The words were uttered tonelessly, yet their cruel and lifeless contempt penetrated nakedly throughout the car. The other men stopped talking and turned as if they had received an electric shock. George did not know what to say; in the embarrassment of the moment he blurted out:
“I— I— there are a lot of people on the train from home. I— I’ve been talking to them — Mayor Kennedy, and ——”
The blind man, never moving, in his terrible toneless voice that carried to all ears, broke in:
“Yes, I know. As eminent a set of sons-of-bitches as were ever gathered together in the narrow confines of a single pullman-car.”
The whole car listened in an appalled silence. The group in the middle looked at one another with fear in their eyes, and in a moment they began ‘talking feverishly again.
“I hear you were in France again last year,” the voice now said. “And did you find the French whores any different from the homegrown variety?”
The naked words, with their toneless evil, pierced through the car like a flash of sheer terror. All conversation stopped. Everyone was stunned, frozen into immobility.
“You’ll find there’s not much difference,” Judge Bland observed calmly and in the same tone. “Syphilis makes the whole world kin. And if you want to lose your eyesight, you can do it in this great democracy as well as anywhere on earth.”
The whole car was as quiet as death. In another moment the stunned faces turned towards one another, and the men began to talk in furtive whispers.
Through all of this the expression on that white and sunken face had never altered, and the shadow of that ghostly smile still lingered around the mouth. But now, low and casually, he said to the young man:
“How are you, son? I’m glad to see you.” And in that simple phrase, spoken by the blind man, there was the suggestion of a devilish humour, although his expression did not change a bit.
“You — you’ve been in Baltimore, Judge Bland?”
“Yes, I still come up to Hopkins now and then. It does no good, of course. You see, son,” the tone was low and friendly now, “I’ve gone completely blind since I last saw you.”
“I didn’t know. But you don’t mean that you ——”
“Oh, utterly! Utterly!” replied Judge Bland, and all at once he threw his sightless face up and laughed with sardonic glee, displaying blackened rims of teeth, as if the joke was too good to be kept. “My dear boy, I assure you that I am utterly blind. I can no longer distinguish one of our most prominent local bastards two feet off —Now, Jarvis!” he suddenly cried out in a chiding voice in the direction of the unfortunate Riggs, who had loudly resumed his discussion of property values —“you know that’s not true! Why, man, I can tell by the look in your eyes that you’re lying!” And again he lifted his face and was shaken by devilish, quiet laughter. “Excuse the interruption, son,” he went on. “I believe the subject of our discourse was bastardy. Why, can you believe it?”— he leaned forward again his long fingers playing gently on the polished ridges of his stick —“where bastardy is concerned, I find I can no longer trust my eyes at all. I rely exclusively on the sense of smell. And”— for the first time his face was sunken deliberately in weariness and disgust —“it is enough. A sense of smell is all you need.” Abruptly changing now, he said: “How are the folks?”
“Why — Aunt Maw’s dead. I— I’m going home to the funeral.”
“Dead, is she?”
That was all he said. None of the usual civilities, no expression of polite regret, just that and nothing more. Then, after a moment:
“So you’re going down to bury her.” It was a statement, and he said it reflectively, as though meditating upon it; then —“And do you think you can go home again?”
George was a little startled and puzzled: “Why — I don’t understand. How do you mean, Judge Bland?”
There was another flare of that secret, evil laughter. “I mean, do you think you can really go home again?” Then, sharp, cold, peremptory —“Now answer me! Do you think you can?”
“Why — why yes! Why —” the young man was desperate, almost frightened now, and, earnestly, beseechingly, he said —“why look here, Judge Bland — I haven’t done anything — honestly I haven’t!”
Again the low, demonic laughter: “You’re sure?”
Frantic now with the old terror which the man had always inspired in him as a boy: “Why — why of course I’m sure! Look here, Judge Bland — in the name of God, what have I done?” He thought desperately of a dozen wild, fantastic things, feeling a sickening and overwhelming consciousness of guilt, without knowing why. He thought: “Has he heard about my book? Does he know I wrote about the town? Is that what he means?”
The blind man cackled thinly to himself, enjoying with evil tenderness his little cat’s play with the young man: “The guilty fleeth where no man pursueth. Is that it, son?”
Frankly distracted: “Why — why — I’m not guilty!” Angrily: “Why damn it, I’m not guilty of anything!” Passionately, excitedly: “I can hold up my head with any man! I can look the whole damn world in the eye! I make no apologies to ——”
He stopped short, seeing the evil ghost-shadow of a smile at the corners of the blind man’s mouth. “That disease!” he thought —“the thing that ruined his eyes — maybe — maybe — why, yes — the man is crazy!” Then he spoke, slowly, simply:
“Judge Bland.” He rose from the seat. “Good-bye, Judge Bland.” The smile still played about the blind man’s mouth, but he answered with a new note of kindness in his voice:
“Good-bye, son.” There was a barely perceptible pause. “But don’t forget I tried to warn you.”
George walked quickly away with thudding heart and trembling limbs. What had Judge Bland meant when he asked, “Do you think you can go home again?” And what had been the meaning of that evil, silent, mocking laughter? What had he heard? What did he know? And these others — did they know, too?
He soon learned that his fear and panic in the blind man’s presence were shared by all the people in the car. Even the passengers who had, never seen Judge Bland before had heard his naked, brutal words, and they were now horrified by the sight of him. As for the rest, the men from Libya Hill, this feeling was greatly enhanced, sharpened by all that they knew of him. He had pursued his life among them with insolent shamelessness. Though he still masked in all the outward aspects of respectability, he was in total disrepute, and yet he met the opinion of the town with such cold and poisonous contempt that everyone held him in a kind of terrified respect. As for Parson Flack, Jarvis Riggs, and Mayor Kennedy, they were afraid of him because his blind eyes saw straight through them. His sudden appearance in the car, where none had expected to meet him, had aroused in all of them a sense of stark, underlying terror.
As George went into the washroom suddenly, be came upon the Mayor cleaning his false teeth in the basin. The man’s plump face, which George had always known in the guise of cheerful, hearty amiability, was all caved in. Hearing a sound behind him, the Mayor turned upon the newcomer. For a moment there was nothing but nameless fright in his weak brown eyes. He mumbled frantically, incoherently, holding his false teeth in his trembling fingers. Like a man who did not know what he was doing, he brandished them in a grotesque yet terrible gesture indicative of — God knows what! — but despair and terror were both in it. Then he put the teeth into his mouth again, smiled feebly, and muttered apologetically, with some counterfeit of his usual geniality:
“Ho, ho! — well, son! You caught me that time, all right! A man can’t talk without his teeth!”
The same thing was now apparent