The Yellow House; Master of Men

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

“Colville Hall?” I repeated. “What sort of place is that? The name sounds familiar.”

“You will see for yourself,” she answered. “It is close here. I will tell the man to stop.”

We were in the thick of the East End, when the cab pulled up in front of a large square building, brilliantly illuminated. Great placards were posted upon the walls, and a constant stream of men and women were passing through the wide open doors. Bruce elbowed a way for us through the crowd, and we found ourselves at last wedged in amongst them, irresistibly carried along into the interior of the great hall. We passed the threshold in a minute or two. Then we paused to take breath. I looked around me with a throb of eager curiosity.

It was a wonderful sight. The room was packed with a huge audience, mostly of men and boys. Nearly all had pipes in their mouths, and the atmosphere of the place was blue with smoke. On a raised platform at the further end several men were sitting, also smoking, and then, with a sudden, swift shock of surprise, I realized that our search was indeed over. One of them was my father, coarsely and poorly dressed, and holding between his fingers a small briar pipe.

Notwithstanding the motley assemblage, the silence in the hall was intense. There were very few women there, and they, as well as the men, appeared to be of the lowest order. Their faces were all turned expectantly towards the platform. One or two of them were whispering amongst themselves, but my father’s voice—he had risen to his feet now—sounded clear and distinct above the faint murmuring—we too, held our breath.

“My friends,” he said quietly, “I am glad to see so many of you here to-night. I have come a long way to have my last talk with you. Partings are always sad things, and I shall feel very strange when I leave this hall to-night, to know that in all human probability I shall never set foot in it again. But our ways are made for us, and all that we can do is to accept them cheerfully. To-night, my friends, it is for us to say farewell.”

Something of the sort seemed to have been expected, yet there were a good many concerned and startled faces; a little half-protesting, half-kindly murmur of negation.

“Gar on! You’re not a-going to leave us, gov-nor!”

My father shook his head, smiling faintly. Notwithstanding his rough attire, the delicacy of his figure and the statuesque beauty of his calm, pale face were distinctly noticeable. With an irresistible effort of memory I seemed to see once more the great cathedral, with its dim, solemn hush, the shadows around the pillars, and the brilliantly lit chancel, a little oasis of light shining through the gloom. The perfume of the flowers, and the soft throbbing music of the great organ seemed to be floating about on the thick, noxious air. Then my father, his hand pressed to his side, and his face soft with a wonderful tenderness, commenced his farewell address to these strange looking people.

Very soon I had forgotten where I was. My eyes were wet with tears, and my heart was aching with a new pain. The gentle, kindly, eloquence, the wan face, with its irresistible sweet smile, so human, so marvellously sympathetic, was a revelation to me. It was a farewell to a people with whom he must have been brought into vivid and personal communion, a message of farewell, too, to others of them who were not there. It was a sermon—did they think of it as a sermon, I wonder?—to the like of which I had certainly never listened before, which seemed to tell between the lines as though with a definite purpose the story of his own sorrows and his own sins. In that great hall there was no sound, save those slow words vibrating with nervous force, which seemed each one of them to leave him palpably the weaker. Some let their pipes go out, others smoked stolidly on, with their faces steadfastly fixed upon that thin, swaying figure. The secret of his long struggle with them and his tardy victory seemed to become revealed to us in their attitude towards him and their reverent silence. One forgot all about their unwashed faces and miserable attire, the foul tobacco smoke, and the hard, unsexed-looking women who listened with bowed heads as though ashamed to display a very unusual emotion. One remembered only that the place was holy.