The Fountainhead by Rand, Ayn

In the library of the penthouse Dominique stood with her hand on the telephone, as if some connection still remained.

For five days and nights, she had fought a single desire–to go to him. To see him alone–anywhere–his home or his office or the street–for one word or only one glance–but alone. She could not go. Her share of action was ended. He would come to her when he wished. She knew he would come, and that he wanted her to wait. She had waited, but she had held on to one thought–of an address, an office in the Cord Building.

She stood, her hand closed over the stem of the telephone receiver. She had no right to go to that office. But Gail Wynand had.

When Ellsworth Toohey entered Wynand’s office, as summoned, he made a few steps, then stopped. The walls of Wynand’s office–the only luxurious room in the Banner Building–were made of cork and copper paneling and had never borne any pictures. Now, on the wall facing Wynand’s desk, he saw an enlarged photograph under glass: the picture of Roark at the opening of the Enright House; Roark standing at the parapet of the river, his head thrown back.

Toohey turned to Wynand. They looked at each other.

Wynand indicated a chair and Toohey sat down. Wynand spoke, smiling:

“I never thought I would come to agree with some of your social theories, Mr. Toohey, but I find myself forced to do so. You have always denounced the hypocrisy of the upper caste and preached the virtue of the masses. And now I find that I regret the advantages I enjoyed in my former proletarian state. Were I still in Hell’s Kitchen, I would have begun this interview by saying: Listen, louse!–but since I am an inhibited capitalist, I shall not do so.”

Toohey waited, he looked curious.

“I shall begin by saying: Listen, Mr. Toohey. I do not know what makes you tick. I do not care to dissect your motives. I do not have the stomach required of medical students. So I shall ask no questions and I wish to hear no explanations. I shall merely tell you that from now on there is a name you will never mention in your column again.” He pointed to the photograph. “I could make you reverse yourself publicly and I would enjoy it, but I prefer to forbid the subject to you entirely. Not a word, Mr. Toohey. Not ever again. Now don’t mention your contract or any particular clause of it. It would not be advisable. Go on writing your column, but remember its title and devote it to commensurate subjects. Keep it small, Mr. Toohey. Very small.”

“Yes, Mr. Wynand,” said Toohey easily. “I don’t have to write about Mr. Roark at present.”

“That’s all.”

Toohey rose. “Yes, Mr. Wynand.”

5.

GAIL WYNAND sat at his desk in his office and read the proofs of an editorial on the moral value of raising large families. Sentences like used chewing gum, chewed and rechewed, spat out and picked up again, passing from mouth to mouth to pavement to shoe sole to mouth to brain….He thought of Howard Roark and went on reading the Banner; it made things easier.

“Daintiness is a girl’s greatest asset. Be sure to launder your undies every night, and learn to talk on some cultured subject, and you will have all the dates you want.” “Your horoscope for tomorrow shows a beneficent aspect. Application and sincerity will bring rewards in the fields of engineering, public accounting and romance.” “Mrs. Huntington-Cole’s hobbies are gardening, the opera and early American sugar-bowls. She divides her time between her little son ‘Kit’ and her numerous charitable activities.” “I’m jus’ Millie, I’m jus’ a orphan.” “For the complete diet send ten cents and a self-addressed, stamped envelope.”…He turned the pages, thinking of Howard Roark.

He signed the advertising contract with Kream-O Pudding–for five years, on the entire Wynand chain, two full pages in every paper every Sunday. The men before his desk sat like triumphal arches in flesh, monuments to victory, to evenings of patience and calculation, restaurant tables, glasses emptied into throats, months of thought, his energy, his living energy flowing like the liquid in the glasses into the opening of heavy lips, into stubby fingers, across a desk, into two full pages every Sunday, into drawings of yellow molds trimmed with strawberries and yellow molds trimmed with butterscotch sauce. He looked, over the heads of the men, at the photograph on the wall of his office: the sky, the river and a man’s face, lifted.

But it hurts me, he thought. It hurts me every time I think of him. It makes everything easier–the people, the editorials, the contracts–but easier because it hurts so much. Pain is a stimulant also. I think I hate that name. I will go on repeating it. It is a pain I wish to bear.

Then he sat facing Roark in the study of his penthouse–and he felt no pain; only a desire to laugh without malice.

“Howard, everything you’ve done in your life is wrong according to the stated ideals of mankind. And here you are. And somehow it seems a huge joke on the whole world.”

Roark sat in an armchair by the fireplace. The glow of the fire moved over the study; the light seemed to curve with conscious pleasure about every object in the room, proud to stress its beauty, stamping approval upon the taste of the man who had achieved this setting for himself. They were alone. Dominique had excused herself after dinner. She had known that they wanted to be alone.

“A joke on all of us,” said Wynand. “On every man in the street. I always look at the men in the street. I used to ride in the subways just to see how many of them carried the Banner. I used to hate them and, sometimes, to be afraid. But now I look at every one of them and I want to say: ‘Why, you poor fool!’ That’s all.”

He telephoned Roark’s office one morning. “Can you have lunch with me, Howard?…Meet me at the Nordland in half an hour.”

He shrugged, smiling, when he faced Roark across the restaurant table.

“Nothing at all, Howard. No special reason. Just spent a revolting half-hour and wanted to take the taste of it out of my mouth.”

“What revolting half-hour?”

“Had my pictures taken with Lancelot Clokey.”

“Who’s Lancelot Clokey?”

Wynand laughed aloud, forgetting his controlled elegance, forgetting the startled glance of the waiter.

“That’s it, Howard. That’s why I had to have lunch with you. Because you can say things like that.”

“Now what’s the matter?”

“Don’t you read books? Don’t you know that Lancelot Clokey is ‘our most sensitive observer of the international scene’? That’s what the critic said–in my own Banner. Lancelot Clokey has just been chosen author of the year or something by some organization or other. We’re running his biography in the Sunday supplement, and I had to pose with my arm around his shoulders. He wears silk shirts and smells of gin. His second book is about his childhood and how it helped him to understand the international scene. It sold a hundred thousand copies. But you’ve never heard of him. Go on, eat your lunch, Howard. I like to see you eating. I wish you were broke, so that I could feed you this lunch and know you really needed it.”

At the end of a day, he would come, unannounced, to Roark’s office or to his home. Roark had an apartment in the Enright House, one of the crystal-shaped units over the East River: a workroom, a library, a bedroom. He had designed the furniture himself. Wynand could not understand for a long time why the place gave him an impression of luxury, until he saw that one did not notice the furniture at all: only a clean sweep of space and the luxury of an austerity that had not been simple to achieve. In financial value it was the most modest home that Wynand had entered as a guest in twenty-five years.

“We started in the same way, Howard,” he said, glancing about Roark’s room. “According to my judgment and experience, you should have remained in the gutter. But you haven’t. I like this room. I like to sit here.”

“I like to see you here.”

“Howard, have you ever held power over a single human being?”

“No. And I wouldn’t take it if it were offered to me.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“It was offered to me once, Gail. I refused it.”

Wynand looked at him with curiosity; it was the first time that he heard effort in Roark’s voice.

“Why?”

“I had to.”

“Out of respect for the man?”

“It was a woman.”

“Oh, you damn fool! Out of respect for a woman?”

“Out of respect for myself.”

“Don’t expect me to understand. We’re as opposite as two men can be.”

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