The Desert Healer

by E. M. Hull

And glad that for the moment the boy appeared to have forgotten his fears, Carew let him talk and finally took him with him to the dining room where, perched cross-legged on a cushion beside the table and made happy with a plate of fruit and sweetmeats, he continued to chatter throughout the formal dinner served by a dejected, tearful-looking Derar and Hosein, who had recovered his accustomed serenity.

Though preferring the simplicity of camp life, Carew, in his town house, followed early traditions and maintained a certain state and ceremony. Many of the servants were old retainers, and Derar had been butler to the late Sir Mark Carew. And the elderly survivor, conservative to the backbone and highly endowed with a sense of his own importance, was largely responsible for the continuance of the old régime that still prevailed at the villa. And so it was that, even when he was alone, Carew dined nightly in the huge room where the table seemed a tiny island set in the midst of a vast marble sea. But this evening he had glanced about him once or twice during the protracted meal with a faintly puzzled look in his sombre eyes. What made the room tonight appear so empty—so chill and lifeless? It was not the lack of guests that troubled him, he was used to being alone, but a strange yearning for something he was at a loss to define. Was it the preliminary warnings of middle age that, urging a remembrance of his forty years, had induced the unaccustomed feeling of lassitude and melancholy that seemed to have taken hold of him? He almost laughed at the thought. For some it might be the beginning of a gradual decline of force and ability, but for himself, he had never felt fitter or stronger. It was just Algiers, he told himself as he lingered over the cup of thick, sweet coffee that had become as indispensable to him as to any native of the country, Algiers—and a consciousness of intense and profound boredom. Thank heaven it wouldn’t last much longer. Life on the march was too strenuous to admit of ennui.

Calling to Saba he went to the study adjoining his bedroom and from there out on to the wide verandah that overlooked the garden.

For a while he smoked in silence that was punctuated at intervals by the blind boy’s fitful remarks to which he replied briefly with an inattention that was not lost upon his small companion, for gradually he, too, fell silent.

The night was very still. Directly before the verandah a broad streak of moonlight stretching like a path of silver to the distant boundary wall made blacker the darkness that enveloped the rest of the garden where trees and flowering shrubs loomed large and fantastic in the murky gloom. The heavy scent of flowers was almost overpowering, languorous and sleep-inducing as the smell of incense. And the brooding hush that Carew had noticed earlier in the evening seemed now even more penetrating and intense. There was in the air a feeling of unnatural suspense, a breathless sensation of expectancy like the deep hush that precedes a storm. In the desert Carew would have known what it portended, but here in Algiers he could not account for it. Was it perhaps only his own imagination magnifying the quiet of an ordinary evening into something that approached the abnormal? He was not given to imagination, but he could not rid himself of the impression of a coming calamity that momentarily made him more wide awake and alert. And with the sense of waiting there came again the feeling of depression and melancholy he had experienced during dinner. How empty and lonely the house had seemed! He had never noticed it before. Why did he notice it now? And as he pondered it there seemed to rise before him the semblance of a figure standing in the brilliant strip of moonlight, a slender, graceful figure whose boyish riding dress no longer moved him to intolerant disgust. For an instant he stared with almost fear at the delicate oval face that appeared so strangely close to his, looking straight into the pain-filled haunting eyes that seemed to be tearing the very heart out of him. Then a terrible oath broke from his rigid lips and in the revulsion of feeling that swept over him he wrenched his gaze away, cursing with bitter rage the day he had ever seen her. Not her nor any other woman—so help him God!

A stifled whimper and a tiny hand slid tremblingly into his, made him realise the passionate utterance that had been forced from him. He caught the boy in his arms and soothed him with remorseful tenderness. “Angry with thee—when am I ever angry with thee, thou little foolish one?” he murmured gently in response to the sobbing question that came muffled from the folds of his robes in which Saba’s head was buried. Content with his answer the child lay still. And the clinging touch of his fingers, the soft warm weight of his slim little body brought a measure of consolation to the lonely man who held him.

For a long time Carew sat without moving, staring into the shadowy garden. Save for the shrilling of a cicada in the grass near by the deep silence was unbroken. And soon even the insect ceased its monotonous chirp, abruptly as it had begun.

Carew had been up since before daybreak, and lulled by the intense quiet and the heaviness of the night, he began to be aware that drowsiness was stealing over him. He was almost asleep when the vague impression of a distant sound, a curious slithering sound that ended in a faint thud, penetrated to his only half conscious mind and roused him to sudden and complete wakefulness. The noise seemed to have come from the further end of the garden. Who was abroad in the garden at this time of night? As he stared keen-eyed into the darkness his brain was working rapidly. He had thought the child to be asleep, but from a slight movement in his arms he knew that Saba too was awake and listening intently, as he himself was listening. To get the boy away before the happening he believed inevitable was his first care. Without altering his own position he slid him silently behind his chair with a low breathed injunction to go. But with a passionate gesture of refusal Saba clung to him and Carew was obliged to use unwilling force to unclasp the slender fingers twined desperately in his thick burnous.

“Go!” he whispered again peremptorily. And as the boy crept slowly away he leant forward in his chair once more, waiting with braced muscles and straining ears for any further sound that should betray his nocturnal visitor’s whereabouts. But the few moments’ attention given to Saba had been moments used by another to advantage. The attack came with unexpected and noiseless suddenness, from a quarter he least expected, and it was only his acute sense of smell that saved him. With the rank, animal-like odour of the desert man reeking in his nostrils he leaped to his feet, swerving as he turned. And his quick, instinctive movement saved his life, for the driving knife thrust aimed at his heart failed in its objective and glanced off his arm gashing it deeply. With a snarl of rage el Dhib thrust again. And, his right hand temporarily numbed and unable to draw the revolver at which his blood drenched fingers fumbled nervelessly, Carew caught the swinging arm with his left hand and flung his whole weight forward against his opponent. They fell with a crash, the Arab undermost, and grappled in the darkness twisting and heaving with straining limbs and labouring breath.

Crippled, Carew at first could do little more than retain his hold, but as the numbness passed from his wounded arm he managed with a desperate effort to jerk himself upward until his knees were pressing with crushing force on Abdul’s chest and rigid forearm and, rolling sideways, he tore the knife from the fingers that clung to it tenaciously. But the manœuvre cost him the advantage he had gained. With a lithe panther-like movement of his sinewy body the Arab slipped uppermost, his hands at the other’s throat. And conscious that he was fighting for his life, Carew put forward his utmost power to meet the strength he knew to be equal to his own. Locked in a mortal embrace that seemed to admit of only one ending they struggled with deadly purpose, writhing to and fro on the floor of the verandah until a sidelong jerk from one of them sent them over the edge and they rolled, still gripping fiercely, into the garden beneath. The drop was a short one, but in falling Carew’s head struck against the abutment of the marble stairway and for a moment he lay stunned. And Abdul who had fallen on top of him was not able to complete the work he had begun. Warned by the lights that flashed up in the villa, unable to recover the knife he had lost, with a parting curse he turned and ran for the shelter of the shadowy trees, doubling like a hare as he sped across the strip of brilliant moonlight. And still dazed from the blow on his head Carew staggered to his feet and stood staring stupidly after him, swaying dizzily as he strove to think collectedly. But as the flying figure almost reached the friendly darkness that would cover his flight the momentary cloud lifted from Carew’s brain and he wrenched the revolver from his waistband. Yet with his finger pressing on the trigger he paused irresolute. Not at an unarmed man—not in the back! That was murder—no matter how great the provocation. With a smothered exclamation he dropped his arm to his side. But the screaming whine of a bullet tearing past his head and a sharp crack behind him told him that Hosein was troubled by no such scruples. And with mingled feelings he watched Abdul el Dhib, caught at the moment he thought himself safe, plunge forward on his face and lie twisting in the agony of death.