The Fountainhead by Rand, Ayn

Keating could not listen to the rest of Heller’s speech, because his head was swimming in so violent an ache that the sounds hurt his eyes and he had to keep his eyelids shut tightly. He leaned against the wall.

He opened his eyes with a jerk, when he became aware of the peculiar silence around him. He had not noticed the end of Heller’s speech. He saw the people in the lobby standing in tense, solemn expectation, and the blank rasping of the loud-speaker pulled every glance into its dark funnel. Then a voice came through the silence, loudly and slowly:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the great honor of presenting to you now Mr. Ellsworth Monkton Toohey!”

Well, thought Keating, Bennett’s won his six bits down at the office. There were a few seconds of silence. Then the thing which happened hit Keating on the back of the head; it was not a sound nor a blow, it was something that ripped time apart, that cut the moment from the normal one preceding it. He knew only the shock, at first; a distinct, conscious second was gone before he realized what it was and that it was applause. It was such a crash of applause that he waited for the loud-speaker to explode; it went on and on and on, pressing against the walls of the lobby, and he thought he could feel the walls buckling out to the street.

The people around him were cheering. Catherine stood, her lips parted, and he felt certain that she was not breathing at all.

It was a long time before silence came suddenly, as abrupt and shocking as the roar; the loud-speaker died, choking on a high note. Those in the lobby stood still. Then came the voice.

“My friends,” it said, simply and solemnly. “My brothers,” it added softly, involuntarily, both full of emotion and smiling apologetically at the emotion. “I am more touched by this reception than I should allow myself to be. I hope I shall be forgiven for a trace of the vain child which is in all of us. But I realize–and in that spirit I accept it–that this tribute was paid not to my person, but to a principle which chance has granted me to represent in all humility tonight.”

It was not a voice, it was a miracle. It unrolled as a velvet banner. It spoke English words, but the resonant clarity of each syllable made it sound like a new language spoken for the first time. It was the voice of a giant.

Keating stood, his mouth open. He did not hear what the voice was saying. He heard the beauty of the sounds without meaning. He felt no need to know the meaning; he could accept anything, he would be led blindly anywhere.

“…and so, my friends,” the voice was saying, “the lesson to be learned from our tragic struggle is the lesson of unity. We shall unite or we shall be defeated. Our will–the will of the disinherited, the forgotten, the oppressed–shall weld us into a solid bulwark, with a common faith and a common goal. This is the time for every man to renounce the thoughts of his petty little problems, of gain, of comfort, of self-gratification. This is the time to merge his self in a great current, in the rising tide which is approaching to sweep us all, willing or unwilling, into the future. History, my friends, does not ask questions or acquiescence. It is irrevocable, as the voice of the masses that determine it. Let us listen to the call. Let us organize, my brothers. Let us organize. Let us organize. Let us organize.”

Keating looked at Catherine. There was no Catherine; there was only a white face dissolving in the sounds of the loudspeaker. It was not that she heard her uncle; Keating could feel no jealousy of him; he wished he could. It was not affection. It was something cold and impersonal that left her empty, her will surrendered and no human will holding hers, but a nameless thing in which she was being swallowed.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. His voice was savage. He was afraid.

She turned to him, as if she were emerging from unconsciousness. He knew that she was trying to recognize him and everything he implied. She whispered: “Yes. Let’s get out.” They walked through the streets, through the rain, without direction. It was cold, but they went on, to move, to feel the movement, to know the sensation of their own muscles moving.

“We’re getting drenched,” Keating said at last, as bluntly and naturally as he could; their silence frightened him; it proved that they both knew the same thing and that the thing had been real. “Let’s find some place where we can have a drink.”

“Yes,” said Catherine, “let’s. It’s so cold….Isn’t it stupid of me? Now I’ve missed Uncle’s speech and I wanted so much to hear it.” It was all right. She had mentioned it. She had mentioned it quite naturally, with a healthy amount of proper regret. The thing was gone. “But I wanted to be with you, Peter…I want to be with you always.” The thing gave a last jerk, not in the meaning of what she said, but in the reason that had prompted her to say it. Then it was gone, and Keating smiled; his fingers sought her bare wrist between her sleeve and glove, and her skin was warm against his….

Many days later Keating heard the story that was being told all over town. It was said that on the day after the mass meeting Gail Wynand had given Ellsworth Toohey a raise in salary. Toohey had been furious and had tried to refuse it. “You cannot bribe me, Mr. Wynand,” he said. “I’m not bribing you,” Wynand had answered; “don’t flatter yourself.”

When the strike was settled, interrupted construction went forward with a spurt throughout the city, and Keating found himself spending days and nights at work, with new commissions pouring into the office. Francon smiled happily at everybody and gave a small party for his staff, to erase the memory of anything he might have said. The palatial residence of Mr. and Mrs. Dale Ainsworth on Riverside Drive, a pet project of Keating’s, done in Late Renaissance and gray granite, was complete at last. Mr. and Mrs. Dale Ainsworth gave a formal reception as a housewarming, to which Guy Francon and Peter Keating were invited, but Lucius N. Heyer was ignored, quite accidentally, as always happened to him of late. Francon enjoyed the reception, because every square foot of granite in the house reminded him of the stupendous payment received by a certain granite quarry in Connecticut. Keating enjoyed the reception, because the stately Mrs. Ainsworth said to him with a disarming smile: “But I was certain that you were Mr. Francon’s partner! It’s Francon and Heyer, of course! How perfectly careless of me! All I can offer by way of excuse is that if you aren’t his partner, one would certainly say you were entitled to be!” Life in the office rolled on smoothly, in one of those periods when everything seemed to go well.

Keating was astonished, therefore, one morning shortly after the Ainsworth reception, to see Francon arrive at the office with a countenance of nervous irritation. “Oh, nothing,” he waved his hand at Keating impatiently, “nothing at all.” In the drafting room Keating noticed three draftsmen, their heads close together, bent over a section of the New York Banner, reading with a guilty kind of avid interest; he heard an unpleasant chuckle from one of them. When they saw him the paper disappeared, too quickly. He had no time to inquire into this; a contractor’s job runner was waiting for him in his office, also a stack of mail and drawings to be approved.

He had forgotten the incident three hours later in a rush of appointments. He felt light, clear-headed, exhilarated by his own energy. When he had to consult his library on a new drawing which he wished to compare with its best prototypes, he walked out of his office, whistling, swinging the drawing gaily.

His motion had propelled him halfway across the reception room, when he stopped short; the drawing swung forward and flapped back against his knees. He forgot that it was quite improper for him to pause there like that in the circumstances.

A young woman stood before the railing, speaking to the reception clerk. Her slender body seemed out of all scale in relation to a normal human body; its lines were so long, so fragile, so exaggerated that she looked like a stylized drawing of a woman and made the correct proportions of a normal being appear heavy and awkward beside her. She wore a plain gray suit; the contrast between its tailored severity and her appearance was deliberately exorbitant–and strangely elegant. She let the fingertips of one hand rest on the railing, a narrow hand ending the straight imperious line of her arm. She had gray eyes that were not ovals, but two long, rectangular cuts edged by parallel lines of lashes; she had an air of cold serenity and an exquisitely vicious mouth. Her face, her pale gold hair, her suit seemed to have no color, but only a hint, just on the verge of the reality of color, making the full reality seem vulgar. Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.

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