第 11 页

with my stupidity, he tells me all about strikes, and conditions in the slums,

and the poor people in the sweatshops, always about others, never about himself.

A friend of his told me that Uncle could be a very rich man if he tried, he’s so

clever, but he won’t, he just isn’t interested in money."

"That’s not human."

"Wait till you see him. Oh, he wants to meet you, too. I’ve told him about you.

He calls you ’the T-square Romeo.’"

"Oh, he does, does he?"

"But you don’t understand. He means it kindly. It’s the way he says things.

You’ll have a lot in common. Maybe he could help you. He knows something about

architecture, too. You’ll love Uncle Ellsworth."

"Who?" said Keating.

"My uncle."

"Say," Keating asked, his voice a little husky, "what’s your

uncle’s name?"

"Ellsworth Toohey. Why?" His hands fell limply. He sat staring at her. "What’s

the matter, Peter?"

He swallowed. She saw the jerking motion of his throat. Then he said, his voice

hard:

"Listen, Katie, I don’t want to meet your uncle."

"But why?"

"I don’t want to meet him. Not through you....You see, Katie, you don’t know me.

I’m the kind that uses people. I don’t want to use you. Ever. Don’t let me. Not

you."

"Use me how? What’s the matter? Why?"

"It’s just this: I’d give my eyeteeth to meet Ellsworth Toohey, that’s all." He

laughed harshly. "So he knows something about architecture, does he? You little

fool! He’s the most important man in architecture. Not yet, maybe, but that’s

what he’ll be in a couple of years--ask Francon, that old weasel knows. He’s on

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his way to becoming the Napoleon of all architectural critics, your Uncle

Ellsworth is, just watch him. In the first place, there aren’t many to bother

writing about our profession, so he’s the smart boy who’s going to comer the

market. You should see the big shots in our office lapping up every comma he

puts out in print! So you think maybe he could help me? Well, he could make me,

and he will, and I’m going to meet him some day, when I’m ready for him, as I

met Francon, but not here, not through you. Understand? Not from you!"

"But, Peter, why not?"

"Because I don’t want it that way! Because it’s filthy and I hate it, all of it,

ray work and my profession, and what I’m doing and what I’m going to do! It’s

something I want to keep you out of. You’re all I really have. Just keep out of

it, Katie!"

"Out of what?"

"I don’t know!"

She rose and stood in the circle of his arms, his face hidden against her hip;

she stroked his hair, looking down at him.

"All right, Peter. I think I know. You don’t have to meet him until you want to.

Just tell me when you want it. You can use me if you have to. It’s all right. It

won’t change anything."

When he raised his head, she was laughing softly.

"You’ve worked too hard, Peter. You’re a little unstrung. Suppose I make you

some tea?"

"Oh, I’d forgotten all about it, but I’ve had no dinner today. Had no time."

"Well, of all things! Well, how perfectly disgusting! Come on to the kitchen,

this minute, I’ll see what I can fix up for you!"

He left her two hours later, and he walked away feeling light, clean, happy, his

fears forgotten, Toohey and Francon forgotten. He thought only that he had

promised to come again tomorrow and that it was an unbearably long time to wait.

She stood at the door, after he had gone, her hand on the knob he had touched,

and she thought that he might come tomorrow--or three months later.

#

"When you finish tonight," said Henry Cameron, "I want to see you in my office."

"Yes," said Roark.

Cameron veered sharply on his heels and walked out of the drafting room. It had

been the longest sentence he had addressed to Roark in a month.

Roark had come to this room every morning, had done his task, and had heard no

word of comment. Cameron would enter the drafting room and stand behind Roark

for a long time, looking over his shoulder. It was as if his eyes concentrated

deliberately on trying to throw the steady hand off its course on the paper. The

two other draftsmen botched their work from the mere thought of such an

apparition standing behind them. Roark did not seem to notice it. He went on,

his hand unhurried, he took his time about discarding a blunted pencil and

picking out another. "Uh-huh," Cameron would grunt suddenly. Roark would turn

his head then, politely attentive. "What is it?" he would ask. Cameron would

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turn away without a word, his narrowed eyes underscoring contemptuously the fact

that he considered an answer unnecessary, and would leave the drafting room.

Roark would go on with his drawing.

"Looks bad," Loomis, the young draftsman, confided to Simpson, his ancient

colleague. "The old man doesn’t like this guy. Can’t say that I blame him,

either. Here’s one that won’t last long."

Simpson was old and helpless; he had survived from Cameron’s three-floor office,

had stuck and had never understood it Loomis was young, with the face of a

drugstore-corner lout; he was here because he had been fired from too many other

places.

Both men disliked Roark. He was usually disliked, from the first sight of his

face, anywhere he went His face was closed like the door of a safety vault;

things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He

was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange

quality: it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or

perhaps that he was and they weren’t.

After work he walked the long distance to his home, a tenement near the East

River. He had chosen that tenement because he had been able to get, for

two-fifty a week, its entire top floor, a huge room that had been used for

storage: it had no ceiling and the roof leaked between its naked beams. But it

had a long row of windows, along two of its walls, some panes filled with glass,

others with cardboard, and the windows opened high over the river on one side

and the city on the other.

A week ago Cameron had come into the drafting room and had thrown down on

Roark’s table a violent sketch of a country residence. "See if you can make a

house out of this!" he had snapped and gone without further explanation. He had

not approached Roark’s table during the days that followed. Roark had finished

the drawings last night and left them on Cameron’s desk. This morning, Cameron

had come in, thrown some sketches of steel joints to Roark, ordered him to

appear in his office later and had not entered the drafting room again for the

rest of the day. The others were gone. Roark pulled an old piece of oilcloth

over his table and went to Cameron’s office. His drawings of the country house

were spread on the desk. The light of the lamp fell on Cameron’s cheek, on his

beard, the white threads glistening, on his fist, on a corner of the drawing,

its black lines bright and hard as if embossed on the paper. "You’re fired,"

said Cameron.

Roark stood, halfway across the long room, his weight on one leg, his arms

hanging by his sides, one shoulder raised. "Am I?" he asked quietly, without

moving. "Come here," said Cameron. "Sit down." Roark obeyed.

"You’re too good," said Cameron. "You’re too good for what you want to do with

yourself. It’s no use, Roark. Better now than later."

"What do you mean?’

"It’s no use wasting what you’ve got on an ideal that you’ll never reach, that

they’ll never let you reach. It’s no use, taking that marvelous thing you have

and making a torture rack for yourself out of it. Sell it, Roark. Sell it now.

It won’t be the same, but you’ve got enough in you. You’ve got what they’ll pay

you for, and pay plenty, if you use it their way. Accept them, Roark.

Compromise. Compromise now, because you’ll have to later, anyway, only then

you’ll have gone through things you’ll wish you hadn’t. You don’t know. I do.

Save yourself from that. Leave me. Go to someone else."

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"Did you do that?"

"You presumptuous bastard! How good do you think I said you were? Did I tell you

to compare yourself to..." He stopped because he saw that Roark was smiling.

He looked at Roark, and suddenly smiled in answer, and it was the most painful

thing that Roark had ever seen.

"No," said Cameron softly, "that won’t work, huh? No, it won’t...Well, you’re

right. You’re as good as you think you are. But I want to speak to you. I don’t

know exactly how to go about it. I’ve lost the habit of speaking to men like

you. Lost it? Maybe I’ve never had it. Maybe that’s what frightens me now. Will

you try to understand?"

"I understand. I think you’re wasting your time."

"Don’t be rude. Because I can’t be rude to you now. I want you to listen. Will

you listen and not answer me?"

"Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend it as rudeness."

"You see, of all men, I’m the last one to whom you should have come. I’ll be

committing a crime if I keep you here. Somebody should have warned you against

me. I won’t help you at all. I won’t discourage you. I won’t teach you any

common sense. Instead, I’ll push you on. I’ll drive you the way you’re going

now. I’ll beat you into remaining what you are, and I’ll make you worse....Don’t

you see? In another month I won’t be able to let you go. I’m not sure I can now.

So don’t argue with me and go. Get out while you can."

"But can I? Don’t you think it’s too late for both of us? It was too late for me

twelve years ago."

"Try it, Roark. Try to be reasonable for once. There’s plenty of big fellows

who’ll take you, expulsion or no expulsion, if I say so. They may laugh at me in

their luncheon speeches, but they steal from me when it suits them, and they

know that I know a good draftsman when I see one. I’ll give you a letter to Guy

Francon. He worked for me once, long ago. I think I fired him, but that wouldn’t

matter. Go to him. You won’t like it at first, but you’ll get used to it. And

you’ll thank me for it many years from now."

"Why are you saying all this to me? That’s not what you want to say. That’s not

what you did."

"That’s why I’m saying it! Because that’s not what I did!...Look, Roark, there’s

one thing about you, the thing I’m afraid of. It’s not just the kind of work you

do; I wouldn’t care, if you were an exhibitionist who’s being different as a

stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It’s a smart racket, to

oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did

that, I wouldn’t worry. But it’s not that. You love your work. God help you, you

love it! And that’s the curse. That’s the brand on your forehead for all of them

to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever

look at the people in the street? Aren’t you afraid of them? I am. They move

past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that’s not the substance

of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That’s

the only kind they fear. I don’t know why. You’re opening yourself up, Roark,

for each and every one of them."

"But I never notice the people in the streets."

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"Do you notice what they’ve done to me?"

"I notice only that you weren’t afraid of them. Why do you ask me to be?"

"That’s just why I’m asking it!" He leaned forward, his fists closing on the

desk before him. "Roark, do you want me to say it? You’re cruel, aren’t you? All

right, I’ll say it: do you want to end up like this? Do you want to be what I

am?" Roark got up and stood against the edge of light on the desk. "If," said

Roark, "at the end of my life, I’ll be what you are today here, in this office,

I shall consider it an honor that I could not have deserved."

"Sit down!" roared Cameron. "I don’t like demonstrations!" Roark looked down at

himself, at the desk, astonished to find himself standing. He said: "I’m sorry.

I didn’t know I got up."

"Well, sit down. Listen. I understand. And it’s very nice of you. But you don’t

know. I thought a few days here would be enough to take the hero worship out of

you. I see it wasn’t. Here you are, saying to yourself how grand old Cameron is,

a noble fighter, a martyr to a lost cause, and you’d just love to die on the

barricades with me and to eat in dime lunch-wagons with me for the rest of your

life. I know, it looks pure and beautiful to you now, at your great old age of

twenty-two. But do you know what it means? Thirty years of a lost cause, that

sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? But do you know how many days there are in thirty

years? Do you know what happens in those days? Roark! Do you know what happens?"

"You don’t want to speak of that."

"No! I don’t want to speak of that! But I’m going to. I want you to hear. I want

you to know what’s in store for you. There will be days when you’ll look at your

hands and you’ll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because

they’ll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them

to do it, and you can’t find that chance, and you can’t bear your living body

because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus

driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he’ll be only asking for a dime,

but that won’t be what you’ll hear; you’ll hear that you’re nothing, that he’s

laughing at you, that it’s written on your forehead, that thing they hate you

for. There will be days when you’ll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to

a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you