This was so odd a behavior for Alvah Scarret that Wynand lost all desire to pursue the conversation. He drew a line across the editorial, but the blue pencil stroke seemed tired and ended in a blur. He said: "Go and bat out something else, Alvah."
Scarret rose, picked up the strip of paper, turned and left the room without a word.
Wynand looked after him, puzzled, amused and slightly sick.
He had known for several years the trend which his paper had embraced gradually, imperceptibly, without any directive from him. He had noticed the cautious "slanting" of news stories, the half-hints, the vague allusions, the peculiar adjectives peculiarly placed, the stressing of certain themes, the insertion of political conclusions where none was needed. If a story concerned a dispute between employer and employee, the employer was made to appear guilty, simply through wording, no matter what the facts presented. If a sentence referred to the past, it was always "our dark past" or "our dead past." If a statement involved someone's personal motive, it was always "goaded by selfishness" or "egged by greed." A crossword puzzle gave the definition of "obsolescent individuals" and the word came out as "capitalists."
Wynand had shrugged about it, contemptuously amused. His staff, he thought, was well trained: if this was the popular slang of the day, his boys assumed it automatically. It meant nothing at all. He kept it off the editorial page and the rest did not matter. It was no more than a fashion of the moment — and he had survived many changing fashions.
He felt no concern over the "We Don't Read Wynand" campaign. He obtained one of their men's-room stickers, pasted it on the windshield of his own Lincoln, added the words: "We don't either," and kept it there long enough to be discovered and snapped by a photographer from a neutral paper. In the course of his career he had been fought, damned, denounced by the greatest publishers of his time, by the shrewdest coalitions of financial power. He could not summon any apprehension over the activities of somebody named Gus Webb.
He knew that the Banner was losing some of its popularity. "A temporary fad," he told Scarret, shrugging. He would run a limerick contest, or a series of coupons for victrola records, see a slight spurt of circulation and promptly forget the matter.
He could not rouse himself to full action. He had never felt a greater desire to work. He entered his office each morning with important eagerness. But within an hour he found himself studying the joints of the paneling on the walls and reciting nursery rhymes in his mind. It was not boredom, not the satisfaction of a yawn, but more like the gnawing pull of wishing to yawn and not quite making it. He could not say that he disliked his work. It had merely become distasteful; not enough to force a decision; not enough to make him clench his fists; just enough to contract his nostrils.
He thought dimly that the cause lay in that new trend of the public taste. He saw no reason why he should not follow it and play on it as expertly as he had played on all other fads. But he could not follow. He felt no moral scruples. It was not a positive stand rationally taken; not defiance in the name of a cause of importance; just a fastidious feeling, something pertaining almost to chastity: the hesitation one feels before putting one's foot down into muck. He thought: It doesn't matter — it will not last — I'll be back when the wave swings on to another theme — I think I'd rather sit this one out.
He could not say why the encounter with Alvah Scarret gave him a feeling of uneasiness, sharper than usual. He thought it was funny that Alvah should have switched to that line of tripe. But there had been something else; there had been a personal quality in Alvah's exit; almost a declaration that he saw no necessity to consider the boss's opinion any longer.
I ought to fire Alvah, he thought — and then laughed at himself, aghast: fire Alvah Scarret? — one might as well think of stopping the earth — or — of the unthinkable — of closing the Banner.
But through the months of that summer and fall, there were days when he loved the Banner. Then he sat at this desk, with his hand on the pages spread before him, fresh ink smearing his palm, and he smiled as he saw the name of Howard Roark in the pages of the Banner.
The word had come down from his office to every department concerned: Plug Howard Roark. In the art section, the real-estate section, the editorials, the columns, mentions of Roark and his buildings began to appear regularly. There were not many occasions when one could give publicity to an architect, and buildings had little news value, but the Banner managed to throw Roark's name at the public under every kind of ingenious pretext. Wynand edited every word of it. The material was startling on the pages of the Banner: it was written in good taste. There were no sensational stories, no photographs of Roark at breakfast, no human interest, no attempts to sell a man; only a considered, gracious tribute to the greatness of an artist.
He never spoke of it to Roark, and Roark never mentioned it. They did not discuss the Banner.
Coming home to his new house in the evening, Wynand saw the Banner on the living room table every night. He had not allowed it in his home since his marriage. He smiled, when he saw it for the first time, and said nothing.
Then he spoke of it, one evening. He turned the pages until he came to an article on the general theme of summer resorts, most of which was a description of Monadnock Valley. He raised his head to glance at Dominique across the room; she sat on the floor by the fireplace. He said:
"Thank you, dear."
"For what, Gail?"
"For understanding when I would be glad to see the Banner in my house."
He walked to her and sat down on the floor beside her. He held her thin shoulders in the curve of his arm. He said:
"Think of all the politicians, movie stars, visiting grand dukes and sash weight murderers whom the Banner has trumpeted all these years. Think of my great crusades about street-car companies, red-light districts and home-grown vegetables. For once, Dominique, I can say what I believe."
"Yes, Gail ... "
"All this power I wanted, reached and never used.,. Now they'll see what I can do. I'll force them to recognize him as he should be recognized. I'll give him the fame he deserves. Public opinion? Public opinion is what I make it."
"Do you think he wants this?"
"Probably not. I don't care. He needs it and he's going to get it. I want him to have it. As an architect, he's public property. He can't stop a newspaper from writing about him if it wants to."
"All that copy on him — do you write it yourself?"
"Most of it."
"Gail, what a great journalist you could have been."
The campaign brought results, of a kind he had not expected. The general public remained blankly indifferent. But in the intellectual circles, in the art world, in the profession, people were laughing at Roark. Comments were reported to Wynand: "Roark? Oh yes, Wynand's pet."
"The Banner's glamour boy."
"The genius of the yellow press."
"The Banner is now selling art — send two box tops or a reasonable facsimile."
"Wouldn't you know it? That's what I've always thought of Roark — the kind of talent fit for the Wynand papers."
"We'll see," said Wynand contemptuously — and continued his private crusade.
He gave Roark every commission of importance whose owners were open to pressure. Since spring, he had brought to Roark's office the contracts for a yacht club on the Hudson, an office building, two private residences. "I'll get you more than you can handle," he said. "I'll make you catch up with all the years they've made you waste."
Austen Heller said to Roark one evening: "If I may be so presumptuous, I think you need advice, Howard. Yes, of course, I mean this preposterous business of Mr. Gail Wynand. You and he as inseparable friends upsets every rational concept I've ever held. After all, there are distinct classes of humanity — no, I'm not talking Toohey's language — but there are certain boundary lines among men which cannot be crossed."