THE CLIMAX OF THE D'ANCONIAS 4 page

His eyes were studying her: the battered coat thrown open, half slipping off her shoulders, and the slender body in a gray suit that looked like an office uniform.

"If you came here dressed like this in order not to let me notice how lovely you are," he said, "you miscalculated. You're lovely. I wish I could tell you what a relief it is to see a face that's intelligent though a woman's. But you don't want to hear it. That's not what you came here for."

The words were improper in so many ways, yet were said so lightly that they brought her back to reality, to anger and to the purpose of her visit. She remained standing, looking down at him, her face blank, refusing him any recognition of the personal, even of its power to offend her. She said, "I came here to ask you a question."

"Go ahead."

"When you told those reporters that you came to New York to witness the farce, which farce did you mean?"

He laughed aloud, like a man who seldom finds a chance to enjoy the unexpected.

"That's what I like about you, Dagny. There are seven million people in the city of New York, at present. Out of seven million people, you are the only one to whom it could have occurred that I wasn't talking about the Vail divorce scandal."

"What were you talking about?"

"What alternative occurred to you?"

"The San Sebastian disaster."

"That's much more amusing than the Vail divorce scandal, isn't it?"

She said in the solemn, merciless tone of a prosecutor, "You did it consciously, cold-bloodedly and with full intention."

"Don't you think it would be better if you took your coat off and sat down?"

She knew she had made a mistake by betraying too much intensity.

She turned coldly, removed her coat and threw it aside. He did not rise to help her. She sat down in an armchair. He remained on the floor, at some distance, but it seemed as if he were sitting at her feet.

"What was it I did with full intention?" he asked.

"The entire San Sebastian swindle."

"What was my full intention?"

"That is what I want to know."

He chuckled, as if she had asked him to explain in conversation a complex science requiring a lifetime of study.

"You knew that the San Sebastian mines were worthless," she said.

"You knew it before you began the whole wretched business."

"Then why did I begin it?"

"Don't start telling me that you gained nothing. I know it. I know you lost fifteen million dollars of your own money. Yet it was done on purpose."

"Can you think of a motive that would prompt me to do it?"

"No. It's inconceivable."

"Is it? You assume that I have a great mind, a great knowledge and a great productive ability, so that anything I undertake must necessarily be successful. And then you claim that I had no desire to put out my best effort for the People's State of Mexico. Inconceivable, isn't it?"

"You knew, before you bought that property, that Mexico was in the hands of a looters' government. You didn't have to start a mining project for them."

"No, I didn't have to."

"You didn't give a damn about that Mexican government, one way or another, because—"

"You're wrong about that."

"—because you knew they'd seize those mines sooner or later. What you were after is your American stockholders."

"That's true." He was looking straight at her, he was not smiling, his face was earnest. He added, "That's part of the truth."

"What's the rest?"

"It was not all I was after."

"What else?"

"That's for you to figure out."

"I came here because I wanted you to know that I am beginning to understand your purpose."

He smiled. "If you did, you wouldn't have come here."

"That's true. I don't understand and probably never shall. I am merely beginning to see part of it."

"Which part?"

"You had exhausted every other form of depravity and sought a new thrill by swindling people like Jim and his friends, in order to watch them squirm. I don't know what sort of corruption could make anyone enjoy that, but that's what you came to New York to see, at the right time."

"They certainly provided a spectacle of squirming on the grand scale. Your brother James in particular."

"They're rotten fools, but in this case their only crime was that they trusted you. They trusted your name and your honor."

Again, she saw the look of earnestness and again knew with certainty that it was genuine, when he said, "Yes. They did. I know it."

"And do you find it amusing?"

"No. I don't find it amusing at all."

He had continued playing with his marbles, absently, indifferently, taking a shot once in a while. She noticed suddenly the faultless accuracy of his aim, the skill of his hands. He merely flicked his wrist and sent a drop of stone shooting across the carpet to click sharply against another drop. She thought of his childhood and of the predictions that anything he did would be done superlatively.

"No," he said, "I don't find it amusing. Your brother James and his friends knew nothing about the copper-mining industry. They knew nothing about making money. They did not think it necessary to learn. They considered knowledge superfluous and judgment inessential. They observed that there I was in the world and that I made it my honor to know. They thought they could trust my honor. One does not betray a trust of this kind, does one?”

"Then you did betray it intentionally?"

"That's for you to decide. It was you who spoke about their trust and my honor. I don't think in such terms any longer. . . ." He shrugged, adding, "I don't give a damn about your brother James and his friends. Their theory was not new, it has worked for centuries. But it wasn't foolproof. There is just one point that they overlooked. They thought it was safe to ride on my brain, because they assumed that the goal of my journey was wealth. All their calculations rested on the premise that I wanted to make money. What if I didn't?"

"If you didn't, what did you want?"

"They never asked me that. Not to inquire about my aims, motives or desires is an essential part of their theory."

"If you didn't want to make money, what possible motive could you have had?"

"Any number of them. For instance, to spend it."

"To spend money on a certain, total failure?"

"How was I to know that those mines were a certain, total failure?"

"How could you help knowing it?"

"Quite simply. By giving it no thought."

"You started that project without giving it any thought?"

"No, not exactly. But suppose I slipped up? I'm only human. I made a mistake. I failed. I made a bad job of it." He flicked his wrist; a crystal marble shot, sparkling, across the floor and cracked violently against a brown one at the other end of the room.

"I don't believe it," she said.

"No? But haven't I the right to be what is now accepted as human?

Should I pay for everybody's mistakes and never be permitted one of my own?"

"That's not like you."

"No?" He stretched himself full-length on the carpet, lazily, relaxing.

"Did you intend me to notice that if you think I did it on purpose, then you still give me credit for having a purpose? You're still unable to accept me as a bum?"

She closed her eyes. She heard him laughing; it was the gayest sound hi the world. She opened her eyes hastily; but there was no hint of cruelty in his face, only pure laughter.

"My motive, Dagny? You don't think that it's the simplest one of all—the spur of the moment?"

No, she thought, no, that's not true; not if he laughed like that, not if he looked as he did. The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviolate peace of spirit is not the achievement of a drifter; to be able to laugh like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn thinking.

Almost dispassionately, looking at his figure stretched on the carpet at her feet, she observed what memory it brought back to her: the black pajamas stressed the long lines of his body, the open collar showed a smooth, young, sunburned skin—and she thought of the figure in black slacks and shirt stretched beside her on the grass at sunrise. She had felt pride then, the pride of knowing that she owned his body; she still felt it. She remembered suddenly, specifically, the excessive acts of their intimacy; the memory should have been offensive to her now, but wasn't. It was still pride, without regret or hope, an emotion that had no power to reach her and that she had no power to destroy.

Unaccountably, by an association of feeling that astonished her, she remembered what had conveyed to her recently the same sense of consummate joy as his.

"Francisco," she heard herself saying softly, "we both loved the music of Richard Halley. . . ."

"I still love it."

"Have you ever met him?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Do you happen to know whether he has written a Fifth Concerto?"

He remained perfectly still. She had thought him impervious to shock; he wasn't. But she could not attempt to guess why of all the things she had said, this should be the first to reach him. It was only an instant; then he asked evenly, "What makes you think he has?"

"Well, has he?"

"You know that there are only four Halley Concertos."

"Yes. But I wondered whether he had written another one."

"He has stopped writing."

"I know."

"Then what made you ask that?"

"Just an idle thought. What is he doing now? Where is he?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him for a long time. What made you think that there was a Fifth Concerto?"

"I didn't say there was. I merely wondered about it."

"Why did you think of Richard Halley just now?"

"Because"—she felt her control cracking a little—"because my mind can't make the leap from Richard Halley's music to . . . to Mrs.

Gilbert Vail."

He laughed, relieved. "Oh, that? . . . Incidentally, if you've been following my publicity, have you noticed a funny little discrepancy in the story of Mrs. Gilbert Vail?"

"I don't read the stuff."

"You should. She gave such a beautiful description of last New Year's Eve, which we spent together in my villa in the Andes. The moonlight on the mountain peaks, and the blood-red flowers hanging on vines in the open windows. See anything wrong in the picture?"

She said quietly, "It's I who should ask you that, and I'm not going to."

"Oh, I see nothing wrong—except that last New Year's Eve I was in El Paso, Texas, presiding at the opening of the San Sebastian Line of Taggart Transcontinental, as you should remember, even if you didn't choose to be present on the occasion. I had my picture taken with my arms around your brother James and the Senor Orren Boyle."

She gasped, remembering that this was true, remembering also that she had seen Mrs. Vail's story in the newspapers.

"Francisco, what . . . what does that mean?"

He chuckled. "Draw your own conclusions. . . . Dagny"—his face was serious—"why did you think of Halley writing a Fifth Concerto?

Why not a new symphony or opera? Why specifically a concerto?"

"Why does that disturb you?"

"It doesn't." He added softly, "I still love his music, Dagny." Then he spoke lightly again. "But it belonged to another age. Our age provides a different kind of entertainment."

He rolled over on his back and lay with his hands crossed under his head, looking up as if he were watching the scenes of a movie farce unrolling on the ceiling.

"Dagny, didn't you enjoy the spectacle of the behavior of the People's State of Mexico in regard to the San Sebastian Mines? Did you read their government's speeches and the editorials in their newspapers?

They're saying that I am an unscrupulous cheat who has defrauded them. They expected to have a successful mining concern to seize. I had no right to disappoint them like that. Did you read about the scabby little bureaucrat who wanted them to sue me?"

He laughed, lying flat on his back; his arms were thrown wide on the carpet, forming a cross with his body; he seemed disarmed, relaxed and young.

"It was worth whatever it's cost me. I could afford the price of that show. If I had staged it intentionally, I would have beaten the record of the Emperor Nero. What's burning a city—compared to tearing the lid off hell and letting men see it?"

He raised himself, picked up a few marbles and sat shaking them absently in his hand; they clicked with the soft, clear sound of good stone. She realized suddenly that playing with those marbles was not a deliberate affectation on his part; it was restlessness; he could not remain inactive for long.

"The government of the People's State of Mexico has issued a proclamation," he said, "asking the people to be patient and put up with hardships just a little longer. It seems that the copper fortune of the San Sebastian Mines was part of the plans of the central planning council.

It was to raise everybody's standard of living and provide a roast of pork every Sunday for every man, woman, child and abortion in the People's State of Mexico. Now the planners are asking their people not to blame the government, but to blame the depravity of the rich, because I turned out to be an irresponsible playboy, instead of the greedy capitalist I was expected to be. How were they to know, they're asking, that I would let them down? Well, true enough. How were they to know it?"

She noticed the way he fingered the marbles in his hand. He was not conscious of it, he was looking off into some grim distance, but she felt certain that the action was a relief to him, perhaps as a contrast. His fingers were moving slowly, feeling the texture of the stones with sensual enjoyment. Instead of finding it crude, she found it strangely attractive—as if, she thought suddenly, as if sensuality were not physical at all, but came from a fine discrimination of the spirit.

"And that's not all they didn't know," he said. "They're in for some more knowledge. There's that housing settlement for the workers of San Sebastian. It cost eight million dollars. Steel-frame houses, with plumbing, electricity and refrigeration. Also a school, a church, a hospital and a movie theater. A settlement built for people who had lived in hovels made of driftwood and stray tin cans. My reward for building it was to be the privilege of escaping with my skin, a special concession due to the accident of my not being a native of the People's State of Mexico. That workers' settlement was also part of their plans.

A model example of progressive State housing. Well, those steel-frame houses arc mainly cardboard, with a coating of good imitation shellac, They won't stand another year. The plumbing pipes—as well as most of our mining equipment—were purchased from the dealers whose main source of supply are the city dumps of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. I'd give those pipes another five months, and the electric system about six. The wonderful roads we graded up four thousand feet of rock for the People's State of Mexico, will not last beyond a couple of winters: they're cheap cement without foundation, and the bracing at the bad turns is just painted clapboard. Wait for one good mountain slide. The church, I think, will stand. They'll need it."

"Francisco," she whispered, "did you do it on purpose?"

He raised his head; she was startled to see that his face had a look of infinite weariness. "Whether I did it on purpose," he said, "or through neglect, or through stupidity, don't you understand that that doesn't make any difference? The same element was missing."

She was trembling. Against all her decisions and control, she cried, "Francisco! If you see what's happening in the world, if you understand all the things you said, you can't laugh about it! You, of all men, you should fight them!"

"Whom?"

"The looters, and those who make world-looting possible. The Mexican planners and their kind."

His smile had a dangerous edge. "No, my dear. It's you that I have to fight."

She looked at him blankly. "What are you trying to say?"

"I am saying that the workers' settlement of San Sebastian cost eight million dollars," he answered with slow emphasis, his voice hard. "The price paid for those cardboard houses was the price that could have bought steel structures. So was the price paid for every other item. That money went to men who grow rich by such methods. Such men do not remain rich for long. The money will go into channels which will carry it, not to the most productive, but to the most corrupt. By the standards of our time, the man who has the least to offer is the man who wins. That money will vanish in projects such as the San Sebastian Mines,"

She asked with effort, "Is that what you're after?"

"Yes."

"Is that what you find amusing?"

"Yes."

"I am thinking of your name," she said, while another part of her mind was crying to her that reproaches were useless. "It was a tradition of your family that a d'Anconia always left a fortune greater than the one he received."

"Oh yes, my ancestors had a remarkable ability for doing the right thing at the right time—and for making the right investments. Of course, 'investment' is a relative term. It depends on what you wish to accomplish. For instance, look at San Sebastian. It cost me fifteen million dollars, but these fifteen million wiped out forty million belonging to Taggart Transcontinental, thirty-five million belonging to stockholders such as James Taggart and Orren Boyle, and hundreds of millions which will be lost in secondary consequences. That's not a bad return on an investment, is it, Dagny?"

She was sitting straight. "Do you realize what you're saying?"

"Oh, fully! Shall I beat you to it and name the consequences you were going to reproach me for? First, I don't think that Taggart Transcontinental will recover from its loss on that preposterous San Sebastian Line. You think it will, but it won't. Second, the San Sebastian helped your brother James to destroy the Phoenix-Durango, which was about the only good railroad left anywhere."

"You realize all that?"

"And a great deal more."

"Do you"—she did not know why she had to say it, except that the memory of the face with the dark, violent eyes seemed to stare at her—

"do you know Ellis Wyatt?"

"Sure."

"Do you know what this might do to him?"

"Yes. He's the one who's going to be wiped out next."

"Do you . . . find that . . . amusing?"

"Much more amusing than the ruin of the Mexican planners."

She stood up. She had called him corrupt for years; she had feared it, she had thought about it, she had tried to forget it and never think of it again; but she had never suspected how far the corruption had gone.

She was not looking at him; she did not know that she was saying it aloud, quoting his words of the past: ". . . who'll do greater honor, you—to Nat Taggart, or I—to Sebastian d'Anconia . . ."

"But didn't you realize that I named those mines in honor of my great ancestor? I think it was a tribute which he would have liked."

It took her a moment to recover her eyesight; she had never known what was meant by blasphemy or what one felt on encountering it; she knew it now.

He had risen and stood courteously, smiling down at her; it was a cold smile, impersonal and unrevealing.

She was trembling, but it did not matter. She did not care what he saw or guessed or laughed at.

"I came here because I wanted to know the reason for what you've done with your life," she said tonelessly, without anger.

"I have told you the reason," he answered gravely, "but you don't want to believe it."

"I kept seeing you as you were. I couldn't forget it. And that you should have become what you are—that does not belong in a rational universe."

"No? And the world as you see it around you, does?"

"You were not the kind of man who gets broken by any kind of world"

"True."

"Then—why?"

He shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"

"Oh, don't use gutter language!"

He glanced at her. His lips held the hint of a smile, but his eyes were still, earnest and, for an instant, disturbingly perceptive.

"Why?" she repeated.

He answered, as he had answered in the night, in this hotel, ten years ago, "You're not ready to hear it."

He did not follow her to the door. She had put her hand on the doorknob when she turned—and stopped. He stood across the room, looking at her; it was a glance directed at her whole person; she knew its meaning and it held her motionless, "I still want to sleep with you," he said. "But I am not a man who is happy enough to do it."

"Not happy enough?" she repeated in complete bewilderment.

He laughed. "Is it proper that that should be the first thing you'd answer?" He waited, but she remained silent. "You want it, too, don't you?"

She was about to answer "No," but realized that the truth was worse than that. "Yes," she answered coldly, "but it doesn't matter to me that I want it."

He smiled, in open appreciation, acknowledging the strength she had needed to say it.

But he was not smiling when he said, as she opened the door to leave, "You have a great deal of courage, Dagny. Some day, you'll have enough of it."

"Of what? Courage?"

But he did not answer.

CHAPTER VI

THE NON-COMMERCIAL

Rearden pressed his forehead to the mirror and tried not to think. That was the only way he could go through with it, he told himself.

He concentrated on the relief of the mirror's cooling touch, wondering how one went about forcing one's mind into blankness, particularly after a lifetime lived on the axiom that the constant, clearest, most ruthless function of his rational faculty was his foremost duty. He wondered why no effort had ever seemed beyond his capacity, yet now he could not scrape up the strength to stick a few black pearl studs into his starched white shirt front.

This was his wedding anniversary and he had known for three months that the party would take place tonight, as Lillian wished.

He had promised it to her, safe in the knowledge that the party was a long way off and that he would attend to it, when the time came, as he attended to every duty on his overloaded schedule. Then, during three months of eighteen-hour workdays, he had forgotten it happily—until half an hour ago, when, long past dinner time, his secretary had entered his office and said firmly, "Your party, Mr. Rearden." He had cried, "Good God!" leaping to his feet; he had hurried home, rushed up the stairs, started tearing his clothes off and gone through the routine of dressing, conscious only of the need to hurry, not of the purpose.

When the full realization of the purpose struck him like a sudden blow, he stopped.

"You don't care for anything but business." He had heard it all his life, pronounced as a verdict of damnation. He had always known that business was regarded as some sort of secret, shameful cult, which one did not impose on innocent laymen, that people thought of it as of an ugly necessity, to be performed but never mentioned, that to talk shop was an offense against higher sensibilities, that just as one washed machine grease off one's hands before coming home, so one was supposed to wash the stain of business off one's mind before entering a drawing room. He had never held that creed, but he had accepted it as natural that his family should hold it. He took it for granted—wordlessly, in the manner of a feeling absorbed in childhood, left unquestioned and unnamed—that he had dedicated himself, like the martyr of some dark religion, to the service of a faith which was his passionate love, but which made him an outcast among men, whose sympathy he was not to expect.

He had accepted the tenet that it was his duty to give his wife some form of existence unrelated to business. But he had never found the capacity to do it or even to experience a sense of guilt. He could neither force himself to change nor blame her if she chose to condemn him.

He had given Lillian none of his time for months—:no, he thought, for years; for the eight years of their marriage. He had no interest to spare for her interests, not even enough to learn just what they were.

She had a large circle of friends, and he had heard it said that their names represented the heart of the country's culture, but he had never had time to meet them or even to acknowledge their fame by knowing what achievements had earned it. He knew only that he often saw their names on the magazine covers on newsstands. If Lillian resented his attitude, he thought, she was right. If her manner toward him was objectionable, he deserved it. If his family called him heartless, it was true.

He had never spared himself in any issue. When a problem came up at the mills, his first concern was to discover what error he had made; he did not search for anyone's fault but his own; it was of himself that he demanded perfection. He would grant himself no mercy now; he took the blame. But at the mills, it prompted him to action in an immediate impulse to correct the error; now, it had no effect. . . . Just a few more minutes, he thought, standing against the mirror, his eyes closed.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 385