第 76 页

Toohey rose to his feet.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Toohey. I have no desire whatever to meet Mrs.

Peter Keating."

"I didn’t think you would have, Mr. Wynand. Not on my unsupported suggestion. I

foresaw that several hours ago. In fact, as early as this morning. So I took the

liberty of preparing for myself another chance to discuss this with you. I took

the liberty of sending you a present. When you get home tonight, you will find

my gift there. Then, if you feel that I was justified in expecting you to do so,

you can telephone me and I shall come over at once so that you will be able to

tell me whether you wish to meet Mrs. Peter Keating or not."

"Toohey, this is unbelievable, but I believe you’re offering me a bribe."

"I am."

"You know, that’s the sort of stunt you should be allowed to get away with

completely--or lose your job for."

"I shall rest upon your opinion of my present tonight."

"All right, Mr. Toohey, I’ll look at your present."

Toohey bowed and turned to go. He was at the door when Wynand added:

345

"You know, Toohey, one of these days you’ll bore me."

"I shall endeavor not to do so until the right time," said Toohey, bowed again

and went out.

When Wynand returned to his home, he had forgotten all about Ellsworth Toohey.

That evening, in his penthouse, Wynand had dinner with a woman who had a white

face, soft brown hair and, behind her, three centuries of fathers and brothers

who would have killed a man for a hint of the things which Gail Wynand had

experienced with her.

The line of her arm, when she raised a crystal goblet of water to her lips, was

as perfect as the lines of the silver candelabra produced by a matchless

talent--and Wynand observed it with the same appreciation. The candlelight

flickering on the planes of her face made a sight of such beauty that he wished

she were not alive, so that he could look, say nothing and think what he

pleased.

"In a month or two, Gail," she said, smiling lazily, "when it gets really cold

and nasty, let’s take the I Do and sail somewhere straight into the sun, as we

did last winter."

I Do was the name of Wynand’s yacht. He had never explained that name to anyone.

Many women had questioned him about it. This woman had questioned him before.

Now, as he remained silent, she asked it again:

"By the way, darling, what does it mean--the name of that wonderful mudscow of

yours?"

"It’s a question I don’t answer," he said. "One of them."

"Well, shall I get my wardrobe ready for the cruise?"

"Green is your best color. It looks well at sea. I love to watch what it does to

your hair and your arms. I shall miss the sight of your naked arms against green

silk. Because tonight is the last time."

Her fingers lay still on the stem of the glass. Nothing had given her a hint

that tonight was to be the last time. But she knew that these words were all he

needed to end it. All of Wynand’s women had known that they were to expect an

end like this and that it was not to be discussed. After a while, she asked, her

voice low:

"What reason, Gail?"

"The obvious one."

He reached into his pocket and took out a diamond bracelet; it flashed a cold,

brilliant fire in the candlelight: its heavy links hung limply in his fingers.

It had no case, no wrapper. He tossed it across the table.

"A memorial, my dear," he said. "Much more valuable than that which it

commemorates."

The bracelet hit the goblet and made it ring, a thin, sharp cry, as if the glass

had screamed for the woman. The woman made no sound. He knew that it was

horrible, because she was the kind to whom one did not offer such gifts at such

346

moments, just as all those other women had been; and because she would not

refuse, as all the others had not refused.

"Thank you, Gail," she said, clasping the bracelet about her wrist, not looking

at him across the candles.

Later, when they had walked into the drawing room, she stopped and the glance

between her long eyelashes moved toward the darkness where the stairway to his

bedroom began. "To let me earn the memorial, Gail?" she asked, her voice flat.

He shook his head.

"I had really intended that," he said. "But I’m tired."

When she had gone, he stood in the hall and thought that she suffered, that the

suffering was real, but after a while none of it would be real to her, except

the bracelet. He could no longer remember the time when such a thought had the

power to give him bitterness. When he recalled that he, too, was concerned in

the event of this evening, he felt nothing, except wonder why he had not done

this long ago.

He went to his library. He sat reading for a few hours. Then he stopped. He

stopped short, without reason, in the middle of an important sentence. He had no

desire to read on. He had no desire ever to make another effort.

Nothing had happened to him--a happening is a positive reality, and no reality

could ever make him helpless; this was some enormous negative--as if everything

had been wiped out, leaving a senseless emptiness, faintly indecent because it

seemed so ordinary, so unexciting, like murder wearing a homey smile.

Nothing was gone--except desire; no, more than that--the root, the desire to

desire. He thought that a man who loses his eyes still retains the concept of

sight; but he had heard of a ghastlier blindness--if the brain centers

controlling vision are destroyed, one loses even the memory of visual

perception.

He dropped the book and stood up. He had no wish to remain on that spot; he had

no wish to move from it. He thought that he should go to sleep. It was much too

early for him, but he could get up earlier tomorrow. He went to his bedroom, he

took a shower, he put on his pyjamas. Then he opened a drawer of his dresser and

saw the gun he always kept there. It was the immediate recognition, the sudden

stab of interest, that made him pick it up.

It was the lack of shock, when he thought he would kill himself, that convinced

him he should. The thought seemed so simple, like an argument not worth

contesting. Like a bromide.

Now he stood at the glass wall, stopped by that very simplicity. One could make

a bromide of one’s life, he thought; but not of one’s death.

He walked to the bed and sat down, the gun hanging in his hand. A man about to

die, he thought, is supposed to see his whole life in a last flash. I see

nothing. But I could make myself see it. I could go over it again, by force. Let

me find in it either the will to live on or the reason to end it now.

#

Gail Wynand, aged twelve, stood in the darkness under a broken piece of wall on

the shore of the Hudson, one arm swung back, the fist closed, ready to strike,

waiting.

347

The stones under his feet rose to the remnant of a corner; one side of it hid

him from the street; there was nothing behind the other side but a sheer drop to

the river. An unlighted, unpaved stretch of waterfront lay before him, sagging

structures and empty spaces of sky, warehouses, a crooked cornice hanging

somewhere over a window with a malignant light.

In a moment he would have to fight--and he knew it would be for his life. He

stood still. His closed fist, held down and back, seemed to clutch invisible

wires that stretched to every key spot of his lanky, fleshless body, under the

ragged pants and shirt, to the long, swollen tendon of his bare arm, to the taut

cords of his neck. The wires seemed to quiver; the body was motionless. He was

like a new sort of lethal instrument; if a finger were to touch any part of him,

it would release the trigger.

He knew that the leader of the boys’ gang was looking for him and that the

leader would not come alone. Two of the boys he expected fought with knives; one

had a killing to his credit. He waited for them, his own pockets empty. He was

the youngest member of the gang and the last to join. The leader had said that

he needed a lesson.

It had started over the looting of the barges on the river, which the gang was

planning. The leader had decided that the job would be done at night. The gang

had agreed; all but Gail Wynand. Gail Wynand had explained, in a slow,

contemptuous voice, that the Little Plug-Uglies, farther down the river, had

tried the same stunt last week and had left six members in the hands of the

cops, plus two in the cemetery; the job had to be done at daybreak, when no one

would expect it. The gang hooted him. It made no difference. Gail Wynand was not

good at taking orders. He recognized nothing but the accuracy of his own

judgment. So the leader wished to settle the issue once and for all. The three

boys walked so softly that the people behind the thin walls they passed could

not hear their steps. Gail Wynand heard them a block away. He did not move in

his corner; only his wrist stiffened a little.

When the moment was right, he leaped. He leaped straight into space, without

thought of landing, as if a catapult had sent him on a flight of miles. His

chest struck the head of one enemy, his stomach another, his feet smashed into

the chest of the third. The four of them went down. When the three lifted their

faces, Gail Wynand was unrecognizable; they saw a whirl suspended in the air

above them, and something darted at them out of the whirl with a scalding touch.

He had nothing but his two fists; they had five fists and a knife on their side;

it did not seem to count. They heard their blows landing with a thud as on hard

rubber; they felt the break in the thrust of their knife, which told that it had

been stopped and had cut its way out. But the thing they were fighting was

invulnerable. He had no time to feel; he was too fast; pain could not catch up

with him; he seemed to leave it hanging in the air over the spot where it had

hit him and where he was no longer in the next second.

He seemed to have a motor between his shoulder blades to propel his arms in two

circles; only the circles were visible; the arms had vanished like the spokes of

a speeding wheel. The circle landed each time, and stopped whatever it had

landed upon, without a break in its spin. One boy saw his knife disappear in

Wynand’s shoulder; he saw the jerk of the shoulder that sent the knife slicing

down through Wynand’s side and flung it out at the belt. It was the last thing

the boy saw. Something happened to his chin and he did not feel it when the back

of his head struck against a pile of old bricks.

For a long time the two others fought the centrifuge that was now spattering red

348

drops against the walls around them. But it was no use. They were not fighting a

man. They were fighting a bodiless human will.

When they gave up, groaning among the bricks, Gail Wynand said in a normal

voice: "We’ll pull it off at daybreak," and walked away. From that moment on, he

was the leader of the gang.

The looting of the barges was done at daybreak, two days later, and came off

with brilliant success.

Gail Wynand lived with his father in the basement of an old house in the heart

of Hell’s Kitchen. His father was a longshoreman, a tall, silent, illiterate man

who had never gone to school. His own father and his grandfather were of the

same kind, and they knew of nothing but poverty in their family. But somewhere

far back in the line there had been a root of aristocracy, the glory of some

noble ancestor and then some tragedy, long since forgotten, that had brought the

descendants to the gutter. Something about all the Wynands--in tenement, saloon

and jail--did not fit their surroundings. Gail’s father was known on the

waterfront as the Duke.

Gail’s mother had died of consumption when he was two years old. He was an only

son. He knew vaguely that there had been some great drama in his father’s

marriage; he had seen a picture of his mother; she did not look and she was not

dressed like the women of their neighborhood; she was very beautiful. All life

had gone out of his father when she died. He loved Gail; but it was the kind of

devotion that did not require two sentences a week.

Gail did not look like his mother or father. He was a throwback to something no

one could quite figure out; the distance had to be reckoned, not in generations,

but in centuries. He was always too tall for his age, and too thin. The boys

called him Stretch Wynand. Nobody knew what he used for muscles; they knew only

that he used it.

He had worked at one job after another since early childhood. For a long while

he sold newspapers on street corners. One day he walked up to the pressroom boss

and stated that they should start a new service--delivering the paper to the

reader’s door in the morning; he explained how and why it would boost

circulation. "Yeah?" said the boss. "I know it will work," said Wynand. "Well,

you don’t run things around here," said the boss. "You’re a fool," said Wynand.

He lost the job.

He worked in a grocery store. He ran errands, he swept the soggy wooden floor,

he sorted out barrels of rotting vegetables, he helped to wait on customers,

patiently weighing a pound of flour or filling a pitcher with milk from a huge

can. It was like using a steamroller to press handkerchiefs. But he set his

teeth and stuck to it. One day, he explained to the grocer what a good idea it

would be to put milk up in bottles, like whisky. "You shut your trap and go wait

on Mrs. Sullivan there," said the grocer, "don’t you tell me nothing I don’t

know about my business. You don’t run things around here." He waited on Mrs.

Sullivan and said nothing.

He worked in a poolroom. He cleaned spittoons and washed up after drunks. He

heard and saw things that gave him immunity from astonishment for the rest of

his life. He made his greatest effort and learned to keep silent, to keep the