She turned to leave the room.
“Dominique, you’re not going?” He sounded hurt. “You won’t say anything? Not anything at all?”
“No.”
“Dominique, you’re letting me down. And how I waited for you! I’m a very self-sufficient person, as a rule, but I do need an audience once in a while. You’re the only person with whom I can be myself. I suppose it’s because you have such contempt for me that nothing I say can make any difference. You see, I know that, but I don’t care. Also, the methods I use on other people would never work on you. Strangely enough, only my honesty will. Hell, what’s the use of accomplishing a skillful piece of work if nobody knows that you’ve accomplished it? Had you been your old self, you’d tell me, at this point, that that is the psychology of a murderer who’s committed the perfect crime and then confesses because he can’t bear the idea that nobody knows it’s a perfect crime. And I’d answer that you’re right. I want an audience. That’s the trouble with victims–they don’t even know they’re victims, which is as it should be, but it does become monotonous and takes half the fun away. You’re such a rare treat–a victim who can appreciate the artistry of its own execution….For God’s sake, Dominique, are you leaving when I’m practically begging you to remain?”
She put her hand on the doorknob. He shrugged and settled back in his chair.
“All right,” he said. “Incidentally, don’t try to buy Hopton Stoddard out. He’s eating out of my hand just now. He won’t sell.” She had opened the door, but she stopped and pulled it shut again. “Oh, yes, of course I know that you’ve tried, it’s no use. You’re not that rich. You haven’t enough to buy that temple and you couldn’t raise enough. Also, Hopton won’t accept any money from you to pay for the alterations. I know you’ve offered that, too. He wants it from Roark. By the way, I don’t think Roark would like it if I let him know that you’ve tried.”
He smiled in a manner that demanded a protest. Her face gave no answer. She turned to the door again. “Just one more question, Dominique. Mr. Stoddard’s attorney wants to know whether he can call you as a witness. An expert on architecture. You will testify for the plaintiff, of course?”
“Yes. I will testify for the plaintiff.”
The case of Hopton Stoddard versus Howard Roark opened in February of 1931.
The courtroom was so full that mass reactions could be expressed only by a slow motion running across the spread of heads, a sluggish wave like the ripple under the tight-packed skin of a sea lion.
The crowd, brown and streaked with subdued color, looked like a fruitcake of all the arts, with the cream of the A.G.A. rich and heavy on top. There were distinguished men and well-dressed, tight-lipped women; each woman seemed to feel an exclusive proprietorship of the art practiced by her escort, a monopoly guarded by resentful glances at the others. Almost everybody knew almost everybody else. The room had the atmosphere of a convention, an opening night and a family picnic. There was a feeling of “our bunch,”
“our boys,”
“our show.”
Steven Mallory, Austen Heller, Roger Enright, Kent Lansing and Mike sat together in one corner. They tried not to look around them. Mike was worried about Steven Mallory. He kept close to Mallory, insisted on sitting next to him and glanced at him whenever a particularly offensive bit of conversation reached them. Mallory noticed it at last, and said: “Don’t worry, Mike. I won’t scream. I won’t shoot anyone.”
“Watch your stomach, kid,” said Mike, “just watch your stomach. A man can’t get sick just because he oughta.”
“Mike, do you remember the night when we stayed so late that it was almost daylight, and Dominique’s car was out of gas, and there were no busses, and we all decided to walk home, and there was sun on the rooftops by the time the first one of us got to his house?”
“That’s right. You think about that, and I’ll think about the granite quarry.”
“What granite quarry?”
“It’s something made me very sick once, but then it turned out it make no difference at all, in the long run.”
Beyond the windows the sky was white and flat like frosted glass. The light seemed to come from the banks of snow on roofs and ledges, an unnatural light that made everything in the room look naked.
The judge sat hunched on his high bench as if he were roosting. He had a small face, wizened into virtue. He kept his hands upright in front of his chest, the fingertips pressed together. Hopton Stoddard was not present. He was represented by his attorney a handsome gentleman, tall and grave as an ambassador.
Roark sat alone at the defense table. The crowd had stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio. He took no notes; there were no papers on the table before him, only a large brown envelope. The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer. Some of them had come prepared to pity him; all of them hated him after the first few minutes.
The plaintiff’s attorney stated his case in a simple opening address; it was true, he admitted, that Hopton Stoddard had given Roark full freedom to design and build the Temple; the point was, however, that Mr. Stoddard had clearly specified and expected a temple; the building in question could not be considered a temple by any known standards; as the plaintiff proposed to prove with the help of the best authorities in the field.
Roark waived his privilege to make an opening statement to the jury.
Ellsworth Monkton Toohey was the first witness called by the plaintiff. He sat on the edge of the witness chair and leaned back, resting on the end of his spine: he lifted one leg and placed it horizontally across the other. He looked amused–but managed to suggest that his amusement was a well-bred protection against looking bored.
The attorney went through a long list of questions about Mr. Toohey’s professional qualifications, including the number of copies sold of his book Sermons in Stone. Then he read aloud Toohey’s column “Sacrilege” and asked him to state whether he had written it. Toohey replied that he had. There followed a list of questions in erudite terms on the architectural merits of the Temple. Toohey proved that it had none. There followed an historical review. Toohey, speaking easily and casually, gave a brief sketch of all known civilizations and of their outstanding religious monuments–from the Incas to the Phoenicians to the Easter Islanders–including, whenever possible, the dates when these monuments were begun and the dates when they were completed, the number of workers employed in the construction and the approximate cost in modern American dollars. The audience listened punch-drunk.
Toohey proved that the Stoddard Temple contradicted every brick, stone and precept of history. “I have endeavored to show,” he said in conclusion, “that the two essentials of the conception of a temple are a sense of awe and a sense of man’s humility. We have noted the gigantic proportions of religious edifices, the soaring lines, the horrible grotesques of monster-like gods, or, later, gargoyles. All of it tends to impress upon man his essential insignificance, to crush him by sheer magnitude, to imbue him with that sacred terror which leads to the meekness of virtue. The Stoddard Temple is a brazen denial of our entire past, an insolent ‘No’ flung in the face of history. I may venture a guess as to the reason why this case has aroused such public interest. All of us have recognized instinctively that it involves a moral issue much beyond its legal aspects. This building is a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. It is one man’s ego defying the most sacred impulses of all mankind, of every man on the street, of every man in this courtroom!”
This was not a witness in court, but Ellsworth Toohey addressing a meeting–and the reaction was inevitable: the audience burst into applause. The judge struck his gavel and made a threat to have the courtroom cleared. Order was restored, but not to the faces of the crowd: the faces remained lecherously self-righteous. It was pleasant to be singled out and brought into the case as an injured party. Three-fourths of them had never seen the Stoddard Temple.
“Thank you, Mr. Toohey,” said the attorney, faintly suggesting a bow. Then he turned to Roark and said with delicate courtesy: “Your witness.”