“Well I’ll be dogged!” he said, astounded. “What d’you know about that!”
The banker now leaned forward and tapped Nebraska confidentially on the knee. He talked to him persuasively, in friendly wise, urging him to invest his savings in the real estate speculations of the town. He brought up all his heaviest artillery of logic and mathematics, drawing forth his pencil and note-book to figure out just how much a given sum of money could be increased if it was shrewdly invested now in this or that piece of property, and then sold when the time was right.
“You can’t go wrong!” said Jarvis Riggs, a little feverishly. “The town is bound to grow. Why, Libya Hill is only at the beginning of its development. You bring your money back home, my boy, and let it go to work for you! You’ll see!”
This went on for some time. But in the face of all their urgings Nebraska remained his characteristic self. He was respectful and good-natured, but a little dubious, and fundamentally stubborn.
“I already got me a farm out in Zebulon,” he said, and, grinning—“It’s paid fer, too! When I git through playin’ baseball, I’m comin’ back an’ settle down out there an’ farm it. It’s three hundred acres of the purtiest bottom land you ever seen. That’s all I want. I couldn’t use no more.”
As Nebraska talked to them in his simple, homely way, he spoke as a man of the earth for whom the future opened up serenely, an independent, stubborn man who knew what he wanted, a man who was firmly rooted, established, secure against calamity and want. He was completely detached from the fever of the times—from the fever of the boom-mad town as well as from the larger fever of the nation. The others talked incessantly about land, but George saw that Nebraska Crane was the only one who still conceived of the land as a place on which to live, and of living on the land as a way of life.
At last Nebraska detached himself from the group and said he was going back to take a smoke. George started to follow him. As he passed down the aisle behind his friend and came abreast of the last seat, suddenly a quiet, toneless voice said:
“Good evening, Webber.”
He stopped and spun round. The blind man was seated there before him. He had almost forgotten about him. The blind man had not moved as he spoke. He was still leaning a little forward on his cane, his thin, white face held straight before him as if he were still listening for something. George felt now, as he had always felt, the strange fascination in that evil shadow of a smile that hovered about the corners of the blind man’s mouth. He paused, then said:
“Judge Bland.”
“Sit down, son.” And like a child under the spell of the Pied Piper, he sat down. “Let the dead bury their dead. Come sit among the blind.”
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.”