by Ayn Rand
"I will answer whatever I may."
"You have decided to retire? To give up your business?"
"Yes."
"Does it mean nothing to you now?"
"It means more to me now than it ever did before."
"But you're going to abandon it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"That, I won't answer."
"You, who loved your work, who respected nothing but work, who despised every kind of aimlessness, passivity and renunciation--have you renounced the kind of life you loved?"
"No. I have just discovered how much I do love it."
"But you intend to exist without work or purpose?"
"What makes you think that?"
"Are you going into the coal-mining business somewhere else?"
"No, not into the coal-mining business."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"I haven't decided that yet."
"Where are you going?"
"I won't answer."
She gave herself a moment's pause, to gather her strength, to tell herself: Don't feel, don't show him that you feel anything, don't let it cloud and break the bridge--then she said, in the same quiet, even voice, "Do you realize what your retirement will do to Hank Rearden, to me, to all the rest of us, whoever is left?"
"Yes. I realize it more fully than you do at present."
"And it means nothing to you?"
"It means more than you will care to believe."
"Then why are you deserting us?"
"You will not believe it and I will not explain, but I am not deserting you."
"We're being left to carry a greater burden, and you're indifferent to the knowledge that you'll see us destroyed by the looters."
"Don't be too sure of that."
"Of which? Your indifference or our destruction?"
"Of either."
"But you know, you knew it this morning, that it's a battle to the death, and it's we--you were one of us--against the looters."
"If I answer that I know it, but you don.'t--you'll think that I attach no meaning to my words. So take it as you wish, but that is my answer."
"Will you tell me the meaning?"
"No. It's for you to discover."
"You're willing to give up the world to the looters. We aren't."
"Don't be too sure of either."
She remained helplessly silent. The strangeness of his manner was its simplicity: he spoke as if he were being completely natural and--in the midst of unanswered questions and of a tragic mystery--he conveyed the impression that there were no secrets any longer, and no mystery need ever have existed.
But as she watched him, she saw the first break in his joyous calm: she saw him struggling against some thought; he hesitated, then said, with effort, "About Hank Rearden ... Will you do me a favor?"
"Of course."
"Will you tell him that I ... You see, I've never cared for people, yet he was always the man I respected, but I didn't know until today that what I felt was .... that he was the only man I ever loved.... Just tell him this and that I wish I could--no, I guess that's all I can tell him.... He'll probably damn me for leaving ... still, maybe he won't."
"I'll tell him."
Hearing the dulled, hidden sound of pain in his voice, she felt so close to him that it seemed impossible he would deliver the blow he was delivering--and she made one last effort.
"Mr. Danagger, if I were to plead on my knees, if I were to find some sort of words that I haven't found--would there be ... is there a chance to stop you?"
"There isn't."
After a moment, she asked tonelessly, "When are you quitting?"
"Tonight."
"What will you do with"--she pointed at the hills beyond the window--". the Danagger Coal Company? To whom are you leaving it?"
"I don't know--or care. To nobody or everybody. To whoever wants to take it."
"You're not going to dispose of it or appoint a successor?"
"No. What for?"
"To leave it in good hands. Couldn't you at least name an heir of your own choice?"
"I haven't any choice. It doesn't make any difference to me. Want me to leave it all to you?" He reached for a sheet of paper. "I'll write a letter naming you sole heiress right now, if you want me to."
She shook her head in an involuntary recoil of horror. "I'm not a looter!"
He chuckled, pushing the paper aside. "You see? You gave the right answer, whether you knew it or not. Don't worry about Danagger Coal. It won't make any difference, whether I appoint the best successor in the world, or the worst, or none. No matter who takes it over now, whether men or weeds, it won't make any difference."
"But to walk off and abandon ... just abandon ... an industrial enterprise, as if we were in the age of landless nomads or of savages wandering in the jungle!"
"Aren't we?" He was smiling at her, half in mockery, half in compassion. "Why should I leave a deed or a will? I don't want to help the looters to pretend that private property still exists. I am complying with the system which they have established. They do not need me, they say, they only need my coal. Let them take it."
"Then you're accepting their system?"
"Am I?"
She moaned, looking at the exit door, "What has he done to you?"
"He told me that I had the right to exist."
"I didn't believe it possible that in three hours one could make a man turn against fifty-two years of his life!"
"If that's what you think he's done, or if you think that he's told me some inconceivable revelation, then I can see how bewildering it would appear to you. But that's not what he's done. He merely named what I had lived by, what every man lives by--at and to the extent of such time as he doesn't spend destroying himself."
She knew that questions were futile and that there was nothing she could say to him.
He looked at her bowed head and said gently, "You're a brave person, Miss Taggart. I know what you're doing right now and what it's costing you. Don't torture yourself. Let me go."
She rose to her feet. She was about to speak--but suddenly he saw her stare down, leap forward and seize the ashtray that stood on the edge of the desk.
The ashtray contained a cigarette butt stamped with the sign of the dollar.
"What's the matter, Miss Taggart?"
"Did he ... did he smoke this?"
"Who?"
"Your caller--did he smoke this cigarette?"
"Why, I don't know ... I guess so ... yes, I think I did see him smoking a cigarette once ... let me see ... no, that's not my brand, so it must be his."
"Were there any other visitors in this office today?"
"No. But why, Miss Taggart? What's the matter?"
"May I take this?"
"What? The cigarette butt?" He stared at her in bewilderment.
"Yes."
"Why, sure--but what for?"
She was looking down at the butt in the palm of her hand as if it were a jewel. "I don't know ... I don't know what good it will do me, except that it's a clue to"--she smiled bitterly--"to a secret of my own."
She stood, reluctant to leave, looking at Ken Danagger in the manner of a last look at one departing for the realm of no return.
He guessed it, smiled and extended his hand. "I won't say good-bye," he said, "because I'll see you again in the not too distant future."
"Oh," she said eagerly, holding his hand clasped across the desk, "are you going to return?"
"No. You're going to join me."
There was only a faint red breath above the structures in the darkness, as if the mills were asleep but alive, with the even breathing of the furnaces and the distant heartbeats of the conveyor belts to show it. Rearden stood at the window of his office, his hand pressed to the pane; in the perspective of distance, his hand covered half a mile of structures, as if he were trying to hold them.
He was looking at a long wall of vertical strips, which was the battery of coke ovens.
A narrow door slid open with a brief gasp of flame, and a sheet of red-glowing coke came sliding out smoothly, like a slice of bread from the side of a giant toaster. It held still for an instant, then an angular crack shot through the slice and it crumbled into a gondola waiting on the rails below.
Danagger coal, he thought. These were the only words in his mind. The rest was a feeling of loneliness, so vast that even its own pain seemed swallowed in an enormous void.
Yesterday, Dagny had told him the story of her futile attempt and given him Danagger's message. This morning, he had heard the news that Danagger had disappeared. Through his sleepless night, then through the taut concentration on the duties of the day, his answer to the message had kept beating in his mind, the answer he would never have a chance to utter.
"The only man I ever loved." It came from Ken Danagger, who had never expressed anything more personal than "Look here, Rearden." He thought: Why had we let it go? Why had we both been condemned -in the hours away from our desks--to an exile among dreary strangers who had made us give up all desire for rest, for friendship, for the sound of human voices? Could I now reclaim a single hour spent listening to my brother Philip and give it to Ken Danagger? Who made it our duty to accept, as the only reward for our work, the gray torture of pretending love for those who roused us to nothing but contempt? We who were able to melt rock and metal for our purpose, why had we never sought that which we wanted from men?
He tried to choke the words in his mind, knowing that it was useless to think of them now. But the words were there and they were like words addressed to the dead: No, I don't damn you for leaving--if that is the question and the pain which you took away with you. Why didn't you give me a chance to tell you ... what? that I approve? ... no, but that I can neither blame you nor follow you.
Closing his eyes, he permitted himself to experience for a moment the immense relief he would feel if he, too, were to walk off, abandoning everything. Under the shock of his loss, he felt a thin thread of envy. Why didn't they come for me, too, whoever they are, and give me that irresistible reason which would make me go? But in the next moment, his shudder of anger told him that he would murder the man who'd attempt to approach him, he would murder before he could hear the words of the secret that would take him away from his mills.
It was late, his staff had gone, but he dreaded the road to his house and the emptiness of the evening ahead. He felt as if the enemy who had wiped out Ken Danagger, were waiting for him in the darkness beyond the glow of the mills. He was not invulnerable any longer, but whatever it was, he thought, wherever it came from, he was safe from it here, as in a circle of fires drawn about him to ward off evil.
He looked at the glittering white splashes on the dark windows of a structure in the distance; they were like motionless ripples of sunlight on water. It was the reflection of the neon sign that burned on the roof of the building above his head, saying: Rearden Steel. He thought of the night when he had wished to light a sign above his past, saying: Rearden Life. Why had he wished it? For whose eyes to see?
He thought--in bitter astonishment and for the first time--that the joyous pride he had once felt, had come from his respect for men, for the value of their admiration and their judgment. He did not feel it any longer. There were no men, he thought, to whose sight he could wish to offer that sign.
He turned brusquely away from the window. He seized his overcoat with the harsh sweep of a gesture intended to jolt him back into the discipline of action. He slammed the two folds of the overcoat about his body, he jerked the belt tight, then hastened to turn off the lights with rapid snaps of his hand on his way out of the office.
He threw the door open--and stopped. A single lamp was burning in a corner of the dimmed anteroom. The man who sat on the edge of a desk, in a pose of casual, patient waiting, was Francisco d.'Anconia.
Rearden stood still and caught a brief instant when Francisco, not moving, looked at him with the hint of an amused smile that was like a wink between conspirators at a secret they both understood, but would not acknowledge. It was only an instant, almost too brief to grasp, because it seemed to him that Francisco rose at once at his entrance, with a movement of courteous deference. The movement suggested a strict formality, the denial of any attempt at presumption--but it stressed the intimacy of the fact that he uttered no word of greeting or explanation.
Rearden asked, his voice hard, "What are you doing here?"
"I thought that you would want to see me tonight, Mr. Rearden."
"Why?"
"For the same reason that has kept you so late in your office. You were not working."
"How long have you been sitting here?"
"An hour or two."
"Why didn't you knock at my door?"
"Would you have allowed me to come in?"
"You're late in asking that question."
"Shall I leave, Mr. Rearden?"
Rearden pointed to the door of his office. "Come in."
Turning the lights on in the office, moving with unhurried control, Rearden thought that he must not allow himself to feel anything, but felt the color of life returning to him in the tensely quiet eagerness of an emotion which he would not identify. What he told himself consciously was: Be careful.
He sat down on the edge of his desk, crossed his arms, looked at Francisco, who remained standing respectfully before him, and asked with the cold hint of a smile, "Why did you come here?"
"You don't want me to answer, Mr. Rearden. You wouldn't admit to me or to yourself how desperately lonely you are tonight. If you don't question me, you won't feel obliged to deny it. Just accept what you do know, anyway: that I know it."
Taut like a string pulled by anger against the impertinence at one end and by admiration for the frankness at the other, Rearden answered, "I'll admit it, if you wish. What should it matter to me, that you know it?"
"That I know and care, Mr. Rearden. I'm the only man around you who does."
"Why should you care? And why should I need your help tonight?"
"Because it's not easy to have to damn the man who meant most to you."
"I wouldn't damn you if you'd only stay away from me."
Francisco's eyes widened a little, then he grinned and said, "I was speaking of Mr. Danagger."
For an instant, Rearden looked as if he wanted to slap his own face, then he laughed softly and said, "All right. Sit down."
He waited to see what advantage Francisco would take of it now, but Francisco obeyed him in silence, with a smile that had an oddly boyish quality: a look of triumph and gratitude, together.
"I don't damn Ken Danagger," said Rearden.
"You don't?" The two words seemed to fall with a singular emphasis; they were pronounced very quietly, almost cautiously, with no remnant of a smile on Francisco's face.
"No. I don't try to prescribe how much a man should have to bear. If he broke, it's not for me to judge him."
"If he broke ... ?"
"Well, didn't he?"
Francisco leaned back; his smile returned, but it was not a happy smile. "What will his disappearance do to you?"
"I will just have to work a little harder."
Francisco looked at a steel bridge traced in black strokes against red steam beyond the window, and said, pointing, "Every one of those girders has a limit to the load it can carry. What's yours?"
Rearden laughed. "Is that what you're afraid of? Is that why you came here? Were you afraid I'd break? Did you want to save me, as Dagny Taggart wanted to save Ken Danagger? She tried to reach him in time, but couldn't."
"She did? I didn't know it. Miss Taggart and I disagree about many things."
"Don't worry. I'm not going to vanish. Let them all give up and stop working. I won't. I don't know my limit and don't care. All I have to know is that I can't be stopped."
"Any man can be stopped, Mr. Rearden."
"How?"
"It's only a matter of knowing man's motive power."
"What
is it?"
"You ought to know, Mr. Rearden. You're one of the last moral men left to the world."
Rearden chuckled in bitter amusement. "I've been called just about everything but that. And you're wrong. You have no idea how wrong."
"Are you sure?"
"I ought to know. Moral? What on earth made you say it?"
Francisco pointed to the mills beyond the window. "This."
For a long moment, Rearden looked at him without moving, then asked only, "What do you mean?"
"If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in material form--there it is. Look at it, Mr. Rearden. Every girder of it, every pipe, wire and valve was put there by a choice in answer to the question: right or wrong? You had to choose right and you had to choose the best within your knowledge--the best for your purpose, which was to make steel--and then move on and extend the knowledge, and do better, and still better, with your purpose as your standard of value. You had to act on your own judgment, you had to have the capacity to judge, the courage to stand on the verdict of your mind, and the purest, the most ruthless consecration to the rule of doing right, of doing the best, the utmost best possible to you. Nothing could have made you act against your judgment, and you would have rejected as wrong--as evil--any man who attempted to tell you that the best way to heat a furnace was to fill it with ice. Millions of men, an entire nation, were not able to deter you from producing Rearden Metal--because you had the knowledge of its superlative value and the power which such knowledge gives. But what I wonder about, Mr. Rearden, is why you live by one code of principles when you deal with nature and by another when you deal with men?"
Rearden's eyes were fixed on him so intently that the question came slowly, as if the effort to pronounce it were a distraction: "What do you mean?"
"Why don't you hold to the purpose of your life as clearly and rigidly as you hold to the purpose of your mills?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have judged every brick within this place by its value to the goal of making steel. Have you been as strict about the goal which your work and your steel are serving? What do you wish to achieve by giving your life to the making of steel? By what standard of value do you judge your days? For instance, why did you spend ten years of exacting effort to produce Rearden Metal?"