“Oh, no, no, no! Please, no! I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Oh, please!”
“Uh-huh! And that’s all you’ve got to say for yourself! Come here! Look up at me!”
They must have hurt, his meaty fingers digging into her shoulder, but then, he felt righteous, he felt like the Old Testament prophets whom his sect admired. And he had found something about which he really could quarrel with her.
She did not look at him, for all his pinching. She merely wept, hopelessly.
“Then you were lying?”
“Oh, I was! Oh, dearest, how can you hurt me like you do?” He released his grip, and looked polite. “Oh, I don’t mean hurting my shoulder. That doesn’t matter. I mean hurting me! So cold to me! And I thought maybe if we were married—I’d do everything to make you happy. I’d go wherever you did. I wouldn’t mind if we had the tiniest little small house—”
“And you—you—expect a minister of the gospel to share any house with a liar! Oh, you viper that—Oh, hell, I won’t talk like a preacher. I don’t suppose I have done altogether right, maybe. Though I noticed you were glad enough to sneak out and meet me places! But when a woman, a Christian, deliberately lies and tries to deceive a man in his deepest feelings—That’s too much no matter what I did! Don’t you ever dare to speak to me again! And if you tell your father about this, and force me into marriage, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll kill myself!”
“Oh, I won’t! Honest, I won’t!”
“I’ll repent my own fault in bitter tears and as for you, young woman—Go and sin no more.”
He swung round, walked away from her, deaf to her whimperings. She desperately trotted after his giant stride for a while, then leaned against the trunk of a sycamore, while a passing grocery clerk snickered.
She did not appear at church the next Sunday. Elmer was so pleased that he thought of having another rendezvous with her.
IV
Deacon Bains and his good wife had noticed how pale and absentminded was their normally bouncing daughter.
“Guess she’s in love with that new preacher. Well, let’s keep our hands off. Be a nice match for her. Never knew a young preacher that was so filled with the power. Talks like a house afire, by golly,” said the deacon, as they yawned and stretched in the vast billowy old bed.
Then Floyd Naylor came fretting to the deacon.
Floyd was a kinsman of the family; a gangling man of twenty-five, immensely strong, rather stupid, a poor farmer, very loyal. For years he had buzzed about Lulu. It would be over-romantic to say that he had eaten his faithful heart out in lone reverence. But he had always considered Lulu the most beautiful, sparkling, and profound girl in the universe. Lulu considered him a stick, and Deacon Bains held in aversion his opinions on alfalfa. He was a familiar of the household; rather like a neighbor’s dog.
Floyd found Deacon Bains in the barnyard mending a whiffletree, and grunted, “Say, Cousin Barney, I’m kind of worried about Lulu.”
“Oh, guess she’s in love with this new preacher. Can’t tell; they might get hitched.”
“Yeh, but is Brother Gantry in love with her? Somehow I don’t like that fella.”
“Rats, you don’t appreciate preachers. You never was in a real state of grace. Never did get reborn of the spirit proper.”
“Like hell I didn’t! Got just as reborn as you did! Preachers are all right, most of ’em. But this fella Gantry—Say, here ’long about two months ago I seen him and Lulu walking down the brick schoolhouse road, and they was hugging and kissing like all get-out, and he was calling her Sweetheart.”
“Heh? Sure it was them?”
“Dead certain. I was, uh—Well, fact is, another fella and me—”
“Who was she?”
“Now that don’t make no difference. Anyway, we was sitting right under the big maple this side of the schoolhouse, in the shade, but it was bright moonlight and Lulu and this preacher come by, near’s I am to you, prett’ near. Well, thinks I, guess they’re going to get engaged. Then I hung around the church, once-twice after meeting, and one time I kinda peeked in the window and I seen ’em right there in the front pew, hugging like they sure ought to get married whether or no. I didn’t say anything—wanted to wait and see if he’d marry her. Now it ain’t any of my business, Barney, but you know I always liked Lulu, and strikes me we ought to know if this Bible-walloper is going to play straight with her.”
“Guess maybe that’s right. I’ll have a talk with her.”
Bains had never been very observant of his daughter, but Floyd Naylor was not a liar, and it was with sharpened eyes that the deacon stumped into the house and found her standing by the churn, her arms hanging limp.
“Say, uh, say, uh, Lu, how’s things going with you and Brother Gantry?”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“You two engaged? Going to be engaged? He going to marry you?”
“Of course not.”
“Been making love to you, ain’t he?”
“Oh, never!”
“Never hugged you or kissed you?”
“Never!”
“How far’d he go?”
“Oh, he didn’t!”
“Why you been looking so kind of peeked lately?”
“Oh, I just don’t feel very well. Oh, I feel fine. It’s just the spring coming on, I guess—” She dropped to the floor and, with her head against the churn, her thin fingers beating an hysterical tattoo on the floor, she choked with weeping.
“There, there, Lu! Your dad’ll do something about it.”
Floyd was waiting in the farmyard.
There were, in those parts and those days, not infrequent ceremonies known as “shotgun weddings.”
V
The Reverend Elmer Gantry was reading an illustrated pink periodical devoted to prizefighters and chorus girls in his room at Elizabeth J. Schmutz Hall late of an afternoon when two large men walked in without knocking.
“Why, good evening, Brother Bains—Brother Naylor! This is a pleasant surprise. I was, uh—Did you ever see this horrible rag? About actoresses. An invention of the
