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Title: The Return of the Soldier

Author: Rebecca West

Release Date: August 24, 2011 [EBook #37189]

Language: English

Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
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He lay there in the confiding relaxation of a child

THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER

BY
REBECCA WEST

NEW colophon YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER
-C-
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


He lay there in the confiding relaxation of a child	Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
"Give it a brush now and then, like a good soul"	6
She would get into the four-foot punt that was used as a ferry and bring it over very slowly	66
"I oughtn't to do it, ought I"	176

CHAPTER: I, II, III, IV, V, VI

THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER

CHAPTER I

“AH, don't begin to fuss!" wailed Kitty. "If a woman began to worry in these days because her husband hadn't written to her for a fortnight! Besides, if he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting was really hot, he'd have found some way of telling me instead of just leaving it as 'Somewhere in France.' He'll be all right."

We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it again, now that the child was dead; but I had come suddenly on Kitty as she slipped the key into the lock, and I had lingered to look in at the high room, so full of whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar, which is kept in all respects as though there were still a child in the house. It was the first lavish day of spring, and the sunlight was pouring through the tall, arched windows and the flowered curtains so brightly that in the old days 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 Mary and her little lamb on the chintz ottoman. And along the mantelpiece, under the loved print of the snarling tiger, in attitudes that were at once angular and relaxed, as though they were ready for play at their master's pleasure, but found it hard to keep from drowsing in this warm weather, sat the Teddy Bear and the chimpanzee and the woolly white dog and the black cat with eyes that roll. Everything was there except Oliver. I turned away so that I might not spy on Kitty revisiting her dead. But she called after me: