He went to a shack he had rented in the hills of an obscure village. He kept paints, brushes and canvas in the shack. He spent his days in the hills, painting. He could not tell why he had remembered that unborn ambition of his youth, which his mother had drained and switched into the channel of architecture. He could not tell by what process the impulse had become irresistible; but he had found the shack and tie liked going there.
He could not say that he liked to paint. It was neither pleasure nor relief, it was self-torture, but somehow, that didn't matter. He sat on a canvas stool before a small easel and he looked at an empty sweep of hills, at the woods and the sky. He had a quiet pain as sole conception of what he wanted to express, a humble, unbearable tenderness for the sight of the earth around him — and something tight, paralyzed, as sole means to express it. He went on. He tried. He looked at his canvases and knew that nothing was captured in their childish crudeness. It did not matter. No one was to see them. He stacked them carefully in a corner of the shack, and he locked the door before he returned to town. There was no pleasure in it, no pride, no solution; only — while he sat alone before the easel — a sense of peace.
He tried not to think of Ellsworth Toohey. A dim instinct told him that he could preserve a precarious security of spirit so long as he did not touch upon that subject. There could be but one explanation of Toohey's behavior toward him — and he preferred not to formulate it.
Toohey had drifted away from him. The intervals between their meetings had grown longer each year. He accepted it and told himself that Toohey was busy. Toohey's public silence about him was baffling. He told himself that Toohey had more important things to write about. Toohey's criticism of "The March of the Centuries" had been a blow. He told himself that his work had deserved it. He accepted any blame. He could afford to doubt himself. He could not afford to doubt Ellsworth Toohey.
It was Neil Dumont who forced him to think of Toohey again. Neil spoke petulantly about the state of the world, about crying over spilt milk, change as a law of existence, adaptability, and the importance of getting in on the ground floor. Keating gathered, from a long, confused speech, that business, as they had known it, was finished, that government would take over whether they liked it or not, that the building trade was dying and the government would soon be the sole builder and they might as well get in now, if they wanted to get in at all. "Look at Gordon Prescott," said Neil Dumont, "and what a sweet little monopoly he's got himself in housing projects and post offices. Look at Gus Webb muscling in on the racket."
Keating did not answer. Neil Dumont was throwing his own unconfessed thoughts at him; he had known that he would have to face this soon and he had tried to postpone the moment.
He did not want to think of Cortlandt Homes.
Cortlandt Homes was a government housing project to be built in Astoria, on the shore of the East River. It was planned as a gigantic experiment in low-rent housing, to serve as model for the whole country; for the whole world. Keating had heard architects talking about it for over a year. The appropriation had been approved and the site chosen; but not the architect. Keating would not admit to himself how desperately he wanted to get Cortlandt and how little chance he had of getting it.
"Listen, Pete, we might as well call a spade a spade," said Neil Dumont. "We're on the skids, pal, and you know it. All right, we'll last another year or two, coasting on your reputation. And then? It's not our fault. It's just that private enterprise is dead and getting deader. It's a historical process. The wave of the future. So we might as well get our surfboard while we can. There's a good, sturdy one waiting for the boy who's smart enough to grab it. Cortlandt Homes."
Now he had heard it pronounced. Keating wondered why the name had sounded like the muffled stroke of a bell; as if the sound had opened and closed a sequence which he would not be able to stop.
"What do you mean, Neil?"
"Cortlandt Homes. Ellsworth Toohey. Now you know what I mean."
"Neil, I ... "
"What's the matter with you, Pete? Listen, everybody's laughing about it. Everybody's saying that if they were Toohey's special pet, like you are, they'd get Cortlandt Homes like that" — he snapped his manicured fingers — "just like that, and nobody can understand what you're waiting for. You know it's friend Ellsworth who's running this particular housing show."
"It's not true. He is not. He has no official position. He never has any official position."
"Whom are you kidding? Most of the boys that count in every office are his boys. Damned if I know how he got them in, but he did. What's the matter, Pete? Are you afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey for a favor?"
This was it, thought Keating; now there was no retreat. He could not admit to himself that he was afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey.
"No," he said, his voice dull, "I'm not afraid, Neil. I'll ... All right, Neil. I'll speak to Ellsworth."
Ellsworth Toohey sat spread out on a couch, wearing a dressing gown. His body had the shape of a sloppy letter X-arms stretched over his head, along the edge of the back pillows, legs open in a wide fork. The dressing gown was made of silk, bearing the trademarked pattern of Coty's face powder, white puffs on an orange background; it looked daring and gay, supremely elegant through sheer silliness. Under the gown, Toohey wore sleeping pyjamas of pistachio-green linen, crumpled. The trousers floated about the thin sticks of his ankles.
This was just like Toohey, thought Keating; this pose amidst the severe fastidiousness of his living room; a single canvas by a famous artist on the wall behind him — and the rest of the room unobtrusive like a monk's cell; no, thought Keating, like the retreat of a king in exile, scornful of material display.
Toohey's eyes were warm, amused, encouraging. Toohey had answered the telephone in person; Toohey had granted him the appointment at once. Keating thought: It's good to be received like this, informally. What was I afraid of? What did I doubt? We're old friends.
"Oh dear me," said Toohey, yawning, "one gets so tired! There comes a moment into every man's day when he gets the urge to relax like a stumble bum. I got home and just felt I couldn't keep my clothes on another minute. Felt like a damn peasant — just plain itchy — and had to get out. You don't mind, do you, Peter? With some people it's necessary to be stiff and formal, but with you it's not necessary at all."
"No, of course not."
"Think I'll take a bath after a while. There's nothing like a good hot bath to make one feel like a parasite. Do you like hot baths, Peter?"
"Why ... yes ... I guess so ... "
"You're gaining weight, Peter. Pretty soon you'll look revolting in a bathtub. You're gaining weight and you look peaked. That's a bad combination. Absolutely wrong aesthetically. Fat people should be happy and jolly."
"I ... I'm all right, Ellsworth. It's only that ... "
"You used to have a nice disposition. You mustn't lose that. People will get bored with you."
"I haven't changed, Ellsworth." Suddenly he stressed the words. "I haven't really changed at all. I'm just what I was when I designed the Cosmo-Slotnick Building."
He looked at Toohey hopefully. He thought this was a hint crude enough for Toohey to understand; Toohey understood things much more delicate than that. He waited to be helped out. Toohey went on looking at him, his eyes sweet and blank.
"Why, Peter, that's an unphilosophical statement. Change is the basic principle of the universe. Everything changes. Seasons, leaves, flowers, birds, morals, men and buildings. The dialectic process, Peter."
"Yes, of course. Things change, so fast, in such a funny way. You don't even notice how, and suddenly one morning there it is. Remember, just a few years ago, Lois Cook and Gordon Prescott and Ike and Lance — they were nobody at all. And now — why, Ellsworth, they're on top and they're all yours. Anywhere I look, any big name I hear — it's one of your boys. You're amazing, Ellsworth. How anybody can do that — in just a few years — "