“He better watch out and not go fooling round my girl!” Elmer reflected, as they pumped back toward Babylon.
He did not congratulate Frank on having overcome his dread of stolid country audiences (Frank had always lived in cities) or on having made Solomon’s temple not merely a depressing object composed of a substance called “cubits” but an actual shrine in which dwelt an active and terrifying god.
III
For two Sundays now Elmer had striven to impress Lulu not only as an efficient young prophet but as a desirable man. There were always too many people about. Only once did he have her alone. They walked half a mile then to call on a sick old woman. On their way Lulu had fluttered at him (gray-and-white kitten in a close bonnet of soft fuzzy gray, which he wanted to stroke).
“I suppose you’re just bored to death by my sermons,” he fished.
“Oh, nnnno! I think they’re just wonderful!”
“Do you, honest?”
“Honest, I do!”
He looked down at her childish face till he had caught her eyes, then, jocularly:
“My, but this wind is making the little cheeks and the cute lips awful’ red! Or I guess maybe some fella must of been kissing ’em before church!”
“Oh, no—”
She looked distressed, almost frightened.
“Whoa up!” he counseled himself. “You’ve got the wrong track. Golly, I don’t believe she’s as much of a fusser as I thought she was. Really is kinda innocent. Poor kid, shame to get her all excited. Oh, thunder, won’t hurt her a bit to have a little educated lovemaking!”
He hastily removed any possible blots on his clerical reputation:
“Oh, I was joking. I just meant—be a shame if as lovely a girl as you weren’t engaged. I suppose you are engaged, of course?”
“No. I liked a boy here awfully, but he went to Cleveland to work, and I guess he’s kind of forgotten me.”
“Oh, that is really too bad!”
Nothing could be stronger, more dependable, more comforting, than the pressure of his fingers on her arm. She looked grateful; and when she came to the sickroom and heard Brother Gantry pray, long, fervently, and with the choicest words about death not really mattering nor really hurting (the old woman had cancer) then Lulu also looked worshipful.
On their way back he made his final probe:
“But even if you aren’t engaged, Sister Lulu, I’ll bet there’s a lot of the young fellows here that’re crazy about you.”
“No, honest there aren’t. Oh, I go round some with a second cousin of mine—Floyd Naylor—but, my! he’s so slow, he’s no fun.”
The Rev. Mr. Gantry planned to provide fun.
IV
Elmer and Frank had gone down on Saturday afternoon to decorate the church for the Thanksgiving service. To save the trip to Babylon and back, they were to spend Saturday night in the broad farmhouse of Deacon Bains, and Lulu Bains and her spinster cousin, Miss Baldwin, were assisting in the decoration—in other words doing it. They were stringing pine boughs across the back of the hall, and arranging a harvest feast of pumpkins, yellow corn, and velvety sumach in front of the pulpit.
“I want your advice, Lulu—Sister Lulu. Don’t you think in my sermon tomorrow it might be helpful to explain—”
(They stood side by side. How sweet were her little shoulders, her soft pussycat cheeks! He had to kiss them! He had to! He swayed toward her. Damn Frank and that Baldwin female! Why didn’t they get out?)
“—to explain that all these riches of the harvest, priceless though they are in themselves and necessary for grub—for the festal board, yet they are but symbols and indications of the—Do sit down, Lulu; you look a little tired.—of the deeper spiritual blessings which he also showers on us and not just at harvest time, and this is a very important point—”
(Her hand dropped against his knee; lay, so white, on the drab pew. Her breasts were young and undrained under her plaid blouse. He had to touch her hand. His fingers crept toward it, touched it by accident, surely by accident, while she looked devotion and he intoned sublimity.)
“—a very important point indeed; all the year round we receive those greater inner blessings, and it is for them more than for any material, uh, material gains that we should lift our voices in Thanksgiving. Don’t you think it might be valuable to all of us if I brought that out?”
“Oh, yes! Indeed I do! I think that’s a lovely thought!”
(His arms tingled. He had to slip them about her.)
Frank and Miss Baldwin had sat down, and they were in an intolerably long discussion as to what ought to be done about that terrible little Cutler boy who said that he didn’t believe that the ravens brought any bread and meat to Elijah, not if he knew anything about these ole crows! Frank explained that he did not wish to rebuke honest doubt; but when this boy went and made a regular business of cutting up and asking foolish questions—
“Lulu!” Elmer urged. “Skip back in the other room with me a second. There’s something about the church work I want to ask you, and I don’t want them to hear.”
There were two rooms in the Schoenheim church: the auditorium and a large closet for the storage of hymnbooks, mops, brooms, folding chairs, communion cups. It was lighted by a dusty window.
“Sister Bains and I are going to look over the Sunday School lesson-charts,” Elmer called largely and brightly.
The fact that she did not deny it bound them together in secrecy. He sat on an upturned bucket; she perched on a stepladder. It was pleasant to be small in her presence and look up to her.
What the “something about church work” which he was going to ask her was, he had no notion, but Elmer was a very ready talker in the presence of young women. He launched out:
“I need your
