Eliphaz was the orator. He would picture Hell to you as it really is. He made you see pretty much what it will be like to wriggle and turn and squirm, and never escape from burning. But Ezekiel Pim, though he seldom said more than three words, uttered those words with such alarming sincerity and had such a sure conviction shining in his eyes that searched right in your face as he said them, and his long hair waved so weirdly as his head shot forward when he said “You’re all damned,” that Ezekiel Pim brought home to you that the vivid descriptions of Eliphaz really applied to you.
People who lead bad lives get their sensibilities hardened. These did not care very much what Eliphaz said. But girls at school, and several governesses, and even some young clergy, were very much affected. Eliphaz Griggs and Ezekiel Pim seemed to bring Hell so near to you. You could almost feel it baking the Marble Arch from two to four on Sundays. And at four o’clock the Surbiton Branch of the International Anarchists used to come along, and Eliphaz Griggs and Ezekiel Pim would pack up their flag and go, for the pitch belonged to the Surbiton people till six; and the crank Movements punctiliously recognize each other’s rights. If they fought among themselves, which is quite unthinkable, the police would run them in; it is the one thing that an anarchist in England may never do.
When the War came the two speakers doubled their efforts. The way they looked at it was that here was a counter-attraction taking people’s minds off the subject of their own damnation just as they had got them to think about it. Eliphaz worked as he had never worked before; he spared nobody; but it was still Ezekiel Pim who somehow brought it most home to them.
One fine spring afternoon Eliphaz Griggs was speaking at his usual place and time; he had wound himself up wonderfully. “You are damned,” he was saying, “for ever and ever and ever. Your sins have found you out. Your filthy lives will be as fuel round you and shall burn for ever and ever.”
“Look here,” said a Canadian soldier in the crowd, “we shouldn’t allow that in Ottawa.”
“What?” asked an English girl.
“Why, telling us we’re all damned like that,” he said.
“Oh, this is England,” she said. “They may all say what they like here.”
“You are all damned,” said Ezekiel, jerking forward his head and shoulders till his hair flapped out behind. “All, all, all damned.”
“I’m damned if I am,” said the Canadian soldier.