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of spring. They did not think of the snow, the frozen clots of earth, wind

whistling through the cracks of planking, thin blankets over army cots, stiff

fingers stretched over coal stoves in the morning, before a pencil could be held

steadily. They remembered only the feeling which is the meaning of spring--one’s

answer to the first blades of grass, the first buds on tree branches, the first

blue of the sky--the singing answer, not to grass, trees and sky, but to the

great sense of beginning, of triumphant progression, of certainty in an

achievement that nothing will stop. Not from leaves and flowers, but from wooden

scaffoldings, from steam shovels, from blocks of stone and sheets of glass

rising out of the earth they received the sense of youth, motion, purpose,

fulfillment.

They were an army and it was a crusade. But none of them thought of it in these

words, except Steven Mallory. Steven Mallory did the fountains and all the

sculpture work of Monadnock Valley. But he came to live at the site long before

he was needed. Battle, thought Steven Mallory, is a vicious concept. There is no

glory in war, and no beauty in crusades of men. But this was a battle, this was

an army and a war--and the highest experience in the life of every man who took

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