With a dim flash of doubt, as he said it, whether
there might not, after all, be a Something,--some deep of calm, of
eternal order, where these coarse chances, these wrestling souls, these
creeds, Catholic or Humanitarian, even that namby-pamby Kitts and his
picture, might be unconsciously working out their part. Looking out
of the hospital-window, he saw the deep of the stainless blue,
impenetrable, with the stars unconscious in their silence of the maddest
raging of the petty world. There was such calm! such infinite love and
justice! it was around, above him; it held him, it held the world,--all
Wrong, all Right! For an instant the turbid heart of the man cowered,
awe-struck, as yours or mine has done when some swift touch of music or
human love gave us a cleaving glimpse of the great I AM. The next, he
opened the newspaper in his hand. What part in the eternal order could
_that_ hold? or slavery, or secession, or civil war? No harmony could
be infinite enough to hold such discords, he thought, pushing the whole
matter from him in despair. Why, the experiment of self-government, the
problem of the ages, was crumbling in ruin! So he despaired just as Tige
did the night the mill fell about his ears, in full confidence that the
world had come to an end now, without hope of salvation,--crawling out
of his cellar in dumb amazement, when the sun rose as usual the next
morning.
Knowles sat, peering at Holmes over his paper, watching the languid
breath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, the face
outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before.
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