His eyes were studying her: the battered coat thrown open, half slipping off her shoulders, and the slender body in a gray suit that looked like an office uniform.
“If you came here dressed like this in order not to let me notice how lovely you are,” he said, “you miscalculated. You’re lovely. I wish I could tell you what a relief it is to see a face that’s intelligent though a woman’s. But you don’t want to hear it. That’s not what you came here for.”
The words were improper in so many ways, yet were said so lightly that they brought her back to reality, to anger and to the purpose of her visit. She remained standing, looking down at him, her face blank, refusing him any recognition of the personal, even of its power to offend her. She said, “I came here to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“When you told those reporters that you came to New York to witness the farce, which farce did you mean?”
He laughed aloud, like a man who seldom finds a chance to enjoy the unexpected.
“That’s what I like about you, Dagny. There are seven million people in the city of New York, at present. Out of seven million people, you are the only one to whom it could have occurred that I wasn’t talking about the Vail divorce scandal.”
“What were you talking about?”
“What alternative occurred to you?”
“The San Sebastian disaster.”
“That’s much more amusing than the Vail divorce scandal, isn’t it?”
She said in the solemn, merciless tone of a prosecutor, “You did it consciously, cold-bloodedly and with full intention.”
“Don’t you think it would be better if you took your coat off and sat down?”
She knew she had made a mistake by betraying too much intensity.
She turned coldly, removed her coat and threw it aside. He did not rise to help her. She sat down in an armchair. He remained on the floor, at some distance, but it seemed as if he were sitting at her feet.
“What was it I did with full intention?” he asked.
“The entire San Sebastian swindle.”
“What was my full intention?”
“That is what I want to know.”
He chuckled, as if she had asked him to explain in conversation a complex science requiring a lifetime of study.
“You knew that the San Sebastian mines were worthless,” she said.
“You knew it before you began the whole wretched business.”
“Then why did I begin it?”
“Don’t start telling me that you gained nothing. I know it. I know you lost fifteen million dollars of your own money. Yet it was done on purpose.”
“Can you think of a motive that would prompt me to do it?”
“No. It’s inconceivable.”
“Is it? You assume that I have a great mind, a great knowledge and a great productive ability, so that anything I undertake must necessarily be successful. And then you claim that I had no desire to put out my best effort for the People’s State of Mexico. Inconceivable, isn’t it?”
“You knew, before you bought that property, that Mexico was in the hands of a looters’ government. You didn’t have to start a mining project for them.”
“No, I didn’t have to.”
“You didn’t give a damn about that Mexican government, one way or another, because—”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“—because you knew they’d seize those mines sooner or later. What you were after is your American stockholders.”
“That’s true.” He was looking straight at her, he was not smiling, his face was earnest. He added, “That’s part of the truth.”
“What’s the rest?”
“It was not all I was after.”
“What else?”
“That’s for you to figure out.”
“I came here because I wanted you to know that I am beginning to understand your purpose.”
He smiled. “If you did, you wouldn’t have come here.”
“That’s true. I don’t understand and probably never shall. I am merely beginning to see part of it.”
“Which part?”
“You had exhausted every other form of depravity and sought a new thrill by swindling people like Jim and his friends, in order to watch them squirm. I don’t know what sort of corruption could make anyone enjoy that, but that’s what you came to New York to see, at the right time.”
“They certainly provided a spectacle of squirming on the grand scale. Your brother James in particular.”
“They’re rotten fools, but in this case their only crime was that they trusted you. They trusted your name and your honor.”
Again, she saw the look of earnestness and again knew with certainty that it was genuine, when he said, “Yes. They did. I know it.”
“And do you find it amusing?”
“No. I don’t find it amusing at all.”
He had continued playing with his marbles, absently, indifferently, taking a shot once in a while. She noticed suddenly the faultless accuracy of his aim, the skill of his hands. He merely flicked his wrist and sent a drop of stone shooting across the carpet to click sharply against another drop. She thought of his childhood and of the predictions that anything he did would be done superlatively.
“No,” he said, “I don’t find it amusing. Your brother James and his friends knew nothing about the copper-mining industry. They knew nothing about making money. They did not think it necessary to learn. They considered knowledge superfluous and judgment inessential. They observed that there I was in the world and that I made it my honor to know. They thought they could trust my honor. One does not betray a trust of this kind, does one?”
“Then you did betray it intentionally?”
“That’s for you to decide. It was you who spoke about their trust and my honor. I don’t think in such terms any longer. . . .” He shrugged, adding, “I don’t give a damn about your brother James and his friends. Their theory was not new, it has worked for centuries. But it wasn’t foolproof. There is just one point that they overlooked. They thought it was safe to ride on my brain, because they assumed that the goal of my journey was wealth. All their calculations rested on the premise that I wanted to make money. What if I didn’t?”
“If you didn’t, what did you want?”
“They never asked me that. Not to inquire about my aims, motives or desires is an essential part of their theory.”
“If you didn’t want to make money, what possible motive could you have had?”
“Any number of them. For instance, to spend it.”
“To spend money on a certain, total failure?”
“How was I to know that those mines were a certain, total failure?”
“How could you help knowing it?”
“Quite simply. By giving it no thought.”
“You started that project without giving it any thought?”
“No, not exactly. But suppose I slipped up? I’m only human. I made a mistake. I failed. I made a bad job of it.” He flicked his wrist; a crystal marble shot, sparkling, across the floor and cracked violently against a brown one at the other end of the room.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“No? But haven’t I the right to be what is now accepted as human?
Should I pay for everybody’s mistakes and never be permitted one of my own?”
“That’s not like you.”
“No?” He stretched himself full-length on the carpet, lazily, relaxing.
“Did you intend me to notice that if you think I did it on purpose, then you still give me credit for having a purpose? You’re still unable to accept me as a bum?”
She closed her eyes. She heard him laughing; it was the gayest sound hi the world. She opened her eyes hastily; but there was no hint of cruelty in his face, only pure laughter.
“My motive, Dagny? You don’t think that it’s the simplest one of all—the spur of the moment?”
No, she thought, no, that’s not true; not if he laughed like that, not if he looked as he did. The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviolate peace of spirit is not the achievement of a drifter; to be able to laugh like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn thinking.
Almost dispassionately, looking at his figure stretched on the carpet at her feet, she observed what memory it brought back to her: the black pajamas stressed the long lines of his body, the open collar showed a smooth, young, sunburned skin—and she thought of the figure in black slacks and shirt stretched beside her on the grass at sunrise. She had felt pride then, the pride of knowing that she owned his body; she still felt it. She remembered suddenly, specifically, the excessive acts of their intimacy; the memory should have been offensive to her now, but wasn’t. It was still pride, without regret or hope, an emotion that had no power to reach her and that she had no power to destroy.