Atlas Shrugged [488]
We do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and we do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster until we have specific reason to expect it-and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering that we consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life."
Galt accompanied him to the door, then came back, sat down at the table and in a leisurely manner reached for another cup of coffee.
She shot to her feet, as if flung by a jet of pressure breaking a safety valve. "Do you think that I'll ever accept his money?"
He waited until the curving streak of coffee had filled his cup, then glanced up at her and answered, "Yes, I think so."
"Well, I won't! I won't let him risk his life for it!"
"You have no choice about that."
"I have the choice never to claim it!"
"Yes, you have."
"Then it will lie in that bank till doomsday!"
"No, it won't. If you don't claim it, some part of it-a very small part-will be turned over to me in your name."
"In my name? Why?"
"To pay for your room and board."
She stared at him, her look of anger switching to bewilderment, then dropped slowly back on her chair.
He smiled. "How long did you think you were going to stay here, Miss Taggart?" He saw her startled look of helplessness. "You haven't thought of it? I have. You're going to stay here for a month. For the one month of our vacation, like the rest of us. I am not asking for your consent-you did not ask for ours when you came here. You broke our rules, so you'll have to take the consequences. Nobody leaves the valley during this month. I could let you go, of course, but I won't.
There's no rule demanding that I hold you, but by forcing your way here, you've given me the right to any choice I make-and I'm going to hold you simply because I want you here. If, at the end of a month, you decide that you wish to go back, you will be free to do so. Not until then."
She sat straight, the planes of her face relaxed, the shape of her mouth softened by the faint, purposeful suggestion of a smile; it was the dangerous smile of an adversary, but her eyes were coldly brilliant and veiled at once, like the eyes of an adversary who fully intends to fight, but hopes to lose.
"Very well," she said, "I shall charge you for your room and board-it is against our rules to provide the unearned sustenance of another human being.
Some of us have wives and children, but there is a mutual trade involved in that, and a mutual payment"-he glanced at her-"of a kind I am not entitled to collect. So I shall charge you fifty cents a day and you will pay me when you accept the account that lies in your name at the Mulligan Bank. If you don't accept the account, Mulligan will charge your debt against it and he will give me the money when I ask for it."
"I shall comply with your terms," she answered; her voice had the shrewd, confident, deliberating slowness of a trader. "But I shall not permit the use of that money for my debts."
"How else do you propose to comply?"
"I propose to earn my room and board."
"By what means?"
"By working."
"In what capacity?"
"In the capacity of your cook and housemaid."
For the first time, she saw him take the shock of the unexpected, in a manner and with a violence she had not foreseen. It was only an explosion of laughter on his part-but he laughed as if he were hit beyond his defenses, much beyond the immediate meaning of her words; she felt that she had struck his past, tearing loose some memory and meaning of his own which she could not know. He laughed as if he were seeing some distant image, as if he were laughing in its face, as if this were his victory-and hers.
"If you will hire me," she said, her face severely polite, her tone harshly clear, impersonal and businesslike, "I shall cook your meals, clean your house, do your laundry and perform such other duties as are required of a servant-in exchange for my