“Gail, I don’t know whether I’m listening to you or to myself.”
“Did you hear yourself just now?”
She smiled. “Actually not. But I won’t take it back, Gail.”
“Thank you–Dominique.” His voice was soft and amused. “But we weren’t talking about you or me. We were talking about other people.” He leaned with both forearms on the rail, he spoke watching the sparks in the water. “It’s interesting to speculate on the reasons that make men so anxious to debase themselves. As in that idea of feeling small before nature. It’s not a bromide, it’s practically an institution. Have you noticed how self-righteous a man sounds when he tells you about it? Look, he seems to say, I’m so glad to be a pygmy, that’s how virtuous I am. Have you heard with what delight people quote some great celebrity who’s proclaimed that he’s not so great when he looks at Niagara Falls? It’s as if they were smacking their lips in sheer glee that their best is dust before the brute force of an earthquake. As if they were sprawling on all fours, rubbing their foreheads in the mud to the majesty of a hurricane. But that’s not the spirit that leashed fire, steam, electricity, that crossed oceans in sailing sloops, that built airplanes and dams…and skyscrapers. What is it they fear? What is they hate so much, those who love to crawl? And why?”
“When I find the answer to that,” she said, “I’ll make my peace with the world.”
He went on talking–of his travels, of the continents beyond the darkness around them, the darkness that made of space a soft curtain pressed against their eyelids. She waited. She stopped answering. She gave him a chance to use the brief silences for ending this, for saying the words she expected. He would not say them.
“Are you tired, my dear?” he asked.
“No.”
“I’ll get you a deck chair, if you want to sit down.”
“No. I like standing here.”
“It’s a little cold. But by tomorrow we’ll be far south and then you’ll see the ocean on fire, at night. It’s very beautiful.”
He was silent. She heard the ship’s speed in the sound of the water, the rustling moan of protest against the thing that cut a long wound across the water’s surface.
“When are we going below?” she asked.
“We’re not going below.”
He had said it quietly, with an odd kind of simplicity, as if he were standing helpless before a fact he could not alter.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
She could not hide the shock; he had seen it in advance, he was smiling quietly, understanding.
“It would be best to say nothing else.” He spoke carefully. “But you prefer to hear it stated–because that kind of silence between us is more than I have a right to expect. You don’t want to tell me much, but I’ve spoken for you tonight, so let me speak for you again. You’ve chosen me as the symbol of your contempt for men. You don’t love me. You wish to grant me nothing. I’m only your tool of self-destruction I know all that, I accept it and I want you to marry me. If you wish to commit an unspeakable act as your revenge against the world, such an act is not to sell yourself to your enemy, but to marry him. Not to match your worst against his worst, but your worst against his best. You’ve tried that once, but your victim wasn’t worthy of your purpose. You see, I’m pleading my case on your own terms. What mine are, what I want to find in that marriage is of no importance to you and I shall regard it in that manner. You don’t have to know about it. You don’t have to consider it. I exact no promises and impose no obligations on you. You’ll be free to leave me whenever you wish. Incidentally–since it is of no concern to you–I love you.”
She stood, one arm stretched behind her, fingertips pressed to the rail. She said:
“I did not want that.”
“I know. But if you’re curious about it, I’ll tell you that you’ve made a mistake. You let me see the cleanest person I’ve ever seen.”
“Isn’t that ridiculous, after the way we met?”
“Dominique, I’ve spent my life pulling the strings of the world. I’ve seen all of it. Do you think I could believe any purity–unless it came to me twisted in some such dreadful shape as the one you chose? But what I feel must not affect your decision.”
She stood looking at him, looking incredulously at all the hours past. Her mouth had the shape of gentleness. He saw it. She thought that every word he said today had been of her language, that this offer and the form he gave it were of her own world–and that he had destroyed his purpose by it, taken away from her the motive he suggested, made it impossible to seek degradation with a man who spoke as he did. She wanted suddenly to reach for him, to tell him everything, to find a moment’s release in his understanding, then ask him never to see her again.
Then she remembered.
He noticed the movement of her hand. Her fingers were not clinging tensely against the rail, betraying a need of support, giving importance to the moment; they relaxed and closed about the rail; as if she had taken hold of some reins, carelessly, because the occasion required no earnest effort any longer.
She remembered the Stoddard Temple. She thought of the man before her, who spoke about the total passion for the total height and about protecting skyscrapers with his body–and she saw a picture on a page of the New York Banner, the picture of Howard Roark looking up at the Enright House, and the caption: “Are you happy, Mr. Superman?”
She raised her face to him. She asked:
“To marry you? To become Mrs. Wynand-Papers?”
She heard the effort in his voice as he answered: “If you wish to call it that–yes.”
“I will marry you.”
“Thank you, Dominique.”
She waited indifferently.
When he turned to her, he spoke as he had spoken all day, a calm voice with an edge of gaiety.
“We’ll cut the cruise short. We’ll take just a week–I want to have you here for a while. You’ll leave for Reno the day after we return. I’ll take care of your husband. He can have Stoneridge and anything else he wants and may God damn him. We’ll be married the day you come back.”
“Yes, Gail. Now let’s go below.”
“Do you want it?”
“No. But I don’t want our marriage to be important.”
“I want it to be important, Dominique. That’s why I won’t touch you tonight. Not until we’re married. I know it’s a senseless gesture. I know that a wedding ceremony has no significance for either one of us. But to be conventional is the only abnormality possible between us. That’s why I want it. I have no other way of making an exception.”
“As you wish, Gail.”
Then he pulled her to him and he kissed her mouth. It was the completion of his words, the finished statement, a statement of such intensity that she tried to stiffen her body, not to respond, and felt her body responding, forced to forget everything but the physical fact of a man who held her.
He let her go. She knew he had noticed. He smiled and said:
“You’re tired, Dominique. Shall I say good night? I want to remain here for a while.”
She turned obediently and walked alone down to her cabin.
5.
“WHAT’S the matter? Don’t I get Stoneridge?” snapped Peter Keating.
Dominique walked into the living room. He followed, waiting in the open door. The elevator boy brought in her luggage, and left. She said, removing her gloves:
“You’ll get Stoneridge, Peter. Mr. Wynand will tell you the rest himself. He wants to see you tonight. At eight-thirty. At his home.”
“Why in hell?”
“He’ll tell you.”
She slapped her gloves softly against her palm, a small gesture of finality, like a period at the end of a sentence. She turned to leave the room. He stood in her way.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t give a damn. I can play it your way. You’re great, aren’t you?–because you act like truck drivers, you and Mr. Gail Wynand? To hell with decency, to hell with the other fellow’s feelings? Well, I can do that too. I’ll use you both and I’ll get what I can out of it–and that’s all I care. How do you like it? No point when the worm refuses to be hurt? Spoils the fun?”
“I think that’s much better, Peter. I’m glad.” He found himself unable to preserve this attitude when he entered Wynand’s study that evening. He could not escape the awe of being admitted into Gail Wynand’s home. By the time he crossed the room to the seat facing the desk he felt nothing but a sense of weight, and he wondered whether his feet had left prints on the soft carpet; like the leaded feet of a deep-sea diver. “What I have to tell you, Mr. Keating, should never have needed to be said or done,” said Wynand. Keating had never heard a man speak in a manner so consciously controlled. He thought crazily that it sounded as if Wynand held his fist closed over his voice and directed each syllable. “Any extra word I speak will be offensive, so I shall be brief. I am going to marry your wife. She is leaving for Reno tomorrow. Here is the contract for Stoneridge. I have signed it. Attached is a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It is in addition to what you will receive for your work under the contract. I’ll appreciate it if you will now make no comment of any kind. I realize that I could have had your consent for less, but I wish no discussion. It would be intolerable if we were to bargain about it. Therefore, will you please take this and consider the matter settled?”