In the clouds

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Once more there was a call to order. But Kinsard, badgered, turned at bay.

“I heard Judge Gwinnan tell you once that unless you kept out of his way he would beat you with a stick, like a dog. How you do tempt the cur’s deserts!”

Harshaw rose hastily to his feet. He stood for a moment, his head lowered, his eyes flaming from under his knitted brows; he looked like the champion mad bull of an arena, about to charge. Suddenly he turned, and without a word resumed his seat. There was a storm of applause from every quarter of the House. A dozen voices were crying that the offensive words should be taken down; the clerk hastily obeyed; they were read aloud, and the speaker called upon Kinsard to deny them or retract.

Kinsard could have said with all the fervor of truth that he was sorry indeed, but it was in an inapplicable sense. He saw, with a sinking of the heart, the havoc he was making in another’s fate,—the moral murder that hung upon his hands. He looked about with despair at the faces around him: they had been friendly, partisan, when he began to speak against the motion; now they were reluctant, alienated, antagonistic. It were better for Gwinnan had he had no friend but his own repute. The impetuous young fellow felt that he had done the worst that was possible. He would not now eat his words. He looked at Harshaw with an indignant divination of his motives, when that gentleman, begging the indulgence of the House, moved that the matter be dropped. He was not here to maintain personal consequence. He was willing—nay, eager—to waive any individual considerations which hindered the deliberations of the House and the course of justice. If the member were so ungenerous as to decline to apologize for words spoken in heat, confirming them in cool malice, he himself was able to overlook them, the more as his character was, he trusted, too favorably known to be injured by these reflections.

He sat down in the midst of a clamor from a number of eager occupants of the floor,—one of whom the speaker presently recognized,—protesting against the unparliamentary nature of the proposal. The objectionable words were again read, and the speaker called upon Kinsard to apologize or to deny them.

Perhaps Kinsard alone appreciated in this edifying demonstration Harshaw’s policy. He could not be tempted to run counter. He would not slack his pursuit of Gwinnan for another trail, however alluring. He had higher game in view than the stripling’s insults could furnish. And he had made himself an example of marvelous tolerance, forbearance, and dignity.

Kinsard, lowering and pierced with all the barbed realization of futility and defeat, adopted his words, refused to retract or apologize, and, being commanded by the speaker to withdraw, took up his hat, and, with a scornful, indifferent manner that angered every member as if charged with a personal relation, strode out of the room.

Harshaw had followed his motions with narrowing eyelids. His attention had relaxed with momentary exultation at this result. He was smiling a little in his beard, and he glanced in a debonair preoccupation out of the window near his seat. The sky was red, for the sun was going down. He noted the flush with a casual eye, unprescient how it should be with him when the day, fading now and dropping its dulling petals on every side, should whitely bloom again. Then he reverted with zest to the proceedings within.

Kinsard walked slowly along the portico to the flight of steps. A belt of clouds, their edges glinting with gold, obscured the scarlet disk of the sun, but from their lower verge a great glory of yellow light gushed down, each of the multitudinous rays distinct, giving a fibrous effect, upon the blue hills of the horizon, upon the city in the foreground. Here and there they struck upon a spire or a tin roof that responded with a glister fiercely white. The intervals showed soft shadows of restful tints, the tops of the budding trees, the silver-gray shingles of an old house, and here and there an open space where the renewed blue-grass grew apace. It wore a dark richness all adown the slopes of the Capitol hill. Somehow as he noted it there was borne upon him for the moment a subtle intimation of the serenity of that life of Nature close to our artificial existence,—mysterious, inevitable, quiescent. The contrast gave a sharpened sense of the turmoils of his heart, the weariness of his spirit, the rasping jars of his petty cares. He paused on the sidewalk and looked about him. Then he produced a cigar, and took his way down into the city.