He asked quietly:
"Is that all?"
She closed her eyes, and then she said, looking down at her hands:
"Yes ... except that I'm not the only one who's like that. A lot of them are, most of the women I work with.... I don't know how they got that way.... I don't know how it happened to me.... I used to feel happy when I helped somebody. I remember once--I had lunch with Peter that day--and on my way back I saw an old organ-grinder and I gave him five dollars I had in my bag. It was all the money I had; I'd saved it to buy a bottle of 'Christmas Night,' I wanted 'Christmas Night' very badly, but afterward every time I thought of that organ-grinder I was happy.... I saw Peter often in those days.... I'd come home after seeing him and I'd want to kiss every ragged kid on our block.... I think I hate the poor now.... I think all the other women do, too.... But the poor don't hate us, as they should. They only despise us.... You know, it's funny: it's the masters who despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters. I don't know who is which. Maybe it doesn't fit here. Maybe it does. I don't know ..."
She raised her head with a last spurt of rebellion.
"Don't you see what it is that I must understand? Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it's making me rotten? I think it's probably because I'm vicious by nature and incapable of leading a good life. That seems to be the only explanation. But ... but sometimes I think it doesn't make sense that a human being is completely sincere in good will and yet the good is not for him to achieve. I can't be as rotten as that. But ... but I've given up everything, I have no selfish desire left, I have nothing of my own--and I'm miserable. And so are the other women like me. And I don't know a single selfless person in the world who's happy--except you."
She dropped her head and she did not raise it again; she seemed indifferent even to the answer she was seeking.
"Katie," he said softly, reproachfully, "Katie darling."
She waited silently.
"Do you really want me to tell you the answer?" She nodded. "Because, you know, you've given the answer yourself, in the things you said." She lifted her eyes blankly. "What have you been talking about? What have you been complaining about? About the fact that you are unhappy. About Katie Halsey and nothing else. It was the most egotistical speech I've ever heard in my life."
She blinked attentively, like a schoolchild disturbed by a difficult lesson.
"Don't you see how selfish you have been? You chose a noble career, not for the good you could accomplish, but for the personal happiness you expected to find in it."
"But I really wanted to help people."
"Because you thought you'd be good and virtuous doing it."
"Why--yes. Because I thought it was right. Is it vicious to want to do right?"
"Yes, if it's your chief concern. Don't you see how egotistical it is? To hell with everybody so long as I'm virtuous."
"But if you have no ... no self-respect, how can you be anything?"
"Why must you be anything?"
She spread her hands out, bewildered.
"If your first concern is for what you are or think or feel or have or haven't got--you're still a common egotist."
"But I can't jump out of my own body."
"No. But you can jump out of your narrow soul."
"You mean, I must want to be unhappy?"
"No. You must stop wanting anything. You must forget how important Miss Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn't. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you've found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It's just growing pains. One can't jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. A beautiful woman is usually a gawky adolescent first. All growth demands destruction. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean--anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul--only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you."
"But, Uncle Ellsworth," she whispered, "when the gates fall open, who is it that's going to enter?"
He laughed aloud, crisply. It sounded like a laugh of appreciation. "My dear," he said, "I never thought you could surprise me."
Then his face became earnest again.
"It was a smart crack, Katie, but you know, I hope, that it was only a smart crack?"
"Yes," she said uncertainly, "I suppose so. Still ..."
"We can't be too literal when we deal in abstractions. Of course it's you who'll enter. You won't have lost your identity--you will merely have acquired a broader one, an identity that will be part of everybody else and of the whole universe."
"How? In what way? Part of what?"
"Now you see how difficult it is to discuss these things when our entire language is the language of individualism, with all its terms and superstitions. 'Identity'--it's an illusion, you know. But you can't build a new house out of crumbling old bricks. You can't expect to understand me completely through the medium of present-day conceptions. We are poisoned by the superstition of the ego. We cannot know what will be right or wrong in a selfless society, nor what we'll feel, nor in what manner. We must destroy the ego first. That is why the mind is so unreliable. We must not think. We must believe. Believe, Katie, even if your mind objects. Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe."
She sat still, composed, but somehow she looked like something run over by a tank. She whispered obediently:
"Yes, Uncle Ellsworth ... I ... I didn't think of it that way. I mean, I always thought that I must think ... But you're right, that is, if right is the word I mean, if there is a word ... Yes, I will believe.... I'll try to understand.... No, not to understand. To feel. To believe, I mean.... Only I'm so weak.... I always feel so small after talking to you.... I suppose I was right in a way--I am worthless ... but it doesn't matter ... it doesn't matter...."
When the doorbell rang on the following evening Toohey went to open the door himself.
He smiled when he admitted Peter Keating. After the trial he had expected Keating to come to him; he knew that Keating would need to come. But he had expected him sooner.
Keating walked in uncertainly. His hands seemed too heavy for his wrists. His eyes were puffed, and the skin of his face looked slack.
"Hello, Peter," said Toohey brightly. "Want to see me? Come right in. Just your luck. I have the whole evening free."
"No," said Keating. "I want to see Katie."
He was not looking at Toohey and he did not see the expression behind Toohey's glasses.
"Katie? But of course!" said Toohey gaily. "You know, you've never come here to call on Katie, so it didn't occur to me, but ... Go right in, I believe she's home. This way--you don't know her room?--second door."
Keating shuffled heavily down the hall, knocked on Catherine's door and went in when she answered. Toohey stood looking after him, his face thoughtful.
Catherine jumped to her feet when she saw her guest. She stood stupidly, incredulously for a moment, then she dashed to her bed to snatch a girdle she had left lying there and stuff it hurriedly under the pillow. Then she jerked off her glasses, closed her whole fist over them, and slipped them into her pocket. She wondered which would be worse: to remain as she was or to sit down at her dressing table and make up her face in his presence.
She had not seen Keating for six months. In the last three years, they had met occasionally, at long intervals, they had had a few luncheons together, a few dinners, they had gone to the movies twice. They had always met in a public place. Since the beginning
of his acquaintance with Toohey, Keating would not come to see her at her home. When they met, they talked as if nothing had changed. But they had not spoken of marriage for a long time.
"Hello, Katie," said Keating softly. "I didn't know you wore glasses now."
"It's just ... it's only for reading.... I ... Hello, Peter.... I guess I look terrible tonight.... I'm glad to see you, Peter...."
He sat down heavily, his hat in his hand, his overcoat on. She stood smiling helplessly. Then she made a vague, circular motion with her hands and asked:
"Is it just for a little while or ... or do you want to take your coat off?"
"No, it's not just for a little while." He got up, threw his coat and hat on the bed, then he smiled for the first time and asked: "Or are you busy and want to throw me out?"
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets, and dropped her hands again quickly; she had to meet him as she had always met him, she had to sound light and normal: "No, no, I'm not busy at all."
He sat down and stretched out his arm in silent invitation. She came to him promptly, she put her hand in his, and he pulled her down to the arm of his chair.
The lamplight fell on him, and she had recovered enough to notice the appearance of his face.
"Peter," she gasped, "what have you been doing to yourself? You look awful."
"Drinking."
"Not ... like that!"
"Like that. But it's over now."
"What was it?"
"I wanted to see you, Katie. I wanted to see you."
"Darling ... what have they done to you?"
"Nobody's done anything to me. I'm all right now. I'm all right. Because I came here ... Katie, have you ever heard of Hopton Stoddard?"
"Stoddard? ... I don't know. I've seen the name somewhere."
"Well, never mind, it doesn't matter. I was only thinking how strange it is. You see, Stoddard's an old bastard who just couldn't take his own rottenness any more, so to make up for it he built a big present to the city. But when I ... when I couldn't take it any more, I felt that the only way I could make up for it was by doing the thing I really wanted to do most--by coming here."
"When you couldn't take--what, Peter?"
"I've done something very dirty, Katie. I'll tell you about it some day, but not now.... Look, will you say that you forgive me--without asking what it is? I'll think ... I'll think that I've been forgiven by someone who can never forgive me. Someone who can't be hurt and so can't forgive--but that makes it worse for me."
She did not seem perplexed. She said earnestly:
"I forgive you, Peter."
He nodded his head slowly several times and said:
"Thank you."
Then she pressed her head to his and she whispered:
"You've gone through hell, haven't you?"
"Yes. But it's all right now."
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Then he did not think of the Stoddard Temple any longer, and she did not think of good and evil. They did not need to; they felt too clean.
"Katie, why haven't we married?"
"I don't know," she said. And added hastily, saying it only because her heart was pounding, because she could not remain silent and because she felt called upon not to take advantage of him: "I guess it's because we know we don't have to hurry."
"But we do. If we're not too late already."
"Peter, you ... you're not proposing to me again?"
"Don't look so stunned, Katie. If you do, I'll know that you've doubted it all these years. And I couldn't stand to think that just now. That's what I came here to tell you tonight. We're going to get married. We're going to get married right away."
"Yes, Peter."
"We don't need announcements, dates, preparations, guests, any of it. We've let one of those things or another stop us every time. I honestly don't know just how it happened that we've let it all drift like that.... We won't say anything to anyone. We'll just slip out of town and get married. We'll announce and explain afterward, if anyone wants explanations. And that means your uncle, and my mother, and everybody."
"Yes, Peter."
"Quit your damn job tomorrow. I'll make arrangements at the office to take a month off. Guy will be sore as hell--I'll enjoy that. Get your things ready--you won't need much--don't bother about the make-up, by the way--did you say you looked terrible tonight?--you've never looked lovelier. I'll be here at nine o'clock in the morning, day after tomorrow. You must be ready to start then."
"Yes, Peter."
After he had gone, she lay on her bed, sobbing aloud, without restraint, without dignity, without a care in the world.
Ellsworth Toohey had left the door of his study open. He had seen Keating pass by the door without noticing it and go out. Then he heard the sound of Catherine's sobs. He walked to her room and entered without knocking. He asked:
"What's the matter, my dear? Has Peter done something to hurt you?"
She half lifted herself on the bed, she looked at him, throwing her hair back off her face, sobbing exultantly. She said without thinking the first thing she felt like saying. She said something which she did not understand, but he did: "I'm not afraid of you, Uncle Ellsworth!"
XIV
"WHO?" GASPED KEATING. "Miss Dominique Francon," the maid repeated. "You're drunk, you damn fool!"
"Mr. Keating! ..."
He was on his feet, he shoved her out of the way, he flew into the living room, and saw Dominique Francon standing there, in his apartment.
"Hello, Peter."
"Dominique! ... Dominique, how come?" In his anger, apprehension, curiosity and flattered pleasure, his first conscious thought was gratitude to God that his mother was not at home.
"I phoned your office. They said you had gone home."
"I'm so delighted, so pleasantly sur ... Oh, hell, Dominique, what's the use? I always try to be correct with you and you always see through it so well that it's perfectly pointless. So I won't play the poised host. You know that I'm knocked silly and that your coming here isn't natural and anything I say will probably be wrong."
"Yes, that's better, Peter."
He noticed that he still held a key in his hand and he slipped it into his pocket; he had been packing a suitcase for his wedding trip of tomorrow. He glanced at the room and noted angrily how vulgar his Victorian furniture looked beside the elegance of Dominique's figure. She wore a gray suit, a black fur jacket with a collar raised to her cheeks, and a hat slanting down. She did not look as she had looked on the witness stand, nor as he remembered her at dinner parties. He thought suddenly of that moment, years ago, when he stood on the stair landing outside Guy Francon's office and wished never to see Dominique again. She was what she had been then: a stranger who frightened him by the crystal emptiness of her face.
"Well, sit down, Dominique. Take your coat off."
"No, I shan't stay long. Since we're not pretending anything today, shall I tell you what I came for--or do you want some polite conversation first?"
"No, I don't want polite conversation."
"All right. Will you marry me, Peter?"
He stood very still; then he sat down heavily--because he knew she meant it.
"If you want to marry me," she went on in the same precise, impersonal voice, "you must do it right now. My car is downstairs. We drive to Connecticut and we come back. It will take about three hours."
"Dominique ..." He didn't want to move his lips beyond the effort of her name. He wanted to think that he was paralyzed. He knew that he was violently alive, that he was forcing the stupor into his muscles and into his mind, because he wished to escape the responsibility of consciousness.
"We're not pretending, Peter. Usually, people discuss their reasons and their feelings first, then make the practical arrangements. With us, this is the only way. If I offered it to you in any other form, I'd be cheating you. It must be like this. No questions, no conditions, no explanations. What we don't say answers itself. By not
being said. There is nothing for you to ponder--only whether you want to do it or not."
"Dominique," he spoke with the concentration he used when he walked down a naked girder in an unfinished building, "I understand only this much: I understand that I must try to imitate you, not to discuss it, not to talk, just answer."
"Yes."
"Only--I can't--quite."
"This is one time, Peter, when there are no protections. Nothing to hide behind. Not even words."
"If you'd just say one thing ..."
"No."
"If you'd give me time ..."
"No. Either we go downstairs together now or we forget it."
"You mustn't resent it if I ... You've never allowed me to hope that you could ... that you ... no, no, I won't say it ... but what can you expect me to think? I'm here, alone, and ..."
"And I'm the only one present to give you advice. My advice is to refuse. I'm honest with you, Peter. But I won't help you by withdrawing the offer. You would prefer not to have had the chance of marrying me. But you have the chance. Now. The choice will be yours."