The Return of the Soldier

ten to her for a fortnight! Besides, if he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting was really ho

a fat fist would certainly have been raised to point out the new, translucent glories of the rosebud. Sunlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft rugs, patterned with strange beasts, and threw dancing beams, which should have been gravely watched for hours, on the white paint and the blue distempered walls. It fell on the rocking-horse, which had been Chris's idea of an appropriate present for his year-old son, and showed what a fine fellow he was and how tremendously dappled; it picked out Ma

nd a large "15 cents" somewhere attached to her person. She had taken Nanny's big basket-chair from its place by the high-chair, and was pushing it over to the middle window. "I always come in here when Emery has washed my hair. It's the sunniest room in the house. I wish

manicurist, and between them they massaged the dear old place into matter for innumerable photographs in the illustrated papers. The house lies on the crest of Harrowweald, and from its windows the eye drops to miles of emerald pasture-land lying wet and brilliant under a westward line of sleek hills; blue with distance an

now and then, l

No-Man's-Land, starting back here because he trod upon a hand, not even looking there because of the awfulness of an unburied head, and not till my dream was packed full of horror did I see him pitch forward on his knees as he reached safety, if it was that. For on the war-films I have seen men slip down as softly from the trench-parapet, and none but the grimmer philosophers could say that they had reached safety by their fall. And when I escaped into wakefulness it

from Chris. It is a fo

to fuss!" and bent over her image in a hand-mirror a

rld that was, so far as surfaces could make it so, good enough for his amazing goodness. Here we had nourished that surpassing amiability which was so habitual that one took it as one of his physical characteristics, and regarded any lapse into bad temper as a calamity as startling as

to the edge of the wood and stood staring down into the clumps of dark-leaved rhododendrons and the yellow tangle of last year's bracken and the cold winter black of the trees. (From this very window I had spied on him.) Then he moved broodingly back to the house to be with his wife until the moment of his going, when Kitty and I stood on the steps to see him motor off to Waterloo. He kissed us both. As he bent over me I noticed once again how his hair was of two colors, brown and gold. Then he got into

back!" I said. "He

tty an

ot have bee

about to dissolve into better, from the passionate anticipation with which he went to new countries or met new people, I was aware that this faith had persisted into his adult life. He had exchanged his expectation of becoming a red Indian for the equally wistful aspiration of becoming completely reconciled to life. It was his hopeless hope that some time he would have an experience that would act on his life like alchemy, turning to gold all the dark metals of events, and from that revelation he would go on his way rich with an inextinguishable joy. There had been, of course, no chance of his ever getting it. Literally there wasn't room to swing a revelation in his crowded life. First of all, at his f

parlor-maid came in with a card on the tray, how little it mattered who had called and what flag of prettiness or wit she flew, since there was no chance that Chris would come in and stan

ad from

the name of the red suburban stain which fouls the fields three miles nearer London than Harrowweald. One

news for you." From her tone one could deduce an over-confiding explanat

ndered,

-jacket over the rocking-horse. "I'm seeing her because she may need something, and I specially want to be kind to people while Chris is away. One wants to deserve well of heaven." For a minute she was aloof in radiance, but as we linked arms and went out into the corridor sh

mething out of a little bottle bought at the chemist's. She had rolled her black thread gloves into a ball on her lap, so that she could turn her gray alpaca skirt well above her muddy boots and adjust its

airs. On the last step she paused and said

stays clicked as she moved. Well, she was not so bad. Her body was long and round and shapely, and with a noble squareness of the shoulders; her fair hair curled diffidently about a good brow; her gray eyes, though they were remote, as if anything worth looking at in her life had kept a long way off, were full of tenderness; and though she was slender, th

at us as w

is sister to your

us at

out a reference

r-nail she followed the burst seam of the dark pigskin purse that slid about on her shiny alpaca lap. "But girls talk, y

he curse of women's lives, a domestic row, Kitty s

sip that I wanted to talk about. I only mentioned Gladys"-she continued to t

don't

drooped

Forgive me, I don

Kitty, wonderingly. "What

r and its view of dark pines and pale March

's hurt," she

ou mean?" a

s she moved her mild face abo

said, "he

gone to some expense to come here with her news and that she was poor, and at the first generous look on our faces there would come some tale of trouble that would disgust the imagination by pictures of yellow-wood furniture that a landlord oddly desired to seize and a pallid child with bandages round its throat. I cast down my eyes and shivered at the horror. Yet there was something about the physical quality of the woman, unlovely though she was, which preserved the occas

, being a little

wounded?"

pattern on the carpe

t it; he's not exactly

n?" sugges

s a term she had long brooded over without arriving at comprehension,

ragged on lamely, "Anyway, he's not well." Again sh

Is he dange

kind to harrow us. "

ler could not bear it, and broke it in a voice that

iggle on her seat, and stooped forward to fumble under the legs of her chair for her umbrella.

ou know a

h a catch of her breath. "A man who used to be a clerk along with my husband is in Mr. Baldry's regiment." Her

ment is that?"

low face sho

ought to as

ur friend

and lay at my feet. I supposed that she cast it from her purposely because its emptiness had

but that this queer, ugly episode in which this woman butted like a clumsy animal at a gate she was not intelligent enough to open would dissolve and be rep

hris i

cause we would not shriek at her false news, the impudently bright, indignant gaze she flung at us, the lift of her voice that pretended she could not understand our coolness and irrelevance. I pushed the purse away from me with

his story because you think that you will get some money. I've read of such cases in the papers. You forget that if anything had happened to my husband the War Offi

ustrated fraud. But Mrs. Grey, who had begun childishly and deliberately, "It's you who are being-" and had desisted simply because she realized that there were no harsh notes on her lyre, and that she could not strike these chords that others found so easy,

e. "There's some mistake. Got the name wro

after that purse. When she rose, her face was pink from stooping, an

een years ago." Her voice freely confessed that she had taken a liberty. "Quite a friend of the family he was." She had added that touch to soften the crude surprisingness of her a

knew suddenly that all she said was true; for

aid pleadingly. "He's lost his memory

to Kitty, who read it,

s sent to my old home, Monkey Island, at Bray. Father kept the inn there. It's fifteen years since we left it. I never should

e telegram and sai

a likel

e to one," she visibly said, but surely not nic

out, as th

about shell-sho

lted into a tr

as a let

ld out h

ga

I couldn'

ave it,"

and dived clumsily for her umbrella,

t hospital I said," as if, since I had dealt her no direct blow, I might be able to salve the news she brought from the general wreck of manners. And then Kitty's stiff pallor struck to her heart, and cried comf

ike the pines above, her cheap boots making her walk on her heels, a spreading stain on the fabric of our life. When she was quite hidden by the dark clump

I followed

believ

gotten that we had e

" I r

stared at me imploringly. "Think, think, of s

dly, because nobody had ever been cross wi

n't be true. But if he isn't-Jenny, there was nothing in that telegram to show he'd lost his memory. It was just affection-a name that might have been a pet name, things that it was a little common to put in a telegram. It's queer he should have wr

hat seemed to be plucking Chris's soul from his bod

s is ill!

tared

ying what

tter words than those Mrs.

he is

face against

ailed. "If he could send that