Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [303]
The butler slipped a plate of plum pudding in front of him, and he heard Lillian’s voice: “Where have you been for the last five minutes, Henry—or is it for the last century? You haven’t answered me. You haven’t heard a word I said.”
“I heard it,” he answered quietly. “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.”
“What a question!” said his mother. “Isn’t that just like a man? She’s trying to save you from going to jail—that’s what she’s trying to accomplish.”
That could be true, he thought; perhaps, by the reasoning of some crude, childish cowardice, the motive of their malice was a desire to protect him, to break him down into the safety of a compromise. It’s possible, he thought—but knew that he did not believe it.
“You’ve always been unpopular,” said Lillian, “and it’s more than a matter of any one particular issue. It’s that unyielding, intractable attitude of yours. The men who’re going to try you, know what you’re thinking. That’s why they’ll crack down on you, while they’d let another man off.”
“Why, no. I don’t think they know what I’m thinking. That’s what I have to let them know tomorrow.”
“Unless you show them that you’re willing to give in and co-operate, you won’t have a chance. You’ve been too hard to deal with.”
“No. I’ve been too easy.”
“But if they put you in jail,” said his mother, “what’s going to happen to your family? Have you thought of that?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Have you thought of the disgrace you’ll bring upon us?”
“Mother, do you understand the issue in this case?”
“No, I don’t and I don’t want to understand. It’s all dirty business and dirty politics. All business is just dirty politics and all politics is just dirty business. I never did want to understand any of it. I don’t care who’s right or wrong, but what I think a man ought to think of first is his family. Don’t you know what this will do to us?”
“No, Mother, I don’t know or care.”
His mother looked at him, aghast.
“Well, I think you have a very provincial attitude, all of you,” said Philip suddenly. “Nobody here seems to be concerned with the wider, social aspects of the case. I don’t agree with you, Lillian. I don’t see why you say that they’re pulling some sort of rotten trick on Henry and that he’s in the right. I think he’s guilty as hell. Mother, I can explain the issue to you very simply. There’s nothing unusual about it, the courts are full of cases of this kind. Businessmen are taking advantage of the national emergency in order to make money. They break the regulations which protect the common welfare of all—for the sake of their own personal gain. They’re profiteers of the black market who grow rich by defrauding the poor of their rightful share, at a time of desperate shortage. They pursue a ruthless, grasping, grabbing, anti-social policy, based on nothing but plain, selfish greed. It’s no use pretending about it, we all know it—and I think it’s contemptible.”
He spoke in a careless, offhand manner, as if explaining the obvious to a group of adolescents; his tone conveyed the assurance of a man who knows that the moral ground of his stand is not open to question.
Rearden sat looking at him, as if studying an object seen for the first time. Somewhere deep in Rearden’s mind, as a steady, gentle, inexorable beat, was a man’s voice, saying: By what right?-by what code?—by what standard?
“Philip,” he said, not raising his voice, “say any of that again and you will find yourself out in the street, right now, with the suit you’ve got on your back, with whatever change you’ve got in your pocket and with nothing else.”
He heard no answer, no sound, no movement. He noted that the stillness of the three before him had no element of astonishment. The look of shock on their faces was not the shock of people at the sudden explosion of a bomb, but the shock of people who had known that they were playing with