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
