第 46 页

207

amused curiosity, but it was respectful. The name of Lois Cook was well known in

the best drawing rooms he visited. The titles of her books were flashed in

conversation like the diamonds in the speaker’s intellectual crown. There was

always a note of challenge in the voices pronouncing them. It sounded as if the

speaker were being very brave. It was a satisfying bravery; it never aroused

antagonism. For an author who did not sell, her name seemed strangely famous and

honored. She was the standard-bearer of a vanguard of intellect and revolt. Only

it was not quite clear to him just exactly what the revolt was against. Somehow,

he preferred not to know.

He designed the house as she wished it. It was a three-floor edifice, part

marble, part stucco, adorned with gargoyles and carriage lanterns. It looked

like a structure from an amusement park.

His sketch of it was reproduced in more publications than any other drawing he

had ever made, with the exception of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. One

commentator expressed the opinion that "Peter Keating is showing a promise of

being more than just a bright young man with a knack for pleasing stuffy moguls

of big business. He is venturing into the field of intellectual experimentation

with a client such as Lois Cook." Toohey referred to the house as "a cosmic

joke."

But a peculiar sensation remained in Keating’s mind: the feeling of an

aftertaste. He would experience a dim flash of it while working on some

important structure he liked; he would experience it in the moments when he felt

proud of his work. He could not identify the quality of the feeling; but he knew

that part of it was a sense of shame.

Once, he confessed it to Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey laughed. "That’s good for you,

Peter. One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one’s own

importance. There’s no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes."

5.

DOMINIQUE had returned to New York. She returned without purpose, merely because

she could not stay in her country house longer than three days after her last

visit to the quarry. She had to be in the city, it was a sudden necessity,

irresistible and senseless. She expected nothing of the city. But she wanted the

feeling of the streets and the buildings holding her there. In the morning, when

she awakened and heard the muffled roar of traffic far below, the sound was a

humiliation, a reminder of where she was and why. She stood at the window, her

arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame; it was as if she held a

piece of the city, all the streets and rooftops outlined on the glass between

her two hands.

She went out alone for long walks. She walked fast, her hands in the pockets of

an old coat, its collar raised. She had told herself that she was not hoping to

meet him. She was not looking for him. But she had to be out in the streets,

blank, purposeless, for hours at a time.

She had always hated the streets of a city. She saw the faces streaming past

her, the faces made alike by fear--fear as a common denominator, fear of

themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce

upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met. She could not define

the nature or the reason of that fear. But she had always felt its presence. She

had kept herself clean and free in a single passion--to touch nothing. She had

liked facing them in the streets, she had liked the impotence of their hatred,

because she offered them nothing to be hurt.

208

She was not free any longer. Each step through the streets hurt her now. She was

tied to him--as he was tied to every part of the city. He was a nameless worker

doing some nameless job, lost in these crowds, dependent on them, to be hurt by

any one of them, to be shared by her with the whole city. She hated the thought

of him on the sidewalks people had used. She hated the thought of a clerk

handing to him a package of cigarettes across a counter. She hated the elbows

touching his elbows in a subway train. She came home, after these walks, shaking

with fever. She went out again the next day.

When the term of her vacation expired, she went to the office of the Banner in

order to resign. Her work and her column did not seem amusing to her any longer.

She stopped Alvah Scarret’s effusive greetings. She said: "I just came back to

tell you that I’m quitting, Alvah." He looked at her stupidly. He uttered only:

"Why?"

It was the first sound from the outside world to reach her in a long time. She

had always acted on the impulse of the moment, proud of the freedom to need no

reasons for her actions. Now she had to face a "why?" that carried an answer she

could not escape. She thought: Because of him, because she was letting him

change the course of her life. It would be another violation; she could see him

smiling as he had smiled on the path in the woods. She had no choice. Either

course taken would be taken under compulsion: she could leave her work, because

he had made her want to leave it, or she could remain, hating it, in order to

keep her life unchanged, in defiance of him. The last was harder.

She raised her head. She said: "Just a joke, Alvah. Just wanted to see what

you’d say. I’m not quitting."

#

She had been back at work for a few days when Ellsworth Toohey walked into her

office.

"Hello, Dominique," he said. "Just heard you’re back."

"Hello, Ellsworth."

"I’m glad. You know, I’ve always had the feeling that you’ll walk out on us some

morning without any reason."

"The feeling, Ellsworth? Or the hope?"

He was looking at her, his eyes as kindly, his smile as charming as ever; but

there was a tinge of self-mockery in the charm, as if he knew that she did not

approve of it, and a tinge of assurance, as if he were showing that he would

look kindly and charming just the same.

"You know, you’re wrong there," he said, smiling peacefully. "You’ve always been

wrong about that."

"No. I don’t fit, Ellsworth. Do I?"

"I could, of course, ask: Into what? But supposing I don’t ask it. Supposing I

just say that people who don’t fit have their uses also, as well as those who

do? Would you like that better? Of course, the simplest thing to say is that

I’ve always been a great admirer of yours and always will be."

"That’s not a compliment."

209

"Somehow, I don’t think we’ll ever be enemies, Dominique, if that’s what you’d

like."

"No, I don’t think we’ll ever be enemies, Ellsworth. You’re the most comforting

person I know."

"Of course."

"In the sense I mean?"

"In any sense you wish."

On the desk before her lay the rotogravure section of the Sunday Chronicle. It

was folded on the page that bore the drawing of the Enright House. She picked it

up and held it out to him, her eyes narrowed in a silent question. He looked at

the drawing, then his glance moved to her face and returned to the drawing. He

let the paper drop back on the desk.

"As independent as an insult, isn’t it?" he said.

"You know, Ellsworth, I think the man who designed this should have committed

suicide. A man who can conceive a thing as beautiful as this should never allow

it to be erected. He should not want to exist. But he will let it be built, so

that women will hang out diapers on his terraces, so that men will spit on his

stairways and draw dirty pictures on his walls. He’s given it to them and he’s

made it part of them, part of everything. He shouldn’t have offered it for men

like you to look at. For men like you to talk about. He’s defiled his own work

by the first word you’ll utter about it. He’s made himself worse than you are.

You’ll be committing only a mean little indecency, but he’s committed a

sacrilege. A man who knows what he must have known to produce this should not

have been able to remain alive."

"Going to write a piece about this?" he asked.

"No. That would be repeating his crime."

"And talking to me about it?"

She looked at him. He was smiling pleasantly.

"Yes of course," she said, "that’s part of the same crime also."

"Let’s have dinner together one of these days, Dominique," he said. "You really

don’t let me see enough of you."

"All right," she said. "Anytime you wish."

#

At his trial for the assault on Ellsworth Toohey, Steven Mallory refused to

disclose his motive. He made no statement. He seemed indifferent to any possible

sentence. But Ellsworth Toohey created a minor sensation when he appeared,

unsolicited, in Mallory’s defense. He pleaded with the judge for leniency; he

explained that he had no desire to see Mallory’s future and career destroyed.

Everybody in the courtroom was touched--except Steven Mallory. Steven Mallory

listened and looked as if he were enduring some special process of cruelty. The

judge gave him two years and suspended the sentence.

There was a great deal of comment on Toohey’s extraordinary generosity. Toohey

dismissed all praise, gaily and modestly. "My friends," was his remark--the one

210

to appear in all the papers--"I refuse to be an accomplice in the manufacturing

of martyrs."

#

At the first meeting of the proposed organization of young architects Keating

concluded that Toohey had a wonderful ability for choosing people who fitted

well together. There was an air about the eighteen persons present which he

could not define, but which gave him a sense of comfort, a security he had not

experienced in solitude or in any other gathering; and part of the comfort was

the knowledge that all the others felt the same way for the same unaccountable

reason. It was a feeling of brotherhood, but somehow not of a sainted or noble

brotherhood; yet this precisely was the comfort--that one felt, among them, no

necessity for being sainted or noble.

Were it not for this kinship, Keating would have been disappointed in the

gathering. Of the eighteen seated about Toohey’s living room, none was an

architect of distinction, except himself and Gordon L. Prescott, who wore a

beige turtle-neck sweater and looked faintly patronizing, but eager. Keating had

never heard the names of the others. Most of them were beginners, young, poorly

dressed and belligerent. Some were only draftsmen. There was one woman architect

who had built a few small private homes, mainly for wealthy widows; she had an

aggressive manner, a tight mouth and a fresh petunia in her hair. There was a

boy with pure, innocent eyes. There was an obscure contractor with a fat,

expressionless face. There was a tall, dry woman who was an interior decorator,

and another woman of no definite occupation at all.

Keating could not understand what exactly was to be the purpose of the group,

though there was a great deal of talk. None of the talk was too coherent, but

all of it seemed to have the same undercurrent. He felt that the undercurrent

was the one thing clear among all the vague generalities, even though nobody

would mention it. It held him there, as it held the others, and he had no desire

to define it.

The young men talked a great deal about injustice, unfairness, the cruelty of

society toward youth, and suggested that everyone should have his future

commissions guaranteed when he left college. The woman architect shrieked

briefly something about the iniquity of the rich. The contractor barked that it

was a hard world and that "fellows gotta help one another." The boy with the

innocent eyes pleaded that "we could do so much good..." His voice had a note of

desperate sincerity which seemed embarrassing and out of place. Gordon L.

Prescott declared that the A.G.A. was a bunch of old fogies with no conception

of social responsibility and not a drop of virile blood in the lot of them, and

that it was time to kick them in the pants anyway. The woman of indefinite

occupation spoke about ideals and causes, though nobody could gather just what

these were.

Peter Keating was elected chairman, unanimously. Gordon L. Prescott was elected

vice-chairman and treasurer. Toohey declined all nominations. He declared that

he would act only as an unofficial advisor. It was decided that the organization

would be named the "Council of American Builders." It was decided that

membership would not be restricted to architects, but would be open to "allied

crafts" and to "all those holding the interests of the great profession of

building at heart."

Then Toohey spoke. He spoke at some length, standing up, leaning on the knuckles

of one hand against a table. His great voice was soft and persuasive. It filled

the room, but it made his listeners realize that it could have filled a Roman

amphitheater; there was something subtly flattering in this realization, in the

sound of the powerful voice being held in check for their benefit.

211

"...and thus, my friends, what the architectural profession lacks is an

understanding of its own social importance. This lack is due to a double cause:

to the anti-social nature of our entire society and to your own inherent

modesty. You have been conditioned to think of yourselves merely as breadwinners

with no higher purpose than to earn your fees and the means of your own

existence. Isn’t it time, my friends, to pause and to redefine your position in

society? Of all the crafts, yours is the most important. Important, not in the

amount of money you might make, not in the degree of artistic skill you might

exhibit, but in the service you render to your fellow men. You are those who

provide mankind’s shelter. Remember this and then look at our cities, at our

slums, to realize the gigantic task awaiting you. But to meet this challenge you