When they went below he walked with her into her cabin. He said: “Please let me know if there’s anything you wish,” and walked out through an inside door. She saw that it led to his bedroom. He closed the door and did not return.
She moved idly across the cabin. A smear of reflection followed her on the lustrous surfaces of the pale satinwood paneling. She stretched out in a low armchair, her ankles crossed, her arms thrown behind her head, and watched the porthole turning from green to a dark blue. She moved her hand, switched on a light; the blue vanished and became a glazed black circle.
The steward announced dinner. Wynand knocked at her door and accompanied her to the dining salon. His manner puzzled her: it was gay, but the sense of calm in the gaiety suggested a peculiar earnestness.
She asked, when they were seated at the table:
“Why did you leave me alone?”
“I thought you might want to be alone.”
“To get used to the idea?”
“If you wish to put it that way.”
“I was used to it before I came to your office.”
“Yes, of course. Forgive me for implying any weakness in you. I know better. By the way, you haven’t asked me where we’re going.”
“That, too, would be weakness.”
“True. I’m glad you don’t care. Because I never have any definite destination. This ship is not for going to places, but for getting away from them. When I stop at a port, it’s only for the sheer pleasure of leaving it. I always think: Here’s one more spot that can’t hold me.”
“I used to travel a great deal. I always felt just like that. I’ve been told it’s because I’m a hater of mankind.”
“You’re not foolish enough to believe that, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Surely you’ve seen through that particular stupidity. I mean the one that claims the pig is the symbol of love for humanity–the creature that accepts anything. As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.”
“You mean the person who says that there’s some good in the worst of us?”
“I mean the person who has the filthy insolence to claim that he loves equally the man who made that statue of you and the man who makes a Mickey Mouse balloon to sell on street corners. I mean the person who loves the men who prefer the Mickey Mouse to your statue–and there are many of that kind. I mean the person who loves Joan of Arc and the salesgirls in dress shops on Broadway–with an equal fervor. I mean the person who loves your beauty and the women he sees in a subway–the kind that can’t cross their knees and show flesh hanging publicly over their garters–with the same sense of exaltation. I mean the person who loves the clean, steady, unfrightened eyes of man looking through a telescope and the white stare of an imbecile–equally, I mean quite a large, generous, magnanimous company. Is it you who hate mankind, Mrs. Keating?”
“You’re saying all the things that–since I can remember–since I began to see and think–have been…” She stopped.
“Have been torturing you. Of course. One can’t love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It’s one or the other. One doesn’t love God and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn’t know that sacrilege has been committed. Because one doesn’t know God.”
“What will you say if I give you the answer people usually give me–that love is forgiveness?”
“I’ll say it’s an indecency of which you’re not capable–even though you think you’re an expert in such matters.”
“Or that love is pity.”
“Oh, keep still. It’s bad enough to hear things like that. To hear them from you is revolting–even as a joke.”
“What’s your answer?”
“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it–the total passion for the total height–you’re incapable of anything less.”
“As–you and I–know it?”
“It’s what we feel when we look at a thing like your statue. There’s no forgiveness in that, and no pity. And I’d want to kill the man who claims that there should be. But, you see, when he looks at your statue–he feels nothing. That–or a dog with a broken paw–it’s all the same to him. He even feels that he’s done something nobler by bandaging the dog’s paw than by looking at your statue. So if you seek a glimpse of greatness, if you want exaltation, if you ask for God and refuse to accept the washing of wounds as substitute–you’re called a hater of humanity, Mrs. Keating, because you’ve committed the crime of knowing a love humanity has not learned to deserve.”
“Mr. Wynand, have you read what I got fired for?”
“No. I didn’t then. I don’t dare to now ”
“Why?”
He ignored the question. He said, smiling: “And so, you came to me and said ‘You’re the vilest person on earth–take me so that I’ll learn self-contempt. I lack that which most people live by. They find life endurable, while I can’t.’ Do you see now what you’ve shown?”
“I didn’t expect it to be seen.”
“No. Not by the publisher of the New York Banner, of course. That’s all right. I expected a beautiful slut who was a friend of Ellsworth Toohey.”
They laughed together. She thought it was strange that they could talk without strain–as if he had forgotten the purpose of this journey. His calm had become a contagious sense of peace between them.
She watched the unobtrusively gracious way their dinner was served, she looked at the white tablecloth against the deep red of the mahogany walls. Everything on the yacht had an air that made her think it was the first truly luxurious place she had ever entered: the luxury was secondary, a background so proper to him that it could be ignored. The man humbled his own wealth. She had seen people of wealth, stiff and awed before that which represented their ultimate goal. The splendor of this place was not the aim, not the final achievement of the man who leaned casually across the table. She wondered what his aim had been.
“This ship is becoming to you,” she said.
She saw a look of pleasure in his eyes–and of gratitude.
“Thank you….Is the art gallery?”
“Yes. Only that’s less excusable.”
“I don’t want you to make excuses for me.” He said it simply, without reproach.
They had finished dinner. She waited for the inevitable invitation. It did not come. He sat smoking, talking about the yacht and the ocean.
Her hand came to rest accidentally on the tablecloth, close to his. She saw him looking at it. She wanted to jerk her hand away, but forced herself to let it lie still. Now, she thought.
He got up. “Let’s go on deck,” he said.
They stood at the rail and looked at a black void. Space was not to be seen, only felt by the quality of the air against their faces. A few stars gave reality to the empty sky. A few sparks of white fire in the water gave life to the ocean.
He stood, slouched carelessly, one arm raised, grasping a stanchion. She saw the sparks flowing, forming the edges of waves, framed by the curve of his body. That, too, was becoming to him.
She said:
“May I name another vicious bromide you’ve never felt?”
“Which one?”
“You’ve never felt how small you were when looking at the ocean.”
He laughed. “Never. Nor looking at the planets. Nor at mountain peaks. Nor at the Grand Canyon. Why should I? When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man, I think of man’s magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes.”
“Yes. And that particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in contemplating nature–I’ve never received it from nature, only from…” She stopped.
“From what?”
“Buildings,” she whispered. “Skyscrapers.”
“Why didn’t you want to say that?”
“I…don’t know.”
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window–no, I don’t feel how small I am–but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”