Ralston Holcombe was now sixty-five, to which he added a few years, for the sake of his friends' compliments on his wonderful physique; Mrs. Ralston Holcombe was forty-two, from which she deducted considerably.
Mrs. Ralston Holcombe maintained a salon that met informally every Sunday afternoon. "Everybody who is anybody in architecture drops in on us," she told her friends. "They'd better," she added.
On a Sunday afternoon in March, Keating drove to the Holcombe mansion--a reproduction of a Florentine palazzo--dutifully, but a little reluctantly. He had been a frequent guest at these celebrated gatherings and he was beginning to be bored, for he knew everybody he could expect to find there. He felt, however, that he had to attend this time, because the occasion was to be in honor of the completion of one more capitol by Ralston Holcombe in some state or another.
A substantial crowd was lost in the marble ballroom of the Holcombes, scattered in forlorn islets through an expanse intended for court receptions. The guests stood about, self-consciously informal, working at being brilliant. Steps rang against the marble with the echoing sound of a crypt. The flames of tall candles clashed desolately with the gray of the light from the street; the light made the candles seem dimmer, the candles gave to the day outside a premonitory tinge of dusk. A scale model of the new state capitol stood displayed on a pedestal in the middle of the room, ablaze with tiny electric bulbs.
Mrs. Ralston Holcombe presided over the tea table. Each guest accepted a fragile cup of transparent porcelain, took two delicate sips and vanished in the direction of the bar. Two stately butlers went about collecting the abandoned cups.
Mrs. Ralston Holcombe, as an enthusiastic girl friend had described her, was "petite, but intellectual." Her diminutive stature was her secret sorrow, but she had learned to find compensations. She could talk, and did, of wearing dresses size ten and of shopping in the junior departments. She wore high-school garments and short socks in summer, displaying spindly legs with hard blue veins. She adored celebrities. That was her mission in life. She hunted them grimly; she faced them with wide-eyed admiration and spoke of her own insignificance, of her humility before achievement; she shrugged, tight-lipped and rancorous, whenever one of them did not seem to take sufficient account of her own views on life after death, the theory of relativity, Aztec architecture, birth control and the movies. She had a great many poor friends and advertised the fact. If a friend happened to improve his financial position, she dropped him, feeling that he had committed an act of treason. She hated the wealthy in all sincerity: they shared her only badge of distinction. She considered architecture her private domain. She had been christened "Constance" and found it awfully clever to be known as "Kiki," a nickname she had forced on her friends when she was well past thirty.
Keating had never felt comfortable in Mrs. Holcombe's presence, because she smiled at him too insistently and commented on his remarks by winking and saying: "Why, Peter, how naughty of you!" when no such intention had been in his mind at all. He bowed over her hand, however, this afternoon as usual, and she smiled from behind the silver teapot. She wore a regal gown of emerald velvet, and a magenta ribbon in her bobbed hair with a cute little bow in front. Her skin was tanned and dry, with enlarged pores showing on her nostrils. She handed a cup to Keating, a square-cut emerald glittering on her finger in the candlelight.
Keating expressed his admiration for the capitol and escaped to examine the model. He stood before it for a correct number of minutes, scalding his lips with the hot liquid that smelled of cloves. Holcombe, who never looked in the direction of the model and never missed a guest stopping before it, slapped Keating's shoulder and said something appropriate about young fellows learning the beauty of the style of the Renaissance. Then Keating wandered off, shook a few hands without enthusiasm, and glanced at his wrist watch, calculating the time when it would be permissible to leave. Then he stopped.
Beyond a broad arch, in a small library, with three young men beside her, he saw Dominique Francon.
She stood leaning against a column, a cocktail glass in her hand. She wore a suit of black velvet; the heavy cloth, which transmitted no light rays, held her anchored to reality by stopping the light that flowed too freely through the flesh of her hands, her neck, her face. A white spark of fire flashed like a cold metallic cross in the glass she held, as if it were a lens gathering the diffused radiance of her skin.
Keating tore forward and found Francon in the crowd.
"Well, Peter!" said Francon brightly. "Want me to get you a drink? Not so hot," he added, lowering his voice, "but the Manhattans aren't too bad."
"No," said Keating, "thanks."
"Entre nous," said Francon, winking at the model of the capital, "it's a holy mess, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Keating. "Miserable proportions.... That dome looks like Holcombe's face imitating a sunrise on the roof...." They had stopped in full view of the library and Keating's eyes were fixed on the girl in black, inviting Francon to notice it; he enjoyed having Francon in a trap.
"And the plan! The plan! Do you see that on the second floor ... oh," said Francon, noticing.
He looked at Keating, then at the library, then at Keating again.
"Well," said Francon at last, "don't blame me afterward. You've asked for it. Come on."
They entered the library together. Keating stopped, correctly, but allowing his eyes an improper intensity, while Francon beamed with unconvincing cheeriness:
"Dominique, my dear! May I present?--this is Peter Keating, my own right hand. Peter--my daughter."
"How do you do," said Keating, his voice soft.
Dominique bowed gravely.
"I have waited to meet you for such a long time, Miss Francon."
"This will be interesting," said Dominique. "You will want to be nice to me, of course, and yet that won't be diplomatic."
"What do you mean, Miss Francon?"
"Father would prefer you to be horrible with me. Father and I don't get along at all."
"Why, Miss Francon, I ..."
"I think it's only fair to tell you this at the beginning. You may want to redraw some conclusions." He was looking for Francon, but Francon had vanished. "No," she said softly, "Father doesn't do these things well at all. He's too obvious. You asked him for the introduction, but he shouldn't have let me notice that. However, it's quite all right, since we both admit it. Sit down."
She slipped into a chair and he sat down obediently beside her. The young men whom he did not know stood about for a few minutes, trying to be included in the conversation by smiling blankly, then wandered off. Keating thought with relief that there was nothing frightening about her; there was only a disquieting contrast between her words and the candid innocence of the manner she used to utter them; he did not know which to trust.
"I admit I asked for the introduction," he said. "That's obvious anyway, isn't it? Who wouldn't ask for it? But don't you think that the conclusions I'll draw may have nothing to do with your father?"
"Don't say that I'm beautiful and exquisite and like no one you've ever met before and that you're very much afraid that you're going to fall in love with me. You'll say it eventually, but let's postpone it. Apart from that, I think we'll get along very nicely."
"But you're trying to make it very difficult for me, aren't you?"
"Yes. Father should have warned you."
"He did."
"You should have listened. Be very considerate of Father. I've met so many of his own right hands that I was beginning to be skeptical. But you're the first one who's lasted. And who looks like he's going to last. I've heard a great deal about you. My congratulations."
"I've been looking forward to meeting you for years. And I've been reading your column with so much ..." He stopped. He knew he shouldn't have mentioned that; and, above all, he shouldn't have stopped.
"So much ... ?" she asked gently.
"... so much pleasure," he finished, hoping that she would let it go at that.
> "Oh, yes," she said. "The Ainsworth house. You designed it. I'm sorry. You just happened to be the victim of one of my rare attacks of honesty. I don't have them often. As you know, if you've read my stuff yesterday."
"I've read it. And--well, I'll follow your example and I'll be perfectly frank. Don't take it as a complaint--one must never complain against one's critics. But really that capitol of Holcombe's is much worse in all those very things that you blasted us for. Why did you give him such a glowing tribute yesterday? Or did you have to?"
"Don't flatter me. Of course I didn't have to. Do you think anyone on the paper pays enough attention to a column on home decoration to care what I say in it? Besides, I'm not even supposed to write about capitols. Only I'm getting tired of home decorations."
"Then why did you praise Holcombe?"
"Because that capitol of his is so awful that to pan it would have been an anticlimax. So I thought it would be amusing to praise it to the sky. It was."
"Is that the way you go about it?"
"That's the way I go about it. But no one reads my column, except housewives who can never afford to decorate their homes, so it doesn't matter at all."
"But what do you really like in architecture?"
"I don't like anything in architecture."
"Well, you know of course that I won't believe that. Why do you write if you have nothing you want to say?"
"To have something to do. Something more disgusting than many other things I could do. And more amusing."
"Come on, that's not a good reason."
"I never have any good reasons."
"But you must be enjoying your work."
"I am. Don't you see that I am?"
"You know, I've actually envied you. Working for a magnificent enterprise like the Wynand papers. The largest organization in the country, commanding the best writing talent and ..."
"Look," she said, leaning toward him confidentially, "let me help you. If you had just met Father, and he were working for the Wynand papers, that would be exactly the right thing to say. But not with me. That's what I'd expect you to say and I don't like to hear what I expect. It would be much more interesting if you said that the Wynand papers are a contemptible dump heap of yellow journalism and all their writers put together aren't worth two bits."
"Is that what you really think of them?"
"Not at all. But I don't like people who try to say only what they think I think."
"Thanks. I'll need your help. I've never met anyone ... oh, no, of course, that's what you didn't want me to say. But I really meant it about your papers. I've always admired Gail Wynand. I've always wished I could meet him. What is he like?"
"Just what Austen Heller called him--an exquisite bastard."
He winced. He remembered where he had heard Austen Heller say that. The memory of Catherine seemed heavy and vulgar in the presence of the thin white hand he saw hanging over the arm of the chair before him.
"But, I mean," he asked, "what's he like in person?"
"I don't know. I've never met him."
"You haven't?"
"No."
"Oh, I've heard he's so interesting!"
"Undoubtedly. When I'm in a mood for something decadent I'll probably meet him."
"Do you know Toohey?"
"Oh," she said. He saw what he had seen in her eyes before, and he did not like the sweet gaiety of her voice. "Oh, Ellsworth Toohey. Of course I know him. He's wonderful. He's a man I always enjoy talking to. He's such a perfect blackguard."
"Why, Miss Francon! You're the first person who's ever ..."
"I'm not trying to shock you. I meant all of it. I admire him. He's so complete. You don't meet perfection often in this world one way or the other, do you? And he's just that. Sheer perfection in his own way. Everyone else is so unfinished, broken up into so many different pieces that don't fit together. But not Toohey. He's a monolith. Sometimes, when I feel bitter against the world, I find consolation in thinking that it's all right, that I'll be avenged, that the world will get what's coming to it--because there's Ellsworth Toohey."
"What do you want to be avenged for?"
She looked at him, her eyelids lifted for a moment, so that her eyes did not seem rectangular, but soft and clear.
"That was very clever of you," she said. "That was the first clever thing you've said."
"Why?"
"Because you knew what to pick out of all the rubbish I uttered. So I'll have to answer you. I'd like to be avenged for the fact that I have nothing to be avenged for. Now let's go on about Ellsworth Toohey."
"Well, I've always heard, from everybody, that he's a sort of saint, the one pure idealist, utterly incorruptible and ..."
"That's quite true. A plain grafter would be much safer. But Toohey is like a testing stone for people. You can learn about them by the way they take him."
"Why? What do you actually mean?"
She leaned back in her chair, and stretched her arms down to her knees, twisting her wrists, palms out, the fingers of her two hands entwined. She laughed easily.
"Nothing that one should make a subject of discussion at a tea party. Kiki's right. She hates the sight of me, but she's got to invite me once in a while. And I can't resist coming, because she's so obvious about not wanting me. You know, I told Ralston tonight what I really thought of his capitol, but he wouldn't believe me. He only beamed and said that I was a very nice little girl."
"Well, aren't you?"
"What?"
"A very nice little girl."
"No. Not today. I've made you thoroughly uncomfortable. So I'll make up for it. I'll tell you what I think of you, because you'll be worrying about that. I think you're smart and safe and obvious and quite ambitious and you'll get away with it. And I like you. I'll tell Father that I approve of his right hand very much, so you see you have nothing to fear from the boss's daughter. Though it would be better if I didn't say anything to Father, because my recommendation would work the other way with him."
"May I tell you only one thing that I think about you?"
"Certainly. Any number of them."
"I think it would have been better if you hadn't told me that you liked me. Then I would have had a better chance of its being true."
She laughed.
"If you understand that," she said, "then we'll get along beautifully. Then it might even be true."
Gordon L. Prescott appeared in the arch of the ballroom, glass in hand. He wore a gray suit and a turtle-neck sweater of silver wool. His boyish face looked freshly scrubbed, and he had his usual air of soap, tooth paste and the outdoors.
"Dominique, darling!" he cried, waving his glass. "Hello, Keating," he added curtly. "Dominique, where have you been hiding yourself? I heard you were here and I've had a hell of a time looking for you!"
"Hello, Gordon," she said. She said it quite correctly; there was nothing offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its indifference--as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around the melodic thread of her contempt.
Prescott had not heard. "Darling," he said, "you look lovelier every time I see you. One wouldn't think it were possible."
"Seventh time," said Dominique.
"What?"
"Seventh time that you've said it when meeting me, Gordon. I'm counting them."
"You simply won't be serious, Dominique. You'll never be serious."
"Oh, yes, Gordon. I was just having a very serious conversation here with my friend Peter Keating."
A lady waved to Prescott and he accepted the opportunity, escaping, looking very foolish. And Keating delighted in the thought that she had dismissed another man for a conversation she wished to continue with her friend Peter Keating.
But when he turned to her, she asked sweetly: "What was it we were talking about, Mr. Keating?" And then she was staring with too great an interest across the room, at the wizened
figure of a little man coughing over a whisky glass.
"Why," said Keating, "we were ..."
"Oh, there's Eugene Pettingill. My great favorite. I must say hello to Eugene."
And she was up, moving across the room, her body leaning back as she walked, moving toward the most unattractive septuagenarian present.
Keating did not know whether he had been made to join the brotherhood of Gordon L. Prescott, or whether it had been only an accident.
He returned to the ballroom reluctantly. He forced himself to join groups of guests and to talk. He watched Dominique Francon as she moved through the crowd, as she stopped in conversation with others. She never glanced at him again. He could not decide whether he had succeeded with her or failed miserably.
He managed to be at the door when she was leaving.
She stopped and smiled at him enchantingly.
"No," she said, before he could utter a word, "you can't take me home. I have a car waiting. Thank you just the same."
She was gone and he stood at the door, helpless and thinking furiously that he believed he was blushing.
He felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned to find Francon beside him.
"Going home, Peter? Let me give you a lift."
"But I thought you had to be at the club by seven."
"Oh, that's all right, I'll be a little late, doesn't matter, I'll drive you home, no trouble at all." There was a peculiar expression of purpose on Francon's face, quite unusual for him and unbecoming.
Keating followed him silently, amused, and said nothing when they were alone in the confortable twilight of Francon's car.
"Well?" Francon asked ominously.
Keating smiled. "You're a pig, Guy. You don't know how to appreciate what you've got. Why didn't you tell me? She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
"Oh, yes," said Francon darkly. "Maybe that's the trouble."
"What trouble? Where do you see any trouble?"
"What do you really think of her, Peter? Forget the looks. You'll see how quickly you'll forget that. What do you think?"
"Well, I think she has a great deal of character."
"Thanks for the understatement."
Francon was gloomily silent, and then he said with an awkward little note of something like hope in his voice: