文档介绍：ACTIONS AND REACTIONS
ACTIONS AND
REACTIONS
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
1
ACTIONS AND REACTIONS
AN HABITATION ENFORCED
My friend, if cause doth wrest thee, Ere folly hath much oppressed
thee, Far from acquaintance kest thee Where country may digest thee . . .
Thank God that so hath blessed thee, And sit down, Robin, and rest
TUSSER.
It came without warning, at the very hour his hand was outstretched to
crumple the Holz and bine. The New York doctors called it
overwork, and he lay in a darkened room, one ankle crossed above the
other, tongue pressed into palate, wondering whether the next brain-surge
of prickly fires would drive his soul from all anchorages. At last they gave
judgment. With care he might in two years return to the arena, but for the
present he must go across the water and do no work whatever. He accepted
the terms. It was capitulation; but bine that had shivered beneath
his knife gave him all the honours of war: Gunsberg himself, full of
condolences, came to the steamer and filled the Chapins' suite of cabins
with overwhelming flower-works.
"Smilax," said e Chapin when he saw them. "Fitz is right. I'm
dead; only I don't see why he left out the 'In Memoriam' on the ribbons!"
"Nonsense!" his wife answered, and poured him his tincture. "You'll be
back before you can think."
He looked at himself in the mirror, surprised that his face had not been
branded by the hells of the past three months. The noise of the decks
worried him, and he lay down, his tongue only a little pressed against his
palate.
An hour later he said: "Sophie, I feel sorry about taking you away
from everything like this. I--I suppose 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?"
They drifted about Europe for months--sometimes alone, sometimes
with chance met gipsies of their own land. From the North Cape to the
Blue Grotto at Capri t