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 everywhere. George saw it in the look of an eye, the movement of a hand, the give-away expression of a face in repose. The merchant, Sol Isaacs, took him aside and whispered:
“Have you heard what they’re saying about the bank?” He looked around quickly and checked himself, as if afraid of the furtive sound of his own voice. “Oh, everything’s O.K.! Sure it is! They just went a little too fast there for a while! Things are rather quiet right now—but they’ll pick up!”
Among all of them there was the same kind of talk that George had heard before. “It’s worth all of that,” they told each other eagerly. “It’ll bring twice as much in a year’s time.” They caught him by the lapel in the most friendly and hearty fashion and said he ought to settle down in Libya Hill and stay for good—“Greatest place on earth, you know!” They made their usual assured pronouncements upon finance, banking, market trends, and property values. But George sensed now that down below all this was just utter, naked, frantic terror—the terror of men who know that they are ruined and are afraid to admit it, even to themselves.
It was after midnight, and the great train was rushing south across Virginia in the moonlight. The people in the little towns lay in their beds and heard the mournful whistle, then the sudden roar as the train went through, and they turned over restlessly and dreamed of fair and distant cities.
In K19 most of the passengers had retired to their berths. Nebraska Crane had turned in early, but George was still up, and so, too, were the banker, the Mayor, and the political boss. Crass, world-weary, unimaginative fellows that they were, they were nevertheless too excited by something of the small boy in them that had never died to go to bed at their usual hour aboard a train, and were now drawn together for companionship in the smoke-fogged washroom. Behind the green curtains the complex of male voices rose and fell in talk as they told their endless washroom stories. Quietly, furtively, with sly delight, they began to recall unsavoury anecdotes remembered from the open and shameless life of Judge Rumford Bland, and at the end of each recital there would be a choking burst of strong laughter.
When the laughter and the slapping of thighs subsided, Parson Flack leaned forward again, eager to tell another. In a voice that was subdued, confidential, almost conspiratorial, he began:
“And do you remember the time that he----?”
Swiftly the curtain was drawn aside, all heads jerked up, and Judge Bland entered.
“Now, Parson”—said he in a chiding voice—“remember what?” Before the blind, cold stare of that emaciated face the seated men were silent. Something stronger than fear was in their eyes.
“Remember what?” he said again, a trifle harshly. He stood before them erect and fragile, both hands balanced on the head of the cane which he held anchored to the floor in front of him. He turned to Jarvis Riggs: “Remember when you established what you boasted was ‘the fastest-growing bank in all the state’—and weren’t too particular what it grew on?” He turned back to Parson Flack: “Remember when one of ‘the boys’, as you like to call them—you always look out for ‘the boys’, don’t you, Parson?—remember when one of ‘the boys’ borrowed money from ‘the fastest-growing bank’ to buy two hundred acres on that hill across the river?”—he turned to the Mayor—“and sold the land to the town for a new cemetery?...Though why,” he turned his face to Parson Flack again, “the dead should have to go so far to bury their dead I do not know!”