The fountainhead by Ayn Rand

particularly since the establishment of his Council. But the trial brought a
subtle change; many members pointed out that the article in "One Small Voice"
had actually brought about the Stoddard lawsuit; and that a man who could force
clients to sue was a man to be treated with caution. So it was suggested that
Ellsworth Toohey should be invited to address the A.G.A. at one of its
luncheons. Some members objected, Guy Francon among them. The most passionate
objector was a young architect who made an eloquent speech, his voice trembling
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with the embarrassment of speaking in public for the first time; he said that he
admired Ellsworth Toohey and had always agreed with Toohey’s social ideals, but
if a group of people felt that some person was acquiring power over them, that
was the time to fight such a person. The majority overruled him. Ellsworth
Toohey was asked to speak at the luncheon, the attendance was enormous and
Toohey made a witty, gracious speech. Many members of the A.G.A. joined the
Council of American Builders, John Erik Snyte among the first.
The four architects in charge of the Stoddard reconstruction met in Keating’s
office, around a table on which they spread blueprints of the Temple,
photographs of Roark’s original drawings, obtained from the contractor, and a
clay model which Keating had ordered made. They talked about the depression and
its disastrous effect on the building industry; they talked about women, and
Gordon L. Prescott told a few jokes of a bathroom nature. Then Gus Webb raised
his fist and smacked it plump upon the roof of the model which was not quite dry
and spread into a flat mess. "Well, boys," he said, "let’s go to work."
"Gus, you son of a bitch," said Keating, "the thing cost money."
"Balls!" said Gus, "we’re not paying for it."
Each of them had a set of photographs of the original sketches with the
signature "Howard Roark" visible in the corner. They spent many evenings and
many weeks, drawing their own versions right on the originals, remaking and
improving. They took longer than necessary. They made more changes than
required. They seemed to find pleasure in doing it. Afterward, they put the four
versions together and made a cooperative combination. None of them had ever
enjoyed a job quite so much. They had long, friendly conferences. There were
minor dissensions, such as Gus Webb saying: "Hell, Gordon, if the kitchen’s
going to be yours, then the johns’ve got to be mine," but these were only
surface ripples. They felt a sense of unity and an anxious affection for one
another, the kind of brotherhood that makes a man withstand the third degree
rather than squeal on the gang.
The Stoddard Temple was not torn down, but its framework was carved into five
floors, containing dormitories, schoolrooms, infirmary, kitchen, laundry. The
entrance hall was paved with colored marble, the stairways had railings of
hand-wrought aluminum, the shower stalls were glass-enclosed, the recreation
rooms had gold-leafed Corinthian pilasters. The huge windows were left
untouched, merely crossed by floorlines.
The four architects had decided to achieve an effect of harmony and therefore
not to use any historical style in its pure form. Peter Keating designed the
white marble semi-Doric portico that rose over the main entrance, and the
Venetian balconies for which new doors were cut. John Erik Snyte designed the
small semi-Gothic spire surmounted by a cross, and the bandcourses of stylized
acanthus leaves which were cut into the limestone of the walls. Gordon L.
Prescott designed the semi-Renaissance cornice, and the glass-enclosed terrace
projecting from the third floor. Gus Webb designed a cubistic ornament to frame
the original windows, and the modern neon sign on the roof, which read: "The
Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children."
"Comes the revolution," said Gus Webb, looking at the completed structure, "and
every kid in the country will have a home like that!"
The original shape of the building remained discernible. It was not like a
corpse whose fragments had been mercifully scattered; it was like a corpse
hacked to pieces and reassembled.
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In September the tenants of the Home moved in. A small, expert staff was chosen
by Toohey. It had been harder to find the children who qualified as inmates.
Most of them had to be taken from other institutions. Sixty-five children, their
ages ranging from three to fifteen, were picked out by zealous ladies who were
full of kindness and so made a point of rejecting those who could be cured and
selecting only the hopeless cases. There was a fifteen-year-old boy who had
never learned to speak; a grinning child who could not be taught to read or
write; a girl born without a nose, whose father was also her grandfather; a
person called "Jackie" of whose age or sex nobody could be certain. They marched
into their new home, their eyes staring vacantly, the stare of death before
which no world existed.
On warm evenings children from the slums nearby would sneak into the park of the
Stoddard Home and gaze wistfully at the playrooms, the gymnasium, the kitchen
beyond the big windows. These children had filthy clothes and smudged faces,
agile little bodies, impertinent grins, and eyes bright with a roaring,
imperious, demanding intelligence. The ladies in charge of the Home chased them
away with angry exclamations about "little gangsters."
Once a month a delegation from the sponsors came to visit the Home. It was a
distinguished group whose names were in many exclusive registers, though no
personal achievement had ever put them there. It was a group of mink coats and
diamond clips; occasionally, there was a dollar cigar and a glossy derby from a
British shop among them. Ellsworth Toohey was always present to show them
through the Home. The inspection made the mink coats seem warmer and their
wearers’ rights to them incontestable, since it established superiority and
altruistic virtue together, in a demonstration more potent than a visit to a
morgue. On the way back from such an inspection Ellsworth Toohey received
humbled compliments on the wonderful work he was doing, and had no trouble in
obtaining checks for his other humanitarian activities, such as publications,
lecture courses, radio forums and the Workshop of Social Study.
Catherine Halsey was put in charge of the children’s occupational therapy, and
she moved into the Home as a permanent resident. She took up her work with a
fierce zeal. She spoke about it insistently to anyone who would listen. Her
voice was dry and arbitrary. When she spoke, the movements of her mouth hid the
two lines that had appeared recently, cut from her nostrils to her chin; people
preferred her not to remove her glasses; her eyes were not good to see. She
spoke belligerently about her work not being charity, but "human reclamation."
The most important time of her day was the hour assigned to the children’s art
activities, known as the "Creative Period." There was a special room for the
purpose--a room with a view of the distant city skyline--where the children were
given materials and encouraged to create freely, under the guidance of Catherine
who stood watch over them like an angel presiding at a birth.
She was elated on the day when Jackie, the least promising one of the lot,
achieved a completed work of imagination. Jackie picked up fistfuls of colored
felt scraps and a pot of glue, and carried them to a corner of the room. There
was, in the corner, a slanting ledge projecting from the wall-plastered over and
painted green--left from Roark’s modeling of the Temple interior that had once
controlled the recession of the light at sunset. Catherine walked over to Jackie
and saw, spread out on the ledge, the recognizable shape of a dog, brown, with
blue spots and five legs. Jackie wore an expression of pride. "Now you see, you
see?" Catherine said to her colleagues. "Isn’t it wonderful and moving! There’s
no telling how far the child will go with proper encouragement. Think of what
happens to their little souls if they are frustrated in their creative
instincts! It’s so important not to deny them a chance for self-expression. Did
you see Jackie’s face?"
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Dominique’s statue had been sold. No one knew who bought it. It had been bought
by Ellsworth Toohey.
#
Roark’s office had shrunk back to one room. After the completion of the Cord
Building he found no work. The depression had wrecked the building trade; there
was little work for anyone; it was said that the skyscraper was finished;
architects were closing their offices.
A few commissions still dribbled out occasionally, and a group of architects
hovered about them with the dignity of a bread line. There were men like Ralston
Holcombe among them, men who had never begged, but had demanded references
before they accepted a client. When Roark tried to get a commission, he was
rejected in a manner implying that if he had no more sense than that, politeness
would be a wasted effort. "Roark?" cautious businessmen said. "The tabloid hero?
Money’s too scarce nowadays to waste it on lawsuits afterwards."
He got a few jobs, remodeling rooming houses, an assignment that involved no
more than erecting partitions and rearranging the plumbing. "Don’t take it,
Howard," Austen Heller said angrily. "The infernal gall of offering you that
kind of work! After a skyscraper like the Cord Building. After the Enright
House."
"I’ll take anything," said Roark.
The Stoddard award had taken more than the amount of his fee for the Cord
Building. But he had saved enough to exist on for a while. He paid Mallory’s
rent and he paid for most of their frequent meals together.
Mallory had tried to object. "Shut up, Steve," Roark had said. "I’m not doing it
for you. At a time like this I owe myself a few luxuries. So I’m simply buying
the most valuable thing that can be bought--your time. I’m competing with a
whole country--and that’s quite a luxury, isn’t it? They want you to do baby
plaques and I don’t, and I like having my way against theirs."
"What do you want me to work on, Howard?"
"I want you to work without asking anyone what he wants you to work on."
Austen Heller heard about it from Mallory, and spoke of it to Roark in private.
"If you’re helping him, why don’t you let me help you?"
"I’d let you if you could," said Roark. "But you can’t. All he needs is his
time. He can work without clients. I can’t."
"It’s amusing, Howard, to see you in the role of an altruist."
"You don’t have to insult me. It’s not altruism. But I’ll tell you this: most
people say they’re concerned with the suffering of others. I’m not. And yet
there’s one thing I can’t understand. Most of them would not pass by if they saw
a man bleeding in the road, mangled by a hit-and-run driver. And most of them
would not turn their heads to look at Steven Mallory. But don’t they know that
if suffering could be measured, there’s no suffering in Steven Mallory when he
can’t do the work he wants to do, than in a whole field of victims mowed down by
a tank? If one must relieve the pain of this world, isn’t Mallory the place to
begin?...However, that’s not why I’m doing it."
#
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Roark had never seen the reconstructed Stoddard Temple. On an evening in
November he went to see it. He did not know whether it was surrender to pain or
victory over the fear of seeing it.
It was late and the garden of the Stoddard Home was deserted. The building was
dark, a single light showed in a back window upstairs. Roark stood looking at
the building for a long time.
The door under the Greek portico opened and a slight masculine figure came out.
It hurried casually down the steps--and then stopped.
"Hello, Mr. Roark," said Ellsworth Toohey quietly.
Roark looked at him without curiosity. "Hello," said Roark.
"Please don’t run away." The voice was not mocking, but earnest.
"I wasn’t going to."
"I think I knew that you’d come here some day and I think I wanted to be here
when you came. I’ve kept inventing excuses for myself to hang about this place."
There was no gloating in the voice; it sounded drained and simple.
"Well?"
"You shouldn’t mind speaking to me. You see, I understand your work. What I do
about it is another matter."
"You are free to do what you wish about it."
"I understand your work better than any living person--with the possible
exception of Dominique Francon. And, perhaps, better than she does. That’s a
deal, isn’t it, Mr. Roark? You haven’t many people around you who can say that.
It’s a greater bond than if I were your devoted, but blind supporter."
"I knew you understood."
"Then you won’t mind talking to me."
"About what?"
In the darkness it sounded almost as if Toohey had sighed. After a while he
pointed to the building and asked:
"Do you understand this?"
Roark did not answer.
Toohey went on softly: "What does it look like to you? Like a senseless mess?
Like a chance collection of driftwood? Like an imbecile chaos? But is it, Mr.
Roark? Do you see no method? You who know the language of structure and the
meaning of form. Do you see no purpose here?"
"I see none in discussing it."
"Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any
words you wish. No one will hear us."
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"But I don’t think of you."
Toohey’s face had an expression of attentiveness, of listening quietly to
something as simple as fate. He remained silent, and Roark asked:
"What did you want to say to me?"
Toohey looked at him, and then at the bare trees around them, at the river far
below, at the great rise of the sky beyond the river.
"Nothing," said Toohey.
He walked away, his steps creaking on the gravel in the silence, sharp and even,
like the cracks of an engine’s pistons.
Roark stood alone in the empty driveway, looking at the building.