Atlas Shrugged [367]
Now-now I'm glad that Ragnar Danneskjold has blown up those mills. May God bless him and never let them find him, whatever and wherever he is! . . . Yes, that's what I've come to feel. Well, how much do they think people can take? . . . It's not so bad for me in the daytime, because I can keep busy and not think, but it gets me at night. I can't sleep any more, I lie awake for hours. . . . Yes!-if you want to know it-yes, it's because I'm worried about her! I'm scared to death for her. Woodstock is just a miserable little hole of a place, miles away from everything, and the Taggart lodge is twenty miles farther, twenty miles of a twisting trail in a godforsaken forest. How do I know what might happen to her there, alone, and with the kind of gangs that are roving all through the country these nights-just through such desolate parts of the country as the Berkshires? . . . I know I shouldn't think about it. I know that she can take care of herself. Only I wish she'd drop me a line. I wish I could go there. But she told me not to.
I told her I'd wait. . . . You know, I'm glad you're here tonight. It helps me-talking to you and . . . just seeing you here. You won't vanish, like all the others, will you? . . . What? Next week? . . . Oh, on your vacation. For how long? . . . How do you rate a whole month's vacation? . . . I wish I could do that, too-take a month off at my own expense. But they wouldn't let me. . . . Really? I envy you. . . . I wouldn't have envied you a few years ago. But now-now I'd like to get away. Now I envy you-if you've been able to take a month off every summer for twelve years."
It was a dark road, but it led in a new direction. Rearden walked from his mills, not toward his house, but toward the city of Philadelphia.
It was a great distance to walk, but he had wanted to do it tonight, as he had done it every evening of the past week. He felt at peace in the empty darkness of the countryside, with nothing but the black shapes of trees around him, with no motion but that of his own body and of branches stirring in the wind, with no lights but the slow sparks of the fireflies flickering through the hedges. The two hours between mills and city were his span of rest.
He had moved out of his home to an apartment in Philadelphia. He had given no explanation to his mother and Philip, he had said nothing except that they could remain in the house if they wished and that Miss Ives would take care of their bills. He had asked them to tell Lillian, when she returned, that she was not to attempt to see him.
They had stared at him in terrified silence.
He had handed to his attorney a signed blank check and said, "Get me a divorce. On any grounds and at any cost. I don't care what means you use, how many of their judges you purchase or whether you find it necessary to stage a frame-up of my wife. Do whatever you wish.
But there is to be no alimony and no property settlement." The attorney had looked at him with the hint of a wise, sad smile, as if this were an event he had expected to happen long ago. He had answered, "Okay, Hank. It can be done. But it will take some time." "Make it as fast as you can."
No one had questioned him about his signature on the Gift Certificate. But he had noticed that the men at the mills looked at him with a kind of searching curiosity, almost as if they expected to find the scars of some physical torture on his body.
He felt nothing-nothing but the sense of an even, restful twilight, like a spread of slag over a molten metal, when it crusts and swallows the last brilliant spurt of the white glow within. He felt nothing at the thought of the looters