Sally Brent wrote an article on Gail Wynand's love life. In a gay, intellectual manner, in the terms of a sociological study, the article presented material such as no pulp magazine would have accepted. It was published in the New Frontiers.
Wynand brought Dominique a necklace designed at his special order. It was made of diamonds without visible settings, spaced wide apart in an irregular pattern, like a handful scattered accidentally, held together by platinum chains made under a microscope, barely noticeable. When he clasped it about her neck, it looked like drops of water fallen at random.
She stood before a mirror. She slipped her dressing gown off her shoulders and let the raindrops glitter on her skin. She said:
"That life story of the Bronx housewife who murdered her husband's young mistress is pretty sordid, Gail. But I think there's something dirtier--the curiosity of the people who pander to that curiosity. Actually, it was that housewife--she has piano legs and such a baggy neck in her pictures--who made this necklace possible. It's a beautiful necklace. I shall be proud to wear it."
He smiled; the sudden brightness of his eyes had an odd quality of courage.
"That's one way of looking at it," he said. "There's another. I like to think that I took the worst refuse of the human spirit--the mind of that housewife and the minds of the people who like to read about her--and I made of it this necklace on your shoulders. I like to think that I was an alchemist capable of performing so great a purification."
She saw no apology, no regret, no resentment as he looked at her. It was a strange glance; she had noticed it before; a glance of simple worship. And it made her realize that there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence.
She was sitting before her mirror when he entered her dressing room on the following night. He bent down, he pressed his lips to the back of her neck--and he saw a square of paper attached to the corner of her mirror. It was the decoded copy of the cablegram that had ended her career on the Banner. FIRE THE BITCH. G W
He lifted his shoulders, to stand erect behind her. He asked:
"How did you get that?"
"Ellsworth Toohey gave it to me. I thought it was worth preserving. Of course, I didn't know it would ever become so appropriate."
He inclined his head gravely, acknowledging the authorship, and said nothing else.
She expected to find the cablegram gone next morning. But he had not touched it. She would not remove it. It remained displayed on the comer of her mirror. When he held her in his arms, she often saw his eyes move to that square of paper. She could not tell what he thought.
In the spring, a publishers' convention took him away from New York for a week. It was their first separation. Dominique surprised him by coming to meet him at the airport when he returned. She was gay and gentle; her manner held a promise he had never expected, could not trust, and found himself trusting completely.
When he entered the drawing room of their penthouse and slumped down, half stretching on the couch, she knew that he wanted to lie still here, to feel the recaptured safety of his own world. She saw his eyes, open, delivered to her, without defense. She stood straight, ready. She said:
"You'd better dress, Gail. We're going to the theater tonight."
He lifted himself to a sitting posture. He smiled, the slanting ridges standing out on his forehead. She had a cold feeling of admiration for him: the control was perfect, all but these ridges. He said:
"Fine. Black tie or white?"
"White. I have tickets for No Skin Off Your Nose. They were very hard to get."
It was too much; it seemed too ludicrous to be part of this moment's contest between them. He broke down by laughing frankly, in helpless disgust.
"Good God, Dominique, not that one!"
"Why, Gail, it's the biggest hit in town. Your own critic, Jules Fougler"--he stopped laughing. He understood--"said it was the greatest play of our age. Ellsworth Toohey said it was the fresh voice of the coming new world. Alvah Scarret said it was not written in ink, but in the milk of human kindness. Sally Brent--before you fired her--said it made her laugh with a lump in her throat. Why, it's the godchild of the Banner. I thought you would certainly want to see it."
"Yes, of course," he said.
He got up and went to dress.
No Skin Off Your Nose had been running for many months. Ellsworth Toohey had mentioned regretfully in his column that the title of the play had had to be changed slightly--"as a concession to the stuffy prudery of the middle class which still controls our theater. It is a crying example of interference with the freedom of the artist. Now don't let's hear any more of that old twaddle about ours being a free society. Originally, the title of this beautiful play was an authentic line drawn from the language of the people, with the brave, simple eloquence of folk expression."
Wynand and Dominique sat in the center of the fourth row, not looking at each other, listening to the play. The things being done on the stage were merely trite and crass; but the undercurrent made them frightening. There was an air about the ponderous inanities spoken, which the actors had absorbed like an infection; it was in their smirking faces, in the slyness of their voices, in their untidy gestures. It was an air of inanities uttered as revelations and insolently demanding acceptance as such; an air, not of innocent presumption, but of conscious effrontery; as if the author knew the nature of his work and boasted of his power to make it appear sublime in the minds of his audience and thus destroy the capacity for the sublime within them. The work justified the verdict of its sponsors: it brought laughs, it was amusing; it was an indecent joke, acted out not on the stage but in the audience. It was a pedestal from which a god had been torn, and in his place there stood, not Satan with a sword, but a corner lout sipping a bottle of Coca-Cola.
There was silence in the audience, puzzled and humble. When someone laughed, the rest joined in, with relief, glad to learn that they were enjoying themselves. Jules Fougler had not tried to influence anybody; he had merely made clear--well in advance and through many channels--that anyone unable to enjoy this play was, basically, a worthless human being. "It's no use asking for explanations," he had said. "Either you're fine enough to like it or you aren't."
In the intermission Wynand heard a stout woman saying: "It's wonderful. I don't understand it, but I have the feeling that it's something very important." Dominique asked him: "Do you wish to go, Gail?" He said: "No. We'll stay to the end."
He was silent in the car on their way home. When they entered their drawing room, he stood waiting, ready to hear and accept anything. For a moment she felt the desire to spare him. She felt empty and very tired. She did not want to hurt him; she wanted to seek his help.
Then she thought again what she had thought in the theater. She thought that this play was the creation of the Banner, this was what the Banner had forced into life, had fed, upheld, made to triumph. And it was the Banner that had begun and ended the destruction of the Stoddard Temple.... The New York Banner, November 2, 1930--"One Small Voice"--"Sacrilege" by Ellsworth M. Toohey--"The Churches of our Childhood" by Alvah Scarret--"Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" ... And now that destruction was not an event long since past--this was not a comparison between two mutually unmeasurable entities, a building and a play--it was not an accident, nor a matter of persons, of Ike, Fougler, Toohey, herself ... and Roark. It was a contest without time, a struggle of two abstractions, the thing that had created the building against the things that made the play possible--two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple statement--two forces that had fought since the world began--and every religion had known of them--and there had always been a God and a Devil--only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil--he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small. The Banner had destroyed the Stoddard Temple in order to make room for this play--it could not do otherwise--there was no middle choice, no escape, no neutrality--it was one or the other--it had always been--and the contest had many
symbols, but no name and no statement.... Roark, she heard herself screaming inside, Roark ... Roark ... Roark ...
"Dominique ... what's the matter?"
She heard Wynand's voice. It was soft and anxious. He had never allowed himself to betray anxiety. She grasped the sound as a reflection of her own face, of what he had seen in her face.
She stood straight, and sure of herself, and very silent inside.
"I'm thinking of you, Gail," she said.
He waited.
"Well, Gail? The total passion for the total height?" She laughed, letting her arms swing sloppily in the manner of the actors they had seen. "Say, Gail, have you got a two-cent stamp with a picture of George Washington on it? ... How old are you, Gail? How hard have you worked? Your life is more than half over, but you've seen your reward tonight. Your crowning achievement. Of course, no man is ever quite equal to his highest passion. Now if you strive and make a great effort, some day you'll rise to the level of that play!"
He stood quietly, hearing it, accepting.
"I think you should take a manuscript of that play and place it on a stand in the center of your gallery downstairs. I think you should rechristen your yacht and call her No Skin Off Your Nose. I think you should take me----"
"Keep still."
"--and put me in the cast and make me play the role of Mary every evening, Mary who adopts the homeless muskrat and ..."
"Dominique, keep still."
"Then talk. I want to hear you talk."
"I never justified myself to anyone."
"Well, boast then. That would do just as well."
"If you want to hear it, it made me sick, that play. As you knew it would. That was worse than the Bronx housewife."
"Much worse."
"But I can think of something worse still. Writing a great play and offering it for tonight's audience to laugh at. Letting oneself be martyred by the kind of people we saw frolicking tonight."
He saw that something had reached her; he could not tell whether it was an answer of surprise or of anger. He did not know how well she recognized these words. He went on:
"It did make me sick. But so have a great many things which the Banner has done. It was worse tonight, because there was a quality about it that went beyond the usual. A special kind of malice. But if this is popular with fools, it's the Banner's legitimate province. The Banner was created for the benefit of fools. What else do you want me to admit?"
"What you felt tonight."
"A minor kind of hell. Because you sat there with me. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? To make me feel the contrast. Still, you miscalculated. I looked at the stage and I thought, this is what people are like, such are their spirits, but I--I've found you, I have you--and the contrast was worth the pain. I did suffer tonight, as you wanted, but it was a pain that went only down to a certain point and then ..."
"Shut up!" she screamed. "Shut up, God damn you!"
They stood for a moment, both astonished. He moved first; he knew she needed his help; he grasped her shoulders. She tore herself away. She walked across the room, to the window; she stood looking at the city, at the great buildings spread in black and fire below her.
After a while she said, her voice toneless:
"I'm sorry, Gail."
He did not answer.
"I had no right to say those things to you." She did not turn, her arms raised, holding the frame of the window. "We're even, Gail. I'm paid back, if that will make it better for you. I broke first."
"I don't want you to be paid back." He spoke quietly. "Dominique, what was it?"
"Nothing."
"What did I make you think of? It wasn't what I said. It was something else. What did the words mean to you?"
"Nothing."
"A pain that went only down to a certain point. It was that sentence. Why?" She was looking at the city. In the distance she could see the shaft of the Cord Building. "Dominique, I've seen what you can take. It must be something very terrible if it could do that to you. I must know. There's nothing impossible. I can help you against it, whatever it is." She did not answer. "At the theater, it was not just that fool play. There was something else for you tonight. I saw your face. And then it was the same thing again here. What is it?"
"Gail," she said softly, "will you forgive me?"
He let a moment pass; he had not been prepared for that.
"What have I to forgive you?"
"Everything. And tonight."
"That was your privilege. The condition on which you married me. To make me pay for the Banner."
"I don't want to make you pay for it."
"Why don't you want it any more?"
"It can't be paid for."
In the silence she listened to his steps pacing the room behind her.
"Dominique. What was it?"
"The pain that stops at a certain point? Nothing. Only that you had no right to say it. The men who have, pay for that right, a price you can't afford. But it doesn't matter now. Say it if you wish. I have no right to say it either."
"That wasn't all."
"I think we have a great deal in common, you and I. We've committed the same treason somewhere. No, that's a bad word.... Yes, I think it's the right word. It's the only one that has the feeling of what I mean."
"Dominique, you can't feel that." His voice sounded strange. She turned to him.
"Why?"
"Because that's what I felt tonight. Treason."
"Toward whom?"
"I don't know. If I were religious, I'd say 'God.' But I'm not religious."
"That's what I meant, Gail."
"Why should you feel it? The Banner is not your child."
"There are other forms of the same guilt."
Then he walked to her across the long room, he held her in his arms, he said:
"You don't know the meaning of the kind of words you use. We have a great deal in common, but not that. I'd rather you went on spitting at me than trying to share my offenses."
She let her hand rest against the length of his cheek, her finger tips at his temple.
He asked:
"Will you tell me--now--what it was?"
"Nothing. I undertook more than I could carry. You're tired, Gail. Why don't you go on upstairs? Leave me here for a little while. I just want to look at the city. Then I'll join you and I'll be all right."
IX
DOMINIQUE STOOD AT THE RAIL OF THE YACHT, THE DECK WARM under her flat sandals, the sun on her bare legs, the wind blowing her thin white dress. She looked at Wynand stretched in a deck chair before her.
She thought of the change she noticed in him again aboard ship. She had watched him through the months of their summer cruise. She had seen him once running down a companionway; the picture remained in her mind; a tall white figure thrown forward in a streak of speed and confidence; his hand grasped a railing, risking deliberately the danger of a sudden break, gaining a new propulsion. He was not the corrupt publisher of a popular empire. He was an aristocrat aboard a yacht. He looked, she thought, like what one believes aristocracy to be when one is young: a brilliant kind of gaiety without guilt.
She looked at him in the deck chair. She thought that relaxation was attractive only in those for whom it was an unnatural state; then even limpness acquired purpose. She wondered about him; Gail Wynand, famous for his extraordinary capacity; but this was not merely the force of an ambitious adventurer who had created a chain of newspapers; this--the quality she saw in him here--the thing stretched out under the sun, like an answer--this was greater, a first cause, a faculty out of universal dynamics.
"Gail," she said suddenly, involuntarily.
He opened his eyes to look at her.
"I wish I had taken a recording of that," he said lazily. "You'd be startled to hear what it sounded like. Quite wasted here. I'd like to play it back in a bedroom."
"I'll repeat it there if you wish."
"Thank you, dearest. And I promise not to exaggerate or presume to
o much. You're not in love with me. You've never loved anyone."
"Why do you think that?"
"If you loved a man, it wouldn't be just a matter of a circus wedding and an atrocious evening in the theater. You'd put him through total hell."
"How do you know that, Gail?"
"Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I'm not the Gail Wynand you'd heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love you'd want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because that's the impossible, the inconceivable for you in your relations with people. That would be the one gift, the great exception you'd want to offer the man you loved. But it wouldn't be easy for you."
"If that's true, then you ..."
"Then I become gentle and humble--to your great astonishment--because I'm the worst scoundrel living."
"I don't believe that, Gail."
"No? I'm not the person before last any more?"
"Not any more."
"Well, dearest, as a matter of fact, I am."
"Why do you want to think that?"
"I don't want to. But I like to be honest. That has been my only private luxury. Don't change your mind about me. Go on seeing me as you saw me before we met."
"Gail, that's not what you want."
"It doesn't matter what I want. I don't want anything--except to own you. Without answer from you. It has to be without answer. If you begin to look at me too closely, you'll see things you won't like at all."
"What things?"
"You're so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on God's part that there's one person who matches inside and out."
"What things, Gail?"
"Do you know what you're actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art. That's the only field where it can be found--art. But you want it in the flesh. You're in love with it. Well, you see, I've never had any integrity."
"How sure are you of that, Gail?"
"Have you forgotten the Banner?"
"To hell with the Banner."
"All right, to hell with the Banner. It's nice to hear you say that. But the Banner's not the major symptom. That I've never practiced any sort of integrity is not so important. What's important is that I've never felt any need for it. I hate the conception of it. I hate the presumptuousness of the idea."