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.
There was a friend whom more than once he had thought of consulting, but a sense of shame had restrained him. Now in this crisis of his affairs, he felt that no other course lay open to him, and that if it was in any way possible he should act upon whatsoever advice should be given him.
He wrapped himself in his heavy mackintosh, pressed down his soft felt hat closely, and set out to walk toward Dulwich through the wind and the rain. The raw air at first chilled then stimulated him and he made his way along rapidly. Gradually the ferment in his mind was allayed, and when he arrived in sight of his friend’s house, he almost hesitated as to going in; the physical exercise seemed to have cleared his mental horizon. But the half-hesitation brought back the feeling of helplessness from which he was trying to escape and he hurried on.
“Why, Edward! You! It’s an age since you came my way; I thought you’d forgotten me. Give the girl your things—so—come along in here and warm yourself by the fire. You don’t know how glad I am to see you. But—you’re not looking well, though you’ve got a color.”
The speaker was a middle-aged, thin little woman, with a sharp face, stamped deeply by the hand of pain, with deep-set, kindly gray eyes and a mouth that seemed formed so as to be able to give utterance only to words of kindness or of consolation.
She sat down opposite him.
“Aren’t you well, Edward?”
“Yes, yes, thank you, I’m quite well in body. I see—you haven’t heard?”