The Fountainhead (65 page)

“I think that Mr. Stoddard has made a mistake. There would have been no doubt about the justice of his case if he had sued, not for alteration costs, but for demolition costs.”

The attorney looked relieved. “Will you explain your reasons, Miss Francon?”

“You have heard them from every witness at this trial.”

“Then I take it that you agree with the preceding testimony?”

“Completely. Even more completely than the persons who testified. They were very convincing witnesses.”

“Will you ... clarify that, Miss Francon? Just what do you mean?”

“What Mr. Toohey said: that this temple is a threat to all of us.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Mr. Toohey understood the issue so well. Shall I clarify it—in my own words?”

“By all means.”

“Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one’s highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man’s birthright. He thought that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation. But Ellsworth Toohey said that this temple was a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. Ellsworth Toohey said that the essence of exaltation was to be scared out of your wits, to fall down and to grovel. Ellsworth Toohey said that man’s highest act was to realize his own worthlessness and to beg forgiveness. Ellsworth Toohey said it was depraved not to take for granted that man is something which needs to be forgiven. Ellsworth Toohey saw that this building was of man and of the earth—and Ellsworth Toohey said that this building had its belly in the mud. To glorify man, said Ellsworth Toohey, was to glorify the gross pleasures of the flesh, for the realm of the spirit is beyond the grasp of man. To enter that realm, said Ellsworth Toohey, man must come as a beggar, on his knees. Ellsworth Toohey is a lover of mankind.”

“Miss Francon, we are not really discussing Mr. Toohey, so if you will confine yourself to ...”

“I do not condemn Ellsworth Toohey. I condemn Howard Roark. A building, they say, must be part of its site. In what kind of world did Roark build his temple? For what kind of men? Look around you. Can you see a shrine becoming sacred by serving as a setting for Mr. Hopton Stoddard? For Mr. Ralston Holcombe? For Mr. Peter Keating? When you look at them all, do you hate Ellsworth Toohey—or do you damn Howard Roark for the unspeakable indignity which he did commit? Ellsworth Toohey is right, that temple is a sacrilege, though not in the sense he meant. I think Mr. Toohey knows that, however. When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return—it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and to let them become the occasion for a whole concert of grunting, transcribed by the court stenographer.”

“Miss Francon, I hardly think that this line of testimony is relevant or admissible ...”

“The witness must be allowed to testify,” the judge declared unexpectedly. He had been bored and he liked to watch Dominique’s figure. Besides, he knew that the audience was enjoying it, in the sheer excitement of scandal, even though their sympathies were with Hopton Stoddard.

“Your Honor, some misunderstanding seems to have occurred,” said the attorney. “Miss Francon, for whom are you testifying? For Mr. Roark or Mr. Stoddard?”

“For Mr. Stoddard, of course. I am stating the reasons why Mr. Stoddard should win this case. I have sworn to tell the truth.”

“Proceed,” said the judge.

“All the witnesses have told the truth. But not the whole truth. I am merely filling in the omissions. They spoke of a threat and of hatred. They were right. The Stoddard Temple is a threat to many things. If it were allowed to exist, nobody would dare to look at himself in the mirror. And that is a cruel thing to do to men. Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul. Well, they know best. They must have their reasons. They won’t say, of course, that they hate you. They will say that you hate them. It’s near enough, I suppose. They know the emotion involved. Such are men as they are. So what is the use of being a martyr to the impossible? What is the use of building for a world that does not exist?”

“Your Honor, I don’t see what possible bearing this can have on ...”

“I am proving your case for you. I am proving why you must go with Ellsworth Toohey, as you will anyway. The Stoddard Temple must be destroyed. Not to save men from it, but to save it from men. What’s the difference, however? Mr. Stoddard wins. I am in full agreement with everything that’s being done here, except for one point. I didn’t think we should be allowed to get away with that point. Let us destroy, but don’t let us pretend that we are committing an act of virtue. Let us say that we are moles and we object to mountain peaks. Or, perhaps, that we are lemmings, the animals who cannot help swimming out to self-destruction. I realize fully that at this moment I am as futile as Howard Roark.
This
is my Stoddard Temple—my first and my last.” She inclined her head to the judge. “That is all, Your Honor.”

“Your witness,” the attorney snapped to Roark.

“No questions,” said Roark.

Dominique left the stand.

The attorney bowed to the bench and said: “The plaintiff rests.”

The judge turned to Roark and made a vague gesture, inviting him to proceed.

Roark got up and walked to the bench, the brown envelope in hand. He took out of the envelope ten photographs of the Stoddard Temple and laid them on the judge’s desk. He said:

“The defense rests.”

H
OPTON STODDARD WON THE SUIT. Ellsworth Toohey wrote in his column: “Mr. Roark pulled a Phryne in court and didn’t get away with it. We never believed that story in the first place.”

Roark was instructed to pay the costs of the Temple’s alterations. He said that he would not appeal the case. Hopton Stoddard announced that the Temple would be remodeled into the Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children.

On the day after the end of the trial Alvah Scarret gasped when he glanced at the proofs of “Your House” delivered to his desk: the column contained most of Dominique’s testimony in court. Her testimony had been quoted in the newspaper accounts of the case but only in harmless excerpts. Alvah Scarret hurried to Dominique’s office.

“Darling, darling, darling,” he said, “we can’t print that.”

She looked at him blankly and said nothing.

“Dominique, sweetheart, be reasonable. Quite apart from some of the language you use and some of your utterly unprintable ideas, you know very well the stand this paper has taken on the case. You know the campaign we’ve conducted. You’ve read my editorial this morning—‘A Victory for Decency.’ We can’t have one writer running against our whole policy.”

“You’ll have to print it.”

“But, sweetheart ...”

“Or I’ll have to quit.”

“Oh, go on, go on, go on, don’t be silly. Now don’t get ridiculous. You know better than that. We can’t get along without you. We can’t ...”

“You’ll have to choose, Alvah.”

Scarret knew that he would get hell from Gail Wynand if he printed the thing, and might get hell if he lost Dominique Francon whose column was popular. Wynand had not returned from his cruise. Scarret cabled him in Bali, explaining the situation.

Within a few hours Scarret received an answer. It was in Wynand’s private code. Translated it read: FIRE THE BITCH. G. W.

Scarret stared at the cable, crushed. It was an order that allowed no alternative, even if Dominique surrendered. He hoped she would resign. He could not face the thought of having to fire her.

Through an office boy whom he had recommended for the job, Toohey obtained the decoded copy of Wynand’s cable. He put it in his pocket and went to Dominique’s office. He had not seen her since the trial. He found her engaged in emptying the drawers of her desk.

“Hello,” he said curtly. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting to hear from Alvah Scarret.”

“Meaning?”

“Waiting to hear whether I’ll have to resign.”

“Feel like talking about the trial?”

“No.”

“I do. I think I owe you the courtesy of admitting that you’ve done what no one has ever done before: you proved me wrong.” He spoke coldly; his face looked flat; his eyes had no trace of kindness. “I had not expected you to do what you did on the stand. It was a scurvy trick. Though up to your usual standard. I simply miscalculated the direction of your malice. However, you did have the good sense to admit that your act was futile. Of course, you made your point. And mine. As a token of appreciation, I have a present for you.”

He laid the cable on her desk.

She read it and stood holding it in her hand.

“You can’t even resign, my dear,” he said. “You can’t make that sacrifice to your pearl-casting hero. Remembering that you attach such great importance to not being beaten except by your own hand, I thought you would enjoy this.”

She folded the cable and slipped it into her purse.

“Thank you, Ellsworth.”

“If you’re going to fight me, my dear, it will take more than speeches.”

“Haven’t I always?”

“Yes. Yes, of course you have. Quite right. You’re correcting me again. You have always fought me—and the only time you broke down and screamed for mercy was on that witness stand.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s where I miscalculated.”

“Yes.”

He bowed formally and left the room.

She made a package of the things she wanted to take home. Then she went to Scarret’s office. She showed him the cable in her hand, but she did not give it to him.

“Okay, Alvah,” she said.

“Dominique, I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it, it was—How the hell did you get that?”

“It’s all right, Alvah. No, I won’t give it back to you. I want to keep it.” She put the cable back in her bag. “Mail me my check and anything else that has to be discussed.”

“You ... you
were
going to resign anyway, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was. But I like it better—being fired.”

“Dominique, if you knew how awful I feel about it. I can’t believe it. I simply can’t believe it.”

“So you people made a martyr out of me, after all. And that is the one thing I’ve tried all my life not to be. It’s so graceless, being a martyr. It’s honoring your adversaries too much. But I’ll tell you this, Alvah—I’ll tell it to you, because I couldn’t find a less appropriate person to hear it: nothing that you do to me—or to him—will be worse than what I’ll do myself. If you think I can’t take the Stoddard Temple, wait till you see what I can take.”

 

On an evening three days after the trial Ellsworth Toohey sat in his room, listening to the radio. He did not feel like working and he allowed himself a rest, relaxing luxuriously in an armchair, letting his fingers follow the rhythm of a complicated symphony. He heard a knock at his door. “Co-ome in,” he drawled.

Catherine came in. She glanced at the radio by way of apology for her entrance.

“I knew you weren’t working, Uncle Ellsworth. I want to speak to you.”

She stood slumped, her body thin and curveless. She wore a skirt of expensive tweed, unpressed. She had smeared some make-up on her face; the skin showed lifeless under the patches of powder. At twenty-six she looked like a woman trying to hide the fact of being over thirty.

In the last few years, with her uncle’s help, she had become an able social worker. She held a paid job in a settlement house, she had a small bank account of her own; she took her friends out to lunch, older women of her profession, and they talked about the problems of unwed mothers, self-expression for the children of the poor and the evils of industrial corporations.

In the last few years Toohey seemed to have forgotten her existence. But he knew that she was enormously aware of him in her silent, self-effacing way. He was seldom first to speak to her. But she came to him continuously for minor advice. She was like a small motor running on his energy, and she had to stop for refueling once in a while. She would not go to the theater without consulting him about the play. She would not attend a lecture course without asking his opinion. Once she developed a friendship with a girl who was intelligent, capable, gay and loved the poor, though a social worker. Toohey did not approve of the girl. Catherine dropped her.

When she needed advice, she asked for it briefly, in passing, anxious not to delay him: between the courses of a meal, at the elevator door on his way out, in the living room when some important broadcast stopped for station identification. She made it a point to show that she would presume to claim nothing but the waste scraps of his time.

So Toohey looked at her, surprised, when she entered his study. He said:

“Certainly, pet. I’m not busy. I’m never too busy for you, anyway. Turn the thing down a bit, will you?”

She softened the volume of the radio, and she slumped down in an armchair facing him. Her movements were awkward and contradictory, like an adolescent’s: she had lost the habit of moving with assurance, and yet, at times, a gesture, a jerk of her head, would show a dry, overbearing impatience which she was beginning to develop.

She looked at her uncle. Behind her glasses, her eyes were still and tense, but unrevealing. She said:

“What have you been doing, Uncle Ellsworth? I saw something in the papers about winning some big lawsuit that you were connected with. I was glad. I haven’t read the papers for months. I’ve been so busy ... No, that’s not quite true. I’ve had the time, but when I came home I just couldn’t make myself do anything, I just fell in bed and went to sleep. Uncle Ellsworth, do people sleep a lot because they’re tired or because they want to escape from something?”