ephraim judd's mother was a widow. her husband, a journeyman carpenter by trade, had died many years before, leaving her with three young children and a small legacy of debts. help, however, had come to her from various quarters. a home had been found for her two younger children, both of whom were girls, in a certain charitable institution, while she herself had been set up in a small way of business as a clearstarcher, and presently enough work had come to her in that line to keep her constantly employed. at this time ephraim was at school, an earnest, painstaking lad, who wrote a beautiful hand, and had a clever head for figures. as it happened, mr. avison the elder was one of the school visitors, and ephraim being one of the show scholars, his attention was drawn to the boy; and thus it fell out that when the latter was fourteen years old, a position as boy-messenger was found for him in the bank. there, in the course of years, he had gradually worked himself up from the lowest rung of the ladder to the position we now find him occupying.
mrs. judd still lived in the same humble domicile in which her husband had died, and ephraim lodged with her, paying her a fixed weekly sum. to do the young fellow justice, he would fain have had the widow give up her clear-starching business, and remove with him to a house in a better class neighborhood.
"i can afford it, mother," he used to say. "there's no need for you to do another day's work as long as you live."
"and how should i contrive to get through the day, ephy, my lad, if i had no work to do?" she would reply. "i'm not one of your fine ladies as can sit with their arms folded on their lap by the hour together. thou must just let me go on as i have since thy father died, and instead of spending thy extry money on me, put it away in the bank. thou'll mayhap want it all one o' these days."
mrs. judd's two daughters had left the institution long ago, and were away in domestic service. now, ephraim, like a great many other people, had two totally opposite sides to his character. to the majority of people he was merely an ordinary, painstaking young clerk, but there were others who knew him under quite a different aspect. the fact was that ephraim was a prominent member of a certain numerically small sect of noncomformists, who for the purposes of this narrative may be called "templetonians." they were not a wealthy body by any means, and their meeting-place was a large room up a narrow court in one of the least reputable streets in ashdown, which had at one time been used as a granary. like other and far more pretentious religious bodies, the templetonians were desirous of making as many proselytes as possible; and, with that end in view, were in the habit, during the summer months, of sending out such of their members as showed any gifts in the way of extempore preaching and praying into the villages round about, where, on sunday evenings, they made a point of "holding forth" to such of the rural population as cared to listen to them.
among those rough-and-ready expounders of the peculiar tenets of the templetonians, ephraim judd was one of the most popular and effective. he had that baneful gift of fluency which enables its possessor to bury the platitudes and commonplaces which, five times out of six, form his sole stock in trade, under a flow of words which his ignorant hearers mistake for eloquence, and which, for the time being, imparts to what he has to say some of the relish of original thought.
it was a faculty the possession of which ephraim had discovered by accident--it is almost needless to say that he regarded it as a special gift from a superior power--but after he had once become aware of its existence, he did not fail to exercise it as often as an opportunity of doing so offered itself. but ephraim was thoroughly in earnest in his preaching and expounding; whatever his other failings might be, he was far from being a conscious hypocrite.
it was only during the light evenings between april and september that ephraim and his co-workers could look to get an open-air audience together. had they attempted to do so during the ordinary hours of morning service, the rural police would undoubtedly have ordered them to "move on;" while on hot summer afternoons, after the heavy sunday dinner, the bucolic inclination is for sleep, rather than for mental excitations of even the most rudimentary kind, however stimulating the latter may be when indulged in at proper times and seasons.
to say that ephraim judd was not troubled in his mind by the part he had played--or, as he preferred to put it to himself, had been compelled to play--at the inquest, and subsequently at the trial of john brancker, would be to do him scant justice indeed. circumstances--of his own bringing about, it is true--had so conspired against him that only one of two alternatives remained open to him: he must either tell what he knew, and thereby bring about his own ruin, or otherwise, by keeping silent, help to brand his best friend with the stigma of a most heinous crime. he was a moral coward, and when the crucial moment came, his courage failed him. he allowed john brancker to go to his trial, when a dozen words spoken by him would have gone far towards his exculpation.
like edward hazeldine, he told himself that, should john be found guilty, then, at that extreme moment, he would unburden himself of his secret, let the consequences to himself be what they might. as it fell out, however, neither he nor edward were called upon to make any such sacrifice.
but not only had ephraim kept silent when it behoved him to speak; he had done worse than that; in a moment of weakness he had perjured himself--he had sworn to a lie. the coroner had asked him whether he had seen mr. brancker leave the bank after the latter had entered it to obtain possession of his umbrella, and he had replied that he had not; whereas the fact was that he had remained lurking no great way off, until he had seen john quit the bank not more than three or four minutes later. since then, to make matters worse, from the ruin he had tacitly helped to bring about there had come to him both preferment and a liberal increase of salary. small wonder was it that the young bank clerk was a most unhappy man.
on a certain saturday evening towards the end of january, ephriam was sent for to the house of mr. hoskins, the pastor of the ashdown templetonians. there he found john iredale, an elderly man, a cabinetmaker by trade, one of his co-religionists, and the leader of the choir. mr. hoskins had slipped on the ice, and had sprained his ankle so severely that it would be impossible for him to leave the house for several days to come, and his object in sending for iredale and judd was that between them they should conduct the service on the morrow in lieu of himself. the former was to take charge of the preliminary part of it, and the latter to deliver one of those discourses for which his name was already so favorably known.
ephraim flushed with pride and pleasure when told what was expected of him. he felt it to be a great honor--the greatest that had ever been accorded him. he had plenty of self-confidence, and never for a moment doubted his ability to pass creditably through the ordeal. although not the least bit nervous, he lay awake a great part of the night, thinking of the morrow, and turning over a variety of texts in his mind, each of which seemed to afford scope for amplification and illustration, before finally deciding on a particular one. of course his discourse, like mr. hoskins' own, was to be wholly extempore: not a note or scrap of paper would he take with him to the desk--placed on a platform a couple of feet above the floor--from behind which mr. hoskins was in the habit of holding forth to his somewhat limited congregation.
it had never been ephraim's lot to break down, nor even to hesitate for longer than a passing moment owing to a paucity of language in which to give expression to his ideas. rather did he suffer from a plenitude of words, finding that his ideas--such as they were--were capable of being clothed in so many different suits of verbiage that he had often to put a curb on himself, lest, in the heat and fervor of his fluency, he should impose upon his hearers by giving them the same thought more than twice over.
a proud man was ephraim when he arose and dressed himself that sunday morning. for the time being the prickings of his conscience were forgotten, or perhaps it would be better to say that they were thrust remorselessly into the background. at length the opportunity for which he had so often longed had offered itself: to-day he would be able to show of what stuff he was made. hitherto the majority of his co-religionists had only known from hearsay of the gift that was in him. at length they would be brought directly into contact with it, and would be in a position to judge of it for themselves. evidently ephraim judd was not one of those foolish people who are content to hide their light under a bushel.
scarcely less elated, in her own quiet, undemonstrative way, was mrs. judd, who was a staunch templetonian. it was far more, from her point of view, that her son should be an eloquent expounder of the tenets of the sect to which they both belonged than that he should be a rising official at avison's bank, with a prosperous and assured future stretching clearly before him.
the meeting-house of the templetonians was filled this morning to repletion. never had mr. hoskins succeeded in gathering round him so numerous a congregation. the news that ephraim judd was to discourse had spread in some mysterious way, the consequence being that there was a large influx of strangers belonging to the other sects who were drawn there out of curiosity to hear the rising young local preacher, the fame of whose untutored eloquence had not failed to reach their ears.
when ephraim, who was seated on the front bench next his mother till the time should come for him to take his place on the platform, glanced round as the first hymn was being given out, his heart swelled within him. all these people had been drawn there to hear him--him! well, he hoped they would not be disappointed. he was quite aware that the audience of to-day was a far more intelligent and critical one than any he had been in the habit of addressing on sunday evenings on village greens, and that he would be tested by a very different standard from any which had heretofore been applied to him.
the thought, however, did not daunt him in the least, but tended rather to elate and brace him for the ordeal before him; for ephraim had a good measure of that audacity, of that thorough belief in himself and his powers, which goes so far towards the achievement of success, whatever may be the line of action on which it is brought to bear.
the portion of the service conducted by john iredale was brought to a close in due course, and the moment came for ephraim judd to take the place of the latter on the platform. a general but decorous movement was discernible among the congregation. some relieved themselves by coughing, others by blowing their noses, here and there came a putting together of heads and a low whispering. mrs. judd gave her son's hand a reassuring squeeze. then ephraim rose and mounting the three steps to the platform, he limped slowly across it, his eyes bent on the ground, till he reached the little reading-desk, where he turned to face his audience.
but first he bent his head and covered his face with his hands for a little while, then he stood upright and gazed calmly around. his face was a little paler than common, but his lips were firm-set, and his eyes clear and untroubled. at once he proceeded to give out his text, which he did in quiet but emphatic tones, so that not a word was unheard by anyone there. then came a brief pause, during which his audience finally settled themselves; and then ephraim, bending slightly forward, and grasping the ledge of the desk with both hands, began as follows:
"my dear brothers and sisters: we are this morning about to consider, from what to some of you may seem a peculiar standpoint, one of the most vital and all-important questions with which, as thinking and responsible beings, it is competent for us to deal. we are about----"
here the speaker came to a sudden pause; then, after a momentary hesitation, he began his last sentence again.
then he faltered, broke down, began afresh in different words, hesitated, broke down finally, threw an agonizing, appealing glance round the startled, upturned faces of his auditors, turned deathly pale, and remained silent.
in one moment of time his mind had become an utter blank--an utter blank, that is to say, so far as his intended discourse was concerned. it was as though a hideous black curtain had been suddenly dropped between him and that section of his brain in which originated the thoughts and ideas it had been his intention this morning to expound and illustrate for, as he had fondly hoped, the spiritual profit of those who were there to listen to him. but thoughts and ideas were all gone, and in their place was nothing but an awful blank. then, deep down in his heart, he heard a low, clear voice:
"impious wretch!" it said. "how dare you stand here to preach to others a doctrine to which your own life offers so emphatic a lie? you have perjured yourself--you have accepted the wages of a lie, and have helped to rob your best friend of his daily bread. you an expounder of the word! you a preacher of morality to your fellows! hide your face, vile hypocrite! go down on your knees, and crave forgiveness for your heinous sin."
all this and more flashed like a fiery scroll across ephraim's mental vision in far less time than it would have taken to speak the words. he stood dumbfounded and aghast. to the eyes of everyone there he looked as though he had been seized with a sudden illness, and might at any moment fall back in a faint. half the audience rose impulsively to their feet, while iredale and a couple of "elders" hastily made their way to the platform.
"what's come over you? are you ill?" whispered iredale.
ephraim's sole reply was a stare. then they placed him in a chair, and someone brought a glass of water. then john iredale, after a few words of apology and a brief prayer, dismissed the congregation. before this mrs. judd was by her son's side. all ephraim said was:
"take me home, mother--take me away from here."
