Rudyard Kipling

Actions and Reactions Rudyard Kipling

It came without warning, at the very hour his hand was outstretched to crumple the Holz andGunsberg Combine. The New York doctors called it overwork, and he lay in a darkened room, oneankle crossed above the other, tongue pressed into palate, wondering whether the next brain-surgeof prickly fires would drive his soul from all anchorages. At last they gave judgment. With care hemight in two years return to the arena, but for the present he must go across the water and do nowork whatever. He accepted the terms. It was capitulation; but the Combine that had shiveredbeneath his knife gave him all the honours of war: Gunsberg himself, full of condolences, came tothe steamer and filled the Chapins' suite of cabins with overwhelming flower-works."Smilax," said George Chapin when he saw them. "Fitz is right. I'm dead; only I don't see why heleft out the 'In Memoriam' on the ribbons!""Nonsense!" his wife answered, and poured him his tincture. "You'll be back before you canthink."He looked at himself in the mirror, surprised that his face had not been branded by the hells ofthe past three months. The noise of the decks worried him, and he lay down, his tongue only a littlepressed against his palate. An hour later he said: "Sophie, I feel sorry about taking you away from everything like this. I-Isuppose we're the two loneliest people on God's earth to-night."Said Sophie his wife, and kissed him: "Isn't it something to you that we're going together?"