Atlas Shrugged (28 page)

“What made you think that I did not like it, Mr. Scudder?” Philip asked humbly.

“Well, it’s going to pinch, isn’t it? The long arm of society is going to trim a little off the hors d‘oeuvres bill around here.” He waved his hand at the bar.

“Why do you assume that I object to that?”

“You don’t?” Bertram Scudder asked without curiosity.

“I don‘t!” said Philip hotly. “I have always placed the public good above any personal consideration. I have contributed my time and money to Friends of Global Progress in their crusade for the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. I think it is perfectly unfair that one man should get all the breaks and leave none to others.”

Bertram Scudder considered him speculatively, but without particular interest. “Well, that’s quite unusually nice of you,” he said.

“Some people do take moral issues seriously, Mr. Scudder,” said Philip, with a gentle stress of pride in his voice.

“What’s he talking about, Philip?” asked Betty Pope. “We don’t know anybody who owns more than one business, do we?”

“Oh, pipe down!” said Bertram Scudder, his voice bored.

“I don’t see why there’s so much fuss about that Equalization of Opportunity Bill,” said Betty Pope aggressively, in the tone of an expert on economics. “I don’t see why businessmen object to it. It’s to their own advantage. If everybody else is poor, they won’t have any market for their goods. But if they stop being selfish and share the goods they’ve hoarded—they’ll have a chance to work hard and produce some more.”

“I do not see why industrialists should be considered at all,” said Scudder. “When the masses are destitute and yet there are goods available, it’s idiotic to expect people to be stopped by some scrap of paper called a property deed. Property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it. The people can seize it at any moment. If they can, why shouldn’t they?”

“They should,” said Claude Slagenhop. “They need it. Need is the only consideration. If people are in need, we’ve got to seize things first and talk about it afterwards.”

Claude Slagenhop had approached and managed to squeeze himself between Philip and Scudder, shoving Scudder aside imperceptibly. Slagenhop was not tall or heavy, but he had a square, compact bulk, and a broken nose. He was the president of Friends of Global Progress.

“Hunger won’t wait,” said Claude Slagenhop. “Ideas are just hot air. An empty belly is a solid fact. I’ve said in all my speeches that it’s not necessary to talk too much. Society is suffering for lack of business opportunities at the moment, so we’ve got the right to seize such opportunities as exist. Right is whatever’s good for society.”

“He didn’t dig that ore single-handed, did he?” cried Philip suddenly, his voice shrill. “He had to employ hundreds of workers. They did it. Why does he think he’s so good?”

The two men looked at him, Scudder lifting an eyebrow, Slagenhop without expression.

“Oh, dear me!” said Betty Pope, remembering.

Hank Rearden stood at a window in a dim recess at the end of the drawing room. He hoped no one would notice him for a few minutes. He had just escaped from a middle-aged woman who had been telling him about her psychic experiences. He stood, looking out. Far in the distance, the red glow of Rearden Steel moved in the sky. He watched it for a moment’s relief.

He turned to look at the drawing room. He had never liked his house; it had been Lillian’s choice. But tonight, the shifting colors of the evening dresses drowned out the appearance of the room and gave it an air of brilliant gaiety. He liked to see people being gay, even though he did not understand this particular manner of enjoyment.

He looked at the flowers, at the sparks of light on the crystal glasses, at the naked arms and shoulders of women. There was a cold wind outside, sweeping empty stretches of land. He saw the thin branches of a tree being twisted, like arms waving in an appeal for help. The tree stood against the glow of the mills.

He could not name his sudden emotion. He had no words to state its cause, its quality, its meaning. Some part of it was joy, but it was solemn like the act of baring one’s head—he did not know to whom.

When he stepped back into the crowd, he was smiling. But the smile vanished abruptly; he saw the entrance of a new guest: it was Dagny Taggart.

Lillian moved forward to meet her, studying her with curiosity. They had met before, on infrequent occasions, and she found it strange to see Dagny Taggart wearing an evening gown. It was a black dress with a bodice that fell as a cape over one arm and shoulder, leaving the other bare; the naked shoulder was the gown’s only ornament. Seeing her in the suits she wore, one never thought of Dagny Taggart’s body. The black dress seemed excessively revealing—because it was astonishing to discover that the lines of her shoulder were fragile and beautiful, and that the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained.

“Miss Taggart, it is such a wonderful surprise to see you here,” said Lillian Rearden, the muscles of her face performing the motions of a smile. “I had not really dared to hope that an invitation from me would take you away from your ever so much weightier concerns. Do permit me to feel flattered.”

James Taggart had entered with his sister. Lillian smiled at him, in the manner of a hasty postscript, as if noticing him for the first time.

“Hello, James. That’s your penalty for being popular—one tends to lose sight of you in the surprise of seeing your sister.”

“No one can match you in popularity, Lillian,” he answered, smiling thinly, “nor ever lose sight of you.”

“Me? Oh, but I am quite resigned to taking second place in the shadow of my husband. I am humbly aware that the wife of a great man has to be contented with reflected glory—don’t you think so, Miss Taggart?”

“No,” said Dagny, “I don’t.”

“Is this a compliment or a reproach, Miss Taggart? But do forgive me if I confess I’m helpless. Whom may I present to you? I’m afraid I have nothing but writers and artists to offer, and they wouldn’t interest you, I’m sure.”

“I’d like to find Hank and say hello to him.”

“But of course. James, do you remember you said you wanted to meet Balph Eubank?—oh yes, he’s here—I’ll tell him that I heard you rave about his last novel at Mrs. Whitcomb’s dinner!”

Walking across the room, Dagny wondered why she had said that she wanted to find Hank Rearden, what had prevented her from admitting that she had seen him the moment she entered.

Rearden stood at the other end of the long room, looking at her. He watched her as she approached, but he did not step forward to meet her.

“Hello, Hank.”

“Good evening.”

He bowed, courteously, impersonally, the movement of his body matching the distinguished formality of his clothes. He did not smile.

“Thank you for inviting me tonight,” she said gaily.

“I cannot claim that I knew you were coming.”

“Oh? Then I’m glad that Mrs. Rearden thought of me. I wanted to make an exception.”

“An exception?”

“I don’t go to parties very often.”

“I am pleased that you chose this occasion as the exception.” He did not add “Miss Taggart,” but it sounded as if he had.

The formality of his manner was so unexpected that she was unable to adjust to it. “I wanted to celebrate,” she said.

“To celebrate my wedding anniversary?”

“Oh, is it your wedding anniversary? I didn’t know. My congratulations, Hank.”

“What did you wish to celebrate?”

“I thought I’d permit myself a rest. A celebration of my own—in your honor and mine.”

“For what reason?”

She was thinking of the new track on the rocky grades of the Colorado mountains, growing slowly toward the distant goal of the Wyatt oil fields. She was seeing the greenish-blue glow of the rails on the frozen ground, among the dried weeds, the naked boulders, the rotting shanties of half-starved settlements.

“In honor of the first sixty miles of Rearden Metal track,” she answered.

“I appreciate it.” The tone of his voice was the one that would have been proper if he had said, “I’ve never heard of it.”

She found nothing else to say. She felt as if she were speaking to a stranger.

“Why, Miss Taggart!” a cheerful voice broke their silence. “Now this is what I mean when I say that Hank Rearden can achieve any miracle!”

A businessman whom they knew had approached, smiling at her in delighted astonishment. The three of them had often held emergency conferences about freight rates and steel deliveries. Now he looked at her, his face an open comment on the change in her appearance, the change, she thought, which Rearden had not noticed.

She laughed, answering the man’s greeting, giving herself no time to recognize the unexpected stab of disappointment, the unadmitted thought that she wished she had seen this look on Rearden’s face, instead. She exchanged a few sentences with the man. When she glanced around, Rearden was gone.

“So that is your famous sister?” said Balph Eubank to James Taggart, looking at Dagny across the room.

“I was not aware that my sister was famous,” said Taggart, a faint bite in his voice.

“But, my good man, she’s an unusual phenomenon in the field of economics, so you must expect people to talk about her. Your sister is a symptom of the illness of our century. A decadent product of the machine age. Machines have destroyed man’s humanity, taken him away from the soil, robbed him of his natural arts, killed his soul and turned him into an insensitive robot. There’s an example of it—a woman who runs a railroad, instead of practicing the beautiful craft of the hand-loom and bearing children.”

Rearden moved among the guests, trying not to be trapped into conversation. He looked at the room; he saw no one he wished to approach.

“Say, Hank Rearden, you’re not such a bad fellow at all when seen close up in the lion’s own den. You ought to give us a press conference once in a while, you’d win us over.”

Rearden turned and looked at the speaker incredulously. It was a young newspaperman of the seedier sort, who worked on a radical tabloid. The offensive familiarity of his manner seemed to imply that he chose to be rude to Rearden because he knew that Rearden should never have permitted himself to associate with a man of his kind.

Rearden would not have allowed him inside the mills; but the man was Lillian’s guest; he controlled himself; he asked dryly, “What do you want?”

“You’re not so bad. You’ve got talent. Technological talent. But, of course, I don’t agree with you about Rearden Metal.”

“I haven’t asked you to agree.”

“Well, Bertram Scudder said that your policy—” the man started belligerently, pointing toward the bar, but stopped, as if he had slid farther than he intended.

Rearden looked at the untidy figure slouched against the bar. Lillian had introduced them, but he had paid no attention to the name. He turned sharply and walked off, in a manner that forbade the young bum to tag him.

Lillian glanced up at his face, when Rearden approached her in the midst of a group, and, without a word, stepped aside where they could not be heard.

“Is that Scudder of
The Future?”
he asked, pointing.

“Why, yes.”

He looked at her silently, unable to begin to believe it, unable to find the lead of a thought with which to begin to understand. Her eyes were watching him.

“How could you invite him here?” he asked.

“Now, Henry, don’t let’s be ridiculous. You don’t want to be narrow-minded, do you? You must learn to tolerate the opinions of others and respect their right of free speech.”

“In my house?”

“Oh, don’t be stuffy!”

He did not speak, because his consciousness was held, not by coherent statements, but by two pictures that seemed to glare at him insistently. He saw the article, “The Octopus,” by Bertram Scudder, which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary. And he saw the lines of Lillian’s profile, the proud purity which he had sought in marrying her.

When he noticed her again, he realized that the vision of her profile was in his own mind, because she was turned to him full-face, watching him. In the sudden instant of returning to reality, he thought that what he saw in her eyes was enjoyment. But in the next instant he reminded himself that he was sane and that this was not possible.

“It’s the first time you’ve invited that ...” he used an obscene word with unemotional precision, “to my house. It’s the last.”

“How dare you use such—”

“Don’t argue, Lillian. If you do, I’ll throw him out right now.”

He gave her a moment to answer, to object, to scream at him if she wished. She remained silent, not looking at him, only her smooth cheeks seemed faintly drawn inward, as if deflated.

Moving blindly away through the coils of lights, voices and perfume, he felt a cold touch of dread. He knew that he should think of Lillian and find the answer to the riddle of her character, because this was a revelation which he could not ignore; but he did not think of her—and he felt the dread because he knew that the answer had ceased to matter to him long ago.

The flood of weariness was starting to rise again. He felt as if he could almost see it in thickening waves; it was not within him, but outside, spreading through the room. For an instant, he felt as if he were alone, lost in a gray desert, needing help and knowing that no help would come.

He stopped short. In the lighted doorway, the length of the room between them, he saw the tall, arrogant figure of a man who had paused for a moment before entering. He had never met the man, but of all the notorious faces that cluttered the pages of newspapers, this was the one he despised. It was Francisco d‘Anconia.