Roark spoke quietly. He was the only man in the room who felt certain of his own words. He felt also that he had no hope. The twelve faces before him had a variety of countenances, but there was something, neither color nor feature, upon all of them, as a common denominator, something that dissolved their expressions, so that they were not faces any longer but only empty ovals of flesh. He was addressing everyone. He was addressing no one. He felt no answer, not even the echo of his own words striking against the membrane of an eardrum. His words were falling down a well, hitting stone salients on their way, and each salient refused to stop them, threw them farther, tossed them from one another, sent them to seek a bottom that did not exist.
He was told that he would be informed of the board's decision. He knew that decision in advance. When he received the letter, he read it without feeling. The letter was from Mr. Janss and it began: "Dear Mr. Roark, I am sorry to inform you that our board of directors find themselves unable to grant you the commission for ... " There was a plea in the letter's brutal, offensive formality: the plea of a man who could not face him.
John Fargo had started in life as a pushcart peddler. At fifty he owned a modest fortune and a prosperous department store on lower Sixth Avenue. For years he had fought successfully against a large store across the street, one of many inherited by a numerous family. In the fall of last year the family had moved that particular branch to new quarters, farther uptown. They were convinced that the center of the city's retail business was shifting north and they had decided to hasten the downfall of their former neighborhood by leaving their old store vacant, a grim reminder and embarrassment to their competitor across the street. John Fargo had answered by announcing that he would build a new store of his own, on the very same spot, next door to his old one; a store newer and smarter than any the city had seen; he would, he declared, keep the prestige of his old neighborhood.
When he called Roark to his office he did not say that he would have to decide later or think things over. He said: "You're the architect." He sat, his feet on his desk, smoking a pipe, snapping out words and puffs of smoke together. "I'll tell you what space I need and how much I want to spend. If you need more — say so. The rest is up to you. I don't know much about buildings. But I know a man who knows when I see him. Go ahead."
Fargo had chosen Roark because Fargo had driven, one day, past Gowan's Service Station, and stopped, and gone in, and asked a few questions. After that, he bribed Heller's cook to show him through the house in Heller's absence. Fargo needed no further argument.
Late in May, when the drafting table in Roark's office was buried deep in sketches for the Fargo store, he received another commission.
Mr. Whitford Sanborn, the client, owned an office building that had been built for him many years ago by Henry Cameron. When Mr. Sanborn decided that he needed a new country residence he rejected his wife's suggestions of other architects; he wrote to Henry Cameron. Cameron wrote a ten-page letter in answer; the first three lines of the letter stated that he had retired from practice; the rest of it was about Howard Roark. Roark never learned what had been said in that letter; Sanborn would not show it to him and Cameron would not tell him. But Sanborn signed him to build the country residence, in spite of Mrs. Sanborn's violent objections.
Mrs. Sanborn was the president of many charity organizations and this had given her an addiction to autocracy such as no other avocation could develop. Mrs. Sanborn wished a French chateau built upon their new estate on the Hudson. She wished it to look stately and ancient, as if it had always belonged to the family; of course, she admitted, people would know that it hadn't, but it would appear as if it had.
Mr. Sanborn signed the contract after Roark had explained to him in detail the kind of a house he was to expect; Mr. Sanborn had agreed to it readily, had not wished even to wait for sketches. "But of course, Fanny," Mr. Sanborn said wearily, "I want a modern house. I told you that long ago. That's what Cameron would have designed."
"What in heaven's name does Cameron mean now?" she asked. "I don't know, Fanny. I know only that there's no building in New York like the one he did for me."
The arguments continued for many long evenings in the dark, cluttered, polished mahogany splendor of the Sanborns' Victorian drawing room. Mr. Sanborn wavered. Roark asked, his arm sweeping out at the room around them: "Is this what you want?"
"Well, if you're going to be impertinent ... " Mrs. Sanborn began, but Mr. Sanborn exploded: "Christ, Fanny! He's right! That's just what I don't want! That's just what I'm sick of!"
Roark saw no one until his sketches were ready. The house — of plain fieldstone, with great windows and many terraces — stood in the gardens over the river, as spacious as the spread of water, as open as the gardens, and one had to follow its lines attentively to find the exact steps by which it was tied to the sweep of the gardens, so gradual was the rise of the terraces, the approach to and the full reality of the walls; it seemed only that the trees flowed into the house and through it; it seemed that the house was not a barrier against the sunlight, but a bowl to gather it, to concentrate it into brighter radiance than that of the air outside.
Mr. Sanborn was first to see the sketches. He studied them, and then he said: "I ... I don't know quite how to say it, Mr. Roark. It's great. Cameron was right about you."
After others had seen the sketches Mr. Sanborn was not certain of this any longer. Mrs. Sanborn said that the house was awful. And the long evening arguments were resumed. "Now why, why can't we add turrets there, on the corners?" Mrs. Sanborn asked. "There's plenty of room on those flat roofs." When she had been talked out of the turrets, she inquired: "Why can't we have mullioned windows? What difference would that make? God knows, the windows are large enough — though why they have to be so large I fail to see, it gives one no privacy at all — but I'm willing to accept your windows, Mr. Roark, if you're so stubborn about it, but why can't you put mullions on the panes? It will soften things, and it gives a regal air, you know, a feudal sort of mood."
The friends and relatives to whom Mrs. Sanborn hurried with the sketches did not like the house at all. Mrs. Walling called it preposterous, and Mrs. Hooper — crude. Mr. Melander said he wouldn't have it as a present. Mrs. Applebee stated that it looked like a shoe factory. Miss Davitt glanced at the sketches and said with approvaclass="underline" "Oh, how very artistic, my dear! Who designed it? ... Roark? ... Roark? ... Never heard of him ... Well, frankly, Fanny, it looks like something phony."
The two children of the family were divided on the question. June Sanborn, aged nineteen, had always thought that all architects were romantic, and she had been delighted to learn that they would have a very young architect; but she did not like Roark's appearance and his indifference to her hints, so she declared that the house was hideous and she, for one, would refuse to live in it. Richard Sanborn, aged twenty-four, who had been a brilliant student in college and was now slowly drinking himself to death, startled his family by emerging from his usual lethargy and declaring that the house was magnificent. No one could tell whether it was esthetic appreciation or hatred of his mother or both.
Whitford Sanborn swayed with every new current. He would mutter: "Well, now, not mullions, of course, that's utter rubbish, but couldn't you give her a cornice, Mr. Roark, to keep peace in the family? Just a kind of a crenelated cornice, it wouldn't spoil anything. Or would it?"
The arguments ended when Roark declared that he would not build the house unless Mr. Sanborn approved the sketches just as they were and signed his approval on every sheet of the drawings. Mr. Sanborn signed.
Mrs. Sanborn was pleased to learn, shortly afterward, that no reputable contractor would undertake the erection of the house. "You see?" she stated triumphantly. Mr. Sanborn refused to see. He found an obscure firm that accepted the commission, grudgingly and as a special favor to him. Mrs. Sanborn learned that she had an ally in the contractor, and she broke social precedent to the extent of inviting him for tea. She had long since lost all coherent ideas about the house; she merely hated Roark. Her contractor hated all architects on principle.