Elmer Gantry (17 page)

Elmer never knew what the words were, or the sense—if indeed any one knew. It was all caressing music to him, and at the
end, when she ran down curving flower-wreathed stairs to the lowest platform and held out her arms, pleading with them to
find peace in salvation, he was aroused to go forward with the converts, to kneel in the writhing row under the blessing of
her extended hands.

But he was lost in no mystical ecstasy. He was the critic, moved by the play but aware that he must get his copy in to
the newspaper.

“This is the outfit I’ve been looking for! Here’s where I could go over great! I could beat that English preacher both
ways from the ace. And Sharon—Oh, the darling!”

She was coming along the line of converts and near-converts, laying her shining hands on their heads. His shoulders
quivered with consciousness of her nearness. When she reached him and invited him, in that thrilling voice, “Brother, won’t
you find happiness in Jesus?” he did not bow lower, like the others, he did not sob, but looked straight up at her jauntily,
seeking to hold her eyes, while he crowed, “It’s happiness just to have had your wondrous message, Sister Falconer!”

She glanced at him sharply, she turned blank, and instantly passed on.

He felt slapped. “I’ll show her yet!”

He stood aside as the crowd wavered out. He got into talk with the crisp young Englishman who had read the Scripture
lesson—Cecil Aylston, Sharon’s first assistant.

“Mighty pleased to be here tonight, Brother,” bumbled Elmer. “I happen to be a Baptist preacher myself. Bountiful
meeting! And you read the lesson most inspiringly.”

Cecil Aylston rapidly took in Elmer’s checked suit, his fancy vest, and “Oh. Really? Splendid. So good of you, I’m sure.
If you will excuse me?” Nor did it increase Elmer’s affection to have Aylston leave him for one of the humblest of the
adherents, an old woman in a broken and flapping straw hat.

Elmer disposed of Cecil Aylston: “To hell with him! There’s a fellow we’ll get rid of! A man like me, he gives me the icy
mitt, and then he goes to the other extreme and slops all over some old dame that’s probably saved already, that you, by
golly, couldn’t unsave with a carload of gin! That’ll do you, my young friend! And you don’t like my check suit, either.
Well, I certainly do buy my clothes just to please you, all right!”

He waited, hoping for a chance at Sharon Falconer. And others were waiting. She waved her hand at all of them, waved her
flaunting smile, rubbed her eyes, and begged, “Will you forgive me? I’m blind-tired. I must rest.” She vanished into the
mysteries behind the gaudy gold-and-white pyramid.

Even in her staggering weariness, her voice was not drab; it was filled with that twilight passion which had captured
Elmer more than her beauty. . . . “Never did see a lady just like her,” he reflected, as he plowed back to his hotel. “Face
kinda thin. Usually I like ’em plumper. And yet—golly! I could fall for her as I never have for anybody in my life. . . . So
this darn’ Englishman didn’t like my clothes! Looked as if he thought they were too sporty. Well, he can stick ’em in his
ear! Anybody got any objection to my clothes?”

The slumbering universe did not answer, and he was almost content. And at eight next morning—Sautersville had an
excellent clothing shop, conducted by Messrs. Erbsen and Goldfarb—and at eight Elmer was there, purchasing a chaste
double-breasted brown suit and three rich but sober ties. By hounding Mr. Goldfarb he had the alterations done by half-past
nine, and at ten he was grandly snooping about the revival tent. . . . He should have gone on to the next town this
morning.

Sharon did not appear till eleven, to lecture the personal workers, but meanwhile Elmer had thrust himself into
acquaintanceship with Art Nichols, a gaunt Yankee, once a barber, who played the cornet and the French horn in the
three-piece orchestra which Sharon carried with her.

“Yes, pretty good game, this is,” droned Nichols. “Better’n barberin’ and better’n one-night stands—oh, I’m a real
trouper, too; play characters in tent shows—I was out three seasons with Tom shows. This is easier. No street parades, and I
guess prob’ly we do a lot of good, saving souls and so on. Only these religious folks do seem to scrap amongst themselves
more’n the professionals.”

“Where do you go from here?”

“We close in five days, then we grab the collection and pull out of here and make a jump to Lincoln, Nebraska; open there
in three days. Regular troupers’ jump, too—don’t even get a Pullman—leave here on the day coach at eleven P.M. and get into
Lincoln at one.”

“Sunday night you leave, eh? That’s funny. I’ll be on that train. Going to Lincoln myself.”

“Well, you can come hear us there. I always do ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ on the cornet, first meeting. Knocks ’em cold. They
say it’s all this gab that gets ’em going and drags in the sinners, but don’t you believe it—it’s the music. Say, I can get
more damn’ sinners weeping on a E-flat cornet than nine gospel-artists all shooting off their faces at once!”

“I’ll bet you can, Art. Say, Art—Of course I’m a preacher myself, just in business temporarily, making arrangements for a
new appointment.” Art looked like one who was about to not lend money. “But I don’t believe all this bull about never having
a good time; and of course Paul said to ‘take a little wine for your stomach’s sake’ and this town is dry, but I’m going to
a wet one between now and Saturday, and if I were to have a pint of rye in my jeans— heh?”

“Well, I’m awful’ fond of my stomach—like to do something for its sake!”

“What kind of a fellow is this Englishman? Seems to be Miss Falconer’s right-hand man.”

“Oh, he’s a pretty bright fellow, but he don’t seem to get along with us boys.”

“She like him? Wha’ does he call himself?”

“Cecil Aylston, his name is. Oh, Sharon liked him first-rate for a while, but wouldn’t wonder if she was tired of his
highbrow stuff now, and the way he never gets chummy.”

“Well, I got to go speak to Miss Falconer a second. Glad met you, Art. See you on the train Sunday evening.”

They had been talking at one of the dozen entrances of the gospel tent. Elmer had been watching Sharon Falconer as she
came briskly into the tent. She was no high priestess now in Grecian robe, but a business-woman, in straw hat, gray suit,
white shirt-waist, linen cuffs and collar. Only her blue bow and the jeweled cross on her watch-fob distinguished her from
the women in offices. But Elmer, collecting every detail of her as a miner scoops up nuggets, knew now that she was not
flat-breasted, as in the loose robe she might have been.

She spoke to the “personal workers,” the young women who volunteered to hold cottage prayer-meetings and to go from house
to house stirring up spiritual prospects:

“My dear friends, I’m very glad you’re all praying, but there comes a time when you’ve got to add a little shoe-leather.
While you’re longing for the Kingdom—the devil does his longing nights, and daytimes he hustles around SEEING people,
TALKING to ’em! Are you ashamed to go right in and ask folks to come to Christ—to come to our meetings, anyway? I’m not at
all pleased. Not at all, my dear young friends. My charts show that in the Southeast district only one house in three has
been visited. This won’t do! You’ve got to get over the idea that the service of the Lord is a nice game, like putting
Easter lilies on the altar. Here there’s only five days left, and you haven’t yet waked up and got busy. And let’s not have
any silly nonsense about hesitating to hit people for money-pledges, and hitting ’em hard! We can’t pay rent for this lot,
and pay for lights and transportation and the wages of all this big crew I carry, on hot air! Now you—you pretty girl there
with the red hair—my! I wish I had such hair!—what have you done, sure-enough DONE, this past week?”

In ten minutes she had them all crying, all aching to dash out and bring in souls and dollars.

She was leaving the tent when Elmer pounced on her, swaggering, his hand out.

“Sister Falconer, I want to congratulate you on your wonderful meetings. I’m a Baptist preacher—the Reverend Gantry.”

“Yes?” sharply. “Where is your church?”

“Why, uh, just at present I haven’t exactly got a church.”

She inspected his ruddiness, his glossiness, the odor of tobacco; her brilliant eyes had played all over him, and she
demanded:

“What’s the trouble this time? Booze or women?”

“Why, that’s absolutely untrue! I’m surprised you should speak like that, Sister Falconer! I’m in perfectly good
standing! It’s just—I’m taking a little time off to engage in business, in order to understand the working of the lay mind,
before going on with my ministry.”

“Um. That’s splendid. Well, you have my blessing, Brother! Now if you will excuse me? I must go and meet the
committee.”

She tossed him an unsmiling smile and raced away. He felt soggy, lumbering, unspeakably stupid, but he swore, “Damn you,
I’ll catch you when you aren’t all wrapped up in business and your own darn-fool self-importance, and then I’ll make you
wake up, my girl!”

He had to do nine days’ work, to visit nine towns, in five days, but he was back in Sautersville on Sunday evening and he
was on the eleven-o’clock train for Lincoln—in the new brown suit.

His fancy for Sharon Falconer had grown into a trembling passion, the first authentic passion of his life.

It was too late in the evening for a great farewell, but at least a hundred of the brethren and sisters were at the
station, singing “God Be With You Till We Meet Again” and shaking hands with Sharon Falconer. Elmer saw his cornet-wielding
Yankee friend, Art Nichols, with the rest of the evangelistic crew—the aide, Cecil Aylston, the fat and sentimental tenor
soloist, the girl pianist, the violinist, the children’s evangelist, the director of personal work. (That important
assistant, the press agent, was in Lincoln making ready for the coming of the Lord.) They looked like a sleepy theatrical
troupe as they sat on their suit-cases waiting for the train to come in, and like troupers, they were dismayingly different
from their stage rôles. The anemically pretty pianist, who for public uses dressed in seraphic silver robes, was now merely
a small-town girl in wrinkled blue serge; the director of personal work, who had been nun-like in linen, was bold in
black-trimmed red, and more attentive to the amorous looks of the German violinist than to the farewell hymns. The Reverend
Cecil Aylston gave orders to the hotel baggageman regarding their trunks more like a quartermaster sergeant than like an
Oxonian mystic.

Sharon herself was imperial in white, and the magnet for all of them. A fat Presbyterian pastor, with whiskers, buzzed
about her, holding her arm with more than pious zeal. She smiled on him (to Elmer’s rage), she smiled equally on the long
thin Disciples-of-Christ preacher, she shook hands fervently, and she was tender to each shout of “Praise God, Sister!” But
her eyes were weary, and Elmer saw that when she turned from her worshipers, her mouth drooped. Young she seemed then, tired
and defenseless.

“Poor kid!” thought Elmer.

The train flared and shrieked its way in, and the troupe bustled with suit-cases. “Good-by—God bless you—God speed the
work!” shouted every one . . . every one save the Congregational minister, who stood sulkily at the edge of the crowd
explaining to a parishioner, “And so she goes away with enough cash for herself, after six weeks’ work, to have run our
whole church for two years!”

Elmer ranged up beside his musical friend, Art Nichols, and as they humped up the steps of a day-coach he muttered, “Art!
Art! Got your stomach-medicine here!”

“Great!”

“Say. Look. Fix it so you sit with Sharon. Then pretty soon go out for a smoke—”

“She don’t like smoking.”

“You don’t need to tell her what for! Go out so I can sit down and talk to her for a while. Important business. Here:
stick this in your pocket. And I’ll dig up s’more for you at Lincoln. Now hustle and get in with her.”

“Well, I’ll try.”

So, in the dark malodorous car, hot with late spring, filled with women whose corsets creaked to their doleful breathing,
with farmers who snored in shirt-sleeves, Elmer stood behind the seat in which a blur marked the shoulders of Art Nichols
and a radiance showed the white presence of Sharon Falconer. To Elmer she seemed to kindle the universe. She was so
precious, every inch of her; he had not known that a human being could be precious like this and magical. To be near her was
ecstasy enough . . . almost enough.

She was silent. He heard only Art Nichols’ twanging, “What do you think about us using some of these nigger songs—hand
’em a jolt?” and her drowsy, “Oh, let’s not talk about it tonight.” Presently, from Art, “Guess I’ll skip out on the
platform and get a breath of air,” and the sacred haunt beside her was free to the exalted Elmer.

He slipped in, very nervous.

She was slumped low in the seat, but she sat up, peered at him in the dimness, and said, with a grave courtesy which shut
him out more than any rudeness, “I’m so sorry, but this place is taken.”

“Yes, I know, Sister Falconer. But the car’s crowded, and I’ll just sit down and rest myself while Brother Nichols is
away—that is, if you’ll let me. Don’t know if you remember me. I’m—I met you at the tent in Sautersville. Reverend
Gantry.”

“Oh,” indifferently. Then quickly: “Oh, yes, you’re the Presbyterian preacher who was fired for drinking.”

“That’s absolutely—!” He saw that she was watching him, and he realized that she was not being her saintly self nor her
efficient self but a quite new, private, mocking self. Delightedly he went on, “—absolutely incorrect. I’m the Christian
Scientist that was fired for kissing the choir-leader on Saturday.”

“Oh, that was careless of you!”

“So you’re really human?”

“Me? Good Heavens, yes! Too human.”

“And you get tired of it?”

“Of what?”

“Of being the great Miss Falconer, of not being able to go into a drug-store to buy a tooth-brush without having the
clerk holler, ‘Praise God, we have some dandy two-bit brushes, hallelujah!’”

Sharon giggled.

“Tired,” and his voice was lulling now, “of never daring to be tired, which same is what you are tonight, and of never
having anybody to lean on!”

“I suppose, my dear reverend Brother, that this is a generous offer to let me lean on you!”

“No. I wouldn’t have the nerve! I’m scared to death of you. You haven’t only got your beauty—no! please let me tell you
how a fellow preacher looks at you—and your wonderful platform-presence, but I kind of guess you’ve got brains.”

“No, I haven’t. Not a brain. All emotion. That’s the trouble with me.” She sounded awake now, and friendly.

“But think of all the souls you’ve brought to repentance. That makes up for everything, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose it—Oh, of course it does. It’s the only thing that counts. Only—Tell me: What really did happen to
you? Why did you get out of the church?”

Gravely, “I was a senior in Mizpah Theological Seminary, but I had a church of my own. I fell for a girl. I won’t say she
lured me on. After all, a man ought to face the consequences of his own foolishness. But she certainly did—Oh, it amused her
to see a young preacher go mad over her. And she was so lovely! Quite a lot like you, only not so beautiful, not near, and
she let on like she was mad about church work—that’s what fooled me. Well! Make a long story short: We were engaged to be
married, and I thought of nothing but her and our life together, doing the work of the Lord, when one evening I walked in
and there she was in the arms of another fellow! It broke me up so that I—Oh, I tried, but I simply couldn’t go on
preaching, so I quit for a while. And I’ve done well in business. But now I’m ready to go back to the one job I’ve ever
cared about. That’s why I wanted to talk to you there at the tent. I needed your woman’s sympathy as well as your
experience—and you turned me down!”

“Oh, I am so, so sorry!” Her hand caressed his arm.

Cecil Aylston came up and looked at them with a lack of sanctity.

When they reached Lincoln, he was holding her hand and saying, “You poor, dear, tired child!” and, “Will you have
breakfast with me? Where are you staying in Lincoln?”

“Now see here, Brother Gantry—”

“Elmer!”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous! Just because I’m so fagged out that it’s nice to play at being a human being, don’t try to take
advantage—”

“Sharon Falconer, will you quit being a chump? I admire your genius, your wonderful work for God, but it’s because you’re
too big to just be a professional gospel-shouter every minute that I most admire you. You know mighty good and well that you
like to be simple and even slangy for a while. And you’re too sleepy just now to know whether you like me or not. That’s why
I want us to meet at breakfast, when the sleepiness is out of the wonderful eyes—”

“Um. It all sounds pretty honest except that last stuff—you’ve certainly used that before. Do you know, I like you!
You’re so completely brazen, so completely unscrupulous, and so beatifically ignorant! I’ve been with sanctimonious folks
too much lately. And it’s interesting to see that you honestly think you can captivate me. You funny thing! I’m staying at
the Antlers Hotel in Lincoln— no use, by the way, your trying to get a room near my suite, because I have practically the
whole floor engaged—and I’ll meet you at breakfast there at nine-thirty.”