Atlas Shrugged (79 page)

But there had been no blow. He knew every shade of sensation ever reflected in Dagny’s face; he had known that she had felt no shock; he had seen nothing but an untouched serenity. Her eyes had moved to his, as if acknowledging the full meaning of this encounter, but looking at him as she would have looked anywhere, as she looked at him in his office or in her bedroom. It had seemed to him that she had stood before them both, at the distance of a few steps, revealed to them as simply and openly as the gray dress revealed her body.

She had bowed to them, the courteous movement of her head including them both. He had answered, he had seen Lillian’s brief nod, and then he had seen Lillian moving away and realized that he had stood with his head bowed for a long moment.

He did not know what Lillian’s friends were saying to him or what he was answering. As a man goes step by step, trying not to think of the length of a hopeless road, so he went moment by moment, keeping no imprint of anything in his mind. He heard snatches of Lillian’s pleased laughter and a tone of satisfaction in her voice.

After a while, he noticed the women around him; they all seemed to resemble Lillian, with the same look of static grooming, with thin eyebrows plucked to a static lift and eyes frozen in static amusement. He noticed that they were trying to flirt with him, and that Lillian watched it as if she were enjoying the hopelessness of their attempts. This, then -he thought—was the happiness of feminine vanity which she had begged him to give her, these were the standards which he did not live by, but had to consider. He turned for escape to a group of men.

He could not find a single straight statement in the conversation of the men; whatever subject they seemed to be talking about never seemed to be the subject they were actually discussing. He listened like a foreigner who recognized some of the words, but could not connect them into sentences. A young man, with a look of alcoholic insolence, staggered past the group and snapped, chuckling, “Learned your lesson, Rearden?” He did not know what the young rat had meant; everybody else seemed to know it; they looked shocked and secretly pleased.

Lillian drifted away from him, as if letting him understand that she did not insist upon his literal attendance. He retreated to a corner of the room where no one would see him or notice the direction of his eyes. Then he permitted himself to look at Dagny.

He watched the gray dress, the shifting movement of the soft cloth when she walked, the momentary pauses sculptured by the cloth, the shadows and the light. He saw it as a bluish-gray smoke held shaped for an instant into a long curve that slanted forward to her knee and back to the tip of her sandal. He knew every facet the light would shape if the smoke were ripped away.

He felt a murky, twisting pain: it was jealousy of every man who spoke to her. He had never felt it before; but he felt it here, where everyone had the right to approach her, except himself.

Then, as if a single, sudden blow to his brain blasted a moment’s shift of perspective, he felt an immense astonishment at what he was doing here and why. He lost, for that moment, all the days and dogmas of his past; his concepts, his problems, his pain were wiped out; he knew only—as from a great, clear distance—that man exists for the achievement of his desires, and he wondered why he stood here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a single irreplaceable hour of his life, when his only desire was to seize the slender figure in gray and hold her through the length of whatever time there was left for him to exist.

In the next moment, he felt the shudder of recapturing his mind. He felt the tight, contemptuous movement of his lips pressed together in token of the words he cried to himself: You made a contract once, now stick to it. And then he thought suddenly that in business transactions the courts of law did not recognize a contract wherein no valuable consideration had been given by one party to the other. He wondered what made him think of it. The thought seemed irrelevant. He did not pursue it.

James Taggart saw Lillian Rearden drift casually toward him at the one moment when he chanced to be alone in the dim corner between a potted palm and a window. He stopped and waited to let her approach. He could not guess her purpose, but this was the manner which, in the code he understood, meant that he had better hear her.

“How do you like my wedding gift, Jim?” she asked, and laughed at his look of embarrassment. “No, no, don’t try to go over the list of things in your apartment, wondering which one the hell it was. It’s not in your apartment, it’s right here, and it’s a non-material gift, darling.”

He saw the half-hint of a smile on her face, the look understood among his friends as an invitation to share a secret victory; it was the look, not of having outthought, but of having outsmarted somebody. He answered cautiously, with a safely pleasant smile, “Your presence is the best gift you could give me.”

“My presence, Jim?”

The lines of his face were shock-bound for a moment. He knew what she meant, but he had not expected her to mean it.

She smiled openly. “We both know whose presence is the most valuable one for you tonight—and the unexpected one. Didn’t you really think of giving me credit for it? I’m surprised at you. I thought you had a genius for recognizing potential friends.”

He would not commit himself; he kept his voice carefully neutral. “Have I failed to appreciate your friendship, Lillian?”

“Now, now, darling, you know what I’m talking about. You didn’t expect him to come here, you didn’t really think that he is afraid of you, did you? But to have the others think he is—that’s quite an inestimable advantage, isn’t it?”

“I’m ... surprised, Lillian.”

“Shouldn’t you say ‘impressed’? Your guests are quite impressed. I can practically hear them thinking all over the room. Most of them are thinking: ‘If he has to seek terms with Jim Taggart, we’d better toe the line.’ And a few are thinking: ‘If
he’s
afraid, we’ll get away with much more.’ This is as you want it, of course—and I wouldn’t think of spoiling your triumph—but you and I are the only ones who know that you didn’t achieve it single-handed.”

He did not smile; he asked, his face blank, his voice smooth, but with a carefully measured hint of harshness, “What’s your angle?”

She laughed. “Essentially—the same as yours, Jim. But speaking practically—none at all. It’s just a favor I’ve done you, and I need no favor in return. Don’t worry, I’m not lobbying for any special interests, I’m not after squeezing some particular directive out of Mr. Mouch, I’m not even after a diamond tiara from you. Unless, of course, it’s a tiara of a non-material order, such as your appreciation.”

He looked straight at her for the first time, his eyes narrowed, his face relaxed to the same half-smile as hers, suggesting the expression which, for both of them, meant that they felt at home with each other: an expression of contempt. “You know that I have always admired you, Lillian, as one of the truly superior women.”

“I’m aware of it.” There was the faintest coating of mockery spread, like shellac, over the smooth notes of her voice.

He was studying her insolently. “You must forgive me if I think that some curiosity is permissible between friends,” he said, with no tone of apology. “I’m wondering from what angle you contemplate the possibility of certain financial burdens—or losses—which affect your own personal interests.”

She shrugged. “From the angle of a horsewoman, darling. If you had the most powerful horse in the world, you would keep it bridled down to the gait required to carry you in comfort, even though this meant the sacrifice of its full capacity, even though its top speed would never be seen and its great power would be wasted. You would do it-because if you let the horse go full blast, it would throw you off in no time.... However, financial aspects are not my chief concern —nor yours, Jim.”

“I did underestimate you,” he said slowly.

“Oh, well, that’s an error I’m willing to help you correct. I know the sort of problem he presents to you. I know why you’re afraid of him, as you have good reason to be. But ... well, you’re in business and in politics, so I’ll try to say it in your language. A businessman says that he can deliver the goods, and a ward heeler says that he can deliver the vote, is that right? Well, what I wanted you to know is that I can deliver
him,
any time I choose. You may act accordingly.”

In the code of his friends, to reveal any part of one’s self was to give a weapon to an enemy—but he signed her confession and matched it, when he said, “I wish I were as smart about my sister.”

She looked at him without astonishment; she did not find the words irrelevant. “Yes,
there’s
a tough one,” she said. “No vulnerable point? No weaknesses?”

“None.”

“No love affairs?”

“God, no!”

She shrugged, in sign of changing the subject; Dagny Taggart was a person on whom she did not care to dwell. “I think I’ll let you run along, so that you can chat a little with Balph Eubank,” she said. “He looks worried, because you haven’t looked at him all evening and he’s wondering whether literature will be left without a friend at court.”

“Lillian, you’re wonderful!” he said quite spontaneously.

She laughed. “That, my dear, is the non-material tiara I wanted!”

The remnant of a smile stayed on her face as she moved through the crowd, a fluid smile that ran softly into the look of tension and boredom worn by all the faces around her. She moved at random, enjoying the sense of being seen, her eggshell satin gown shimmering like heavy cream with the motion of her tall figure.

It was the green-blue spark that caught her attention: it flashed for an instant under the lights, on the wrist of a thin, naked arm. Then she saw the slender body, the gray dress, the fragile, naked shoulders. She stopped. She looked at the bracelet, frowning.

Dagny turned at her approach. Among the many things that Lillian resented, the impersonal politeness of Dagny’s face was the one she resented most.

“What do you think of your brother’s marriage, Miss Taggart?” she asked casually, smiling.

“I have no opinion about it.”

“Do you mean to say that you don’t find it worthy of any thought?”

“If you wish to be exact—yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Oh, but don’t you see any human significance in it?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think that a person such as your brother’s bride does deserve some interest?”

“Why, no.”

“I envy you, Miss Taggart. I envy your Olympian detachment. It is, I think, the secret of why lesser mortals can never hope to equal your success in the field of business. They allow their attention to be divided—at least to the extent of acknowledging achievements in other fields.”

“What achievements are we talking about?”

“Don’t you grant any recognition at all to the women who attain unusual heights of conquest, not in the industrial, but in the human realm?”

“I don’t think that there is such a word as ‘conquest’—in the human realm.”

“Oh, but consider, for instance, how hard other women would have had to work—if work were the only means available to them—to achieve what this girl has achieved through the person of your brother.”

“I don’t think she knows the exact nature of what she has achieved.”

Rearden saw them together. He approached. He felt that he had to hear it, no matter what the consequences. He stopped silently beside them. He did not know whether Lillian was aware of his presence; he knew that Dagny was.

“Do show a little generosity toward her, Miss Taggart,” said Lillian. “At least, the generosity of attention. You must not despise the women who do not possess your brilliant talent, but who exercise their own particular endowments. Nature always balances her gifts and offers compensations—don’t you think so?”

“I’m not sure I understand you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me become more explicit!”

“Why, yes, I do.”

Lillian shrugged angrily; among the women who were her friends, she would have been understood and stopped long ago; but this was an adversary new to her—a woman who refused to be hurt. She did not care to speak more clearly, but she saw Rearden looking at her. She smiled and said, “Well, consider your sister-in-law, Miss Taggart. What chance did she have to rise in the world? None—by your exacting standards. She could not have made a successful career in business. She does not possess your unusual mind. Besides, men would have made it impossible for her. They would have found her too attractive. So she took advantage of the fact that men have standards which, unfortunately, are not as high as yours. She resorted to talents which, I’m sure, you despise. You have never cared to compete with us lesser women in the sole field of our ambition—in the achievement of power over men.”

“If you call it power, Mrs. Rearden—then, no, I haven’t.”

She turned to go, but Lillian’s voice stopped her: “I would like to believe that you’re fully consistent, Miss Taggart, and fully devoid of human frailties. I would like to believe that you’ve never felt the desire to flatter—or to offend—anyone. But I see that you expected both Henry and me to be here tonight.”

“Why, no, I can’t say that I did, I had not seen my brother’s guest list.”

“Then why are you wearing that bracelet?”

Dagny’s eyes moved deliberately straight to hers. “I always wear it.”

“Don’t you think that that’s carrying a joke too far?”

“It was never a joke, Mrs. Rearden.”

“Then you’ll understand me if I say that I’d like you to give that bracelet back to me.”

“I understand you. But I will not give it back.”

Lillian let a moment pass, as if to let them both acknowledge the meaning of their silence. For once, she held Dagny’s glance without smiling. “What do you expect me to think, Miss Taggart?”