“Get out!” snapped the gaunt man.
Mechanically, his legs limp, Frank staggered out. He looked up at the moon. “It’s the last time I’ll ever see the moon—see the stars—hear voices. Never again to walk on a fresh morning!”
“What are you going to do?” he said, hating them too much to be afraid.
“Well, dearie,” said the driver, with a dreadful jocosity, “you’re going to take a little walk with us, back here in the fields a ways.”
“Hell!” said the bartender, “let’s hang him. Here’s a swell tree. Use the towrope.”
“No,” from the gaunt man. “Just hurt him enough so he’ll remember, and then he can go back and tell his atheist friends it ain’t healthy for ’em in real Christian parts. Move, you!”
Frank walked in front of them, ghastly silent. They followed a path through the cornfield to a hollow. The crickets were noisily cheerful; the moon serene.
“This’ll do,” snarled the gaunt one; then to Frank: “Now get ready to feel good.”
He set his pocket electric torch on a clod of earth. In its light Frank saw him draw from his pocket a coiled black leather whip, a whip for mules.
“Next time,” said the gaunt one, slowly, “next time you come back here, we’ll kill you. And any other yellow traitor and stinker and atheist like you. Tell ’em all that! This time we won’t kill you—not quite.”
“Oh, quit talking and let’s get busy!” said the bartender. “All right!”
The bartender caught Frank’s two arms behind, bending them back, almost breaking them, and suddenly with a pain appalling and unbelievable the whip slashed across Frank’s cheek, cutting it, and instantly it came again—again—in a darkness of reeling pain.
X
Consciousness returned waveringly as dawn crawled over the cornfield and the birds were derisive. Frank’s only clear emotion was a longing to escape from this agony by death. His whole face reeked with pain. He could not understand why he could scarce see. When he fumblingly raised his hand, he discovered that his right eye was a pulp of blind flesh, and along his jaw he could feel the exposed bone.
He staggered along the path through the cornfield, stumbling over hummocks, lying there sobbing, muttering, “Bess—oh, come—Bess!”
His strength lasted him just to the high road, and he sloped to earth, lay by the road like a drunken beggar. A motor was coming, but when the driver saw Frank’s feebly uplifted arm he sped on. Pretending to be hurt was a device of holdup men.
“Oh, God, won’t anybody help me?” Frank whimpered, and suddenly he was laughing, a choking twisted laughter. “Yes, I said it, Philip—‘God’ I said—I suppose it proves I’m a good Christian!”
He rocked and crawled along the road to a cottage. There was a light—a farmer at early breakfast. “At last!” Frank wept. When the farmer answered the knock, holding up a lamp, he looked once at Frank, then screamed and slammed the door.
An hour later a motorcycle policeman found Frank in the ditch, in half delirium.
“Another drunk!” said the policeman, most cheerfully, snapping the support in place on his cycle. But as he stooped and saw Frank’s half-hidden face, he whispered, “Good God Almighty!”
XI
The doctors told him that though the right eye was gone completely, he might not entirely lose the sight of the other for perhaps a year.
Bess did not shriek when she saw him; she only stood with her hands shaky at her breast.
She seemed to hesitate before kissing what had been his mouth. But she spoke cheerfully:
“Don’t you worry about a single thing. I’ll get a job that’ll keep us going. I’ve already seen the general secretary at the C.O.S. And isn’t it nice that the kiddies are old enough now to read aloud to you.”
To be read aloud to, the rest of his life …
XII
Elmer called and raged, “This is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard of in my life, Frank! Believe me, I’m going to give the fellows that did this to you the most horrible beating they ever got, right from my pulpit! Even though it may hinder me in getting money for my new church—say, we’re going to have a bang-up plant there, right up to date, cost over half a million dollars, seat over two thousand. But nobody can shut me up! I’m going to denounce those fiends in a way they’ll never forget!”
And that was the last Elmer is known ever to have said on the subject, privately or publicly.
Chapter XXX
I
The Reverend Elmer Gantry was in his oak and Spanish leather study at the great new Wellspring Church.
The building was of cheerful brick, trimmed with limestone. It had Gothic windows, a carillon in the square stone tower, dozens of Sunday School rooms, a gymnasium, a social room with a stage and a motion-picture booth, an electric range in the kitchen, and over it all a revolving electric cross and a debt.
But the debt was being attacked. Elmer had kept on the professional church-money-raiser whom he had employed during the campaign for the building fund. This financial crusader was named Emmanuel Navitsky; he was said to be the descendant of a noble Polish Catholic family converted to Protestantism; and certainly he was a most enthusiastic Christian—except possibly on Passover Eve. He had raised money for Presbyterian Churches, Y.M.C.A. buildings, Congregational Colleges, and dozens of other holy purposes. He did miracles with card indices of rich people; and he is said to have been the first ecclesiastical go-getter to think of inviting Jews to contribute to Christian temples.
Yes, Emmanuel would take care of the debt, and Elmer could give himself to purely spiritual matters.
He sat now in his study, dictating to Miss Bundle. He was happy in the matter of that dowdy lady, because her brother, a steward in the church, had recently died, and he could presently get rid of her without too
