by Ayn Rand
The advertisements for Sermons in Stone carried quotations from critics: "Magnificent!" "A stupendous achievement!" "Unequaled in all art history!" "Your chance to get acquainted with a charming man and a profound thinker." "Mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to the title of intellectual."
There seemed to be a great many aspiring to that title. Readers acquired erudition without study, authority without cost, judgment without effort. It was pleasant to look at buildings and criticize them with a professional manner and with the memory of page 439; to hold artistic discussions and exchange the same sentences from the same paragraphs. In distinguished drawing rooms one could soon hear it said: "Architecture? Oh, yes, Ellsworth Toohey."
According to his principles, Ellsworth M. Toohey listed no architect by name in the text of his book--"the myth-building, hero-worshiping method of historical research has always been obnoxious to me." The names appeared only in footnotes. Several of these referred to Guy Francon, "who has a tendency to the overornate, but must be commended for his loyalty to the strict tradition of Classicism." One note referred to Henry Cameron, "prominent once as one of the fathers of the so-called modern school of architecture and relegated since to a well-deserved oblivion. Vox populi vox dei."
In February of 1925 Henry Cameron retired from practice.
For a year, he had known that the day would come. He had not spoken of it to Roark, but they both knew and went on, expecting nothing save to go on as long as it was still possible. A few commissions had dribbled into their office in the past year, country cottages, garages, remodeling of old buildings. They took anything. But the drops stopped. The pipes were dry. The water had been turned off by a society to whom Cameron had never paid his bill.
Simpson and the old man in the reception room had been dismissed long ago. Only Roark remained, to sit still through the winter evenings and look at Cameron's body slumped over his desk, arms flung out, head on arms, a bottle glistening under the lamp.
Then, one day in February, when Cameron had touched no alcohol for weeks, he reached for a book on a shelf and collapsed at Roark's feet, suddenly, simply, finally. Roark took him home and the doctor stated that an attempt to leave his bed would be all the death sentence Cameron needed. Cameron knew it. He lay still on his pillow, his hands dropped obediently one at each side of his body, his eyes unblinking and empty. Then he said:
"You'll close the office for me, Howard, will you?"
"Yes," said Roark.
Cameron closed his eyes, and would say nothing else, and Roark sat all night by his bed, not knowing whether the old man slept or not.
A sister of Cameron's appeared from somewhere in New Jersey. She was a meek little old lady with white hair, trembling hands and a face one could never remember, quiet, resigned and gently hopeless. She had a meager little income and she assumed the responsibility of taking her brother to her home in New Jersey; she had never married and had no one else in the world; she was neither glad nor sorry of the burden; she had lost all capacity for emotion many years ago.
On the day of his departure Cameron handed to Roark a letter he had written in the night, written painfully, an old drawing board on his knees, a pillow propping his back. The letter was addressed to a prominent architect; it was Roark's introduction to a job. Roark read it and, looking at Cameron, not at his own hands, tore the letter across, folded the pieces and tore it again.
"No," said Roark. "You're not going to ask them for anything. Don't worry about me."
Cameron nodded and kept silent for a long time.
Then he said:
"You'll close up the office, Howard. You'll let them keep the furniture for their rent. But you'll take the drawing that's on the wall in my room there and you'll ship it to me. Only that. You'll burn everything else. All the papers, the files, the drawings, the contracts, everything."
"Yes," said Roark.
Miss Cameron came with the orderlies and the stretcher, and they rode in an ambulance to the ferry. At the entrance to the ferry, Cameron said to Roark:
"You're going back now." He added: "You'll come to see me, Howard.... Not too often ..."
Roark turned and walked away, while they were carrying Cameron to the pier. It was a gray morning and there was the cold, rotting smell of the sea in the air. A gull dipped low over the street, gray like a floating piece of newspaper, against a corner of damp, streaked stone.
That evening, Roark went to Cameron's closed office. He did not turn on the lights. He made a fire in the Franklin heater in Cameron's room, and emptied drawer after drawer into the fire, not looking down at them. The papers rustled dryly in the silence, a thin odor of mold rose through the dark room, and the fire hissed, crackling, leaping in bright streaks. At times a white flake with charred edges would flutter out of the flames. He pushed it back with the end of a steel ruler.
There were drawings of Cameron's famous buildings and of buildings unbuilt; there were blueprints with the thin white lines that were girders still standing somewhere; there were contracts with famous signatures; and at times, from out of the red glow, there flashed a sum of seven figures written on yellowed paper, flashed and went down, in a thin burst of sparks.
From among the letters in an old folder, a newspaper clipping fluttered to the floor. Roark picked it up. It was dry, brittle and yellow, and it broke at the folds, in his fingers. It was an interview given by Henry Cameron, dated May 7, 1892. It said: "Architecture is not a business, not a career, but a crusade and a consecration to a joy that justifies the existence of the earth." He dropped the clipping into the fire and reached for another folder.
He gathered every stub of pencil from Cameron's desk and threw them in also.
He stood over the heater. He did not move, he did not look down; he felt the movement of the glow, a faint shudder at the edge of his vision. He looked at the drawing of the skyscraper that had never been built, hanging on the wall before him.
It was Peter Keating's third year with the firm of Francon & Heyer. He carried his head high, his body erect with studied uprightness; he looked like the picture of a successful young man in advertisements for high-priced razors or medium-priced cars.
He dressed well and watched people noticing it. He had an apartment off Park Avenue, modest but fashionable, and he bought three valuable etchings as well as a first edition of a classic he had never read nor opened since. Occasionally, he escorted clients to the Metropolitan Opera. He appeared, once, at a fancy-dress Arts Ball and created a sensation by his costume of a medieval stonecutter, scarlet velvet and tights; he was mentioned in a society-page account of the event--the first mention of his name in print--and he saved the clipping.
He had forgotten his first building, and the fear and doubt of its birth. He had learned that it was so simple. His clients would accept anything, so long as he gave them an imposing facade, a majestic entrance and a regal drawing room, with which to astound their guests. It worked out to everyone's satisfaction: Keating did not care so long as his clients were impressed, the clients did not care so long as their guests were impressed, and the guests did not care anyway.
Mrs. Keating rented her house in Stanton and came to live with him in New York. He did not want her; he could not refuse--because she was his mother and he was not expected to refuse. He met her with some eagerness; he could at least impress her by his rise in the world. She was not impressed; she inspected his rooms, his clothes, his bank books and said only: "It'll do, Petey--for the time being."
She made one visit to his office and departed within a half-hour. That evening he had to sit still, squeezing and cracking his knuckles, for an hour and a half, while she gave him advice. "That fellow Whithers had a much more expensive suit than yours, Petey. That won't do. You've got to watch your prestige before those boys. The little one who brought in those blueprints--I didn't like the way he spoke to you.... Oh, nothing, nothing, only I'd keep my eye on him.... The one with the long nose is no friend of yours.... Never mind, I just know.... Wa
tch out for the one they called Bennett. I'd get rid of him if I were you. He's ambitious. I know the signs...."
Then she asked:
"Guy Francon ... has he any children?"
"One daughter."
"Oh ..." said Mrs. Keating. "What is she like?"
"I've never met her."
"Really, Peter," she said, "it's downright rude to Mr. Francon if you've made no effort to meet his family."
"She's been away at college, Mother. I'll meet her some day. It's getting late, Mother, and I've got a lot of work to do tomorrow...."
But he thought of it that night and the following day. He had thought of it before and often. He knew that Francon's daugher had graduated from college long ago and was now working on the Banner, where she wrote a small column on home decoration. He had been able to learn nothing else about her. No one in the office seemed to know her. Francon never spoke of her.
On that following day, at luncheon, Keating decided to face the subject.
"I hear such nice things about your daughter," he said to Francon.
"Where did you hear nice things about her?" Francon asked ominously.
"Oh, well, you know how it is, one hears things. And she writes brilliantly."
"Yes, she writes brilliantly." Francon's mouth snapped shut.
"Really, Guy, I'd love to meet her."
Francon looked at him and sighed wearily.
"You know she's not living with me," said Francon. "She has an apartment of her own--I'm not sure that I even remember the address. ... Oh, I suppose you'll meet her some day. You won't like her, Peter."
"Now, why do you say that?"
"It's one of those things, Peter. As a father I'm afraid I'm a total failure.... Say, Peter, what did Mrs. Mannering say about that new stairway arrangement?"
Keating felt angry, disappointed--and relieved. He looked at Francon's squat figure and wondered what appearance his daughter must have inherited to earn her father's so obvious disfavor. Rich and ugly as sin--like most of them, he decided. He thought that this need not stop him--some day. He was glad only that the day was postponed. He thought, with new eagerness, that he would go to see Catherine tonight.
Mrs. Keating had met Catherine in Stanton. She had hoped that Peter would forget. Now she knew that he had not forgotten, even though he seldom spoke of Catherine and never brought her to his home. Mrs. Keating did not mention Catherine by name. But she chatted about penniless girls who hooked brilliant young men, about promising boys whose careers had been wrecked by marriage to the wrong woman; and she read to him every newspaper account of a celebrity divorcing his plebeian wife who could not live up to his eminent position.
Keating thought, as he walked toward Catherine's house that night, of the few times he had seen her; they had been such unimportant occasions, but they were the only days he remembered of his whole life in New York.
He found, in the middle of her uncle's living room, when she let him in, a mess of letters spread all over the carpet, a portable typewriter, newspapers, scissors, boxes and a pot of glue.
"Oh dear!" said Catherine, flopping limply down on her knees in the midst of the litter. "Oh dear!"
She looked up at him, smiling disarmingly, her hands raised and spread over the crinkling white piles. She was almost twenty now and looked no older than she had looked at seventeen.
"Sit down, Peter. I thought I'd be through before you came, but I guess I'm not. It's Uncle's fan mail and his press clippings. I've got to sort it out, and answer it and file it and write notes of thanks and ... Oh, you should see some of the things people write to him! It's wonderful. Don't stand there. Sit down, will you? I'll be through in a minute."
"You're through right now," he said, picking her up in his arms, carrying her to a chair.
He held her and kissed her and she laughed happily, her head buried on his shoulder. He said:
"Katie, you're an impossible little fool and your hair smells so nice!"
She said: "Don't move, Peter. I'm comfortable."
"Katie, I want to tell you, I had a wonderful time today. They opened the Bordman Building officially this afternoon. You know, down on Broadway, twenty-two floors and a Gothic spire. Francon had indigestion, so I went there as his representative. I designed that building anyway and ... Oh, well, you know nothing about it."
"But I do, Peter. I've seen all your buildings. I have pictures of them. I cut them out of the papers. And I'm making a scrapbook, just like Uncle's. Oh, Peter, it's so wonderful!"
"What?"
"Uncle's scrapbooks, and his letters ... all this ..." She stretched her hands out over the papers on the floor, as if she wanted to embrace them. "Think of it, all these letters coming from all over the country, perfect strangers and yet he means so much to them. And here I am, helping him, me, just nobody, and look what a responsibility I have! It's so touching and so big, what do they matter--all the little things that can happen to us?--when this concerns a whole nation!"
"Yeah? Did he tell you that?"
"He told me nothing at all. But you can't live with him for years without getting some of that ... that wonderful selflessness of his."
He wanted to be angry, but he saw her twinkling smile, her new kind of fire, and he had to smile in answer.
"I'll say this, Katie: it's becoming to you, becoming as hell. You know, you could look stunning if you learned something about clothes. One of these days, I'll take you bodily and drag you down to a good dressmaker. I want you to meet Guy Francon some day. You'll like him."
"Oh? I thought you said once that I wouldn't."
"Did I say that? Well, I didn't really know him. He's a grand fellow. I want you to meet them all. You'd be ... hey, where are you going?" She had noticed the watch on his wrist and was edging away from him.
"I ... It's almost nine o'clock, Peter, and I've got to have this finished before Uncle Ellsworth gets home. He'll be back by eleven, he's making a speech at a labor meeting tonight. I can work while we're talking, do you mind?"
"I certainly do! To hell with your dear uncle's fans! Let him untangle it all himself. You stay just where you are."
She sighed, but put her head on his shoulder obediently. "You mustn't talk like that about Uncle Ellsworth. You don't understand him at all. Have you read his book?"
"Yes! I've read his book and it's grand, it's stupendous, but I've heard nothing but talk of his damn book everywhere I go, so do you mind if we change the subject?"
"You still don't want to meet Uncle Ellsworth?"
"Why? What makes you say that? I'd love to meet him."
"Oh ..."
"What's the matter?"
"You said once that you didn't want to meet him through me."
"Did I? How do you always remember all the nonsense I happen to say?"
"Peter, I don't want you to meet Uncle Ellsworth."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. It's kind of silly of me. But now I just don't want you to. I don't know why."
"Well, forget it then. I'll meet him when the time comes. Katie, listen, yesterday I was standing at the window in my room, and I thought of you, and I wanted so much to have you with me, I almost called you, only it was too late. I get so terribly lonely for you like that, I ..."
She listened, her arms about his neck. And then he saw her looking suddenly past him, her mouth opened in consternation; she jumped up, dashed across the room, and crawled on her hands and knees to reach a lavender envelope lying under a desk.
"Now what on earth?" he demanded angrily.
"It's a very important letter," she said, still kneeling, the envelope held tightly in her little fist, "it's a very important letter and there it was, practically in the wastebasket, I might have swept it out without noticing. It's from a poor widow who has five children and her eldest son wants to be an architect and Uncle Ellsworth is going to arrange a scholarship for him."
"Well," said Keating, rising, "I've had just about enough of this. Let's get out of here, Kati
e. Let's go for a walk. It's beautiful out tonight. You don't seem to belong to yourself in here."
"Oh, fine! Let's go for a walk."
Outside, there was a mist of snow, a dry, fine, weightless snow that hung still in the air, filling the narrow tanks of streets. They walked together, Catherine's arm pressed to his, their feet leaving long brown smears on the white sidewalks.
They sat down on a bench in Washington Square. The snow enclosed the Square, cutting them off from the houses, from the city beyond. Through the shadow of the arch, little dots of light rolled past them, steel-white, green and smeared red.
She sat huddled close to him. He looked at the city. He had always been afraid of it and he was afraid of it now; but he had two fragile protections: the snow and the girl beside him.
"Katie," he whispered, "Katie ..."
"I love you, Peter...."
"Katie," he said, without hesitation, without emphasis, because the certainty of his words allowed no excitement, "we're engaged, aren't we?"
He saw her chin move faintly as it dropped and rose to form one word.
"Yes," she said calmly, so solemnly that the word sounded indifferent.
She had never allowed herself to question the future, for a question would have been an admission of doubt. But she knew, when she pronounced the "yes," that she had waited for this and that she would shatter it if she were too happy.