The Fountainhead (97 page)

Wynand slumped down in his chair and laughed. He laughed for a long time, unable to stop. It was not a happy sound.

Roark shook his head wearily. “You knew better than that. And it’s such an old one to me. My antisocial stubbornness is so well-known that I didn’t think anyone would waste time trying to tempt me again.”

“Howard. I meant it. Until I saw this.”

“I knew you meant it. I didn’t think you could be such a fool.”

“You knew you were taking a terrible kind of chance?”

“None at all. I had an ally I could trust.”

“What? Your integrity?”

“Yours, Gail.”

Wynand sat looking down at the surface of his desk. After a while he said:

“You’re wrong about that.”

“I don’t think so.”

Wynand lifted his head; he looked tired; he sounded indifferent.

“It was your method of the Stoddard trial again, wasn’t it? ‘The defense rests.’ ... I wish I had been in the courtroom to hear that sentence.... You did throw the trial back at me again, didn’t you?”

“Call it that.”

“But this time, you won. I suppose you know I’m not glad that you won.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Don’t think it was one of those temptations when you tempt just to test your victim and are happy to be beaten, and smile and say, well, at last, here’s the kind of man I want. Don’t imagine that. Don’t make that excuse for me.”

“I’m not. I know what you wanted.”

“I wouldn’t have lost so easily before. This would have been only the beginning. I know I can try further. I don’t want to try. Not because you’d probably hold out to the end. But because I wouldn’t hold out. No, I’m not glad and I’m not grateful to you for this.... But it doesn’t matter....”

 

“Gail, how much lying to yourself are you actually capable of?”

“I’m not lying. Everything I just told you is true. I thought you understood it.”

“Everything you just told me—yes. I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“You’re wrong in what you’re thinking. You’re wrong in remaining here.”

“Do you wish to throw me out?”

“You know I can’t.”

Wynand’s glance moved from Roark to the drawing of the house lying face down on his desk. He hesitated for a moment, looking at the blank cardboard, then turned it over. He asked softly:

“Shall I tell you now what I think of this?”

“You’ve told me.”

“Howard, you spoke about a house as a statement of my life. Do you think my life deserves a statement like this?”

“Yes.”

“Is this your honest judgment?”

“My honest judgment, Gail. My most sincere one. My final one. No matter what might happen between us in the future.”

Wynand put the drawing down and sat studying the plans for a long time. When he raised his head, he looked calm and normal.

“Why did you stay away from here?” he asked.

“You were busy with private detectives.”

Wynand laughed. “Oh that? I couldn’t resist my old bad habits and I was curious. Now I know everything about you—except the women in your life. Either you’ve been very discreet or there haven’t been many. No information available on that anywhere.”

“There haven’t been many.”

“I think I missed you. It was a kind of substitute—gathering the details of your past. Why did you actually stay away?”

“You told me to.”

“Are you always so meek about taking orders?”

“When I find it advisable.”

“Well, here’s an order—hope you place it among the advisable ones: come to have dinner with us tonight. I’ll take this drawing home to show my wife. I’ve told her nothing about the house so far.”

“You haven’t told her?”

“No. I want her to see this. And I want you to meet her. I know she hasn’t been kind to you in the past—I read what she wrote about you. But it’s so long ago. I hope it doesn’t matter now.”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

“Then will you come?”

“Yes.”

D
OMINIQUE STOOD AT THE GLASS DOOR OF HER ROOM. WYNAND saw the starlight on the ice sheets of the roof garden outside. He saw its reflection touching the outline of her profile, a faint radiance on her eyelids, on the planes of her cheeks. He thought that this was the illumination proper to her face. She turned to him slowly, and the light became an edge around the pale straight mass of her hair. She smiled as she had always smiled at him, a quiet greeting of understanding.

“What’s the matter, Gail?”

“Good evening, dear. Why?”

“You look happy. That’s not the word. But it’s the nearest.”

“ ‘Light’ is nearer. I feel light, thirty years lighter. Not that I’d want to be what I was thirty years ago. One never does. What the feeling means is only a sense of being carried back intact, as one is now, back to the beginning. It’s quite illogical and impossible and wonderful.”

“What the feeling usually means is that you’ve met someone. A woman as a rule.”

“I have. Not a woman. A man. Dominique, you’re very beautiful tonight. But I always say that. It’s not what I wanted to say. It’s this: I am very happy tonight that you’re so beautiful.”

“What is it, Gail?”

“Nothing. Only a feeling of how much is unimportant and how easy it is to live.”

He took her hand and held it to his lips.

“Dominique, I’ve never stopped thinking it’s a miracle that our marriage has lasted. Now I believe that it won’t be broken. By anything or anyone.” She leaned back against the glass pane. “I have a present for you—don’t remind me it’s the sentence I use more often than any other. I will have a present for you by the end of this summer. Our house.”

“The house? You haven’t spoken of it for so long, I thought you had forgotten.”

“I’ve thought of nothing else for the last six months. You haven’t changed your mind? You do want to move out of the city?”

“Yes, Gail, if you want it so much. Have you decided on an architect?”

“I’ve done more than that. I have the drawing of the house to show you.”

“Oh, I’d like to see it.”

“It’s in my study. Come on. I want you to see it.”

She smiled and closed her fingers over his wrist, a brief pressure, like a caress of encouragement, then she followed him. He threw the door of his study open and let her enter first. The light was on and the drawing stood propped on his desk, facing the door.

She stopped, her hands behind her, palms flattened against the doorjamb. She was too far away to see the signature, but she knew the work and the only man who could have designed that house.

Her shoulders moved, describing a circle, twisting slowly, as if she were tied to a pole, had abandoned hope of escape, and only her body made a last, instinctive gesture of protest.

She thought, were she lying in bed in Roark’s arms in the sight of Gail Wynand, the violation would be less terrible; this drawing, more personal than Roark’s body, created in answer to a matching force that came from Gail Wynand, was a violation of her, of Roark, of Wynand -and yet, she knew suddenly that it was the inevitable.

“No,” she whispered, “things like that are never a coincidence.”

“What?”

But she held up her hand, softly pushing back all conversation, and she walked to the drawing, her steps soundless on the carpet. She saw the sharp signature in the corner—“Howard Roark.” It was less terrifying than the shape of the house; it was a thin point of support, almost a greeting.

“Dominique?”

She turned her face to him. He saw her answer. He said:

“I knew you’d like it. Forgive the inadequacy. We’re stuck for words tonight.”

She walked to the davenport and sat down; she let her back press against the cushions; it helped to sit straight. She kept her eyes on Wynand. He stood before her, leaning on the mantelpiece, half turned away, looking at the drawing. She could not escape that drawing; Wynand’s face was like a mirror of it.

“You’ve seen him, Gail?”

“Whom?”

“The architect.”

“Of course I’ve seen him. Not an hour ago.”

“When did you first meet him?”

“Last month.”

“You knew him all this time? ... Every evening ... when you came home ... at the dinner table ...”

“You mean, why didn’t I tell you? I wanted to have the sketch to show you. I saw the house like this, but I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t think anyone would ever understand what I wanted and design it. He did.”

“Who?”

“Howard Roark.”

She had wanted to hear the name pronounced by Gail Wynand.

“How did you happen to choose him, Gail?”

“I looked all over the country. Every building I liked had been done by him.”

She nodded slowly.

“Dominique, I take it for granted you don’t care about it any more, but I know that I picked the one architect you spent all your time denouncing when you were on the
Banner.”

“You read that?”

“I read it. You had an odd way of doing it. It was obvious that you admired his work and hated him personally. But you defended him at the Stoddard trial.”

“Yes.”

“You even worked for him once. That statue, Dominique, it was made for his temple.”

“Yes.”

“It’s strange. You lost your job on the
Banner
for defending him. I didn’t know it when I chose him. I didn’t know about that trial. I had forgotten his name. Dominique, in a way, it’s he who gave you to me. That statue—from his temple. And now he’s going to give me this house. Dominique, why did you hate him?”

“I didn’t hate him.... It was so long ago ...”

“I suppose none of that matters now, does it?” He pointed to the drawing.

“I haven’t seen him for years.”

“You’re going to see him in about an hour. He’s coming here for dinner.”

She moved her hand, tracing a spiral on the arm of the davenport, to convince herself that she could.

“Yes.”

“You’ve asked him for dinner?”

He smiled; he remembered his resentment against the presence of guests in their house. He said: “This is different. I want him here. I don’t think you remember him well—or you wouldn’t be astonished.”

She got up.

“All right, Gail. I’ll give the orders. Then I’ll get dressed.”

 

They faced each other across the drawing room of Gail Wynand’s penthouse. She thought how simple it was. He had always been here. He had been the motive power of every step she had taken in these rooms. He had brought her here and now he had come to claim this place. She was looking at him. She was seeing him as she had seen him on the morning when she awakened in his bed for the last time. She knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living intactness of that memory. She thought this had been inevitable from the first, from the instant when she had looked down at him on the ledge of a quarry—it had to come like this, in Gail Wynand’s house—and now she felt the peace of finality, knowing that her share of decision had ended; she had been the one who acted, but he would act from now on.

She stood straight, her head level; the planes of her face had a military cleanliness of precision and a feminine fragility; her hands hung still, composed by her sides, parallel with the long straight lines of her black dress.

“How do you do, Mr. Roark.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Wynand.”

“May I thank you for the house you have designed for us? It is the most beautiful of your buildings.”

“It had to be, by the nature of the assignment, Mrs. Wynand.”

She turned her head slowly.

“How did you present the assignment to Mr. Roark, Gail?”

“Just as I spoke of it to you.”

She thought of what Roark had heard from Wynand, and had accepted. She moved to sit down; the two men followed her example. Roark said:

“If you like the house, the first achievement was Mr. Wynand’s conception of it.”

She asked: “Are you sharing the credit with a client?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“I believe this contradicts what I remember of your professional convictions.”

“But supports my personal ones.”

“I’m not sure I ever understood that.”

“I believe in conflict, Mrs. Wynand.”

“Was there a conflict involved in designing this house?”

“The desire not to be influenced by my client.”

“In what way?”

“I have liked working for some people and did not like working for others. But neither mattered. This time, I knew that the house would be what it became only because it was being done for Mr. Wynand. I had to overcome this. Or rather, I had to work with it and against it. It was the best way of working. The house had to surpass the architect, the client and the future tenant. It did.”

“But the house—it’s you, Howard,” said Wynand. “It’s still you.”

It was the first sign of emotion on her face, a quiet shock, when she heard the “Howard.” Wynand did not notice it. Roark did. He glanced at her—his first glance of personal contact. She could read no comment in it—only a conscious affirmation of the thought that had shocked her.

“Thank you for understanding that, Gail,” he answered.

She was not certain whether she had heard him stressing the name.

“It’s strange,” said Wynand. “I am the most offensively possessive man on earth. I do something to things. Let me pick up an ash tray from a dime-store counter, pay for it and put it in my pocket—and it becomes a special kind of ash tray, unlike any on earth, because it’s
mine.
It’s an extra quality in the thing, like a sort of halo. I feel that about everything I own. From my overcoat—to the oldest linotype in the composing room—to the copies of the
Banner
on newsstands—to this penthouse—to my wife. And I’ve never wanted to own anything as much as I want this house you’re going to build for me, Howard. I will probably be jealous of Dominique living in it—I can be quite insane about things like that. And yet—I don’t feel that I’ll own it, because no matter what I do or pay, it’s still yours. It will always be yours.”