The Fountainhead (22 page)

“You’re slipping, Peter. There was a time when you wouldn’t have admitted that there was anything you couldn’t get.”

“But I don’t want her, Mother.”

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you? Well, there you are. Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? Look at yourself! There you’ve got Francon, the best architect in town, just where you want him! He’s practically begging you to take a partnership—at your age, over how many other, older men’s heads? He’s not permitting, he’s
asking
you to marry his daughter! And you’ll walk in tomorrow and you’ll present to him the little nobody you’ve gone and married! Just stop thinking of yourself for a moment and think of others a bit! How do you suppose he’ll like that? How will he like it when you show him the little guttersnipe that you’ve preferred to his daughter?”

“He won’t like it,” Keating whispered.

“You bet your life he won’t! You bet your life he’ll kick you right out on the street! He’ll find plenty who’ll jump at the chance to take your place. How about that Bennett fellow?”

“Oh, no!” Keating gasped so furiously that she knew she had struck right. “Not Bennett!”

“Yes,” she said triumphantly. “Bennett! That’s what it’ll be—Francon & Bennett, while you’ll be pounding the pavements looking for a job! But you’ll have a wife! Oh, yes, you’ll have a wife!”

“Mother, please ...” he whispered, so desperately that she could allow herself to go on without restraint.

“This is the kind of wife you’ll have. A clumsy little girl who won’t know where to put her hands or feet. A sheepish little thing who’ll run and hide from any important person that you’ll want to bring to the house. So you think you’re so good? Don’t kid yourself, Peter Keating! No great man ever got there alone. Don’t you shrug it off, how much the right woman’s helped the best of them. Your Francon didn’t marry a chambermaid, you bet your life he didn’t! Just try to see things through other people’s eyes for a bit. What will they think of your wife? What will they think of you? You don’t make your living building chicken coops for soda jerkers, don’t you forget that! You’ve got to play the game as the big men of this world see it. You’ve got to live up to them. What will they think of a man who’s married to a common little piece of baggage like that? Will they admire you? Will they trust you? Will they respect you?”

“Shut up!” he cried.

But she went on. She spoke for a long time, while he sat, cracking his knuckles savagely, moaning once in a while; “But I love her.... I can’t, Mother! I can’t.... I love her....”

She released him when the streets outside were gray with the light of morning. She let him stumble off to his room, to the accompaniment of the last, gentle, weary sounds of her voice:

“At least, Peter, you can do that much. Just a few months. Ask her to wait just a few months. Heyer might die any moment and then, once you’re a partner, you can marry her and you might get away with it. She won’t mind waiting just that little bit longer, if she loves you.... Think it over, Peter.... And while you’re thinking it over, think just a bit that if you do this now, you’ll be breaking your mother’s heart. It’s not important, but take just a tiny notice of that. Think of yourself for an hour, but give one minute to the thought of others....”

He did not try to sleep. He did not undress, but sat on his bed for hours, and the thing clearest in his mind was the wish to find himself transported a year ahead when everything would have been settled, he did not care how.

He had decided nothing when he rang the door bell of Catherine’s apartment at ten o’clock. He felt dimly that she would take his hand, that she would lead him, that she would insist—and thus the decision would be made.

Catherine opened the door and smiled, happily and confidently, as if nothing had happened. She led him to her room, where broad shafts of sunlight flooded the columns of books and papers stacked neatly on her desk. The room was clean, orderly, the pile of the rug still striped in bands left by a carpet sweeper. Catherine wore a crisp organdy blouse, with sleeves standing stiffly, cheerfully about her shoulders; little fluffy needles glittered through her hair in the sunlight. He felt a brief wrench of disappointment that no menace met him in her house; a wrench of relief also, and of disappointment.

“I’m ready, Peter,” she said. “Get me my coat.”

“Did you tell your uncle?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I told him last night. He was still working when I got back.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He just laughed and asked me what I wanted for a wedding present. But he laughed so much!”

“Where is he? Didn’t he want to meet me at least?”

“He had to go to his newspaper office. He said he’d have plenty of time to see more than enough of you. But he said it so nicely!”

“Listen, Katie, I ... there’s one thing I wanted to tell you.” He hesitated, not looking at her. His voice was flat. “You see, it’s like this: Lucius Heyer, Francon’s partner, is very ill and they don’t expect him to live. Francon’s been hinting quite openly that I’m to take Heyer’s place. But Francon has the crazy idea that he wants me to marry his daughter. Now don’t misunderstand me, you know there’s not a chance, but I can’t tell him so. And I thought ... I thought that if we waited... for just a few weeks... I’d be set with the firm and then Francon could do nothing to me when I come and tell him that I’m married.... But, of course it’s up to you.” He looked at her and his voice was eager. “If you want to do it now, we’ll go at once.”

“But, Peter,” she said calmly, serene and astonished. “But of course. We’ll wait.”

He smiled in approval and relief. But he closed his eyes.

“Of course, we’ll wait,” she said firmly. “I didn’t know this and it’s very important. There’s really no reason to hurry at all.”

“You’re not afraid that Francon’s daughter might get me?”

She laughed. “Oh, Peter! I know you too well.”

“But if you’d rather ...”

“No, it’s much better. You see, to tell you the truth, I thought this morning that it would be better if we waited, but I didn’t want to say anything if you had made up your mind. Since you’d rather wait, I’d much rather too, because, you see, we got word this morning that Uncle’s invited to repeat this same course of lectures at a terribly important university on the West Coast this summer. I felt horrible about leaving him flat, with the work unfinished. And then I thought also that perhaps we were being foolish, we’re both so young. And Uncle Ellsworth laughed so much. You see, it’s really wiser to wait a little.”

“Yes. Well, that’s fine. But, Katie, if you feel as you did last night...”

“But I don’t! I’m so ashamed of myself. I can’t imagine what ever happened to me last night. I try to remember it and I can’t understand. You know how it is, you feel so silly afterward. Everything’s so clear and simple the next day. Did I say a lot of awful nonsense last night?”

“Well, forget it. You’re a sensible little girl. We’re both sensible. And we’ll wait just a while, it won’t be long.”

“Yes, Peter.”

He said suddenly, fiercely:

“Insist
on it now, Katie.”

And then he laughed stupidly, as if he had not been quite serious.

She smiled gaily in answer. “You see?” she said, spreading her hands out.

“Well ...” he muttered. “Well, all right, Katie. We’ll wait. It’s better, of course. I ... I’ll run along then. I’ll be late at the office.” He felt he had to escape her room for the moment, for that day. “I’ll give you a ring. Let’s have dinner together tomorrow.”

“Yes, Peter. That will be nice.”

He went away, relieved and desolate, cursing himself for the dull, persistent feeling that told him he had missed a chance which would never return; that something was closing in on them both and they had surrendered. He cursed, because he could not say what it was that they should have fought. He hurried on to his office where he was being late for an appointment with Mrs. Moorehead.

Catherine stood in the middle of the room, after he had left, and wondered why she suddenly felt empty and cold; why she hadn’t known until this moment that she had hoped he would force her to follow him. Then she shrugged, and smiled reproachfully at herself, and went back to the work on her desk.

XIII

O
N A DAY IN OCTOBER, WHEN THE HELLER HOUSE WAS NEARING completion, a lanky young man in overalls stepped out of a small group that stood watching the house from the road and approached Roark.

“You the fellow who built the Booby Hatch?” he asked, quite diffidently.

“If you mean this house, yes,” Roark answered.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. It’s only that that’s what they call the place around here. It’s not what I’d call it. You see, I’ve got a building job... well, not exactly, but I’m going to build a filling station of my own about ten miles from here, down on the Post Road. I’d like to talk to you.”

Later, on a bench in front of the garage where he worked, Jimmy Gowan explained in detail. He added: “And how I happened to think of you, Mr. Roark, is that I like it, that funny house of yours. Can’t say why, but I like it. It makes sense to me. And then again I figured everybody’s gaping at it and talking about it, well, that’s no use to a house, but that’d be plenty smart for a business, let them giggle, but let them talk about it. So I thought I’d get you to build it, and then they’ll all say I’m crazy, but do you care? I don’t.”

Jimmy Gowan had worked like a mule for fifteen years, saving money for a business of his own. People voiced indignant objections to his choice of architect; Jimmy uttered no word of explanation or self-defense; he said politely: “Maybe so, folks, maybe so,” and proceeded to have Roark build his station.

The station opened on a day in late December. It stood on the edge of the Boston Post Road, two small structures of glass and concrete forming a semicircle among the trees: the cylinder of the office and the long, low oval of the diner, with the gasoline pumps as the colonnade of a forecourt between them. It was a study in circles; there were no angles and no straight lines; it looked like shapes caught in a flow, held still at the moment of being poured, at the precise moment when they formed a harmony that seemed too perfect to be intentional. It looked like a cluster of bubbles hanging low over the ground, not quite touching it, to be swept aside in an instant on a wind of speed; it looked gay, with the hard, bracing gaity of efficiency, like a powerful airplane engine.

Roark stayed at the station on the day of its opening. He drank coffee in a clean, white mug, at the counter of the diner, and he watched the cars stopping at the door. He left late at night. He looked back once, driving down the long, empty road. The lights of the station winked, flowing away from him. There it stood, at the crossing of two roads, and cars would be streaming past it day and night, cars coming from cities in which there was no room for buildings such as this, going to cities in which there would be no buildings such as this. He turned his face to the road before him, and he kept his eyes off the mirror which still held, glittering softly, dots of light that moved away far behind him....

He drove back to months of idleness. He sat in his office each morning, because he knew that he had to sit there, looking at a door that never opened, his fingers forgotten on a telephone that never rang. The ash trays he emptied each day, before leaving, contained nothing but the stubs of his own cigarettes.

“What are you doing about it, Howard?” Austen Heller asked him at dinner one evening.

“Nothing.”

“But you must.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“You must learn how to handle people.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how. I was born without some one particular sense.”

“It’s something one acquires.”

“I have no organ to acquire it with. I don’t know whether it’s something I lack, or something extra I have that stops me. Besides, I don’t like people who have to be handled.”

“But you can’t sit still and do nothing now. You’ve got to go after commissions.”

“What can I tell people in order to get commissions? I can only show my work. If they don’t hear that, they won’t hear anything I say. I’m nothing to them, but my work—my work is all we have in common. And I have no desire to tell them anything else.”

“Then what are you going to do? You’re not worried?”

“No. I expected it. I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“My kind of people.”

“What kind is that?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do know, but I can’t explain it. I’ve often wished I could. There must be some one principle to cover it, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Honesty?”

“Yes ... no, only partly. Guy Francon is an honest man, but it isn’t that. Courage? Ralston Holcombe has courage, in his own manner.... I don’t know. I’m not that vague on other things. But I can tell my kind of people by their faces. By something in their faces. There will be thousands passing by your house and by the gas station. If out of those thousands, one stops and sees it—that’s all I need.”

“Then you do need other people, after all, don’t you, Howard?”

“Of course. What are you laughing at?”

“I’ve always thought that you were the most anti-social animal I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

“I need people to give me work. I’m not building mausoleums. Do you suppose I should need them in some other way? In a closer, more personal way?”

“You don’t need anyone in a very personal way.”

“No.”

“You’re not even boasting about it.”

“Should I?”

“You can’t. You’re too arrogant to boast.”

“Is that what I am?”

“Don’t you know what you are?”

“No. Not as far as you’re seeing me, or anyone else.”

Heller sat silently, his wrist describing circles with a cigarette. Then Heller laughed, and said:

“That was typical.”

“What?”

“That you didn’t ask me to tell you what you are as I see you. Anybody else would have.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t indifference. You’re one of the few friends I want to keep. I just didn’t think of asking.”

“I know you didn’t. That’s the point. You’re a self-centered monster, Howard. The more monstrous because you’re utterly innocent about it.”

“That’s true.”

“You should show a little concern when you admit that.”

“Why?”

“You know, there’s a thing that stumps me. You’re the coldest man I know. And I can’t understand why—knowing that you’re actually a fiend in your quiet sort of way—why I always feel, when I see you, that you’re the most life-giving person I’ve ever met.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Just that.”

The weeks went by, and Roark walked to his office each day, sat at his desk for eight hours, and read a great deal. At five o’clock, he walked home. He had moved to a better room, near the office; he spent little; he had enough money for a long time to come.

On a morning in February the telephone rang in his office. A brisk, emphatic feminine voice asked for an appointment with Mr. Roark, the architect. That afternoon, a brisk, small, dark-skinned woman entered the office; she wore a mink coat and exotic earrings that tinkled when she moved her head. She moved her head a great deal, in sharp little birdlike jerks. She was Mrs. Wayne Wilmot of Long Island and she wished to build a country house. She had selected Mr. Roark to build it, she explained, because he had designed the home of Austen Heller. She adored Austen Heller; he was, she stated, an oracle to all those pretending just the tiniest bit to the title of progressive intellectual, she thought—“don’t you?”—and she followed Heller like a zealot, “yes, literally, like a zealot.” Mr. Roark was very young, wasn’t he?—but she didn’t mind that, she was very liberal and glad to help youth. She wanted a large house, she had two children, she believed in expressing their individuality—“don’t you?”—and each had to have a separate nursery, she had to have a library—“I read to distraction”—a music room, a conservatory—“we grow lilies-of-the-valley, my friends tell me it’s my flower”—a den for her husband, who trusted her implicitly and let her plan the house—“because I’m so good at it, if I weren’t a woman I’m sure I’d be an architect”—servants’ rooms and all that, and a three-car garage. After an hour and a half of details and explanations, she said:

“And of course, as to the style of the house, it will be English Tudor. I adore English Tudor.”

He looked at her. He asked slowly:

“Have you seen Austen Heller’s house?”

“No, though I did want to see it, but how could I?—I’ve never met Mr. Heller, I’m only his fan, just that, a plain, ordinary fan, what is he like in person?—you must tell me, I’m dying to hear it—no, I haven’t seen his house, it’s somewhere up in Maine, isn’t it?”

Roark took photographs out of the desk drawer and handed them to her.

“This,” he said, “is the Heller house.”

She looked at the photographs, her glance like water skimming off their glossy surfaces, and threw them down on the desk.

“Very interesting,” she said. “Most unusual. Quite stunning. But, of course, that’s not what I want. That kind of a house wouldn’t express my personality. My friends tell me I have the Elizabethan personality.”

Quietly, patiently, he tried to explain to her why she should not build a Tudor house. She interrupted him in the middle of a sentence.

“Look here, Mr. Roark, you’re not trying to teach me something, are you? I’m quite sure that I have good taste, and I know a great deal about architecture, I’ve taken a special course at the club. My friends tell me that I know more than many architects. I’ve quite made up my mind that I shall have an English Tudor house. I do not care to argue about it.”

“You’ll have to go to some other architect, Mrs. Wilmot.”

She stared at him incredulously.

“You mean, you’re refusing the commission?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t want my commission?”

“No.”

“But why?”

“I don’t do this sort of thing.”

“But I thought architects ...”

“Yes. Architects will build you anything you ask for. Any other architect in town will.”

“But I gave you first chance.”

“Will you do me a favor, Mrs. Wilmot? Will you tell me why you came to me if all you wanted was a Tudor house?”

“Well, I certainly thought you’d appreciate the opportunity. And then, I thought I could tell my friends that I had Austen Heller’s architect.”

He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.

“I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Wayne Wilmot, “but I’m not accustomed to dealing with a person utterly incapable of reason. I’m quite sure I shall find plenty of bigger men who’ll be glad to work for me. My husband was opposed to my idea of having you, in the first place, and I’m sorry to see that he was right. Good day, Mr. Roark.”

She walked out with dignity, but she slammed the door. He slipped the photographs back into the drawer of his desk.

Mr. Robert L. Mundy, who came to Roark’s office in March, had been sent by Austen Heller. Mr. Mundy’s voice and hair were gray as steel, but his eyes were blue, gentle and wistful. He wanted to build a house in Connecticut, and he spoke of it tremulously, like a young bridegroom and like a man groping for his last, secret goal.

“It’s not just a house, Mr. Roark,” he said with timid diffidence, as if he were speaking to a man older and more prominent than himself, “it’s like ... like a symbol to me. It’s what I’ve been waiting and working for all these years. It’s so many years now.... I must tell you this, so you’ll understand. I have a great deal of money now, more than I care to think about. I didn’t always have it. Maybe it came too late. I don’t know. Young people think that you forget what happens on the way when you get there. But you don’t. Something stays. I’ll always remember how I was a boy—in a little place down in Georgia, that was—and how I ran errands for the harness maker, and the kids laughed when carriages drove by and splashed mud all over my pants. That’s how long ago I decided that some day I’d have a house of my own, the kind of a house that carriages stop before. After that, no matter how hard it got to be at times, I’d always think of that house, and it helped. Afterward, there were years when I was afraid of it—I could have built it, but I was afraid. Well, now the time has come. Do you understand, Mr. Roark? Austen said you’d be just the man who’d understand.”

“Yes,” said Roark eagerly, “I do.”

“There was a place,” said Mr. Mundy, “down there, near my home town. The mansion of the whole county. The Randolph place. An old plantation house, as they don’t build them any more. I used to deliver things there sometimes, at the back door. That’s the house I want, Mr. Roark. Just like it. But not back there in Georgia. I don’t want to go back. Right here, near the city. I’ve bought the land. You must help me to have it landscaped just like the Randolph place. We’ll plant trees and shrubs, the kind they have in Georgia, the flowers and everything. We’ll find a way to make them grow. I don’t care how much it costs. Of course, we’ll have electric lights and garages now, not carriages. But I want the electric lights made like candles and I want the garages to look like the stables. Everything, just as it was. I have photographs of the Randolph place. And I’ve bought some of their old furniture.”

When Roark began to speak Mr. Mundy listened, in polite astonishment. He did not seem to resent the words. They did not penetrate.

“Don’t you see?” Roark was saying. “It’s a monument you want to build, but not to yourself. Not to your life or your own achievement. To other people. To their supremacy over you. You’re not challenging that supremacy. You’re immortalizing it. You haven’t thrown it off—you’re putting it up forever. Will you be happy if you seal yourself for the rest of your life in that borrowed shape? Or if you strike free, for once, and build a new house, your own? You don’t want the Randolph place. You want what it stood for. But what it stood for is what you’ve fought all your life.”