He pushed the thought out of his mind. He was not going anywhere. When the time came, he slipped his drawings into a folder and went to Roark's office.
He found Roark alone, sitting at the desk in the large room that bore no signs of activity.
"Hello, Howard!" he said brightly. "How are you? I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
"Hello, Peter," said Roark. "You aren't."
"Not awfully busy, are you?"
"No."
"Mind if I sit down for a few minutes?"
"Sit down."
"Well, Howard, you've been doing great work. I've seen the Fargo Store. It's splendid. My congratulations."
"Thank you."
"You've been forging straight ahead, haven't you? Had three commissions already?"
"Four."
"Oh, yes, of course, four. Pretty good. I hear you've been having a little trouble with the Sanborns."
"I have."
"Well, it's not all smooth sailing, not all of it, you know.... No new commissions since? Nothing?"
"No. Nothing."
"Well, it will come. I've always said that architects don't have to cut one another's throat, there's plenty of work for all of us, we must develop a spirit of professional unity and co-operation. For instance, take that competition--have you sent your entry in already?"
"What competition?"
"Why, the competition. The Cosmo-Slotnick competition."
"I'm not sending any entry."
"You're ... not? Not at all?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I don't enter competitions."
"Why, for heaven's sake?"
"Come on, Peter. You didn't come here to discuss that."
"As a matter of fact I did think I'd show you my own entry, you understand I'm not asking you to help me, I just want your reaction, just a general opinion."
He hastened to open the folder.
Roark studied the sketches. Keating snapped: "Well? Is it all right?"
"No. It's rotten. And you know it."
Then, for hours, while Keating watched and the sky darkened and lights flared up in the windows of the city, Roark talked, explained, slashed lines through the plans, untangled the labyrinth of the theater's exits, cut windows, unraveled halls, smashed useless arches, straightened stairways. Keating stammered once: "Jesus, Howard! Why don't you enter the competition, if you can do it like this?" Roark answered: "Because I can't. I couldn't if I tried. I dry up. I go blank. I can't give them what they want. But I can straighten someone else's damn mess when I see it."
It was morning when he pushed the plans aside. Keating whispered:
"And the elevation?"
"Oh, to hell with your elevation! I don't want to look at your damn Renaissance elevations!" But he looked. He could not prevent his hand from cutting lines across the perspective. "All right, damn you, give them good Renaissance if you must and if there is such a thing! Only I can't do that for you. Figure it out yourself. Something like this. Simpler, Peter, simpler, more direct, as honest as you can make of a dishonest thing. Now go home and try to work out something on this order."
Keating went home. He copied Roark's plans. He worked out Roark's hasty sketch of the elevation into a neat, finished perspective. Then the drawings were mailed, properly addressed, to: "The Most Beautiful Building in the World" Competition
Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures, Inc.
New York City.
The envelope, accompanying the entry, contained the names: "Francon & Heyer, architects, Peter Keating, associated designer."
Through the months of that winter Roark found no other chances, no offers, no prospects of commissions. He sat at his desk and forgot, at times, to turn on the lights in the early dusk. It was as if the heavy immobility of all the hours that had flowed through the office, of its door, of its air, were beginning to seep into his muscles. He would rise and fling a book at the wall, to feel his arm move, to hear the burst of sound. He smiled, amused, picked up the book, and laid it neatly back on the desk. He turned on the desk lamp. Then he stopped, before he had withdrawn his hands from the cone of light under the lamp, and he looked at his hands; he spread his fingers out slowly. Then he remembered what Cameron had said to him long ago. He jerked his hands away. He reached for his coat, turned the lights off, locked the door and went home.
As spring approached he knew that his money would not last much longer. He paid the rent on his office promptly on the first of each month. He wanted the feeling of thirty days ahead, during which he would still own the office. He entered it calmly each morning. He found only that he did not want to look at the calendar when it began to grow dark and he knew that another day of the thirty had gone. When he noticed this, he made himself look at the calendar. It was a race he was running now, a race between his rent money and... he did not know the name of the other contestant. Perhaps it was every man whom he passed on the street.
When he went up to his office, the elvator operators looked at him in a queer, lazy, curious sort of way; when he spoke, they answered, not insolently, but in an indifferent drawl that seemed to say it would become insolent in a moment. They did not know what he was doing or why; they knew only that he was a man to whom no clients ever came. He attended, because Austen Heller asked him to attend, the few parties Heller gave occasionally; he was asked by guests: "Oh, you're an architect? You'll forgive me, I haven't kept up with architecture--what have you built?" When he answered, he heard them say: "Oh, yes, indeed," and he saw the conscious politeness of their manner tell him that he was an architect by presumption. They had never seen his buildings; they did not know whether his buildings were good or worthless; they knew only that they had never heard of these buildings.
It was a war in which he was invited to fight nothing, yet he was pushed forward to fight, he had to fight, he had no choice--and no adversary.
He passed by buildings under construction. He stopped to look at the steel cages. He felt at times as if the beams and girders were shaping themselves not into a house, but into a barricade to stop him; and the few steps on the sidewalk that separated him from the wooden fence enclosing the construction were the steps he would never be able to take. It was pain, but it was a blunted, unpenetrating pain. It's true, he would tell himself; it's not, his body would answer, the strange, untouchable healthiness of his body.
The Fargo Store had opened. But one building could not save a neighborhood; Fargo's competitors had been right, the tide had turned, was flowing uptown, his customers were deserting him. Remarks were made openly on the decline of John Fargo, who had topped his poor business judgment by an investment in a preposterous kind of a building; which proved, it was stated, that the public would not accept these architectural innovations. It was not stated that the store was the cleanest and brightest in the city; that the skill of its plan made its operation easier than had ever been possible; that the neighborhood had been doomed before its erection. The building took the blame.
Athelstan Beasely, the wit of the architectural profession, the court jester of the A.G.A., who never seemed to be building anything, but organized all the charity balls, wrote in his column entitled "Quips and Quirks" in the A.G.A. Bulletin:
"Well, lads and lassies, here's a fairy tale with a moral: seems there was, once upon a time, a little boy with hair the color of a Hallowe'en pumpkin, who thought that he was better than all you common boys and girls. So to prove it, he up and built a house, which is a very nice house, except that nobody can live in it, and a store, which is a very lovely store, except that it's going bankrupt. He also erected a very eminent structure, to wit: a dogcart on a mud road. This last is reported to be doing very well indeed, which, perhaps, is the right field of endeavor for that little boy."
At the end of March Roark read in the papers about Roger Enright. Roger Enright possessed millions, an oil concern and no sense of restraint. This made his name appear in the papers frequently. He aroused a half-admiring, half-derisive awe by the inc
oherent variety of his sudden ventures. The latest was a project for a new type of residential development--an apartment building, with each unit complete and isolated like an expensive private home. It was to be known as the Enright House. Enright had declared that he did not want it to look like anything anywhere else. He had approached and rejected several of the best architests in town.
Roark felt as if this newspaper item were a personal invitation; the kind of chance created expressly for him. For the first time he attempted to go after a commission. He requested an interview with Roger Enright. He got an interview with a secretary. The secretary, a young man who looked bored, asked him several questions about his experience; he asked them slowly, as if it required an effort to decide just what it would be appropriate to ask under the circumstances, since the answers would make no difference whatever; he glanced at some photographs of Roark's buildings, and declared that Mr. Enright would not be interested.
In the first week of April, when Roark had paid his last rental for one more month at the office, he was asked to submit drawings for the new building of the Manhattan Bank Company. He was asked by Mr. Weidler, a member of the board of directors, who was a friend of young Richard Sanborn. Weidler told him: "I've had a stiff fight, Mr. Roark, but I think I've won. I've taken them personally through the Sanborn house, and Dick and I explained a few things. However, the board must see the drawings before they make a decision. So it's not quite certain as yet, I must tell you frankly, but it's almost certain. They've turned down two other architects. They're very much interested in you. Go ahead. Good luck!"
Henry Cameron had had a relapse and the doctor warned his sister that no recovery could be expected. She did not believe it. She felt a new hope, because she saw that Cameron, lying still in bed, looked serene and--almost happy, a word she had never found it possible to associate with her brother.
But she was frightened, one evening, when he said suddenly: "Call Howard. Ask him to come here." In the three years since his retirement he had never called for Roark, he had merely waited for Roark's visits.
Roark arrived within an hour. He sat by the side of Cameron's bed, and Cameron talked to him as usual. He did not mention the special invitation and did not explain. The night was warm and the window of Cameron's bedroom stood open to the dark garden. When he noticed, in a pause between sentences, the silence of the trees outside, the unmoving silence of late hours, Cameron called his sister and said: "Fix the couch in the living room for Howard. He's staying here." Roark looked at him and understood. Roark inclined his head in agreement; he could acknowledge what Cameron had just declared to him only by a quiet glance as solemn as Cameron's.
Roark remained at the house for three days. No reference was made to his staying there--nor to how long he would have to stay. His presence was accepted as a natural fact requiring no comment. Miss Cameron understood--and knew that she must say nothing. She moved about silently, with the meek courage of resignation.
Cameron did not want Roark's continuous presence in his room. He would say: "Go out, take a walk through the garden, Howard. It's beautiful, the grass is coming up." He would lie in bed and watch, with contentment, through the open window, Roark's figure moving among the bare trees that stood against a pale blue sky.
He asked only that Roark eat his meals with him. Miss Cameron would put a tray on Cameron's knees, and serve Roark's meal on a small table by the bed. Cameron seemed to take pleasure in what he had never had nor sought: a sense of warmth in performing a daily routine, the sense of family.
On the evening of the third day Cameron lay back on his pillow, talking as usual, but the words came slowly and he did not move his head. Roark listened and concentrated on not showing that he knew what went on in the terrible pauses between Cameron's words. The words sounded natural, and the strain they cost was to remain Cameron's last secret, as he wished.
Cameron spoke about the future of building materials. "Watch the light metals industry, Howard.... In a few... years... you'll see them do some astounding things.... Watch the plastics, there's a whole new era... coming from that.... You'll find new tools, new means, new forms.... You'll have to show... the damn fools... what wealth the human brain has made for them... what possibilities.... Last week I read about a new kind of composition tile ... and I've thought of a way to use it where nothing... else would do ... take, for instance, a small house... about five thousand dollars ..."
After a while he stopped and remained silent, his eyes closed. Then Roark heard him whisper suddenly:
"Gail Wynand ..."
Roark leaned closer to him, bewildered.
"I don't... hate anybody any more... only Gail Wynand ... No, I've never laid eyes on him.... But he represents ... everything that's wrong with the world... the triumph... of overbearing vulgarity.... It's Gail Wynand that you'll have to fight, Howard...."
Then he did not speak for a long time. When he opened his eyes again, he smiled. He said:
"I know... what you're going through at your office just now...." Roark had never spoken to him of that. "No ... don't deny and ... don't say anything.... I know.... But... it's all right.... Don't be afraid.... Do you remember the day when I tried to fire you? ... Forget what I said to you then.... It was not the whole story.... This is ... Don't be afraid.... It was worth it...."
His voice failed and he could not use it any longer. But the faculty of sight remained untouched and he could lie silently and look at Roark without effort. He died half an hour later.
Keating saw Catherine often. He had not announced their engagement, but his mother knew, and it was not a precious secret of his own any longer. Catherine thought, at times, that he had dropped the sense of significance in their meetings. She was spared the loneliness of waiting for him; but she had lost the reassurance of his inevitable returns.
Keating had told her: "Let's wait for the results of that movie competition, Katie. It won't be long, they'll announce the decision in May. If I win--I'll be set for life. Then we'll be married. And that's when I'll meet your uncle--and he'll want to meet me. And I've got to win."
"I know you'll win."
"Besides, old Heyer won't last another month. The doctor told us that we can expect a second stroke at any time and that will be that. If it doesn't get him to the graveyard, it'll certainly get him out of the office."
"Oh, Peter, I don't like to hear you talk like that. You mustn't be so ... so terribly selfish."
"I'm sorry, dear. Well ... yes, I guess I'm selfish. Everybody is."
He spent more time with Dominique. Dominique watched him complacently, as if he presented no further problem to her. She seemed to find him suitable as an inconsequential companion for an occasional, inconsequential evening. He thought that she liked him. He knew that this was not an encouraging sign.
He forgot at times that she was Francon's daughter; he forgot all the reasons that prompted him to want her. He felt no need to be prompted. He wanted her. He needed no reasons now but the excitement of her presence.
Yet he felt helpless before her. He refused to accept the thought that a woman could remain indifferent to him. But he was not certain even of her indifference. He waited and tried to guess her moods, to respond as he supposed she wished him to respond. He received no answer.
On a spring night they attended a ball together. They danced, and he drew her close, he stressed the touch of his fingers on her body. He knew that she noticed and understood. She did not withdraw; she looked at him with an unmoving glance that was almost expectation. When they were leaving, he held her wrap and let his fingers rest on her shoulders; she did not move or draw the wrap closed; she waited; she let him lift his hands. Then they walked together down to the cab.
She sat silently in a corner of the cab; she had never before considered his presence important enough to require silence. She sat, her legs crossed, her wrap gathered tightly, her finger tips beating in slow rotation against her knee. He closed his hand softly about her forearm. She did not r
esist; she did not answer; only her fingers stopped beating. His lips touched her hair; it was not a kiss, he merely let his lips rest against her hair for a long time.
When the cab stopped, he whispered: "Dominique ... let me come up ... for just a moment ..."
"Yes," she answered. The word was flat, impersonal, with no sound of invitation. But she had never allowed it before. He followed her, his heart pounding.
There was one fragment of a second, as she entered her apartment, when she stopped, waiting. He stared at her helplessly, bewildered, too happy. He noticed the pause only when she was moving again, walking away from him, into the drawing room. She sat down, and her hands fell limply one at each side, her arms away from her body, leaving her unprotected. Her eyes were half closed, rectangular, empty.
"Dominique ..." he whispered, "Dominique ... how lovely you are! ..."
Then he was beside her, whispering incoherently:
"Dominique ... Dominique, I love you ... Don't laugh at me, please don't laugh! ... My whole life ... anything you wish ... Don't you know how beautiful you are? ... Dominique ... I love you ..."
He stopped, with his arms around her and his face over hers, to catch some hint of response or resistance; he saw nothing. He jerked her violently against him and kissed her lips.
His arms fell open. He let her body fall back against the seat, and he stared at her, aghast. It had not been a kiss; he had not held a woman in his arms; what he had held and kissed had not been alive. Her lips had not moved in answer against his; her arms had not moved to embrace him; it was not revulsion--he could have understood revulsion. It was as if he could hold her forever or drop her, kiss her again or go further to satisfy his desire--and her body would not know it, would not notice it. She was looking at him, past him. She saw a cigarette stub that had fallen off a tray on a table beside her, she moved her hand and slipped the cigarette back into the tray.
"Dominique," he whispered stupidly, "didn't you want me to kiss you?"