At times, too, he would turn from the anvil and the darkness within and come out into the doorway for a breath of air; and here he would look out upon the day—the great broad empty day.
A man with a sledge-hammer in his hands instinctively looks up at the heavens. He has inherited that instinct from his great ancestor, who brought down fire and thought to men, and taught them to rebel against God.
Peer looked at the sky, and at the clouds, sweeping across it in a meaningless turmoil. Rebellion against someone up there? But heaven is empty. There is no one to rebel against.
But then all the injustice, the manifold iniquity! Who is to sit in judgment on it at the great day?
Who? No one.
What? Think of the millions of all kinds of martyrs, who died under the bloodiest torments, yet innocent as babes at the breast—is there to be no day of reparation for them?
None.
But there must be a whole world-full of victims of injustice, whose souls flit restlessly around, because they died under a weight of undeserved shame—because they lost a battle in which the right was theirs—because they suffered and strove for truth, but went down because falsehood was the stronger. Truth? Right? Is there no one, then, who will one day give peace to the dead in their graves and set things in their right places? Is there no one?
No one.
The world rolls on its way. Fate is blind, and God smiles while Satan works his will upon Job.