The Fountainhead (92 page)

There were a sheriff, a deputy and two reporters from local papers.

“Good morning,” said Dominique. “Come in.”

“Mrs.... Wynand?” said the sheriff.

“That’s right. Mrs. Gail Wynand. Come in. Sit down.”

In the ludicrous folds of the pyjamas, with dark cloth bulging over a belt wound tightly, with sleeves hanging over her finger tips, she had all the poised elegance she displayed in her best hostess gown. She was the only one who seemed to find nothing unusual in the situation.

The sheriff held a notebook as if he did not know what to do with it. She helped him to find the right questions and answered them precisely, like a good newspaper woman.

“It was a star-sapphire ring set in platinum. I took it off and left it here, on this table, next to my purse, before going to bed.... It was about ten o’clock last night.... When I got up this morning, it was gone.... Yes, this window was open.... No, we didn’t hear anything. ... No, it was not insured, I have not had the time, Mr. Roark gave it to me recently.... No, there are no servants here and no other guests.... Yes, please look through the house.... Living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.... Yes, of course, you may look too, gentlemen. The press, I believe? Do you wish to ask me any questions?”

There were no questions to ask. The story was complete. The reporters had never seen a story of this nature offered in this manner.

She tried not to look at Roark after her first glance at his face. But he kept his promise. He did not try to stop her or protect her. When questioned, he answered, enough to support her statements.

Then the men departed. They seemed glad to leave. Even the sheriff knew that he would not have to conduct a search for that ring.

Dominique said:

“I’m sorry. I know it was terrible for you. But it was the only way to get it into the papers.”

“You should have told me which one of your star sapphires I gave you.”

“I’ve never had any. I don’t like star sapphires.”

“That was a more thorough job of dynamiting than Cortlandt.”

“Yes. Now Gail is blasted over to the side where he belongs. So he thinks you’re an ‘unprincipled, antisocial type of man’? Now let him see the
Banner
smearing me also. Why should he be spared that? Sorry, Howard, I don’t have your sense of mercy. I’ve read that editorial. Don’t comment on this. Don’t say anything about self-sacrifice or I’ll break and ... and I’m not quite as strong as that sheriff is probably thinking. I didn’t do it for you. I’ve made it worse for you—I’ve added scandal to everything else they’ll throw at you. But, Howard, now we stand together—against all of them. You’ll be a convict and I’ll be an adulteress. Howard, do you remember that I was afraid to share you with lunch wagons and strangers’ windows? Now I’m not afraid to have this past night smeared all over their newspapers. My darling, do you see why I’m happy and why I’m free?”

He said:

“I’ll never remind you afterward that you’re crying, Dominique.”

The story, including the pyjamas, the dressing gown, the breakfast table and the single bed, was in all the afternoon papers of New York that day.

Alvah Scarret walked into Wynand’s office and threw a newspaper down on his desk. Scarret had never discovered how much he loved Wynand, until now, and he was so hurt that he could express it only in furious abuse. He gulped:

“God damn you, you blasted fool! It serves you right! It serves you right and I’m glad, damn your witless soul! Now what are we going to do?”

Wynand read the story and sat looking at the paper. Scarret stood before the desk. Nothing happened. It was just an office, a man sat at a desk holding a newspaper. He saw Wynand’s hands, one at each side of the sheet, and the hands were still. No, he thought, normally a man would not be able to hold his hands like that, lifted and unsupported, without a tremor.

Wynand raised his head. Scarret could discover nothing in his eyes, except a kind of mild astonishment, as if Wynand were wondering what Scarret was doing here. Then, in terror, Scarret whispered:

“Gail, what are we going to do?”

“We’ll run it,” said Wynand. “It’s news.”

“But ... how?”

“In any way you wish.”

Scarret’s voice leaped ahead, because he knew it was now or never, he would not have the courage to attempt this again; and because he was caught here, he was afraid to back toward the door.

“Gail, you must divorce her.” He found himself still standing there, and he went on, not looking at Wynand, screaming in order to get it said: “Gail, you’ve got no choice now! You’ve got to keep what’s left of your reputation! You’ve got to divorce her and it’s you who must file the suit!”

“All right.”

“Will you? At once? Will you let Paul file the papers at once?”

“All right.”

Scarret hurried out of the room. He rushed to his own office, slammed the door, seized the telephone and called Wynand’s lawyer. He explained and went on repeating: “Drop everything and file it now, Paul, now, today, hurry, Paul, before he changes his mind!”

Wynand drove to his country house. Dominique was there, waiting for him.

She stood up when he entered her room. She stepped forward, so that there would be no furniture between them; she wished him to see her whole body. He stood across the empty space and looked at her as if he were observing them both at once, an impartial spectator who saw Dominique and a man facing her, but no Gail Wynand.

She waited, but he said nothing.

“Well, I’ve given you a story that will build circulation, Gail.”

He had heard, but he looked as if nothing of the present were relevant. He looked like a bank teller balancing a stranger’s account that had been overdrawn and had to be closed. He said:

“I would like only to know this, if you’ll tell me: that was the first time since our marriage?”

“Yes.”

“But it was not the first time?”

“No. He was the first man who had me.”

“I think I should have understood. You married Peter Keating. Right after the Stoddard trial.”

“Do you wish to know everything? I want to tell you. I met him when he was working in a granite quarry. Why not? You’ll put him in a chain gang now or a jute mill. He was working in a quarry. He didn’t ask my consent. He raped me. That’s how it began. Want to use it? Want to run it in the
Banner?”

“He loved you.”

“Yes.”

“Yet he built this house for us.”

“Yes.”

“I only wanted to know.”

He turned to leave.

“God damn you!” she cried. “If you can take it like this, you had no right to become what you became!”

“That’s why I’m taking it.”

He walked out of the room. He closed the door softly.

Guy Francon telephoned Dominique that evening. Since his retirement he had lived alone on his country estate near the quarry town. She had refused to answer calls today, but she took the receiver when the maid told her that it was Mr. Francon. Instead of the fury she expected, she heard a gentle voice saying:

“Hello, Dominique.”

“Hello, Father.”

“You’re going to leave Wynand now?”

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t move to the city. It’s not necessary. Don’t overdo it. Come and stay here with me. Until ... the Cortlandt trial.”

The things he had not said and the quality of his voice, firm, simple and with a note that sounded close to happiness, made her answer, after a moment:

“All right, Father.” It was a girl’s voice, a daughter’s voice, with a tired, trusting, wistful gaiety. “I’ll get there about midnight. Have a glass of milk for me and some sandwiches.”

“Try not to speed as you always do. The roads aren’t too good.”

When she arrived, Guy Francon met her at the door. They both smiled, and she knew that there would be no questions, no reproaches. He led her to the small morning room where he had set the food on a table by a window open to a dark lawn. There was a smell of grass, candles on the table and a bunch of jasmine in a silver bowl.

She sat, her fingers closed about a cold glass, and he sat across the table, munching a sandwich peacefully.

“Want to talk, Father?”

“No. I want you to drink your milk and go to bed.”

“All right.”

He picked up an olive and sat studying it thoughtfully, twisting it on a colored toothpick. Then he glanced up at her.

“Look, Dominique. I can’t attempt to understand it all. But I know this much—that it’s the right thing for you. This time, it’s the right man.”

“Yes, Father.”

“That’s why I’m glad.”

She nodded.

“Tell Mr. Roark that he can come here any time he wants.”

She smiled. “Tell whom, Father?”

“Tell ... Howard.”

Her arm lay on the table; her head dropped down on her arm. He looked at the gold hair in the candlelight. She said, because it was easier to control a voice: “Don’t let me fall asleep here. I’m tired.”

But he answered:

“He’ll be acquitted, Dominique.”

All the newspapers of New York were brought to Wynand’s office each day, as he had ordered. He read every word of what was written and whispered in town. Everybody knew that the story had been a self-frame-up; the wife of a multi-millionaire would not report the loss of a five-thousand-dollar ring in the circumstances; but this did not prevent anyone from accepting the story as given and commenting accordingly. The most offensive comments were spread on the pages of the
Banner.

Alvah Scarret had found a crusade to which he devoted himself with the truest fervor he had ever experienced. He felt that it was his atonement for any disloyalty he might have committed toward Wynand in the past. He saw a way to redeem Wynand’s name. He set out to sell Wynand to the public as the victim of a great passion for a depraved woman; it was Dominique who had forced her husband to champion an immoral cause, against his better judgment; she had almost wrecked her husband’s paper, his standing, his reputation, the achievement of his whole life—for the sake of her lover. Scarret begged readers to forgive Wynand—a tragic, self-sacrificing love was his justification. It was an inverse ratio in Scarret’s calculations: every filthy adjective thrown at Dominique created sympathy for Wynand in the reader’s mind; this fed Scarret’s smear talent. It worked. The public responded, the
Banner’s
old feminine readers in particular. It helped in the slow, painful work of the paper’s reconstruction.

Letters began to arrive, generous in their condolences, unrestrained in the indecency of their comment on Dominique Francon. “Like the old days, Gail,” said Scarret happily, “just like the old days!” He piled all the letters on Wynand’s desk.

Wynand sat alone in his office with the letters. Scarret could not suspect that this was the worst of the suffering Gail Wynand was to know. He made himself read every letter. Dominique, whom he had tried to save from the
Banner
...

When they met in the building, Scarret looked at him expectantly, with an entreating, tentative half-smile, an eager pupil waiting for the teacher’s recognition of a lesson well learned and well done. Wynand said nothing. Scarret ventured once:

“It was clever, wasn’t it, Gail?”

“Yes.”

“Have any idea on where we can milk it some more?”

“It’s your job, Alvah.”

“She’s really the cause of everything, Gail. Long before all this. When you married her. I was afraid then. That’s what started it. Remember when you didn’t allow us to cover your wedding? That was a sign. She’s ruined the
Banner.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t rebuild it now right on her own body. Just as it was. Our old
Banner.”

“Yes.”

“Got any suggestions, Gail? What else would you like me to do?”

“Anything you wish, Alvah.”

XVIII

A
TREE BRANCH HUNG IN THE OPEN WINDOW. THE LEAVES MOVED against the sky, implying sun and summer and an inexhaustible earth to be used. Dominique thought of the world as background. Wynand thought of two hands bending a tree branch to explain the meaning of life. The leaves drooped, touching the spires of New York’s skyline far across the river. The skyscrapers stood like shafts of sunlight, washed white by distance and summer. A crowd filled the county courtroom, witnessing the trial of Howard Roark.

Roark sat at the defense table. He listened calmly.

Dominique sat in the third row of spectators. Looking at her, people felt as if they had seen a smile. She did not smile. She looked at the leaves in the window.

Gail Wynand sat at the back of the courtroom. He had come in, alone, when the room was full. He had not noticed the stares and the flashbulbs exploding around him. He had stood in the aisle for a moment, surveying the place as if there were no reason why he should not survey it. He wore a gray summer suit and a panama hat with a drooping brim turned up at one side. His glance went over Dominique as over the rest of the courtroom. When he sat down, he looked at Roark. From the moment of Wynand’s entrance Roark’s eyes kept returning to him. Whenever Roark looked at him, Wynand turned away.

“The motive which the State proposes to prove,” the prosecutor was making his opening address to the jury, “is beyond the realm of normal human emotions. To the majority of us it will appear monstrous and inconceivable.”

Dominique sat with Mallory, Heller, Lansing, Enright, Mike—and Guy Francon, to the shocked disapproval of his friends. Across the aisle, celebrities formed a comet: from the small point of Ellsworth Toohey, well in front, a tail of popular names stretched through the crowd: Lois Cook, Gordon L. Prescott, Gus Webb, Lancelot Clokey, Ike, Jules Fougler, Sally Brent, Homer Slottern, Mitchell Layton.

“Even as the dynamite which swept a building away, his motive blasted all sense of humanity out of this man’s soul. We are dealing, gentlemen of the jury, with the most vicious explosive on earth—the egotist!”

On the chairs, on the window sills, in the aisles, pressed against the walls, the human mass was blended like a monolith, except for the pale ovals of faces. The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, honest or dishonest, but an attempt. It had left on all a single mark in common: on lips smiling with malice, on lips loose with renunciation, on lips tight with uncertain dignity—on all—the mark of suffering.

“... In this day and age, when the world is torn by gigantic problems, seeking an answer to questions that hold the survival of man in the balance—this man attached to such a vague intangible, such an inessential as his artistic opinions sufficient importance to let it become his sole passion and the motivation of a crime against society.”

The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment—a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger’s face seen in a bus—a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer were necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer.

“... a ruthless, arrogant egotist who wished to have his own way at any price ...”

Twelve men sat in the jury box. They listened, their faces attentive and emotionless. People had whispered that it was a tough-looking jury. There were two executives of industrial concerns, two engineers, a mathematician, a truck driver, a bricklayer, an electrician, a gardener and three factory workers. The impaneling of the jury had taken some time. Roark had challenged many talesmen. He had picked these twelve. The prosecutor had agreed, telling himself that this was what happened when an amateur undertook to handle his own defense; a lawyer would have chosen the gentlest types, those most likely to respond to an appeal for mercy; Roark had chosen the hardest faces.

“... Had it been some plutocrat’s mansion, but a
housing project,
gentlemen of the jury, a housing project!”

The judge sat erect on the tall bench. He had gray hair and the stern face of an army officer.

“... a man trained to serve society, a builder who became a destroyer ...”

The voice went on, practiced and confident. The faces filling the room listened with the response they granted to a good weekday dinner: satisfying and to be forgotten within an hour. They agreed with every sentence; they had heard it before, they had always heard it, this was what the world lived by; it was self-evident—like a puddle before one’s feet.

The prosecutor introduced his witnesses. The policeman who had arrested Roark took the stand to tell how he had found the defendant standing by the electric plunger. The night watchman related how he had been sent away from the scene; his testimony was brief; the prosecutor preferred not to stress the subject of Dominique. The contractor’s superintendent testified about the dynamite missing from the stores on the site. Officials of Cortlandt, building inspectors, estimators took the stand to describe the building and the extent of the damage. This concluded the first day of the trial.

Peter Keating was the first witness called on the following day.

He sat on the stand, slumped forward. He looked at the prosecutor obediently. His eyes moved, once in a while. He looked at the crowd, at the jury, at Roark. It made no difference.

“Mr. Keating, will you state under oath whether you designed the project ascribed to you, known as Cortlandt Homes?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Who designed it?”

“Howard Roark.”

“At whose request?”

“At my request.”

“Why did you call on him?”

“Because I was not capable of doing it myself.”

There was no sound of honesty in the voice, because there was no sound of effort to pronounce a truth of such nature; no tone of truth or falsehood; only indifference.

The prosecutor handed him a sheet of paper. “Is this the agreement you signed?”

Keating held the paper in his hand. “Yes.”

“Is that Howard Roark’s signature?”

“Yes.”

“Will you please read the terms of this agreement to the jury?”

Keating read it aloud. His voice came evenly, well drilled. Nobody in the courtroom realized that this testimony had been intended as a sensation. It was not a famous architect publicly confessing incompetence; it was a man reciting a memorized lesson. People felt that were he interrupted, he would not be able to pick up the next sentence, but would have to start all over again from the beginning.

He answered a great many questions. The prosecutor introduced in evidence Roark’s original drawings of Cortlandt, which Keating had kept; the copies which Keating had made of them; and photographs of Cortlandt as it had been built.

“Why did you object so strenuously to the excellent structural changes suggested by Mr. Prescott and Mr. Webb?”

“I was afraid of Howard Roark.”

“What did your knowledge of his character lead you to expect?”

“Anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid. I used to be afraid.”

The questions went on. The story was unusual, but the audience felt bored. It did not sound like the recital of a participant. The other witnesses had seemed to have a more personal connection with the case.

When Keating left the stand, the audience had the odd impression that no change had occurred in the act of a man’s exit; as if no person had walked out.

“The prosecution rests,” said the District Attorney.

The judge looked at Roark.

“Proceed,” he said. His voice was gentle.

Roark got up. “Your Honor, I shall call no witnesses. This will be my testimony and my summation.”

“Take the oath.”

Roark took the oath. He stood by the steps of the witness stand. The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.

The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one’s own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name—fear—need—dependence—hatred?

Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd—and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone’s approval?—does it matter?—am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free—free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room.

It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak.

“Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

“That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures—because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer—because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

“No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building—that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.

“His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man’s spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

“The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.

“And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons—a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind.

“But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.