enter these enchanted woods,
you who dare!
the woods of westermain.
gardiner bought himself an outfit at a second-hand dealer's in one of the back streets off the vauxhall bridge road. his plan was to ride as far as the next station before southampton, leave his machine at the cloak-room there, and change his clothes in some wood before going on into the town. once among the docks, he would slip on board some outward-bound ship, if he could find one about to sail and if he could evade the night watchman, and stow away till she was at sea. such things are still done by gentlemen whose reasons for not signing on in public are urgent. of course the captain might hand him over to the british consul at the end of the voyage—but he preferred not to think of that.
from the portobello inn to london is exactly twenty-one miles, from london to southampton is something under eighty: a longish journey for an out-of-practice rider on a strange machine. gardiner left town by the portsmouth road. the first green he passed (by such things did he count off the stages of his journey, where another man would have reckoned by inns), was clapham common, a dismal vision of lamps, railings, wet asphalt, unhappy grass, and avenues of suicidal trees. next came wandsworth common; then, beyond roehampton, wimbledon and richmond park. they gave him a breath of true night sweetness, but he was in surbiton directly, with its blazing lamps and self-complacent villas. gardiner hated suburbs. better the frank vulgar life of the vauxhall bridge road than their soul-destroying, smug respectability. he raced on[pg 148] through esher, sedate and pleasant old town; and with the end of esher came the beginning of the real country.
"my soul
smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll,
freshening and fluttering in the wind...."
beyond the palings of claremont park, at the entrance of the oxshott woods, he was brought up by a puncture. he mended it, crouching under a lamp beside the road. unfenced, alluring, dangerous, the woods pressed up behind. they sent forward their scouts, silver birches up to their knees in bracken which crept out to the very edge of the road, black pines stalking forward, stealthy as red-skins, to peer down at the stranger. scents and sounds of the forest floated out, filaments of enticement. gardiner glanced irresolutely down the road, while under the solemn-burning, stately procession of lamps, which marched away through the night over valley and hill. a car rushed by, steaming golden vapors: it glared at him for an instant with big golden eyes, and was gone, with dying roar. he looked down the road of mankind; and then over his shoulder at the silent tempting ranks of the pines and the soft savage darkness that pressed close on every side. if he rested here for ten minutes or so? he was tired; and there was no hurry. he dragged his bicycle out of the ditch and wheeled it into the woods.
moss underfoot; on either side the pines, scattered at first among fine-leaved undergrowth, then closing up in ordered ranks. his lamp tiger-striped their dark even columns till he left the machine propped against one of them. even by day the heart of these woods is lonely. the trippers who sit by companies along every green ride, with their buns and oranges, never wander far from the path. presumably they are afraid of bears. now, by night, the whole forest was triumphantly savage, solitary, and dark, so dark that gardiner, though he had cat's eyes, sometimes greeted his friends the trees by running into them. he soon strayed from the track. underfoot the ground became swampy.[pg 149] pools of red-brown rain-water splashed him to the knee; long brambles trailed their thorns across his face.
the ground rose beneath his feet, and he found himself stumbling up a hill, his feet sinking deep in soft masses of pine-needles. here was the summit of a ridge, so steep and narrow that on either side he could see the pallor of the sky between the dark columns of the trees. as he followed the line of the ridge downwards the woods closed again, but there grew before him, low among the stems, a sort of pool of whiteness: not the sky this time, but the light of some clearing. the ridge came to its end in an abrupt round knoll, the ground fell away at his feet, and there—o miracle of sudden loveliness!—before him shone a lake. ebony and silver, polished like a mirror, misted with faint gauze, it lay in a cup of soft black woods. a rustling throng of rushes, pale and ghostly, stepped forward into the water among their slim reflections. silver-gray and even-tinted, the sky arched above, cut by the small incisive crescent of the moon.
gardiner threw himself down among the pine-needles. he gave himself to the woods, and let them work on him with their melancholy and voluptuous charm. the night took his spirit in her cool hands and smoothed it out, as the sun smoothes and strengthens the crumpled wings of a new-hatched butterfly. it was not enough that he should steep himself in loveliness; a thousand light touches were stilling and charming every nerve of sensation, smell and touch and hearing as well as sight. there was the surging murmur of the wind among the pines; night perfumes of water and forest; warm elastic softness of the fir-needles under his tired body. the old pagan earth was whispering her seductions into his ear.
"love and joy be thine, o spirit, for ever;
serve thy sweet desire; despise endeavor."
"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[pg 150] 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[pg 151] 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.
[pg 152]
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.
