.... I suppose I was right in a way—I
am
worthless ... but it doesn’t matter ... it doesn’t matter....”

When the doorbell rang on the following evening Toohey went to open the door himself.

He smiled when he admitted Peter Keating. After the trial he had expected Keating to come to him; he knew that Keating would need to come. But he had expected him sooner.

Keating walked in uncertainly. His hands seemed too heavy for his wrists. His eyes were puffed, and the skin of his face looked slack.

“Hello, Peter,” said Toohey brightly. “Want to see me? Come right in. Just your luck. I have the whole evening free.”

“No,” said Keating. “I want to see Katie.”

He was not looking at Toohey and he did not see the expression behind Toohey’s glasses.

“Katie? But of course!” said Toohey gaily. “You know, you’ve never come here to call on Katie, so it didn’t occur to me, but ... Go right in, I believe she’s home. This way—you don’t know her room?—second door.”

Keating shuffled heavily down the hall, knocked on Catherine’s door and went in when she answered. Toohey stood looking after him, his face thoughtful.

Catherine jumped to her feet when she saw her guest. She stood stupidly, incredulously for a moment, then she dashed to her bed to snatch a girdle she had left lying there and stuff it hurriedly under the pillow. Then she jerked off her glasses, closed her whole fist over them, and slipped them into her pocket. She wondered which would be worse: to remain as she was or to sit down at her dressing table and make up her face in his presence.

She had not seen Keating for six months. In the last three years, they had met occasionally, at long intervals, they had had a few luncheons together, a few dinners, they had gone to the movies twice. They had always met in a public place. Since the beginning of his acquaintance with Toohey, Keating would not come to see her at her home. When they met, they talked as if nothing had changed. But they had not spoken of marriage for a long time.

“Hello, Katie,” said Keating softly. “I didn’t know you wore glasses now.”

“It’s just ... it’s only for reading.... I ... Hello, Peter.... I guess I look terrible tonight.... I’m glad to see you, Peter....”

He sat down heavily, his hat in his hand, his overcoat on. She stood smiling helplessly. Then she made a vague, circular motion with her hands and asked:

“Is it just for a little while or ... or do you want to take your coat off?”

“No, it’s not just for a little while.” He got up, threw his coat and hat on the bed, then he smiled for the first time and asked: “Or are you busy and want to throw me out?”

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets, and dropped her hands again quickly; she had to meet him as she had always met him, she had to sound light and normal: “No, no, I’m not busy at all.”

He sat down and stretched out his arm in silent invitation. She came to him promptly, she put her hand in his, and he pulled her down to the arm of his chair.

The lamplight fell on him, and she had recovered enough to notice the appearance of his face.

“Peter,” she gasped, “what have you been doing to yourself? You look awful.”

“Drinking.”

“Not ... like that!”

“Like that. But it’s over now.”

“What was it?”

“I wanted to see you, Katie. I wanted to see you.”

“Darling ... what have they done to you?”

“Nobody’s done anything to me. I’m all right now. I’m all right. Because I came here ... Katie, have you ever heard of Hopton Stoddard?”

“Stoddard? ... I don’t know. I’ve seen the name somewhere.”

“Well, never mind, it doesn’t matter. I was only thinking how strange it is. You see, Stoddard’s an old bastard who just couldn’t take his own rottenness any more, so to make up for it he built a big present to the city. But when I ... when I couldn’t take it any more, I felt that the only way I could make up for it was by doing the thing I really wanted to do most—by coming here.”

“When you couldn’t take—what, Peter?”

“I’ve done something very dirty, Katie. I’ll tell you about it some day, but not now.... Look, will you say that you forgive me—without asking what it is? I’ll think ... I’ll think that I’ve been forgiven by someone who can never forgive me. Someone who can’t be hurt and so can’t forgive—but that makes it worse for me.”

She did not seem perplexed. She said earnestly:

“I forgive you, Peter.”

He nodded his head slowly several times and said:

“Thank you.”

Then she pressed her head to his and she whispered:

“You’ve gone through hell, haven’t you?”

“Yes. But it’s all right now.”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Then he did not think of the Stoddard Temple any longer, and she did not think of good and evil. They did not need to; they felt too clean.

“Katie, why haven’t we married?”

“I don’t know,” she said. And added hastily, saying it only because her heart was pounding, because she could not remain silent and because she felt called upon not to take advantage of him: “I guess it’s because we know we don’t have to hurry.”

“But we do. If we’re not too late already.”

“Peter, you ... you’re not proposing to me again?”

“Don’t look so stunned, Katie. If you do, I’ll know that you’ve doubted it all these years. And I couldn’t stand to think that just now. That’s what I came here to tell you tonight. We’re going to get married. We’re going to get married right away.”

“Yes, Peter.”

“We don’t need announcements, dates, preparations, guests, any of it. We’ve let one of those things or another stop us every time. I honestly don’t know just how it happened that we’ve let it all drift like that.... We won’t say anything to anyone. We’ll just slip out of town and get married. We’ll announce and explain afterward, if anyone wants explanations. And that means your uncle, and my mother, and everybody.”

“Yes, Peter.”

“Quit your damn job tomorrow. I’ll make arrangements at the office to take a month off. Guy will be sore as hell—I’ll enjoy that. Get your things ready—you won’t need much—don’t bother about the make-up, by the way—did you say you looked terrible tonight?—you’ve never looked lovelier. I’ll be here at nine o’clock in the morning, day after tomorrow. You must be ready to start then.”

“Yes, Peter.”

After he had gone, she lay on her bed, sobbing aloud, without restraint, without dignity, without a care in the world.

Ellsworth Toohey had left the door of his study open. He had seen Keating pass by the door without noticing it and go out. Then he heard the sound of Catherine’s sobs. He walked to her room and entered without knocking. He asked:

“What’s the matter, my dear? Has Peter done something to hurt you?”

She half lifted herself on the bed, she looked at him, throwing her hair back off her face, sobbing exultantly. She said without thinking the first thing she felt like saying. She said something which she did not understand, but he did: “I’m not afraid of you, Uncle Ellsworth!”

XIV

“W
HO?” GASPED KEATING. “Miss Dominique Francon,” the maid repeated. “You’re drunk, you damn fool!”

“Mr. Keating! ...”

He was on his feet, he shoved her out of the way, he flew into the living room, and saw Dominique Francon standing there, in his apartment.

“Hello, Peter.”

“Dominique! ... Dominique, how come?” In his anger, apprehension, curiosity and flattered pleasure, his first conscious thought was gratitude to God that his mother was not at home.

“I phoned your office. They said you had gone home.”

“I’m so delighted, so pleasantly sur ... Oh, hell, Dominique, what’s the use? I always try to be correct with you and you always see through it so well that it’s perfectly pointless. So I won’t play the poised host. You know that I’m knocked silly and that your coming here isn’t natural and anything I say will probably be wrong.”

“Yes, that’s better, Peter.”

He noticed that he still held a key in his hand and he slipped it into his pocket; he had been packing a suitcase for his wedding trip of tomorrow. He glanced at the room and noted angrily how vulgar his Victorian furniture looked beside the elegance of Dominique’s figure. She wore a gray suit, a black fur jacket with a collar raised to her cheeks, and a hat slanting down. She did not look as she had looked on the witness stand, nor as he remembered her at dinner parties. He thought suddenly of that moment, years ago, when he stood on the stair landing outside Guy Francon’s office and wished never to see Dominique again. She was what she had been then: a stranger who frightened him by the crystal emptiness of her face.

“Well, sit down, Dominique. Take your coat off.”

“No, I shan’t stay long. Since we’re not pretending anything today, shall I tell you what I came for—or do you want some polite conversation first?”

“No, I don’t want polite conversation.”

“All right. Will you marry me, Peter?”

He stood very still; then he sat down heavily—because he knew she meant it.

“If you want to marry me,” she went on in the same precise, impersonal voice, “you must do it right now. My car is downstairs. We drive to Connecticut and we come back. It will take about three hours.”

“Dominique ...” He didn’t want to move his lips beyond the effort of her name. He wanted to think that he was paralyzed. He knew that he was violently alive, that he was forcing the stupor into his muscles and into his mind, because he wished to escape the responsibility of consciousness.

“We’re not pretending, Peter. Usually, people discuss their reasons and their feelings first, then make the practical arrangements. With us, this is the only way. If I offered it to you in any other form, I’d be cheating you. It must be like this. No questions, no conditions, no explanations. What we don’t say answers itself. By not being said. There is nothing for you to ponder—only whether you want to do it or not.”

“Dominique,” he spoke with the concentration he used when he walked down a naked girder in an unfinished building, “I understand only this much: I understand that I must try to imitate you, not to discuss it, not to talk, just answer.”

“Yes.”

“Only—I can’t—quite.”

“This is one time, Peter, when there are no protections. Nothing to hide behind. Not even words.”

“If you’d just say one thing ...”

“No.”

“If you’d give me time ...”

“No. Either we go downstairs together now or we forget it.”

“You mustn’t resent it if I ... You’ve never allowed me to hope that you could ... that you ... no, no, I won’t say it ... but what can you expect me to think? I’m here, alone, and ...”

“And I’m the only one present to give you advice. My advice is to refuse. I’m honest with you, Peter. But I won’t help you by withdrawing the offer. You would prefer not to have had the chance of marrying me. But you have the chance. Now. The choice will be yours.”

Then he could not hold on to his dignity any longer; he let his head drop, he pressed his fist to his forehead.

“Dominique—
Why?
”

“You know the reasons. I told them to you once, long ago. If you haven’t the courage to think of them, don’t expect me to repeat them.”

He sat still, his head down. Then he said:

“Dominique, two people like you and me getting married, it’s almost a front-page event.”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to do it properly, with an announcement and a real wedding ceremony?”

“I’m strong, Peter, but I’m not that strong. You can have your receptions and your publicity afterward.”

“You don’t want me to say anything now, except yes or no?”

“That’s all.”

He sat looking up at her for a long time. Her glance was on his eyes, but it had no more reality than the glance of a portrait. He felt alone in the room. She stood, patient, waiting, granting him nothing, not even the kindness of prompting him to hurry.

“All right, Dominique. Yes,” he said at last.

She inclined her head gravely in acquiescence.

He stood up. “I’ll get my coat,” he said. “Do you want to take your car?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an open car, isn’t it? Should I wear my fur coat?”

“No. Take a warm muffler, though. There’s a little wind.”

“No luggage? We’re coming right back to the city?”

“We’re coming right back.”

He left the door to the hall open, and she saw him putting on his coat, throwing a muffler around his throat, with the gesture of flinging a cape over his shoulder. He stepped to the door of the living room, hat in hand, and invited her to go, with a silent movement of his head. In the hall outside he pressed the button of the elevator and he stepped back to let her enter first. He was precise, sure of himself, without joy, without emotion. He seemed more coldly masculine than he had ever been before.

He took her elbow firmly, protectively, to cross the street where she had left her car. He opened the car’s door, let her slide behind the wheel and got in silently beside her. She leaned over across him and adjusted the glass wind screen on his side. She said: “If it’s not right, fix it any way you want when we start moving, so it won’t be too cold for you.” He said: “Get to the Grand Concourse, fewer lights there.” She put her handbag down on his lap while she took the wheel and started the car. There was suddenly no antagonism between them, but a quiet, hopeless feeling of comradeship, as if they were victims of the same impersonal disaster, who had to help each other.

She drove fast, as a matter of habit, an even speed without a sense of haste. They sat silently to the level drone of the motor, and they sat patiently, without shifting the positions of their bodies, when the car stopped for a light. They seemed caught in a single streak of motion, an imperative direction like the flight of a bullet that could not be stopped on its course. There was a first hint of twilight in the streets of the city. The pavements looked yellow. The shops were still open. A movie theater had lighted its sign, and the red bulbs whirled jerkily, sucking the last daylight out of the air, making the street look darker.

Peter Keating felt no need of speech. He did not seem to be Peter Keating any longer. He did not ask for warmth and he did not ask for pity. He asked nothing. She thought of that once, and she glanced at him, a glance of appreciation that was almost gentle. He met her eyes steadily; she saw understanding, but no comment. It was as if his glance said: “Of course,” nothing else.

They were out of the city, with a cold brown road flying to meet them, when he said:

“The traffic cops are bad around here. Got your press card with you, just in case?”

“I’m not the press any longer.”

“You’re not what?”

“I’m not a newspaper woman any more.”

“You quit your job?”

“No, I was fired.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where have you been the last few days? I thought everybody knew it. ”

“Sorry. I didn’t follow things very well the last few days.”

Miles later, she said: “Give me a cigarette. In my bag.”

He opened her bag, and he saw her cigarette case, her compact, her lipstick, her comb, a folded handkerchief too white to touch, smelling faintly of her perfume. Somewhere within him he thought that this was almost like unbuttoning her blouse. But most of him was not conscious of the thought nor of the intimate proprietorship with which he opened the bag. He took a cigarette from her case, lighted it and put it from his lips to hers. “Thanks,” she said. He lighted one for himself and closed the bag.

When they reached Greenwich, it was he who made the inquiries, told her where to drive, at what block to turn, and said, “Here it is,” when they pulled up in front of the judge’s house. He got out first and helped her out of the car. He pressed the button of the doorbell.

They were married in a living room that displayed armchairs of faded tapestry, blue and purple, and a lamp with a fringe of glass beads. The witnesses were the judge’s wife and someone from next door named Chuck, who had been interrupted at some household task and smelled faintly of Clorox.

Then they came back to their car and Keating asked: “Want me to drive if you’re tired?” She said: “No, I’ll drive.”

The road to the city cut through brown fields where every rise in the ground had a shade of tired red on the side facing west. There was a purple haze eating away the edges of the fields, and a motionless streak of fire in the sky. A few cars came toward them as brown shapes, still visible; others had their lights on, two disquieting spots of yellow.

Keating watched the road; it looked narrow, a small dash in the middle of the windshield, framed by earth and hills, all of it held within the rectangle of glass before him. But the road spread as the windshield flew forward. The road filled the glass, it ran over the edges, it tore apart to let them pass, streaming in two gray bands on either side of the car. He thought it was a race and he waited to see the windshield win, to see the car hurtle into that small dash before it had time to stretch.

“Where are we going to live now, at first?” he asked. “Your place or mine?”

“Yours, of course.”

“I’d rather move to yours.”

“No. I’m closing my place.”

“You can’t possibly like my apartment.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t fit you.”

“I’ll like it.”

They were silent for a while, then he asked: “How are we going to announce this now?”

“In any way you wish. I’ll leave it up to you.”

It was growing darker and she switched on the car’s headlights. He watched the small blurs of traffic signs, low by the side of the road, springing suddenly into life as they approached, spelling out: “Left turn,” “Crossing ahead,” in dots of light that seemed conscious, malevolent, winking.

They drove silently, but there was no bond in their silence now; they were not walking together toward disaster; the disaster had come; their courage did not matter any longer. He felt disturbed and uncertain as he always felt in the presence of Dominique Francon.

He half turned to look at her. She kept her eyes on the road. Her profile in the cold wind was serene and remote and lovely in a way that was hard to bear. He looked at her gloved hands resting firmly, one on each side of the wheel. He looked down at her slender foot on the accelerator, then his eyes rose up the line of her leg. His glance remained on the narrow triangle of her tight gray skirt. He realized suddenly that he had a right to think what he was thinking.

For the first time this implication of marriage occurred to him fully and consciously. Then he knew that he had always wanted this woman, that it was the kind of feeling he would have for a whore, only lasting and hopeless and vicious. My wife, he thought for the first time, without a trace of respect in the word. He felt so violent a desire that had it been summer he would have ordered her to drive into the first side lane and he would have taken her there.

He slipped his arm along the back of the seat and encircled her shoulders, his fingers barely touching her. She did not move, resist or turn to look at him. He pulled his arm away, and he sat staring straight ahead.

“Mrs. Keating,” he said flatly, not addressing her, just as a statement of fact.

“Mrs. Peter Keating,” she said.

When they stopped in front of his apartment house, he got out and held the door for her, but she remained sitting behind the wheel.

“Good night, Peter,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She added, before the expression of his face had turned into an obscene swearword: “I’ll send my things over tomorrow and we’ll discuss everything then. Everything will begin tomorrow, Peter.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have things to settle.”

“But what will I tell people tonight?”

“Anything you wish, if at all.”

She swung the car into the traffic and drove away.

When she entered Roark’s room, that evening, he smiled, not his usual faint smile of acknowledging the expected, but a smile that spoke of waiting and pain.

He had not seen her since the trial. She had left the courtroom after her testimony and he had heard nothing from her since. He had come to her house, but her maid had told him that Miss Francon could not see him.

She looked at him now and she smiled. It was, for the first time, like a gesture of complete acceptance, as if the sight of him solved everything, answered all questions, and her meaning was only to be a woman who looked at him.

They stood silently before each other for a moment, and she thought that the most beautiful words were those which were not needed.

When he moved, she said: “Don’t say anything about the trial. Afterward.”

When he took her in his arms, she turned her body to meet his straight on, to feel the width of his chest with the width of hers, the length of his legs with the length of hers, as if she were lying against him, and her feet felt no weight, and she was held upright by the pressure of his body.

They lay in bed together that night, and they did not know when they slept, the intervals of exhausted unconsciousness as intense an act of union as the convulsed meetings of their bodies.