Ephrata Symonds’s Double Life

"Ephrata Symonds’s Double Life" by Charles Battell Loomis is a novel that explores the complexities of identity and societal norms through the experiences of its protagonist, Ephrata Symonds. Set against a backdrop of contrasting realities, the story delves into themes of duality and personal transformation, highlighting the struggles and triumphs faced by Ephrata as she navigates her dual existence. With Loomis's sharp wit and keen observations, the narrative offers a thought-provoking commentary on individuality and the masks people wear in different facets of their lives.

• Short story

								
I

Ephrata Symonds was a knave. Of that there was no doubt. It stuck out
all over him. His face was a chart of wickedness, and it was his open
boast that he had never done any good in his life, and, please the
devil, he never intended doing any. He had married early in life (in
a fit of absent-mindedness), but he had long since forsaken his wife
and children.

“Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do”; but, to speak
in a paradox, Satan never gave him any employment, for he was ever
busy--at evil. It was when he was just turned fifty that he was
elected a member of the Evil-doers’ Club. He soon became popular,
and upon the incarceration of the president of the club, the trusted
cashier of the Tyninth National Bank, Symonds was unanimously elected
president in his place.

That he was the right man for the position he immediately proved by
presenting the club with a fine new club-house, which he assured
them was not his to give, or he would not have presented it. In the
first six months of his presidency he eloped with two married women
at once, and so managed the trip that neither suspected that she was
not quite alone in his company. He deserted them both in the West,
and returned to pose before his fellow club-members. He diverted
to his use the little property of a friendless woman, and in many
characteristic ways showed himself to be thoroughly bad.

It was at this period of his life that his death came, and his last
words were: “I am thankful that no man is the better for my having
lived.”

His fellow Evil-doers mourned his departure with sincerity. They felt
that in losing such a thoroughly bad man they had suffered a loss
which it would be impossible to repair. As the secretary feelingly
put it, “Hell is the worse for having him.” “Yes,” said another;
“he was admirably bad. And it is the more to his credit that he was
bad in spite of adverse influences. His parents were pious people,
and Ephrata had every temptation to lead a life of virtue; but in
the face of all the obstacles that his father put in the way of his
becoming vicious, he persevered, and yesterday I had the honor of
telling his old mother that her son was undoubtedly the most wicked
man in New York. It made quite an impression on her. We shall ne’er
see his like again.”

The parlors of the Evil-doers’ Club were draped in black, and mock
resolutions of sympathy were sent to his deserted wife.

II

Great was the chagrin of the members of the club when it began to
be bruited among them that Symonds had been leading a double life;
that his wickedness was but a cloak to hide his goodness. The rumors
were at first pooh-poohed, but when it was remembered that every
third week he had always absented himself from town, the story that
he was really a good man began to wear an air of truth. Detectives
were set to work, and the damning proofs of his deceitful goodness
multiplied rapidly, and at last the facts came out, but only to the
club-members. They felt that it would not be creditable to allow such
scandalous stories to be repeated to the world at large, which would
only too willingly point the finger of scorn at them on learning that
their chief officer had, in spite of every lure, gone right. Some
might even go so far as to insinuate that maybe other members were
better than they seemed to be. No; Symonds’s disreputable goodness
should continue to be as well cloaked as he had cloaked it while
alive.

The story of his goodness is as follows: It seems that every third
week of his life had been spent in Boston, and while there he had
earned a large income as a life-insurance agent. It was his wont
to spend this money in doing good. Nothing was known in the Hub of
his private life. He lived at the Adams House, and cultivated an
austerity of manner that repelled people; but by underhand means he
contrived to ameliorate a deal of misery.

Having become convinced in his early youth that unostentatious
benevolence was preferable to a life of good works blazoned forth
to an admiring world, he had habituated himself to every form of
vice, in order, under cover of it, to pursue unobserved the efforts
he was to put forth for the good of his fellow-men. And he had well
succeeded. When Elias Hapgood, who had for thirty years subsisted on
the bounty of an unknown benefactor, read in the Boston “Herald” an
account of the death of Ephrata Symonds, “the wickedest man in New
York,” he breathed a prayer of thankfulness that the world was rid of
such a man, little knowing that he was misjudging his best friend.
And Elias was but one of scores that had been similarly benefited.
Symonds’s charities had been literally endless and invariably
anonymous. And now, after having, as it were, lived down his good
works, it was a little hard that death should have torn from him the
lifelong mask of deceit, and set him before his fellow-members for
what he was--a thoroughly good man.

III

It was a special business meeting of the Evil-doers’ Club. The
chairman rapped for order, and the secretary read the following
resolutions:

“WHEREAS, It has pleased Nature to take from among us Ephrata
Symonds, for some time our honored president;

“WHEREAS, We had always supposed him to be a man of the most
exemplary wickedness, a man before whom all Evil-doers might well
hide their diminished heads in despair of ever approaching his level
of degradation;

“WHEREAS, His life had always seemed to us a perfectly unbroken and
singularly consistent chain of crimes and enormities to be emulated
by us all; and

“WHEREAS, It has lately come to be known that his wickedness was but
a mask to hide a life of well-doing, occupied in its every third week
with deeds of kindness and generosity;

“Therefore be it Resolved, That we, as members of this club, have
been most shamefully imposed upon;

“Resolved, That we hereby express our contempt for a man who,
with every incentive to be always bad, should have so far forgotten
himself as to lead a third of a worthy life.”

The secretary had not finished reading the resolutions when a
messenger brought in a letter which he handed to the chairman as the
clock pointed to eight fifty-eight.

It ran in this fashion:

  FELLOW-MEMBERS: It is, by the time of reading this, probably plain
  to you that you have been taken in by me, and that, so far from my
  really having been a wicked person, I was a credit to my race and
  time.

  True to my desire that to the rest of the world I should be
  accounted a bad man, I have caused to be delivered with this letter
  a box. It works its purpose at nine o’clock. Sit where you are and
  do not attempt to escape. The secret of my goodness rests, and
  shall rest, with you.

      Yours insincerely, EPHRATA SYMONDS.

As the chairman finished reading he glanced at the clock. It was on
the stroke of nine! He seized the box, and with a wild cry attempted

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