Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [332]
Dagny burst out laughing.
She could not stop herself, she could not resist it, she could not reject a moment’s chance to avenge Ellis Wyatt, Andrew Stockton, Lawrence Hammond, all the others. She said, torn by laughter:
“Thanks, Mr. Weatherby!”
Mr. Weatherby looked at her in astonishment. “Yes?” he asked coldly.
“I knew that we would have to pay for those bonds one way or another. We’re paying.”
“Miss Taggart,” said the chairman severely, “don’t you think that I-told-you-so’s are futile? To talk of what would have happened if we had acted differently is nothing but purely theoretical speculation. We cannot indulge in theory, we have to deal with the practical reality of the moment.”
“Right,” said Mr. Weatherby. “That’s what you ought to be—practical. Now we offer you a trade. You do something for us and we’ll do something for you. You give the unions their wage raises and we’ll give you permission to close the Rio Norte Line.”
“All right,” said James Taggart, his voice choked.
Standing at the window, she heard them vote on their decision. She heard them declare that the John Gait Line would end in six weeks, on March 31.
It’s only a matter of getting through the next few moments, she thought; take care of the next few moments, and then the next, a few at a time, and after a while it will be easier; you’ll get over it, after a while.
The assignment she gave herself for the next few moments was to put on her coat and be first to leave the room.
Then there was the assignment of riding in an elevator down the great, silent length of the Taggart Building. Then there was the assignment of crossing the dark lobby.
Halfway through the lobby, she stopped. A man stood leaning against the wall, in a manner of purposeful waiting—and it was she who was his purpose, because he was looking straight at her. She did not recognize him at once, because she felt certain that the face she saw could not possibly be there in that lobby at this hour.
“Hi, Slug,” he said softly.
She answered, groping for some great distance that had once been hers, “Hi, Frisco.”
“Have they finally murdered John Galt?”
She struggled to place the moment into some orderly sequence of time. The question belonged to the present, but the solemn face came from those days on the hill by the Hudson when he would have understood all that the question meant to her.
“How did you know that they’d do it tonight?” she asked.
“It’s been obvious for months that that would be the next step at their next meeting.”
“Why did you come here?”
“To see how you’d take it.”
“Want to laugh about it?”
“No, Dagny, I don’t want to laugh about it.”
She saw no hint of amusement in his face; she answered trustingly, “I don’t know how I’m taking it.”
“I do.”
“I was expecting it, I knew they’d have to do it, so now it’s only a matter of getting through”—tonight, she wanted to say, but said—“all the work and details.”
He took her arm. “Let’s go some place where we can have a drink together.”
“Francisco, why don’t you laugh at me? You’ve always laughed about that Line.”
“I will—tomorrow, when I see you going on with all the work and details. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Come on. You’re in no condition to talk about it.”
“I—” She wanted to protest, but said, “No, I guess I’m not.”
He led her out to the street, and she found herself walking silently in time with the steady rhythm of his steps, the grasp of his fingers on her arm unstressed and firm. He signaled a passing taxicab and held the door open for her. She obeyed him without questions; she felt relief, like a swimmer who stops struggling. The spectacle of a man acting with assurance, was a life belt thrown to her at a moment when she had forgotten the hope of its existence. The relief was not in the surrender of responsibility, but in the sight of a man able to assume it.
“Dagny,” he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, “think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He did not say, ‘It seems to me,’ and he did not take