The Desert Healer

by E. M. Hull

For an hour or more his quiet voice went on until the lengthening shadows deepened into blackness and the tent grew dark and obscure, until Carew, sitting Arab fashion on the divan, was almost invisible and only the glowing end of his cigarette revealed his presence. And Meredith—the first plunge made—found him curiously easy to talk to, curiously knowledgeable too. From one or two comments he let fall Meredith was inclined to believe that the Watching Game was no new one to him and the knowledge made his own tale less difficult to tell.

He stopped at last and groped for the matches on the stool beside him. “That about lets me out,” he said, as he lit a cigarette. Carew rose and going to the tent door clapped his hands. “You’re doing a big work, Micky,” he said as he came slowly through the gloom. “You’ll end on the Indian Council if you don’t take care,” he added with almost the old bantering note in his voice.

“If I don’t end with a bullet through my head, which is much more probable,” replied Meredith with a quick laugh, blinking at the lighted lamps that were being brought into the tent.

During the dinner that followed the conversation was mainly of Algeria. But though Carew discussed the country and its conditions, its people and the sport it afforded, of his own life there he said nothing. Neither did he refer to the old days when their friendship had meant so much to each. The past was evidently a sealed book that he had no intention of reopening. A tentative remark hazarded by Meredith met with no response and it was not until later when they were sitting out in the darkness under the awning that the soldier put the question he had been trying to ask all evening. They had sat for some time in silence, smoking, looking across the moonlit plain, listening to the subdued noises of the camp behind them and to the faint rhythmical thump of a tom-tom far off amongst the orange trees. A tiny breeze drifting, perfume laden, across their faces made Meredith think suddenly of the scented gardens of Kashmere. He twisted in his chair to get a better view of the starry heavens, and blurted out his question.

“Why didn’t you write, old man?”

For a long time there was no answer and he mentally kicked himself for a blundering fool. Then Carew’s deep voice, deeper even than usual, came out of the darkness. “I couldn’t. I tried once—but there seemed nothing to say. I hoped you would understand.”

Meredith moved uncomfortably. “I was—damned sorry,” he muttered gruffly. Carew lit a fresh cigarette slowly.

“You needn’t waste any sympathy on me, Micky,” he said with a sudden hard laugh. “I was a fool once—but I learnt my lesson—thoroughly.” There was another long silence. Then Meredith asked abruptly: “Why Algeria?”

Carew shrugged. “I had to go somewhere. The house—its associations were a hell I wasn’t strong enough to stand. So I played the coward’s part and ran away. My people used to winter in Algiers when I was a boy. I liked the country. It seemed the natural place to come to, somehow.” He paused. When he spoke again it was in a voice that was new to Meredith. “It’s a wonderful place, the desert, Micky,” he said dreamily, “it gets you in the end—if you go far enough, and stay long enough. It’s got me all right. I don’t suppose I shall ever leave it now. I come into Algiers sometimes, but never for very long. Always I go back to it. It holds me as nothing else has ever held me. The mystery of it, the charm of it—always new, never the same, changing from day to day. And its moods, my God, Micky, its moods! The peace of heaven one moment and the fury of hell let loose the next. Cruel but beautiful, pitiless but fascinating. And, somehow, one forgets the cruelty and only the beauty remains—the beauty of its wonderful solitudes, its marvellous emptiness.”

“And being there—what do you do?” Meredith had no wish to appear inquisitive but for the last few minutes he had been trying, unsuccessfully, to fit his old friend into the new setting that seemed so incongruous. Gervas and solitude! To Meredith, remembering the perpetual house parties at Royal Carew, the crowds of pleasure-seeking, sport-loving men and women with whom the genial host of those old days had surrounded himself, it appeared a thing incredible. And again he asked with growing perplexity: “What do you do?” and wondered if Carew would consign him to the devil. But the retort he half expected did not ensue. “What do I do?” repeated Carew slowly. “That was the question I asked myself when I came to Algeria, when I seemed to have come to the end of everything—‘what shall I do.’ My first trip into the desert settled that quickly enough. I had always been interested in the Arabs—I spoke the language as early as I spoke English—but I only knew the Arabs of the towns. So I went down into the south to see the real life of the desert. I met some of the old Sheiks who used to come into Algiers when I was a boy and who still remembered my father. They made it easy for me and passed me on into districts where otherwise I could never have penetrated, and I saw more than I had ever hoped to see. I started my wanderings with no higher motive than curiosity—and a desire to get away from my own thoughts. It had never occurred to me that up till then I had led an utterly purposeless life, that not a soul in the world was the better for my being in it. But out there in the desert the crying need I found forced me to think, for the reckless waste of life and the ghastly unnecessary suffering I saw appalled me. I knew that one man alone could not do much—but he could do something. It didn’t take me long to make up my mind. The old life was over. I wanted a new life that wouldn’t give me time to think, that would give me opportunity to help the people I had professed to be interested in. I went to Paris and studied medicine, specializing in surgery, and took my degree. Afterwards I put in six months with a man in Switzerland, a brute—but a wizard with the knife, and then came back to Algeria. That’s what I do, Micky.”