The Desert Healer

by E. M. Hull

“I’m all right,” she gasped, “if—if I can ride beside you,” she added, faintly. His lips tightened as he eyed her doubtfully. Then without answering he wheeled Suliman towards the south.

The movements of her horse were easy, and away from the metalled roads the slow canter at which they rode was less jarring, but it took all her resolution to maintain the upright carriage she had adopted and hide from him the weakness that was steadily overcoming her. The nervous strength that had upheld her at first was slipping from her fast now that the immediate fear of discovery was past, and in the reaction of relief she feared the collapse that was threatening momentarily. She pulled the haick closer about her face that he might not see the moisture lying thick on her forehead and rode on with compressed lips fighting the spells of faintness that made her head reel and the surrounding landscape appear to waver in curious undulations before her eyes.

The dawn was brightening. Already it was light enough to see distinctly, and despite her fatigue, Marny looked with interest on a district that was new to her.

For some time still their way led past farms and fruit gardens, but of human life they saw little. And the few field workers and goatherds they met were absorbed in their own affairs and paid no heed to their passing, or at most bestowed on them a perfunctory salaam that was due to Carew’s supposed rank. He looked like a chief, she thought with a strange new feeling of pride. It was difficult seeing him thus to remember that he was an Englishman. To her he would always be an Arab, a man of the open, a desert dweller. And in the sandy wastes of the great wilderness towards which her thoughts had turned so longingly she would live with him the wild free life of her dreams, a life that might prove hard and dangerous but a life that would be made sweet by his love and companionship. If only she need not have come to him like this! If only he had found her in the time of her unfettered girlhood when he could have taken her unstained and without dishonour! But over their love now hung the shadow of disgrace. And it was for her sake that he had done what would be held up to him as a reproach. For her sake—He heard the strangled sob she tried to smother and winced, his eyes sweeping the horizon impatiently. He knew that she had almost reached the limit of her endurance and his arms were aching to hold her, to ease the pain of her weary little body against his own strong limbs, but while the scattered farms still stretched about them he dared not risk the chance of passing observation. Neither, because of her weakness, did he dare to quicken their slow pace—an unaccustomed pace at which Suliman was fretting and protesting, rearing from time to time as he tried to break into the usual gallop.

But at length the last outlying vineyard was passed, and screened by the rising ground of the foothills they were approaching, precaution was no longer necessary. With a sigh of relief Carew swung his horse close to hers and, bending sideways, lifted her easily out of the saddle. She yielded without demur, relaxing against him with a moan of utter exhaustion. He knew that she was crying, but he knew also that the tears which hurt him so poignantly were necessary to relieve the excited brain that had gone so perilously near to destruction and he made no attempt to check them. Tightening his arm about her he gave Suliman his head. And with a snort of pleasure the big bay leaped forward, free to go his own pace at last, galloping as he had galloped when once before he had carried double. The memory of that midnight ride came to Carew as he glanced down at the girl he held before him. With what different feelings he had carried her then! How he had revolted at her proximity, hating the slight burden that was now so precious. Every moment had been torture. Now, in the ecstasy that filled him, he wished that the way were longer, that the moment might never come when he would have to waken from his dream ride of almost unbelievable happiness and face the stern realities of the difficult course that lay before them. For an instant his sombre eyes grew stern and brooding, then he thrust the thought of the future from him. There was time, and enough to think of that. Now he could only think of her. His face grew very tender, very pitiful as he looked at her. Poor little tired child, bruised and broken with appalling experience—would even his love, great as it was, compensate for the suffering that had wrecked her young life? All that was best in him rose up as he caught her closer with a stifled whisper. That he might never fail her, that she might never regret the step she had taken, never regret the faith she had in him, was the prayer that burst from his innermost soul—a prayer that was deeper, more fervent than any he had ever uttered in his life.

But as the bay tore on with long swinging strides that were the perfection of movement, Carew put from him everything but the joy of the moment. After the enforced stay in a town he had come to loathe, after the tedious days of comparative inactivity made hideous by mental struggle, he felt like a man released from prison. Behind him lay all he wished to forget. Before him lay a new life, new happiness, new hope. He could hardly realise yet what it meant to him. No longer alone, with something more than his work to live for, he seemed to see the world suddenly with new eyes—a world of new wonder, a world transformed and beautified. Eagerly he looked at the brightening sky. The dawn had almost come, a dawn that was to him symbolical.

A feeling of exultation came over him. The wild rush through the air, the cool wind blowing against his face, was like an intoxicant stirring him as it always stirred him, and today more powerfully than ever before. For did he not hold in his arms his heart’s desire—was not the woman he had craved his at last! With a quick fierce laugh he drove his knees into Suliman’s ribs and swung him round to face the open hillside. Gallantly the horse attacked the steep incline, but the gradient was punishing and gradually his pace slackened till it dropped to a walk and, picking his steps carefully amongst the scrub and boulders, he wound his way laboriously up the twisting track till he reached the summit to stand with heaving sides and wide distended nostrils.

And at the same moment the sun rose clear of the banking clouds of gold and crimson, and the full light came with startling suddenness revealing all the wild beauty of the desolate hills. A scene of more than ordinary grandeur, or so it seemed to the man whose heart was throbbing with a passion that almost frightened him and whose whole sensitive being was thrilling and responding to the radiant glory of this most marvellous sunrise he had ever witnessed. Behind them Hosein was on his knees absorbed in rapt devotion, and alone with her he viewed the advent of the new day, the new life that they would live together. The reins dropped loose on Suliman’s neck as he raised her high in his arms till their lips met and her shy eyes fell under the ardour of his burning kiss. A kiss that with its hungry passion, its complete possessiveness awoke her to a fuller realisation of the step she had taken.

She was trembling when at last he released her, her quivering face scarlet with shame. Miserably she stared at him, struggling to free herself.

“Let me go,” she moaned. “I hadn’t any right to ask you—I hadn’t any right to make it difficult for you.” But in her piteous eyes he read the despair that gave the lie to her stumbling sobbing words.