The Fountainhead (57 page)

Late in the afternoon, when Wynand was ready to leave his office, his secretary announced that Ellsworth Toohey requested the privilege of seeing him. “Let him in,” said Wynand.

Toohey entered, a cautious half-smile on his face, a smile mocking himself and his boss, but with a delicate sense of balance, sixty percent of the mockery directed at himself. He knew that Wynand did not want to see him, and being received was not in his favor.

Wynand sat behind his desk, his face courteously blank. Two diagonal ridges stood out faintly on his forehead, parallel with his slanting eyebrows. It was a disconcerting peculiarity which his face assumed at times; it gave the effect of a double exposure, an ominous emphasis.

“Sit down, Mr. Toohey. Of what service can I be to you?”

“Oh, I’m much more presumptuous than that, Mr. Wynand,” said Toohey gaily. “I didn’t come to ask for your services, but to offer you mine.”

“In what matter?”

“Stoneridge.”

The diagonal lines stood out sharper on Wynand’s forehead.

“Of what use can a newspaper columnist be to Stoneridge?”

“A newspaper columnist—none, Mr. Wynand. But an architectural expert ...” Toohey let his voice trail into a mocking question mark.

If Toohey’s eyes had not been fixed insolently on Wynand’s, he would have been ordered out of the office at once. But the glance told Wynand that Toohey knew to what extent he had been plagued by people recommending architects and how hard he had tried to avoid them; and that Toohey had outwitted him by obtaining this interview for a purpose Wynand had not expected. The impertinence of it amused Wynand, as Toohey had known it would.

“All right, M. Toohey. Whom are you selling?”

“Peter Keating.”

“Well?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, sell him to me.”

Toohey was stopped, then shrugged brightly and plunged in:

“You understand, of course, that I’m not connected with Mr. Keating in any way. I’m acting only as his friend—and yours.” The voice sounded pleasantly informal, but it had lost some of its certainty. “Honestly, I know it does sound trite, but what else can I say? It just happens to be the truth.” Wynand would not help him out. “I presumed to come here because I felt it was my duty to give you my opinion. No, not a moral duty. Call it an esthetic one. I know that you demand the best in anything you do. For a project of the size you have in mind there’s not another architect living who can equal Peter Keating in efficiency, taste, originality, imagination. That, Mr. Wynand, is my sincere opinion.”

“I quite believe you.”

“You do?”

“Of course. But, Mr. Toohey, why should I consider your opinion?”

“Well, after all, I
am
your architectural expert!” He could not keep the edge of anger out of his voice.

“My dear Mr. Toohey, don’t confuse me with my readers.”

After a moment, Toohey leaned back and spread his hands out in laughing helplessness.

“Frankly, Mr. Wynand, I didn’t think my word would carry much weight with you. So I didn’t intend trying to sell you Peter Keating.”

“No? What did you intend?”

“Only to ask that you give half an hour of your time to someone who can convince you of Peter Keating’s ability much better than I can.”

“Who is that?”

“Mrs. Peter Keating.”

“Why should I wish to discuss this matter with Mrs. Peter Keating?”

“Because she is an exceedingly beautiful woman and an extremely difficult one.”

Wynand threw his head back and laughed aloud.

“Good God, Toohey, am I as obvious as that?”

Toohey blinked, unprepared.

“Really, Mr. Toohey, I owe you an apology, if, by allowing my tastes to become so well known, I caused you to be so crude. But I had no idea that among your many other humanitarian activities you were also a pimp.”

Toohey rose to his feet.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Toohey. I have no desire whatever to meet Mrs. Peter Keating.”

“I didn’t think you would have, Mr. Wynand. Not on my unsupported suggestion. I foresaw that several hours ago. In fact, as early as this morning. So I took the liberty of preparing for myself another chance to discuss this with you. I took the liberty of sending you a present. When you get home tonight, you will find my gift there. Then, if you feel that I was justified in expecting you to do so, you can telephone me and I shall come over at once so that you will be able to tell me whether you wish to meet Mrs. Peter Keating or not.”

“Toohey, this is unbelievable, but I believe you’re offering me a bribe.”

“I am.”

“You know, that’s the sort of stunt you should be allowed to get away with completely—or lose your job for.”

“I shall rest upon your opinion of my present tonight.”

“All right, Mr. Toohey, I’ll look at your present.”

Toohey bowed and turned to go. He was at the door when Wynand added:

“You know, Toohey, one of these days you’ll bore me.”

“I shall endeavor not to do so until the right time,” said Toohey, bowed again and went out.

When Wynand returned to his home, he had forgotten all about Ellsworth Toohey.

That evening, in his penthouse, Wynand had dinner with a woman who had a white face, soft brown hair and, behind her, three centuries of fathers and brothers who would have killed a man for a hint of the things which Gail Wynand had experienced with her.

The line of her arm, when she raised a crystal goblet of water to her lips, was as perfect as the lines of the silver candelabra produced by a matchless talent—and Wynand observed it with the same appreciation. The candlelight flickering on the planes of her face made a sight of such beauty that he wished she were not alive, so that he could look, say nothing and think what he pleased.

“In a month or two, Gail,” she said, smiling lazily, “when it gets really cold and nasty, let’s take the
I
Do and sail somewhere straight into the sun, as we did last winter.”

I
Do was the name of Wynand’s yacht. He had never explained that name to anyone. Many women had questioned him about it. This woman had questioned him before. Now, as he remained silent, she asked it again:

“By the way, darling, what does it mean—the name of that wonderful mud-scow of yours?”

“It’s a question I don’t answer,” he said. “One of them.”

“Well, shall I get my wardrobe ready for the cruise?”

“Green is your best color. It looks well at sea. I love to watch what it does to your hair and your arms. I shall miss the sight of your naked arms against green silk. Because tonight is the last time.”

Her fingers lay still on the stem of the glass. Nothing had given her a hint that tonight was to be the last time. But she knew that these words were all he needed to end it. All of Wynand’s women had known that they were to expect an end like this and that it was not to be discussed. After a while, she asked, her voice low:

“What reason, Gail?”

“The obvious one.”

He reached into his pocket and took out a diamond bracelet; it flashed a cold, brilliant fire in the candlelight; its heavy links hung limply in his fingers. It had no case, no wrapper. He tossed it across the table.

“A memorial, my dear,” he said. “Much more valuable than that which it commemorates.”

The bracelet hit the goblet and made it ring, a thin, sharp cry, as if the glass had screamed for the woman. The woman made no sound. He knew that it was horrible, because she was the kind to whom one did not offer such gifts at such moments, just as all those other women had been; and because she would not refuse, as all the others had not refused.

“Thank you, Gail,” she said, clasping the bracelet about her wrist, not looking at him across the candles.

Later, when they had walked into the drawing room, she stopped and the glance between her long eyelashes moved toward the darkness where the stairway to his bedroom began.

“To let me earn the memorial, Gail?” she asked, her voice flat.

He shook his head.

“I had really intended that,” he said. “But I’m tired.”

When she had gone, he stood in the hall and thought that she suffered, that the suffering was real, but after a while none of it would be real to her, except the bracelet. He could no longer remember the time when such a thought had the power to give him bitterness. When he recalled that he, too, was concerned in the event of this evening, he felt nothing, except wonder why he had not done this long ago.

He went to his library. He sat reading for a few hours. Then he stopped. He stopped short, without reason, in the middle of an important sentence. He had no desire to read on. He had no desire ever to make another effort.

Nothing had happened to him—a happening is a positive reality, and no reality could ever make him helpless; this was some enormous negative—as if everything had been wiped out, leaving a senseless emptiness, faintly indecent because it seemed so ordinary, so unexciting, like murder wearing a homey smile.

Nothing was gone—except desire; no, more than that—the root, the desire to desire. He thought that a man who loses his eyes still retains the concept of sight; but he had heard of a ghastlier blindness—if the brain centers controlling vision are destroyed, one loses even the memory of visual perception.

He dropped the book and stood up. He had no wish to remain on that spot; he had no wish to move from it. He thought that he should go to sleep. It was much too early for him, but he could get up earlier tomorrow. He went to his bedroom, he took a shower, he put on his pyjamas. Then he opened a drawer of his dresser and saw the gun he always kept there. It was the immediate recognition, the sudden stab of interest, that made him pick it up.

It was the lack of shock, when he thought he would kill himself, that convinced him he should. The thought seemed so simple, like an argument not worth contesting. Like a bromide.

Now he stood at the glass wall, stopped by that very simplicity. One could make a bromide of one’s life, he thought; but not of one’s death.

He walked to the bed and sat down, the gun hanging in his hand. A man about to die, he thought, is supposed to see his whole life in a last flash. I see nothing. But I could make myself see it. I could go over it again, by force. Let me find in it either the will to live on or the reason to end it now.

Gail Wynand, aged twelve, stood in the darkness under a broken piece of wall on the shore of the Hudson, one arm swung back, the fist closed, ready to strike, waiting.

The stones under his feet rose to the remnant of a corner; one side of it hid him from the street; there was nothing behind the other side but a sheer drop to the river. An unlighted, unpaved stretch of waterfront lay before him, sagging structures and empty spaces of sky, warehouses, a crooked cornice hanging somewhere over a window with a malignant light.

In a moment he would have to fight—and he knew it would be for his life. He stood still. His closed fist, held down and back, seemed to clutch invisible wires that stretched to every key spot of his lanky, fleshless body, under the ragged pants and shirt, to the long, swollen tendon of his bare arm, to the taut cords of his neck. The wires seemed to quiver; the body was motionless. He was like a new sort of lethal instrument; if a finger were to touch any part of him, it would release the trigger.

He knew that the leader of the boys’ gang was looking for him and that the leader would not come alone. Two of the boys he expected fought with knives; one had a killing to his credit. He waited for them, his own pockets empty. He was the youngest member of the gang and the last to join. The leader had said that he needed a lesson.

It had started over the looting of the barges on the river, which the gang was planning. The leader had decided that the job would be done at night. The gang had agreed; all but Gail Wynand. Gail Wynand had explained, in a slow, contemptuous voice, that the Little Plug-Uglies, farther down the river, had tried the same stunt last week and had left six members in the hands of the cops, plus two in the cemetery; the job had to be done at daybreak, when no one would expect it. The gang hooted him. It made no difference. Gail Wynand was not good at taking orders. He recognized nothing but the accuracy of his own judgment. So the leader wished to settle the issue once and for all.

The three boys walked so softly that the people behind the thin walls they passed could not hear their steps. Gail Wynand heard them a block away. He did not move in his corner; only his wrist stiffened a little.

When the moment was right, he leaped. He leaped straight into space, without thought of landing, as if a catapult had sent him on a flight of miles. His chest struck the head of one enemy, his stomach another, his feet smashed into the chest of the third. The four of them went down. When the three lifted their faces, Gail Wynand was unrecognizable; they saw a whirl suspended in the air above them, and something darted at them out of the whirl with a scalding touch.

He had nothing but his two fists; they had five fists and a knife on their side; it did not seem to count. They heard their blows landing with a thud as on hard rubber; they felt the break in the thrust of their knife, which told that it had been stopped and had cut its way out. But the thing they were fighting was invulnerable. He had no time to feel; he was too fast; pain could not catch up with him; he seemed to leave it hanging in the air over the spot where it had hit him and where he was no longer in the next second.

He seemed to have a motor between his shoulder blades to propel his arms in two circles; only the circles were visible; the arms had vanished like the spokes of a speeding wheel. The circle landed each time, and stopped whatever it had landed upon, without a break in its spin. One boy saw his knife disappear in Wynand’s shoulder; he saw the jerk of the shoulder that sent the knife slicing down through Wynand’s side and flung it out at the belt. It was the last thing the boy saw. Something happened to his chin and he did not feel it when the back of his head struck against a pile of old bricks.

For a long time the two others fought the centrifuge that was now spattering red drops against the walls around them. But it was no use. They were not fighting a man. They were fighting a bodiless human will.