The Fountainhead Part 74

He left the car and walked to the top of the hill. He saw Roark among the men. He stood outside and watched the way Roark walked through the structure, the way he turned his head or raised his hand, pointing. He noticed Roark's manner of stopping: his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted; an instinctive pose of confidence, of energy held under effortless control, a moment that gave to his body the structural cleanliness of his own building. Structure, thought Wynand, is a solved problem of tension, of balance, of security in counterthrusts.

He thought: There's no emotional significance in the act of erecting a building; it's just a mechanical job, like laying sewers or making an automobile. And he wondered why he watched Roark, feeling what he felt in his art gallery. He belongs in an unfinished building, thought Wynand, more than in a completed one, more than at a drafting table, it's his right setting, it's becoming to him-as Dominique said a yacht was becoming to me.

Afterward Roark came out and they walked together along the crest of the hill, among the trees. They sat down on a fallen tree trunk, they saw the structure in the distance through the stems of the brushwood. The stems were dry and naked, but there was a quality of spring in the cheerful insolence of their upward thrust, the stirring of a self-a.s.sertive purpose.

Wynand asked: "Howard, have you ever been in love?"

Roark turned to look straight at him and answer quietly: "I still am."

"But when you walk through a building, what you feel is greater than that?"

"Much greater, Gail."

"I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but for his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why. They whine and say they don't understand the meaning of life. There's a particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher purpose or 'universal goal,' who don't know what to live for, who moan that they must 'find themselves.' You hear it all around us. That seems to be the official bromide of our century. Every book you open. Every drooling self-confession. It seems to be the n.o.ble thing to confess. I'd think it would be the most shameful one."

"Look, Gail." Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That's the meaning of life."

"Your strength?"

"Your work." He tossed the branch aside. "The material the earth offers you and what you make of it ... What are you thinking of, Gail?"

"The photograph on the wall of my office."

To remain controlled, as he wished, to be patient, to make of patience an active duty executed consciously each day, to stand before Roark and let her serenity tell him: "This is the hardest you could have demanded of me, but I'm glad, if it's what you want"-such was the discipline of Dominique's existence.

She stood by, as a quiet spectator of Roark and Wynand. She watched them silently. She had wanted to understand Wynand. This was the answer.

She accepted Roark's visits to their house and the knowledge that in the hours of these evenings he was Wynand's property, not hers. She met him as a gracious hostess, indifferent and smiling, not a person but an exquisite fixture of Wynand's home, she presided at the dinner table, she left them in the study afterward.

She sat alone in the drawing room, with the lights turned off and the door open; she sat erect and quiet, her eyes on the slit of light under the door of the study across the hall. She thought: This is my task, even when alone, even in the darkness, within no knowledge but my own, to look at that door as I looked at him here, without complaint.... Roark, if it's the punishment you chose for me, I'll carry it completely, not as a part to play in your presence, but as a duty to perform alone-you know that violence is not hard for me to bear, only patience is, you chose the hardest, and I must perform it and offer it to you ... my ... dearest one...

When Roark looked at her, there was no denial of memory in his eyes. The glance said simply that nothing had changed and nothing was needed to state it. She felt as if she heard him saying: Why are you shocked? Have we ever been parted? Your drawing room, your husband and the city you dread beyond the windows, are they real now, Dominique? Do you understand? Are you beginning to understand? "Yes," she would say suddenly, aloud, trusting that the word would fit the conversation of the moment, knowing that Roark would hear it as his answer.

It was not a punishment he had chosen for her. It was a discipline imposed on both of them, the last test. She understood his purpose when she found that she could feel her love for him proved by the room, by Wynand, even by his love for Wynand and hers, by the impossible situation, by her enforced silence-the barriers proving to her that no barriers could exist.

She did not see him alone. She waited.

She would not visit the site of construction. She had said to Wynand: "I'll see the house when it's finished." She never questioned him about Roark. She let her hands lie in sight on the arms of her chair, so that the relief of any violent motion would be denied her, her hands as her private barometer of endurance, when Wynand came home late at night and told her that he had spent the evening at Roark's apartment, the apartment she had never seen.

Once she broke enough to ask: "What is this, Gail? An obsession?"

"I suppose so." He added: "It's strange that you don't like him."

"I haven't said that."

"I can see it. I'm not really surprised. It's your way. You would dislike him-precisely because he's the type of man you should like.... Don't resent my obsession."

"I don't resent it."

"Dominique, would you understand it if I told you that I love you more since I've met him? Even-I want to say this-even when you lie in my arms, it's more than it was. I feel a greater right to you."

He spoke with the simple confidence they had given each other in the last three years. She sat looking at him as she always did; her glance had tenderness without scorn and sadness without pity.

"I understand, Gail."

After a moment she asked: "What is he to you, Gail? In the nature of a shrine?"

"In the nature of a hair s.h.i.+rt," said Wynand.

When she had gone upstairs, he walked to a window and stood looking up at the sky. His head thrown back, he felt the pull of his throat muscles and he wondered whether the peculiar solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from what one contemplates, but from that uplift of one's head.

VI

"THE BASIC TROUBLE WITH THE MODERN WORLD," SAID ELLSWORTH Toohey, "is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the gigantic problems crus.h.i.+ng the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple ill.u.s.tration. Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck. If you were a.s.signed to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment. Whenever a new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom.

"That's right!" shrieked Mitch.e.l.l Layton.

It was an actual shriek, thin and high. It had come with the startling suddenness of a fire siren. His guests looked at Mitch.e.l.l Layton.

He sat in a tapestry armchair of his drawing room, half lying, legs and stomach forward, like an obnoxious child flaunting his bad posture. Everything about the person of Mitch.e.l.l Layton was almost and not quite, just short of succeeding: his body had started out to be tall, but changed its mind, leaving him with a long torso above short, stocky legs; his face had delicate bones, but the flesh had played a joke on them, puffing out, not enough to achieve obesity, just enough to suggest permanent mumps. Mitch.e.l.l Layton pouted. It was not a temporary expression nor a matter of facial arrangement. It was a chronic attribute, pervading his entire person. He pouted with his whole body.

Mitch.e.l.l Layton had inherited a quarter of a billion dollars and had spent the thirty-three years of his life trying to make amends for it.

Ellsworth Toohey, in dinner clothes, stood lounging against a cabinet. His nonchalance had an air of gracious informality and a touch of impertinence, as if the people around him did not deserve the preservation of rigid good manners.

His eyes moved about the room. The room was not exactly modern, not quite Colonial and just a little short of French Empire; the furnis.h.i.+ngs presented straight planes and swan-neck supports, black mirrors and electric hurricane lamps, chromium and tapestry; there was unity in a single attribute: in the expensiveness of everything.

"That's right," said Mitch.e.l.l Layton belligerently, as if he expected everyone to disagree and was insulting them in advance. "People make too d.a.m.n much fuss about freedom. What I mean is it's a vague, over-abused word. I'm not even sure it's such a G.o.d-d.a.m.n blessing. I I think people would be much happier in a regulated society that had a definite pattern and a unified form-like a folk dance. You know how beautiful a folk dance is. And rhythmic too. That's because it took generations to work it out and they don't let just any chance fool come along to change it. That's what we need. Pattern, I mean, and rhythm. Also beauty." think people would be much happier in a regulated society that had a definite pattern and a unified form-like a folk dance. You know how beautiful a folk dance is. And rhythmic too. That's because it took generations to work it out and they don't let just any chance fool come along to change it. That's what we need. Pattern, I mean, and rhythm. Also beauty."

"That's an apt comparison, Mitch," said Ellsworth Toohey. "I've always told you that you had a creative mind."

"What I mean is, what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much," said Mitch.e.l.l Layton. "Having to decide, always to decide, torn every which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe. n.o.body would come to him all the time pestering him to do something. n.o.body would have to do anything. What I mean is, of course, except working for the common good."

"It's spiritual values that count," said Homer Slottern. "Got to be up to date and keep up with the world. This is a spiritual century."

Homer Slottern had a big face with drowsy eyes. His s.h.i.+rt studs were made of rubies and emeralds combined, like gobs of salad dripping down his starched white s.h.i.+rt front. He owned three department stores.

"There ought to be a law to make everybody study the mystical secrets of the ages," said Mitch.e.l.l Layton. "It's all been written out in the pyramids in Egypt."

"That's true, Mitch," Homer Slottern agreed. "There's a lot to be said for mysticism. On the one hand. On the other hand, dialectic materialism ..."

"It's not a contradiction," Mitch.e.l.l Layton drawled contemptuously. "The world of the future will combine both."

"As a matter of fact," said Ellsworth Toohey, "the two are superficially varied manifestations of the same thing. Of the same intention." His eyegla.s.ses gave a spark, as if lighted from within; he seemed to relish this particular statement in his own way.

"All I know is, unselfishness is the only moral principle," said Jessica Pratt, "the n.o.blest principle and a sacred duty and much more important than freedom. Unselfishness is the only way to happiness. I would have everybody who refused to be unselfish shot. To put them out of their misery. They can't be happy anyway."

Jessica Pratt spoke wistfully. She had a gentle, aging face; her powdery skin, innocent of make-up, gave the impression that a finger touching it would be left with a spot of white dust.

Jessica Pratt had an old family name, no money, and a great pa.s.sion: her love for her younger sister Renee. They had been left orphaned at an early age, and she had dedicated her life to Renee's upbringing. She had sacrificed everything; she had never married; she had struggled, plotted, schemed, defrauded through the years-and achieved the triumph of Renee's marriage to Homer Slottern.

Renee Slottern sat curled up on a footstool, munching peanuts. Once in a while she reached up to the crystal dish on a side table and took another. She exhibited no further exertion. Her pale eyes stared placidly out of her pale face.

"That's going too far, Jess," said Homer Slottern. "You can't expect everybody to be a saint."

"I don't expect anything," said Jessica Pratt meekly. "I've given up expecting long ago. But it's education that we all need. Now I think Mr. Toohey understands. If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we'd have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy."

"This is a perfectly useless discussion," said Eve Layton. "No intelligent person believes in freedom nowadays. It's dated. The future belongs to social planning. Compulsion is a law of nature. That's that. It's self-evident."

Eve Layton was beautiful. She stood under the light of a chandelier, her smooth black hair clinging to her skull, the pale green satin of her gown alive like water about to stream off and expose the rest of her soft, tanned skin. She had the special faculty of making satin and perfume appear as modern as an aluminum table top. She was Venus rising out of a submarine hatch.

Eve Layton believed that her mission in life was to be the vanguard-it did not matter of what. Her method had always been to take a careless leap and land triumphantly far ahead of all others. Her philosophy consisted of one sentence-"I can get away with anything." In conversation she paraphrased it to her favorite line: "I? I'm the day after tomorrow." She was an expert horsewoman, a racing driver, a stunt pilot, a swimming champion. When she saw that the emphasis of the day had switched to the realm of ideas, she took another leap, as she did over any ditch. She landed well in front, in the latest. Having landed, she was amazed to find that there were people who questioned her feat. n.o.body had ever questioned her other achievements. She acquired an impatient anger against all those who disagreed with her political views. It was a personal issue. She had to be right, since she was the day after tomorrow.

Her husband, Mitch.e.l.l Layton, hated her.

"It's a perfectly valid discussion," he snapped. "Everybody can't be as competent as you, my dear. We must help the others. It's the moral duty of intellectual leaders. What I mean is we ought to lose that bugaboo of being scared of the word compulsion. It's not compulsion when it's for a good cause. What I mean is in the name of love. But I don't know how we can make this country understand it. Americans are so stuffy."

He could not forgive his country because it had given him a quarter of a billion dollars and then refused to grant him an equal amount of reverence. People would not take his views on art, literature, history, biology, sociology and metaphysics as they took his checks. He complained that people identified him with his money too much; he hated them because they did not identify him enough.

"There's a great deal to be said for compulsion," stated Homer Slottern. "Provided it's democratically planned. The common good must always come first, whether we like it or not."

Translated into language, Homer Slottern's att.i.tude consisted of two parts; they were contradictory parts, but this did not trouble him, since they remained untranslated in his mind. First, he felt that abstract theories were nonsense, and if the customers wanted this particular kind, it was perfectly safe to give it to them, and good business, besides. Second, he felt uneasy that he had neglected whatever it was people called spiritual life, in the rush of making money; maybe men like Toohey had something there. And what if his stores were taken away from him? Wouldn't it really be easier to live as manager of a State-owned Department Store? Wouldn't a manager's salary give him all the prestige and comfort he now enjoyed, without the responsibility of owners.h.i.+p?

"Is it true that in the future society any woman will sleep with any man she wants," asked Renee Slottern. It had started as a question, but it petered out. She did not really want to know. She merely felt a vapid wonder about how it felt to have a man one really wanted and how one went about wanting.

"It's stupid to talk about personal choice," said Eve Layton. "It's old-fas.h.i.+oned. There's no such thing as a person. There's only a collective ent.i.ty. It's self-evident."

Ellsworth Toohey smiled and said nothing.

"Something's got to be done about the ma.s.ses," Mitch.e.l.l Layton declared. "They've got to be led. They don't know what's good for them. What I mean is, I can't understand why people of culture and position like us understand the great ideal of collectivism so well and are willing to sacrifice our personal advantages, while the working man who has everything to gain from it remains so stupidly indifferent. I can't understand why the workers in this country have so little sympathy with collectivism."

"Can't you?" said Ellsworth Toohey. His gla.s.ses sparkled.

"I'm bored with this," snapped Eve Layton, pacing the room, light streaming off her shoulders.

The conversation switched to art and its acknowledged leaders of the day in every field.

"Lois Cook said that words must be freed from the oppression of reason. She said the stranglehold of reason upon words is like the exploitation of the ma.s.ses by the capitalists. Words must be permitted to negotiate with reason through collective bargaining. That's what she said. She's so amusing and refres.h.i.+ng."

"Ike-what's his name again?-says that the theater is an instrument of love. It's all wrong, he says, about a play taking place on the stage-it takes place in the hearts of the audience."

"Jules Fougler said in last Sunday's Banner that in the world of the future the theater will not be necessary at all. He says that the daily life of the common man is as much a work of art in itself as the best Shakespearean tragedy. In the future there will be no need for a dramatist. The critic will simply observe the life of the ma.s.ses and evaluate its artistic points for the public. That's what Jules Fougler said. Now I don't know whether I agree with him, but he's got an interesting fresh angle there."

"Lancelot Clokey says the British Empire is doomed. He says there will be no war, because the workers of the world won't allow it, it's international bankers and munition makers who start wars and they've been kicked out of the saddle. Lancelot Clokey says that the universe is a mystery and that his mother is his best friend. He says the Premier of Bulgaria eats herring for breakfast."

"Gordon Prescott says that four walls and a ceiling is all there is to architecture. The floor is optional. All the rest is capitalistic ostentation. He says n.o.body should be allowed to build anything anywhere until every inhabitant of the globe has a roof over his head ... Well, what about the Patagonians? It's our our job to teach them to job to teach them to want want a roof. Prescott calls it dialectic trans-spatial interdependence." a roof. Prescott calls it dialectic trans-spatial interdependence."

Ellsworth Toohey said nothing. He stood smiling at the vision of a huge typewriter. Each famous name he heard was a key of its keyboard, each controlling a special field, each hitting, leaving its mark, and the whole making connected sentences on a vast blank sheet. A typewriter, he thought, presupposes the hand that punches its keys.

He snapped to attention when he heard Mitch.e.l.l Layton's sulking voice say: "Oh, yes, the Banner, Banner, G.o.d d.a.m.n it!" G.o.d d.a.m.n it!"

"I know," said Homer Slottern.

"It's slipping," said Mitch.e.l.l Layton. "It's definitely slipping. A swell investment it turned out to be for me. It's the only time Ellsworth's been wrong."

"Ellsworth is never wrong," said Eve Layton.

"Well, he was, that time. It was he who advised me to buy a piece of that lousy sheet." He saw Toohey's eyes, patient as velvet, and he added hastily: "What I mean is, I'm not complaining, Ellsworth. It's all right. It may even help me to slice something off my d.a.m.ned income tax. But that filthy reactionary rag is sure going downhill."

"Have a little patience, Mitch," said Toohey.

"You don't think I should sell and get out from under?"

"No, Mitch, I don't."

"Okay, if you say so. I can afford it. I can afford anything."

"But I jolly well can't!" Homer Slottern cried with surprising vehemence. "It's coming to where one can't afford to advertise in the Banner. Banner. It's not their circulation-that's okay-but there's a feeling around-a funny kind of feeling.... Ellsworth, I've been thinking of dropping my contract." It's not their circulation-that's okay-but there's a feeling around-a funny kind of feeling.... Ellsworth, I've been thinking of dropping my contract."

"Why?"

"Do you know about the 'We Don't Read Wynand' movement?"

"I've heard about it."

"It's run by somebody named Gus Webb. They paste stickers on parked winds.h.i.+elds and in public privies. They hiss Wynand newsreels in theaters. I don't think it's a large group, but ... Last week an unappetizing female threw a fit in my store-the one on Fifth Avenue-calling us enemies of labor because we advertised in the Banner. Banner. You can ignore that, but it becomes serious when one of our oldest customers, a mild little old lady from Connecticut and a Republican for three generations, calls us to say that perhaps maybe she should cancel her charge account, because somebody told her that Wynand is a dictator." You can ignore that, but it becomes serious when one of our oldest customers, a mild little old lady from Connecticut and a Republican for three generations, calls us to say that perhaps maybe she should cancel her charge account, because somebody told her that Wynand is a dictator."

"Gail Wynand knows nothing about politics, except of the most primitive kind," said Toohey. "He still thinks in terms of the Democratic Club of h.e.l.l's Kitchen. There was a certain innocence about the political corruption of those days, don't you think so?"

"I don't care. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean, the Banner is becoming a kind of liability. It hurts business. One's got to be so careful nowadays. You get tied up with the wrong people and first thing you know there's a smear campaign going on and you get splashed too. I can't afford that sort of thing."

"It's not entirely an unjustified smear."

"I don't care. I don't give a d.a.m.n whether it's true or not. Who am I to stick my neck out for Gail Wynand? If there's a public sentiment against him, my job is to get as far away as I can, p.r.o.nto. And I'm not the only one. There's a bunch of us who're thinking the same. Jim Ferris of Ferris & Symes, Billy Shultz of Vimo Flakes, Bud Harper of Toddler Togs, and ... h.e.l.l, you know them all, they're all your friends, our bunch, the liberal businessmen. We all want to yank our ads out of the Banner." Banner."

"Have a little patience, Homer. I wouldn't hurry. There's a proper time for everything. There's such a thing as a psychological moment."