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THE EXPLOITERS AND THE EXPLOITED 4 page

 

I'm very tired. . . ." The sincerity of his voice was genuine. He walked slowly away from her. "There was a time when I looked at the tragic mess they've made of this earth, and I wanted to cry out, to beg them to listen—I could teach them to live so much better than they did—but there was nobody to hear me, they had nothing to hear me with. . . .

 

Intelligence? It is such a rare, precarious spark that flashes for a moment somewhere among men, and vanishes. One cannot tell its nature, or its future . . . or its death. . . ."

 

She made a movement to rise.

 

"Don't go, Miss Taggart. I'd like you to understand."

 

She raised her face to him, in obedient indifference. Her face was not pale, but its planes stood out with strangely naked precision, as if its skin had lost the shadings of color.

 

"You're young," he said. "At your age, I had the same faith in the unlimited power of reason. The same brilliant vision of man as a rational being. I have seen so much, since. I have been disillusioned so often. . . . I'd like to tell you just one story."

 

He stood at the window of his office. It had grown dark outside. The darkness seemed to rise from the black cut of the river, far below. A few lights trembled in the water, from among the hills of the other shore. The sky was still the intense blue of evening. A lonely star, low over the earth, seemed unnaturally large and made the sky look darker.

 

"When I was at the Patrick Henry University," he said, "I had three pupils. I have had many bright students in the past, but these three were- the kind of reward a teacher prays for. If ever you could wish to receive the gift of the human mind at its best, young and delivered into your hands for guidance, they were this gift. Theirs was the kind of intelligence one expects to see, in the future, changing the course of the world. They came from very different backgrounds, but they were inseparable friends. They made a strange choice of studies. They majored in two subjects—mine and Hugh Akston's. Physics and philosophy. It is not a combination of interests one encounters nowadays. Hugh Akston was a distinguished man, a great mind . . . unlike the incredible creature whom that University has now put in his place. . . . Akston and I were a little jealous of each other over these three students. It was a kind of contest between us, a friendly contest, because we understood each other, I heard Akston saying one day that he regarded them as his sons. I resented it a little . . . because I thought of them as mine. . . ."

 

He turned and looked at her. The bitter lines of age were visible now, cutting across his cheeks. He said, "When I endorsed the establishment of this Institute, one of these three damned me. I have not seen him since. It used to disturb me, in the first few years. I wondered, once in a while, whether he had been right. . . . It has ceased to disturb me, long ago."



 

He smiled. There was nothing but bitterness now, in his smile and his face.

 

"These three men, these three who held all the hope which the gift of intelligence ever proffered, these three from whom we expected such a magnificent future—one of them was Francisco d'Anconia, who became a depraved playboy. Another was Ragnar Danneskjold, who became a plain bandit. So much for the promise of the human mind."

 

"Who was the third one?" she asked, He shrugged. "The third one did not achieve even that sort of notorious distinction. He vanished without a trace—into the great unknown of mediocrity. He is probably a second assistant bookkeeper somewhere."

 

"It's a lie! I didn't run away!" cried James Taggart. "I came here because I happened to be sick. Ask Dr. Wilson. It's a form of flu.

 

He'll prove it. And how did you know that I was here?"

 

Dagny stood in the middle of the room; there were melting snowflakes on her coat collar, on the brim of her hat. She glanced around, feeling an emotion that would have been sadness, had she had time to acknowledge it.

 

It was a room in the house of the old Taggart estate on the Hudson.

 

Jim had inherited the place, but he seldom came here. In their childhood, this had been their father's study. Now it had the desolate air of a room which is used, yet uninhabited. There were slipcovers on all but two chairs, a cold fireplace and the dismal warmth of an electric heater with a cord twisting across the floor, a desk, its glass surface empty.

 

Jim lay on the couch, with a towel wrapped for a scarf around his neck. She saw a stale, filled ashtray on a chair beside him, a bottle of whisky, a wilted paper cup, and two-day-old newspapers scattered about the floor. A portrait of their grandfather hung over the fireplace, full figure, with a railroad bridge in the fading background.

 

"I have no time for arguments, Jim."

 

"It was your idea! I hope you'll admit to the Board that it was your idea. That's what your goddamn Rearden Metal has done to us! If we had waited for Orren Boyle . . ." His unshaved face was pulled by a twisted scramble of emotions: panic, hatred, a touch of triumph, the relief of screaming at a victim—and the faint, cautious, begging look that sees a hope of help.

 

He had stopped tentatively, but she did not answer. She stood watching him, her hands in the pockets of her coat.

 

"There's nothing we can do now!" he moaned. "I tried to call Washington, to get them to seize the Phoenix-Durango and turn it over to us, on the ground of emergency, but they won't even discuss it! Too many people objecting, they say, afraid of some fool precedent or another! . . . I got the National Alliance of Railroads to suspend the deadline and permit Dan Conway to operate his road for another year —that would have given us time—but he's refused to do it! I tried to get Ellis Wyatt and his bunch of friends in Colorado to demand that Washington order Conway to continue operations—but all of them, Wyatt and all the rest of those bastards, refused! It's their skin, worse than ours, they're sure to go down the drain—but they've refused!"

 

She smiled briefly, but made no comment.

 

"Now there's nothing left for us to do! We're caught. We can't give up that branch and we can't complete it. We can't stop or go on. We have no money. Nobody will touch us with a ten-foot pole! What have we got left without the Rio Norte Line? But we can't finish it. We'd be boycotted. We'd be blacklisted. That union of track workers would sue us. They would, there's a law about it. We can't complete that Line! Christ! What are we going to do?"

 

She waited. "Through, Jim?" she asked coldly. "If you are, I’ll tell you what we're going to do."

 

He kept silent, looking up at her from under his heavy eyelids.

 

"This is not a proposal, Jim. It's an ultimatum. Just listen and accept. I am going to complete the construction of the Rio Norte Line.

 

I personally, not Taggart Transcontinental. I will take a leave of absence from the job of Vice-President. I will form a company in my own name. Your Board will turn the Rio None Line over to me. I will act as my own contractor. I will get my own financing. I will take full charge and sole responsibility. I will complete the Line on time. After you have seen how the Rearden Metal rails can take it, I will transfer the Line back to Taggart Transcontinental and I'll return to my job. That is all,"

 

He was looking at her silently, dangling a bedroom slipper on the tip of his foot. She had never supposed that hope could look ugly in a man's face, but it did: it was mixed with cunning. She turned her eyes away from him, wondering how it was possible that a man's first thought in such a moment could be a search for something to put over on her.

 

Then, preposterously, the first thing he said, his voice anxious, was, "But who will run Taggart Transcontinental in the meantime?"

 

She chuckled; the sound astonished her, it seemed old in its bitterness.

 

She said, "Eddie Willers."

 

"Oh no! He couldn't!"

 

She laughed, in the same brusque, mirthless way. "I thought you were smarter than I about things of this kind. Eddie will assume the title of Acting Vice-President. He will occupy my office and sit at my desk.

 

But who do you suppose will run Taggart Transcontinental?"

 

"But I don't see how—"

 

"I will commute by plane between Eddie's office and Colorado. Also, there are long-distance phones available. I will do just what I have been doing. Nothing will change, except the kind of show you will put on for your friends . . . and the fact that it will be a little harder for me."

 

"What show?"

 

"You understand me, Jim. I have no idea what sort of games you're tangled in, you and your Board of Directors. I don't know how many ends you're all playing against the middle and against one another, or how many pretenses you have to keep up in how many opposite directions. I don't know or care. You can all hide behind me.

 

If you're all afraid, because you've made deals with friends who're threatened by Rearden Metal—well, here's your chance to go through the motions of assuring them that you're not involved, that you're not doing this—I am. You can help them to curse me and denounce me.

 

You can all stay home, take no risks and make no enemies. Just keep out of my way."

 

"Well . . ." he said slowly, "of course, the problems involved in the policy of a great railroad system are complex . . . while a small, independent company, in the name of one person, could afford to—"

 

"Yes, Jim, yes, I know all that. The moment you announce that you're turning the Rio Norte Line over to me, the Taggart stock will rise. The bedbugs will stop crawling from out of unlikely corners, since they won't have the incentive of a big company to bite. Before they decide what to do about me, I will have the Line finished. And as for me, I don't want to have you and your Board to account to, to argue with, to beg permissions from. There isn't any time for that, if I am to do the kind of job that has to be done. So I'm going to do it alone."

 

"And . . . if you fail?"

 

"If I fail, I'll go down alone."

 

"You understand that in such case Taggart Transcontinental wilt not be able to help you in any way?"

 

“I understand.”

 

"You will not count on us?"

 

"No."

 

"You will cut all official connection with us, so that your activities will not reflect upon our reputation?"

 

"Yes."

 

"I think we should agree that in case of failure or public scandal . . . your leave of absence will become permanent . . . that is, you will not expect to return to the post of Vice-President."

 

She closed her eyes for a moment. "All right, Jim. In such case, I will not return."

 

"Before we transfer the Rio Norte Line to you, we must have a written agreement that you will transfer it back to us, along with your controlling interest at cost, in case the Line becomes successful. Otherwise you might try to squeeze us for a windfall profit, since we need that Line."

 

There was only a brief stab of shock in her eyes, then she said indifferently, the words sounding as if she were tossing alms, "By all means, Jim. Have that stated in writing."

 

"Now as to your temporary successor . . ."

 

"Yes?"

 

"You don't really want it to be Eddie Willers, do you?"

 

"Yes. I do."

 

"But he couldn't even act like a vice-president! He doesn't have the presence, the manner, the—"

 

"He knows his work and mine. He knows what I want. I trust him.

 

I'll be able to work with him."

 

"Don't you think it would be better to pick one of our more distinguished young men, somebody from a good family, with more social poise and—"

 

"It's going to be Eddie Willers, Jim."

 

He sighed. "All right. Only . . . only we must be careful about it.

 

. . . We don't want people to suspect that it's you who're still running Taggart Transcontinental. Nobody must know it."

 

"Everybody will know it, Jim. But since nobody will admit it openly, everybody will be satisfied."

 

"But we must preserve appearances."

 

"Oh, certainly! You don't have to recognize me on the street, if you don't want to. You can say you've never seen me before and I'll say I've never heard of Taggart Transcontinental."

 

He remained silent, trying to think, staring down at the floor.

 

She turned to look at the grounds beyond the window. The sky had the even, gray-white pallor of winter. Far below, on the shore of the Hudson, she saw the road she used to watch for Francisco's car—she saw the cliff over the river, where they climbed to look for the towers of New York—and somewhere beyond the woods were the trails that led to Rockdale Station. The earth was snow-covered now, and what remained was like the skeleton of the countryside she remembered—a thin design of bare branches rising from the snow to the sky.

 

It was gray and white, like a photograph, a dead photograph which one keeps hopefully for remembrance, but which has no power to bring back anything.

 

"What are you going to call it?"

 

She turned, startled. "What?"

 

"What are you going to call your company?"

 

"Oh . . . Why, the Dagny Taggart Line, I guess."

 

"But . . . Do you think that's wise? It might be misunderstood.

 

The Taggart might be taken as—"

 

"Well, what do you want me to call it?" she snapped, worn down to anger. "The Miss Nobody? The Madam X? The John Galt?" She stopped. She smiled suddenly, a cold, bright, dangerous smile. 'That's what I'm going to call it: the John Galt Line."

 

"Good God, no!"

 

"Yes."

 

"But it's . . . if s just a cheap piece of slang!"

 

"You can't make a joke out of such a serious project! . . . You can't be so vulgar and . . . and undignified!"

 

"Can't I?"

 

"But for God's sake, why?”

 

"Because it's going to shock all the rest of them just as it shocked you."

 

"I've never seen you playing for effects."

 

"I am, this time."

 

"But . . ." His voice dropped to an almost superstitious sound: "Look, Dagny, you know, it's . . . it's bad luck. . . . What it stands for is . . ." He stopped.

 

"What does it stand for?"

 

"I don't know . . . But the way people use it, they always seem to say it out of—"

 

"Fear? Despair? Futility?"

 

"Yes . . . yes, that's what it is."

 

"That's what I want to throw in their faces!"

 

The bright, sparkling anger in her eyes, her first look of enjoyment, made him understand that he had to keep still.

 

"Draw up all the papers and all the red tape in the name of the John Galt Line," she said.

 

He sighed. "Well, it's your Line."

 

"You bet it is!"

 

He glanced at her, astonished. She had dropped the manners and style of a vice-president; she seemed to be relaxing happily to the level of yard crews and construction gangs.

 

"As to the papers and the legal side of it," he said, "there might be some difficulties. We would have to apply for the permission of—"

 

She whirled to face him. Something of the bright, violent look still remained in her face. But it was not gay and she was not smiling. The look now had an odd, primitive quality. When he saw it, he hoped he would never have to see it again.

 

"Listen, Jim," she said; he had never heard that tone in any human voice. "There is one thing you can do as your part of the deal and you'd better do it: keep your Washington boys off. See to it that they give me all the permissions, authorizations, charters and other waste paper that their laws require. Don't let them try to stop me. If they try . . . Jim, people say that our ancestor, Nat Taggart, killed a politician who tried to refuse him a permission he should never have had to ask. I don't know whether Nat Taggart did it or not. But I'll tell you this: I know how he felt, if he did. If he didn't—I might do the job for him, to complete the family legend. I mean it, Jim."

 

Francisco d'Anconia sat in front of her desk. His face was blank. It had remained blank while Dagny explained to him, in the clear, impersonal tone of a business interview, the formation and purpose of her own railroad company. He had listened. He had not pronounced a word.

 

She had never seen his face wear that look of drained passivity.

 

There was no mockery, no amusement, no antagonism; it was as if he did not belong in these particular moments of existence and could not be reached. Yet his eyes looked at her attentively; they seemed to see more than she could suspect; they made her think of one-way glass: they let all light rays in, but none out.

 

"Francisco, I asked you to come here, because I wanted you to see me in my office. You've never seen it. It would have meant something to you, once."

 

His eyes moved slowly to look at the office. Its walls were bare, except for three things: a map of Taggart Transcontinental—the original drawing of Nat Taggart, that had served as model for his statue —and a large railroad calendar, in cheerfully crude colors, the kind that was distributed each year, with a change of its picture, to every station along the Taggart track, the kind that had hung once in her first work place at Rockdale.

 

He got up. He said quietly, "Dagny, for your own sake, and"—it was a barely perceptible hesitation—"and in the name of any pity you might feel for me, don't request what you're going to request.

 

Don't. Let me go now."

 

This was not like him and like nothing she could ever have expected to hear from him. After a moment, she asked, "Why?"

 

"I can't answer you. I can't answer any questions. That is one of the reasons why it's best not to discuss it."

 

"You know what I am going to request?"

 

"Yes." The way she looked at him was such an eloquent, desperate question, that he had to add, "I know that I am going to refuse."

 

"Why?"

 

He smiled mirthlessly, spreading his hands out, as if to show her that this was what he had predicted and had wanted to avoid.

 

She said quietly, "I have to try, Francisco. I have to make the request. That's my part. What you'll do about it is yours. But I'll know that I've tried everything."

 

He remained standing, but he inclined his head a little, in assent, and said, "I will listen, if that will help you."

 

"I need fifteen million dollars to complete the Rio Norte Line, I have obtained seven million against the Taggart stock I own free and clear. I can raise nothing else. I will issue bonds in the name of my new company, in the amount of eight million dollars. I called you here to ask you to buy these bonds."

 

He did not answer.

 

"I am simply a beggar, Francisco, and I am begging you for money.

 

I had always thought that one did not beg in business. I thought that one stood on the merit of what one had to offer, and gave value for value. This is not so any more, though I don't understand how we can act on any other rule and continue to exist. Judging by every objective fact, the Rio Norte Line is to be the best railroad in the country. Judging by every known standard, it is the best investment possible. And that is what damns me. I cannot raise money by offering people a good business venture: the fact that it's good, makes people reject it. There is no bank that would buy the bonds of my company.

 

So I can't plead merit. I can only plead."

 

Her voice was pronouncing the words with impersonal precision. She stopped, waiting for his answer. He remained silent.

 

"I know that I have nothing to offer you," she said. "I can't speak to you in terms of investment. You don't care to make money. Industrial projects have ceased to concern you long ago. So I won't pretend that it's a fair exchange. It's just begging." She drew her breath and said, "Give me that money as alms, because it means nothing to you."

 

"Don't," he said, his voice low. She could not tell whether the strange sound of it was pain or anger; his eyes were lowered.

 

"Will you do it, Francisco?"

 

"No."

 

After a moment, she said, "I called you, not because I thought you would agree, but because you were the only one who could understand what I am saying. So I had to try it." Her voice was dropping lower, as if she hoped it would make emotion harder to detect. "You see, I can't believe that you're really gone . . . because I know that you're still able to hear me. The way you live is depraved. But the way you act is not. Even the way you speak of it, is not. . . . I had to try . . .

 

But I can't struggle to understand you any longer."

 

"I'll give you a hint. Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

 

"Francisco," she whispered, "why don't you tell me what it was that happened to you?"

 

"Because, at this moment, the answer would hurt you more than the doubt."

 

"Is it as terrible as that?"

 

"It is an answer which you must reach by yourself."

 

She shook her head. "I don't know what to offer you. I don't know what is of value to you any longer. Don't you see that even a beggar has to give value in return, has to offer some reason why you might want to help him? . . . Well, I thought . . . at one time, it meant a great deal to you—success. Industrial success. Remember how we used to talk about it? You were very severe. You expected a lot from me.

 

You told me I'd better live up to it. I have. You wondered how far I'd rise with Taggart Transcontinental." She moved her hand, pointing at the office. "This is how far I've risen. . . . So I thought . . . if the memory of what had been your values still has some meaning for you, if only as amusement, or a moment's sadness, or just like . . . like putting flowers on a grave . . . you might want to give me the money . . . in the name of that."

 

"No."

 

She said, with effort, "That money would mean nothing to you—you've wasted that much on senseless parties—you've wasted much more on the San Sebastian Mines—"

 

He glanced up. He looked straight at her and she saw the first spark of a living response in his eyes, a look that was bright, pitiless and, incredibly, proud: as if this were an accusation that gave him strength.

 

"Oh, yes," she said slowly, as if answering his thought, "I realize that. I've damned you for those mines, I've denounced you, I've thrown my contempt at you in every way possible, and now I come back to you—for money. Like Jim, like any moocher you've ever met. I know it's a triumph for you, I know that you can laugh at me and despise me with full justice. Well—perhaps I can offer you that. If it's amusement that you want, if you enjoyed seeing Jim and the Mexican planners crawl—wouldn't it amuse you to break me? Wouldn't it give you pleasure? Don't you want to hear me acknowledge that I'm beaten by you? Don't you want to see me crawling before you? Tell me what form of it you'd like and I'll submit."

 

He moved so swiftly that she could not notice how he started; it only seemed to her that his first movement was a shudder. He came around the desk, he took her hand and raised it to his lips. It began as a gesture of the gravest respect, as if its purpose were to give her strength; but as he held his lips, then his face, pressed to her hand, she knew that he was seeking strength from it himself.

 

He dropped her hand, he looked down at her face, at the frightened stillness of her eyes, he smiled, not trying to hide that his smile held suffering, anger and tenderness.

 

"Dagny, you want to crawl? You don't know what the word means and never will. One doesn't crawl by acknowledging it as honestly as that. Don't you suppose I know that your begging me was the bravest thing you could do? But . . . Don't ask me, Dagny."

 

"In the name of anything I ever meant to you . . ." she whispered, "anything left within you . . ."

 

In the moment when she thought that she had seen this look before, that this was the way he had looked against the night glow of the city, when he lay in bed by her side for the last time—she heard his cry, the kind of cry she had never torn from him before: "My love, I can't!"

 

Then, as they looked at each other, both shocked into silence by astonishment, she saw the change in his face. It was as crudely abrupt as if he had thrown a switch. He laughed, he moved away from her and said, his voice jarringly offensive by being completely casual: "Please excuse the mixture in styles of expression. I've been supposed to say that to so many women, but on somewhat different occasions."

 

Her head dropped, she sat huddled tight together, not caring that he saw it.

 

When she raised her head, she looked at him indifferently. "All right, Francisco. It was a good act. I did believe it. If that was your own way of having the kind of fun I was offering you, you succeeded.

 

I won't ask you for anything."

 

"I warned you."

 

"I didn't know which side you belonged on. It didn't seem possible —but it's the side of Orren Boyle and Bertram Scudder and your old teacher."

 

"My old teacher?" he asked sharply.

 

"Dr. Robert Stadler."

 

He chuckled, relieved. "Oh, that one? He's the looter who thinks that his end justifies his seizure of my means." He added, "You know, Dagny, I'd like you to remember which side you said I'm on. Some day, I'll remind you of it and ask you whether you'll want to repeat it."

 

"You won't have to remind me."

 

He turned to go. He tossed his hand in a casual salute and said, "If it could be built, I'd wish good luck to the Rio Norte Line."

 

"It's going to be built. And it's going to be called the John Galt Line."

 

"What?!"

 

It was an actual scream; she chuckled derisively. "The John Galt Line."


Date: 2015-12-17; view: 556


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