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.
The words of farewell were spoken at last. He did not openly speak of death, yet I doubt whether there was one of them who did not divine it. He stood upon the little platform holding out his hands towards them, and they left their places in orderly fashion, yet jealously eager to be amongst the first to clasp them, and somehow we three felt that it was no place for us, and we made our way out again on to the pavement. My mother and I looked at one another with wet eyes.
"At last, then," I murmured, "we know his secret. Would to God that we had known before."
"It is wonderful," my mother answered, "that he has escaped recognition. There has been so much written about this place lately. Only last week I was asked to come here. Every one has been talking about the marvellous influence he has gained over these people."
We waited there for him. In little groups the congregation came slowly out and dispersed. The lights in the main body of the building were extinguished. Still he did not come. We were on the point of seeking for a side entrance when a man came hurriedly out of the darkened building and commenced running up the street. Something seemed to tell me the truth.