The Journals of Ayn Rand (6 page)

Ellen Darrow, her millionaire father Mr. Darrow, and her fiancé Dick Saunders are paying their last visit to Peking. The American Consul, their friend, advises them to leave China as soon as possible, for it is dangerous for foreigners to stay there with all the disorders and insurrections.

Ellen has been noticed by a Chinaman of bad reputation, Jung-Tzan, who had seen her in a restaurant. She has been saved from him by the two Americans, who were present there. Mr. Darrow is very nervous and promises the Consul that they will leave tomorrow.

They return to their hotel to spend the last night there. This hotel is a strong building, reminiscent of a Chinese castle. It is situated in a picturesque but lonely spot among rivers and woods, miles from Peking. The manager is a European and the residents are all Americans and Europeans, a very exclusive crowd of society people. The only Chinaman in the place is the janitor.

That night, when the lights of the hotel go out, a young American, Kenneth Hartley, slips into the building through an open window. He isn’t a resident of the place. He’s just a crook and his aim is the safe in Mr. Darrow’s room.

He is opening the safe when Ellen, in her room upstairs, hears the noise. She rushes downstairs, revolver in hand, and stops Kenneth just as he had opened the safe. Mr. Darrow and Dick Saunders arrive at her call. Kenneth is disarmed. Dick is about to put handcuffs on him, when they hear shots outside and a loud knocking at the door.

The hotel is surrounded by a mob of Chinese bandits led by Jung-Tzan, Ellen’s enemy. The terrified hotel guests are in a mad panic. They don’t know what to do and are too frightened to act. The only man that realizes the position is Kenneth.

In a few moments he organizes the defense of the hotel. All of the doors are strong iron and most of the windows have iron bars and shutters. The residents have quite a big supply of firearms. Kenneth assigns a post to every man in the place.

The Chinese mob attacks the hotel and the attack is forced back by the hotel guests, under Kenneth’s orders. Knowing that they can’t hold for a long time, Jung-Tzan orders his bandits to remain around the building in a regular siege. He had previously cut off all the hotel’s telephone wires. There isn’t a living soul for miles around. He knows that the place is in his power, with all the money, jewels, and women in it.

A few days pass. Kenneth is the supreme chief and dictator of the besieged hotel. He leads the defense and the helpless society people know that their lives are in his hands. There is not much food nor many weapons in the place for a long siege and Kenneth manages it, spending as little as possible.

Dick Saunders is very drunk and jealous, for he notices a growing friendship between Ellen and Kenneth. After one of the Chinese attacks, Kenneth is slightly wounded and Ellen bandages his wound. During that battle Ellen has seen and recognized the Chinese chief, and it adds to the anxiety of Mr. Darrow, her father.

That night, Kenneth is watching over the hotel and surveying the Chinese camp. All seems quiet, when he suddenly sees two Chinamen climbing up the old stone wall towards Ellen’s window. He rushes to Ellen’s room and enters it noiselessly. Ellen is asleep. For a moment he looks at her, forgetting the enemies and everything. Then, mastering himself, he goes to the window and shoots at the Chinamen, just as they are approaching. One is killed; the other—Jung-Tzan—runs away.

Ellen wakes up and runs to Kenneth in terror. Then she realizes that she is in his arms and steps away from him, just as her father and Dick rush in.

The next morning, Kenneth finds a strange letter in his room. It is from Jung-Tzan. The Chinese chief tells Kenneth that he is the only one they fear and offers him a big sum of money for surrendering the place. Kenneth throws the letter away disdainfully, wondering how it got there.

That day, while putting iron bars on the window in Ellen’s room, Kenneth sees Ellen and, forgetting himself, tries to take her in his arms. She tears herself from him. She does not speak to him that day, and tries to be especially tender to her fiancé, Dick Saunders, as though to convince herself that she still loves him. Kenneth is dark and silent, tortured by jealousy.

The hotel guests notice it all. It worries them, and their worry changes to terror when one of them finds Jung-Tzan’s letter in Kenneth’s room. They are afraid that Kenneth will betray them. They call Ellen. They ask her to pretend to love Kenneth, to prevent him from surrendering the hotel. Ellen is indignant. But they all plead with her, asking her sacrifice to save them from a terrible fate. Even Dick Saunders does not object to it.

Ellen agrees at last. She tries to convince herself that her task is more disagreeable to her than she really feels it is.

Meanwhile, as a last hope, Mr. Darrow decides to send the Chinese janitor to Peking, hoping that he might be able to slip through the Chinese lines and inform the American Consul. The janitor is let out through a little side door.

In a short time, Ellen has conquered Kenneth. And when she is in his arms, when she loves him, she is afraid that she is not playing a part. But she does not want to admit it to herself.

Kenneth asks her to marry him right away, for he wants her and they cannot be sure of the future, with the terrible danger hanging over them. Ellen struggles with herself, then agrees.

Mr. Darrow has to agree, too. Kenneth is radiant with happiness and tells them that he is going straight forever.

There is a priest among the hotel residents. Everything is ready for the wedding. The ceremony is about to start when there is a knock at the little door. The janitor returns. He announces that he has informed the Consul and American soldiers are on their way to the hotel: they will be there in a couple of hours.

A roar of enthusiasm greets the news. Dick Saunders stops the wedding, says that Ellen does not have to play the part anymore. Ellen wants to protest, but cannot, for Kenneth is stricken with the discovery of her deception.

And the guests’ attitude toward Kenneth changes. They don’t need him anymore. They are mocking and disdainful. To them, he is the crook again. They even put handcuffs on him, but Ellen takes them off. Kenneth is too stricken to protest or say anything.

Some of the guests run to the roof of the building and fire their last bullets into the air, as a signal to the coming soldiers.

Kenneth is alone in a dark comer when the janitor approaches him. The janitor is laughing triumphantly. He tells Kenneth that he is in Jung-Tzan’s service and the news is a fake, nobody is coming to the rescue, but that Jung-Tzan’s offer to Kenneth is still good and maybe he will accept it, now that he sees how his people have treated him.

Kenneth runs to the cellar; there is no food left and hardly any bullets. He returns to the janitor and tells him to bring Jung-Tzan in secretly through the little side door to discuss his offer.

Jung-Tzan comes. Kenneth says that he will agree to open the doors to him, under two conditions: first, Kenneth will be the master and the Chinese will obey his orders; second, the woman, Ellen Darrow, will belong to him. Jung-Tzan hesitates, but finally agrees.

In the evening, the hotel guests are all dressed in their best evening clothes, waiting for the soldiers, when Kenneth opens the doors and lets the Chinese mob in. It is a terrible scene. At Kenneth’s orders the guests are all made prisoners in a few moments. They are horrified at Kenneth’s betrayal, which seems so hideous. Kenneth orders them all to be locked in the hotel’s cellar and the key brought to him.

Ellen is the only one that is not locked. He takes her to his room. She struggles desperately, but he drags her roughly up the stairs, while the Chinamen laugh.

When they are alone in his room, Kenneth tells her that he brought her here only because he could not trust Jung-Tzan. He explains that this was the only way to save them all. He is going to let them all escape, in two of the Chinese trucks, while he will remain here and keep the Chinese from following them.

Ellen is horrified. She does not want him to remain. She tells him how much she loves him and they have a sincere love scene this time. But Kenneth has to remain to save the others. While the wild Chinese mob is robbing the house, breaking the safes and drinking the remaining wine, Kenneth leads all the prisoners to two trucks, parked in a lonely, dark spot, and they speed away. He remains.

He does all he can to keep the Chinamen from going into the cellar. He drinks with them and tries to amuse them. Then Jung-Tzan suggests that they must prepare tortures for the prisoners. Kenneth tries to keep them at it as long as possible, inventing more and more tortures, but knowing that he is the only one on whom they will be used.

Finally, they grow impatient. He tells them that he has lost the cellar key. They go downstairs, they break the door. The cellar is empty.

They rush to Kenneth. He faces them with a calm [expression].

The hotel guests reach Peking. Mr. Darrow asks for American soldiers to be sent to the hotel immediately. He and Ellen go back to the hotel with them.

Taken by surprise, the Chinese mob in the hotel surrenders immediately. Ellen runs madly through the rooms, searching for Kenneth. She finds him at last, tied to a torture machine, but still alive.

 

 

In her mature writings, AR stressed that she advocated rational selfishness, not the whim-worshipping subjectivism of the man who says: “The good is whatever I want. ” She regarded the whim-worshipper with particular contempt, arguing that such a man entirely lacks the virtue of selfishness (see “Selfishness Without a Self” in Philosophy: Who Needs It
)
. But in the following notes, AR is focused on a single question: whether a man is motivated to act for himself or for others—and not on the epistemological issue of whether he acts by reason or whim. Consequently, she praises any expression of egoism, even when it seems to be the pseudo-egoism she would soon begin to denounce.

Furthermore, AR has not yet distinguished clearly between the independent man and the man who seeks power over others (e.g., between a man like Howard Roark and one like Gail Wynand). She writes admiringly of
the
strong individual who wants to “command, ” rather than “obey. ” Later
she
recognized that such a choice is a false alternative: “The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. ” The notes for
The Little Street
were written nearly eight years before she began work on
The Fountainhead.

Occasionally, AR describes certain fundamental attitudes or character traits as “innate” “
(
e.g., her hero’s innate egoism). These passages contradict her advocacy of free-will; it might appear that AR believed in some form of biological determinism. In fact, even in these early notes, her dominant premise is that men are responsible for the ideas they choose to accept and the actions they choose to take. For example, she cites the ideas that have led to the moral corruption in the world, and her implication throughout is that men can choose to accept these ideas or not. She is inconsistent in this story, because she does not yet see the contradiction between free-will and innate virtues.