The Desert Healer

by E. M. Hull

Carew smiled faintly at the implied compliment which he knew to be no idle one but a genuine expression of opinion.

“I’ll do my best,” he said briefly, with a slight shrug of embarrassment, “but I am not infallible,” he added, “and if I fail—”

“You will at least have had a charming excursion,” cut in Sanois laughingly. “You will have broken new ground. You will probably have found a new disease and we shall have to send an expensively equipped medical mission to follow up your discovery, and you will end by costing us the deuce and all of a lot of money. But that’s not my affair,” he added, tapping the gold lace on his sleeve significantly, and turned once more to the large scale map he had laid out.

Carew hitched the folds of his heavy burnous closer round him and drew his chair nearer to the table.

“I am ready to start almost at once. My own preparations can be concluded in a week. I am anxious to get out of Algiers, and if you keep me waiting indefinitely—well, then, I can’t promise that when you want me you will find me.” He smiled at Sanois’ whistle of dismay for there had been an undertone of peremptoriness in his voice that the general recognised.

“A week?” he said rather doubtfully. “You don’t give us much time, my friend. It will take longer than a week to settle this affair. But I’ll do what I can. And now to business.”

When the details of the expedition had been discussed in every particular and Carew rose at last to go night had fallen. He refused the general’s invitation to dine with the mess and found himself obliged to repeat his refusal more than once before he reached the barrack yard. Usually he was glad to accept the hospitality of the officers with whom he was a frequent and popular guest but tonight he wanted to be alone.

Riding through the crowded streets Suliman occupied his exclusive attention, but when the town had been left behind and the ascent to Mustapha begun he let his thoughts range forward to the coming journey. Regretfully he put away from him the temptation of the City of Stones. It would have to be for another time. He was pledged to Sanois now and, the general himself bound down to a promise, he had at last something definite to go on. Not that there was much for him, personally, to arrange. The change of route called for little alteration in the preparations he had already made for an extended tour in the desert. And the boy would go in either case. He had spent most of his young life in the saddle and his apparently frail little body was capable of astonishing endurance. To leave him behind would be to break his heart—and Carew could not do without him. Tonight the air was strangely soft, heavy with the scent of flowers, and a brooding silence that was reminiscent of the solemn hush of the desert seemed to have closed down over all nature. Not a tree moved, not a dog barked, and Carew had the curious feeling that he was riding through a place of the dead. Amongst the Arabs it was an omen of death, a sure and certain sign that for some human soul the wings of Azrael were beating downward from the realms of the blessed. For his? With a philosophical shrug he turned in the saddle to look back at the newly risen moon, a crescent slip of silver in the sky, and then sent Suliman flying in the direction of the villa.

The door of the wall was open, and Hosein, ghostlike in his white draperies, emerged from the deep shadows of the entrance as Carew dismounted. He took the horse in silence, still evidently nursing his grievance of the morning, and half amused, half annoyed by his servant’s tacit expression of disapproval Carew omitted his own customary greeting and swinging on his heel walked up to the house.

In the Moorish hall, brilliantly lit by three large hanging lamps of beaten silver, Saba was waiting. And as his sensitive ears caught the almost imperceptible sound of soft leather against the marble pavement he darted forward with a wild cry of joy and fell, laughing and sobbing together, into the arms stretched out to catch him. Tossing him up on his shoulder, Carew carried him, chattering with excitement, through the jasmine scented courtyard to the big bedroom at the back of the house, there to cope with a flow of endless questions which ceased not but penetrated shrilly even to the distant bathroom. And standing beside the dressing table, his slim fingers straying caressingly among the orderly arranged toilet appointments, he was still talking when Carew came back from his tub. Then the questions gave place to a detailed description of his own small doings during the last three days and he rambled on discoursively, while Carew changed into the fresh robes laid out for him, carrying his listener through endless imaginary adventures and concluding with the grave announcement that Derar, the fat butler, had assuredly incurred the wrath of Allah for his wife had presented him that morning with yet another unwelcome daughter “—which, as your lordship knows, is the fifth,” he added with fine scorn.