by Ayn Rand
"Then the responsibility and the risk will be theirs, not mine."
"I admire your ... no, I must not say 'innocence,' but shall I say 'purity?' You have never thought of it, I'm sure, but life is not as straight and logical as ... as a railroad track. It is regrettable, but possible, that your high intentions may lead people to suspect things which ... well, which I'm sure you know to be of a sordid and scandalous nature."
Dagny was looking straight at her. "I don't."
"But you cannot ignore that possibility."
"I do." Dagny turned to go.
"Oh, but should you wish to evade a discussion if you have nothing to hide?" Dagny stopped. "And if your brilliant--and reckless--courage permits you to gamble with your reputation, should you ignore the danger to Mr. Rearden?"
Dagny asked slowly, "What is the danger to Mr. Rearden?"
"I'm sure you understand me."
"I don't."
"Oh, but surely it isn't necessary to be more explicit."
"It is--if you wish to continue this discussion."
Lillian's eyes went to Rearden's face, searching for some sign to help her decide whether to continue or to stop. He would not help her.
"Miss Taggart," she said, "I am not your equal in philosophical altitude. I am only an average wife. Please give me that bracelet--if you do not wish me to think what I might think and what you wouldn't want me to name."
"Mrs. Rearden, is this the manner and place in which you choose to suggest that I am sleeping with your husband?"
"Certainly not!" The cry was immediate; it had a sound of panic and the quality of an automatic reflex, like the jerk of withdrawal of a pickpocket's hand caught in action. She added, with an angry, nervous chuckle, in a tone of sarcasm and sincerity that confessed a reluctant admission of her actual opinion, "That would be the possibility farthest from my mind."
"Then you will please apologize to Miss Taggart," said Rearden.
Dagny caught her breath, cutting off all but the faint echo of a gasp. They both whirled to him. Lillian saw nothing in his face; Dagny saw torture.
"It isn't necessary, Hank," she said.
"It is--for me," he answered coldly, not looking at her; he was looking at Lillian in the manner of a command that could not be disobeyed.
Lillian studied his face with mild astonishment, but without anxiety or anger, like a person confronted by a puzzle of no significance. "But of course," she said complaisantly, her voice smooth and confident again. "Please accept my apology, Miss Taggart, if I gave you the impression that I suspected the existence of a relationship which I would consider improbable for you and--from my knowledge of his inclinations--impossible for my husband."
She turned and walked away indifferently, leaving them together, as if in deliberate proof of her words.
Dagny stood still, her eyes closed; she was thinking of the night when Lillian had given her the bracelet. He had taken his wife's side, then; he had taken hers, now. Of the three of them, she was the only one who understood fully what this meant.
"Whatever is the worst you may wish to say to me, you will be right."
She heard him and opened her eyes. He was looking at her coldly, his face harsh, allowing no sign of pain or apology to suggest a hope of forgiveness.
"Dearest, don't torture yourself like that," she said. "I knew that you're married. I've never tried to evade that knowledge. I'm not hurt by it tonight."
Her first word was the most violent of the several blows he felt: she had never used that word before. She had never let him hear that particular tone of tenderness. She had never spoken of his marriage in the privacy of their meetings--yet she spoke of it here with effortless simplicity.
She saw the anger in his face--the rebellion against pity--the look of saying to her contemptuously that he had betrayed no torture and needed no help--then the look of the realization that she knew his face as thoroughly as he knew hers--he closed his eyes, he inclined his head a little, and he said very quietly, "Thank you."
She smiled and turned away from him.
James Taggart held an empty champagne glass in his hand and noticed the haste with which Balph Eubank waved at a passing waiter, as if the waiter were guilty of an unpardonable lapse. Then Eubank completed his sentence:
"--but you, Mr. Taggart, would know that a man who lives on a higher plane cannot be understood or appreciated. It's a hopeless struggle--trying to obtain support for literature from a world ruled by businessmen. They are nothing but stuffy, middle-class vulgarians or else predatory savages like Rearden."
"Jim," said Bertram Scudder, slapping his shoulder, "the best compliment I can pay you is that you're not a real businessman!"
"You're a man of culture, Jim," said Dr. Pritchett, "you're not an ex-ore-digger like Rearden. I don't have to explain to you the crucial need of Washington assistance to higher education."
"You really liked my last novel, Mr. Taggart?" Balph Eubank kept asking. "You really liked it?"
Orren Boyle glanced at the group, on his way across the room, but did not stop. The glance was sufficient to give him an estimate of the nature of the group's concerns. Fair enough, he thought, one's got to trade something. He knew, but did not care to name just what was being traded.
"We are at the dawn of a new age," said James Taggart, from above the rim of his champagne glass. "We are breaking up the vicious tyranny of economic power. We will set men free of the rule of the dollar. We will release our spiritual aims from dependence on the owners of material means. We will liberate our culture from the stranglehold of the profit-chasers. We will build a society dedicated to higher ideals, and we will replace the aristocracy of money by--"
"--the aristocracy of pull," said a voice beyond the group.
They whirled around. The man who stood facing them was Francisco d'Anconia.
His face looked tanned by a summer sun, and his eyes were the exact color of the sky on the kind of day when he had acquired his tan. His smile suggested a summer morning. The way he wore his formal clothes made the rest of the crowd look as if they were masquerading in borrowed costumes.
"What's the matter?" he asked in the midst of their silence. "Did I say something that somebody here didn't know?"
"How did you get here?" was the first thing James Taggart found himself able to utter.
"By plane to Newark, by taxi from there, then by elevator from my suite fifty-three floors above you."
"I didn't mean ... that is, what I meant was--"
"Don't look so startled, James. If I land in New York and hear that there's a party going on, I wouldn't miss it, would I? You've always said that I'm just a party hound."
The group was watching them.
"I'm delighted to see you, of course," Taggart said cautiously, then added belligerently, to balance it, "But if you think you're going to--"
Francisco would not pick up the threat; he let Taggart's sentence slide into mid-air and stop, then asked politely, "If I think what?"
"You understand me very well."
"Yes. I do. Shall I tell you what I think?"
"This is hardly the moment for any--"
"I think you should present me to your bride, James. Your manners have never been glued to you too solidly--you always lose them in an emergency, and that's the time when one needs them most."
Turning to escort him toward Cherryl, Taggart caught the faint sound that came from Bertram Scudder; it was an unborn chuckle. Taggart knew that the men who had crawled at his feet a moment ago, whose hatred for Francisco d'Anconia was, perhaps, greater than his own, were enjoying the spectacle none the less. The implications of this knowledge were among the things he did not care to name.
Francisco bowed to Cherryl and offered his best wishes, as if she were the bride of a royal heir. Watching nervously, Taggart felt relief--and a touch of nameless resentment, which, if named, would have told him he wished the occasion deserved the grandeur that Francisco's manner gave it for a moment.
He was
afraid to remain by Francisco's side and afraid to let him loose among the guests. He backed a few tentative steps away, but Francisco followed him, smiling.
"You didn't think I'd want to miss your wedding, James--when you're my childhood friend and best stockholder?"
"What?" gasped Taggart, and regretted it: the sound was a confession of panic.
Francisco did not seem to take note of it; he said, his voice gaily innocent, "Oh, but of course I know it. I know the stooge behind the stooge behind every name on the list of the stockholders of d'Anconia Copper. It's surprising how many men by the name of Smith and Gomez are rich enough to own big chunks of the richest corporation in the world--so you can't blame me if I was curious to learn what distinguished persons I actually have among my minority stockholders. I seem to be popular with an astonishing collection of public figures from all over the world--from People's States where you wouldn't think there's any money left at all."
Taggart said dryly, frowning, "There are many reasons--business reasons--why it is sometimes advisable not to make one's investments directly."
"One reason is that a man doesn't want people to know he's rich. Another is that he doesn't want them to learn how he got that way."
"I don't know what you mean or why you should object."
"Oh, I don't object at all. I appreciate it. A great many investors -the old-fashioned sort--dropped me after the San Sebastian Mines. It scared them away. But the modern ones had more faith in me and acted as they always do--on faith. I can't tell you how thoroughly I appreciate it."
Taggart wished Francisco would not talk so loudly; he wished people would not gather around them. "You have been doing extremely well," he said, in the safe tone of a business compliment.
"Yes, haven't I? It's wonderful how the stock of d'Anconia Copper has risen within the last year. But I don't think I should be too conceited about it--there's not much competition left in the world, there's no place to invest one's money, if one happens to get rich quickly, and here's d'Anconia Copper, the oldest company on earth, the one that's been the safest bet for centuries. Just think of what it managed to survive through the ages. So if you people have decided that it's the best place for your hidden money, that it can't be beaten, that it would take a most unusual kind of man to destroy d'Anconia Copper--you were right."
"Well, I hear it said that you've begun to take your responsibilities seriously and that you've settled down to business at last. They say you've been working very hard."
"Oh, has anybody noticed that? It was the old-fashioned investors who made it a point to watch what the president of a company was doing. The modern investors don't find knowledge necessary. I don't think they ever look into my activities."
Taggart smiled. "They look at the ticker tape of the stock exchange. That tells the whole story, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Yes, it does--in the long run."
"I must say I'm glad that you haven't been much of a party hound this past year. The results show in your work."
"Do they? Well, no, not quite yet."
"I suppose," said Taggart, in the cautious tone of an indirect question, "that I should feel flattered you chose to come to this party."
"Oh, but I had to come. I thought you were expecting me."
"Why, no, I wasn't . . . that is, I mean--"
"You should have expected me, James. This is the great, formal, nose-counting event, where the victims come in order to show how safe it is to destroy them, and the destroyers form pacts of eternal friendship, which lasts for three months. I don't know exactly which group I belong to, but I had to come and be counted, didn't I?"
"What in hell do you think you're saying?" Taggart cried furiously, seeing the tension on the faces around them.
"Be careful, James. If you try to pretend that you don't understand me, I'm going to make it much clearer."
"If you think it's proper to utter such--"
"I think it's funny. There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that's all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns--just somebody naming the exact nature of what you're doing?"
"If you think it's proper to come to a celebration such as a wedding, in order to insult the host--"
"Why, James, I came here to thank you."
"To thank me?"
"Of course. You've done me a great favor--you and your boys in Washington and the boys in Santiago. Only I wonder why none of you took the trouble to inform me about it. Those directives that somebody issued here a few months ago are choking off the entire copper industry of this country. And the result is that this country suddenly has to import much larger amounts of copper. And where in the world is there any copper left--unless it's d'Anconia copper? So you see that I have good reason to be grateful."
"I assure you I had nothing to do with it," Taggart said hastily, "and besides, the vital economic policies of this country are not determined by any considerations such as you're intimating or--"
"I know how they're determined, James. I know that the deal started with the boys in Santiago, because they've been on the d'Anconia pay roll for centuries--well, no, 'pay roll' is an honorable word, it would be more exact to say that d'Anconia Copper has been paying them protection money for centuries--isn't that what your gangsters call it? Our boys in Santiago call it taxes. They've been getting their cut on every ton of d'Anconia copper sold. So they have a vested interest to see me sell as many tons as possible. But with the world turning into People's States, this is the only country left where men are not yet reduced to digging for roots in forests for their sustenance--so this is the only market left on earth. The boys in Santiago wanted to corner this market. I don't know what they offered to the boys in Washington, or who traded what and to whom--but I know that you came in on it somewhere, because you do hold a sizable chunk of d'Anconia Copper stock. And it surely didn't displease you--that morning, four months ago, the day after the directives were issued--to see the kind of soaring leap that d'Anconia Copper performed on the Stock Exchange. Why, it practically leaped off the ticker tape and into your face."
"Who gave you any grounds to invent an outrageous story of this kind?"
"Nobody. I knew nothing about it. I just saw the leap on the ticker tape that morning. That told the whole story, didn't it? Besides, the boys in Santiago slapped a new tax on copper the following week--and they told me that I shouldn't mind it, not with that sudden rise of my stock. They were working for my best interests, they said. They said, why should I care--taking the two events together, I was richer than I had been before. True enough. I was."
"Why do you wish to tell me this?"
"Why don't you wish to take any credit for it, James? That's out of character and out of the policy at which you're such an expert. In an age when men exist, not by right, but by favor, one does not reject a grateful person, one tries to trap into gratitude as many people as possible. Don't you want to have me as one of your men under obligation?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Think what a favor I received without any effort on my part. I wasn't consulted, I wasn't informed, I wasn't thought about, everything was arranged without me--and all I have to do now is produce the copper. That was a great favor, James--and you may be sure that I will repay it."
Francisco turned abruptly, not waiting for an answer, and started away. Taggart did not follow; he stood, feeling that anything was preferable to one more minute of their conversation.
Francisco stopped when he came to Dagny. He looked at her for a silent instant, without greeting, his smile acknowledging that she had been the first person he saw and the first one to see him at his entrance into the ballroom.
Against every doubt and warning in her mind, she felt nothing but a joyous confidence; inexplicably, she felt as if his fi
gure in that crowd was a point of indestructible security. But in the moment when the beginning of a smile told him how glad she was to see him, he asked, "Don't you want to tell me what a brilliant achievement the John Gait Line turned out to be?"
She felt her lips trembling and tightening at once, as she answered, "I'm sorry if I show that I'm still open to be hurt. It shouldn't shock me that you've come to the stage where you despise achievement."
"Yes, don't I? I despised that Line so much that I didn't want to see it reach the kind of end it has reached."
He saw her look of sudden attentiveness, the look of thought rushing into a breach torn open upon a new direction. He watched her for a moment, as if he knew every step she would find along that road, then chuckled and said, "Don't you want to ask me now: Who is John Galt?"
"Why should I want to, and why now?"
"Don't you remember that you dared him to come and claim your Line? Well, he has."
He walked on, not waiting to see the look in her eyes--a look that held anger, bewilderment and the first faint gleam of a question mark.
It was the muscles of his own face that made Rearden realize the nature of his reaction to Francisco's arrival: he noticed suddenly that he was smiling and that his face had been relaxed into the dim well-being of a smile for some minutes past, as he watched Francisco d.'An conia in the crowd.
He acknowledged to himself, for the first time, all the half-grasped, half-rejected moments when he had thought of Francisco d'Anconia and thrust the thought aside before it became the knowledge of how much he wanted to see him again. In moments of sudden exhaustion--at his desk, with the fires of the furnaces going down in the twilight--in the darkness of the lonely walk through the empty countryside to his house--in the silence of sleepless nights--he had found himself thinking of the only man who had once seemed to be his spokesman. He had pushed the memory aside, telling himself: But that one is worse than all the others!--while feeling certain that this was not true, yet being unable to name the reason of his certainty. He had caught himself glancing through the newspapers to see whether Francisco d'.Anconia had returned to New York--and he had thrown the newspapers aside, asking himself angrily: What if he did return?--would you go chasing him through night clubs and cocktail parties?--what is it that you want from him?