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and through it; it seemed that the house was not a barrier against the sunlight,

but a bowl to gather it, to concentrate it into brighter radiance than that of

the air outside.

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Mr. Sanborn was first to see the sketches. He studied them, and then he said:

"I...I don’t know quite how to say it, Mr. Roark. It’s great. Cameron was right

about you."

After others had seen the sketches Mr. Sanborn was not certain of this any

longer. Mrs. Sanborn said that the house was awful. And the long evening

arguments were resumed. "Now why, why can’t we add turrets there, on the

corners?" Mrs. Sanborn asked. "There’s plenty of room on those flat roofs." When

she had been talked out of the turrets, she inquired: "Why can’t we have

mullioned windows? What difference would that make? God knows, the windows are

large enough--though why they have to be so large I fail to see, it gives one no

privacy at all--but I’m willing to accept your windows, Mr. Roark, if you’re so

stubborn about it, but why can’t you put mullions on the panes? It will soften

things, and it gives a regal air, you know, a feudal sort of mood."

The friends and relatives to whom Mrs. Sanborn hurried with the sketches did not

like the house at all. Mrs. Walling called it preposterous, and Mrs.

Hooper--crude. Mr. Melander said he wouldn’t have it as a present. Mrs. Applebee

stated that it looked like a shoe factory. Miss Davitt glanced at the sketches

and said with approval: "Oh, how very artistic, my dear! Who designed

it?...Roark?...Roark?...Never heard of him....Well, frankly, Fanny, it looks

like something phony."

The two children of the family were divided on the question. June Sanborn, aged

nineteen, had always thought that all architects were romantic, and she had been

delighted to learn that they would have a very young architect; but she did not

like Roark’s appearance and his indifference to her hints, so she declared that

the house was hideous and she, for one, would refuse to live in it. Richard

Sanborn, aged twenty-four, who had been a brilliant student in college and was

now slowly drinking himself to death, startled his family by emerging from his

usual lethargy and declaring that the house was magnificent. No one could tell

whether it was esthetic appreciation or hatred of his mother or both.

Whitford Sanborn swayed with every new current. He would mutter: "Well, now, not

mullions, of course, that’s utter rubbish, but couldn’t you give her a cornice,

Mr. Roark, to keep peace in the family? Just a kind of a crenelated cornice, it

wouldn’t spoil anything. Or would it?"

The arguments ended when Roark declared that he would not build the house unless

Mr. Sanborn approved the sketches just as they were and signed his approval on

every sheet of the drawings. Mr. Sanborn signed.

Mrs. Sanborn was pleased to learn, shortly afterward, that no reputable

contractor would undertake the erection of the house. "You see?" she stated

triumphantly. Mr. Sanborn refused to see. He found an obscure firm that accepted

the commission, grudgingly and as a special favor to him. Mrs. Sanborn learned

that she had an ally in the contractor, and she broke social precedent to the

extent of inviting him for tea. She had long since lost all coherent ideas about

the house; she merely hated Roark. Her contractor hated all architects on

principle.

The construction of the Sanborn house proceeded through the months of summer and

fall, each day bringing new battles. "But, of course, Mr. Roark, I told you I

wanted three closets in my bedroom, I remember distinctly, it was on a Friday

and we were sitting in the drawing room and Mr. Sanborn was sitting in the big

chair by the window and I was...What about the plans? What plans? How do you

expect me to understand plans?"

"Aunt Rosalie says she can’t possibly climb a circular stairway, Mr. Roark. What

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are we going to do? Select our guests to fit your house?"

"Mr. Hulburt says that kind of ceiling won’t hold....Oh yes, Mr. Hulburt knows a

lot about architecture. He’s spent two summers in Venice."

"June, poor darling, says her room will be dark as a cellar....Well, that’s the

way she feels, Mr. Roark. Even if it isn’t dark, but if it makes her feel dark,

it’s the same thing." Roark stayed up nights, redrafting the plans for the

alterations which he could not avoid. It meant days of tearing down floors,

stairways, partitions already erected; it meant extras piling up on the

contractor’s budget. The contractor shrugged and said: "I told you so. That’s

what always happens when you get one of those fancy architects. You wait and see

what this thing will cost you before he gets through."

Then, as the house took shape, it was Roark who found that he wanted to make a

change. The eastern wing had never quite satisfied him. Watching it rise, he saw

the mistake he had made and the way to correct it; he knew it would bring the

house into a more logical whole. He was making his first steps in building and

they were his first experiments. He could admit it openly. But Mr. Sanborn

refused to allow the change; it was his turn. Roark pleaded with him; once the

picture of that new wing had become clear in Roark’s mind he could not bear to

look at the house as it stood. "It’s not that I disagree with you," Mr. Sanborn

said coldly, "in fact, I do think you’re right. But we cannot afford it. Sorry."

"It will cost you less than the senseless changes Mrs. Sanborn has forced me to

make."

"Don’t bring that up again."

"Mr. Sanborn," Roark asked slowly, "will you sign a paper that you authorize

this change provided it costs you nothing?"

"Certainly. If you can conjure up a miracle to work that."

He signed. The eastern wing was rebuilt. Roark paid for it himself. It cost him

more than the fee he received. Mr. Sanborn hesitated: he wanted to repay it.

Mrs. Sanborn stopped him. "It’s just a low trick," she said, "just a form of

high-pressure. He’s blackmailing you on your better feelings. He expects you to

pay. Wait and see. He’ll ask for it. Don’t let him get away with that." Roark

did not ask for it. Mr. Sanborn never paid him.

When the house was completed, Mrs. Sanborn refused to live in it. Mr. Sanborn

looked at it wistfully, too tired to admit that he loved it, that he had always

wanted a house just like it. He surrendered. The house was not furnished. Mrs.

Sanborn took herself, her husband and her daughter off to Florida for the

winter, "where," she said, "we have a house that’s a decent Spanish, thank

God!--because we bought it ready-made. This is what happens when you venture to

build for yourself, with some half-baked idiot of an architect!" Her son, to

everybody’s amazement, exhibited a sudden burst of savage will power: he refused

to go to Florida; he liked the new house, he would live nowhere else. So three

of the rooms were furnished for him. The family left and he moved alone into the

house on the Hudson. At night, one could see from the river a single rectangle

of yellow, small and lost, among the windows of the huge, dead house.

The bulletin of the Architects’ Guild of America carried a small item:

"A curious incident, which would be amusing if it were not deplorable, is

reported to us about a home recently built by Mr. Whitford Sanborn, noted

industrialist. Designed by one Howard Roark and erected at a cost of well over

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$100,000, this house was found by the family to be uninhabitable. It stands now,

abandoned, as an eloquent witness to professional incompetence."

14.

LUCIUS N. Heyer stubbornly refused to die. He had recovered from the stroke and

returned to his office, ignoring the objections of his doctor and the solicitous

protests of Guy Francon. Francon offered to buy him out. Heyer refused, his

pale, watering eyes staring obstinately at nothing at all. He came to his office

every two or three days; he read the copies of correspondence left in his letter

basket according to custom; he sat at his desk and drew flowers on a clean pad;

then he went home. He walked, dragging his feet slowly; he held his elbows

pressed to his sides and his forearms thrust forward, with the fingers half

closed, like claws; the fingers shook; he could not use his left hand at all. He

would not retire. He liked to see his name on the firm’s stationery.

He wondered dimly why he was no longer introduced to prominent clients, why he

never saw the sketches of their new buildings, until they were half erected. If

he mentioned this, Francon protested: "But, Lucius, I couldn’t think of

bothering you in your condition. Any other man would have retired, long ago."

Francon puzzled him mildly. Peter Keating baffled him. Keating barely bothered

to greet him when they met, and then as an afterthought; Keating walked off in

the middle of a sentence addressed to him; when Heyer issued some minor order to

one of the draftsmen, it was not carried out and the draftsman informed him that

the order had been countermanded by Mr. Keating. Heyer could not understand it;

he always remembered Keating as the diffident boy who had talked to him so

nicely about old porcelain. He excused Keating at first; then he tried to

mollify him, humbly and clumsily; then he conceived an unreasoning fear of

Keating. He complained to Francon. He said, petulantly, assuming the tone of an

authority he could never have exercised: "That boy of yours, Guy, that Keating

fellow, he’s getting to be impossible. He’s rude to me. You ought to get rid of

him."

"Now you see, Lucius," Francon answered dryly, "why I say that you should

retire. You’re overstraining your nerves and you’re beginning to imagine

things."

Then came the competition for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building.

Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures of Hollywood, California, had decided to erect a

stupendous home office in New York, a skyscraper to house a motion-picture

theater and forty floors of offices. A world-wide competition for the selection

of the architect had been announced a year in advance. It was stated that

Cosmo-Slotnick were not merely the leaders in the art of the motion picture, but

embraced all the arts, since all contributed to the creation of the films; and

architecture being a lofty, though neglected, branch of esthetics,

Cosmo-Slotnick were ready to put it on the map.

With the latest news of the casting of I’ll Take a Sailor and the shooting of

Wives for Sale, came stories about the Parthenon and the Pantheon. Miss Sally

O’Dawn was photographed on the steps of the Rheims Cathedral--in a bathing suit,

and Mr. Pratt ("Pardner") Purcell gave an interview, stating that he had always

dreamed of being a master builder, if he hadn’t been a movie actor. Ralston

Holcombe, Guy Francon and Gordon L. Prescott were quoted on the future of

American architecture--in an article written by Miss Dimples Williams, and an

imaginary interview quoted what Sir Christopher Wren would have said about the

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motion picture. In the Sunday supplements there were photographs of

Cosmo-Slotnick starlets in shorts and sweaters, holding T-squares and

slide-rules, standing before drawing boards that bore the legend:

"Cosmo-Slotnick Building" over a huge question mark.

The competition was open to all architects of all countries; the building was to

rise on Broadway and to cost ten million dollars; it was to symbolize the genius

of modern technology and the spirit of the American people; it was announced in

advance as "the most beautiful building in the world." The jury of award

consisted of Mr. Shupe, representing Cosmo, Mr. Slotnick, representing Slotnick.

Professor Peterkin of the Stanton Institute of Technology, the Mayor of the City

of New York, Ralston Holcombe, president of the A.G.A., and Ellsworth M. Toohey.

"Go to it, Peter!" Francon told Keating enthusiastically. "Do your best. Give me

all you’ve got. This is your great chance. You’ll be known the world over if you

win. And here’s what we’ll do: we’ll put your name on our entry, along with the

firm’s. If we win, you’ll get one fifth of the prize. The grand prize is sixty

thousand dollars, you know."

"Heyer will object" said Keating cautiously.

"Let him object. That’s why I’m doing it. He might get it through his head

what’s the decent thing for him to do. And I...well, you know how I feel, Peter.

I think of you as my partner already. I owe it to you. You’ve earned it. This

might be your key to it."

Keating redrew his project five times. He hated it. He hated every girder of

that building before it was born. He worked, his hand trembling. He did not

think of the drawing under his hand. He thought of all the other contestants, of

the man who might win and be proclaimed publicly as his superior. He wondered

what that other one would do, how the other would solve the problem and surpass

him. He had to beat that man; nothing else mattered; there was no Peter Keating,

there was only a suction chamber, like the kind of tropical plant he’d heard

about, a plant that drew an insect into its vacuum and sucked it dry and thus

acquired its own substance.

He felt nothing but immense uncertainty when his sketches were ready and the

delicate perspective of a white marble edifice lay, neatly finished, before him.

It looked like a Renaissance palace made of rubber and stretched to the height

of forty stories. He had chosen the style of the Renaissance because he knew the

unwritten law that all architectural juries liked columns, and because he

remembered Ralston Holcombe was on the jury. He had borrowed from all of

Holcombe’s favorite Italian palaces. It looked good...it might be good...he was

not sure. He had no one to ask.

He heard these words in his own mind and he felt a wave of blind fury. He felt