The Retreat

by Forrest Reid

  He repacked his basket and followed the stream down to the shore. Here it became shallower and wider, flowing in several channels, and though it still ran swiftly its voice was lost in the roar of the breaking waves. For a while Tom threw pieces of wood into the current and watched them being carried out to sea, but presently he tired of this amusement and began to walk along the beach. The place was as lonely as he had imagined it would be. Perhaps even lonelier, for it seemed to him almost like an undiscovered world. Or an abandoned world maybe—with that black broken hull of a boat half buried in the sand. “The world will be like this,” Tom mused, “when all the saints have been caught up into the air.”

  No sign of a human being: not a soul could have been here to-day; the only marks on the long brown stretch of sand were the thin strange footprints of sea-birds. The entire crescent of the bay must measure more than two hundred yards, and it was shut in behind and at both ends by cliffs which rose nearly perpendicularly to a height of some hundred and fifty feet. These cliffs were covered, but not densely covered, with grass, through which fragments of grey rock thrust forth. The sun was still well above them in spite of Tom’s loitering, and the tide must be nearly at its lowest ebb. When it was full, the water would reach almost to the foot of the cliffs, he supposed, because except at the edge the sand was not white and powdery, but brown and smooth.

  And it was the most fascinating shore he had ever seen. Below the unbroken stretch of dry sand, the lower, ridged sand was strewn with rocks of many colours—bluish, pink, and every shade between light and dark grey. It was as if in some remote past these rocks had been thrown up by an earthquake; and the water churned between them, and ran up the beach in foam. There were glittering pools and delicate seaweeds—seaweeds moss-green, and seaweeds more brightly green than grass; seaweeds branching like coral and coral-pink; seaweeds brown and purple. There was very little of what he knew as wrack, but there were seaweeds, clinging to the lower flatter rocks, with long smooth slippery blades that were exactly like the razor-strop hanging up on the door of Daddy’s and Mother’s bathroom. He supposed that all these weeds really had their own individual names, like land weeds, though people just called them vaguely sea weed. It would be interesting to make a collection of them—with Pascoe. Something caused him to add this little tail to his thought—something very like a precaution, though he wasn’t sure what the precaution was against. Perhaps an angel. He glanced round, but saw nobody. . . .

  The pools were fascinating. They were like small lagoons. There were tiny fishes in them, and crabs, and other creatures. Tom wondered how they managed not to be carried out by the tide. He took off his shoes and stockings, but some of the pools were deeper than they looked, so he took off his trousers as well. He explored the pools for a long time. He’d have bathed, only perhaps the bathing here was dangerous. Anyway, secretly, he much preferred paddling.

  Many of the rocks were stained and patterned curiously with beds of minute mussels, purple and black. The colours were clear and beautiful. He stood watching all this vivid sea-washed beauty and listening to the waves. He could have listened to the waves for hours without tiring. Their sound was like no other sound, though the wind in a wood might sometimes remind you of it. He thought he liked the sea better than anything, but it was really the sea running up the sand or breaking against the rocks, really the music of the sea, that he liked; for when he was out in a boat he didn’t much like it—in fact it soon bored him. But when you were on the shore it was different, and the sound hid away everything else, and was like an endless lullaby. . . .

  Gamelyn, his name was. It didn’t begin with an “L” after all. . . .

  A small and very tickly green crab was walking over Tom’s foot. He drew his foot out of the water with the crab still on it, and then turned to look back at the cliffs. He wondered if he could climb them. “Not that I’m going to,” he added prudently, “and perhaps get stuck half-way up.”

  Several sheep had come to the edge and were looking over. Somehow they made the whole scene less lonely. It wasn’t exactly as if they had been human beings, but it was very nearly the same, whereas the seagulls hadn’t made any difference at all. This was puzzling. . . .

  The cliff was in shadow now, and there was a line of shadow along the shore at the foot of it. Mother had lent him her watch. It was a wrist-watch—a rather silly little thing and a very distant relation indeed of the clock he had left in charge of the house—but still it told you the time, and what it said now was four o’clock. He wished he had a spade so that he could dig channels between the pools, but there weren’t even any big shells. Suddenly a dark round head rose out of the water to look at him. “That’s a seal,” said Tom, and remembered having read somewhere—but it might only have been in a fairy story—that seals are passionately fond of music. If they are, he thought, they must get precious little of it except what the waves make. So he sang to the seal, and the seal really did seem to listen, though he wouldn’t come out of the water.

  It was lovely singing here: it was like singing with an orchestra. “What I’d like most of all,” Tom decided, “would be for all animals and all birds, and even all fishes and insects, to want to be friends with me. And they would too,” he thought, “if they only knew. Some do know—some dogs and donkeys—but there are so many that don’t. It would be fine to be friends with a seal.” And he began an adventure in which the seal came close to the rocks and took him for a ride on his back. He imagined Daddy and Mother and Pascoe and Miss Jimpson and Brown—a whole crowd of people—standing on the shore in amazement. Nor was it really so impossible. It would have been quite possible, and even quite easy, if things had been just a little different—if animals could speak a human language, for instance. . . .

  He wondered if ships ever came into this bay. He hadn’t seen one, but he supposed they must. . . .

  “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” Pascoe had made a mess of that; he had said “boats”, and been offended because Pemby had talked for five minutes about how the change of one word could rob a line of all its character. “Ships,” Pascoe had amended. “Silly old ass,” he had added under his breath. “Steamers, rafts, canoes, barges.” And though Tom had appreciated the wittiness of this, he had felt all the same that Pemby was right. There was a difference, though he didn’t know what made it, and Pemby hadn’t explained. But “ships” meant more—meant masts and yard-arms and great white sails, and even a look-out man at the bow, shading his eyes with his hand—and a wide, heaving sea.

  It was rather mysterious: he wished Pemby had explained it. . . . But perhaps he ought to be going home soon. He had enjoyed himself frightfully, though he wouldn’t object at present if a fisherman or somebody were to come down to the bay, or even appear at the top of the cliff. It had begun all of a sudden to be a little too lonely. He put on his trousers and walked back along the shore, while the seal accompanied him, or at any rate swam in the same direction. Tom followed the track of his own footprints, but they somehow looked now so solitary on that deserted beach that they gave him a queer feeling and he was not sorry to reach the end of the bay.

  Here he had another meal, to fortify himself for the homeward climb. Also another drink out of the stream—more iron. The basket was lighter and Tom heavier when he began to toil up the ascent. He reached the place where he had gone to sleep, but the goat was no longer there. . . . Yes, this was the exact spot—where the grass was crushed—and that was where the angel had sat. A sudden thought made him stoop lower and examine the ground carefully. It showed no superficial marks, but actually Tom was not looking for marks, he was looking for a sprig of watercress.

  But there was nothing. He sighed faintly and resumed his journey. When at last, plodding stubbornly, he reached the beginning of the wider road over the hill, there was a cart loaded with green rushes drawn across the way, and beside the cart was a man with two dogs. Tom was glad to see all three of them, and as the man wished him good evening, he thought h
e might stop to talk with him, and pat the friendly sheepdogs. The conversation lasted while the man finished his pipe, but Tom talked most, for the man hadn’t much to say. He was a good listener, however, and Tom made a lengthy and circumstantial story of his rambles. The goat was in it, and so was the seal; only the angel was not mentioned. Then he told the man about Daddy and Mother and the expected Pascoe. Henry came next, but this was because the man asked him if he had a dog of his own. And the dogs pricked up their ears, Tom fancied, at this point, listening with far more attention while he was describing Henry’s antics than they had shown before. “Well, I’m afraid I must be going,” he concluded at last, quite reluctantly, “but I’ll very likely be back with my friend soon; in fact I’m sure to be.”

  “That’s right,” the man replied, “I’ll keep a lookout for you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HE ARRIVED home, tired and dusty, to find Daddy and Mother entertaining visitors. To Tom they were not interesting visitors, and when after dinner they were taken out for a drive, he was quite content to be left behind, though he had nothing particular to do. But he did not want to do much, feeling a good deal more tired than he would admit, and for a while he sat on a bench watching a very noisy and hilarious game of golf-croquet which was being played by two young men and two girls. All four were staying at the hotel without adding to its attractiveness, Tom felt; and while he watched their game his actual thought was that they were awful! So presently he climbed up on to the battlement and stood with his back to them, gazing over the parapet.

  Below him the ground dipped and rose again, forming a narrow ravine which ran on to the sea. On the opposite side of this ravine, and on a level with the Fort, were the grey ruins of a castle. The castle had been built in 1313, Daddy said, and little remained of it now except the lower walls, and here and there the fragments of a spiral staircase. The floor was solid rock, however, coated with grass; and looking through a broken archway, her pale mild face turned towards him, Tom perceived a sheep reposing in solitude.

  He waved his hand and smiled (he was getting to know quite a number of animals), and the sheep bowed. There were plenty of rabbits moving among the rocks and bracken down below, but the sheep appeared to be the sole proprietress of the castle, a white and woolly chatelaine, gazing out with the prudent inquisitiveness of her race. She somehow had an exclusive, old-maidish appearance, and Tom wondered if that ever happened with animals. Rather prim, she looked, but affable—quite different from those girls anyhow, who were certainly bent on not remaining old maids.

  The sun was sinking, and the rich warm flood of light, filling empty spaces and washing crumbling stones, had a curious effect of spiritualizing the scene. From the precise spot where he now stood, Tom two or three times a day had looked across at this castle—also he had climbed up and explored every inch of it—yet never before had it suggested to him anything beyond itself. Now its altered aspect awakened a vague stirring in his mind, as if a submerged impression were trying to force its way upward to consciousness; but unsuccessfully, for it produced in him only a dim sense of being reminded of another scene, a place still unidentified, but which he had at some time visited, though he could not tell when. Yet it ought to be easy, he felt, for he knew very few ruins—Inch, Greyabbey, Bonamargy, Dunluce—he could remember no others. And then suddenly he knew that it wasn’t a real place at all he was thinking of, but only a place in a dream—that queer dream which he was convinced had been repeated several times, though it still obstinately eluded his waking efforts to recall it. He saw, too, that even the fancied resemblance was an illusion. There was no resemblance; the house of his dream had not been like that. Moreover, it had not been near the sea, and the ravine itself had been different, a kind of wood, a kind of glen—like the glen beside his own house at home. . . .

  The glen at home! Could it be? The thought brought him up with an abrupt little shock of discovery. But it was true, though it seemed very strange that recognition should only have come now, and in so roundabout a fashion. On the other hand his dream-house had not been like the house at home either, and certainly it had been the castle, perched up there with the steep drop beside it, which had set him pondering. Surely he ought to be able to remember everything now. But he could not: it was just as baffling as ever. Only that one brief glimpse of a vanishing scene—as if he had entered a theatre at the very moment when the curtain was descending—and then—Henry scratching at his bedroom door. . . .

  Tom turned around, and immediately perceived that he must have been gazing at the castle for a long time. The croquet players were gone, yet he had not heard them going. It was latish too—he could feel that—though perhaps not more than half-past nine or ten. At all events Daddy and Mother had not yet returned, and since the moment they did so he probably would be sent to bed, it might be just as well to move a little further off while he had the chance.

  He came down from the battlement, and passing round by the kitchen quarters and through the vegetable garden, descended a rough path to the shore. The falling dew had made the grass slippery and enticed crowds of snails from their hiding-places. Tom, careful not to tread on these adventurers, walked along a beaten track, with bracken on either side of him and the rocky shore below. He climbed a stile and skirted the wall of the Manor House, where Miss Pascoe lived. It was a low stone wall, scarcely three feet high on Tom’s side, and almost level with the strip of green sward within. The garden stretched at the foot of tall rocks, which were split here and there into narrow crannies suggesting the entrances to secret caves. It was a brilliant garden in the daytime, but the colour was draining out of it now. And behind house and garden and rocks there rose steeply a dark plantation.

  An overflow of flowers from Miss Pascoe’s garden bordered the path along which Tom was walking. Some had even seeded themselves close to the shore—white, yellow, and purple foxgloves, and Saint John’s-wort, with its yellow flowers and green and deep-crimson leaves. At the end of the wall the ground widened out on both sides and the coastline was broken into a series of small bays, each with its smooth sandy beach. The tide was full or nearly full, and Tom scrambled out as far as he could over the lichened barnacled rocks, till the water was lapping at his feet. The thickly crusted rocks were the colour of tarnished silver, and up the numerous channels between them the water swelled and sucked backward with a hollow melancholy sound.

  The sun had vanished nearly an hour ago behind the hill Tom had climbed on his way to Glenagivney, but it was still reflected in the clouds, and the reflection was mirrored in a crimson track, almost the colour of blood, across the tumbling sea. On the opposite shore, soft as a pastel drawing, the hills were outlined in dark slate-blue against a paler sky.

  The light was fading fast.

  The Manor House, large and square and white, had become like a phantom house glimmering against the black background of the wood. Further along was the grey mass of the Fort, with the round Martello tower, at the foot of which was a stone staircase leading to Tom’s bedroom (for he had a private staircase all to himself), and further still was the castle. Up the faint blue sky there rose a heavy column of cloud, like a genie escaping from a jar. Cloud upon cloud, the sky was strewn with them, loose and floating, those underneath tinged to gold, those nearer earth grey or faint mauve, with deep translucent wells between them of pale pea-green and silver-blue. But on the farther shore darkness was descending like a curtain, blotting out the pattern of the hills; and a peculiar mystical happiness had descended upon Tom—dreamily peaceful—almost ecstatic—for it was only remotely related to this world.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HE HAD been right about that at least; undertaken with Pascoe the walk to Glenagivney became quite different. Pascoe, with a specimen-box and a press he had manufactured for drying flowers, turned an idle excursion into a scientific expedition. He had even brought a botany book with him, borrowed from Daddy, whom he had consulted, and who had given him a sort of introductory lesson on ho
w to use the book, while Pascoe all the time had hung on his words with a rapt interest and attention that ought to have been flattering. It had made Tom, at least, think how extremely satisfactory a son Pascoe would have been for Daddy; and this in turn made him wonder what kind of father would have found him satisfactory.

  Not one like Daddy, he was afraid, though perhaps sharing the same tastes and interests was less important than he imagined. It couldn’t be the only thing, at any rate, for he and Pascoe shared very few, and it didn’t prevent them from being friends. They were much happier now, for instance, going this walk together, than either of them would have been with any of the other boys they knew, and yet each probably was getting a quite different kind of enjoyment from it. Pascoe was busy collecting flowers; Tom, though he too plucked a flower occasionally, was really thinking all the time of what had happened on his last visit here. It was in this very lane that he had dreamed of his angel, and in this lane that he had met the goat. She certainly had not been a dream, and he kept a lookout for her, wondering if she would remember him. The lane, however, proved to be empty of goats and angels alike.

  “Let’s get over to the other side of the hedge,” Pascoe suggested. “It looks as if it was mostly heather there, but we may find some small flowers, and anyhow I want to press the ones we’ve got while they’re fresh.” So they jumped the ditch, crawled through a gap, and picked their way on stepping-stones across a shallow stream. They were now on the edge of the ravine above Glenagivney Bay. Here and there, marking the track of the lane, a few slender half-grown trees grew, chiefly birch and willow, but all the open ground was rocky and deep in heather—dry, brittle, and fragrant. Tom sat down among it; Pascoe, who had work to do, sat on a stone.