“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?