The Other World

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“Yes,” said the girl, “I will tell him that I am proud of him—that if he had remained at home now I would never have married him!”

She walked steadily across the hall and put both her hands out to him. He took them in his own, and bent his head down to them, kissing each of them.

Then he raised his head and looked round at the portraits in the panels, and laughed.

He left the Hall in the evening.

III.

It was the most dismal Christmas that any one in England could remember. Here and there a success had been snatched from the enemy; but the list of casualties published every day made the morning papers a terror to read. The British losses had passed the tenth thousand, and still Buller could not reach Ladysmith and Methuen could not cross the Modder. It seemed as if the last of the Egyptian plagues had fallen on England, and there was not a household in which there was not one dead!

It was a dreary Christmas at Harland Hall. News had arrived a few days previously of Julian’s safe arrival at the Cape and of his having taken part in a skirmish on his way to the front. Every morning his mother and Madge—who had come to stay at the Hall for another month—picked up the newspaper and glanced with fearing eyes down the usual casualty list. When they failed to find his name there they breathed again. There was no thought of festivity in the Hall this Christmas Day, and it was a relief to Madge as well as to Mrs Harland when bedtime came. Before going to bed the girl sat for some time before the fire in her room, with Julian’s portrait in her hand, and on her lap some of the things which his hands had touched—a shrivelled November rose which he had discovered on the last stroll they had together through the garden—a swan’s feather which he had picked up and thrust with a laugh and a mock taunt into her hair—the lace handkerchief which had been given to her on the day of the outbreak of the war. She sat there lost in her own thoughts—praying her own prayers.

Suddenly she became aware of an unusual sound—a sort of tap at rare intervals upon her window-pane. At first she fancied that it was a twig of ivy which was being blown by the breeze against the window, but the next time the sound came she felt sure that it could only be produced by a tiny pebble flung up from the carriage drive.

For a few moments she was slightly alarmed. She quickly extinguished her candle, however, and then went to the window, drawing the blind a little way to one side and peering out. There was no moon, but the sky was full of stars, and she knew that if any one was on the drive there was light enough to make her aware of the fact. For some time, however, her eyes, accustomed to the light of her room, were unable to make out any figure below; but after waiting at the window for a few minutes, it seemed to her that she could detect the figure of a man in the middle of the drive.

She shut out all the light of the fire behind her and continued peering. Beyond a doubt there was a man outside. He was waving something white up to her. In another instant she knew him. A terrible fear took hold upon her, for she knew that she was looking out at a man in khaki uniform, and she knew that that man was Julian Harland. And now she saw him distinctly in the starlight: he was making signs to her, pointing to the porch and walking in that direction.