“Because,” replied Laronde bitterly, “if there was a God He could not stand by and see me suffering such prolonged and awful misery.”
“If, instead of misery, you had been placed during the last twelve years in supreme felicity, would you have believed in a God?” asked Sommers.
Laronde was silent. He saw that the reason which he had given for disbelief was untenable, and he was too straightforward to quibble about it.
“I don’t know,” he said at last angrily. “No doubt there are hundreds of men in happy and favourable circumstances who say, as I do, that they don’t believe in a God. I don’t know. All I do know is that I am supremely miserable!”
“Now you are reasonable,” returned the merchant, “for you talk of what you do know, and you admit that in regard to God you ‘don’t know,’ but you began by stating that ‘there is no God.’ Ah, my friend, I sympathise with you in your terrible sorrow, even as you have sympathised with me in mine, but don’t let us give way to despair and cast the only Refuge that remains to us behind our backs. I will not ask you to join me in praying to One in whom you say you do not believe, but I will pray for you.”
Hugh Sommers got upon his knees and then and there—in the dark and dank prison-house—prayed most earnestly for guidance and spiritual light in the name of Jesus. At first the Frenchman listened with what we may style kindly contempt, and then with surprise, for the Englishman drew to the conclusion of his very brief prayer without any mention of his own name. Just at the close, however, Sommers said, “O God! show to my friend here that he is wrong, and that Thou art Love.”
It was with eager and trembling heart next day that Hugh Sommers watched, during the noontide meal, for the coming of his mysterious black friend, and it was with no less anxiety and trembling of heart that Hester approached her father at the same hour.
“Now mind how you doos,” said the doubtful Sally, as she glanced keenly at Hester’s face. “Mind, I’ll hab no marcy on you if you gibs way!”
Hester made no reply, for she was drawing near to her father, and saw that he was gazing at her with fixed intensity. She raised her heart to God and received strength to pass without a word or look, dropping the biscuits as on the previous day. The man, however, proved less capable of self-restraint than the girl, for he could not resist whispering, “Hester!”
The poor girl turned towards him as if by an irresistible impulse, but her black guardian angel was equal to the emergency. Seizing Hester by the shoulder, she pushed her violently forward, storming at her loudly as on the former occasion.