“Your witness,” the attorney snapped to Roark.
“No questions,” said Roark.
Dominique left the stand.
The attorney bowed to the bench and said: “The plaintiff rests.”
The judge turned to Roark and made a vague gesture, inviting him to proceed.
Roark got up and walked to the bench, the brown envelope in hand. He took out of the envelope ten photographs of the Stoddard Temple and laid them on the judge’s desk. He said:
“The defense rests.”
13.
HOPTON STODDARD won the suit.
Ellsworth Toohey wrote in his column: “Mr. Roark pulled a Phryne in court and didn’t get away with it. We never believed that story in the first place.”
Roark was instructed to pay the costs of the Temple’s alterations. He said that he would not appeal the case. Hopton Stoddard announced that the Temple would be remodeled into the Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children.
On the day after the end of the trial Alvah Scarret gasped when he glanced at the proofs of “Your House” delivered to his desk: the column contained most of Dominique’s testimony in court. Her testimony had been quoted in the newspaper accounts of the case but only in harmless excerpts. Alvah Scarret hurried to Dominique’s office.
“Darling, darling, darling,” he said, “we can’t print that.”
She looked at him blankly and said nothing.
“Dominique, sweetheart, be reasonable. Quite apart from some of the language you use and some of your utterly unprintable ideas, you know very well the stand this paper has taken on the case. You know the campaign we’ve conducted. You’ve read my editorial this morning–‘A Victory for Decency.’ We can’t have one writer running against our whole policy.”
“You’ll have to print it.”
“But, sweetheart…”
“Or I’ll have to quit.”
“Oh, go on, go on, go on, don’t be silly. Now don’t get ridiculous. You know better than that. We can’t get along without you. We can’t…”
“You’ll have to choose, Alvah.”
Scarret knew that he would get hell from Gail Wynand if he printed the thing, and might get hell if he lost Dominique Francon whose column was popular. Wynand had not returned from his cruise. Scarret cabled him in Bali, explaining the situation.
Within a few hours Scarret received an answer. It was in Wynand’s private code. Translated it read FIRE THE BITCH. G.W.
Scarret stared at the cable, crushed. It was an order that allowed no alternative, even if Dominique surrendered. He hoped she would resign. He could not face the thought of having to fire her.
Through an office boy whom he had recommended for the job, Toohey obtained the decoded copy of Wynand’s cable. He put it in his pocket and went to Dominique’s office. He had not seen her since the trial. He found her engaged in emptying the drawers of her desk.
“Hello,” he said curtly. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting to hear from Alvah Scarret.”
“Meaning?”
“Waiting to hear whether I’ll have to resign.”
“Feel like talking about the trial?”
“No.”
“I do. I think I owe you the courtesy of admitting that you’ve done what no one has ever done before: you proved me wrong.” He spoke coldly; his face looked flat; his eyes had no trace of kindness. “I had not expected you to do what you did on the stand. It was a scurvy trick. Though up to your usual standard. I simply miscalculated the direction of your malice. However, you did have the good sense to admit that your act was futile. Of course, you made your point. And mine. As a token of appreciation, I have a present for you.” He laid the cable on her desk. She read it and stood holding it in her hand. “You can’t even resign, my dear,” he said. “You can’t make that sacrifice to your pearl-casting hero. Remembering that you attach such great importance to not being beaten except by your own hand, I thought you would enjoy this.”
She folded the cable and slipped it into her purse.
“Thank you, Ellsworth.”
“If you’re going to fight me, my dear, it will take more than speeches.”
“Haven’t I always?”
“Yes. Yes, of course you have. Quite right. You’re correcting me again. You have always fought me–and the only time you broke down and screamed for mercy was on that witness stand.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s where I miscalculated.”
“Yes.”
He bowed formally and left the room.
She made a package of the things she wanted to take home. Then she went to Scarret’s office. She showed him the cable in her hand, but she did not give it to him.
“Okay, Alvah,” she said.
“Dominique, I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it, it was–How the hell did you get that?”
“It’s all right, Alvah. No, I won’t give it back to you. I want to keep it.” She put the cable back in her bag. “Mail me my check and anything else that has to be discussed.”
“You…you were going to resign anyway, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was. But I like it better–being fired.”
“Dominique, if you knew how awful I feel about it. I can’t believe it. I simply can’t believe it.”
“So you people made a martyr out of me, after all. And that is the one thing I’ve tried all my life not to be. It’s so graceless, being a martyr. It’s honoring your adversaries too much. But I’ll tell you this, Alvah–I’ll tell it to you, because I couldn’t find a less appropriate person to hear it: nothing that you do to me–or to him–will be worse than what I’ll do myself. If you think I can’t take the Stoddard Temple, wait till you see what I can take.”
On an evening three days after the trial Ellsworth Toohey sat in his room, listening to the radio. He did not feel like working and he allowed himself a rest, relaxing luxuriously in an armchair, letting his fingers follow the rhythm of a complicated symphony. He heard a knock at his door. “Co-ome in,” he drawled.
Catherine came in. She glanced at the radio by way of apology for her entrance.
“I knew you weren’t working, Uncle Ellsworth. I want to speak to you.”
She stood slumped, her body thin and curveless. She wore a skirt of expensive tweed, unpressed. She had smeared some makeup on her face; the skin showed lifeless under the patches of powder. At twenty-six she looked like a woman trying to hide the fact of being over thirty.
In the last few years, with her uncle’s help, she had become an able social worker. She held a paid job in a settlement house, she had a small bank account of her own; she took her friends out to lunch, older women of her profession, and they talked about the problems of unwed mothers, self-expression for the children of the poor, and the evils of industrial corporations.
In the last few years Toohey seemed to have forgotten her existence. But he knew that she was enormously aware of him in her silent, self-effacing way. He was seldom first to speak to her. But she came to him continuously for minor advice. She was like a small motor running on his energy, and she had to stop for refueling once in a while. She would not go to the theater without consulting him about the play. She would not attend a lecture course without asking his opinion. Once she developed a friendship with a girl who was intelligent, capable, gay and loved the poor, though a social worker. Toohey did not approve of the girl. Catherine dropped her.
When she needed advice, she asked for it briefly, in passing, anxious not to delay him: between the courses of a meal, at the elevator door on his way out, in the living room when some important broadcast stopped for station identification. She made it a point to show that she would presume to claim nothing but the waste scraps of his time.
So Toohey looked at her, surprised, when she entered his study. He said:
“Certainly, pet. I’m not busy. I’m never too busy for you, anyway. Turn the thing down a bit, will you?”
She softened the volume of the radio, and she slumped down in an armchair facing him. Her movements were awkward and contradictory, like an adolescent’s: she had lost the habit of moving with assurance, and yet, at times, a gesture, a jerk of her head, would show a dry, overbearing impatience which she was beginning to develop.
She looked at her uncle. Behind her glasses, her eyes were still and tense, but unrevealing. She said:
“What have you been doing, Uncle Ellsworth? I saw something in the papers about winning some big lawsuit that you were connected with. I was glad. I haven’t read the papers for months. I’ve been so busy…No, that’s not quite true. I’ve had the time, but when I came home I just couldn’t make myself do anything, I just fell in bed and went to sleep. Uncle Ellsworth, do people sleep a lot because they’re tired or because they want to escape from something?”