“No, of course not. I’m sorry. I understand. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“So long, Katie.”
He had heard the latest story about Ellsworth Toohey, but he did not want to think of it because it brought him back to the annoying subject of the strike. Six months ago, on the wave of his success with Sermons in Stone, Ellsworth Toohey had been signed to write “One Small Voice,” a daily syndicated column for the Wynand papers. It appeared in the Banner and had started as a department of art criticism, but grown into an informal tribune from which Ellsworth M. Toohey pronounced verdicts on art, literature, New York restaurants, international crises and sociology–mainly sociology. It had been a great success. But the building strike had placed Ellsworth M. Toohey in a difficult position. He made no secret of his sympathy with the strikers, but he had said nothing in his column, for no one could say what he pleased on the papers owned by Gail Wynand save Gail Wynand. However, a mass meeting of strike sympathizers had been called for this evening. Many famous men were to speak, Ellsworth Toohey among them. At least, Toohey’s name had been announced.
The event caused a great deal of curious speculation and bets were made on whether Toohey would dare to appear. “He will,” Keating had heard a draftsman insist vehemently, “he’ll sacrifice himself. He’s that kind. He’s the only honest man in print.”
“He won’t,” another had said. “Do you realize what it means to pull a stunt like that on Wynand? Once Wynand gets it in for a man, he’ll break the guy for sure as hell’s fire. Nobody knows when he’ll do it or how he’ll do it, but he’ll do it, and nobody’ll prove a thing on him, and you’re done for once you get Wynand after you.” Keating did not care about the issue one way or another, and the whole matter annoyed him.
He ate his dinner, that evening, in grim silence and when Mrs. Keating began, with an “Oh, by the way…” to lead the conversation in a direction he recognized, he snapped: “You’re not going to talk about Catherine. Keep still.” Mrs. Keating said nothing further and concentrated on forcing more food on his plate.
He took a taxi to Greenwich Village. He hurried up the stairs. He jerked at the bell. He waited. There was no answer. He stood, leaning against the wall, ringing, for a long time. Catherine wouldn’t be out when she knew he was coming; she couldn’t be. He walked incredulously down the stairs, out to the street, and looked up at the windows of her apartment. The windows were dark.
He stood, looking up at the windows as at a tremendous betrayal. Then came a sick feeling of loneliness, as if he were homeless in a great city; for the moment, he forgot his own address or its existence. Then he thought of the meeting, the great mass meeting where her uncle was publicly to make a martyr of himself tonight. That’s where she went, he thought, the damn little fool! He said aloud: “To hell with her!”…And he was walking rapidly in the direction of the meeting hall.
There was one naked bulb of light over the square frame of the hall’s entrance, a small, blue-white lump glowing ominously, too cold and too bright. It leaped out of the dark street, lighting one thin trickle of rain from some ledge above, a glistening needle of glass, so thin and smooth that Keating thought crazily of stories where men had been killed by being pierced with an icicle. A few curious loafers stood indifferently in the rain around the entrance, and a few policemen. The door was open. The dim lobby was crowded with people who could not get into the packed hall, they were listening to a loud-speaker installed there for the occasion. At the door three vague shadows were handing out pamphlets to passers-by. One of the shadows was a consumptive, unshaved young man with a long, bare neck; the other was a trim youth with a fur collar on an expensive coat; the third was Catherine Halsey.
She stood in the rain, slumped, her stomach jutting forward in weariness, her nose shiny, her eyes bright with excitement. Keating stopped, staring at her.
Her hand shot toward him mechanically with a pamphlet, then she raised her eyes and saw him. She smiled without astonishment and said happily:
“Why, Peter! How sweet of you to come here!”
“Katie…” He choked a little. “Katie, what the hell…”
“But I had to, Peter.” Her voice had no trace of apology. “You don’t understand, but I…”
“Get out of the rain. Get inside.”
“But I can’t! I have to…”
“Get out of the rain at least, you fool!” He pushed her roughly through the door, into a corner of the lobby.
“Peter darling, you’re not angry, are you? You see, it was like this: I didn’t think Uncle would let me come here tonight, but at the last minute he said I could if I wanted to, and that I could help with the pamphlets. I knew you’d understand, and I left you a note on the living room table, explaining, and…”
“You left me a note? Inside?”
“Yes…Oh…Oh, dear me, I never thought of that, you couldn’t get in of course, how silly of me, but I was in such a rush! No, you’re not going to be angry, you can’t! Don’t you see what this means to him? Don’t you know what he’s sacrificing by coming here? And I knew he would. I told them so, those people who said not a chance, it’ll be the end of him–and it might be, but he doesn’t care. That’s what he’s like. I’m frightened and I’m terribly happy, because what he’s done–it makes me believe in all human beings. But I’m frightened, because you see, Wynand will…”
“Keep still! I know it all. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to hear about your uncle or Wynand or the damn strike. Let’s get out of here.”
“Oh, no, Peter! We can’t! I want to hear him and…”
“Shut up over there!” someone hissed at them from the crowd.
“We’re missing it all,” she whispered. “That’s Austen Heller speaking. Don’t you want to hear Austen Heller?”
Keating looked up at the loud-speaker with a certain respect, which he felt for all famous names. He had not read much of Austen Heller, but he knew that Heller was the star columnist of the Chronicle, a brilliant, independent newspaper, arch-enemy of the Wynand publications; that Heller came from an old, distinguished family and had graduated from Oxford; that he had started as a literary critic and ended by becoming a quiet fiend devoted to the destruction of all forms of compulsion, private or public, in heaven or on earth; that he had been cursed by preachers, bankers, club-women and labor organizers; that he had better manners than the social elite whom he usually mocked, and a tougher constitution than the laborers whom he usually defended; that he could discuss the latest play on Broadway, medieval poetry or international finance; that he never donated to charity, but spent more of his own money than he could afford, on defending political prisoners anywhere.
The voice coming from the loud-speaker was dry, precise, with the faint trace of a British accent.
“…and we must consider,” Austen Heller was saying unemotionally, “that since–unfortunately–we are forced to live together, the most important thing for us to remember is that the only way in which we can have any law at all is to have as little of it as possible. I see no ethical standard to which to measure the whole unethical conception of a State, except in the amount of time, of thought, of money, of effort and of obedience, which a society extorts from its every member. Its value and its civilization are in inverse ratio to that extortion. There is no conceivable law by which a man can be forced to work on any terms except those he chooses to set. There is no conceivable law to prevent him from setting them–just as there is none to force his employer to accept them. The freedom to agree or disagree is the foundation of our kind of society–and the freedom to strike is a part of it. I am mentioning this as a reminder to a certain Petronius from Hell’s Kitchen, an exquisite bastard who has been rather noisy lately about telling us that this strike represents a destruction of law and order.”
The loud-speaker coughed out a high, shrill sound of approval and a clatter of applause. There were gasps among the people in the lobby. Catherine grasped Keating’s arm. “Oh, Peter!” she whispered. “He means Wynand! Wynand was born in Hell’s Kitchen. He can afford to say that, but Wynand will take it out on Uncle Ellsworth!”