The Fountainhead Part 65

He stood quietly, hearing it, accepting.

"I think you should take a ma.n.u.script of that play and place it on a stand in the center of your gallery downstairs. I think you should rechristen your yacht and call her No Skin Off Your Nose. No Skin Off Your Nose. I think you should take me--" I think you should take me--"

"Keep still."

"-and put me in the cast and make me play the role of Mary every evening, Mary who adopts the homeless muskrat and ..."

"Dominique, keep still."

"Then talk. I want to hear you talk."

"I never justified myself to anyone."

"Well, boast then. That would do just as well."

"If you want to hear it, it made me sick, that play. As you knew it would. That was worse than the Bronx housewife."

"Much worse."

"But I can think of something worse still. Writing a great play and offering it for tonight's audience to laugh at. Letting oneself be martyred by the kind of people we saw frolicking tonight."

He saw that something had reached her; he could not tell whether it was an answer of surprise or of anger. He did not know how well she recognized these words. He went on: "It did make me sick. But so have a great many things which the Banner Banner has done. It was worse tonight, because there was a quality about it that went beyond the usual. A special kind of malice. But if this is popular with fools, it's the has done. It was worse tonight, because there was a quality about it that went beyond the usual. A special kind of malice. But if this is popular with fools, it's the Banner's Banner's legitimate province. The legitimate province. The Banner Banner was created for the benefit of fools. What else do you want me to admit?" was created for the benefit of fools. What else do you want me to admit?"

"What you felt tonight."

"A minor kind of h.e.l.l. Because you sat there with me. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? To make me feel the contrast. Still, you miscalculated. I looked at the stage and I thought, this is what people are like, such are their spirits, but I-I've found you, I have you-and the contrast was worth the pain. I did suffer tonight, as you wanted, but it was a pain that went only down to a certain point and then ..."

"Shut up!" she screamed. "Shut up, G.o.d d.a.m.n you!"

They stood for a moment, both astonished. He moved first; he knew she needed his help; he grasped her shoulders. She tore herself away. She walked across the room, to the window; she stood looking at the city, at the great buildings spread in black and fire below her.

After a while she said, her voice toneless: "I'm sorry, Gail."

He did not answer.

"I had no right to say those things to you." She did not turn, her arms raised, holding the frame of the window. "We're even, Gail. I'm paid back, if that will make it better for you. I broke first."

"I don't want you to be paid back." He spoke quietly. "Dominique, what was it?"

"Nothing."

"What did I make you think of? It wasn't what I said. It was something else. What did the words mean to you?"

"Nothing."

"A pain that went only down to a certain point. It was that sentence. Why?" She was looking at the city. In the distance she could see the shaft of the Cord Building. "Dominique, I've seen what you can take. It must be something very terrible if it could do that to you. I must know. There's nothing impossible. I can help you against it, whatever it is." She did not answer. "At the theater, it was not just that fool play. There was something else for you tonight. I saw your face. And then it was the same thing again here. What is it?"

"Gail," she said softly, "will you forgive me?"

He let a moment pa.s.s; he had not been prepared for that.

"What have I to forgive you?"

"Everything. And tonight."

"That was your privilege. The condition on which you married me. To make me pay for the Banner." Banner."

"I don't want to make you pay for it."

"Why don't you want it any more?"

"It can't be paid for."

In the silence she listened to his steps pacing the room behind her.

"Dominique. What was it?"

"The pain that stops at a certain point? Nothing. Only that you had no right to say it. The men who have, pay for that right, a price you can't afford. But it doesn't matter now. Say it if you wish. I have no right to say it either."

"That wasn't all."

"I think we have a great deal in common, you and I. We've committed the same treason somewhere. No, that's a bad word.... Yes, I think it's the right word. It's the only one that has the feeling of what I mean."

"Dominique, you can't feel that." His voice sounded strange. She turned to him.

"Why?"

"Because that's what I felt tonight. Treason."

"Toward whom?"

"I don't know. If I were religious, I'd say 'G.o.d.' But I'm not religious."

"That's what I meant, Gail."

"Why should you feel it? The Banner Banner is not your child." is not your child."

"There are other forms of the same guilt."

Then he walked to her across the long room, he held her in his arms, he said: "You don't know the meaning of the kind of words you use. We have a great deal in common, but not that. I'd rather you went on spitting at me than trying to share my offenses."

She let her hand rest against the length of his cheek, her finger tips at his temple.

He asked: "Will you tell me-now-what it was?"

"Nothing. I undertook more than I could carry. You're tired, Gail. Why don't you go on upstairs? Leave me here for a little while. I just want to look at the city. Then I'll join you and I'll be all right."

IX

DOMINIQUE STOOD AT THE RAIL OF THE YACHT, THE DECK WARM under her flat sandals, the sun on her bare legs, the wind blowing her thin white dress. She looked at Wynand stretched in a deck chair before her.

She thought of the change she noticed in him again aboard s.h.i.+p. She had watched him through the months of their summer cruise. She had seen him once running down a companionway; the picture remained in her mind; a tall white figure thrown forward in a streak of speed and confidence; his hand grasped a railing, risking deliberately the danger of a sudden break, gaining a new propulsion. He was not the corrupt publisher of a popular empire. He was an aristocrat aboard a yacht. He looked, she thought, like what one believes aristocracy to be when one is young: a brilliant kind of gaiety without guilt.

She looked at him in the deck chair. She thought that relaxation was attractive only in those for whom it was an unnatural state; then even limpness acquired purpose. She wondered about him; Gail Wynand, famous for his extraordinary capacity; but this was not merely the force of an ambitious adventurer who had created a chain of newspapers; this-the quality she saw in him here-the thing stretched out under the sun, like an answer-this was greater, a first cause, a faculty out of universal dynamics.

"Gail," she said suddenly, involuntarily.

He opened his eyes to look at her.

"I wish I had taken a recording of that," he said lazily. "You'd be startled to hear what it sounded like. Quite wasted here. I'd like to play it back in a bedroom."

"I'll repeat it there if you wish."

"Thank you, dearest. And I promise not to exaggerate or presume too much. You're not in love with me. You've never loved anyone."

"Why do you think that?"

"If you loved a man, it wouldn't be just a matter of a circus wedding and an atrocious evening in the theater. You'd put him through total h.e.l.l."

"How do you know that, Gail?"

"Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I'm not the Gail Wynand you'd heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love you'd want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because that's the impossible, the inconceivable for you in your relations with people. That would be the one gift, the great exception you'd want to offer the man you loved. But it wouldn't be easy for you."

"If that's true, then you ..."

"Then I become gentle and humble-to your great astonishment-because I'm the worst scoundrel living."

"I don't believe that, Gail."

"No? I'm not the person before last any more?"

"Not any more."

"Well, dearest, as a matter of fact, I am."

"Why do you want to think that?"

"I don't want to. But I like to be honest. That has been my only private luxury. Don't change your mind about me. Go on seeing me as you saw me before we met."

"Gail, that's not what you want."

"It doesn't matter what I want. I don't want anything-except to own you. Without answer from you. It has to be without answer. If you begin to look at me too closely, you'll see things you won't like at all."

"What things?"

"You're so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on G.o.d's part that there's one person who matches inside and out."

"What things, Gail?"

"Do you know what you're actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art. That's the only field where it can be found-art. But you want it in the flesh. You're in love with it. Well, you see, I've never had any integrity."

"How sure are you of that, Gail?"

"Have you forgotten the Banner?" Banner?"

"To h.e.l.l with the Banner." Banner."

"All right, to h.e.l.l with the Banner. Banner. It's nice to hear you say that. But the It's nice to hear you say that. But the Banner's Banner's not the major symptom. That I've never practiced any sort of integrity is not so important. What's important is that I've never felt any need for it. I hate the conception of it. I hate the presumptuousness of the idea." not the major symptom. That I've never practiced any sort of integrity is not so important. What's important is that I've never felt any need for it. I hate the conception of it. I hate the presumptuousness of the idea."

"Dwight Carson ..." she said. He heard the sound of disgust in her voice.

He laughed. "Yes, Dwight Carson. The man I bought. The individualist who's become a mob-glorifier and, incidentally, a dipsomaniac. I did that. That was worse than the Banner, Banner, wasn't it? You don't like to be reminded of that?" wasn't it? You don't like to be reminded of that?"

"No."

"But surely you've heard enough screaming about it. All the giants of the spirit whom I've broken. I don't think anybody ever realized how much I enjoyed doing it. It's a kind of l.u.s.t. I'm perfectly indifferent to slugs like Ellsworth Toohey or my friend Alvah, and quite willing to leave them in peace. But just let me see a man of a slightly higher dimension-and I've got to make a sort of Toohey out of him. I've got to. It's like a s.e.x urge."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Incidentally, you misunderstand Ellsworth Toohey."

"Possibly. You don't expect me to waste mental effort to untangle that snail's sh.e.l.l?"

"And you contradict yourself."

"Where?"

"Why didn't you set out to destroy me?"

"The exception-making, Dominique. I love you. I had to love you. G.o.d help you if you were a man."

"Gail-why?"

"Why have I done all that?"

"Yes."

"Power, Dominique. The only thing I ever wanted. To know that there's not a man living whom I can't force to do-anything. Anything I choose. The man I couldn't break would destroy me. But I've spent years finding out how safe I am. They say I have no sense of honor, I've missed something in life. Well, I haven't missed very much, have I? The thing I've missed-it doesn't exist."