ALIVE IN DEATH.
DOWNY BULWRAG was indeed in trouble—not brought on by his evil deeds,
as good people might have imagined; or at any rate not so caused
directly, according to present knowledge, although in the end it proved
otherwise. It had seemed an astonishing thing to me, considering his
haughtiness and shrewd perception, that he should have deigned to
expose himself to that quiet rebuff from Miss Coldpepper. And then that
he had gone upon another quest of money, even more humiliating, showed
that there must be some terrible strait, some crushing urgency in his
affairs.
He was not a man who lived extravagantly; he was rather of the mean and
close-fisted order, even in his self-indulgence. From what had been
said at Sam Henderson’s dinner, it would seem that he had fallen into
certain racing debts; but I could not believe that these were crippling
him, for he generally managed to work them off, and come out with a
balance in his favour. But there was another thing in the background,
of which I had no knowledge yet; and when I speak of it now, it must be
understood that I do so from later information.
That account in the _Globe_, which the clergyman showed me, had been
followed by further particulars in the Journals of the following day,
and by one or two extracts from private letters brought to England
by the _Simon Pure_. But the ships had been parted by a sudden gale,
after a very brief interview, and some despatches, which were not
quite ready, had lost their chance of delivery. There was nothing of
interest to me, except what I had seen at first; and no letter from
the Captain to my wife arrived by post, which surprised me for the
moment. But that was explained by the likelihood that he might have
been hurried with official reports, while intending to send his private
letters with them, and thus had lost the chance of despatching either.
And as any such letter must have missed its mark, there was no great
disappointment.
But the _Simon Pure_ landed near Liverpool, as I came to know long
afterwards, an unhappy and afflicted man, welcome to no person and to
no place on the face of the habitable globe. An elderly man of great
bodily strength, and bulk of frame, and large stature, he had better
have gone beneath the earth—as the father of poets has it—than linger
on it, lonesome, loathsome, shunned, abominated, and abhorred.
His sins had been many, and his merits few; he had lived for his own
coarse pleasures only; he had never done good to man, woman, or child;
yet he might have called any man worse than himself, who refused to
grieve for his awful grief—for this man was a leper.
The captain of the _Simon Pure_ was humane as well as resolute. This
Spaniard, as he called himself, had lurked under a tarpaulin, till the
boat of the _Archytas_ was far away, and the gale began to whistle
through the shrouds and chains. Then he came forth and showed himself,
holding forth his hands, defying the sailors to throw him overboard.
For a month he had been treated well by the crew of the exploring ship,
who were all picked men of some education, and ready to listen to
reason. He had managed to quit them without their knowledge, and cast
his lot among a less enlightened crew.
The boldest feared to touch him, but with nautical skill they encoiled
him in ropes from a distance, and were just beginning their yo-heave-oh
chant, when the captain rushed up and dashed them right and left. With
his own hand he unbound the leper, and led him forward, and allotted
him a place on the forecastle, where none might come near him, except
to bring him food, and where he must abide, if he cared to live. His
chief desire was to get back to England, and finding himself well
on the way for that, he indulged in strange antics, and shouted and
roared, as if all the ship belonged to him. When the moon was high—for
the moon appears to have strange power over those outcasts—the sailors
were afraid to keep the deck, with his wild songs flowing aft to them;
for he had belonged to a colony of Indian lepers, and had learned their
poetry.
As soon as the ship was in the Mersey, he contrived to be quit of her.
Perhaps he was afraid that his condition would be made known to the
authorities, who might find it their duty to observe him, though they
could not legally confine him. At any rate he escaped any such trouble,
by dropping into a boat, and landing on the south side of the river. A
purse had been made for him by the sailors, not a very heavy one, for
they were short of cash, but enough to carry him to London—at once the
fountain and the cesspool of diseased humanity.
Donovan Bulwrag had been unable, after his recovery, to put up with the
control and order of his mother’s house in Kensington. He had taken
private rooms again, in a little street near Berkeley Square; and
though his mother was not well pleased, she had now to contend with a
will as strong as her own, and even firmer. He must have his own way in
this, he must be indulged at every cost, rather than driven to mutiny
when all depended on him. If once he were married to Lady Clara, all
would be wealth and prosperity. She had hoped to see it done ere now,
but a wicked chance had crossed her.
It was nearly twelve o’clock one night, towards the end of February;
and Bulwrag, having returned from his club much earlier than usual, was
sitting by the fire in his dressing-gown, with a cigar in his mouth
and a bottle of very old Cognac on the table. He was not in a pleasant
humour, for the luck had been against him, and foreseeing worse he had
come away, for he was growing superstitious.
He was dwelling gloomily on the dull necessity before him—the
“brilliant prospect,” his mother called it, but he disliked his
intended bride; and this good thing (alone perhaps) may be said in his
favour—he was not wholly mercenary. I would fain hope, though without
much faith, that he may have felt some true regret at the cruel wrong
he had done me—for verily the expiation was nigh.
Suddenly the front-door bell rang sharply, and the poor weary maid
shuffled down the stairs. She had told him, when he came in that night,
that a tall strange-looking gentleman, with his face muffled in a white
cravat, had called about nine o’clock and left word that he would
come again that evening. He had given his name as “Senhor Diaz,” and
Bulwrag, after wondering vainly, concluded that it must be some one
connected with the sailor Migwell, whom he had seen in the autumn.
Slow heavy steps approached his door, and the maid was dismissed with
some gruff words in a foreign language quite unknown to Donovan. Then
the door was opened without a knock, and a big man stood and looked at
him.
“Who are you? And what do you mean by coming at this time of night?”
Bulwrag spoke in his roughest tone, for the man was shabby and
repulsive.
The visitor coolly took a chair, handling it in a peculiar manner, for
he seemed to have bags on, instead of gloves. Then he crossed a pair of
gigantic legs; and Bulwrag saw that he wore no boots, but loose slops
of hide with the hair on, in size and shape much like the nosebag of a
horse. His hat was flapped over his ears and forehead, and he spoke not
a word, but gazed at Downy with large red eyes, having never a hair of
lash or brow to shade them. Bulwrag shuddered, and drew his chair away;
he had never been looked at like this, and could not meet it.
“In the name of the Devil—” He could get no further; for the eyes of
this monster, and the strange formation under the cloth, where his face
should have been, declared that he was laughing.
“You have learned to swear. Valedon—very good”—the voice sounded
dead through the mufflings, and the accent was not like an
Englishman’s—“chip of the old block. I was famous for that, at your
age, young man.”
“What do you know of my age? Who are you? What are you? What brings you
here at this time of night? What do you want me to do for you?”
Even Downy Bulwrag was hurried and confused, and lost his resources in
the presence of this man; and a fearful idea made his blood run cold.
“Ha, he knows me not. He is not a wise son”—the stranger still kept his
red eyes on him—“where is the voice of nature, that I am compelled to
introduce myself?”
“Speak out. Do you mean to stop here all night? Don’t cover your face
up, like a thief. In the name of God, who are you?”
The stranger slowly uncovered his face, sliding the bandage from his
cheek-bones downward, with a clumsy movement of his bagged hands; then
he rose to his full height and stood before the gas, and looking
no longer at Bulwrag, waited to be looked at by him. His face was
transformed into that of a lion.
“You must go to a hospital. Don’t come near me. Pull it up again, for
God’s sake.”
“It is God who has done it, if there is a God. And why should a man be
ashamed of it? Embrace your father—as the Frenchmen say—in a few years
you will be like him.”
“Don’t come near me, I tell you again. I have a revolver in this
drawer; none of your pop-guns, but a heavy bullet. I don’t want to hurt
you, if you will only go away.”
“My son, I do not intend to go away. It grieves me to hear you speak
of it. Surely you never would cast off your father, for such a sweet
trifle as leprosy.”
Bulwrag began to recover himself, which was more than most men of his
years would have done. Nature had not endowed him with the largest head
in London, without putting something inside it. His sitting-room was
small and plainly furnished, but having been used by convivial men, it
possessed a long table (now set against the wall) which would slide
out to still greater length with levers. He drew this across the room,
extended it, and closed the gap at the end with the one in common use.
Then he threw up the window at his side of the room, after fastening
back the curtains, and requested his visitor to throw up the other; for
the house was a corner one, and the room had “cross-lights.”
“Couldn’t do it, my son. Would you like to see my hands? No? Very
well, you must take them upon trust. I have three fingers left, but
the spot is upon them. However, you are a brave fellow, so far, though
infected with popular ignorance. Nine out of ten would have rushed
away, shouting ‘Murder!’ But you may put away your shooting-irons, as
the Yankees call them. A hole in my body does more good than harm,
under the circumstances. Once for all, my complaint is not contagious,
or at any rate not among well-fed people; and you are well-fed, if ever
anybody was. Give me a cigar; you will do that gladly for your own
interest, I dare say. I can smoke it with my bandage on. Now a glass of
good brandy—no water with it. You may break the glass afterwards, if
you think proper, as the fools did on board the _Simon Pure_; but never
in the _Archytas_. Ah, that was a ship of science!”
“The _Archytas_? Do you mean to say you have been in her?”
“Without her and her glorious captain, my son, you would never have
seen your beloved parent. And more than that, if there had not been
a beautiful young lady on board that ship, I should never have been
here. Ah, you may well be surprised to see me. If ever any man has been
knocked about—seventeen wounds I could count, till this affair took
five away. And one of them laid me five years by the heels, laid me
under ground, it was said everywhere. I suppose you heard that I was
dead.”
“Yes, and on very good authority too. But I was too young to know much
about it. Do you know what has happened in the family?”
“Ah, the Spaniards are the men for proverbs. ‘Believe no man dead till
he comes and proves it.’ But women can always believe what they wish.
Curse the woman, she has caused all my troubles. But wait a little
longer.”
The deep thick voice, and the glare of his father’s eyes, made Downy
tremble. “Surely you will not—in this condition—you will go to a
hospital and get cured—you will leave the management of things to me.”
“Will I? No doctor in the world can cure me, or lengthen the months of
my rotting away. And I got it by goodness, I took it by goodness. If I
had stuck to my nature, I should have been sound. No more goodness for
me in this world, and none in the next. Can a leper go to heaven?”
For a while they sat silent, the old man puffing his smoke through
his muffler, and lifting the glass between his great wrists every now
and then; the young man absorbed in this awful puzzle, with his vast
head drooping on his breast. It had never even crossed his mind to ask
whether this man might be an impostor. He felt that every word was
true; and now what possible course remained for him? At length his
father spoke again.
“Come, cheer up, my hearty, as the sailors said to me, though they took
care to say it a long way off. You don’t seem delighted to have found
a father, and a man of such renown and rank. Why, I am the Marquis of
Torobelle, and you are the heir to the title. Lord Roarmore doesn’t
sound much after that. But alas, I have nothing to keep up the title,
and I dropped it among the Indians. I shall have to trouble you a
little in that way; one cannot live on glory. Oh, but they treated me
infamously, when I could do no more for them. They drove me across the
Rio Negro into Patagonia, and paid a tribe of the wandering Indians
never to let me back again. They passed me on to the Moluches, and I
tried to make my escape from them, but was caught and left for dead
again, till a woman took pity on me. Then I married her, and lived on
putrid fish with a roving horde of the Eastern tribes, in a miserable
country, where no white man goes. Then I took the disease from the diet
and the nursing of my poor woman in her illness, and for five years
I was shut up in the leper’s den—as they called a reeking peninsula,
which explorers know as Saint Jacob; at the back of a place called the
Bottomless Pit. There was no getting out; there were thirty of us,
sometimes more, and sometimes less, sometimes we got victuals, and
sometimes we starved, and I was the only white man there.
“Although we were quite close to the sea, and almost surrounded by it,
we were far away from all chance of ships, on a desolate, barbarous
coast in a curve a hundred leagues out of the line of traffic. And
there I must have wasted into a sandy skeleton, for there was no
possibility of escape inland, unless a good angel had been sent to
fetch me. For the ship was taking soundings, or something of the sort,
having come far away from the usual course, to find the truth about
the bottomless gulf; and all I could do would have gone for nothing,
except for that young lady. They were giving us a wide berth, as if
we all were savages, when luckily for me she brought her spy-glass to
bear, and declared that she saw a white man among the rest. The others
laughed at her, for you may be pretty sure that there was not much
white about me just then; but she stuck to it, and ran for the Captain,
and insisted that a boat should be sent to see about it. Oh, I could
worship that girl, I could; though it isn’t much good to me, after all.
“Come, you ought to say you will take care that it is, and devote all
your days and your money to the welfare of your persecuted parent. You
must have expected me long ago, or at any rate had some hopes of it,
for I sent you a message several years ago, and some documents too
from Mendoza, before I was banished finally. A knockabout fellow swore
to find out all about you, and deliver them the next time he was in
London. Do you mean to say he has never done it?”
“Not till last autumn; and it was so old, I thought nothing more would
come of it. A sort of half Englishman, half Spaniard. But a faithful
fellow, and thought wonders of you. When he first came with your
message, he got into a scrape before he could deliver it. He stabbed a
man at the Docks, and had to bolt again, and he fought shy of London
for years after that. But to see you like this was the last thing I
could dream of. You said not a word of this in your letter.”
“Because I had not got it then. I took it from misery and starvation,
and living among the savages. Ah, I have seen a good deal of the world,
and met with some wonderful people. How small even London seems to me!”
“Yes, I dare say; and how small the world is! You could tell many a
tale no doubt, but none more wonderful than your own. Do you know who
it was that fetched you off—the Captain of the _Archytas_?”
“Give me more brandy. It is good enough for that.” The great stranger
shook himself—though he might have had more manners—and his clothes
rattled round him like mildewed pea-pods. “I knew nothing about it at
the time, of course; but since I came here I know everything. Why it
was the man who stepped into my shoes, and a devilish sight too good
to do it. Ah, he has had his hair combed, once or twice, I doubt.
Better almost have turned leper at once. How good he was to me! No
haughty airs, no shudders, no ‘keep your distance, dog!’ He was not at
all sure of contagion, till he looked at his books in the cabin. But
it made no difference to him. He could not tell who I was; he took me
for a Spaniard—‘Diaz’ was the name I went by—but he treated me as a
Christian, as Christ himself would have treated me.”
The poor man lifted his hat as he spoke, from his naked yellow head,
and the glare of his eyes was clouded. The power to weep was gone, but
not the power of things that move to it.
“And he did a good work for himself,” he resumed, looking fiercely
again at Downy; “he did himself a better turn than me, without knowing
anything about it. Every one of my troubles has been through that
woman. She never knew what a man’s wife is. She wanted to be man and
woman too. The Pulcho Indians would have taught her something. Top-knot
come down. Your husband is a leper, and the man you have eaten up for
years goes free. I am only waiting till the proper time comes. I have
had a fine time of it; and so shall she.”
“But I suppose you don’t want to hurt your children;” Donovan spoke in
a surly voice, for he saw that this man was not one to be soothed;
“what harm have your children ever done you? By appearing now you would
simply starve us; and what could we do to help you then? You have been
in London for weeks, I dare say, and you have learned all you could
about us. Did you learn that we are living in Fairthorn’s house, and
on Fairthorn’s money? And what becomes of that, when you turn up? Did
you learn that I am likely to marry a lady of great wealth and good
position? What becomes of that if you turn up? You have not let my
mother know a word as yet?”
“Not I. Not a syllable yet, my son. What a strange thing it seems
to have a son again! No, I don’t want to hurt you, or the two girls
either. I have managed to get a look at them. How they would have
stared, if they had guessed it. I consider them to be a credit to me,
and I hope they are better than their mother. And you are a credit in a
certain way—a strong, plain-spoken fellow. Not much humbug about you,
I should say. And of course, I can’t expect much affection. But I dare
say you are sorry about your poor father.”
“Father, I am. I am broken down about you. I have always thought well
of you, and made allowance for you.”
“God knows that I have wanted it, my son. I will do all I can to help
you now. I will live in some hole, and not show myself, for a time. But
only for a time, mind you. My revenge I will have, when it can’t hurt
you so much. But you must give me money, to support me till that day.
What will you pay, and how long will you want?”
“Three months, perhaps four; and pay two pounds a week. It is all I can
afford, for I am awfully hard up. After my marriage, five pounds, if
you like. Give me your address. You can have two weeks’ money now. It
is all I have by me. But don’t come here again; these people are very
suspicious. I will arrange to meet you somewhere.”
The poor cripple managed to take the money, and after a few more words
departed. Then Bulwrag flung the other window up, cast the tumbler out
of it, and lighted some pastilles. Then he took a draught of brandy
neat, and went upstairs to sit in his bedroom, and brood over this
calamity.