The Desert Healer

by E. M. Hull

The chief rolled over with a growl of angry impatience.

“For the sake of the tribe,” he flashed. “Do you think by any chance that I did it to please myself! Do I do anything to please myself in these days? I put it off as long as possible, but my people were insistent—the house of Zarrarah had need of an heir.”

“And your wife—?” The involuntary question surprised Carew even more than his listener. To an ordinary Arab the remark would have been beyond the bounds of all etiquette and convention; to Said Ibn Zarrarah, western in his ideas even with regard to the sex he despised, it was curious only as coming from the man it did.

“She is happy with her child,” he said with a shrug of indifference, and searched for a cigarette in the folds of his burnous. But despite his outward show of unconcern it seemed as if his answer had scarcely contented himself for his black brows were knitted gloomily and his face almost sullen as he sat smoking in silence with his melancholy eyes fixed on the boundless space before him. “Why should she not be happy?” he burst out at length. “She has everything she asks for—the only wonder is she asks so little. She has more liberty allowed her than the average Arab woman—and is too rigid an Arab to make use of it. She is alone in my harem, she has no rival to make her life miserable—and she has borne a son to the house of Zarrarah.”

She had borne a son—the supreme desire of the eastern woman.

A shadow crossed Carew’s face as he turned and looked at his companion curiously. “And is that no compensation to you? There are those who would envy you your son, Sheik,” he said, with a touch of bitterness in his voice. But his question went unanswered and he changed the conversation abruptly.

“You were a fool to leave it to Faidherbe,” he said with friendly candour. “You knew what he was, and the attitude he was likely to adopt. You had your chance with the change of administration. His successor is a very different type. He would at least have listened to your explanations with an open mind. He would listen to them now if you chose to make them. But the first move must come from you. You cannot expect the Government to make overtures to one who is suspect. I heard the story at the time, of course—Faidherbe’s version of it, that is to say. But I could do nothing then. I was practically new to the country and I was not—”

“You were not El Hakim—the eye of France,” cut in the chief with a swift smile. Carew laughed.

“Is that what they call me? A blind eye, Sheik, where my friends are concerned.” The chief nodded. “That I have also heard. And that is why you are trusted—trusted as few men are in Algeria,” he added gravely.

And for a time he relapsed into silence and Carew waited for the suggestion he preferred the other to make. He had a certain influence now with the Government, he could pave the way for a reconciliation—if Said Ibn Zarrarah really desired it. But did he desire it? It was clear from what he had said that in spite of his very natural feeling of resentment the chief nourished no schemes of revenge and had no thought of turning the large forces at his command against the country he still admired. But wounded in his deepest susceptibilities, embittered by years of solitary brooding, would his pride allow him to make overtures that must of necessity be humiliating and would require a certain moral courage to perform? And his present position was a strong one, apart from the injury to his feelings he had little to lose or gain either way.