The Yellow House; Master of Men

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

It was at evensong in the great cathedral that she tasted the first fruits of her triumph. During the earlier portion of the service the shadows had half enveloped the huge body of the building, and the white faces of the congregation had been only dimly visible to us from where we sat in one of the high side pews. But when my father ascended the steps into the pulpit, and stood for a minute looking downwards with the light from a little semi-circle of candles thrown upon his pale, delicate face, I caught the sound of a sharp, smothered cry from a seat close to ours. With a little shiver of dread I looked around. She had half risen from her seat, and was leaning over the front of the pew. Her eyes were riveted upon him, and her thin, sallow face was white with sudden excitement. I saw him look up, and their eyes met for one terrible moment. He did not flinch or falter. But for the slightly prolonged resting of his eyes upon her eager, strained face he took no more notice of her than of any other member of the congregation. I alone knew that her challenge had been met and answered, and it was my hard fate to sit there and suffer in silence.

There was no mark of nervousness or weakness of any sort in the sermon he preached. He seemed to be speaking with a consciousness perhaps that it might be for the last time, and with a deliberate effort that some part of those delicately chosen sentences might leave an everlasting mark behind him. Already his fame as a preacher was spreading, and many of the townspeople were there, attracted by his presence. They listened with a rare and fervid attention. As for me, it seemed that I should never altogether lose the memory of that low, musical voice, never once raised above its ordinary pitch, yet with every word penetrating softly and clearly into the furthermost corner of the great building. There was a certain wistfulness in his manner that night, a gentle, pathetic eloquence which brought glistening tears into the eyes of more than one of the little throng of listeners. For he spoke of death, and of the leaving behind of all earthly things—of death, and of spiritual death—of the ties between man and woman and man and God. It was all so different to what is generally expected from a preacher with the reputation of eloquence, so devoid of the usual arts of oratory, and yet so sweetly human, æsthetically beautiful that when at last, with a few words, in a sense valedictory he left the pulpit, and the low strains of the organ grew louder and louder. I slipped from my seat and groped across the close with my eyes full of blinding tears. I had a passionate conviction that I had misjudged my father. Suddenly he seemed to loom before my eyes in a new light—the light of a martyr. My judgments concerning him seemed harsh and foolish. Who was I to judge such a man as that? He was as far above me as the stars, and I had refused him my sympathy. He had begged for it, and I had refused it! I had left him to carry his burden alone! It seemed to me then that never whilst I lived could I escape from the bitterness of this sudden whirlwind of regret.

Swiftly though I had walked from the cathedral, he was already in his study when I entered the house. I opened the door timidly. He was sitting in his chair leaning back with half-closed eyes like a man overcome with sudden pain. I fell on my knees by his side and took his fingers in mine.

“Father!” I cried, “I have done my best to keep her away! I have done all that I could!”

His hand pressed mine gently. Then there was a loud ringing at the bell. I sprang up white with fear.

“I will not let her come here!” I cried. “We will say that you are ill! She must go away!”

He shook his head.

“It is useless,” he said, quietly; “it must come sooner or later—better now perhaps. Let us wait, I have left word that she is to be shown in here.”

There was a brief silence. Then we heard steps in the hall, the rustling of a woman’s gown, and the door was opened and closed. She came forward to the edge of the little circle of light thrown around us by my father’s reading lamp. There she stood with a great red spot burning in her cheeks, and a fierce light in her eyes.