Elmer Gantry (31 page)

He did not stand by the altar now, uplifted in a vow that he would be good and reverent. He was like the new general
manager of a factory as he bustled for the first time through the Wellspring Methodist Church, Zenith, and his first comment
was “The plant’s run down—have to buck it up.”

He was accompanied on his inspection by his staff: Miss Bundle, church secretary and personal secretary to himself, a
decayed and plaintive lady distressingly free of seductiveness; Miss Weezeger, the deaconess, given to fat and good works;
and A. F. Cherry, organist and musical director, engaged only on part time.

He was disappointed that the church could not give him a pastoral assistant or a director of religious education. He’d
have them, soon enough—and boss them! Great!

He found an auditorium which would hold sixteen hundred people but which was offensively gloomy in its streaky windows,
its brown plaster walls, its cast-iron pillars. The rear wall of the chancel was painted a lugubrious blue scattered with
stars which had ceased to twinkle; and the pulpit was of dark oak, crowned with a foolish, tasseled, faded green velvet
cushion. The whole auditorium was heavy and forbidding; the stretch of empty brown-grained pews stared at him
dolorously.

“Certainly must have been a swell bunch of cheerful Christians that made this layout! I’ll have a new church here in five
years—one with some pep to it, and Gothic fixin’s and an up-to-date educational and entertainment plant,” reflected the new
priest.

The Sunday School rooms were spacious enough, but dingy, scattered with torn hymn books; the kitchen in the basement, for
church suppers, had a rusty ancient stove and piles of chipped dishes. Elmer’s own study and office was airless, and looked
out on the flivver-crowded yard of a garage. And Mr. Cherry said the organ was rather more than wheezy.

“Oh, well,” Elmer conferred with himself afterward, “what do I care! Anyway, there’s plenty of room for the crowds, and
believe me, I’m the boy can drag ’em in! . . . God, what a frump that Bundle woman is! One of these days I’ll have a smart
girl secretary—a good-looker. Well, hurray, ready for the big work! I’ll show this town what high-class preaching is!”

Not for three days did he chance to think that Cleo might also like to see the church.

Though there were nearly four hundred thousand people in Zenith and only nine hundred in Banjo Crossing, Elmer’s
reception in the Zenith church-basement was remarkably like his reception in the Banjo basement. There were the same rugged,
hard-handed brothers, the same ample sisters renowned for making doughnuts, the same brisk little men given to giggling and
pious jests. There were the same homemade ice cream and homemade oratory. But there were five times as many people as at the
Banjo reception, and Elmer was ever a lover of quantity. And among the transplanted rustics were several prosperous
professional men, several well-gowned women, and some pretty girls who looked as though they went to dancing school,
Discipline or not.

He felt cheerful and loving toward them—his, as he pointed out to them, “fellow crusaders marching on resolutely to
achievement of the Kingdom of God on earth.”

It was easy to discover which of the members present from the Official Board of the church were most worth his
attentions. Mr. Ernest Apfelmus, one of the stewards, was the owner of the Gem of the Ocean Pie and Cake Corporation. He
looked like a puffy and bewildered urchin suddenly blown up to vast size; he was very rich, Miss Bundle whispered; and he
did not know how to spend his money except on his wife’s diamonds and the cause of the Lord. Elmer paid court to Mr.
Apfelmus and his wife, who spoke quite a little English.

Not so rich but even more important, Elmer guessed, was T. J. Rigg, the famous criminal lawyer, a trustee of Wellspring
Church.

Mr. Rigg was small, deep-wrinkled, with amused and knowing eyes. He would be, Elmer felt instantly, a good man with whom
to drink. His wife’s face was that of a girl, round and smooth and blue-eyed, though she was fifty and more, and her
laughter was lively.

“Those are folks I can shoot straight with,” decided Elmer, and he kept near them.

Rigg hinted, “Say, Reverend, why don’t you and your good lady come up to my house after this, and we can loosen up and
have a good laugh and get over this sewing-circle business.”

“I’d certainly like to.” As he spoke Elmer was considering that if he was really to loosen up, he could not have Cleo
about. “Only, I’m afraid my wife has a headache, poor girl. We’ll just send her along home and I’ll come with you.”

“After you shake hands a few thousand more times!”

“Exactly!”

Elmer was edified to find that Mr. Rigg had a limousine with a chauffeur—one of the few in which Elmer had yet ridden. He
did like to have his Christian brethren well heeled. But the sight of the limousine made him less chummy with the Riggses,
more respectful and unctuous, and when they had dropped Cleo at the hotel, Elmer leaned gracefully back on the velvet seat,
waved his large hand poetically, and breathed, “Such a welcome the dear people gave me! I am so grateful! What a real
outpouring of the spirit!”

“Look here,” sniffed Rigg, “you don’t have to be pious with us! Ma and I are a couple of old dragoons. We like religion;
like the good old hymns—takes us back to the hick town we came from; and we believe religion is a fine thing to keep people
in order—they think of higher things instead of all these strikes and big wages and the kind of hell-raising that’s throwing
the industrial system all out of kilter. And I like a fine upstanding preacher that can give a good show. So I’m willing to
be a trustee. But we ain’t pious. And any time you want to let down—and I reckon there must be times when a big cuss like
you must get pretty sick of listening to the sniveling sisterhood!—you just come to us, and if you want to smoke or even
throw in a little jolt of liquor, as I’ve been known to do, why we’ll understand. How about it, Ma?”

“You bet!” said Mrs. Rigg. “And I’ll go down to the kitchen, if cook isn’t there, and fry you a couple of eggs, and if
you don’t tell the rest of the brethren, there’s always a couple of bottles of beer on the ice. Like one?”

“WOULD I!” cheered Elmer. “You bet I would! Only—I cut out drinking and smoking quite a few years ago. Oh, I had my share
before that! But I stopped, absolute, and I’d hate to break my record. But you go right ahead. And I want to say that it’ll
be a mighty big relief to have some folks in the church that I can talk to without shocking ’em half to death. Some of these
holier-than-thou birds—Lord, they won’t let a preacher be a human being!”

The Rigg house was large, rather faded, full of books which had been read—history, biography, travels. The smaller
sitting-room, with its log fire and large padded chairs, looked comfortable, but Mrs. Rigg shouted, “Oh, let’s go out to the
kitchen and shake up a welsh rabbit! I love to cook, and I don’t dast till after the servants go to bed.”

So his first conference with T. J. Rigg, who became the only authentic friend Elmer had known since Jim Lefferts, was
held at the shiny white-enamel-topped table in the huge kitchen, with Mrs. Rigg stalking about, bringing them welsh rabbit,
with celery, cold chicken, whatever she found in the ice box.

“I want your advice, Brother Rigg,” said Elmer. “I want to make my first sermon here something sen—well, something
that’ll make ’em sit up and listen. I don’t have to get the subject in for the church ads till tomorrow. Now what do you
think of some pacifism?”

“Eh?”

“I know what you think. Of course during the war I was just as patriotic as anybody—Four–Minute Man, and in another month
I’d of been in uniform. But honest, some of the churches are getting a lot of kick out of hollering pacifism now the war’s
all safely over—some of the biggest preachers in the country. But far’s I’ve heard, nobody’s started it here in Zenith yet,
and it might make a big sensation.”

“Yes, that’s so, and course it’s perfectly all right to adopt pacifism as long as there’s no chance for another war.”

“Or do you think—you know the congregation here—do you think a more dignified and kind of you might say poetic expository
sermon would impress ’em more? Or what about a good, vigorous, right-out-from-the-shoulder attack on vice? You know, booze
and immorality— like short skirts—by golly, girls’ skirts getting shorter every year!”

“Now that’s what I’d vote for,” said Rigg. “That’s what gets ’em. Nothing like a good juicy vice sermon to bring in the
crowds. Yes, sir! Fearless attack on all this drinking and this awful sex immorality that’s getting so prevalent.” Mr. Rigg
meditatively mixed a highball, keeping it light because next morning in court he had to defend a lady accused of running a
badger game. “You bet. Some folks say sermons like that are just sensational, but I always tell ’em: once the preacher gets
the folks into the church that way—and mighty few appreciate how hard it is to do a good vice sermon; jolt ’em enough and
yet not make it too dirty—once you get in the folks, then you can give ’em some good, solid, old-time religion and show ’em
salvation and teach ’em to observe the laws and do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, ‘stead of clock-watching
like my doggone clerks do! Yep, if you ask me, try the vice. . . . Oh, say, Ma, do you think the Reverend would be shocked
by that story about the chambermaid and the traveling man that Mark was telling us?”

Elmer was not shocked. In fact he had another droll tale himself.

He went home at one.

“I’ll have a good time with those folks,” he reflected, in the luxury of a taxicab. “Only, better be careful with old
Rigg. He’s a shrewd bird, and he’s onto me. . . . Now what do you mean?” indignantly. “What do you mean by ‘onto me’?
There’s nothing to be onto! I refused a drink and a cigar, didn’t I? I never cuss except when I lose my temper, do I? I’m
leading an absolutely Christian life. And I’m bringing a whale of a lot more souls into churches than any of these
pussy-footing tin saints that’re afraid to laugh and jolly people. ‘Onto me’ nothing!”

On Saturday morning, on the page of religious advertisements in the Zenith newspapers, Elmer’s first sermon was announced
in a two-column spread as dealing with the promising problem: “Can Strangers Find Haunts of Vice in Zenith?”

They could, and with gratifying ease, said Elmer in his sermon. He said it before at least four hundred people, as
against the hundred who had normally been attending.

He himself was a stranger in Zenith, and he had gone forth and he had been “appalled—aghast—bowed in shocked horror” at
the amount of vice, and such interesting and attractive vice. He had investigated Braun’s Island, a rackety beach and dance
floor and restaurant at South Zenith, and he had found mixed bathing. He described the ladies’ legs; he described the two
amiable young women who had picked him up. He told of the waiter who, though he denied that Braun’s restaurant itself sold
liquor, had been willing to let him know where to get it, and where to find an all-night game of poker—“and, mind you,
playing poker for keeps, you understand,” Elmer explained.

On Washington Avenue, North, he had found two movies in which “the dreadful painted purveyors of putrescent vice”—he
meant the movie actors—had on the screen danced “suggestive steps which would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of any
decent woman,” and in which the same purveyors had taken drinks which he assumed to be the deadly cocktails. On his way to
his hotel after these movies three ladies of the night had accosted him, right under the White Way of lights. Street-corner
loafers—he had apparently been very chummy with them—had told him of blind pigs, of dope-peddlers, of strange lecheries.

“That,” he shouted, “is what one stranger was able to find in your city—now MY city, and well beloved! But could he find
virtue so easily, could he, could he? Or just a lot of easygoing churches, lollygagging along, while the just God threatens
this city with the fire and devouring brimstone that destroyed proud Sodom and Gomorrah in their abominations! Listen! With
the help of God Almighty, let us raise here in this church a standard of virtue that no stranger can help seeing! We’re
lazy. We’re not burning with a fever of righteousness. On your knees, you slothful, and pray God to forgive you and to aid
you and me to form a brotherhood of helpful, joyous, fiercely righteous followers of every commandment of the Lord Our
God!”

The newspapers carried almost all of it. . . . It had just happened that there were reporters present—it had just
happened that Elmer had been calling up the Advocate–Times on Saturday—it had just happened that he remembered he had met
Bill Kingdom, the Advocate reporter, in Sparta—it had just happened that to help out good old Bill he had let him know there
would be something stirring in the church, come Sunday.

The next Saturday Elmer advertised “Is There a Real Devil Sneaking Around with Horns and Hoofs?” On Sunday there were
seven hundred present. Within two months Elmer was preaching, ever more confidently and dramatically, to larger crowds than
were drawn by any other church in Zenith except four or five.

But, “Oh, he’s just a new sensation—he can’t last out—hasn’t got the learning and staying-power. Besides, Old Town is
shot to pieces,” said Elmer’s fellow vinters—particularly his annoyed fellow Methodists.

Cleo and he had found a gracious old house in Old Town, to be had cheap because of the ragged neighborhood. He had hinted
to her that since he was making such a spiritual sacrifice as to take a lower salary in coming to Zenith, her father, as a
zealous Christian, ought to help them out; and if she should be unable to make her father perceive this, Elmer would
regretfully have to be angry with her.

She came back from a visit to Banjo Crossing with two thousand dollars.

Cleo had an instinct for agreeable furniture. For the old house, with its white mahogany paneling, she got reproductions
of early New England chairs and commodes and tables. There was a white-framed fireplace and a fine old crystal chandelier in
the living— room.

“Some class! We can entertain the bon ton here, and, believe me, I’ll soon be having a lot of ’em coming to church! . . .
Sometimes I do wish, though, I’d gone out for the Episcopal Church. Lots more class there, and they don’t beef if a minister
takes a little drink,” he said to Cleo.

“Oh, Elmer, how CAN you! When Methodism stands for—”

“Oh, God, I do wish that just once you wouldn’t deliberately misunderstand me! Here I was just carrying on a
philosophical discussion, and not speaking personal, and you go and—”

His house in order, he gave attention to clothes. He dressed as calculatingly as an actor. For the pulpit, he continued
to wear morning clothes. For his church study, he chose offensively inoffensive lounge suits, gray and brown and striped
blue, with linen collars and quiet blue ties. For addresses before slightly boisterous lunch-clubs, he went in for manly
tweeds and manly soft collars, along with his manly voice and manly jesting.

He combed his thick hair back from his strong, square face, and permitted it to hang, mane-like, just a bit over his
collar. But it was still too black to be altogether prophetic.

The two thousand was gone before they had been in Zenith a month.

“But it’s all a good investment,” he said. “When I meet the Big Bugs, they’ll see I may have a dump of a church in a bum
section but I can put up as good a front as if I were preaching on Chickasaw Road.”