A church in Zenith! Elmer would—almost—have taken it with no salary whatever. He could see his Doctor of Divinity degree at hand, his bishopric or college presidency or fabulous pulpit in New York.
He found the Wellspring M.E. Church a hideous graystone hulk with gravy-colored windows, and a tall spire ornamented with tin gargoyles and alternate layers of tiles in distressing red and green. The neighborhood had been smart, but the brick mansions, once leisurely among lawns and gardens, were scabrous and slovenly, turned into boardinghouses with delicatessen shops in the basements.
“Gosh, this section never will come back. Too many of the doggone hoi polloi. Bunch of Wops. Nobody for ten blocks that would put more’n ten cents in the collection. Nothing doing! I’m not going to run a soup-kitchen and tell a bunch of dirty bums to come to Jesus. Not on your life!”
But he saw, a block from the church, a new apartment-house, and near it an excavation.
“Hm. Might come back, in apartments, at that. Mustn’t jump too quick. Besides, these folks need the gospel just as much as the swell-headed plutes out on Royal Ridge,” reflected the Reverend Mr. Gantry.
Through his old acquaintance, Gil O’Hearn of the O’Hearn House, Elmer met a responsible contractor and inquired into the fruitfulness of the Wellspring vineyard.
“Yes, they’re dead certain to build a bunch of apartment-houses, and pretty good ones, in that neighborhood these next few years. Be a big residential boom in Old Town. It’s near enough in to be handy to the business section, and far enough from the Union Station so’s they haven’t got any warehouses or wholesalers. Good buy, Reverend.”
“Oh, I’m not buying—I’m just selling—selling the gospel!” said the Reverend, and he went to inform Bishop Toomis that after prayer and meditation he had been led to accept the pastorate of the Wellspring Church.
So, at thirty-nine, Caesar came to Rome, and Rome heard about it immediately.
Chapter XXIII
I
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.
II
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
