As these old stories recur to my memory, and beseech me for my life not to take so great a risk,—but how long it takes to tell it all!—a big, jolly-faced black gatekeeper quiets my apprehensions by saying that we would not be exposed to the least danger whatever; that some of the labourers and attendants have been employed to work among the lepers for years with no bad results. With this comfortable assurance of a doubtful safety from the gateman, the driver whips up, and we move on into the yard, and up the avenue to the hospital, made gruesome by horrid buzzards perching on its roof and eaves in grim expectancy.
But it is the coming closer into the deep shade which reveals to us its true significance. From without, this white house is long and low and restful to the eye, and the trees bending over it, with clinging arms, seem to breathe only life and beauty, and the white-coated men here and there under the shade are the labourers resting during the still noon hour.
But a nearer approach and a closer acquaintance changes the whole scene. Was it upon such wrecks of life that the gentle Saviour gazed in pitying love? These are not men; they are pieces,—parts of men, hung together by the long-suffering cord of life.
The first leper we see near at hand seems to take an interest in us. The others we have passed lie around in a dull, listless way. I presume they see us, but they evidence no concern other than keeping in the shade. But this leper—I hardly know how to designate him—has more life in him than the others; he is walking about and nods to us as we pass. He has strange, unnatural ears; they are twice the normal size and have nodules on the outer edge. His face is swollen into mushroom-like patches, and deeply seamed by ridges, and yet the skin has apparently the same appearance it had in a state of health, except a little grayer and more lifeless looking. Another patient hobbles toward us, and we find that he is walking on stumps of feet, without toe. We throw some pennies to another group, and the one nearest the coin picks it up by making a scoop of his flipper-like palm. His fingers are gone, only little points are left, as if they had been whittled off with a jack-knife. An old man looks at us with one eye, the other eye, eaten away by the relentless advance of the disease, has commenced to run out. These are only the moderately sick patients.
As we drive nearer to the hospital, a dozen or so horrible-looking creatures crowd to the end of an upper gallery and stand there, leaning out over the railing, a ghastly picture of misery. I scarcely dare look at them, their faces have been so mutilated by the disease; and others worse there are inside, whom the heroic Sisters—Romish and Protestant—care for and comfort until the living hideous death is at an end and life begins.
We move slowly along up the drive, and come quite near to the great archway which leads into the courtyard. There we call to the cabby to stop, and the tall man, who is never afraid of anything, gets out, and his leaving the carriage becomes, unwittingly to us, a signal for the poor lepers to approach. One hurries away from his companion—an emaciated, becrutched Hindoo—and comes to within a few feet of us, and just as he does so, our protector turns to me and says: “Did you ever think I would find myself talking to a leper just three feet from me?” and, interesting as the experience is, I recoil within myself for fear that the money which we want to give them may necessitate a closer proximity than we desire. But the unfortunate victim understands the situation and keeps his distance, while the tall man coming back to us, stands there with one foot on the carriage-step, still turning toward the leper.