Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [765]
The lights of the valley fell in glowing patches on the snow still covering the ground. There were shelves of snow on the granite ledges and on the heavy limbs of the pines. But the naked branches of the birch trees had a faintly upward thrust, as if in confident promise of the coming leaves of spring.
The rectangle of light on the side of a mountain was the window of Mulligan’s study. Midas Mulligan sat at his desk, with a map and a column of figures before him. He was listing the assets of his bank and working on a plan of projected investments. He was noting down the locations he was choosing: “New York—Cleveland—Chicago ... New York—Philadelphia ... New York ... New York ... New York ...”
The rectangle of light at the bottom of the valley was the window of Danneskjöld’s home. Kay Ludlow sat before a mirror, thoughtfully studying the shades of film make-up, spread open in a battered case. Ragnar Danneskjöld lay stretched on a couch, reading a volume of the works of Aristotle: “.... for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being.... For a principle which every one must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis.... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect....”
The rectangle of light in the acres of a farm was the window of the library of Judge Narragansett. He sat at a table, and the light of his lamp fell on the copy of an ancient document. He had marked and crossed out the contradictions in its statements that had once been the cause of its destruction. He was now adding a new clause to its pages: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade ...”
The rectangle of light in the midst of a forest was the window of the cabin of Francisco d.‘Anconia. Francisco lay stretched on the floor, by the dancing tongues of a fire, bent over sheets of paper, completing the drawing of his smelter. Hank Rearden and Ellis Wyatt sat by the fireplace. “John will design the new locomotives,” Rearden was saying, “and Dagny will run the first railroad between New York and Philadelphia. She—” And, suddenly, on hearing the next sentence, Francisco threw his head up and burst out laughing, a laughter of greeting, triumph and release. They could not hear the music of Halley’s Fifth Concerto now flowing somewhere high above the roof, but Francisco’s laughter matched its sounds. Contained in the sentence he had heard, Francisco was seeing the sunlight of spring on the open lawns of homes across the country, he was seeing the sparkle of motors, he was seeing the glow of the steel in the rising frames of new skyscrapers, he was seeing the eyes of youth looking at the future with no uncertainty or fear.
The sentence Rearden had uttered was: “She will probably try to take the shirt off my back with the freight rates she’s going to charge, but—I’ll be able to meet them.”
The faint glitter of light weaving slowly through space, on the highest accessible ledge of a mountain, was the starlight on the strands