THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 6 page

She studied him as he stood across the room, the tall, straight, taut lines of his body emphasized by the single color of the dark blue pajamas.

"You're very attractive," she said. "You look so much better—these last few months. Younger. Should I say happier? You look less tense.

Oh, I know you're rushed more than ever and you act like a commander in an air raid, but that's only the surface. You're less tense—inside."

He looked at her, astonished. It was true; he had not known it, had not admitted it to himself. He wondered at her power of observation.

She had seen little of him in these last few months. He had not entered her bedroom since his return from Colorado. He had thought that she would welcome their isolation from each other. Now he wondered what motive could have made her so sensitive to a change in him—unless it was a feeling much greater than he had ever suspected her of experiencing.

"I was not aware of it,” he said.

"It's quite becoming, dear—and astonishing, since you've been having such a terribly difficult time."

He wondered whether this was intended as a question. She paused, as if waiting for an answer, but she did not press it and went on gaily: "I know you're having all sorts of trouble at the mills—and then the political situation is getting to be ominous, isn't it? If they pass those laws they're talking about, it will hit you pretty hard, won't it?"

"Yes. It will. But that is a subject which is of no interest to you, Lillian, is it?"

"Oh, but it is!" She raised her head and looked straight at him; her eyes had the blank, veiled look he had seen before, a look of deliberate mystery and of confidence in his inability to solve it. "It is of great interest to me . . . though not because of any possible financial losses,” she added softly.

He wondered, for the first time, whether her spite, her sarcasm, the cowardly manner of delivering insults under the protection of a smile, were not the opposite of what he had always taken them to be—not a method of torture, but a twisted form of despair, not a desire to make him suffer, but a confession of her own pain, a defense for the pride of an unloved wife, a secret plea—so that the subtle, the hinted, the evasive in her manner, the thing begging to be understood, was not the open malice, but the hidden love. He thought of it, aghast. It made his guilt greater than he had ever contemplated.

"If we're talking politics, Henry, I had an amusing thought. The side you represent—what is that slogan you all use so much, the motto you're supposed to stand for? 'The sanctity of contract'—is that it?"

She saw his swift glance, the intentness of his eyes, the first response of something she had struck, and she laughed aloud.

"Go on," he said; his voice was low; it had the sound of a threat.

"Darling, what for?—since you understood me quite well."

"What was it you intended to say?" His voice was harshly precise and without any color of feeling.

"Do you really wish to bring me to the humiliation of complaining?

It's so trite and such a common complaint—although I did think I had a husband who prides himself on being different from lesser men. Do you want me to remind you that you once swore to make my happiness the aim of your life? And that you can't really say in all honesty whether I'm happy or unhappy, because you haven't even inquired whether I exist?"

He felt them as a physical pain—all the things that came tearing at him impossibly together. Her words were a plea, he thought—and he felt the dark, hot flow of guilt. He felt pity—the cold ugliness of pity without affection. He felt a dim anger, like a voice he tried to choke, a voice crying in revulsion: Why should I deal with her rotten, twisted lying?—why should I accept torture for the sake of pity?—why is it I who should have to take the hopeless burden of trying to spare a feeling she won't admit, a feeling I can't know or understand or try to guess?

—if she loves me, why doesn't the damn coward say so and let us both face it in the open? He heard another, louder voice, saying evenly: Don't switch the blame to her, that's the oldest trick of all cowards—you're guilty—no matter what she does, it's nothing compared to your guilt—she's right—it makes you sick, doesn't it, to know it's she who's right?—let it make you sick, you damn adulterer—it's she who's right!

"What would make you happy, Lillian?" he asked. His voice was toneless.

She smiled, leaning back in her chair, relaxing; she had been watching his face intently.

"Oh, dear!" she said, as in bored amusement. "That's the shyster question. The loophole. The escape clause."

She got up, letting her arms fall with a shrug, stretching her body in a limp, graceful gesture of helplessness.

"What would make me happy, Henry? That is what you ought to tell me. That is what you should have discovered for me. I don't know. You were to create it and offer it to me. That was your trust, your obligation, your responsibility. But you won't be the first man to default on that promise. It's the easiest of all debts to repudiate. Oh, you'd never welsh on a payment for a load of iron ore delivered to you. Only on a life."

She was moving casually across the room, the green-yellow folds of her skirt coiling in long waves about her, "I know that claims of this kind are impractical," she said. "I have no mortgage on you, no collateral, no guns, no chains. I have no hold on you at all, Henry—nothing but your honor."

He stood looking at her as if it took all of his effort to keep his eyes directed at her face, to keep seeing her, to endure the sight. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Darling, there are so many things you could guess by yourself, if you really wished to know what I want. For instance, if you have been avoiding me so blatantly for months, wouldn't I want to know the reason?"

"I have been very busy."

She shrugged. "A wife expects to be the first concern of her husband's existence. I didn't know that when you swore to forsake all others, it didn't include blast furnaces."

She came closer and, with an amused smile that seemed to mock them both, she slipped her arms around him.

It was the swift, instinctive, ferocious gesture of a young bridegroom at the unrequested contact of a whore—the gesture with which he tore her arms off his body and threw her aside.

He stood, paralyzed, shocked by the brutality of his own reaction.

She was staring at him, her face naked in bewilderment, with no mystery, no pretense or protection; whatever calculations she had made, this was a thing she had not expected.

"I'm sorry, Lillian . . ." he said, his voice low, a voice of sincerity and of suffering.

She did not answer.

"I'm sorry . . . It's just that I'm very tired," he added, his voice lifeless; he was broken by the triple lie, one part of which was a disloyalty he could not bear to face; it was not the disloyalty to Lillian.

She gave a brief chuckle. "Well, if that's the effect your work has on you, I may come to approve of it. Do forgive me, I was merely trying to do my duty. I thought that you were a sensualist who'd never rise above the instincts of an animal in the gutter. I'm not one of those bitches who belong in it." She was snapping the words dryly, absently, without thinking. Her mind was on a question mark, racing over every possible answer.

It was her last sentence that made him face her suddenly, face her simply, directly, not as one on the defensive any longer. "Lillian, what purpose do you live for?" he asked.

"What a crude question! No enlightened person would ever ask it."

"Well, what is it that enlightened people do with their lives?"

"Perhaps they do not attempt to do anything. That is their enlightenment."

"What do they do with their time?"

"They certainly don't spend it on manufacturing plumbing pipes."

"Tell me, why do you keep making those cracks? I know that you feel contempt for the plumbing pipes. You've made that clear long ago.

Your contempt means nothing to me. Why keep repeating it?"

He wondered why this hit her; he did not know in what manner, but he knew that it did. He wondered why he felt with absolute certainty that that had been the right thing to say.

She asked, her voice dry, "What's the purpose of the sudden questionnaire?"

He answered simply, "I'd like to know whether there's anything that you really want. If there is, I'd like to give it to you, if I can."

"You'd like to buy it? That's all you know—paying for things. You get off easily, don't you? No, it's not as simple as that. What I want is non-material."

"What is it?"

"You."

"How do you mean that, Lillian? You don't mean it in the gutter sense."

"No, not in the gutter sense."

"How, then?"

She was at the door, she turned, she raised her head to look at him and smiled coldly.

"You wouldn't understand it," she said and walked out.

The torture remaining to him was the knowledge that she would never want to leave him and he would never have the right to leave—the thought that he owed her at least the feeble recognition of sympathy, of respect for a feeling he could neither understand nor return—the knowledge that he could summon nothing for her, except contempt, a strange, total, unreasoning contempt, impervious to pity, to reproach, to his own pleas for justice—and, hardest to bear, the proud revulsion against his own verdict, against his demand that he consider himself lower than this woman he despised.

Then it did not matter to him any longer, it all receded into some outer distance, leaving only the thought that he was willing to bear anything—leaving him in a state which was both tension and peace—because he lay in bed, his face pressed to the pillow, thinking of Dagny, of her slender, sensitive body stretched beside him, trembling under the touch of his fingers. He wished she were back in New York. If she were, he would have gone there, now, at once, in the middle of the night.

Eugene Lawson sat at his desk as if it were the control panel of a bomber plane commanding a continent below. But he forgot it, at times, and slouched down, his muscles going slack inside his suit, as if he were pouting at the world. His mouth was the one part of him which he could not pull tight at any time; it was uncomfortably prominent in his lean face, attracting the eyes of any listener: when he spoke, the movement ran through his lower lip, twisting its moist flesh into extraneous contortions of its own.

"I am not ashamed of it," said Eugene Lawson. "Miss Taggart, I want you to know that I am not ashamed of my past career as president of the Community National Bank of Madison."

"I haven't made any reference to shame," said Dagny coldly.

"No moral guilt can be attached to me, inasmuch as I lost everything I possessed in the crash of that bank. It seems to me that I would have the right to feel proud of such a sacrifice."

"I merely wanted to ask you some questions about the Twentieth Century Motor Company which—"

"I shall be glad to answer any questions. I have nothing to hide. My conscience is clear. If you thought that the subject was embarrassing to me, you were mistaken.'1

"I wanted to inquire about the men who owned the factory at the time when you made a loan to—"

"They were perfectly good men. They were a perfectly sound risk—though, of course, I am speaking in human terms, not in the terms of cold cash, which you are accustomed to expect from bankers. I granted them the loan for the purchase of that factory, because they needed the money. If people needed money, that was enough for me. Need was my standard, Miss Taggart. Need, not greed. My father and grandfather built up the Community National Bank just to amass a fortune for themselves. I placed their fortune in the service of a higher ideal. I did not sit on piles of money and demand collateral from poor people who needed loans. The heart was my collateral. Of course, I do not expect anyone in this materialistic country to understand me. The rewards I got were not of a kind that people of your class, Miss Taggart, would appreciate. The people who used to sit in front of my desk at the bank, did not sit as you do, Miss Taggart. They were humble, uncertain, worn with care, afraid to speak. My rewards were the tears of gratitude in their eyes, the trembling voices, the blessings, the woman who kissed my hand when I granted her a loan she had begged for in vain everywhere else."

"Will you please tell me the names of the men who owned the motor factory?"

"That factory was essential to the region, absolutely essential. I was perfectly justified in granting that loan. It provided employment for thousands of workers who had no other means of livelihood."

"Did you know any of the people who worked in the factory?"

"Certainly. I knew them all. It was men that interested me, not machines. I was concerned with the human side of industry, not the cash register side."

She leaned eagerly across the desk. "Did you know any of the engineers who worked there?"

"The engineers? No, no. I was much more democratic than that. It's the real workers that interested me. The common men. They all knew me by sight. I used to come into the shops and they would wave and shout, 'Hello, Gene.' That's what they called me—Gene. But I'm sure this is of no interest to you. It's past history. Now if you really came to Washington in order to talk to me about your railroad"—he straightened up briskly, the bomber-plane pose returning—"I don't know whether I can promise you any special consideration, inasmuch as I must hold the national welfare above any private privileges or interests which—"

"1 didn't come to talk to you about my railroad," she said, looking at him in bewilderment. "I have no desire to talk to you about my railroad."

"No?" He sounded disappointed.

"No. I came for information about the motor factory. Could you possibly recall the names of any of the engineers who worked there?"

"I don't believe I ever inquired about their names. I wasn't concerned with the parasites of office and laboratory. I was concerned with the real workers—the men of calloused hands who keep a factory going. They were my friends."

"Can you give me a few of their names? Any names, of anyone who worked there?"

"My dear Miss Taggart, it was so long ago, there were thousands of them, how can I remember?"

"Can't you recall one, any one?”

"I certainly cannot. So many people have always filled my life that I can't be expected to recall individual drops in the ocean."

"Were you familiar with the production of that factory? With the kind of work they were doing—or planning?"

"Certainly. I took a personal interest in all my investments. I went to inspect that factory very often. They were doing exceedingly well.

They were accomplishing wonders. The workers' housing conditions were the best in the country. I saw lace curtains at every window and flowers on the window sills. Every home had a plot of ground for a garden. They had built a new schoolhouse for the children."

"Did you know anything about the work of the factory's research laboratory?"

"Yes, yes, they had a wonderful research laboratory, very advanced, very dynamic, with forward vision and great plans."

"Do you . . . remember hearing anything about . . . any plans to produce a new type of motor?"

"Motor? What motor, Miss Taggart? I had no time for details. My objective was social progress, universal prosperity, human brotherhood and love. Love, Miss Taggart. That is the key to everything. If men learned to love one another, it would solve all their problems."

She turned away, not to see the damp movements of his mouth.

A chunk of stone with Egyptian hieroglyphs lay on a pedestal in a corner of the office—the statue of a Hindu goddess with six spider arms stood in a niche—and a huge graph of bewildering mathematical detail, like the sales chart of a mail-order house, hung on the wall.

"Therefore, if you're thinking of your railroad, Miss Taggart—as, of course, you are, in view of certain possible developments—I must point out to you that although the welfare of the country is my first consideration, to which I would not hesitate to sacrifice anyone's profits, still, I have never closed my ears to a plea for mercy and—"

She looked at him and understood what it was that he wanted from her, what sort of motive kept him going.

"I don't wish to discuss my railroad," she said, fighting to keep her voice monotonously flat, while she wanted to scream in revulsion. "Anything you have to say on the subject, you will please say it to my brother, Mr. James Taggart."

"I'd think that at a time like this you wouldn't want to pass up a rare opportunity to plead your case before—"

"Have you preserved any records pertaining to the motor factory?"

She sat straight, her hands clasped tight together.

"What records? I believe I told you that I lost everything I owned when the bank collapsed." His body had gone slack once more, his interest had vanished. "But I do not mind it. What I lost was mere material wealth. I am not the first man in history to suffer for an ideal. I was defeated by the selfish greed of those around me. I couldn't establish a system of brotherhood and love in just one small state, amidst a nation of profit-seekers and dollar-grubbers. It was not my fault. But I won't let them beat me. I am not to be stopped. I am fighting—on a wider scale—for the privilege of serving my fellow men. Records, Miss Taggart? The record I left, when I departed from Madison, is inscribed in the hearts of the poor, who had never had a chance before."

She did not want to utter a single unnecessary word; but she could not stop herself: she kept seeing the figure of the old charwoman scrubbing the steps. "Have you seen that section of the country since?" she asked.

"It's not my fault!" he yelled. "It's the fault of the rich who still had money, but wouldn't sacrifice it to save my bank and the people of Wisconsin! You can't blame me! I lost everything!"

"Mr. Lawson," she said with effort, "do you perhaps recall the name of the man who headed the corporation that owned the factory? The corporation to which you lent the money. It was called Amalgamated Service, wasn't it? Who was its president?"

"Oh, him? Yes, I remember him. His name was Lee Hunsacker. A very worthwhile young man, who's taken a terrible beating."

"Where is he now? Do you know his address?"

"Why—I believe he's somewhere in Oregon. Grangeville, Oregon.

My secretary can give you his address. But I don't see of what interest . . . Miss Taggart, if what you have in mind is to try to see Mr.

Wesley Mouch, let me tell you that Mr. Mouch attaches a great deal of weight to my opinion in matters affecting such issues as railroads and other—"

"I have no desire to see Mr. Mouch," she said, rising.

"But then, I can't understand . . . What, really, was your purpose in coming here?"

"I am trying to find a certain man who used to work for the Twentieth Century Motor Company."

"Why do you wish to find him?"

"I want him to work for my railroad."

He spread his arms wide, looking incredulous and slightly indignant.

"At such a moment, when crucial issues hang in the balance, you choose to waste your time on looking for some one employee? Believe me, the fate of your railroad depends on Mr. Mouch much more than on any employee you ever find."

"Good day," she said.

She had turned to go, when he said, his voice jerky and high, "You haven't any right to despise me."

She stopped to look at him. "I have expressed no opinion."

"I am perfectly innocent, since I lost my money, since I lost all of my own money for a good cause. My motives were pure. I wanted nothing for myself. I've never sought anything for myself. Miss Taggart, I can proudly say that in all of my life I have never made a profit!"

Her voice was quiet, steady and solemn: "Mr. Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable."

"I never had a chance!" said Lee Hunsacker.

He sat in the middle of the kitchen, at a table cluttered with papers.

He needed a shave; his shirt needed laundering. It was hard to judge his age: the swollen flesh of his face looked smooth and blank, untouched by experience; the graying hair and filmy eyes looked worn by exhaustion; he was forty-two.

"Nobody ever gave me a chance. I hope they're satisfied with what they've made of me. But don't think that I don't know it. I know I was cheated out of my birthright. Don't let them put on any airs about how kind they are. They're a stinking bunch of hypocrites."

"Who?" asked Dagny.

"Everybody," said Lee Hunsacker. "People are bastards at heart and it's no use pretending otherwise. Justice? Huh! Look at it!" His arm swept around him. "A man like me reduced to this!"

Beyond the window, the light of noon looked like grayish dusk among the bleak roofs and naked trees of a place that was not country and could never quite become a town. Dusk and dampness seemed soaked into the walls of the kitchen. A pile of breakfast dishes lay in the sink; a pot of stew simmered on the stove, emitting steam with the greasy odor of cheap meat; a dusty typewriter stood among the papers on the table.

"The Twentieth Century Motor Company," said Lee Hunsacker, "was one of the most illustrious names in the history of American industry. I was the president of that company. I owned that factory.

But they wouldn't give me a chance."

"You were not the president of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, were you? I believe you headed a corporation called Amalgamated Service?"

"Yes, yes, but it's the same thing. We took over their factory. We were going to do just as well as they did. Better. We were just as important. Who the hell was Jed Starnes anyway? Nothing but a backwoods garage mechanic—did you know that that's how he started?—without any background at all. My family once belonged to the New York Four Hundred. My grandfather was a member of the national legislature. It's not my fault that my father couldn't afford to give me a car of my own, when he sent me to school. All the other boys had cars. My family name was just as good as any of theirs. When I went to college—" He broke off abruptly. "What newspaper did you say you're from?"

She had given him her name; she did not know why she now felt glad that he had not recognized it and why she preferred not to enlighten him. "I did not say I was from a newspaper," she answered, "j need some information on that motor factory for a private purpose of my own, not for publication."

"Oh." He looked disappointed. He went on sullenly, as if she were guilty of a deliberate offense against him. "I thought maybe you came for an advance interview because I'm writing my autobiography." He pointed to the papers on the table. "And what I intend to tell is plenty.

I intend—Oh, hell!" he said suddenly, remembering something.

He rushed to the stove, lifted the lid off the pot and went through the motions of stirring the stew, hatefully, paying no attention to his performance. He flung the wet spoon down on the stove, letting the grease drip into the gas burners, and came back to the table.

"Yeah, I'll write my autobiography if anybody ever gives me a chance," he said. "How can I concentrate on serious work when this is the sort of thing I have to do?" He jerked his head at the stove.

"Friends, huh! Those people think that just because they took me in, they can exploit me like a Chinese coolie! Just because I had no other place to go. They have it easy, those good old friends of mine. He never lifts a finger around the house, just sits in his store all day; a lousy little two-bit stationery store—can it compare in importance with the book I'm writing? And she goes out shopping and asks me to watch her damn stew for her. She knows that a writer needs peace and concentration, but does she care about that? Do you know what she did today?" He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes in the sink. "She went to the market and left all the breakfast dishes there and said she'd do them later. I know what she wanted. She expected me to do them. Well, I'll fool her. I'll leave them just where they are."

"Would you allow me to ask you a few questions about the motor factory?"

"Don't imagine that that motor factory was the only thing in my life.

I'd held many important positions before. I was prominently connected, at various times, with enterprises manufacturing surgical appliances, paper containers, men's hats and vacuum cleaners. Of course, that sort of stuff didn't give me much scope. But the motor factory—that was my big chance. That was what I'd been waiting for."

"How did you happen to acquire it?"

"It was meant for me. It was my dream come true. The factory was 'shut down—bankrupt. The heirs of Jed Starnes had run it into the ground pretty fast. I don't know exactly what it was, but there had been something goofy going on up there, so the company went broke. The railroad people closed their branch line. Nobody wanted the place, nobody would bid on it. But there it was, this great factory, with all the equipment, all the machinery, all the things that had made millions for Jed Starnes. That was the kind of setup I wanted, the kind of opportunity I was entitled to. So I got a few friends together and we formed the Amalgamated Service Corporation and we scraped up a little money. But we didn't have enough, we needed a loan to help us out and give us a start. It was a perfectly safe bet, we were young men embarking on great careers, full of eagerness and hope for the future.

But do you think anybody gave us any encouragement? They did not.

Not those greedy, entrenched vultures of privilege! How were we to succeed in life if nobody would give us a factory? We couldn't compete against the little snots who inherit whole chains of factories, could we?

Weren't we entitled to the same break? Aw, don't let me hear anything about justice! I worked like a dog, trying to get somebody to lend us the money. But that bastard Midas Mulligan put me through the wringer."

She sat up straight. "Midas Mulligan?"

"Yeah—the banker who looked like a truck driver and acted it, too!"

"Did you know Midas Mulligan?"

"Did I know him? I'm the only man who ever beat him—not that it did me any good!"

At odd moments, with a sudden sense of uneasiness, she had wondered—as she wondered about the stories of deserted ships found floating at sea or of sourceless lights flashing in the sky—about the disappearance of Midas Mulligan. There was no reason why she felt that she had to solve these riddles, except that they were mysteries which had no business being mysteries: they could not be causeless, yet no known cause could explain them.

Midas Mulligan had once been the richest and, consequently, the most denounced man in the country. He had never taken a loss on any investment he made; everything he touched turned into gold. "It's because I know what to touch," he said. Nobody could grasp the pattern of his investments: he rejected deals that were considered flawlessly safe, and he put enormous amounts into ventures that no other banker would handle. Through the years, he had been the trigger that had sent unexpected, spectacular bullets of industrial success shooting over the country. It was he who had invested in Rearden Steel at its start, thus helping Rearden to complete the purchase of the abandoned steel mills in Pennsylvania. When an economist referred to him once as an audacious gambler, Mulligan said, "The reason why you'll never get rich is because you think that what I do is gambling."

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 454