Atlas Shrugged – Day 059 – pp. 649-658
Hey! Hey! You! What’re you doin’ over there. Get back to work. . .
Oh, man. It’s been like week since I’ve written anything here. Been busy with the business though. Hank and Dagny would both be proud. But now that things are caught up on the work side, time to get caught up a little here too.
Going to try to double up for a few days. Not only to catch up, but because this book is getting really damn good! Now, where was I?
Ah yes, Quentin Daniels, the motor physicist, has turned in his resignation on the motor project. Dagny is pushing her trip to Colorado up a day and leaving now.
Hank has snuck out – and Eddie’s come over to take some final notes for while she’s gone.
That Eddie’s a good egg. Smart. Thinks on his feet. He was rounding up workers to start rebuilding track and when he couldn’t find anyone to actually take charge of the work, he tried contacting Dan Conway (of defunct Phoenix-Durango fame.) Dan used to lay five miles of track a day. Eddie begged him on bended knee.
Dan turned him down. Not out of bitterness though.
“He said one must not try to bring people back out of the grave . . . You know, I don’t think he’s one of those that the destroyer knocked out, I think he just broke by himself.”
Agreed.
And while Dagny is packing for her trip, her closet door swings open. And Eddie notices “a man’s dressing gown” (why are there no more dressing gowns?) He recognizes the monogram on it.
And then he has this huge internal-combustion, emotional explosion. Apparently he loves Dagny too. Wow. Two revelations in one night.
I suppose I could have guessed. Dagny seems to attract that kind of admiration / desire. But of course, he’s not right for her, at least in his mind. He’s never thought of her as really more than the railroad. But he’s hurt.
He covers it up though.
After she leaves, he heads to the cafeteria to try to eat something. I suppose I can sympathize. I can recall one or more romance that blew up in my face. I didn’t feel like eating. You don’t feel like doing anything.
Still, he grabs a tray and sits down. Across from his friend.
The “mysterious” stranger can see somethings wrong. C’mon buddy, you can talk to me. Eddie goes on about the railroad and some of his usual business worldly woes.
He tells him about how Dagny is going to try and save a world that’s doomed.
He tells him about how Quentin Daniels quit because he won’t let the man sponge off his intellect anymore. Mystery man bursts out in laughter.
But these guys have been eating together too long. He finally tells him about Dagny. Confesses his unworthy love for her. And then. . .
“Why should I feel anything? We won’t last much longer. Why should I care what she does? Why should I care that she’s sleeping with Hank Rearden? . . . Oh God! — what’s the matter with you? Don’t go! Where are you going?”
The stranger is off! Don’t tell me John Galt’s got a thing for Dagny too! Anyway…
Chapter X – The Sign of the Dollar
Dagny’s on the train – in her private car – watching the world go by. She suffers an emotional lapse and starts to cry. Then pulling herself together, she decides to get something to eat.
As she entered the vestibule of her car, she comes face to face with the conductor confronting a tramp who’s stowed away. He’s going to get the boot the next time the train slows down.
Rand paints a graphic picture of what the times have done to men.
“An aging tramp had taken refuge in the corner of her vestibule. He sat on the floor, his posture suggesting that he had no strength left to stand up or to care about being caught. . . There was no astonishment in the tramp’s face. no protest, ho anger, no hope. . . He moved obediently to rise, his hand groping upward along the rivets of the car’s wall. . . The two men were not human beings to each other any longer.”
Dagny stops the conductor. Invites the tramp in to be her guest. He politely queries who she is. She introduces herself. He’s heard of her.
“You were the lady who ran a railroad.”
“Yes . . I was.”
So where’s he off to?
“I don’t know. . . I guess I just wanted to keep moving until I saw some place that looked like there might be a chance to find work there.”
What kind of work?
“People don’t look for kinds of work any more, . . . They just look for work.”
No work back East. Too many UB guys watching everything back there. The only thing for him to do was head west.
“But there’s nothing to do in the East except sit under some hedge and wait to die. I don’t’ think I’d mind it much now, the dying. I know it would be a lot easier. Only I think that it’s a sin to sit down and let your life go, without making a try for it.”
The will to live – to contribute value – lives even in the most desperate situations.
Dagny’s impressed. She oughta be…