It was hard to give heed to his mother’s wails of joy all the way to her boardinghouse.
“Now don’t you dare think of getting up early to see me off on the train,” she insisted. “All I have to do is just to carry my little valise across the street. You’ll need your sleep, after all this stirrin’ up you’ve had tonight—I was so proud—I’ve never known anybody to really wrestle with the Lord like you did. Oh, Elmy, you’ll stay true? You’ve made your old mother so happy! All my life I’ve sorrowed, I’ve waited, I’ve prayed and now I shan’t ever sorrow again! Oh, you will stay true?”
He threw the last of his emotional reserve into a ringing, “You bet I will, Ma!” and kissed her good night.
He had no emotion left with which to face walking alone, in a cold and realistic night, down a street not of shining columns but of cottages dumpy amid the bleak snow and unfriendly under the bitter stars.
His plan of saving Jim Lefferts, his vision of Jim with reverent and beatific eyes, turned into a vision of Jim with extremely irate eyes and a lot to say. With that vanishment his own glory vanished.
“Was I,” he wondered, “just a plain damn’ fool?
“Jim warned me they’d nab me if I lost my head.
“Now I suppose I can’t ever even smoke again without going to hell.”
But he wanted a smoke. Right now!
He had a smoke.
It comforted him but little as he fretted on:
“There wasn’t any fake about it! I really did repent all these darn’ fool sins. Even smoking—I’m going to cut it out. I did feel the—the peace of God.
“But can I keep up this speed? Christ! I can’t do it! Never take a drink or anything—
“I wonder if the Holy Ghost really was there and getting after me? I did feel different! I did! Or was it just because Judson and Ma and all those Christers were there whooping it up—
“Jud Roberts kidded me into it. With all his Big Brother stuff. Prob’ly pulls it everywhere he goes. Jim’ll claim I—Oh, damn Jim, too! I got some rights! None of his business if I come out and do the fair square thing! And they did look up to me when I gave them the invitation! It went off fine and dandy! And that kid coming right up and getting saved. Mighty few fellows ever’ve pulled off a conversion as soon after their own conversion as I did! Moody or none of ’em. I’ll bet it busts the records! Yes, sir, maybe they’re right. Maybe the Lord has got some great use for me, even if I ain’t always been all I might of been … someways … but I was never mean or tough or anything like that … just had a good time.
“Jim—what right’s he got telling me where I head in? Trouble with him is, he thinks he knows it all. I guess these wise old coots that’ve written all these books about the Bible, I guess they know more’n one smart-aleck Kansas agnostic!
“Yes, sir! The whole crowd! Turned to me like I was an All-American preacher!
“Wouldn’t be so bad to be a preacher if you had a big church and—Lot easier than digging out law-cases and having to put it over a jury and another lawyer maybe smarter’n you are.
“The crowd have to swallow what you tell ’em in a pulpit, and no backtalk or cross-examination allowed!”
For a second he snickered, but:
“Not nice to talk that way. Even if a fellow don’t do what’s right himself, no excuse for his sneering at fellows that do, like preachers. … There’s where Jim makes his mistake.
“Not worthy to be a preacher. But if Jim Lefferts thinks for one single solitary second that I’m afraid to be a preacher because he pulls a lot of gaff—I guess I know how I felt when I stood up and had all them folks hollering and rejoicing—I guess I know whether I experienced salvation or not! And I don’t require any James Blaine Lefferts to tell me, neither!”
Thus for an hour of dizzy tramping; now colder with doubt than with the prairie wind, now winning back some of the exaltation of his spiritual adventure, but always knowing that he had to confess to an inexorable Jim.
IV
It was after one. Surely Jim would be asleep, and by next day there might be a miracle. Morning always promises miracles.
He eased the door open, holding it with a restraining hand. There was a light on the washstand beside Jim’s bed, but it was a small kerosene lamp turned low. He tiptoed in, his tremendous feet squeaking.
Jim suddenly sat up, turned up the wick. He was red-nosed, red-eyed, and coughing. He stared, and unmoving, by the table, Elmer stared back.
Jim spoke abruptly:
“You son of a sea-cook! You’ve gone and done it! You’ve been saved! You’ve let them hornswoggle you into being a Baptist witch-doctor! I’m through! You can go—to heaven!”
“Aw, say now, Jim, lissen!”
“I’ve listened enough. I’ve got nothing more to say. And now you listen to me!” said Jim, and he spoke with tongues for three minutes straight.
Most of the night they struggled for the freedom of Elmer’s soul, with Jim not quite losing yet never winning. As Jim’s face had hovered at the gospel meeting between him and the evangelist, blotting out the vision of the cross, so now the faces of his mother and Judson hung sorrowful and misty before him, a veil across Jim’s pleading.
Elmer slept four hours and went out, staggering with weariness, to bring cinnamon buns, a wienie sandwich, and a tin pail of coffee for Jim’s breakfast. They were laboring windily into new arguments, Jim a little more stubborn, Elmer ever more irritable, when no less a dignitary than President the Rev. Dr. Willoughby Quarles, chin whisker, glacial shirt, bulbous waistcoat and all, plunged under the fat soft wing of the landlady.
The president shook
