Elmer Gantry (26 page)

Elmer managed, during supper, to let them know that not only was he a theological seminary man, not only had he mastered
psychology, Oriental occultism, and the methods of making millions, but also he had been general manager for the famous Miss
Sharon Falconer.

Whether Bishop Toomis was considering, “I want this man—he’s a comer—he’d be useful to me,” is not known. But certainly
he listened with zeal to Elmer, and cooed at him, and after supper, with not more than an hour of showing him the library
and the mementos of far-off roamings, he took him off to the study, away from Mrs. Toomis, who had been interrupting, every
quarter of an hour, with her own recollections of roast beef at Simpson’s, prices of rooms on Bloomsbury Square, meals on
the French wagon restaurant, the speed of French taxicabs, and the view of the Eiffel Tower at sunset.

The study was less ornate than the living-room. There was a business-like desk, a phonograph for dictation, a card
catalogue of possible contributors to funds, a steel filing-cabinet, and the bishop’s own typewriter. The books were
strictly practical: Cruden’s Concordance, Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, an atlas of Palestine, and the three published
volumes of the Bishop’s own sermons. By glancing at these for not more than ten minutes, he could have an address ready for
any occasion.

The bishop sank into his golden oak revolving desk-chair, pointed at his typewriter, and sighed, “From this horrid room
you get a hint of how pressed I am by practical affairs. What I should like to do is to sit down quietly there at my beloved
machine and produce some work of pure beauty that would last forever, where even the most urgent temporal affairs tend,
perhaps, to pass away. Of course I have editorials in the Advocate, and my sermons have been published.”

He looked sharply at Elmer.

“Yes, of COURSE, Bishop, I’ve read them!”

“That’s very kind of you. But what I’ve longed for all these years is sinfully worldly literary work. I’ve always
fancied, perhaps vainly, that I have a talent—I’ve longed to do a book, in fact a novel—I have rather an interesting plot.
You see, this farm boy, brought up in circumstances of want, with very little opportunity for education, he struggles hard
for what book-learning he attains, but there in the green fields, in God’s own pure meadows, surrounded by the leafy trees
and the stars overhead at night, breathing the sweet open air of the pastures, he grows up a strong, pure, reverent young
man, and of course when he goes up to the city—I had thought of having him enter the ministry, but I don’t want to make it
autobiographical, so I shall have him enter a commercial line, but one of the more constructive branches of the great realm
of business, say like banking. Well, he meets the daughter of his boss—she is a lovely young woman, but tempted by the
manifold temptations and gaieties of the city, and I want to show how his influence guides her away from the broad paths
that lead to destruction, and what a splendid effect he has not only on her but on others in the mart of affairs. Yes, I
long to do that, but—Sitting here, just us two, one almost feels as though it would be pleasant to smoke—DO YOU SMOKE?”

“No, thanks be to God, Bishop. I can honestly say that for years I have never known the taste of nicotine or
alcohol.”

“God be praised!”

“When I was younger, being kind of, you might say, a vigorous fellow, I was led now and then into temptation, but the
influence of Sister Falconer—oh, there was a sanctified soul, like a nun— only strictly Protestant, of course—they so
uplifted me that now I am free of all such desires.”

“I am glad to hear it, Brother, so glad to hear it. . . . Now, Gantry, the other day you said something about having
thought of coming into the Methodist fold. How seriously have you thought about it?”

“Very.”

“I wish you would. I mean—Of course neither you nor I is necessary to the progress of that great Methodist Church, which
day by day is the more destined to instruct and guide our beloved nation. But I mean—When I meet a fine young man like you,
I like to think of what spiritual satisfaction he would have in this institution. Now the work you’re doing at present is
inspiring to many fine young men, but it is single-handed—it has no PERMANENCE. When you go, much of the good you have done
dies, because there is no institution like the living church to carry it on. You ought to be in one of the large
denominations, and of these I feel, for all my admiration of the Baptists, that the Methodist Church is in some ways the
great exemplar. It is so broad-spirited and democratic, yet very powerful. It is the real church of the people.”

“Yes, I rather believe you’re right, Bishop. Since I talked with you I’ve been thinking—Uh, if the Methodist Church
should want to accept me, what would I have to do? Would there be much red tape?”

“It would be a very simple matter. As you’re already ordained, I could have the District Conference, which meets next
month at Sparta, recommend you to the Annual Conference for membership. I am sure when the Annual Conference meets in spring
of next year, a little less than a year from now, with your credits from Terwillinger and Mizpah I could get you accepted by
the Conference and your orders recognized. Till then I can have you accepted as a preacher on trial. And I have a church
right now, at Banjo Crossing, that is in need of just such leadership as you could furnish. Banjo has only nine hundred
people, but you understand that it would be necessary for you to begin at the bottom. The brethren would very properly be
jealous if I gave you a first-class appointment right at the first. But I am sure I could advance you rapidly. Yes, we must
have you in the church. Great is the work for consecrated hands—and I’ll bet a cookie I live to see you a bishop
yourself!”

He couldn’t, Elmer complained, back in the refuge of his hotel, sink to a crossroads of nine hundred people, with a
salary of perhaps eleven hundred dollars; not after the big tent and Sharon’s throngs, not after suites and morning coats
and being Dr. Gantry to brokers’ wives in ballrooms.

But also he couldn’t go on. He would never get to the top in the New Thought business. He admitted that he hadn’t quite
the creative mind. He could never rise to such originality as, say, Mrs. Riddle’s humorous oracle: “Don’t be scared of
upsetting folks ‘coz most of ’em are topsy-turvy anyway, and you’ll only be putting ’em back on their feet”

Fortunately, except in a few fashionable churches, it wasn’t necessary to say anything original to succeed among the
Baptists or Methodists.

He would be happy in a regular pastorate. He was a professional. As an actor enjoyed grease-paint and call-boards and
stacks of scenery, so Elmer had the affection of familiarity for the details of his profession—hymn books, communion
service, training the choir, watching the Ladies’ Aid grow, the drama of coming from the mysteries back-stage, so unknown
and fascinating to the audience, to the limelight of the waiting congregation.

And his mother—He had not seen her for two years, but he retained the longing to solace her, and he knew that she was
only bewildered over his New Thought harlequinade.

But—nine hundred population!

He held out for a fortnight; demanded a bigger church from Bishop Toomis; brought in all his little clippings about
eloquence in company with Sharon.

Then the Zenith lectures closed, and he had ahead only the most speculative opportunities.

Bishop Toomis grieved, “I am disappointed, Brother, that you should think more of the size of the flock than of the
great, grrrrrrrreat opportunities for good ahead of you!”

Elmer looked his most flushing, gallant, boyish self. “Oh, no, Bishop, you don’t get me, honest! I just wanted to be able
to use my training where it might be of the most value. But I’m eager to be guided by you!”

Two months later Elmer was on the train to Banjo Crossing, as pastor of the Methodist Church in that amiable village
under the sycamores.

A Thursday in June 1913.

The train wandered through orchard-land and cornfields—two seedy day-coaches and a baggage car. Hurry and efficiency had
not yet been discovered on this branch line, and it took five hours to travel the hundred and twenty miles from Zenith to
Banjo Crossing.

The Reverend Elmer Gantry was in a state of grace. Having resolved henceforth to be pure and humble and humanitarian, he
was benevolent to all his traveling companions, he was mothering the world, whether the world liked it or not.

But he did not insist on any outward distinction as a parson, a Professional Good Man. He wore a quietly modest gray sack
suit, a modestly rich maroon tie. Not just as a minister, but as a citizen, he told himself, it was his duty to make life
breezier and brighter for his fellow wayfarers.

The aged conductor knew most of his passengers by their first names, and they hailed him as “Uncle Ben,” but he resented
strangers on their home train. When Elmer shouted, “Lovely day, Brother!” Uncle Ben looked at him as if to say “Well,
‘tain’t my fault!” But Elmer continued his philadelphian violences till the old man sent in the brakeman to collect the
tickets the rest of the way.

At a traveling salesman who tried to borrow a match, Elmer roared, “I don’t smoke, Brother, and I don’t believe George
Washington did either!” His benignancies were received with so little gratitude that he almost wearied of good works, but
when he carried an old woman’s suit-case off the train, she fluttered at him with the admiration he deserved, and he was
moved to pat children upon the head—to their terror—and to explain crop-rotation to an ancient who had been farming for
forty-seven years.

Anyway, he satisfied the day’s lust for humanitarianism, and he turned back the seat in front of his, stretched out his
legs, looked sleepy so that no one would crowd in beside him, and rejoiced in having taken up a life of holiness and
authority.

He glanced out at the patchy country with satisfaction. Rustic, yes, but simple, and the simple honest hearts of his
congregation would yearn toward him as the bookkeepers could not be depended upon to do in Prosperity Classes. He pictured
his hearty reception at Banjo Crossing. He knew that his district superintendent (a district superintendent is a
lieutenant-bishop in the Methodist Church—formerly called a presiding elder) had written the hour of his coming to Mr.
Nathaniel Benham of Banjo Crossing, and he knew that Mr. Benham, the leading trustee of the local church, was the chief
general merchant in the Banjo Valley. Yes, he would shake hands with all of his flock, even the humblest, at the station; he
would look into their clear and trusting eyes, and rejoice to be their shepherd, leading them on and upward, for at least a
year.

Banjo Crossing seemed very small as the train staggered into it. There were back porches with wash-tubs and broken-down
chairs; there were wooden sidewalks.

As Elmer pontifically descended at the red frame station, as he looked for the reception and the holy glee, there wasn’t
any reception, and the only glee visible was on the puffy face of the station agent as he observed a City Fellow trying to
show off. “Hee, hee, there AIN’T no ‘bus!” giggled the agent. “Guess yuh’ll have to carry your own valises over to the
hotel!”

“Where,” demanded Elmer, “is Mr. Benham, Mr. Nathaniel Benham?”

“Old Nat? Ain’t seen him today. Guess yuh’ll find him at the store, ‘bout as usual, seeing if he can’t do some farmer out
of two cents on a batch of eggs. Traveling man?”

“I am the new Methodist preacher!”

“Oh, well, say! That a fact! Pleased to meet yuh! Wouldn’t of thought you were a preacher. You look too well fed! You’re
going to room at Mrs. Pete Clark’s—the Widow Clark’s. Leave your valises here, and I’ll have my boy fetch ’em over. Well,
good luck, Brother. Hope you won’t have much trouble with your church. The last fellow did, but then he was kind of
pernickety—wa’n’t just plain folks.”

“Oh, I’m just plain folks, and mighty happy, after the great cities, to be among them!” was Elmer’s amiable greeting, but
what he observed as he walked away was “I am like hell!”

Altogether depressed now, he expected to find the establishment of Brother Benham a littered and squalid cross-roads
store, but he came to a two-story brick structure with plate-glass windows and, in the alley, the half-dozen trucks with
which Mr. Benham supplied the farmers for twenty miles up and down the Banjo Valley. Respectful, Elmer walked through broad
aisles, past counters trim as a small department-store, and found Mr. Benham dictating letters.

If in a small way Nathaniel Benham had commercial genius, it did not show in his aspect. He wore a beard like a bath
sponge, and in his voice was a righteous twang.

“Yes?” he quacked.

“I’m Reverend Gantry, the new pastor.”

Benham rose, not too nimbly, and shook hands dryly. “Oh, yes. The presiding elder said you were coming today. Glad you’ve
come, Brother, and I hope the blessing of the Lord will attend your labors. You’re to board at the Widow Clark’s—anybody’ll
show you where it is.”

Apparently he had nothing else to say.

A little bitterly, Elmer demanded, “I’d like to look over the church. Have you a key?”

“Now let’s see. Brother Jones might have one—he’s got the paint and carpenter shop right up here on Front Street. No,
guess he hasn’t, either. We got a young fella, just a boy you might say, who’s doing the janitor work now, and guess he’d
have a key, but this bein’ vacation he’s off fishin’ more’n likely. Tell you: you might try Brother Fritscher, the
shoemaker—he might have a key. You married?”

“No. I’ve, uh, I’ve been engaged in evangelistic work, so I’ve been denied the joys and solaces of domestic life.”

“Where you born?”

“Kansas.”

“Folks Christians?”

“They certainly were! My mother was—she is—a real consecrated soul.”

“Smoke or drink?”

“Certainly not!”

“Do any monkeying with this higher criticism?”

“No, indeed!”

“Ever go hunting?”

“I, uh—Well, yes!”

“That’s fine! Well, glad you’re with us, Brother. Sorry I’m busy. Say, Mother and I expect you for supper tonight,
six-thirty. Good luck!”

Benham’s smile, his handshake, were cordial enough, but he was definitely giving dismissal, and Elmer went out in a fury
alternating with despair. . . . To this, to the condescension of a rustic store-keeper, after the mounting glory with
Sharon!

As he walked toward the house of the widow Clark, to which a loafer directed him, he hated the shabby village, hated the
chicken-coops in the yards, the frowsy lawns, the old buggies staggering by, the women with plump aprons and wet red
arms—women who made his delights of amorous adventures seem revolting—and all the plodding yokels with their dead eyes and
sagging jaws and sudden guffawing.

Fallen to this. And at thirty-two. A failure!

As he waited on the stoop of the square, white, characterless house of the Widow Clark, he wanted to dash back to the
station and take the first train—anywhere. In that moment he decided to return to farm implements and the bleak lonely
freedom of the traveling man. Then the screen door was opened by a jolly ringleted girl of fourteen or fifteen, who caroled,
“Oh, is it Reverend Gantry! My, and I kept you waiting! I’m terrible sorry! Ma’s just sick she can’t be here to welcome you,
but she had to go over to Cousin Etta’s—Cousin Etta busted her leg. Oh, please do come in. My, I didn’t guess we’d have a
young preacher this time!”

She was charming in her excited innocence.

After a faded provincial fashion, the square hall was stately, with its Civil War chromos.

Elmer followed the child—Jane Clark, she was—up to his room. As she frisked before him, she displayed six inches of ankle
above her clumsy shoes, and Elmer was clutched by that familiar feeling, swifter than thought, more elaborate than the
strategy of a whole war, which signified that here was a girl he was going to pursue. But as suddenly—almost wistfully, in
his weary desire for peace and integrity—he begged himself, “No! Don’t! Not any more! Let the kid alone! Please be decent!
Lord, give me decency and goodness!”

The struggle was finished in the half-minutes of ascending the stairs, and he could shake hands casually, say carelessly,
“Well, I’m mighty glad you were here to welcome me, Sister, and I hope I may bring a blessing on the house.”

He felt at home now, warmed, restored. His chamber was agreeable— Turkey-red carpet, stove a perfect shrine of polished
nickel, and in the bow-window, a deep arm-chair. On the four-poster bed was a crazy-quilt, and pillow-shams embroidered with
lambs and rabbits and the motto, “God Bless Our Slumbers.”

“This is going to be all right. Kinda like home, after these doggone hotels,” he meditated.

He was again ready to conquer Banjo Crossing, to conquer Methodism; and when his bags and trunk had come, he set out,
before unpacking, to view his kingdom.

Banjo Crossing was not extensive, but to find the key to the First Methodist Church was a Scotland Yard melodrama.

Brother Fritscher, the shoemaker, had lent it to Sister Anderson of the Ladies’ Aid, who had lent it to Mrs. Pryshetski,
the scrubwoman, who had lent it to Pussy Byrnes, president of the Epworth League, who had lent it to Sister Fritscher,
consort of Brother Fritscher, so that Elmer captured it next door to the shoemaker’s shop from which he had irritably set
out.

Each of them, Brother Fritscher and Sister Fritscher, Sister Pryshetski and Sister Byrnes, Sister Anderson and most of
the people from whom he inquired directions along the way, asked him the same questions:

“You the new Methodist preacher?” and “Not married, are you?” and “Just come to town?” and “Hear you come from the
City—guess you’re pretty glad to get away, ain’t you?”

He hadn’t much hope for his church-building—but he expected a hideous brown hulk with plank buttresses. He was delighted
then, proud as a worthy citizen elected mayor, when he came to an agreeable little church covered with gray shingles,
crowned with a modest spire, rimmed with cropped lawn and flower-beds. Excitedly he let himself in, greeted by the stale
tomb-like odor of all empty churches.

The interior was pleasant. It would hold two hundred and ninety, perhaps. The pews were of a light yellow, too glaring,
but the walls were of soft cream, and in the chancel, with a white arch graceful above it, was a seemly white pulpit and a
modest curtained choir-loft. He explored. There was a goodish Sunday School room, a basement with tables and a small
kitchen. It was all cheerful, alive; it suggested a chance of growth.

As he returned to the auditorium, he noted one good colored memorial window, and through the clear glass of the others
the friendly maples looked in at him.

He walked round the building. Suddenly he was overwhelmed and exalted with the mystic pride of ownership. It was all his;
his own; and as such it was all beautiful. What beautiful soft gray shingles! What an exquisite spire! What a glorious
maple-tree! Yes, and what a fine cement walk, what a fine new ash-can, what a handsome announcement board, soon to be
starred with his own name! His! To do with as he pleased! And, oh, he would do fine things, aspiring things, very important
things! Never again, with this new reason for going on living, would he care for lower desires—for pride, for the adventure
of women. . . . HIS!

He entered the church again; he sat proudly in each of the three chairs on the platform which, as a boy, he had believed
to be reserved for the three persons of the Trinity. He stood up, leaned his arms on the pulpit, and to a worshiping throng
(many standing) he boomed, “My brethren!”

He was in an ecstasy such as he had not known since his hours with Sharon. He would start again—HAD started again, he
vowed. Never lie or cheat or boast. This town, it might be dull, but he would enliven it, make it his own creation, lift it
to his own present glory. He could! Life opened before him, clean, joyous, full of the superb chances of a Christian
knighthood. Some day he would be a bishop, yes, but even that was nothing compared with the fact that he had won a victory
over his lower nature.

He knelt, and with his arms wide in supplication he prayed, “Lord, thou who hast stooped to my great unworthiness and
taken even me to thy Kingdom, who this moment hast shown me the abiding joy of righteousness, make me whole and keep me
pure, and in all things, Our Father, thy will be done. Amen.”

He stood by the pulpit, tears in his eyes, his meaty hands clutching the cover of the great leather Bible till it
cracked.

The door at the other end of the aisle was opening, and he saw a vision standing on the threshold in the June sun.

He remembered afterward, from some forgotten literary adventure in college, a couplet which signified to him the young
woman who was looking at him from the door:

She was younger than himself, yet she suggested a serene maturity, a gracious pride. She was slender, but her bosom was
full, and some day she might be portly. Her face was lovely, her forehead wide, her brown eyes trusting, and smooth her
chestnut hair. She had taken off her rose-trimmed straw hat and was swinging it in her large and graceful hands. . . .
Virginal, stately, kind, most generous.

She came placidly down the aisle, a hand out, crying, “It’s Reverend Gantry, isn’t it? I’m so proud to be the first to
welcome you here in the church! I’m Cleo Benham—I lead the choir. Perhaps you’ve seen Papa—he’s a trustee—he has the
store.”

“You sure are the first to welcome me, Sister Benham, and it’s a mighty great pleasure to meet you! Yes, your father was
so nice as to invite me for supper tonight.”

They shook hands with ceremony and sat beaming at each other in a front pew. He informed her that he was certain there
was “going to be a great spiritual awakening here,” and she told him what lovely people there were in the congregation, in
the village, in the entire surrounding country. And her panting breast told him that she, the daughter of the village
magnate, had instantly fallen in love with him.