A home, built in charity, for the poor. Built upon ten thousand years in which men had been taught that charity and self-sacrifice are an absolute not to be questioned, the touchstone of virtue, the ultimate ideal. Ten thousand years of voices speaking of service and sacrifice — sacrifice is the prime rule of life — serve or be served — crush or get crushed — sacrifice is noble — make what you can of it, at the one end or the other — serve and sacrifice — serve and serve and serve ...
Against that — one man who wished neither to serve nor to rule. And had thereby committed the only unforgivable crime.
It was a sensational scandal, and there was the usual noise and the usual lust of righteous anger, such as is proper to all lynchings. But there was a fierce, personal quality in the indignation of every person who spoke about it.
"He's just an egomaniac devoid of all moral sense" —
— said the society woman dressing for a charity bazaar, who dared not contemplate what means of self-expression would be left to her and how she could impose her ostentation on her friends, if charity were not the all-excusing virtue —
— said the social worker who had found no aim in life and could generate no aim from within the sterility of his soul, but basked in virtue and held an unearned respect from all, by grace of his fingers on the wounds of others —
— said the novelist who had nothing to say if the subject of service and sacrifice were to be taken away from him, who sobbed in the hearing of attentive thousands that he loved them and loved them and would they please love him a little in return —
— said the lady columnist who had just bought a country mansion because she wrote so tenderly about the little people —
— said all the little people who wanted to hear of love, the great love, the unfastidious love, the love that embraced everything, forgave everything and permitted them everything —
— said every second-hander who could not exist except as a leech on the souls of others.
Ellsworth Toohey sat back, watched, listened and smiled.
Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb were entertained at dinners and cocktail parties; they were treated with tender, curious solicitude, like survivors of disaster. They said that they could not understand what possible motive Roark could have had, and they demanded justice.
Peter Keating went nowhere. He refused to see the press. He refused to see anyone. But he issued a written statement that he believed Roark was not guilty. His statement contained one curious sentence, the last. It said: "Leave him alone, please can't you leave him alone?"
Pickets from the Council of American Builders paced in front of the Cord Building. It served no purpose, because there was no work in Roark's office. The commissions he was to start had been canceled.
This was solidarity. The debutante having her toenails pedicured — the housewife buying carrots from a pushcart — the bookkeeper who had wanted to be a pianist, but had the excuse of a sister to support — the businessman who hated his business — the worker who hated his work — the intellectual who hated everybody — all were united as brothers in the luxury of common anger that cured boredom and took them out of themselves, and they knew well enough what a blessing it was to be taken out of themselves. The readers were unanimous. The press was unanimous.
Gail Wynand went against the current.
"Gail!" Alvah Scarret had gasped. "We can't defend a dynamiter!"
"Keep still, Alvah," Wynand had said, "before I bash your teeth in."
Gail Wynand stood alone in the middle of his office, his head thrown back, glad to be living, as he had stood on a wharf on a dark night facing the lights of a city.
"In the filthy howling now going on all around us," said an editorial in the Banner, signed "Gail Wynand" in big letters, "nobody seems to remember that Howard Roark surrendered himself of his own free will. If he blew up that building — did he have to remain at the scene to be arrested? But we don't wait to discover his reasons. We have convicted him without a hearing. We want him to be guilty. We are delighted with this case. What you hear is not indignation — it's gloating. Any illiterate maniac, any worthless moron who commits some revolting murder, gets shrieks of sympathy from us and marshals an army of humanitarian defenders. But a man of genius is guilty by definition. Granted that it is vicious injustice to condemn a man simply because he is weak and small. To what level of depravity has a society descended when it condemns a man simply because he is strong and great? Such, however, is the whole moral atmosphere of our century — the century of the second-rater."
"We hear it shouted," said another Wynand editorial, "that Howard Roark spends his career in and out of courtrooms. Well, that is true. A man like Roark is on trial before society all his life. Whom does that indict — Roark or society?"
"We have never made an effort to understand what is greatness in man and how to recognize it," said another Wynand editorial. "We have come to hold, in a kind of mawkish stupor, that greatness is to be gauged by self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, we drool, is the ultimate virtue. Let's stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feelings? The independence of his thought? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They, however, are above sacrificing to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then, stop preaching dangerous and vicious nonsense? Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all."
This editorial was quoted in the New Frontiers and in many newspapers, reprinted in a box under the heading: "Look who's talking!"
Gail Wynand laughed. Resistance fed him and made him stronger. This was a war, and he had not engaged in a real war for years, not since the time when he laid the foundations of his empire amid cries of protest from the whole profession. He was granted the impossible, the dream of every man: the chance and intensity of youth, to be used with the wisdom of experience. A new beginning and a climax, together. I have waited and lived, he thought, for this.
His twenty-two newspapers, his magazines, his newsreels were given the order: Defend Roark. Sell Roark to the public. Stem the lynching.
"Whatever the facts," Wynand explained to his staff, "this is not going to be a trial by facts. It's a trial by public opinion. We've always made public opinion. Let's make it. Sell Roark. I don't care how you do it. I've trained you. You're experts at selling. Now show me how good you are."
He was greeted by silence, and his employees glanced at one another. Alvah Scarret mopped his forehead. But they obeyed.
The Banner printed a picture of the Enright House, with the caption: "Is this the man you want to destroy?" A picture of Wynand's home: "Match this, if you can." A picture of Monadnock Valley: "Is this the man who has contributed nothing to society?"
The Banner ran Roark's biography, under the byline of a writer nobody had ever heard of; it was written by Gail Wynand. The Banner ran a series on famous trials in which innocent men had been convicted by the majority prejudice of the moment. The Banner ran articles on man martyred by society: Socrates, Galileo, Pasteur, the thinkers, the scientists, a long, heroic line — each a man who stood alone, the man who defied men.
"But, Gail, for God's sake, Gail, it was a housing project!" wailed Alvah Scarret.
Wynand looked at him helplessly: "I suppose it's impossible to make you fools understand that that has nothing to do with it. All right. We'll talk about housing projects."