Atlas Shrugged [471]
She sat beside him in the car, feeling no desire to speak, knowing that neither of them could conceal the meaning of their silence. She watched a few lights come up in the distant homes of the valley, then the lighted windows of Mulligan's house on the ledge ahead. She asked, "Who will be there?"
"Some of your last friends," he answered, "and some of my first."
Midas Mulligan met them at the door. She noticed that his grim, square face was not as harshly expressionless as she had thought: he had a look of satisfaction, but satisfaction could not soften his features, it merely struck them like flint and sent sparks of humor to glitter faintly in the corners of his eyes, a humor that was shrewder, more demanding, yet warmer than a smile.
He opened the door of his house, moving his arm a shade more slowly than normal, giving an imperceptibly solemn emphasis to his gesture.
Walking into the living room, she faced seven men who rose to their feet at her entrance.
"Gentlemen-Taggart Transcontinental," said Midas Mulligan.
He said it smiling, but only half-jesting; some quality in his voice made the name of the railroad sound as it would have sounded in the days of Nat Taggart, as a sonorous title of honor.
She inclined her head, slowly, in acknowledgment to the men before her, knowing that these were the men whose standards of value and honor were the same as her own, the men who recognized the glory of that title as she recognized it, knowing with a sudden stab of wistfulness how much she had longed for that recognition through all her years.
Her eyes moved slowly, in greeting, from face to face: Ellis Wyatt-
Ken Danagger-Hugh Akston-Dr. Hendricks-Quentin Daniels-
Mulligan's voice pronounced the names of the two others: "Richard Halley-Judge Narragansett."
The faint smile on Richard Halley's face seemed to tell her that they had known each other for years-as, in her lonely evenings by the side of her phonograph, they had. The austerity of Judge Narragansett's white-haired figure reminded her that she had once heard him described as a marble statue-a blindfolded marble statue; it was the kind of figure that had vanished from the courtrooms of the country when the gold coins had vanished from the country's hands.
"You have belonged here for a long time, Miss Taggart," said Midas Mulligan. "This was not the way we expected you to come, but-welcome home."
No!-she wanted to answer, but heard herself answering softly, "Thank you."
"Dagny, how many years is it going to take you to learn to be yourself?" It was Ellis Wyatt, grasping her elbow, leading her to a chair, grinning at her look of helplessness, at the struggle between a smile and a tightening resistance in her face. "Don't pretend that you don't understand us. You do."
"We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston. "That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell-we show.
We do not claim-we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw-we can help you to name it, but not to accept it-the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours."
"I feel as if I know it," she answered simply, "and more: I feel as if I've always known it, but never found it, and now I'm afraid, not afraid to hear it, just afraid that it's coming so close."
Akston smiled. "What does this look like to you, Miss Taggart?" He pointed around the room.
"This?" She laughed suddenly, looking at the faces of the men against the golden sunburst of rays filling the great windows. "This looks like . . . You know, I never hoped to see any of you again, I wondered at times how much I'd give for just one more glimpse or one more word-and now-now this is like that dream you imagine in childhood, when you think that some day, in heaven, you will see those great departed whom you had not seen on earth, and you choose, from