The Fountainhead (75 page)

In all the gossip about Gail Wynand, no one had ever mentioned the expression of his face as it was in this moment. The few men who had seen it did not talk about it. Of these men, Dwight Carson had been the first. Wynand’s lips were parted, his eyes brilliant. It was an expression of sensual pleasure derived from agony—the agony of his victim or his own, or both.

“I want you to design all my future commercial structures—as the public wishes commercial structures to be designed. You’ll build Colonial houses, Rococo hotels and semi-Grecian office buildings. You’ll exercise your matchless ingenuity within forms chosen by the taste of the people -and you’ll make money for me. You’ll take your spectacular talent and make it obedient. Originality and subservience together. They call it harmony. You’ll create in your sphere what the
Banner
is in mine. Do you think it took no talent to create the
Banner?
Such will be your future career. But the house you’ve designed for me shall be erected as you designed it. It will be the last Roark building to rise on earth. Nobody will have one after mine. You’ve read about ancient rulers who put to death the architect of their palace, that no others might equal the glory he had given them. They killed the architect or cut his eyes out. Modern methods are different. For the rest of your life you’ll obey the will of the majority. I shan’t attempt to offer you any arguments. I am merely stating an alternative. You’re the kind of man who can understand plain language. You have a simple choice: if you refuse, you’ll never build anything again; if you accept, you’ll build this house which you want so much to see erected, and a great many other houses which you won’t like, but which will make money for both of us. For the rest of your life you’ll design rental developments, such as Stoneridge. That is what I want.”

He leaned forward, waiting for one of the reactions he knew well and enjoyed: a look of anger, or indignation, or ferocious pride.

“Why, of course,” said Roark gaily. “I’ll be glad to do it. That’s easy.”

He reached over, took a pencil and the first piece of paper he saw on Wynand’s desk—a letter with an imposing letterhead. He drew rapidly on the back of the letter. The motion of his hand was smooth and confident. Wynand looked at his face bent over the paper; he saw the unwrinkled forehead, the straight line of the eyebrows, attentive, but untroubled by effort.

Roark raised his head and threw the paper to Wynand across the desk.

“Is this what you want?”

Wynand’s house stood drawn on the paper—with Colonial porches, a gambrel roof, two massive chimneys, a few little pilasters, a few porthole windows. It was not a parody, it was a serious job of adaptation in what any professor would have called excellent taste.

“Good God, no!” The gasp was instinctive and immediate.

“Then shut up,” said Roark, “and don’t ever let me hear any architectural suggestions.”

Wynand slumped down in his chair and laughed. He laughed for a long time, unable to stop. It was not a happy sound.

Roark shook his head wearily. “You knew better than that. And it’s such an old one to me. My antisocial stubbornness is so well-known that I didn’t think anyone would waste time trying to tempt me again.”

“Howard. I meant it. Until I saw this.”

“I knew you meant it. I didn’t think you could be such a fool.”

“You knew you were taking a terrible kind of chance?”

“None at all. I had an ally I could trust.”

“What? Your integrity?”

“Yours, Gail.”

Wynand sat looking down at the surface of his desk. After a while he said:

“You’re wrong about that.”

“I don’t think so.”

Wynand lifted his head; he looked tired; he sounded indifferent.

“It was your method of the Stoddard trial again, wasn’t it? ‘The defense rests.’ ... I wish I had been in the courtroom to hear that sentence.... You did throw the trial back at me again, didn’t you?”

“Call it that.”

“But this time, you won. I suppose you know I’m not glad that you won.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Don’t think it was one of those temptations when you tempt just to test your victim and are happy to be beaten, and smile and say, well, at last, here’s the kind of man I want. Don’t imagine that. Don’t make that excuse for me.”

“I’m not. I know what you wanted.”

“I wouldn’t have lost so easily before. This would have been only the beginning. I know I can try further. I don’t want to try. Not because you’d probably hold out to the end. But because I wouldn’t hold out. No, I’m not glad and I’m not grateful to you for this.... But it doesn’t matter....”

“Gail, how much lying to yourself are you actually capable of?”

“I’m not lying. Everything I just told you is true. I thought you understood it.”

“Everything you just told me—yes. I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“You’re wrong in what you’re thinking. You’re wrong in remaining here.”

“Do you wish to throw me out?”

“You know I can’t.”

Wynand’s glance moved from Roark to the drawing of the house lying face down on his desk. He hesitated for a moment, looking at the blank cardboard, then turned it over. He asked softly:

“Shall I tell you now what I think of this?”

“You’ve told me.”

“Howard, you spoke about a house as a statement of my life. Do you think my life deserves a statement like this?”

“Yes.”

“Is this your honest judgment?”

“My honest judgment, Gail. My most sincere one. My final one. No matter what might happen between us in the future.”

Wynand put the drawing down and sat studying the plans for a long time. When he raised his head, he looked calm and normal.

“Why did you stay away from here?” he asked.

“You were busy with private detectives.”

Wynand laughed. “Oh that? I couldn’t resist my old bad habits and I was curious. Now I know everything about you—except the women in your life. Either you’ve been very discreet or there haven’t been many. No information available on that anywhere.”

“There haven’t been many.”

“I think I missed you. It was a kind of substitute—gathering the details of your past. Why did you actually stay away?”

“You told me to.”

“Are you always so meek about taking orders?”

“When I find it advisable.”

“Well, here’s an order—hope you place it among the advisable ones: come to have dinner with us tonight. I’ll take this drawing home to show my wife. I’ve told her nothing about the house so far.”

“You haven’t told her?”

“No. I want her to see this. And I want you to meet her. I know she hasn’t been kind to you in the past—I read what she wrote about you. But it’s so long ago. I hope it doesn’t matter now.”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

“Then will you come?”

“Yes.”

IV

D
OMINIQUE STOOD AT THE GLASS DOOR OF HER ROOM. WYNAND saw the starlight on the ice sheets of the roof garden outside. He saw its reflection touching the outline of her profile, a faint radiance on her eyelids, on the planes of her cheeks. He thought that this was the illumination proper to her face. She turned to him slowly, and the light became an edge around the pale straight mass of her hair. She smiled as she had always smiled at him, a quiet greeting of understanding.

“What’s the matter, Gail?”

“Good evening, dear. Why?”

“You look happy. That’s not the word. But it’s the nearest.”

“ ‘Light’ is nearer. I feel light, thirty years lighter. Not that I’d want to be what I was thirty years ago. One never does. What the feeling means is only a sense of being carried back intact, as one is now, back to the beginning. It’s quite illogical and impossible and wonderful.”

“What the feeling usually means is that you’ve met someone. A woman as a rule.”

“I have. Not a woman. A man. Dominique, you’re very beautiful tonight. But I always say that. It’s not what I wanted to say. It’s this: I am very happy tonight that you’re so beautiful.”

“What is it, Gail?”

“Nothing. Only a feeling of how much is unimportant and how easy it is to live.”

He took her hand and held it to his lips.

“Dominique, I’ve never stopped thinking it’s a miracle that our marriage has lasted. Now I believe that it won’t be broken. By anything or anyone.” She leaned back against the glass pane. “I have a present for you—don’t remind me it’s the sentence I use more often than any other. I will have a present for you by the end of this summer. Our house.”

“The house? You haven’t spoken of it for so long, I thought you had forgotten.”

“I’ve thought of nothing else for the last six months. You haven’t changed your mind? You do want to move out of the city?”

“Yes, Gail, if you want it so much. Have you decided on an architect?”

“I’ve done more than that. I have the drawing of the house to show you.”

“Oh, I’d like to see it.”

“It’s in my study. Come on. I want you to see it.”

She smiled and closed her fingers over his wrist, a brief pressure, like a caress of encouragement, then she followed him. He threw the door of his study open and let her enter first. The light was on and the drawing stood propped on his desk, facing the door.

She stopped, her hands behind her, palms flattened against the doorjamb. She was too far away to see the signature, but she knew the work and the only man who could have designed that house.

Her shoulders moved, describing a circle, twisting slowly, as if she were tied to a pole, had abandoned hope of escape, and only her body made a last, instinctive gesture of protest.

She thought, were she lying in bed in Roark’s arms in the sight of Gail Wynand, the violation would be less terrible; this drawing, more personal than Roark’s body, created in answer to a matching force that came from Gail Wynand, was a violation of her, of Roark, of Wynand -and yet, she knew suddenly that it was the inevitable.

“No,” she whispered, “things like that are never a coincidence.”

“What?”

But she held up her hand, softly pushing back all conversation, and she walked to the drawing, her steps soundless on the carpet. She saw the sharp signature in the corner—“Howard Roark.” It was less terrifying than the shape of the house; it was a thin point of support, almost a greeting.

“Dominique?”

She turned her face to him. He saw her answer. He said:

“I knew you’d like it. Forgive the inadequacy. We’re stuck for words tonight.”

She walked to the davenport and sat down; she let her back press against the cushions; it helped to sit straight. She kept her eyes on Wynand. He stood before her, leaning on the mantelpiece, half turned away, looking at the drawing. She could not escape that drawing; Wynand’s face was like a mirror of it.

“You’ve seen him, Gail?”

“Whom?”

“The architect.”

“Of course I’ve seen him. Not an hour ago.”

“When did you first meet him?”

“Last month.”

“You knew him all this time? ... Every evening ... when you came home ... at the dinner table ...”

“You mean, why didn’t I tell you? I wanted to have the sketch to show you. I saw the house like this, but I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t think anyone would ever understand what I wanted and design it. He did.”

“Who?”

“Howard Roark.”

She had wanted to hear the name pronounced by Gail Wynand.

“How did you happen to choose him, Gail?”

“I looked all over the country. Every building I liked had been done by him.”

She nodded slowly.

“Dominique, I take it for granted you don’t care about it any more, but I know that I picked the one architect you spent all your time denouncing when you were on the
Banner.”

“You read that?”

“I read it. You had an odd way of doing it. It was obvious that you admired his work and hated him personally. But you defended him at the Stoddard trial.”

“Yes.”

“You even worked for him once. That statue, Dominique, it was made for his temple.”

“Yes.”

“It’s strange. You lost your job on the
Banner
for defending him. I didn’t know it when I chose him. I didn’t know about that trial. I had forgotten his name. Dominique, in a way, it’s he who gave you to me. That statue—from his temple. And now he’s going to give me this house. Dominique, why did you hate him?”

“I didn’t hate him.... It was so long ago ...”

“I suppose none of that matters now, does it?” He pointed to the drawing.

“I haven’t seen him for years.”

“You’re going to see him in about an hour. He’s coming here for dinner.”

She moved her hand, tracing a spiral on the arm of the davenport, to convince herself that she could.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve asked him for dinner?”

He smiled; he remembered his resentment against the presence of guests in their house. He said: “This is different. I want him here. I don’t think you remember him well—or you wouldn’t be astonished.”

She got up.

“All right, Gail. I’ll give the orders. Then I’ll get dressed.”

They faced each other across the drawing room of Gail Wynand’s penthouse. She thought how simple it was. He had always been here. He had been the motive power of every step she had taken in these rooms. He had brought her here and now he had come to claim this place. She was looking at him. She was seeing him as she had seen him on the morning when she awakened in his bed for the last time. She knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living intactness of that memory. She thought this had been inevitable from the first, from the instant when she had looked down at him on the ledge of a quarry—it had to come like this, in Gail Wynand’s house—and now she felt the peace of finality, knowing that her share of decision had ended; she had been the one who acted, but he would act from now on.

She stood straight, her head level; the planes of her face had a military cleanliness of precision and a feminine fragility; her hands hung still, composed by her sides, parallel with the long straight lines of her black dress.

“How do you do, Mr. Roark.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Wynand.”

“May I thank you for the house you have designed for us? It is the most beautiful of your buildings.”

“It had to be, by the nature of the assignment, Mrs. Wynand.”

She turned her head slowly.

“How did you present the assignment to Mr. Roark, Gail?”

“Just as I spoke of it to you.”

She thought of what Roark had heard from Wynand, and had accepted. She moved to sit down; the two men followed her example. Roark said:

“If you like the house, the first achievement was Mr. Wynand’s conception of it.”

She asked: “Are you sharing the credit with a client?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“I believe this contradicts what I remember of your professional convictions.”

“But supports my personal ones.”

“I’m not sure I ever understood that.”

“I believe in conflict, Mrs. Wynand.”

“Was there a conflict involved in designing this house?”

“The desire not to be influenced by my client.”

“In what way?”

“I have liked working for some people and did not like working for others. But neither mattered. This time, I knew that the house would be what it became only because it was being done for Mr. Wynand. I had to overcome this. Or rather, I had to work with it and against it. It was the best way of working. The house had to surpass the architect, the client and the future tenant. It did.”

“But the house—it’s you, Howard,” said Wynand. “It’s still you.”

It was the first sign of emotion on her face, a quiet shock, when she heard the “Howard.” Wynand did not notice it. Roark did. He glanced at her—his first glance of personal contact. She could read no comment in it—only a conscious affirmation of the thought that had shocked her.

“Thank you for understanding that, Gail,” he answered.

She was not certain whether she had heard him stressing the name.

“It’s strange,” said Wynand. “I am the most offensively possessive man on earth. I do something to things. Let me pick up an ash tray from a dime-store counter, pay for it and put it in my pocket—and it becomes a special kind of ash tray, unlike any on earth, because it’s
mine.
It’s an extra quality in the thing, like a sort of halo. I feel that about everything I own. From my overcoat—to the oldest linotype in the composing room—to the copies of the
Banner
on newsstands—to this penthouse—to my wife. And I’ve never wanted to own anything as much as I want this house you’re going to build for me, Howard. I will probably be jealous of Dominique living in it—I can be quite insane about things like that. And yet—I don’t feel that I’ll own it, because no matter what I do or pay, it’s still yours. It will always be yours.”

“It has to be mine,” said Roark. “But in another sense, Gail, you own that house and everything else I’ve built. You own every structure you’ve stopped before and heard yourself answering.”

“In what sense?”

“In the sense of that personal answer. What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word—‘Yes.’ The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. And that ‘Yes’ is more than an answer to one thing, it’s a kind of ‘Amen’ to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created it, to yourself for being able to see it. But the ability to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ is the essence of all ownership. It’s your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function—the act of valuing. ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ ‘I wish’ or ‘I do not wish.’ You can’t say ‘Yes’ without saying ‘I.’ There’s no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours.”

“In this sense, you share things with others?”

“No. It’s not sharing. When I listen to a symphony I love, I don’t get from it what the composer got. His ‘Yes’ was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience. I’m alone when I design a house, Gail, and you can never know the way in which I own it. But if you said your own ‘Amen’ to it—it’s also yours. And I’m glad it’s yours.”

Wynand said, smiling:

“I like to think that. That I own Monadnock and the Enright House and the Cord Building ...”

“And the Stoddard Temple,” said Dominique.

She had listened to them. She felt numb. Wynand had never spoken like this to any guest in their house; Roark had never spoken like this to any client. She knew that the numbness would break into anger, denial, indignation later; now it was only a cutting sound in her voice, a sound to destroy what she had heard.

She thought that she succeeded. Wynand answered, the word dropping heavily:

“Yes.”

“Forget the Stoddard Temple, Gail,” said Roark. There was such a simple, careless gaiety in his voice that no solemn dispensation could have been more effective.

“Yes, Howard,” said Wynand, smiling.

She saw Roark’s eyes turned to her.

“I have not thanked you, Mrs. Wynand, for accepting me as your architect. I know that Mr. Wynand chose me and you could have refused my services. I wanted to tell you that I’m glad you didn’t.”

She thought, I believe it because none of this can be believed; I’ll accept anything tonight; I’m looking at him.

She said, courteously indifferent: “Wouldn’t it be a reflection on my judgment to suppose that I would wish to reject a house you had designed, Mr. Roark?” She thought that nothing she said aloud could matter tonight.

Wynand asked:

“Howard, that Yes’—once granted, can it be withdrawn?”

She wanted to laugh in incredulous anger. It was Wynand’s voice that had asked this; it should have been hers. He must look at me when he answers, she thought; he must look at me.

“Never,” Roark answered, looking at Wynand.

“There’s so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions,” said Wynand. “I’ve always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I still like them.”

The butler entered, carrying a tray of cocktails. Holding her glass, she watched Roark take his off the tray. She thought: At this moment the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine; we have this much in common.... Wynand stood, holding a glass, looking at Roark with a strange kind of incredulous wonder, not like a host, like an owner who cannot quite believe his ownership of his prize possession.

... She thought: I’m not insane, I’m only hysterical, but it’s quite all right, I’m saying something, I don’t know what it is, but it must be all right, they are both listening and answering, Gail is smiling, I must be saying the proper things....

Dinner was announced and she rose obediently; she led the way to the dining room, like a graceful animal given poise by conditioned reflexes. She sat at the head of the table, between the two men facing each other at her sides. She watched the silverware in Roark’s fingers, the pieces of polished metal with the initials “D. W.” She thought: I have done this so many times—I am the gracious Mrs. Gail Wynand—they were Senators, judges, presidents of insurance companies, sitting at dinner in that place at my right—and this is what I was being trained for, this is why Gail has been rising through tortured years to the position of entertaining Senators and judges at dinner—for the purpose of reaching an evening when the guest facing him would be Howard Roark.