The Fountainhead Part 7

After work he walked the long distance to his home, a tenement near the East River. He had chosen that tenement because he had been able to get, for two-fifty a week, its entire top floor, a huge room that had been used for storage: it had no ceiling and the roof leaked between its naked beams. But it had a long row of windows, along two of its walls, some panes filled with gla.s.s, others with cardboard, and the windows opened high over the river on one side and the city on the other.

A week ago Cameron had come into the drafting room and had thrown down on Roark's table a violent sketch of a country residence. "See if you can make a house out of this!" he had snapped and gone without further explanation. He had not approached Roark's table during the days that followed. Roark had finished the drawings last night and left them on Cameron's desk. This morning, Cameron had come in, thrown some sketches of steel joints to Roark, ordered him to appear in his office later and had not entered the drafting room again for the rest of the day.

The others were gone. Roark pulled an old piece of oil cloth over his table and went to Cameron's office. His drawings of the country house were spread on the desk. The light of the lamp fell on Cameron's cheek, on his beard, the white threads glistening, on his fist, on a corner of the drawing, its black lines bright and hard as if embossed on the paper.

"You're fired," said Cameron.

Roark stood, halfway across the long room, his weight on one leg, his arms hanging by his sides, one shoulder raised.

"Am I?" he asked quietly, without moving.

"Come here," said Cameron. "Sit down."

Roark obeyed.

"You're too good," said Cameron. "You're too good for what you want to do with yourself. It's no use, Roark. Better now than later."

"What do you mean?"

"It's no use wasting what you've got on an ideal that you'll never reach, that they'll never let you reach. It's no use, taking that marvelous thing you have and making a torture rack for yourself out of it. Sell it, Roark. Sell it now. It won't be the same, but you've got enough in you. You've got what they'll pay you for, and pay plenty, if you use it their way. Accept them, Roark. Compromise. Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't. You don't know. I do. Save yourself from that. Leave me. Go to someone else."

"Did you do that?"

"You presumptuous b.a.s.t.a.r.d! How good do you think I said you were? Did I tell you to compare yourself to ..." He stopped because he saw that Roark was smiling.

He looked at Roark, and suddenly smiled in answer, and it was the most painful thing that Roark had ever seen.

"No," said Cameron softly, "that won't work, huh? No, it won't ... Well, you're right. You're as good as you think you are. But I want to speak to you. I don't know exactly how to go about it. I've lost the habit of speaking to men like you. Lost it? Maybe I've never had it. Maybe that's what frightens me now. Will you try to understand?"

"I understand. I think you're wasting your time."

"Don't be rude. Because I can't be rude to you now. I want you to listen. Will you listen and not answer me?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't intend it as rudeness."

"You see, of all men, I'm the last one to whom you should have come. I'll be committing a crime if I keep you here. Somebody should have warned you against me. I won't help you at all. I won't discourage you. I won't teach you any common sense. Instead, I'll push you on. I'll drive you the way you're going now. I'll beat you into remaining what you are, and I'll make you worse.... Don't you see? In another month I won't be able to let you go. I'm not sure I can now. So don't argue with me and go. Get out while you can."

"But can I? Don't you think it's too late for both of us? It was too late for me twelve years ago."

"Try it, Roark. Try to be reasonable for once. There's plenty of big fellows who'll take you, expulsion or no expulsion, if I say so. They may laugh at me in their luncheon speeches, but they steal from me when it suits them, and they know that I know a good draftsman when I see one. I'll give you a letter to Guy Francon. He worked for me once, long ago. I think I fired him, but that wouldn't matter. Go to him. You won't like it at first, but you'll get used to it. And you'll thank me for it many years from now."

"Why are you saying all this to me? That's not what you want to say. That's not what you did."

"That's why I'm saying it! Because that's not what I did! ... Look, Roark, there's one thing about you, the thing I'm afraid of. It's not just the kind of work you do; I wouldn't care, if you were an exhibitionist who's being different as a stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It's a smart racket, to oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did that, I wouldn't worry. But it's not that. You love your work. G.o.d help you, you love it! And that's the curse. That's the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren't you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that's not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That's the only kind they fear. I don't know why. You're opening yourself up, Roark, for each and every one of them."

"But I never notice the people in the streets."

"Do you notice what they've done to me?"

"I notice only that you weren't afraid of them. Why do you ask me to be?"

"That's just why I'm asking it!" He leaned forward, his fists closing on the desk before him. "Roark, do you want me to say it? You're cruel, aren't you? All right, I'll say it: do you want to end up like this? Do you want to be what I am?"

Roark got up and stood against the edge of light on the desk.

"If," said Roark, "at the end of my life, I'll be what you are today, here, in this office, I shall consider it an honor that I could not have deserved."

"Sit down!" roared Cameron. "I don't like demonstrations!"

Roark looked down at himself, at the desk, astonished to find himself standing. He said: "I'm sorry. I didn't know I got up."

"Well, sit down. Listen. I understand. And it's very nice of you. But you don't know. I thought a few days here would be enough to take the hero wors.h.i.+p out of you. I see it wasn't. Here you are, saying to yourself how grand old Cameron is, a n.o.ble fighter, a martyr to a lost cause, and you'd just love to die on the barricades with me and to eat in dime lunchwagons with me for the rest of your life. I know, it looks pure and beautiful to you now, at your great old age of twenty-two. But do you know what it means? Thirty years of a lost cause, that sounds beautiful, doesn't it? But do you know how many days there are in thirty years? Do you know what happens in those days? Roark! Do you know what happens?"

"You don't want to speak of that."

"No! I don't want to speak of that! But I'm going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he'll be only asking for a dime, but that won't be what you'll hear; you'll hear that you're nothing, that he's laughing at you, that it's written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you'll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear the people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make-they're not a language in that room any longer; but if you'd want to speak, you won't anyway, because you'll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?"

Roark sat still, the shadows sharp on his face, a black wedge on a sunken cheek, a long triangle of black cutting across his chin, his eyes on Cameron.

"Not enough?" asked Cameron. "All right. Then, one day, you'll see on a piece of paper before you a building that will make you want to kneel; you won't believe that you've done it, but you will have done it; then you'll think that the earth is beautiful and the air smells of spring and you love your fellow men, because there is no evil in the world. And you'll set out from your house with this drawing, to have it erected, because you won't have any doubt that it will be erected by the first man to see it. But you won't get very far from your house. Because you'll be stopped at the door by the man who's come to turn off the gas. You hadn't had much food, because you saved money to finish your drawing, but still you had to cook something and you hadn't paid for it.... All right, that's nothing, you can laugh at that. But finally you'll get into a man's office with your drawing, and you'll curse yourself for taking so much s.p.a.ce of his air with your body, and you'll try to squeeze yourself out of his sight, so that he won't see you, but only hear your voice begging him, pleading, your voice licking his knees; you'll loathe yourself for it, but you won't care, if only he'd let you put up that building, you won't care, you'll want to rip your insides open to show him, because if he saw what's there he'd have to let you put it up. But he'll say that he's very sorry, only the commission has just been given to Guy Francon. And you'll go home, and do you know what you'll do there? You'll cry. You'll cry like a woman, like a drunkard, like an animal. That's your future, Howard Roark. Now, do you want it?"

"Yes," said Roark.

Cameron's eyes dropped; then his head moved down a little, then a little farther; his head went on dropping slowly, in long, single jerks, then stopped; he sat still, his shoulders hunched, his arms huddled together in his lap.

"Howard," whispered Cameron, "I've never told it to anyone...."

"Thank you...." said Roark.

After a long time, Cameron raised his head.

"Go home now," said Cameron, his voice flat. "You've worked too much lately. And you have a hard day ahead." He pointed to the drawings of the country house. "This is all very well, and I wanted to see what you'd do, but it's not good enough to build. You'll have to do it over. I'll show you what I want tomorrow."

V

A YEAR WITH THE FIRM OF FRANCON & HEYER HAD GIVEN KEATING the whispered t.i.tle of crown prince without portfolio. Still only a draftsman, he was Francon's reigning favorite. Francon took him out to lunch-an unprecedented honor for an employee. Francon called him to be present at interviews with clients. The clients seemed to like seeing so decorative a young man in an architect's office. YEAR WITH THE FIRM OF FRANCON & HEYER HAD GIVEN KEATING the whispered t.i.tle of crown prince without portfolio. Still only a draftsman, he was Francon's reigning favorite. Francon took him out to lunch-an unprecedented honor for an employee. Francon called him to be present at interviews with clients. The clients seemed to like seeing so decorative a young man in an architect's office.

Lucius N. Heyer had the annoying habit of asking Francon suddenly: "When did you get the new man?" and pointing to an employee who had been there for three years. But Heyer surprised everybody by remembering Keating's name and by greeting him, whenever they met, with a smile of positive recognition. Keating had had a long conversation with him, one dreary November afternoon, on the subject of old porcelain. It was Heyer's hobby; he owned a famous collection, pa.s.sionately gathered. Keating displayed an earnest knowledge of the subject, though he had never heard of old porcelain till the night before, which he had spent at the public library. Heyer was delighted; n.o.body in the office cared about his hobby, few ever noticed his presence. Heyer remarked to his partner: "You're certainly good at picking your men, Guy. There's one boy I wish we wouldn't lose, what's his name?-Keating." "Yes, indeed," Francon answered, smiling, "yes, indeed."

In the drafting room, Keating concentrated on Tim Davis. Work and drawings were only unavoidable details on the surface of his days; Tim Davis was the substance and the shape of the first step in his career.

Davis let him do most of his own work; only night work, at first, then parts of his daily a.s.signments as well; secretly, at first, then openly. Davis had not wanted it to be known. Keating made it known, with an air of naive confidence which implied that he was only a tool, no more than Tim's pencil or T-square, that his help enhanced Tim's importance rather than diminished it and, therefore, he did not wish to conceal it.

At first, Davis relayed instructions to Keating; then the chief draftsman took the arrangement for granted and began coming to Keating with orders intended for Davis. Keating was always there, smiling, saying: "I'll do it, don't bother Tim with those little things, I'll take care of it." Davis relaxed and let himself be carried along; he smoked a great deal, he lolled about, his legs twisted loosely over the rungs of a stool, his eyes closed, dreaming of Elaine; he uttered once in a while: "Is the stuff ready, Pete?"

Davis had married Elaine that spring. He was frequently late for work. He had whispered to Keating: "You're in with the old man, Pete, slip a good word for me, once in a while, will you?-so they'll overlook a few things. G.o.d, do I hate to have to be working right now!" Keating would say to Francon: "I'm sorry, Mr. Francon, that the Murray job subbas.e.m.e.nt plans were so late, but Tim Davis had a quarrel with his wife last night, and you know how newlyweds are, you don't want to be too hard on them," or: "It's Tim Davis again, Mr. Francon, do forgive him, he can't help it, he hasn't got his mind on his work at all!"

When Francon glanced at the list of his employees' salaries, he noticed that his most expensive draftsman was the man least needed in the office.

When Tim Davis lost his job, no one in the drafting room was surprised but Tim Davis. He could not understand it. He set his lips defiantly in bitterness against a world he would hate forever. He felt he had no friend on earth save Peter Keating.

Keating consoled him, cursed Francon, cursed the injustice of humanity, spent six dollars in a speak-easy, entertaining the secretary of an obscure architect of his acquaintance and arranged a new job for Tim Davis.

Whenever he thought of Davis afterward, Keating felt a warm pleasure; he had influenced the course of a human being, had thrown him off one path and pushed him into another; a human being-it was not Tim Davis to him any longer, it was a living frame and a mind, a conscious mind-why had he always feared that mysterious ent.i.ty of consciousness within others?-and he had twisted that frame and that mind to his own will. By a unanimous decision of Francon, Heyer and the chief draftsman, Tim's table, position and salary were given to Peter Keating. But this was only part of his satisfaction; there was another sense of it, warmer and less real-and more dangerous. He said brightly and often: "Tim Davis? Oh yes, I I got him his present job." got him his present job."

He wrote to his mother about it. She said to her friends: "Petey is such an unselfish boy."

He wrote to her dutifully, each week; his letters were short and respectful; hers, long, detailed and full of advice which he seldom finished reading.

He saw Catherine Halsey occasionally. He had not gone to her on that following evening, as he had promised. He had awakened in the morning and remembered the things he had said to her, and hated her for his having said them. But he had gone to her again, a week later; she had not reproached him and they had not mentioned her uncle. He saw her after that every month or two; he was happy when he saw her, but he never spoke to her of his career.

He tried to speak of it to Howard Roark; the attempt failed. He called on Roark twice; he climbed, indignantly, the five flights of stairs to Roark's room. He greeted Roark eagerly; he waited for rea.s.surance, not knowing what sort of rea.s.surance he needed nor why it could come only from Roark. He spoke of his job and he questioned Roark, with sincere concern, about Cameron's office. Roark listened to him, answered all his questions willingly, but Keating felt that he was knocking against a sheet of iron in Roark's unmoving eyes, and that they were not speaking about the same things at all. Before the visit was over, Keating was taking notice of Roark's frayed cuffs, of his shoes, of the patch on the knee of his trousers, and he felt satisfied. He went away chuckling, but he went away miserably uneasy, and wondered why, and swore never to see Roark again, and wondered why he knew that he would have to see him.

"Well," said Keating, "I couldn't quite work it to ask her to lunch, but she's coming to Mawson's exhibition with me day after tomorrow. Now what?"

He sat on the floor, his head resting against the edge of a couch, his bare feet stretched out, a pair of Guy Francon's chartreuse pyjamas floating loosely about his limbs.

Through the open door of the bathroom he saw Francon standing at the washstand, his stomach pressed to its s.h.i.+ning edge, brus.h.i.+ng his teeth.

"That's splendid," said Francon, munching through a thick foam of toothpaste. "That'll do just as well. Don't you see?"

"No."

"Lord, Pete, I explained it to you yesterday before we started. Mrs. Dunlop's husband's planning to build a home for her."

"Oh, yeah," said Keating weakly, brus.h.i.+ng the matted black curls off his face. "Oh, yeah... I remember now ... Jesus, Guy, I got a head on me! ..."

He remembered vaguely the party to which Francon had taken him the night before, he remembered the caviar in a hollow iceberg, the black net evening gown and the pretty face of Mrs. Dunlop, but he could not remember how he had come to end up in Francon's apartment. He shrugged; he had attended many parties with Francon in the past year and had often been brought here like this.

"It's not a very large house," Francon was saying, holding the toothbrush in his mouth; it made a lump on his cheek and its green handle stuck out. "Fifty thousand or so, I understand. They're small fry anyway. But Mrs. Dunlop's brother-in-law is Quimby-you know, the big real estate fellow. Won't hurt to get a little wedge into that family, won't hurt at all. You're to see where that commission ends up, Pete. Can I count on you, Pete?"

"Sure," said Keating, his head drooping. "You can always count on me, Guy...."

He sat still, watching his bare toes and thinking of Stengel, Francon's designer. He did not want to think, but his mind leaped to Stengel automatically, as it always did, because Stengel represented his next step.

Stengel was impregnable to friends.h.i.+p. For two years, Keating's attempts had broken against the ice of Stengel's gla.s.ses. What Stengel thought of him was whispered in the drafting rooms, but few dared to repeat it save in quotes; Stengel said it aloud, even though he knew that the corrections his sketches bore, when they returned to him from Francon's office, were made by Keating's hand. But Stengel had a vulnerable point: he had been planning for some time to leave Francon and open an office of his own. He had selected a partner, a young architect of no talent but of great inherited wealth. Stengel was waiting only for a chance. Keating had thought about this a great deal. He could think of nothing else. He thought of it again, sitting there on the floor of Francon's bedroom.

Two days later, when he escorted Mrs. Dunlop through the gallery exhibiting the paintings of one Frederic Mawson, his course of action was set. He piloted her through the spa.r.s.e crowd, his fingers closing over her elbow once in a while, letting her catch his eyes directed at her young face more often than at the paintings.

"Yes," he said as she stared obediently at a landscape featuring an auto dump and tried to compose her face into the look of admiration expected of her, "magnificent work. Note the colors, Mrs. Dunlop.... They say this fellow Mawson had a terribly hard time. It's an old story-trying to get recognition. Old and heartbreaking. It's the same in all the arts. My own profession included."

"Oh, indeed?" said Mrs. Dunlop, who quite seemed to prefer architecture at the moment.

"Now this," said Keating, stopping before the depiction of an old hag picking at her bare toes on a street curb, "this is art as a social doc.u.ment. It takes a person of courage to appreciate this."

"It's simply wonderful," said Mrs. Dunlop.

"Ah, yes, courage. It's a rare quality.... They say Mawson was starving in a garret when Mrs. Stuyvesant discovered him. It's glorious to be able to help young talent on its way."

"It must be wonderful," agreed Mrs. Dunlop.

"If I were rich," said Keating wistfully, "I'd make it my hobby: to arrange an exhibition for a new artist, to finance the concert of a new pianist, to have a house built by a new architect...."

"Do you know, Mr. Keating?-my husband and I are planning to build a little home on Long Island."

"Oh, are you? How very charming of you, Mrs. Dunlop, to confess such a thing to me. You're so young, if you'll forgive my saying this. Don't you know that you run the danger of my becoming a nuisance and trying to interest you in my firm? Or are you safe and have chosen an architect already?"

"No, I'm not safe at all," said Mrs. Dunlop prettily, "and I wouldn't mind the danger really. I've thought a great deal about the firm of Francon & Heyer in these last few days. And I've heard they are so terribly good."

"Why, thank you, Mrs. Dunlop."

"Mr. Francon is a great architect."

"Oh, yes."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Nothing really."

"No, what's the matter?"

"Do you really want me to tell you?"

"Why, certainly."

"Well, you see, Guy Francon-it's only a name. He would have nothing to do with your house. It's one of those professional secrets that I shouldn't divulge, but I don't know what it is about you that makes me want to be honest. All the best buildings in our office are designed by Mr. Stengel."

"Who?"

"Claude Stengel. You've never heard the name, but you will, when someone has the courage to discover him. You see, he does all the work, he's the real genius behind the scenes, but Francon puts his signature on it and gets all the credit. That's the way it's done everywhere."

"But why does Mr. Stengel stand for it?"

"What can he do? No one will give him a start. You know how most people are, they stick to the beaten path, they pay three times the price for the same thing, just to have the trademark. Courage, Mrs. Dunlop, they lack courage. Stengel is a great artist, but there are so few discerning people to see it. He's ready to go on his own, if only he could find some outstanding person like Mrs. Stuyvesant to give him a chance."

"Really?" said Mrs. Dunlop. "How very interesting! Tell me more about it."

He told her a great deal more about it. By the time they had finished the inspection of the works of Frederic Mawson, Mrs. Dunlop was shaking Keating's hand and saying: "It's so kind, so very unusually kind of you. Are you sure that it won't embarra.s.s you with your office if you arrange for me to meet Mr. Stengel? I didn't quite dare to suggest it and it was so kind of you not to be angry at me. It's so unselfish of you and more than anyone else would have done in your position."