Truth will not underlie all facts, in this muddle
of a world, in spite of the Positive Philosophy, you know.
Don't sneer at Knowles. Your own clear, tolerant brain, that
reflects all men and creeds alike, like colourless water, drawing
the truth from all, is very different, doubtless, from this
narrow, solitary soul, who thought the world waited for him to
fight down his one evil before it went on its slow way. An
intolerant fanatic, of course. But the truth he did know was so
terribly real to him, there was such sick, throbbing pity in his
heart for men who suffered as he had done! And then, fanatics
must make history for conservative men to learn from, I suppose.
If Knowles shunned the hospital, there was another place he
shunned more,--the place where his Communist buildings were to
have stood. He went out there once, as one might go alone to
bury his dead out of his sight, the day after the mill was
burnt,--looking first at the smoking mass of hot bricks and
charred shingles, so as clearly to understand how utterly dead
his life-long scheme was. He stalked gravely around it, his
hands in his pockets; the hodmen who were raking out their
winter's firewood from the ashes remarking, that "old Knowles
didn't seem a bit cut up about it." Then he went out to the farm
he had meant to buy, as I told you, and looked at it in the same
stolid way. It was a dull day in October. The river crawled
moodily past his feet, the dingy prairie stretched drearily away
on the other side, while the heavy-browed Indiana hills stood
solemnly looking down the plateau where the buildings were to
have risen.
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