The Fountainhead by Rand, Ayn

He had forbidden his mother to announce the news, but she had made a few telephone calls last night, and she was making a few more this morning, and now their telephone was ringing constantly, with eager voices asking: “Is it true?” pouring out sounds of amazement and congratulations. Keating could see the news spreading through the city in widening circles, by the names and social positions of the people who called. He refused to answer the telephone. It seemed to him that every corner of New York was flooded with celebration and that he alone, hidden in the watertight caisson of his room, was cold and lost and horrified.

It was almost noon when the doorbell rang, and he pressed his hands to his ears, not to know who it was and what they wanted. Then he heard his mother’s voice, so shrill with joy that it sounded embarrassingly silly: “Petey darling, don’t you want to come out and kiss your wife?” He flew out into the hall, and there was Dominique, removing her soft mink coat, the fur throwing to his nostrils a wave of the street’s cold air touched by her perfume. She was smiling correctly, looking straight at him, saying: “Good morning, Peter.”

He stood drawn up, for one instant, and in that instant he relived all the telephone calls and felt the triumph to which they entitled him. He moved as a man in the arena of a crowded stadium, he smiled as if he felt the ray of an arc light playing in the creases of his smile, and he said: “Dominique my dear, this is like a dream come true!”

The dignity of their doomed understanding was gone and their marriage was what it had been intended to be.

She seemed glad of it. She said: “Sorry you didn’t carry me over the threshold, Peter.” He did not kiss her, but took her hand and kissed her arm above the wrist, in casual, intimate tenderness.

He saw his mother standing there, and he said with a dashing gesture of triumph: “Mother–Dominique Keating.”

He saw his mother kissing her. Dominique returned the kiss gravely. Mrs. Keating was gulping: “My dear, I’m so happy, so happy, God bless you, I had no idea you were so beautiful!”

He did not know what to do next, but Dominique took charge, simply, leaving them no time for wonder. She walked into the living room and she said: “Let’s have lunch first, and then you’ll show me the place, Peter. My things will be here in an hour or so.”

Mrs. Keating beamed: “Lunch is all ready for three, Miss Fran…” She stopped. “Oh, dear, what am I to call you, honey? Mrs. Keating or…”

“Dominique, of course,” Dominique answered without smiling.

“Aren’t we going to announce, to invite anyone, to…?” Keating began, but Dominique said:

“Afterwards, Peter. It will announce itself.”

Later, when her luggage arrived, he saw her walking into his bedroom without hesitation. She instructed the maid how to hang up her clothes, she asked him to help her rearrange the contents of the closets.

Mrs. Keating looked puzzled. “But aren’t you children going to go away at all? It’s all so sudden and romantic, but–no honeymoon of any kind?”

“No,” said Dominique, “I don’t want to take Peter away from his work.”

He said: “This is temporary of course, Dominique. We’ll have to move to another apartment, a bigger one. I want you to choose it.”

“Why, no,” she said. “I don’t think that’s necessary. We’ll remain here.”

“I’ll move out,” Mrs. Keating offered generously, without thinking, prompted by an overwhelming fear of Dominique. “I’ll take a little place for myself.”

“No,” said Dominique. “I’d rather you wouldn’t. I want to change nothing. I want to fit myself into Peter’s life just as it is.”

“That’s sweet of you!” Mrs. Keating smiled, while Keating thought numbly that it was not sweet of her at all.

Mrs. Keating knew that when she had recovered she would hate her daughter-in-law. She could have accepted snubbing. She could not forgive Dominique’s grave politeness.

The telephone rang. Keating’s chief designer at the office delivered his congratulations and said: “We just heard it, Peter, and Guy’s pretty stunned. I really think you ought to call him up or come over here or something.”

Keating hurried to the office, glad to escape from his house for a while. He entered the office like a perfect figure of a radiant young lover. He laughed and shook hands in the drafting room, through noisy congratulations, gay shouts of envy and a few smutty references. Then he hastened to Francon’s office.

For an instant he felt oddly guilty when he entered and saw the smile on Francon’s face, a smile like a blessing. He tugged affectionately at Francon’s shoulders and he muttered: “I’m so happy, Guy, I’m so happy…”

“I’ve always expected it,” said Francon quietly, “but now I feel right. Now it’s right that it should be all yours, Peter, all of it, this room, everything, soon.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come, you always understand. I’m tired, Peter. You know, there comes a time when you get tired in a way that’s final and then…No, you wouldn’t know, you’re too young. But hell, Peter, of what use am I around here? The funny part of it is that I don’t care any more even about pretending to be of any use….I like to be honest sometimes. It’s a nice sort of feeling….Well, anyway, it might be another year or two, but then I’m going to retire. Then it’s all yours. It might amuse me to hang on around here just a little longer–you know, I actually love the place–it’s so busy, it’s done so well, people respect us–it was a good firm, Francon & Heyer, wasn’t it?–What the hell am I saying? Francon & Keating. Then it will be just Keating….Peter,” he asked softly, “why don’t you look happy?”

“Of course I’m happy, I’m very grateful and all that, but why in blazes should you think of retiring now?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean–why don’t you look happy when I say that it will be yours? I…I’d like you to be happy about that, Peter.”

“For God’s sake, Guy, you’re being morbid, you’re…”

“Peter, it’s very important to me–that you should be happy at what I’m leaving you. That you should be proud of it. And you are, aren’t you, Peter? You are?”

“Well, who wouldn’t be?” He did not look at Francon. He could not stand the sound of pleading in Francon’s voice.

“Yes, who wouldn’t be? Of course….And you are, Peter?”

“What do you want?” snapped Keating angrily.

“I want you to feel proud of me, Peter,” said Francon humbly, simply, desperately. “I want to know that I’ve accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure that it wasn’t all–for nothing.”

“You’re not sure of that? You’re not sure?” Keating’s eyes were murderous, as if Francon were a sudden danger to him.

“What’s the matter, Peter?” Francon asked gently, almost indifferently.

“God damn you, you have no right–not to be sure! At your age, with your name, with your prestige, with your…”

“I want to be sure, Peter. I’ve worked very hard.”

“But you’re not sure!” He was furious and frightened, and so he wanted to hurt, and he flung out the one thing that could hurt most, forgetting that it hurt him, not Francon, that Francon wouldn’t know, had never known, wouldn’t even guess: “Well, I know somebody who’ll be sure, at the end of his life, who’ll be so God-damn sure I’d like to cut his damn throat for it!”

“Who?” asked Francon quietly, without interest. “Guy! Guy, what’s the matter with us? What are we talking about?”

“I don’t know,” said Francon. He looked tired.

That evening Francon came to Keating’s house for dinner. He was dressed jauntily, and he twinkled with his old gallantry as he kissed Mrs. Keating’s hand. But he looked grave when he congratulated Dominique and he found little to say to her; there was a pleading look in his eyes when he glanced up at her face. Instead of the bright, cutting mockery he had expected from her, he saw a sudden understanding. She said nothing, but bent down and kissed him on the forehead and held her lips pressed gently to his head a second longer than formality required. He felt a warm flood of gratitude–and then he felt frightened. “Dominique,” he whispered–the others could not hear him–“how terribly unhappy you must be….” She laughed gaily, taking his arm: “Why, no, Father, how can you say that!”

“Forgive me,” he muttered, “I’m just stupid….This is really wonderful….”

Guests kept coming in all evening, uninvited and unannounced, anyone who had heard the news and felt privileged to drop in. Keating did not know whether he was glad to see them or not. It seemed all right, so long as the gay confusion lasted. Dominique behaved exquisitely. He did not catch a single hint of sarcasm in her manner.

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