Squire had finished his frugal breakfast, and stood, newspaper in hand, looking aimlessly out of the window. The trouble through which he was passing had left no trace or mark upon his face, but there was a restless misery in his eyes. Sighing heavily, he held up the paper and glanced at it without purpose, almost unconsciously. “Sunshine at Brighton” was the heading of an article down which his eye ran without comprehension until Maddison’s name fixed his attention:—“Another well-known face occasionally seen on the King’s Road is that of Mr. George Maddison, the A.R.A., who is staying at his cottage at Rottingdean.”
He crushed the paper angrily and threw it aside. They were at Rottingdean, then; that was why his watch upon the studio had been vain. They had gone away, trusting to his not being able to trace them.
Since his interview with Maddison, Squire’s life had been a restless dream; every purpose had left him save one, the finding of Marian. Despite the upshot of his last conversation with her, he still felt confident that he could rescue her from the terrible life she was leading. Hour after hour, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, he had watched the studio in hopes of meeting her. He had seen Maddison several times, but had avoided him; it was Marian with whom he desired to speak. He had tried to track Maddison more than once, but one accident or another had baffled him. Then Maddison appeared no more, and he had had to wait upon “the skirts of happy chance,” and now fate had helped him. Still he hesitated, for by several incidents it had been borne in upon him that to save one soul he was neglecting many others intrusted to his care—sinners, some of them, greater even than Marian. Could he feel assured that he was pursuing the right course? That there was no element of self in his eagerness to find Marian and to save her? Would he have been so eager had she been a stranger to him? He was torn this way and that by the doubts which assailed him.
In the efficacy of prayer he had absolute faith, and consternation had assailed him when he found that prayer brought no relief to his agony or solution of his difficulty. He had asked for guidance, and God had not granted him any. Heretofore prayer had always brought him peace; not realizing that he had never before been in distress or difficulty, it shocked, then stunned him, that no response apparently was to be made to his faithful pleading for assistance. It is said that the extreme terror caused by an earthquake arises from the failure of the one last resort of safety when all else is crumbling, by the trembling, the shattering beneath the feet of the solid earth itself; when that fails no refuge is left. It was thus with Squire now; misery might be his lot, but not terror at any disaster or misfortune, for “God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world”—that had been his faith. But was God in His heaven? He had raised his voice to heaven and had prayed for succor, but there had been no answer: had God forgotten him? There was no sense of rebellion or of protest in his heart, only piteous helplessness and loneliness. His spiritual pride had died; humility had taken its place, but mingled with it was an almost insane dread that unwittingly he had sinned so heinously that God had cast him away. As he had knelt this morning, words of prayer had refused to come. He had striven to say “Our Father Which art in Heaven,” but his trembling lips had stumbled; in agony he had buried his face in his hands and wept.