Atlas Shrugged [577]
Rearden to see you, sir."
"What? . . . Oh . . . Well! Have her come in!"
He swung his feet down to the floor, but made no other concession, and waited with half a smile of alerted curiosity, choosing not to rise until a moment after Lillian had entered the room.
She wore a wine-colored dinner gown, an imitation of an Empire traveling suit, with a miniature double-breasted jacket gripping her high waistline over the long sweep of the skirt, and a small hat clinging to one ear, with a feather sweeping down to curl under her chin. She entered with a brusque, unrhythmical motion, the train of her dress and the feather of her hat swirling, then flapping against her legs and throat, like pennants signaling nervousness.
"Lillian, my dear, am I to be flattered, delighted or just plain flabbergasted?"
"Oh, don't make a fuss about it! I had to see you, and it had to be immediately, that's all."
The impatient tone, the peremptory movement with which she sat down were a confession of weakness: by the rules of their unwritten language, one did not assume a demanding manner unless one were seeking a favor and had no value-no threat-to barter.
"Why didn't you stay at the Gonzales reception?" she asked, her casual smile failing to hide the tone of irritation. "I dropped in on them after dinner, just to catch hold of you-but they said you hadn't been feeling well and had gone home."
He crossed the room and picked up a cigarette, for the pleasure of padding in his stocking feet past the formal elegance of her costume.
"I was bored," he answered.
"I can't stand them," she said, with a little shudder; he glanced at her in astonishment: the words sounded involuntary and sincere. "I can't stand Senor Gonzales and that whore he's got himself for a wife.
It's disgusting that they've become so fashionable, they and their parties. I don't feel like going anywhere any longer. It's not the same
style any more, not the same spirit. I haven't run into Balph Eubank for months, or Dr. Pritchett, or any of the boys. And all those new faces that look like butcher's assistants! After all, our crowd were gentlemen."
"Yeah," he said reflectively. "Yeah, there's some funny kind of difference. It's like on the railroad, too: I could get along with Gem Weatherby, he was civilized, but Cuffy Meigs-that's something else again, that's . . ."He stopped abruptly.
"It's perfectly preposterous," she said, in the tone of a challenge to the space at large. "They can't get away with it."
She did not explain "who" or "with what." He knew what she meant. Through a moment of silence, they looked as if they were clinging to each other for reassurance.
In the next moment, he was thinking with pleasurable amusement that Lillian was beginning to show her age. The deep burgundy color of her gown was unbecoming, it seemed to draw a purplish tinge out of her skin, a tinge that gathered, like twilight, in the small gullies of her face, softening her flesh to a texture of tired slackness, changing her look of bright mockery into a look of stale malice.
He saw her studying him, smiling and saying crisply, with the smile as license for insult, "You are unwell, aren't you, Jim? You look like a disorganized stable boy."
He chuckled. "I can afford it."
"I know it, darling. You're one of the most powerful men in New York City." She added, "It's a good joke on New York City."
"It is."
"I concede that you're in a position to do anything. That's why I had to see you." She added a small, grunt like sound of amusement, to dilute her statement's frankness.
"Good," he said, his voice comfortable and noncommittal.
"I had to come here, because I thought it best, in this particular matter, not to be seen together in public."
"That is always wise."
"I seem to remember having been useful to you in the past."
"In the past-yes."
"I am sure that I can count on you."
"Of course-only isn't that an old-fashioned, unphilosophical remark? How can we ever be sure of anything?"
"Jim," she snapped suddenly, "you've