The fountainhead by Ayn Rand

part in it. Why? Where was the root of the difference and the law to explain it?
He did not speak of it to anyone. But he saw the same feeling in Mike’s face,
when Mike arrived with the gang of electricians. Mike said nothing, but he
winked at Mallory in cheerful understanding. "I told you not to worry," Mike
said to him once, without preamble, "at the trial that was. He can’t lose,
quarries or no quarries, trials or no trials. They can’t beat him, Steve, they
just can’t, not the whole goddamn world."
But they had really forgotten the world, thought Mallory. This was a new earth,
their own. The hills rose to the sky around them, as a wall of protection. And
they had another protection--the architect who walked among them, down the snow
or the grass of the hillsides, over the boulders and the piled planks, to the
drafting tables, to the derricks, to the tops of rising walls--the man who had
made this possible--the thought in the mind of that man--and not the content of
that thought, nor the result, not the vision that had created Monadnock Valley,
nor the will that had made it real--but the method of his thought, the rule of
its function--the method and rule which were not like those of the world beyond
the hills. That stood on guard over the valley and over the crusaders within it.
And then he saw Mr. Bradley come to visit the site, to smile blandly and depart
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again. Then Mallory felt anger without reason--and fear. "Howard," Mallory said
one night, when they sat together at a fire of dry branches on the hillside over
the camp, "it’s the Stoddard Temple again."
"Yes," said Roark. "I think so. But I can’t figure out in just what way or what
they’re after."
He rolled over on his stomach and looked down at the panes of glass scattered
through the darkness below; they caught reflections from somewhere and looked
like phosphorescent, self-generated springs of light rising out of the ground.
He said:
"It doesn’t matter, Steve, does it? Not what they do about it nor who comes to
live here. Only that we’ve made it. Would you have missed this, no matter what
price they make you pay for it afterward?"
"No," said Mallory.
#
Roark had wanted to rent one of the houses for himself and spend the summer
there, the first summer of Monadnock Valley’s existence. But before the resort
was open, he received a wire from New York.
"I told you I would, didn’t I? It took five years to get rid of my friends and
brothers, but the Aquitania is now mine--and yours. Come to finish it. Kent
Lansing."
So he went back to New York--to see the rubble and cement dust cleared away from
the hulk of the Unfinished Symphony, to see derricks swing girders high over
Central Park, to see the gaps of windows filled, the broad decks spread over the
roofs of the city, the Aquitania Hotel completed, glowing at night in the Park’s
skyline.
He had been very busy in the last two years. Monadnock Valley had not been his
only commission. From different states, from unexpected parts of the country,
calls had come for him: private homes, small office buildings, modest shops. He
had built them--snatching a few hours of sleep on trains and planes that carried
him from Monadnock Valley to distant small towns. The story of every commission
he received was the same: "I was in New York and I liked the Enright House." "I
saw the Cord Building." "I saw a picture of that temple they tore down." It was
as if an underground stream flowed through the country and broke out in sudden
springs that shot to the surface at random, in unpredictable places. They were
small, inexpensive jobs--but he was kept working.
That summer, with Monadnock Valley completed, he had no time to worry about its
future fate. But Steven Mallory worried about it. "Why don’t they advertise it,
Howard? Why the sudden silence? Have you noticed? There was so much talk about
their grand project, so many little items in print--before they started. There
was less and less while we were doing it. And now? Mr. Bradley and company have
gone deaf-mute. Now, when you’d expect them to stage a press agent’s orgy. Why?"
"I wouldn’t know," said Roark. "I’m an architect, not a rental agent. Why should
you worry? We’ve done our job, let them do theirs in their own way."
"It’s a damn queer way. Did you see their ads--the few they’ve let dribble out?
They say all the things you told them, about rest, peace and privacy--but how
they say it! Do you know what those ads amount to in effect? ’Come to Monadnock
Valley and be bored to death.’ It sounds--it actually sounds as if they were
trying to keep people away."
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"I don’t read ads, Steve."
But within a month of its opening every house in Monadnock Valley was rented.
The people who came were a strange mixture: society men and women who could have
afforded more fashionable resorts, young writers and unknown artists, engineers
and newspapermen and factory workers. Suddenly, spontaneously, people were
talking about Monadnock Valley. There was a need for that kind of a resort, a
need no one had tried to satisfy. The place became news, but it was private
news; the papers had not discovered it. Mr. Bradley had no press agents; Mr.
Bradley and his company had vanished from public life. One magazine,
unsolicited, printed four pages of photographs of Monadnock Valley, and sent a
man to interview Howard Roark. By the end of summer the houses were leased in
advance for the following year. In October, early one morning, the door of
Roark’s reception room flew open and Steven Mallory rushed in, making straight
for Roark’s office. The secretary tried to stop him; Roark was working and no
interruptions were allowed. But Mallory shoved her aside and tore into the
office, slamming the door behind. She noticed that he held a newspaper in his
hand.
Roark glanced up at him, from the drafting table, and dropped his pencil. He
knew that this was the way Mallory’s face had looked when he shot at Ellsworth
Toohey.
"Well, Howard? Do you want to know why you got Monadnock Valley?"
He threw the newspaper down on the table. Roark saw the heading of a story on
the third page: "Caleb Bradley arrested."
"It’s all there," said Mallory. "Don’t read it. It will make you sick."
"All right, Steve, what is it?"
"They sold two hundred percent of it."
"Who did? Of what?"
"Bradley and his gang. Of Monadnock Valley." Mallory spoke with a forced,
vicious, self-torturing precision. "They thought it was worthless--from the
first. They got the land practically for nothing--they thought it was no place
for a resort at all--out of the way, with no bus lines or movie theaters
around--they thought the time wasn’t right and the public wouldn’t go for it.
They made a lot of noise and sold snares to a lot of wealthy suckers--it was
just a huge fraud. They sold two hundred percent of the place. They got twice
what it cost them to build it. They were certain it would fail. They wanted it
to fail. They expected no profits to distribute. They had a nice scheme ready
for how to get out of it when the place went bankrupt. They were prepared for
anything--except for seeing it turn into the kind of success it is. And they
couldn’t go on--because now they’d have to pay their backers twice the amount
the place earned each year. And it’s earning plenty. And they thought they had
arranged for certain failure. Howard, don’t you understand? They chose you as
the worst architect they could find!"
Roark threw his head back and laughed.
"God damn you, Howard! It’s not funny!"
"Sit down, Steve. Stop shaking. You look as if you’d just seen a whole field of
butchered bodies."
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"I have. I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen the root. I’ve seen what makes such fields
possible. What do the damn fools think of as horror? Wars, murders, fires,
earthquakes? To hell with that! This is horror--that story in the paper. That’s
what men should dread and fight and scream about and call the worst shame on
their record. Howard, I’m thinking of all the explanations of evil and all the
remedies offered for it through the centuries. None of them worked. None of them
explained or cured anything. But the root of evil--my drooling beast--it’s
there. Howard, in that story. In that--and in the souls of the smug bastards
who’ll read it and say: ’Oh well, genius must always struggle, it’s good for
’em’--and then go and look for some village idiot to help, to teach him how to
weave baskets. That’s the drooling beast in action. Howard, think of Monadnock.
Close your eyes and see it. And then think that the men who ordered it, believed
it was the worst thing they could build! Howard, there’s something wrong,
something very terribly wrong in the world if you were given your greatest
job--as a filthy joke!"
"When will you stop thinking about that? About the world and me? When will you
learn to forget it? When will Dominique..."
He stopped. They had not mentioned that name in each other’s presence for five
years. He saw Mallory’s eyes, intent and shocked. Mallory realized that his
words had hurt Roark, hurt him enough to force this admission. But Roark turned
to him and said deliberately:
"Dominique used to think just as you do."
Mallory had never spoken of what he guessed about Roark’s past. Their silence
had always implied that Mallory understood, that Roark knew it, and that it was
not to be discussed. But now Mallory asked:
"Are you still waiting for her to come back? Mrs. Gail Wynand--God damn her!"
Roark said without emphasis:
"Shut up, Steve."
Mallory whispered: "I’m sorry."
Roark walked to his table and said, his voice normal again:
"Go home, Steve, and forget about Bradley. They’ll all be suing one another now,
but we won’t be dragged in and they won’t destroy Monadnock. Forget it, and get
out, I have to work."
He brushed the newspaper off the table, with his elbow, and bent over the sheets
of drafting paper.
#
There was a scandal over the revelations of the financing methods behind
Monadnock Valley, there was a trial, a few gentlemen sentenced to the
penitentiary, and a new management taking Monadnock over for the shareholders.
Roark was not involved. He was busy, and he forgot to read the accounts of the
trial in the papers. Mr. Bradley admitted--in apology to his partners--that he
would be damned if he could have expected a resort built on a crazy, unsociable
plan ever to become successful. "I did all I could--I chose the worst fool I
could find."
Then Austen Heller wrote an article about Howard Roark and Monadnock Valley. He
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spoke of all the buildings Roark had designed, and he put into words the things
Roark had said in structure. Only they were not Austen Heller’s usual quiet
words--they were a ferocious cry of admiration and of anger. "And may we be
damned if greatness must reach us through fraud!"
The article started a violent controversy in art circles.
"Howard," Mallory said one day, some months later, "you’re famous."
"Yes," said Roark, "I suppose so."
"Three-quarters of them don’t know what it’s all about, but they’ve heard the
other one-quarter fighting over your name and so now they feel they must
pronounce it with respect. Of the fighting quarter, four-tenths are those who
hate you, three-tenths are those who feel they must express an opinion in any
controversy, two-tenths are those who play safe and herald any ’discovery,’ and
one-tenth are those who understand. But they’ve all found out suddenly that
there is a Howard Roark and that he’s an architect. The A.G.A. Bulletin refers
to you as a great but unruly talent--and the Museum of the Future has hung up
photographs of Monadnock, the Enright House, the Cord Building and the
Aquitania, under beautiful glass--next to the room where they’ve got Gordon L.
Prescott. And still--I’m glad."
Kent Lansing said, one evening: "Heller did a grand job. Do you remember,
Howard, what I told you once about the psychology of a pretzel? Don’t despise
the middleman. He’s necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make a
very great career: the man who is great, and the man--almost rarer--who is great
enough to see greatness and say so."
Ellsworth Toohey wrote: "The paradox in all this preposterous noise is the fact
that Mr. Caleb Bradley is the victim of a grave injustice. His ethics are open
to censure, but his esthetics were unimpeachable. He exhibited sounder judgment
in matters of architectural merit than Mr. Austen Heller, the outmoded
reactionary who has suddenly turned art critic. Mr. Caleb Bradley was martyred
by the bad taste of his tenants. In the opinion of this column his sentence
should have been commuted in recognition of his artistic discrimination.
Monadnock Valley is a fraud--but not merely a financial one."
There was little response to Roark’s fame among the solid gentlemen of wealth
who were the steadiest source of architectural commissions. The men who had
said: "Roark? Never heard of him," now said: "Roark? He’s too sensational."
But there were men who were impressed by the simple fact that Roark had built a
place which made money for owners who didn’t want to make money; this was more
convincing than abstract artistic discussions. And there was the one-tenth who
understood. In the year after Monadnock Valley Roark built two private homes in
Connecticut, a movie theater in Chicago, a hotel in Philadelphia.
In the spring of 1936 a western city completed plans for a World’s Fair to be
held next year, an international exposition to be known as "The March of the
Centuries." The committee of distinguished civic leaders in charge of the
project chose a council of the country’s best architects to design the fair. The
civic leaders wished to be conspicuously progressive. Howard Roark was one of
the eight architects chosen.
When he received the invitation, Roark appeared before the committee and
explained that he would be glad to design the fair--alone.
"But you can’t be serious, Mr. Roark," the chairman declared. "After all, with a
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stupendous undertaking of this nature, we want the best that can be had. I mean,
two heads are better than one, you know, and eight heads...why, you can see for
yourself--the best talents of the country, the brightest names--you know,
friendly consultation, co-operation and collaboration--you know what makes great
achievements."
"I do."
"Then you realize..."
"If you want me, you’ll have to let me do it all, alone. I don’t work with
councils."
"You wish to reject an opportunity like this, a shot in history, a chance of
world fame, practically a chance of immortality..."
"I don’t work with collectives. I don’t consult, I don’t cooperate, I don’t
collaborate."
There was a great deal of angry comment on Roark’s refusal, in architectural
circles. People said: "The conceited bastard!" The indignation was too sharp and
raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal
insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any
man living.
"The incident illustrates to perfection," wrote Ellsworth Toohey, "the
antisocial nature of Mr. Howard Roark’s egotism, the arrogance of the unbridled
individualism which he has always personified."
Among the eight chosen to design "The March of the Centuries" were Peter
Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, Ralston Holcombe. "I won’t work with Howard Roark,"
said Peter Keating, when he saw the list of the council, "you’ll have to choose.
It’s he or I." He was informed that Mr. Roark had declined. Keating assumed
leadership over the council. The press stories about the progress of the fair’s
construction referred to "Peter Keating and his associates."
Keating had acquired a sharp, intractable manner in the last few years. He
snapped orders and lost his patience before the smallest difficulty; when he
lost his patience, he screamed at people: he had a vocabulary of insults that
carried a caustic, insidious, almost feminine malice; his face was sullen.
In the fall of 1936 Roark moved his office to the top floor of the Cord
Building. He had thought when he designed that building, that it would be the
place of his office some day. When he saw the inscription: "Howard Roark,
Architect," on his new door, he stopped for a moment; then he walked into the
office. His own room, at the end of a long suite, had three walls of glass, high
over the city. He stopped in the middle of the room. Through the broad panes, he
could see the Fargo Store, the Enright House, the Aquitania Hotel. He walked to
the windows facing south and stood there for a long time. At the tip of
Manhattan, far in the distance, he could see the Dana Building by Henry Cameron.
On an afternoon of November, returning to his office after a visit to the site
of a house under construction on Long Island, Roark entered the reception room,
shaking his drenched raincoat, and saw a look of suppressed excitement on the
face of his secretary; she had been waiting impatiently for his return.
"Mr. Roark, this is probably something very big," she said. "I made an
appointment for you for three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. At his office."
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"Whose office?"
"He telephoned half an hour ago. Mr. Gail Wynand."
2.
A SIGN hung over the entrance door, a reproduction of the paper’s masthead:
#
THE NEW YORK BANNER
#
The sign was small, a statement of fame and power that needed no emphasis; it
was like a fine, mocking smile that justified the building’s bare ugliness; the
building was a factory scornful of all ornament save the implications of that
masthead.
The entrance lobby looked like the mouth of a furnace; elevators drew a stream
of human fuel and spat it out. The men did not hurry, but they moved with
subdued haste, the propulsion of purpose; nobody loitered in that lobby. The
elevator doors clicked like valves, a pulsating rhythm in their sound. Drops of
red and green light flashed on a wall board, signaling the progress of cars high
in space.
It looked as if everything in that building were run by such control boards in
the hands of an authority aware of every motion, as if the building were flowing
with channeled energy, functioning smoothly, soundlessly, a magnificent machine
that nothing could destroy. Nobody paid any attention to the redheaded man who
stopped in the lobby for a moment.
Howard Roark looked up at the tiled vault. He had never hated anyone. Somewhere
in this building was its owner, the man who had made him feel his nearest
approach to hatred.
Gail Wynand glanced at the small clock on his desk. In a few minutes he had an
appointment with an architect. The interview, he thought, would not be
difficult; he had held many such interviews in his life; he merely had to speak,
he knew what he wanted to say, and nothing was required of the architect except
a few sounds signifying understanding.
His glance went from the clock back to the sheets of proofs on his desk. He read
an editorial by Alvah Scarret on the public feeding of squirrels in Central
Park, and a column by Ellsworth Toohey on the great merits of an exhibition of
paintings done by the workers of the City Department of Sanitation. A buzzer
rang on his desk, and his secretary’s voice said: "Mr. Howard Roark, Mr.
Wynand."
"Okay," said Wynand, flicking the switch off. As his hand moved back, he noticed
the row of buttons at the edge of his desk, bright little knobs with a color
code of their own, each representing the end of a wire that stretched to some