The Fountainhead (30 page)

He’s only a common worker, she thought, a hired man doing a convict’s labor. She thought of that, sitting before the glass shelf of her dressing table. She looked at the crystal objects spread before her; they were like sculptures in ice—they proclaimed her own cold, luxurious fragility; and she thought of his strained body, of his clothes drenched in dust and sweat, of his hands. She stressed the contrast, because it degraded her. She leaned back, closing her eyes. She thought of the many distinguished men whom she had refused. She thought of the quarry worker. She thought of being broken—not by a man she admired, but by a man she loathed. She let her head fall down on her arm; the thought left her weak with pleasure.

For two days she made herself believe that she would escape from this place; she found old travel folders in her trunk, studied them, chose the resort, the hotel and the particular room in that hotel, selected the train she would take, the boat and the number of the stateroom. She found a vicious amusement in doing that, because she knew she would not take this trip she wanted; she would go back to the quarry.

She went back to the quarry three days later. She stopped over the ledge where he worked and she stood watching him openly. When he raised his head, she did not turn away. Her glance told him that she knew the meaning of her action, but did not respect him enough to conceal it. His glance told her only that he had expected her to come. He bent over his drill and went on with his work. She waited. She wanted him to look up. She knew that he knew it. He would not look again.

She stood, watching his hands, waiting for the moments when he touched stone. She forgot the drill and the dynamite. She liked to think of the granite being broken by his hands.

She heard the superintendent calling her name, hurrying to her up the path. She turned to him when he approached.

“I like to watch the men working,” she explained.

“Yes, quite a picture, isn’t it?” the superintendent agreed. “There’s the train starting over there with another load.”

She was not watching the train. She saw the man below looking at her, she saw the insolent hint of amusement tell her that he knew she did not want him to look at her now. She turned her head away. The superintendent’s eyes traveled over the pit and stopped on the man below them.

“Hey, you down there!” he shouted. “Are you paid to work or to gape?”

The man bent silently over his drill. Dominique laughed aloud.

The superintendent said: “It’s a tough crew we got down here, Miss Francon.... Some of ’em even with jail records.”

“Has that man a jail record?” she asked, pointing down.

“Well, I couldn’t say. Wouldn’t know them all by sight.”

She hoped he had. She wondered whether they whipped convicts nowadays. She hoped they did. At the thought of it, she felt a sinking gasp such as she had felt in childhood, in dreams of falling down a long stairway; but she felt the sinking in her stomach.

She turned brusquely and left the quarry.

She came back many days later. She saw him, unexpectedly, on a flat stretch of stone before her, by the side of the path. She stopped short. She did not want to come too close. It was strange to see him before her, without the defense and excuse of distance.

He stood looking straight at her. Their understanding was too offensively intimate, because they had never said a word to each other. She destroyed it by speaking to him.

“Why do you always stare at me?” she asked sharply.

She thought with relief that words were the best means of estrangement. She had denied everything they both knew by naming it. For a moment, he stood silently, looking at her. She felt terror at the thought that he would not answer, that he would let his silence tell her too clearly why no answer was necessary. But he answered. He said:

“For the same reason you’ve been staring at me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“If you didn’t, you’d be much more astonished and much less angry, Miss Francon.”

“So you know my name?”

“You’ve been advertising it loudly enough.”

“You’d better not be insolent. I can have you fired at a moment’s notice, you know.”

He turned his head, looking for someone among the men below. He asked: “Shall I call the superintendent?”

She smiled contemptuously.

“No, of course not. It would be too simple. But since you know who I am, it would be better if you stopped looking at me when I come here. It might be misunderstood.”

“I don’t think so.”

She turned away. She had to control her voice. She looked over the stone ledges. She asked: “Do you find it very hard to work here?”

“Yes. Terribly.”

“Do you get tired?”

“Inhumanly.”

“How does that feel?”

“I can hardly walk when the day’s ended. I can’t move my arms at night. When I lie in bed, I can count every muscle in my body by the number of separate, different pains.”

She knew suddenly that he was not telling her about himself; he was speaking of her, he was saying the things she wanted to hear and telling her that he knew why she wanted to hear these particular sentences.

She felt anger, a satisfying anger because it was cold and certain. She felt also a desire to let her skin touch his; to let the length of her bare arm press against the length of his; just that; the desire went no further.

She was asking calmly:

“You don’t belong here, do you? You don’t talk like a worker. What were you before?”

“An electrician. A plumber. A plasterer. Many things.”

“Why are you working here?”

“For the money you’re paying me, Miss Francon.”

She shrugged. She turned and walked away from him up the path. She knew that he was looking after her. She did not glance back. She continued on her way through the quarry, and she left it as soon as she could, but she did not go back down the path where she would have to see him again.

II

D
OMINIQUE AWAKENED EACH MORNING TO THE PROSPECT OF A DAY made significant by the existence of a goal to be reached: the goal of making it a day on which she would not go to the quarry.

She had lost the freedom she loved. She knew that a continuous struggle against the compulsion of a single desire was compulsion also, but it was the form she preferred to accept. It was the only manner in which she could let him motivate her life. She found a dark satisfaction in pain—because that pain came from him.

She went to call on her distant neighbors, a wealthy, gracious family who had bored her in New York; she had visited no one all summer. They were astonished and delighted to see her. She sat among a group of distinguished people at the edge of a swimming pool. She watched the air of fastidious elegance around her. She watched the deference of these people’s manner when they spoke to her. She glanced at her own reflection in the pool: she looked more delicately austere than any among them.

And she thought, with a vicious thrill, of what these people would do if they read her mind in this moment; if they knew that she was thinking of a man in a quarry, thinking of his body with a sharp intimacy as one does not think of another’s body but only of one’s own. She smiled; the cold purity of her face prevented them from seeing the nature of that smile. She came back again to visit these people—for the sake of such thoughts in the presence of their respect for her.

One evening, a guest offered to drive her back to her house. He was an eminent young poet. He was pale and slender; he had a soft, sensitive mouth, and eyes hurt by the whole universe. She had not noticed the wistful attention with which he had watched her for a long time. As they drove through the twilight she saw him leaning hesitantly closer to her. She heard his voice whispering the pleading, incoherent things she had heard from many men. He stopped the car. She felt his lips pressed to her shoulder.

She jerked away from him. She sat still for an instant, because she would have to brush against him if she moved and she could not bear to touch him. Then she flung the door open, she leaped out, she slammed the door behind her as if the crash of sound could wipe him out of existence, and she ran blindly. She stopped running after a while, and she walked on, shivering, walked down the dark road until she saw the roof line of her own house.

She stopped, looking about her with her first coherent thought of astonishment. Such incidents had happened to her often in the past; only then she had been amused; she had felt no revulsion; she had felt nothing.

She walked slowly across the lawn, to the house. On the stairs to her room she stopped. She thought of the man in the quarry. She thought, in clear, formed words, that the man in the quarry wanted her. She had known it before; she had known it with his first glance at her. But she had never stated the knowledge to herself.

She laughed. She looked about her, at the silent splendor of her house. The house made the words preposterous. She knew what would never happen to her. And she knew the kind of suffering she could impose on him.

For days she walked with satisfaction through the rooms of her house. It was her defense. She heard the explosions of blasting from the quarry and smiled.

But she felt too certain and the house was too safe. She felt a desire to underscore the safety by challenging it.

She chose the marble slab in front of the fireplace in her bedroom. She wanted it broken. She knelt, hammer in hand, and tried to smash the marble. She pounded it, her thin arm sweeping high over her head, crashing down with ferocious helplessness. She felt the pain in the bones of her arms, in her shoulder sockets. She succeeded in making a long scratch across the marble.

She went to the quarry. She saw him from a distance and walked straight to him.

“Hello,” she said casually.

He stopped the drill. He leaned against a stone shelf. He answered:

“Hello.”

“I have been thinking of you,” she said softly, and stopped, then added, her voice flowing on in the same tone of compelling invitation, “because there’s a bit of a dirty job to be done at my house. Would you like to make some extra money?”

“Certainly, Miss Francon.”

“Will you come to my house tonight? The way to the servants’ entrance is off Ridgewood Road. There’s a marble piece at a fireplace that’s broken and has to be replaced. I want you to take it out and order a new one made for me.”

She expected anger and refusal. He asked:

“What time shall I come?”

“At seven o’clock. What are you paid here?”

“Sixty-two cents an hour.”

“I’m sure you’re worth that. I’m quite willing to pay you at the same rate. Do you know how to find my house?”

“No, Miss Francon.”

“Just ask anyone in the village to direct you.”

“Yes, Miss Francon.”

She walked away, disappointed. She felt that their secret understanding was lost; he had spoken as if it were a simple job which she could have offered to any other workman. Then she felt the sinking gasp inside, that feeling of shame and pleasure which he always gave her: she realized that their understanding had been more intimate and flagrant than ever—in his natural acceptance of an unnatural offer; he had shown her how much he knew—by his lack of astonishment.

She asked her old caretaker and his wife to remain in the house that evening. Their diffident presence completed the picture of a feudal mansion. She heard the bell of the servants’ entrance at seven o’clock. The old woman escorted him to the great front hall where Dominique stood on the landing of a broad stairway.

She watched him approaching, looking up at her. She held the pose long enough to let him suspect that it was a deliberate pose deliberately planned; she broke it at the exact moment before he could become certain of it. She said: “Good evening.” Her voice was austerely quiet.

He did not answer, but inclined his head and walked on up the stairs toward her. He wore his work clothes and he carried a bag of tools. His movements had a swift, relaxed kind of energy that did not belong here, in her house, on the polished steps, between the delicate, rigid banisters. She had expected him to seem incongruous in her house; but it was the house that seemed incongruous around him.

She moved one hand, indicating the door of her bedroom. He followed obediently. He did not seem to notice the room when he entered. He entered it as if it were a workshop. He walked straight to the fireplace.

“There it is,” she said, one finger pointing to the marble slab.

He said nothing. He knelt, took a thin metal wedge from his bag, held its point against the scratch on the slab, took a hammer and struck one blow. The marble split in a long, deep cut.

He glanced up at her. It was the look she dreaded, a look of laughter that could not be answered, because the laughter could not be seen, only felt. He said:

“Now it’s broken and has to be replaced.”

She asked calmly:

“Would you know what kind of marble this is and where to order another piece like it?”

“Yes, Miss Francon.”

“Go ahead, then. Take it out.”

“Yes, Miss Francon.”

She stood watching him. It was strange to feel a senseless necessity to watch the mechanical process of the work as if her eyes were helping it. Then she knew that she was afraid to look at the room around them. She made herself raise her head.

She saw the shelf of her dressing table, its glass edge like a narrow green satin ribbon in the semidarkness, and the crystal containers; she saw a pair of white bedroom slippers, a pale blue towel on the floor by a mirror, a pair of stockings thrown over the arm of a chair; she saw the white satin cover of her bed. His shirt had damp stains and gray patches of stone dust; the dust made streaks on the skin of his arms. She felt as if each object in the room had been touched by him, as if the air were a heavy pool of water into which they had been plunged together, and the water that touched him carried the touch to her, to every object in the room. She wanted him to look up. He worked, without raising his head.

She approached him and stood silently over him. She had never stood so close to him before. She looked down at the smooth skin on the back of his neck; she could distinguish single threads of his hair. She glanced down at the tip of her sandal. It was there, on the floor, an inch away from his body; she needed but one movement, a very slight movement of her foot, to touch him. She made a step back.

He moved his head, but not to look up, only to pick another tool from the bag, and bent over his work again.

She laughed aloud. He stopped and glanced at her.

“Yes?” he asked.

Her face was grave, her voice gentle when she answered:

“Oh, I’m sorry. You might have thought that I was laughing at you. But I wasn’t, of course.”

She added:

“I didn’t want to disturb you. I’m sure you’re anxious to finish and get out of here. I mean, of course, because you must be tired. But then, on the other hand, I’m paying you by the hour, so it’s quite all right if you stretch your time a little, if you want to make more out of it. There must be things you’d like to talk about.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Francon.”

“Well?”

“I think this is an atrocious fireplace.”

“Really? This house was designed by my father.”

“Yes, of course, Miss Francon.”

“There’s no point in your discussing the work of an architect.”

“None at all.”

“Surely we could choose some other subject.”

“Yes, Miss Francon.”

She moved away from him. She sat down on the bed, leaning back on straight arms, her legs crossed and pressed close together in a long, straight line. Her body, sagging limply from her shoulders, contradicted the inflexible precision of the legs; the cold austerity of her face contradicted the pose of her body.

He glanced at her occasionally, as he worked. He was speaking obediently. He was saying:

“I shall make certain to get a piece of marble of precisely the same quality, Miss Francon. It is very important to distinguish between the various kinds of marble. Generally speaking, there are three kinds. The white marbles, which are derived from the recrystallization of limestone, the onyx marbles which are chemical deposits of calcium carbonate, and the green marbles which consist mainly of hydrous magnesium silicate or serpentine. This last must not be considered as true marble. True marble is a metamorphic form of limestone, produced by heat and pressure. Pressure is a powerful factor. It leads to consequences which, once started, cannot be controlled.”

“What consequences?” she asked, leaning forward.

“The recrystallization of the particles of limestone and the infiltration of foreign elements from the surrounding soil. These constitute the colored streaks which are to be found in most marbles. Pink marble is caused by the presence of manganese oxides, gray marble is due to carbonaceous matter, yellow marble is attributed to a hydrous oxide of iron. This piece here is, of course, white marble. There are a great many varieties of white marble. You should be very careful, Miss Francon ...”

She sat leaning forward, gathered into a dim black huddle; the lamp light fell on one hand she had dropped limply on her knees, palm up, the fingers half-closed, a thin edge of fire outlining each finger, the dark cloth of her dress making the hand too naked and brilliant.

“... to make certain that I order a new piece of precisely the same quality. It would not be advisable, for instance, to substitute a piece of white Georgia marble which is not as fine-grained as the white marble of Vermont, which is not as fine-grained as the white marble of Alabama. This is Alabama marble. Very high grade. Very expensive.”

He saw her hand close and drop down, out of the light. He continued his work in silence.

When he had finished, he rose, asking:

“Where shall I put the stone?”

“Leave it there. I’ll have it removed.”

“I’ll order a new piece cut to measure and delivered to you C.O.D. Do you wish me to set it?”

“Yes, certainly. I’ll let you know when it comes. How much do I owe you?” She glanced at a clock on her bedside table. “Let me see, you’ve been here three quarters of an hour. That’s forty-eight cents.” She reached for her bag, she took out a dollar bill, she handed it to him. “Keep the change,” she said.

She hoped he would throw it back in her face. He slipped the bill into his pocket. He said:

“Thank you, Miss Francon.”

He saw the edge of her long black sleeve trembling over her closed fingers.

“Good night,” she said, her voice hollow in anger.

He bowed: “Good night, Miss Francon.”

He turned and walked down the stairs, out of the house.

She stopped thinking of him. She thought of the piece of marble he had ordered. She waited for it to come, with the feverish intensity of a sudden mania; she counted the days; she watched the rare trucks on the road beyond the lawn.

She told herself fiercely that she merely wanted the marble to come; just that; nothing else; no hidden reasons; no reasons at all. It was a last, hysterical aftermath; she was free of everything else. The stone would come and that would be the end.

When the stone came, she barely glanced at it. The delivery truck had not left the grounds, when she was at her desk, writing a note on a piece of exquisite stationery. She wrote:

“The marble is here. I want it set tonight.”

She sent her caretaker with the note to the quarry. She ordered it delivered to: “I don’t know his name. The redheaded workman who was here.”

The caretaker came back and brought her a scrap torn from a brown paper bag, bearing in pencil:

“You’ll have it set tonight.”

She waited, in the suffocating emptiness of impatience, at the window of her bedroom. The servants’ entrance bell rang at seven o’clock. There was a knock at her door. “Come in,” she snapped—to hide the strange sound of her own voice. The door opened and the caretaker’s wife entered, motioning for someone to follow. The person who followed was a short, squat, middle-aged Italian with bow legs, a gold hoop in one ear and a frayed hat held respectfully in both hands.