The Desert Healer

by E. M. Hull

In the early days of her married life, she had tried to rebel, and the memory of those futile struggles was like a horrible nightmare, but the passing years had taught her wisdom and given her strength to accept what she revolted from and detested.

Slipping a long chain of uncut emeralds round her neck she went silently out of the room. The drawing room she entered was more English than French in its appointments, bright with gay coloured chintzes and fragrant with masses of flowers banked in every available space. She lingered by a tall basket filled with giant roses, inhaling their delicate perfume and gathering the cool petals against her hot cheeks. Then she moved slowly to glance at a porcelain clock ticking noisily on the mantelpiece. Little more than an hour before Clyde might come and her brief holiday would be over. He rarely left her for so long and the days of respite had flown. With a shiver she lit a cigarette and began to pace the narrow room, her thoughts travelling back over the last five years of bitter misery to the day when, barely seventeen years of age, a child in every sense, she had grown suddenly in the space of a few agonising hours into womanhood, cruelly awakened to what it meant to be Clyde Geradine’s wife. As he determined to continue so had he begun. The disgust and loathing he inspired in her had never lessened. Herself innately chaste, his gross coarseness and frank sensuality appalled her. If he had even once shown that he had been moved by any higher sentiment, had had any nobler thought beyond the purely physical attraction she had for him she would have tried to make allowances. But for him she was merely a perfectly made vigorous young animal by whom he hoped, as he candidly told her, to get the heir on whom he had set his heart. And with nothing to cling to, nothing to hope for, she felt only degradation in her association with him. His moods were variable as his temper was uncertain. He was made up of contradictions. Despite his own infidelities, infidelities of which she was fully aware, despite the fact that he deliberately paraded her beauty on every possible occasion, he was possessed with an insensate jealousy. Faithless himself he placed no trust in her faithfulness, and was suspicious of every mark of admiration shown her. She was his, he insisted, as much his property as any horse or dog in his stable, his to use as he would. His also, it seemed, to abuse and torture by every subtle mental torment his cruel nature could devise. And not mental only. It pleased him to know her powerless against his strength, it pleased him when the mood was on him to subject her to physical violence that his warped mind held to be within his right. He had bought her, body and soul he had bought her, and brutally he allowed her no possibility of ever forgetting the fact.

Motherless before she was old enough to know her loss, she had grown up in a big rambling house in an isolated part of the west coast of Ireland. The father she adored had died when she was twelve, leaving her in care of her brother Denis, who was ten years her senior. Neighbours were few and far between, their visits long since discouraged by the lonely, broken-hearted man who had lived a life of seclusion since his wife’s death. With no companions of her own age, with almost no associates of her own rank, she had spent her days in the open, riding and fishing, content with the limited life she led. Ann’s had been the only womanly influence she had known, Ann who had been her mother’s nurse and then her own.

And Denis, a ne’er-do-well with tastes and inclinations studiously hidden during his father’s lifetime, had, on succeeding to his inheritance, shaken the dust of Ireland off his feet to seek a more exhilarating sphere of activity where he had successfully dissipated his patrimony, and incidentally fallen under the influence and into the power of Lord Geradine who was a past master in all the vices the younger man emulated. Marny had never known the real truth of the whole sordid story. She only knew that after years of absence Denis had returned, changed almost beyond recognition, bringing with him a stranger who had stayed for a fortnight in the house. She had hated the big domineering Englishman at sight, instinctively repelled, and the attention that almost from the first he had shown had terrified her. Then he had gone, and a couple of months later Denis had reappeared, more haggard, more careworn than before. He had told her a long rambling tale, most of which she had not understood, and had ended with a wild appeal to her to save his honour and the honour of the family she had been taught from childhood to reverence. Only by her marriage with Lord Geradine, it seemed, could the family name escape disgrace. And, ignorant of what she did, carried away by Denis’ eloquence, passionately jealous for the name that had gone untarnished for generations, she had consented. She had been given no time for further reflection, and in spite of Ann’s horrified remonstrances and pleadings she had been married almost at once. That was five years ago. And for five years she had endured a life of misery, in an alien environment, disillusioned and shocked. Her husband’s hold over her brother—a hold she had never comprehended and which had never been explained to her—was the means by which he compelled her submission in everything. And consistently she had done what she thought to be her duty, had striven to please him as far as she was able and had been loyal to him who had never shown loyalty to her.

Five years—only five years!

With a bitter sigh she sank wearily into a big chintz covered Chesterfield. For a long time she lay thinking, almost dreaming, until at last she awoke with a sudden sense of shock to the import of her thoughts. The Arab who had saved her! She could see distinctly every line of his tall, graceful figure, every feature of his grave, bronzed face. She found herself wondering again at the cold austerity of his expression, so different from the appraising glances of admiration usually accorded her and which made her hate the beauty that inspired them. He had not even appeared to know that she was beautiful. His sombre eyes had rested on her with complete indifference, almost, so it seemed to her, with dislike. Hyper-sensitive, she had been conscious that his aid, his hospitality had been given unwillingly. She remembered the curt impatient voice, “I do not keep you to please myself—” and wondered why the fact of his indifference seemed so suddenly to hurt her. If he had not been indifferent, if he had looked on her as other men did, what would have been her fate? She would have escaped one horrible peril only to fall into another as horrible. She had been utterly in his power, utterly at his mercy—the mercy of an Arab. She owed her honour to an Arab—and she did not even know his name! Why had he evaded what was a perfectly natural question, why hidden his identity under a sobriquet? Was he afraid that she would try to trace him, try to force on him some tangible proof of the gratitude he had refused to listen to? Her cheeks burned. What he had done was beyond payment. In all probability she would never see him again. She would have to be content with the meagre information he had given her, content with the memory of a wonderful chivalry she had never thought to experience and which had been a revelation. It was as though some healing power had touched her, like the clean, wholesome breath of some purifying wind penetrating the defiling atmosphere that surrounded her, opening her eyes to a new conception of man’s attitude towards woman. The men she had hitherto met had been uniformly alike in taste and inclination to the husband who forced their society upon her. She shrank from them as she shrank from him with a sense of shame that was unendurable. Compelled to participate in a life she abhorred, she seemed to be on the brink of some loathsome pit, choked with the fetid fumes of its foul putrescence, steadily sinking downward into an abyss of horrible and terrible darkness, her whole soul recoiling from the moral destruction that appeared to loom inevitably ahead of her. What did her soul matter to Clyde? It was only her body he wanted. It was only physical admiration she saw in the eyes of his friends. Yesterday for the first time she had met a man who had ignored her sex, whose gaze had not lingered desirously on the fair exterior compelling a remembrance of her womanhood, whose proximity had not moved her to hot discomfort, but had given instead a sense of security and trust. With him she had felt safe—safe and curiously unstrange. The hours spent in his tent, the long ride through the night at his side, would never be effaced from her memory. He had given her a glimpse of a finer, cleaner manhood than in her unhappy experience she had ever known. In some undefinable way he seemed to have restored the self-respect that year by year she had felt being torn from her. And he was an Arab! An Arab. She whispered it again, lying very still on the sofa, her fingers twining and untwining restlessly about the emerald chain. What did his nationality matter—it was the man himself who counted. The man who had shown her a nobler type than she had ever met with, the man who had shown her that all strength was not merciless, that all men did not look on women merely as their natural prey. And as with this desert man, so must it be with many men of her own race. Her brooding eyes darkened with sudden anguish, and she flung on to her face burying her head in the silken cushions, fighting the agony of misery and revolt that swept over her. Why had she been destined for such a fate? Why had it been her lot to be thrown only amongst those whose vileness debased the sacred image in which they were made? Why had she been given no chance of the happiness that must be the portion of luckier women than she? If it had been otherwise, if for her marriage had meant not only physical union but a higher, holier companionship of mind and spirit, how gladly would she have yielded to a passion hallowed by love, to possession tempered by consideration. If she could have loved and respected where now she only obeyed and endured! A marriage such as hers was ignoble, degrading, horrible beyond all thought. If she had known what it would mean, would she have had the courage to face what she had done in ignorance? She sat up, pushing the heavy hair off her forehead, staring into space with pain-filled eyes. Yes, she would have done it again in spite of everything. Not for love of Denis, she had never loved him—in childhood he had bullied her, in girlhood he had neglected her, and on the threshold of her womanhood he had made her pay the price of his infamy—but for love of the name and family that meant so much to her. And because of that, because her wretchedness was the result of her own willing sacrifice she must struggle on as she had struggled all these five terrible years, beaten and hopeless, but striving to fulfill her part of the marriage vows her husband treated so lightly. But, oh, dear God, she had never known it would be so hard! Harder now than ever. Why did her thoughts turn so persistently to the man who had saved her? Why did the recollection of his chivalry and generosity seem to make her feel so much more acutely the misery of her life? Was it only the contrast to the man whose wife she was? She hid her face in her hands with a sharp little cry of fear. It was more than that. Quite suddenly she realised it—the full meaning of what had happened to her, the full significance of the thoughts that were crowding in her brain. She shivered, clasping her hands closer over her eyes. Why, oh why had this come to her—had she not already enough to bear! And if she had not been bound, if she were free, it would make no difference. He was an Arab! Then her self-control gave way and she fell back among the cushions, dry-eyed but shaking with emotion. “I wouldn’t have cared,” she wailed, “I wouldn’t care what he was.”

But his indifference had been complete—and she was married! She wrung her hands in an agony of shame and horror. She was married. She was Clyde’s wife. To even think of another man was sin. She must tear from her heart the image that in a few short hours had become so deeply implanted. She would never see him again. With quivering lips she whispered it, and writhed at the strange new sense of desolation that came upon her. A companionship that had been so brief, a passing stranger of an alien race whose name she did not even know—and yet the world seemed suddenly empty. She pondered it, ashamed and vaguely frightened. It was because she had trusted him, she thought with a pitiful attempt at self-justification, and because she was tired and overwrought. Unnerved, she had allowed his kindness to make too deep an impression.

Later, when strength was given her again, she would forget—not him—but the wickedness that filled her heart tonight. She moved listlessly on the sofa, mentally exhausted, too tired almost to care that The Caid was still missing, that very soon her husband might be returning and she would have to make her lame explanation and face his inevitable wrath. And for once, honesty compelled her to admit it, he would have good cause for anger. The horse was valuable, and she had had no right to take him so far from Algiers unattended. It was asking for trouble in a land of horsemen who stole where they could not buy and who would consider the theft of a noted stallion, that a foreigner purposed to remove from the country, as an act of merit rather than otherwise. All her young life she had ridden alone. But it would be useless to try and explain to Clyde the overpowering desire for solitude that had driven her out yesterday morning without the groom whose constant presence put a period to her enjoyment and took from her all the pleasure of her rides.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck seven. She hardly glanced at it. If Clyde did come, the train would probably be late. It usually was. And for nearly an hour more she lay still, striving to concentrate her tired mind on trivialities, becoming momentarily drowsier as the room grew darker. She was nearly asleep when the sound of a loud blustering voice echoing from the hall sent her bolt upright on the sofa, her heart beating violently, her wide eyes fixed apprehensively on the door.

She stumbled to her feet as he flung into the room, a tall heavily-built man whose big frame seemed to almost fill the aperture as he stood for a moment in the entrance peering for her in the dim light.