Atlas Shrugged [310]
The newspapers were silent. After the exaggerated attention they had given to the case, they acted as if the trial were not worthy of notice. They printed brief accounts on unlikely pages, worded in such generalities that no reader could discover any hint of a controversial issue.
The businessmen he met seemed to wish to evade the subject of his trial. Some made no comment at all, but turned away, their faces showing a peculiar resentment under the effort to appear noncommittal, as if they feared that the mere act of looking at him would be interpreted as taking a stand. Others ventured to comment: "In my opinion, Rearden, it was extremely unwise of you. . . . It seems to me that this is hardly the time to make enemies. . . . We can't afford to arouse resentment."
"Whose resentment?" he asked.
"I don't think the government will like it."
"You saw the consequences of that"
"Well, I don't know . . . The public won't take it, there's bound to be a lot of indignation."
"You saw how the public took it."
"Well, I don't know . . . We've been trying hard not to give any grounds for all those accusations about selfish greed-and you've given ammunition to the enemy."
"Would you rather agree with the enemy that you have no right to your profits and your property?"
"Oh, no, no, certainly not-but why go to extremes? There's always a middle ground."
"A middle ground between you and your murderers?"
"Now why use such words?"
"What I said at the trial, was it true or not?"
"It's going to be misquoted and misunderstood."
"Was it true or not?"
"The public is too dumb to grapple with such issues."
"Was it true or not?"
"It's no time to boast about being rich-when the populace is starving. It's just goading them on to seize everything."
"But telling them that you have no right to your wealth, while they have-is what's going to restrain them?"
"Well, I don't know . . ."
"I don't like the things you said at your trial," said another man.
"In my opinion, I don't agree with you at all. Personally, I'm proud to believe that I am working for the public good, not just for my own profit. I like to think that I have some goal higher than just earning my three meals a day and my Hammond limousine."
"And I don't like that idea about no directives and no controls,"
said another. "I grant you they're running hog-wild and overdoing it.
But-no controls at all? I don't go along with that. I think some controls are necessary. The ones which are for the public good."
"I am sorry, gentlemen," said Rearden, "that I will be obliged to save your goddamn necks along with mine."
A group of businessmen headed by Mr. Mowen did not issue any statements about the trial. But a week later they announced, with an inordinate amount of publicity, that they were endowing the construction of a playground for the children of the unemployed.
Bertram Scudder did not mention the trial in his column. But ten days later, he wrote, among items of miscellaneous gossip: "Some idea of the public value of Mr. Hank Rearden may be gathered from the fact that of all social groups, he seems to be most unpopular with his own fellow businessmen. His old-fashioned brand of ruthlessness seems to be too much even for those predatory barons of profit."
On an evening in December-when the street beyond his window was like a congested throat coughing with the horns of pre-Christmas traffic-Rearden sat in his room at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, fighting an enemy more dangerous than weariness or fear: revulsion against the thought of having to deal with human beings.
He sat, unwilling to venture into the streets of the city, unwilling to move, as if he were chained to his chair and to this room. He had tried for hours to ignore an emotion that felt like the pull of homesickness: his awareness that the only man whom he longed to see, was here, in this hotel, just a few floors above him.
He had caught himself, in the past few weeks, wasting time in the lobby whenever he entered the hotel or left it, loitering unnecessarily at the mail counter or the