On the following day they rode across the mountain to Tetuan. They
started in the dawn. Claire's eyes were heavy. She came languidly out
from the tent door to mount her horse, and when she touched Renfrew he
felt that her hand was cold like an icicle. He looked at her anxiously.
"Are you ill?" he asked.
"No, Desmond."
He lifted her into the saddle.
"You haven't slept," he said.
She looked down at him as she slowly gathered up her reins.
"Unfortunately, I have," she replied.
Before Renfrew had time to express surprise at this unexpected
rejoinder, she had struck her horse with the whip, and trotted off over
the grass in the direction of the white Kasbar that gleamed on the hill
under the kiss of the rising sun. He leaped into the saddle, and
followed her. The path into which they came was narrow, winding through
wild fig-trees and olives, and constantly ascending. Claire did not turn
her head, and Renfrew could not ride by her side. He watched her thin
and sinuous figure swaying slightly in obedience to the motion of her
horse, which scrambled over the rough path with the activity of a wild
cat. In front of her their personal attendant, Mohammed, rode on a huge
grey mule, and sang to himself incessantly in a deep and murmuring
voice. Once or twice Renfrew spoke to Claire, but she did not seem to
hear him. He resolved to ask about her sleep when they gained some
plateau on which they could rest for a moment. At present it was
necessary to concentrate his attention on his horse and on the dangers
of the road.
When the sun was high in the heavens, and they were high on the
mountain, above a gorge in which the scrub grew densely, and great
bushes starred with yellow and white flowers hid the rocks and made a
home for birds, Mohammed called a halt. Renfrew lifted Claire to the
ground. The men passed on towards Tetuan with their camp, and Claire
sank down on a gay rug beneath the shade of a huge white umbrella, which
was pitched on a square of level ground and circled with luxuriant
vegetation. Renfrew lay at her feet and lit his pipe, while Mohammed,
the dragoman, and one of the porters squatted at a little distance, and
began to play cards in a cloud of keef. Claire was fanning herself
slowly with an enormous Spanish fan in which all gay colours met. She
still looked very tired. The shuffle of the descending mules died away
down the mountain, and a silence, through which the butterflies flitted,
fell round them.
"Is this journey too much for you, Claire?" Renfrew asked.
"No. I can rehearse for six hours in London, surely I can ride for six
here."
"But you look tired."
"Because, as I told you, I slept too much last night."
"What does that mean?"
She stretched herself on the rug with the easy grace of a woman who has
trained her body to carry to the eyes of others, as a message, all the
moods of passion and of peace. Then she leaned her cheek on her hand.
"In the darkness of the tent, Desmond, I slept and did not know it. I
believed that I lay awake. I thought I still could hear the jackals, and
the stamping of the mules. But, really, I slept."
"How do you know that?"
"Because of what I am going to tell you. The wind blew about the canvas
door, and when it bulged outwards I could see on each side of it a tiny
section of the night outside, a bit of a bush, blades of short grass
moving, a ray of the moon, the slinking shadow of one of the dogs from
the village."
"Yes."
"Presently there came, I thought, a stronger gust than usual. It tore
the canvas flap from the pegs, and the whole thing blew up, leaving the
entrance quite open. Then it blew down again. It was only up for a
minute. During that minute I had seen that a very tall man was standing
outside the tent."
"One of the soldiers."
"If I had been awake it might have been."
"You mean that all this was a dream?"
"I mean that I slept last night, and that I wish I hadn't."
She turned her great eyes on Renfrew, holding the red, green, and yellow
fan so that it concealed the lower part of her face. And he looked at
her, staring at him like some tragic stranger above the rampart of an
unknown city, and wondered whether she was acting to him in the sun. On
the forefinger of the hand that held up the fan a huge black pearl
perched in a circle of gold. Renfrew had often noticed it on the stage,
when Claire lifted the silver dagger to kill the man who loved her in
the play.
"The door of your tent was securely closed when I got up and came out
this morning," he said.
"Oh, yes."