“Well, sir, by golly, Brother, I’d of been mad’s a wet hen if you hadn’t stopped! This is your house and there’s always an extra plate to slap on the table. Yes, sir! Had your supper? Sandwich? Enough? Foolishness! We’ll have the womenfolks fix you up something in two shakes. The woman and Lulu, they’re still out in the kitchen. Lu-lu!”
“Oh, I mustn’t stop—so terribly far back to town, and so late—shouldn’t have walked so far.”
“You don’t step your foot out of this house tonight, Brother! You stay right here!”
When Lulu saw him, her tranced eyes said, “And did you come all this way for me?”
She was more softly desirable than he had fancied.
Warmed and swollen with fried eggs and admiration, he sat with them in the parlor narrating more or less possible incidents of his campaigns for righteousness in Kansas, till Mr. Bains began to yawn.
“By golly, ten minutes after nine! Don’t know how it got to be so late. Ma, guess it’s about time to turn in.”
Elmer lunged gallantly:
“Well, you can go to bed, but we young folks are going to sit up and tell each other our middle names! I’m no preacher on week days—I’m just a student, by Jiminy!”
“Well—If you call this a week day. Looks like a week night to me, Brother!”
Everybody laughed.
She was in his arms, on the couch, before her father had yawned and coughed up the stairs; she was in his arms, limp, unreasoning, at midnight; after a long stillness in the chilling room, she sat up hastily at two, and fingered her rumpled hair.
“Oh, I’m frightened!” she whimpered.
He tried to pat her comfortingly, but there was not much heat in him now.
“But it doesn’t matter. When shall we be married?” she fluttered.
And then there was no heart in him at all, but only a lump of terror.
Once or twice in his visions he had considered that there might be danger of having to many her. He had determined that marriage now would cramp his advancement in the church and that, anyway, he didn’t want to marry this brainless little fluffy chick, who would be of no help in impressing rich parishioners. But that caution he had utterly forgotten in emotion, and her question was authentically a surprise, abominably a shock. Thus in whirling thought, even while he mumbled:
“Well—well—Don’t think we can decide yet. Ought to wait till I have time to look around after I graduate, and get settled in some good pastorate.”
“Yes, perhaps we ought,” she said meekly to her man, the best and most learned and strongest and much the most interesting person she had ever known.
“So you mustn’t mention it to anybody, Lu. Not ever to your folks. They might not understand, like you do, how hard it is for a preacher to get his first real church.”
“Yes, dear. Oh, kiss me!”
And he had to kiss her any number of times, in that ghastly cold room, before he could escape to his chamber.
He sat on his bed with an expression of sickness, complaining, “Hell, I oughtn’t to have gone so far! I thought she’d resist more. Aaah! It wasn’t worth all this risk. Aaaaah! She’s dumm as a cow. Poor little thing!” His charity made him feel beneficent again. “Sorry for her. But, good God, she is wishy-washy. Her fault, really, but—Aaah! I was a fool! Well, fellow has to stand right up and face his faults honestly. I do. I don’t excuse myself. I’m not afraid to admit my faults and repent.”
So he was able to go to bed admiring his own virtue and almost forgiving her.
Chapter VIII
I
The ardor of Lulu, the pride of having his own church at Schoenheim, the pleasure of watching Frank Shallard puff in agony over the handcar, all these did not make up to Elmer for his boredom in seminary classes from Monday to Friday—that boredom which all preachers save a few sporting country parsons, a few managers of factory-like institutional churches, must endure throughout their lives.
Often he thought of resigning and going into business. Since buttery words and an important manner would be as valuable in business as in the church, the class to which he gave the most reverent attention was that of Mr. Ben T. Bohnsock, “Professor of Oratory and Literature, and Instructor in Voice Culture.” Under him, Elmer had been learning an ever more golden (yet steel-strong) pulpit manner, learning not to split infinitives in public, learning that references to Dickens, Victor Hugo, James Whitcomb Riley, Josh Billings, and Michelangelo give to a sermon a very toney Chicago air.
Elmer’s eloquence increased like an August pumpkin. He went into the woods to practise. Once a small boy came up behind him, standing on a stump in a clearing, and upon being greeted with “I denounce the abominations of your lascivious and voluptuous, uh, abominations,” he fled yelping, and never again was the same carefree youth.
In moments when he was certain that he really could continue with the easy but dull life of the ministry, Elmer gave heed to Dean Trosper’s lectures in Practical Theology and in Homiletics. Dr. Trosper told the aspiring holy clerks what to say when they called on the sick, how to avoid being compromised by choir-singers, how to remember edifying or laugh-trapping anecdotes by cataloguing them, how to prepare sermons when they had nothing to say, in what books they could find the best predigested sermon-outlines, and, most useful of all, how to raise money.
Eddie Fislinger’s notebook on the Practical Theology lectures (which Elmer viewed as Elmer’s notebook also, before examinations) was crammed with such practical theology as:
Pastoral visiting:
No partiality.
Don’t neglect hired girls, be cordial.
Guard conversation, pleasing manner and laugh and maybe one funny story but no scandal or crit. of others.
Stay only 15–30 minutes.
Ask if like to pray with, not
