“Why, Dean,” in hurt rectitude, “I’m engaged to a fine young lady there—daughter of one of my deacons.”
“Well, that’s good. It’s better to marry than to burn—or at least so it is stated in the Scriptures. Now I don’t want any monkey-business about this. A preacher must walk circumspectly. You must shun the very appearance of evil. I hope you’ll love and cherish her, and seems to me it would be well not only to be engaged to her but even to marry her. Thaddeldo.”
“Now what the devil did he mean by that?” protested Parsifal as he went home.
VII
He had to work quickly. He had less than two months before the threatened marriage.
If he could entangle Lulu with someone? What about Floyd Naylor? The fool loved her.
He spent as much time in Schoenheim as possible, not only with Lulu but with Floyd. He played all his warm incandescence on Floyd, and turned that trusting drudge from enemy into admiring friend. One day when Floyd and he were walking together to the handcar Elmer purred:
“Say, Floydy, some ways it’s kind of a shame Lu’s going to marry me and not you. You’re so steady and hardworking and patient. I fly off the handle too easy.”
“Oh, gosh, no, I ain’t smart enough for her, Elmer. She ought to marry a fella with a lot of book-learning like you, and that dresses swell, so she can be in society and everything.”
“But I guess you liked her pretty well yourself, eh? You ought to! Sweetest girl in the whole world. You kind of liked her?”
“Yuh, I guess I did. I—Oh, well rats, I ain’t good enough for her, God bless her!”
Elmer spoke of Floyd as a future cousin and professed his fondness for him, his admiration of the young man’s qualities and remarkable singing (Floyd Naylor sang about as Floyd Naylor would have sung.) Elmer spoke of him as a future cousin, and wanted to see a deal of him.
He praised Lulu and Floyd to each other, and left them together as often as he could contrive, slipping back to watch them through the window. But to his indignation they merely sat and talked.
Then he had a week in Schoenheim, the whole week before Easter. The Baptists of Schoenheim, with their abhorrence of popery, did not make much of Easter as Easter; they called it “The Festival of Christ’s Resurrection,” but they did like daily meetings during what the heretical world knew as Holy Week. Elmer stayed with the Bainses and labored mightily both against sin and against getting married. Indeed he was so stirred and so eloquent that he led two sixteen-year-old girls out of their sins, and converted the neighborhood object-lesson, a patriarch who drank hard cider and had not been converted for two years.
Elmer knew by now that though Floyd Naylor was not exactly a virgin, his achievements and his resolution were considerably less than his desires, and he set to work to improve that resolution. He took Floyd off to the pasture and, after benignly admitting that perhaps a preacher oughtn’t to talk of such things, he narrated his amorous conquests till Floyd’s eyes were hungrily bulging. Then, with giggling apologies, Elmer showed his collection of what he called Art Photographs.
Floyd almost ate them, Elmer lent them to him. That was on a Thursday.
At the same time Elmer deprived Lulu all week of the caresses which she craved, till she was desperate.
On Friday Elmer held morning meeting instead of evening meeting, and arranged that Lulu and Floyd and he should have picnic supper in the sycamore grove near the Bains house. He suggested it in a jocund idyllic way, and Lulu brightened. On their way to the grove with their baskets she sighed to him, as they walked behind Floyd, “Oh, why have you been so cold to me? Have I offended you again, dear?”
He let her have it, brutally: “Oh, don’t be such a damned whiner! Can’t you act as if you had some brains, just for once?”
When they spread the picnic supper, she was barely keeping hold of her sobs.
They finished supper in the dusk. They sat quietly, Floyd looking at her, wondering at her distress, peeping nervously at her pretty ankles.
“Say, I’ve got to go in and make some notes for my sermon tomorrow. No, you two wait for me here. Nicer out in the fresh air. Be back in about half an hour,” said Elmer.
He made much of noisily swaggering away through the brush; he crept back softly, stood behind a sycamore near them. He was proud of himself. It was working. Already Lulu was sobbing openly, while Floyd comforted her with “What is it, pretty? What is it, dear? Tell me.”
Floyd had moved nearer to her (Elmer could just see them) and she rested her head on his cousinly shoulder.
Presently Floyd was kissing her tears away, and she seemed to be snuggling close to him. Elmer heard her muffled, “Oh, you oughtn’t to kiss me!”
“Elmer said I should think of you as a sister, and I could kiss you—Oh, my God, Lulu, I do love you so terrible!”
“Oh, we oughtn’t—” Then silence.
Elmer fled into the barnyard, found Deacon Bains, and demanded harshly, “Come here! I want you to see what Floyd and Lulu are doing! Put that lantern down. I’ve got one of these electric dinguses here.”
He had. He had bought it for this purpose. He also had a revolver in his pocket.
When Elmer and the bewildered Mr. Bains burst upon them, saw them in the circle from the electric flashlight, Lulu and Floyd were deep in a devastating kiss.
“There!” bellowed the outraged Elmer. “Now you see why I hesitated to be engaged to that woman! I’ve suspected it all along! Oh, abomination—abomination, and she that committeth it shall be cut off!”
Floyd sprang up, a fighting hound. Elmer could doubtless have handled him, but it was Deacon Bains who with one maniac blow knocked Floyd down. The deacon turned to
