“Now as to your temporary successor . . .”
“Yes?”
“You don’t really want it to be Eddie Willers, do you?”
“Yes. I do.”
“But he couldn’t even act like a vice-president! He doesn’t have the presence, the manner, the—”
“He knows his work and mine. He knows what I want. I trust him.
I’ll be able to work with him.”
“Don’t you think it would be better to pick one of our more distinguished young men, somebody from a good family, with more social poise and—”
“It’s going to be Eddie Willers, Jim.”
He sighed. “All right. Only . . . only we must be careful about it.
. . . We don’t want people to suspect that it’s you who’re still running Taggart Transcontinental. Nobody must know it.”
“Everybody will know it, Jim. But since nobody will admit it openly, everybody will be satisfied.”
“But we must preserve appearances.”
“Oh, certainly! You don’t have to recognize me on the street, if you don’t want to. You can say you’ve never seen me before and I’ll say I’ve never heard of Taggart Transcontinental.”
He remained silent, trying to think, staring down at the floor.
She turned to look at the grounds beyond the window. The sky had the even, gray-white pallor of winter. Far below, on the shore of the Hudson, she saw the road she used to watch for Francisco’s car—she saw the cliff over the river, where they climbed to look for the towers of New York—and somewhere beyond the woods were the trails that led to Rockdale Station. The earth was snow-covered now, and what remained was like the skeleton of the countryside she remembered—a thin design of bare branches rising from the snow to the sky.
It was gray and white, like a photograph, a dead photograph which one keeps hopefully for remembrance, but which has no power to bring back anything.
“What are you going to call it?”
She turned, startled. “What?”
“What are you going to call your company?”
“Oh . . . Why, the Dagny Taggart Line, I guess.”
“But . . . Do you think that’s wise? It might be misunderstood.
The Taggart might be taken as—”
“Well, what do you want me to call it?” she snapped, worn down to anger. “The Miss Nobody? The Madam X? The John Galt?” She stopped. She smiled suddenly, a cold, bright, dangerous smile. ‘That’s what I’m going to call it: the John Galt Line.”
“Good God, no!”
“Yes.”
“But it’s . . . if s just a cheap piece of slang!”
“You can’t make a joke out of such a serious project! . . . You can’t be so vulgar and . . . and undignified!”
“Can’t I?”
“But for God’s sake, why?”
“Because it’s going to shock all the rest of them just as it shocked you.”
“I’ve never seen you playing for effects.”
“I am, this time.”
“But . . .” His voice dropped to an almost superstitious sound: “Look, Dagny, you know, it’s . . . it’s bad luck. . . . What it stands for is . . .” He stopped.
“What does it stand for?”
“I don’t know . . . But the way people use it, they always seem to say it out of—”
“Fear? Despair? Futility?”
“Yes . . . yes, that’s what it is.”
“That’s what I want to throw in their faces!”
The bright, sparkling anger in her eyes, her first look of enjoyment, made him understand that he had to keep still.
“Draw up all the papers and all the red tape in the name of the John Galt Line,” she said.
He sighed. “Well, it’s your Line.”
“You bet it is!”
He glanced at her, astonished. She had dropped the manners and style of a vice-president; she seemed to be relaxing happily to the level of yard crews and construction gangs.
“As to the papers and the legal side of it,” he said, “there might be some difficulties. We would have to apply for the permission of—”
She whirled to face him. Something of the bright, violent look still remained in her face. But it was not gay and she was not smiling. The look now had an odd, primitive quality. When he saw it, he hoped he would never have to see it again.
“Listen, Jim,” she said; he had never heard that tone in any human voice. “There is one thing you can do as your part of the deal and you’d better do it: keep your Washington boys off. See to it that they give me all the permissions, authorizations, charters and other waste paper that their laws require. Don’t let them try to stop me. If they try . . . Jim, people say that our ancestor, Nat Taggart, killed a politician who tried to refuse him a permission he should never have had to ask. I don’t know whether Nat Taggart did it or not. But I’ll tell you this: I know how he felt, if he did. If he didn’t—I might do the job for him, to complete the family legend. I mean it, Jim.”
Francisco d’Anconia sat in front of her desk. His face was blank. It had remained blank while Dagny explained to him, in the clear, impersonal tone of a business interview, the formation and purpose of her own railroad company. He had listened. He had not pronounced a word.
She had never seen his face wear that look of drained passivity.
There was no mockery, no amusement, no antagonism; it was as if he did not belong in these particular moments of existence and could not be reached. Yet his eyes looked at her attentively; they seemed to see more than she could suspect; they made her think of one-way glass: they let all light rays in, but none out.
“Francisco, I asked you to come here, because I wanted you to see me in my office. You’ve never seen it. It would have meant something to you, once.”
His eyes moved slowly to look at the office. Its walls were bare, except for three things: a map of Taggart Transcontinental—the original drawing of Nat Taggart, that had served as model for his statue —and a large railroad calendar, in cheerfully crude colors, the kind that was distributed each year, with a change of its picture, to every station along the Taggart track, the kind that had hung once in her first work place at Rockdale.
He got up. He said quietly, “Dagny, for your own sake, and”—it was a barely perceptible hesitation—”and in the name of any pity you might feel for me, don’t request what you’re going to request.
Don’t. Let me go now.”
This was not like him and like nothing she could ever have expected to hear from him. After a moment, she asked, “Why?”
“I can’t answer you. I can’t answer any questions. That is one of the reasons why it’s best not to discuss it.”
“You know what I am going to request?”
“Yes.” The way she looked at him was such an eloquent, desperate question, that he had to add, “I know that I am going to refuse.”
“Why?”
He smiled mirthlessly, spreading his hands out, as if to show her that this was what he had predicted and had wanted to avoid.
She said quietly, “I have to try, Francisco. I have to make the request. That’s my part. What you’ll do about it is yours. But I’ll know that I’ve tried everything.”
He remained standing, but he inclined his head a little, in assent, and said, “I will listen, if that will help you.”
“I need fifteen million dollars to complete the Rio Norte Line, I have obtained seven million against the Taggart stock I own free and clear. I can raise nothing else. I will issue bonds in the name of my new company, in the amount of eight million dollars. I called you here to ask you to buy these bonds.”
He did not answer.
“I am simply a beggar, Francisco, and I am begging you for money.
I had always thought that one did not beg in business. I thought that one stood on the merit of what one had to offer, and gave value for value. This is not so any more, though I don’t understand how we can act on any other rule and continue to exist. Judging by every objective fact, the Rio Norte Line is to be the best railroad in the country. Judging by every known standard, it is the best investment possible. And that is what damns me. I cannot raise money by offering people a good business venture: the fact that it’s good, makes people reject it. There is no bank that would buy the bonds of my company.
So I can’t plead merit. I can only plead.”
Her voice was pronouncing the words with impersonal precision. She stopped, waiting for his answer. He remained silent.