“I do not co-operate at the point of a gun.”
“Why speak of guns? This matter is not serious enough to warrant such references. We are fully aware that the guilt in this case lies chiefly with Mr. Kenneth Danagger, who instigated this infringement of the law, who exerted pressure upon you and who confessed his guilt by disappearing in order to escape trial”
“No. We did it by equal, mutual, voluntary agreement.”
“Mr. Rearden,” said the second judge, “you may not share some of our ideas, but when all is said and done, we’re all working for the same cause. For the good of the people. We realize that you were prompted to disregard legal technicalities by the critical situation of the coal mines and the crucial importance of fuel to the public welfare.”
“No. I was prompted by my own profit and my own interests.
What effect it had on the coal mines and the public welfare is for you to estimate. That was not my motive.”
Mr. Mowen stared dazedly about him and whispered to Paul Larkin, “Something’s gone screwy here.”
“Oh, shut up!” snapped Larkin.
“I am sure, Mr. Rearden,” said the eldest judge, “that you do not really believe—nor docs the public—that we wish to treat you as a sacrificial victim. If anyone has been laboring under such a misapprehension, we are anxious to prove that it is not true.”
The judges retired to consider their verdict. They did not stay out long. They returned to an ominously silent courtroom—and announced that a fine of $5,000 was imposed on Henry Rearden, but that the sentence was suspended.
Streaks of jeering laughter ran through the applause that swept the courtroom. The applause was aimed at Rearden, the laughter—at the judges.
Rearden stood motionless, not turning to the crowd, barely hearing the applause. He stood looking at the judges. There was no triumph in his face, no elation, only the still intensity of contemplating a vision with a bitter wonder that was almost fear. He was seeing the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant—and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.
He was jolted back into the courtroom by the people pressing to surround him. He smiled in answer to their smiles, to the frantic, tragic eagerness of their faces; there was a touch of sadness in his smile.
“God bless you, Mr. Rearden!” said an old woman with a ragged shawl over her head. “Can’t you save us, Mr. Rearden? They’re eating us alive, and it’s no use fooling anybody about how it’s the rich that they’re after—do you know what’s happening to us?”
“Listen, Mr. Rearden,” said a man who looked like a factory worker, “it’s the rich who’re selling us down the river. Tell those wealthy bastards, who’re so anxious to give everything away, that when they give away their palaces, they’re giving away the skin off our backs.”
“I know it,” said Rearden.
The guilt is ours, he thought. If we who were the movers, the providers, the benefactors of mankind, were willing to let the brand of evil be stamped upon us and silently to bear punishment for our virtues—what sort of “good” did we expect to triumph in the world?
He looked at the people around him. They had cheered him today; they had cheered him by the side of the track of the John Galt Line.
But tomorrow they would clamor for a new directive from Wesley Mouch and a free housing project from Orren Boyle, while Boyle’s girders collapsed upon their heads. They would do it, because they would be told to forget, as a sin, that which had made them cheer Hank Rearden.
Why were they ready to renounce their highest moments as a sin?
Why were they willing to betray the best within them? What made them believe that this earth was a realm of evil where despair was their natural fate? He could not name the reason, but he knew that it had to be named. He felt it as a huge question mark within the courtroom, which it was now his duty to answer.
This was the real sentence imposed upon him, he thought—to discover what idea, what simple idea available to the simplest man, had made mankind accept the doctrines that led it to self-destruction.
“Hank, I’ll never think that it’s hopeless, not ever again,” said Dagny that evening, after the trial. “I’ll never be tempted to quit. You’ve proved that the right always works and always wins—” She stopped, then added, “—provided one knows what is the right.”
Lillian said to him at dinner next day, “So you’ve won, have you?”
Her voice was noncommittal; she said nothing else; she was watching him, as If studying a riddle.
The Wet Nurse asked him at the mills, “Mr. Rearden, what’s a moral premise?” “What you’re going to have a lot of trouble with.”
The boy frowned, then shrugged and said, laughing, “God, that was a wonderful show! What a beating you gave them, Mr. Rearden! I sat by the radio and howled.” “How do you know it was a beating?” “Well, it was, wasn’t it?” “Are you sure of it?” “Sure I’m sure.” “The thing that makes you sure is a moral premise.”
The newspapers were silent. After the exaggerated attention they had given to the case, they acted as if the trial were not worthy of notice. They printed brief accounts on unlikely pages, worded in such generalities that no reader could discover any hint of a controversial issue.
The businessmen he met seemed to wish to evade the subject of his trial. Some made no comment at all, but turned away, their faces showing a peculiar resentment under the effort to appear noncommittal, as if they feared that the mere act of looking at him would be interpreted as taking a stand. Others ventured to comment: “In my opinion, Rearden, it was extremely unwise of you. . . . It seems to me that this is hardly the time to make enemies. . . . We can’t afford to arouse resentment.”
“Whose resentment?” he asked.
“I don’t think the government will like it.”
“You saw the consequences of that”
“Well, I don’t know . . . The public won’t take it, there’s bound to be a lot of indignation.”
“You saw how the public took it.”
“Well, I don’t know . . . We’ve been trying hard not to give any grounds for all those accusations about selfish greed—and you’ve given ammunition to the enemy.”
“Would you rather agree with the enemy that you have no right to your profits and your property?”
“Oh, no, no, certainly not—but why go to extremes? There’s always a middle ground.”
“A middle ground between you and your murderers?”
“Now why use such words?”
“What I said at the trial, was it true or not?”
“It’s going to be misquoted and misunderstood.”
“Was it true or not?”
“The public is too dumb to grapple with such issues.”
“Was it true or not?”
“It’s no time to boast about being rich—when the populace is starving. It’s just goading them on to seize everything.”
“But telling them that you have no right to your wealth, while they have—is what’s going to restrain them?”
“Well, I don’t know . . .”
“I don’t like the things you said at your trial,” said another man.
“In my opinion, I don’t agree with you at all. Personally, I’m proud to believe that I am working for the public good, not just for my own profit. I like to think that I have some goal higher than just earning my three meals a day and my Hammond limousine.”
“And I don’t like that idea about no directives and no controls,” said another. “I grant you they’re running hog-wild and overdoing it.
But—no controls at all? I don’t go along with that. I think some controls are necessary. The ones which are for the public good.”
“I am sorry, gentlemen,” said Rearden, “that I will be obliged to save your goddamn necks along with mine.”
A group of businessmen headed by Mr. Mowen did not issue any statements about the trial. But a week later they announced, with an inordinate amount of publicity, that they were endowing the construction of a playground for the children of the unemployed.
Bertram Scudder did not mention the trial in his column. But ten days later, he wrote, among items of miscellaneous gossip: “Some idea of the public value of Mr. Hank Rearden may be gathered from the fact that of all social groups, he seems to be most unpopular with his own fellow businessmen. His old-fashioned brand of ruthlessness seems to be too much even for those predatory barons of profit.”