Elmer Gantry never knew who sent him thirty dimes, wrapped in a tract about holiness, nor why. But he found the sentiments in the tract useful in a sermon, and the thirty dimes he spent for lively photographs of burlesque ladies.
Chapter IX
I
The relations of Brother Gantry and Brother Shallard were not ardent, toward Chrismastide, even in the intimacy of pumping a handcar.
Frank complained while they were laboring along the track after church at Schoenheim:
“Look here, Gantry, something’s got to be done. I’m not satisfied about you and Lulu. I’ve caught you looking at each other. And I suspect you’ve been talking to the dean about Dr. Zechlin. I’m afraid I’ve got to go to the dean myself. You’re not fit to have a pastorate.”
Elmer stopped pumping, glared, rubbed his mittened hands on his thighs, and spoke steadily:
“I’ve been waiting for this! I’m impulsive—sure; I make bad mistakes—every red-blooded man does. But what about you? I don’t know how far you’ve gone with your hellish doubts, but I’ve been listening to the hedging way you answer questions in Sunday School, and I know you’re beginning to wabble. Pretty soon you’ll be an out-and-out liberal. God! Plotting to weaken the Christian religion, to steal away from weak groping souls their only hope of salvation! The worst murderer that ever lived isn’t a criminal like you!”
“That isn’t true! I’d die before I’d weaken the faith of anyone who needed it!”
“Then you simply haven’t got brains enough to see what you’re doing, and there’s no place for you in any Christian pulpit! It’s me that ought to go to Pop Trosper complaining! Just today, when that girl came to you worrying about her pa’s giving up family-prayers, you let on like it didn’t matter much. You may have started that poor young lady on the doubt-paved road that leads to everlasting Hell!”
And all the way to Mizpah Frank worried and explained.
And at Mizpah Elmer graciously permitted him to resign his place at Schoenheim, and advised him to repent and seek the direction of the Holy Spirit before he should ever attempt another pastorate.
Elmer sat in his rooms flaming with his evangelistic triumph. He was so sincere about it that not for minutes did he reflect that Frank would no longer be an obstacle to his relations with Lulu Bains.
II
A score of times before March, in her own house, in an abandoned log barn, at the church, Elmer contrived to have meetings with Lulu. But he wearied of her trusting babble. Even her admiration, since she always gushed the same things in the same way, began to irritate him. Her lovemaking was equally unimaginative. She always kissed and expected to be kissed in the same way. Even before March he had had enough, but she was so completely devoted to him that he wondered if he might not have to give up the Schoenheim church to get rid of her. He felt injured.
Nobody could ever say he was unkind to girls or despised ’em, the way Jim Lefferts used to. He’d taught Lulu an awful lot; got her over her hick ideas; showed her how a person could be religious and still have a good time, if you just looked at it right and saw that while you ought to teach the highest ideals, nobody could be expected to always and exactly live up to ’em every day. Especially when you were young. And hadn’t he given her a bracelet that cost five good bucks?
But she was such a darned fool. Never could understand that after a certain point a man wanted to quit lovemaking and plan his next Sunday’s sermon or bone up on his confounded Greek. Practically, he felt resentfully, she’d deceived him. Here he’d thought that she was a nice, safe, unemotional little thing, whom it might be pleasant to tease but who’d let him alone when he had more serious matters to attend to, and then she’d turned out passionate. She wanted to go on being kissed and kissed and kissed when he was sick of it. Her lips were always creeping around, touching his hand or his cheek when he wanted to talk.
She sent him whining little notes at Mizpah. Suppose somebody found one of ’em! Golly! She wrote to him that she was just living till their next meeting—trying to bother him and distract his attention when he had a man’s work to do. She mooned up at him with her foolish soft mushy eyes all through his sermons—absolutely spoiled his style. She was wearing him out, and he’d have to get rid of her.
Hated to do it. Always had been nice to girls—to everybody. But it was for her sake just as much as his—
He’d have to be mean to her and make her sore.
III
They were alone in the Schoenheim church after morning meeting. She had whispered to him at the door, “I’ve got something I have to tell you.”
He was frightened; he grumbled, “Well, we oughtn’t to be seen together so much but—Slip back when the other folks are gone.”
He was sitting in the front pew in the deserted church, reading hymns for want of better, when she crept behind him and kissed his ear. He jumped.
“Good Lord, don’t go startling people like that!” he snarled. “Well, what’s all this you have to tell me?”
She was faltering, near to tears. “I thought you’d like it! I just wanted to creep close and say I loved you!”
“Well, good heavens, you needn’t of acted as though you were pregnant or something!”
“Elmer!” Too hurt in her gay affection, too shocked in her rustic sense of propriety, for resentment.
“Well, that’s just about how you acted! Making me
