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.”