All of them listening to the Rev. Dr. Elmer Gantry as he shouted:
“—and I want to tell you that the fellow who is eaten by ambition is putting the glories of this world before the glories of Heaven! Oh, if I could only help you to understand that it is humility, that it is simple loving kindness, that it is tender loyalty, which alone make the heart glad! Now, if you’ll let me tell a story: It reminds me of two Irishmen named Mike and Pat—”
V
For years Elmer had had a waking nightmare of seeing Jim Lefferts sitting before him in the audience, scoffing. It would be a dramatic encounter and terrible; he wasn’t sure but that Jim would speak up and by some magic kick him out of the pulpit.
But when, that Sunday morning, he saw Jim in the third row, he considered only, “Oh, Lord, there’s Jim Lefferts! He’s pretty gray. I suppose I’ll have to be nice to him.”
Jim came up afterward to shake hands. He did not look cynical; he looked tired; and when he spoke, in a flat prairie voice, Elmer felt urban and urbane and superior.
“Hello, Hellcat,” said Jim.
“Well, well, well! Old Jim Lefferts! Well, by golly! Say, it certainly is a mighty great pleasure to see you, my boy! What you doing in this neck of the woods?”
“Looking up a claim for a client.”
“What you doing now, Jim?”
“I’m practising law in Topeka.”
“Doing pretty well?”
“Oh, I can’t complain. Oh, nothing extra special. I was in the state senate for a term though.”
“That’s fine! That’s fine! Say, how long gonna be in town?”
“Oh, ’bout three days.”
“Say, want to have you up to the house for dinner; but doggone it, Cleo—that’s my wife—I’m married now—she’s gone and got me all sewed up with a lot of dates—you know how these women are—me, I’d rather sit home and read. But sure got to see you again. Say, gimme a ring, will you?—at the house (find it in the tel’phone book) or at my study here in the church.”
“Yuh, sure, you bet. Well, glad to seen you.”
“You bet. Tickled t’ death seen you, old Jim!”
Elmer watched Jim plod away, shoulders depressed, a man discouraged.
“And that,” he rejoiced, “is the poor fish that tried to keep me from going into the ministry!” He looked about his auditorium, with the organ pipes a vast golden pyramid, with the Chubbuck memorial window vivid in ruby and gold and amethyst. “And become a lawyer like him, in a dirty stinking little office! Huh! And he actually made fun of me and tried to hold me back when I got a clear and definite Call of God! Oh, I’ll be good and busy when he calls up, you can bet on that!”
Jim did not telephone.
On the third day Elmer had a longing to see him, a longing to regain his friendship. But he did not know where Jim was staying; he could not reach him at the principal hotels.
He never saw Jim Lefferts again, and within a week he had forgotten him, except as it was a relief to have lost his embarrassment before Jim’s sneering—the last bar between him and confident greatness.
VI
It was in the summer of 1924 that Elmer was granted a three-months leave, and for the first time Cleo and he visited Europe.
He had heard the Rev. Dr. G. Prosper Edwards say, “I divide American clergymen into just two classes—those who could be invited to preach in a London church, and those who couldn’t.” Dr. Edwards was of the first honorable caste, and Elmer had seen him pick up great glory from having sermonized in the City Temple. The Zenith papers, even the national religious periodicals, hinted that when Dr. Edwards was in London, the entire population from king to navvies had galloped to worship under him, and the conclusion was that Zenith and New York would be sensible to do likewise.
Elmer thoughtfully saw to it that he should be invited also. He had Bishop Toomis write to his Wesleyan colleagues, he had Rigg and William Dollinger Styles write to their Nonconformist business acquaintances in London, and a month before he sailed he was bidden to address the celebrated Brompton Road Chapel, so that he went off in a glow not only of adventure but of message-bearing.
VII
Dr. Elmer Gantry was walking the deck of the Scythia, a bright, confident, manly figure in a blue suit, a yachting cap, and white canvas shoes, swinging his arms and beaming pastorally on his fellow athletic maniacs.
He stopped at the deck chairs of a little old couple—a delicate blue-veined old lady, and her husband, with thin hands and a thin white beard.
“Well, you folks seem to be standing the trip pretty good—for old folks!” he roared.
“Yes, thank you very much,” said the old lady.
He patted her knee, and boomed, “If there’s anything I can do to make things nice and comfy for you, mother, you just holler! Don’t be afraid to call on me. I haven’t advertised the fact—kind of fun to travel what they call incognito—but fact is, I’m a minister of the gospel, even if I am a husky guy, and it’s my pleasure as well as my duty to help folks anyway I can. Say, don’t you think it’s just about the loveliest thing about this ocean traveling, the way folks have the leisure to get together and exchange ideas? Have you crossed before?”
“Oh, yes,
