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The useless questions never came back to him again. He had no time for them in the days that followed. He had won the Cosmo-Slotnick competition.
Peter Keating had known it would be a triumph, but he had not expected the thing that happened. He had dreamed of a sound of trumpets; he had not foreseen a symphonic explosion.
It began with the thin ringing of a telephone, a
It made a better story than Francon had expected. From the pages of newspapers the face of Peter Keating looked upon the country, the handsome, wholesome, smiling face with the brilliant eyes and the dark curls; it headed columns of print about poverty, struggle, aspiration and unremitting toil that had won their reward; about the faith of a mother who had sacrificed everything to her boy's success; about the "Cinderella of Architecture."
Cosmo-Slotnick were pleased; they had not thought that prize-wi
Keating's drawings of the "most beautiful skyscraper on earth" were reproduced in the papers, with the words of the award underneath: " ... for the brilliant skill and simplicity of its plan ... for its clean, ruthless efficiency ... for its ingenious economy of space ... for the masterful blending of the modern with the traditional in Art ... to Francon & Heyer and Peter Keating ... "
Keating appeared in newsreels, shaking hands with Mr. Shupe and Mr. Slotnick, and the subtitle a
Mrs. Keating had sobbed at first, clasped Peter in her arms and gulped that she could not believe it. She had stammered, answering questions about Petey, and she had posed for pictures, embarrassed, eager to please. Then she became used to it. She told Peter, shrugging, that of course he had won, it was nothing to gape at, no one else could have won. She acquired a brisk little tone of condescension for the reporters. She was distinctly a
Keating let himself be carried by the torrent. He needed the people and the clamor around him. There were no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent — admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right at the number of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself born in them, he saw himself being granted the gift of life. That was Peter Keating, that, the reflection in those staring pupils, and his body was only its reflection.
He found time to spend two hours with Catherine, one evening. He held her in his arms and she whispered radiant plans for their future; he glanced at her with contentment; he did not hear her words; he was thinking of how it would look if they were photographed like this together and in how many papers it would be syndicated.
He saw Dominique once. She was leaving the city for the summer. Dominique was disappointing. She congratulated him, quite correctly; but she looked at him as she had always looked, as if nothing had happened. Of all architectural publications, her column had been the only one that had never mentioned the Cosmo-Slotnick competition or its wi
"I'm going to Co
But there was one thing which did spoil his triumph; not often and not too loudly. He never tired of hearing what was said about him; but he did not like to hear too much about his building. And when he had to hear it, he did not mind the comments on "the masterful blending of the modern with the traditional" in its facade; but when they spoke of the plan — and they spoke so much of the plan — when he heard about "the brilliant skill and simplicity ... the clean, ruthless efficiency ... the ingenious economy of space ... " when he heard it and thought of ... He did not think it. There were no words in his brain. He would not allow them. There was only a heavy, dark feeling — and a name.
For two weeks after the award he pushed this thing out of his mind, as a thing unworthy of his concern, to be buried as his doubting, humble past was buried. All winter long he had kept his own sketches of the building with the pencil lines cut across them by another's hands; on the evening of the award he had burned them; it was the first thing he had done.
But the thing would not leave him. Then he grasped suddenly that it was not a vague threat, but a practical danger; and he lost all fear of it. He could deal with a practical danger, he could dispose of it quite simply. He chuckled with relief, he telephoned Roark's office, and made an appointment to see him.
He went to that appointment confidently. For the first time in his life he felt free of the strange uneasiness which he had never been able to explain or escape in Roark's presence. He felt safe now. He was through with Howard Roark.
Roark sat at the desk in his office, waiting. The telephone had rung once, that morning, but it had been only Peter Keating asking for an appointment. He had forgotten now that Keating was coming. He was waiting for the telephone. He had become dependent on that telephone in the last few weeks. He was to hear at any moment about his drawings for the Manhattan Bank Company.