The Desert Healer

by E. M. Hull

“When you talk you stop sometimes as if you were searching for a word,” she said, rather hesitatingly, “and the other day, in the Bouzaréa woods, half the time you were speaking in French.”

“I have scarcely spoken English for twelve years,” he said shortly. Then as if to cover the slight piece of personal information he had let slip he added:

“There is no longer any need for you to restrict your rides, Lady Geradine. The woods are safe enough now.”

She turned to him swiftly. “What do you mean?” she said with sudden breathlessness. And as she listened to his bald unvarnished account of the end of Abdul el Dhib the colour that had risen to her face died out of it leaving her white to the lips. She was shivering when he finished, her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap. “And it was because of me—because of what you did for me that night,” she burst out passionately. “Oh, I never thought, I never guessed the risk you were taking! And you knew all the time! It was he you meant when you warned me not to ride alone. It was he you thought was coming that morning in the woods when Tanner brought the horses, and that very night—oh, if he had killed you, it would have been my fault! And I—I—” She pulled herself up sharply, aghast at the sound of her own voice, at the confession that had been almost wrung from her. A wave of burning colour suffused her face and tingling with shame she averted it hastily, veiling her eyes with the thick dark lashes that swept downward to her cheek—but not before he had seen the look that flashed into them, a look that sent the blood racing madly through his veins and made his heart leap with sudden violence. For a moment he sat rigid, stunned with self-realisation, the hands that were clasped around his knee tightening slowly until the knuckles shone white through the tanned skin. Then with a tremendous effort he mastered himself.

“Nobody’s fault but my own, I’m afraid,” he said with forced lightness. “I knew the man I was dealing with. I have good friends in Algiers who gave me warnings in plenty and because I chose to ignore them what happened was due to my carelessness.”

“It still doesn’t lessen my obligation,” she said in a stifled voice. But his quiet tone, his imperturbable manner was fast restoring her own self-possession. Indifferent himself, why should he guess the true cause of her agitation? Perhaps what had seemed so blatant to her had escaped him, and he had seen in her outburst only a natural womanly distress for the danger of a man who had risked his life on her behalf. And the formal courtesy of his next words further reassured her. “There was never any obligation,” he said quietly. “I merely did what anybody else would have done under the circumstances.” And abruptly he changed the conversation to the recent race meeting at Biskra. Convinced that he had not divined her secret, her feeling of self-consciousness and restraint wore gradually away and only the joy of his companionship remained. She would get from it what she could, she would live for the moment and its transient happiness and leave to the future the misery and loneliness that was going to be so much harder to bear than it had ever been. Enough that she was with him and that she loved him, loved him as she had never thought it possible to love. A love that should be her secret strength in the bitter years to come.

Silence fell between them again. And content to wait until he should choose to speak she sat very still beside him, watching him covertly as he leant back with his hands clasped behind his head, his half-shut eyes staring straight before him as if he saw more than the ferns and fairy lights at which he was looking. Tonight his face seemed graver, sterner than she had ever seen it. A tragic face it appeared to her, a face that bore the deep-cut marks of sorrow and disappointment. And she wondered, with a dull pain in her heart, what had been the tragedy that had driven him to the solitary wilds of the desert. She knew nothing of his history, his name and the nature of his work amongst the Arabs were all that Mrs. Chalmers had confided, and she had no means of ever knowing. A being apart, a type that had been a revelation, he would pass out of her life, abruptly as he had come into it, to forget her in the greater interest of his chosen vocation. It was strange to think of him as a doctor, living a life of arduous toil and terrible risk. Into what savage and lonely places must he go to wrestle with the pain and suffering he sought to alleviate. El Hakim—the desert healer! And she, who loved him, would have no knowledge of his achievements, would never know the final happening that would terminate that life of noble and self-sacrificing endeavour. In the pitiless years that stretched so barrenly ahead she would have only a memory to cling to, a memory that would be at once her consolation and her pain. Into the tender, brooding eyes fixed on him there came a look of mingled pride and anguish. He would never know, thank God he would never know! But if he had cared, if she had brought sorrow to him—she caught her trembling lip fiercely between her teeth and began with fumbling haste to draw on the long gloves he had laid on the sofa between them.

“Oughtn’t we to be going back to the other room?”

He turned his head slowly.

“There’s plenty of time,” he said lazily, “they are still dancing.”