"If you're afraid of a thing, I should think you'd want to face it and prove to yourself that you aren't."
The words floated into his head out of nowhere. He could hear the very intonation of Lettice's voice. "What folly!" he said to himself, and laughed the memory away. Nevertheless, a sharp little dart of discomfort stuck fast in his self-complacency, and, smarting, forced him to think. How much better it was to lie here free in the woods than in a police court cell! to listen to the wind in the pines rather than to a casual "drunk and dis" banging on his door! Yes, said a voice, rising unexpectedly within him to take sides with Lettice, but does one live only for what is comfortable? "That's all the more reason for staying." There was Lettice's answer, net and uncompromising. She would not have run away. Denis, then: how would he have taken it? Denis, more single-minded, would not even have felt the temptation—it would never have occurred to him that to run away was possible. No, the fact was not to be blinked; what he was doing would surprise and disappoint both these friends of his. Be it so, then, he told himself, defiant; he would still do it, even in the face of these disapproving witnesses.
In the face of another Witness, moreover. Men who live close to nature cannot escape from the presence of God. Only for a very few years of his very early youth had Gardiner been able to be a materialist. As soon as the soul was born in him (about the age of eighteen; for boys haven't souls, only the rudiments) he had begun to be conscious of the august and gracious Power which held him as in the hollow of a hand. The feeling was intermittent, the grip at times relaxed, but it never let him free. Now, to his anger and terror, he felt again the pressure of that control. The Hand that held him forced on him no action: but gently, steadily, inexorably, it turned him to face the truth, bidding him see what he was doing. He struggled against it with passion, trying to avert his eyes, trying to get back to the spirit of the woods, but in vain. And then suddenly his resistance collapsed, and he looked. Yes! he was running away. He was letting his weakness rule. He was destroying the love of his friends, failing them, failing too the Power which had created him to be a fighter, not a shirker. He blinded his eyes no longer, he did not tell himself that he was taking the only sensible course; he owned that his flight was contemptible. But what else could he do? "I can't go back now!" he said, panic knocking at his heart. "If I'd owned up in the first instance it would have been all right, and I wish to God I had; but now—now I've made it impossible for them to do anything but convict. Oh, what on earth shall I do?"
"Face it," said the inner voice. "Look your fear in the eyes, and look it down. Never mind the cost." And after a pause of struggling terror it spoke again: "If you fail now, it will not be the end; it will be the beginning. You will fail again, and worse. You will go down among the cowards and weaklings. You will lose Denis; you will lose Lettice. Do you know what that means? Look, my child, look well before you do this thing. Weigh what it will cost you."
He weighed it, desperate now under that soft inexorable pressure. He saw, rebelling against the vision, all his future loss. Turning from that, he saw, on the other side, prison, and the tide of panic rushing towards him. Already it was cold about his feet. He could not bear it; he fled for refuge to his old purpose. He must get away. To that thought he clung, lifting his agonized face. "What else can I do? What else can I do?"
And then down came the thunder of the Presence all around him, sweeping him from his poor little foothold. "Do, poor weak human child? Trust Me. I will be your strength. Lay your hand in mine and have no fear."
He went down, down, drowned in gulfs of agony, blinded by the light of God. Did he decide for himself, of free will, or was the choice taken out of his hands? It seemed so to him; but in reality it was his own past self which decided, the sum of the courage and the discipline which he had learned in common practice day by day. For God does not save us against our will; and the measure of the triumphant strength which he pours into us in moments of stress is the measure of our own past efforts.
Gardiner lifted his head. The moon was gone now, behind the trees, which threw black shadows across the argent of the lake. He was cold and stiff and desperately tired, but he stood up and began to retrace his steps towards the road. Soon the topaz-gleaming lamps shone through the trees, and he came out not a hundred yards from the point where he had left his bicycle. There was Mars, the star of battles, shining over the glow of London. In the opposite direction lay Southampton and the sea. He turned his back on these, and rode towards that star.