“But of course! That’s…very kind of you, Ellsworth! You know, I thought when you said…and when I read your note, that you wanted–well, some favor from me, you know, a good turn for a good turn, and here you’re…”
“My dear Peter, how naive you are!”
“Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t have said that! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you, I…”
“I don’t mind. You must learn to know me better. Strange as it may sound, a totally selfless interest in one’s fellow men is possible in this world, Peter.”
Then they talked about Lois Cook and her three published works–“Novels? No, Peter, not exactly novels….No, not collections of stories either…that’s just it, just Lois Cook–a new form of literature entirely…”–about the fortune she had inherited from a long line of successful tradesmen, and about the house she planned to build.
It was only when Toohey had risen to escort Keating to the door–and Keating noted how precariously erect he stood on his very small feet–that Toohey paused suddenly to say:
“Incidentally, it seems to me as if I should remember some personal connection between us, though for the life of me I can’t quite place…oh, yes, of course. My niece. Little Catherine.”
Keating felt his face tighten, and knew he must not allow this to be discussed, but smiled awkwardly instead of protesting.
“I understand you’re engaged to her?”
“Yes.”
“Charming,” said Toohey. “Very charming. Should enjoy being your uncle. You love her very much?”
“Yes,” said Keating. “Very much.”
The absence of stress in his voice made the answer solemn. It was, laid before Toohey, the first bit of sincerity and of importance within Keating’s being.
“How pretty,” said Toohey. “Young love. Spring and dawn and heaven and drugstore chocolates at a dollar and a quarter a box. The prerogative of the gods and of the movies….Oh, I do approve, Peter. I think it’s lovely. You couldn’t have made a better choice than Catherine. She’s just the kind for whom the world is well lost–the world with all its problems and all its opportunities for greatness–oh, yes, well lost because she’s innocent and sweet and pretty and anemic.”
“If you’re going to…” Keating began, but Toohey smiled with a luminous sort of kindliness.
“Oh, Peter, of course I understand. And I approve. I’m a realist. Man has always insisted on making an ass of himself. Oh, come now, we must never lose our sense of humor. Nothing’s really sacred but a sense of humor. Still, I’ve always loved the tale of Tristan and Isolde. It’s the most beautiful story ever told–next to that of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.”
4.
“…TOOTHBRUSH in the jaw toothbrush brush brush tooth jaw foam dome in the foam Roman dome come home home in the jaw Rome dome tooth toothbrush toothpick pickpocket socket rocket…”
Peter Keating squinted his eyes, his glance unfocused as for a great distance, but put the book down. The book was thin and black, with scarlet letters forming: Clouds and Shrouds by Lois Cook. The jacket said that it was a record of Miss Cook’s travels around the world.
Keating leaned back with a sense of warmth and well-being. He liked this book. It had made the routine of his Sunday morning breakfast a profound spiritual experience; he was certain that it was profound, because he didn’t understand it.
Peter Keating had never felt the need to formulate abstract convictions. But he had a working substitute. “A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom”–this had always been his credo, unstated and unquestioned. This spared him any attempt to reach, reason or see; and it cast a nice reflection of scorn on those who made the attempt. So he was able to enjoy the work of Lois Cook. He felt uplifted by the knowledge of his own capacity to respond to the abstract, the profound, the ideal. Toohey had said: “That’s just it, sound as sound, the poetry of words as words, style as a revolt against style. But only the fines’ spirit can appreciate it, Peter.” Keating thought he could talk of this book to his friends, and if they did not understand he would know that he was superior to them. He would not need to explain that superiority–that’s just it, “superiority as superiority”–automatically denied to those who asked for explanations. He loved the book.
He reached for another piece of toast. He saw, at the end of the table, left there for him by his mother, the heavy pile of the Sunday paper. He picked it up, feeling strong enough, in this moment, in the confidence of his secret spiritual grandeur, to face the whole world contained in that pile. He pulled out the rotogravure section. He stopped. He saw the reproduction of a drawing: the Enright House by Howard Roark.
He did not need to see the caption or the brusque signature in the corner of the sketch; he knew that no one else had conceived that house and he knew the manner of drawing, serene and violent at once, the pencil lines like high-tension wires on the paper, slender and innocent to see, but not to be touched. It was a structure on a broad space by the East River. He did not grasp it as a building, at first glance, but as a rising mass of rock crystal. There was the same severe, mathematical order holding together a free, fantastic growth; straight lines and clean angles, space slashed with a knife, yet in a harmony of formation as delicate as the work of a jeweler; an incredible variety of shapes, each separate unit unrepeated, but leading inevitably to the next one and to the whole; so that the future inhabitants were to have, not a square cage out of a square pile of cages, but each a single house held to the other houses like a single crystal to the side of a rock. Keating looked at the sketch. He had known for a long time that Howard Roark had been chosen to build the Enright House. He had seen a few mentions of Roark’s name in the papers; not much, all of it to be summed up only as “some young architect chosen by Mr. Enright for some reason, probably an interesting young architect.” The caption under the drawing announced that the construction of the project was to begin at once. Well, thought Keating, and dropped the paper, so what? The paper fell beside the black and scarlet book. He looked at both. He felt dimly as if Lois Cook were his defense against Howard Roark. “What’s that, Petey?” his mother’s voice asked behind him. He handed the paper to her over his shoulder. The paper fell past him back to the table in a second. “Oh,” shrugged Mrs. Keating. “Huh…” She stood beside him. Her trim silk dress was fitted too tightly, revealing the solid rigidity of her corset; a small pin glittered at her throat, small enough to display ostentatiously that it was made of real diamonds. She was like the new apartment into which they had moved: conspicuously expensive. The apartment’s decoration had been Keating’s first professional job for himself. It had been furnished in fresh, new mid-Victorian. It was conservative and stately. Over the fireplace in the drawing room hung a large old painting of what was not but looked like an illustrious ancestor.
“Petey sweetheart, I do hate to rush you on a Sunday morning, but isn’t it time to dress up? I’ve got to run now and I’d hate you to forget the time and be late, it’s so nice of Mr. Toohey asking you to his house!”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Any famous guests coming too?”
“No. No guests. But there will be one other person there. Not famous.” She looked at him expectantly. He added: “Katie will be there.”
The name seemed to have no effect on her whatever. A strange assurance had coated her lately, like a layer of fat through which that particular question could penetrate no longer.
“Just a family tea,” he emphasized. “That’s what he said.”
“Very nice of him. I’m sure Mr. Toohey is a very intelligent man.”
“Yes, Mother.”
He rose impatiently and went to his room.
It was Keating’s first visit to the distinguished residential hotel where Catherine and her uncle had moved recently. He did not notice much about the apartment, beyond remembering that it was simple, very clean and smartly modest, that it contained a great number of books and very few pictures, but these authentic and precious. One never remembered the apartment of Ellsworth Toohey, only its host. The host, on this Sunday afternoon, wore a dark gray suit, correct as a uniform, and bedroom slippers of black patent leather trimmed with red; the slippers mocked the severe elegance of the suit, yet completed the elegance as an audacious anticlimax. He sat in a broad, low chair and his face wore an expression of cautious gentleness, so cautious that Keating and Catherine felt, at times, as if they were insignificant soap bubbles.