“What is this, Alvah? Are you telling me things I don’t know, or is this just in the nature of letting off steam–do forgive the mixed metaphor–on my shoulder?”
“I guess so. I don’t like to knock Gail, but I’ve been so damn mad for so long I’m fit to be tied. But here’s what I’m driving at: This Howard Roark, what does he make you think of?”
“I could write a volume on that, Alvah. This is hardly the time to launch into such an undertaking.”
“No, but I mean, what’s the one thing we know about him? That’s he’s a crank and a freak and a fool, all right, but what else? That he’s one of those fools you can’t budge with love or money or a sixteen-inch gun. He’s worse than Dwight Carson, worse than the whole lot of Gall’s pets put together. Well? Get my point? What’s Gail going to do when he comes up against that kind of a man?”
“One of several possible things.”
“One thing only, if I know Gail, and I know Gail. That’s why I feel kind of hopeful. This is what he’s needed for a long time. A swig of his old medicine. The safety valve. He’ll go out to break that guy’s spine–and it will be good for Gail. The best thing in the world. Bring him back to normal….That was my idea, Ellsworth.” He waited, saw no complementary enthusiasm on Toohey’s face and finished lamely: “Well, I might be wrong….I don’t know….It might mean nothing at all….I just thought that was psychology….”
“That’s what it was, Alvah.”
“Then you think it’ll work that way?”
“It might. Or it might be much worse than anything you imagine. But it’s of no importance to us any more. Because you see, Alvah, as far as the Banner is concerned, if it came to a showdown between us and our boss, we don’t have to be afraid of Mr. Gail Wynand any longer.”
When the boy from the morgue entered, carrying a thick envelope of clippings, Wynand looked up from his desk and said:
“That much? I didn’t know he was so famous.”
“Well, it’s the Stoddard trial, Mr. Wynand.”
The boy stopped. There was nothing wrong–only the ridges on Wynand’s forehead, and he did not know Wynand well enough to know what these meant. He wondered what made him feel as if he should be afraid. After a moment, Wynand said:
“All right. Thank you.”
The boy deposited the envelope on the glass surface of the desk, and walked out.
Wynand sat looking at the bulging shape of yellow paper. He saw it reflected in the glass, as if the bulk had eaten through the surface and grown roots to his desk. He looked at the walls of his office and he wondered whether they contained a power which could save him from opening that envelope.
Then he pulled himself erect, he put both forearms in a straight line along the edge of the desk, his fingers stretched and meeting, he looked down, past his nostrils, at the surface of the desk, he sat for a moment, grave, proud, collected, like the angular mummy of a Pharaoh, then he moved one hand, pulled the envelope forward, opened it and began to read.
“Sacrilege” by Ellsworth M. Toohey–“The Churches of our Childhood” by Alvah Scarret–editorials, sermons, speeches, statements, letters to the editor, the Banner unleashed full-blast, photographs, cartoons, interviews, resolutions of protest, letters to the editor.
He read every word, methodically, his hands on the edge of the desk, fingers meeting, not lifting the clippings, not touching them, reading them as they lay on top of the pile, moving a hand only to turn a clipping over and read the one beneath, moving the hand with a mechanical perfection of timing, the fingers rising as his eyes took the last word, not allowing the clipping to remain in sight a second longer than necessary. But he stopped for a long time to look at the photographs of the Stoddard Temple. He stopped longer to look at one of Roark’s pictures, the picture of exaltation captioned “Are you happy, Mr. Superman?” He tore it from the story it illustrated, and slipped it into his desk drawer. Then he continued reading.
The trial–the testimony of Ellsworth M. Toohey–of Peter Keating–of Ralston Holcombe–of Gordon L. Prescott–no quotations from the testimony of Dominique Francon, only a brief report. “The defense rests.” A few mentions in “One Small Voice”–then a gap–the next clipping dated three years later–Monadnock Valley.
It was late when he finished reading. His secretaries had left. He felt the sense of empty rooms and halls around him. But he heard the sound of presses: a low, rumbling vibration that went through every room. He had always liked that–the sound of the building’s heart, beating. He listened. They were running off tomorrow’s Banner. He sat without moving for a long time.
3.
ROARK and Wynand stood on the top of a hill, looking over a spread of land that sloped away in a long gradual curve. Bare trees rose on the hilltop and descended to the shore of a lake, their branches geometrical compositions cut through the air. The color of the sky, a clear, fragile blue-green, made the air colder. The cold washed the colors of the earth, revealing that they were not colors but only the elements from which color was to come, the dead brown not a full brown but a future green, the tired purple an overture to flame, the gray a prelude to gold. The earth was like the outline of a great story, like the steel frame of a building–to be filled and finished, holding all the splendor of the future in naked simplification.
“Where do you think the house should stand?” asked Wynand.
“Here,” said Roark.
“I hoped you’d choose this.”
Wynand had driven his car from the city, and they had walked for two hours down the paths of his new estate, through deserted lanes, through a forest, past the lake, to the hill. Now Wynand waited, while Roark stood looking at the countryside spread under his feet. Wynand wondered what reins this man was gathering from all the points of the landscape into his hand.
When Roark turned to him, Wynand asked:
“May I speak to you now?”
“Of course,” Roark smiled, amused by the deference which he
had not requested.
Wynand’s voice sounded clear and brittle, like the color of the sky above them, with the same quality of ice-green radiance: “Why did you accept this commission?”
“Because I’m an architect for hire.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Don’t you hate my guts?”
“No. Why should I?”
“You want me to speak of it first?”
“Of what?”
“The Stoddard Temple.”
Roark smiled. “So you did check up on me since yesterday.”
“I read our clippings.” He waited, but Roark said nothing. “All of them.” His voice was harsh, half defiance, half plea. “Everything we said about you.” The calm of Roark’s face drove him to fury. He went on, giving slow, full value to each word: “We called you an incompetent fool, a tyro, a charlatan, a swindler, an egomaniac…”
“Stop torturing yourself.”
Wynand closed his eyes, as if Roark had struck him. In a moment, he said:
“Mr. Roark, you don’t know me very well. You might as well learn this: I don’t apologize. I never apologize for any of my actions.”
“What made you think of apology? I haven’t asked for it.”
“I stand by every one of those descriptive terms. I stand by every word printed in the Banner.”
“I haven’t asked you to repudiate it.”
“I know what you think. You understood that I didn’t know about the Stoddard Temple yesterday. I had forgotten the name of the architect involved. You concluded it wasn’t I who led that campaign against you. You’re right, it wasn’t I, I was away at the time. But you don’t understand that the campaign was in the true and proper spirit of the Banner. It was in strict accordance with the Banner’s function. No one is responsible for it but me. Alvah Scarret was doing only what I taught him. Had I been in town, I would have done the same.”
“That’s your privilege.”
“You don’t believe I would have done it?”
“No.”
“I haven’t asked you for compliments and I haven’t asked you for pity.”
“I can’t do what you’re asking for.”
“What do you think I’m asking?”
“That I slap your face.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I can’t pretend an anger I don’t feel,” said Roark. “It’s not pity. It’s much more cruel than anything I could do. Only I’m not doing it in order to be cruel. If I slapped your face, you’d forgive me for the Stoddard Temple.”
“Is it you who should seek forgiveness?”
“No. You wish I did. You know that there’s an act of forgiveness involved. You’re not clear about the actors. You wish I would forgive you–or demand payment, which is the same thing–and you believe that that would close the record. But, you see, I have nothing to do with it. I’m not one of the actors. It doesn’t matter what I do or feel about it now. You’re not thinking of me. I can’t help you. I’m not the person you’re afraid of just now.”