Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [338]
The last train stood at the platform, its windows a long, lone streak of light. The steam of the locomotive, gasping tensely through the wheels, did not have its usual joyous sound of energy released for a sprint; it had the sound of a panting breath that one dreads to hear and dreads more to stop hearing. Far at the end of the lighted windows, she saw the small red dot of a lantern attached to her private car. Beyond the lantern, there was nothing but a black void.
The train was loaded to capacity, and the shrill notes of hysteria in the confusion of voices were the pleas for space in vestibules and aisles. Some people were not leaving, but stood in vapid curiosity, watching the show; they had come, as if knowing that this was the last event they would ever witness in their community and, perhaps, in their lives.
She walked hastily through the crowd, trying not to look at anyone. Some knew who she was, most of them did not. She saw an old woman with a ragged shawl on her shoulders and the graph of a lifetime’s struggle on the cracked skin of her face; the woman’s glance was a hopeless appeal for help. An unshaved young man with gold-rimmed glasses stood on a crate under an arc light, yelling to the faces shifting past him, “What do they mean, no business! Look at that train! It’s full of passengers! There’s plenty of business! It’s just that there’s no profits for them—that’s why they’re letting you perish, those greedy parasites!” A disheveled woman rushed up to Dagny, waving two tickets and screaming something about the wrong date. Dagny found herself pushing people out of the way, fighting to reach the end of the train—but an emaciated man, with the staring eyes of years of malicious futility, rushed at her, shouting, “It’s all right for you, you’ve got a good overcoat and a private car, but you won’t give us any trains, you and all the selfish—” He stopped abruptly, looking at someone behind her. She felt a hand grasping her elbow: it was Hank Rearden. He held her arm and led her toward her car; seeing the look on his face, she understood why people got out of their way. At the end of the platform, a pallid, plumpish man stood saying to a crying woman, “That’s how it’s always been in this world. There will be no chance for the poor, until the rich are destroyed.” High above the town, hanging in black space like an uncooled planet, the flame of Wyatt’s Torch was twisting in the wind.
Rearden went inside her car, but she remained on the steps of the vestibule, delaying the finality of turning away. She heard the “All aboard!” She looked at the people who remained on the platform as one looks at those who watch the departure of the last lifeboat.
The conductor stood below, at the foot of the steps, with his lantern in one hand and his watch in the other. He glanced at the watch, then glanced up at her face. She answered by the silent affirmation of closing her eyes and inclining her head. She saw his lantern circling through the air, as she turned away—and the first jolt of the wheels, on the rails of Rearden Metal, was made easier for her by the sight of Rearden, as she pulled the door open and went into her car.
When James Taggart telephoned Lillian Rearden from New York and said, “Why, no—no special reason, just wondered how you were and whether you ever came to the city—haven’t seen you for ages and just thought we might have lunch together next time you’re in New York”—she knew that he had some very special reason in mind.
When she answered lazily, “Oh, let me see—what day is this? April second?—let me look at my calendar—why, it just so happens that I have some shopping to do in New York tomorrow, so I’ll be delighted to let you save me my lunch money”—he knew that she had no shopping to do and that the luncheon would be the only purpose of her trip to the city.
They met in a distinguished, high-priced restaurant, much too distinguished