"Do you ever do awful stuff?"
"Probably more of it than any other architect and with less excuse. The only distinction I can claim is that my botches end up in my own wastebasket."
"I warn you, we'll be away for months. If you begin to regret it and cry for your drafting table in a week, like all men who've never learned to loaf, I won't take you back. I'm the worst kind of dictator aboard my yacht. You'll have everything you can imagine, except paper or pencils. I won't even leave you any freedom of speech. No mention of girders, plastics or reinforced concrete once you step on board. I'll teach you to eat, sleep and exist like the most worthless millionaire."
"I'd like to try that."
The work in the office did not require Roark's presence for the next few months. His current jobs were being completed. Two new commissions were not to be started until spring.
He had made all the sketches Keating needed for Cortlandt. The construction was about to begin. Before sailing, on a day in late December, Roark went to take a last look at the site of Cortlandt. An anonymous spectator in a group of the idle curious, he stood and watched the steam shovels biting the earth, breaking the way for future foundations. The East River was a broad band of sluggish black water; and beyond, in a sparse haze of snowflakes, the towers of the city stood softened, half suggested in watercolors of orchid and blue.
Dominique did not protest when Wynand told her that he wanted to sail on a long cruise with Roark. "Dearest, you understand that it's not running away from you? I just need some time taken out of everything. Being with Howard is like being alone with myself, only more at peace."
"Of course, Gail. I don't mind."
But he looked at her, and suddenly he laughed, incredulously pleased. "Dominique, I believe you're jealous. It's wonderful, I'm more grateful to him than ever — if it could make you jealous of me."
She could not tell him that she was jealous or of whom.
The yacht sailed at the end of December. Roark watched, grinning, Wynand's disappointment when Wynand found that he needed to enforce no discipline. Roark did not speak of buildings, lay for hours stretched out on deck in the sun, and loafed like an expert. They spoke little. There were days when Wynand could not remember what sentences they had exchanged. It would have seemed possible to him that they had not spoken at all. Their serenity was their best means of communication.
Today they had dived together to swim and Wynand had climbed back first. As he stood at the rail, watching Roark in the water, he thought of the power he held in this moment: he could order the yacht to start moving, sail away and leave that redheaded body to sun and ocean. The thought gave him pleasure: the sense of power and the sense of surrender to Roark in the knowledge that no conceivable force could make him exercise that power. Every physical instrumentality was on his side: a few contractions of his vocal cords giving the order and someone's hand opening a valve — and the obedient machine would move away. He thought: It's not just a moral issue, not the mere horror of the act, one could conceivably abandon a man if the fate of a continent depended on it. But nothing would enable him to abandon this man. He, Gail Wynand, was the helpless one in this moment, with the solid planking of the deck under his feet. Roark, floating like a piece of driftwood, held a power greater than that of the engine in the belly of the yacht. Wynand thought: Because that is the power from which the engine has come.
Roark climbed back on deck; Wynand looked at Roark's body, at the threads of water running down the angular planes. He said:
"You made a mistake on the Stoddard Temple, Howard. That statue should have been, not of Dominique, but of you."
"No. I'm too egotistical for that."
"Egotistical? An egotist would have loved it. You use words in the strangest way."
"In the exact way. I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself."
Stretched in a deck chair, Wynand glanced up with satisfaction at the lantern, a disk of frosted glass on the bulkhead behind him: it cut off the black void of the ocean and gave him privacy within solid walls of light. He heard the sound of the yacht's motion, he felt the warm night air on his face, he saw nothing but the stretch of deck around him, enclosed and final.
Roark stood before him at the rail; a tall white figure leaning back against black space, his head lifted as Wynand had seen it lifted in an unfinished building. His hands clasped the rail. The short shirt sleeves left his arms in the light; vertical ridges of shadow stressed the tensed muscles of his arms and the tendons of his neck. Wynand thought of the yacht's engine, of skyscrapers, of transatlantic cables, of everything man had made.
"Howard, this is what I wanted. To have you here with me."
"I know."
"Do you know what it really is? Avarice. I'm a miser about two things on earth: you and Dominique. I'm a millionaire who's never owned anything. Do you remember what you said about ownership? I'm like a savage who's discovered the idea of private property and run amuck on it. It's funny. Think of Ellsworth Toohey."
"Why Ellsworth Toohey?"
"I mean, the things he preaches, I've been wondering lately whether he really understands what he's advocating. Selflessness in the absolute sense? Why, that's what I've been. Does he know that I'm the embodiment of his ideal? Of course, he wouldn't approve of my motive, but motives never alter facts. If it's true selflessness he's after, in the philosophical sense — and Mr. Toohey is a philosopher — in a sense much beyond matters of money, why, let him look at me. I've never owned anything. I've never wanted anything. I didn't give a damn — in the most cosmic way Toohey could ever hope for. I made myself into a barometer subject to the pressure of the whole world. The voice of his masses pushed me up and down. Of course, I collected a fortune in the process. Does that change the intrinsic reality of the picture? Suppose I gave away every penny of it. Suppose I had never wished to take any money at all, but had set out in pure altruism to serve the people. What would I have to do? Exactly what I've done. Give the greatest pleasure to the greatest number. Express the opinions, the desires, the tastes of the majority. The majority that voted me its approval and support freely, in the shape of a three-cent ballot dropped at the corner newsstand every morning. The Wynand papers? For thirty-one years they have represented everybody except Gail Wynand. I erased my ego out of existence in a way never achieved by any saint in a cloister. Yet people call me corrupt. Why? The saint in a cloister sacrifices only material things. It's a small price to pay for the glory of his soul. He hoards his soul and gives up the world. But I — I took automobiles, silk pyjamas, a penthouse, and gave the world my soul in exchange. Who's sacrificed more — if sacrifice is the test of virtue? Who's the actual saint?"
"Gail ... I didn't think you'd ever admit that to yourself."
"Why not? I knew what I was doing. I wanted power over a collective soul and I got it. A collective soul. It's a messy kind of concept, but if anyone wishes to visualize it concretely, let him pick up a copy of the New York Banner."
"Yes ... "
"Of course, Toohey would tell me that this is not what he means by altruism. He means I shouldn't leave it up to the people to decide what they want I should decide it. I should determine, not what I like nor what they like, but what I think they should like, and then ram it down their throats. It would have to be rammed, since their voluntary choice is the Banner. Well, there are several such altruists in the world today."
"You realize that?"
"Of course. What else can one do if one must serve the people? If one must live for others? Either pander to everybody's wishes and be called corrupt; or impose on everybody by force your own idea of everybody's good. Can you think of any other way?"
"No."
"What's left then? Where does decency start? What begins where altruism ends? Do you see what I'm in love with?"