“I’m going. I can’t stand this. I’ll send you another preacher. I’ll never see any of you again!” said Elmer.
“I don’t blame you. Try to forgive us, Brother.” The deacon was sobbing now, dusty painful sobbing, bewildered sobs of anger.
The last thing Elmer saw in the light of his electric torch was Lulu huddled, with shrunk shoulders, her face insane with fear.
Chapter X
I
As he tramped back to Babylon that evening, Elmer did not enjoy his deliverance so much as he had expected. But he worked manfully at recalling Lulu’s repetitious chatter, her humorless ignorance, her pawing, her unambitious rusticity, and all that he had escaped.
… To have her around—gumming his life—never could jolly the congregation and help him—and suppose he were in a big town with a swell church—Gee! Maybe he wasn’t glad to be out of it! Besides! Really better for her. She and Floyd much better suited …
He knew that Dean Trosper’s one sin was reading till late, and he came bursting into the dean’s house at the scandalous hour of eleven. In the last mile he had heroically put by his exhilaration; he had thrown himself into the state of a betrayed and desolate young man so successfully that he had made himself believe it.
“Oh, how wise you were about women, Dean!” he lamented. “A terrible thing has happened! Her father and I have just found my girl in the arms of another man—a regular roué down there. I can never go back, not even for Easter service. And her father agrees with me. … You can ask him!”
“Well, I am most awfully sorry to hear this, Brother Gantry. I didn’t know you could feel so deeply. Shall we kneel in prayer, and ask the Lord to comfort you? I’ll send Brother Shallard down there for the Easter service—he knows the field.”
On his knees, Elmer told the Lord that he had been dealt with as no man before or since. The dean approved his agonies very much.
“There, there, my boy. The Lord will lighten your burden in his own good time. Perhaps this will be a blessing in disguise—you’re lucky to get rid of such a woman, and this will give you that humility, that deeper thirsting after righteousness, which I’ve always felt you lacked, despite your splendid pulpit voice. Now I’ve got something to take your mind off your sorrows. There’s quite a nice little chapel on the edge of Monarch where they’re lacking an incumbent. I’d intended to send Brother Hudkins—you know him; he’s that old retired preacher that lives out by the brickyard—comes into classes now and then—I’d intended to send him down for the Easter service. But I’ll send you instead, and in fact, if you see the committee, I imagine you can fix it to have this as a regular charge, at least till graduation. They pay fifteen a Sunday and your fare. And being there in a city like Monarch, you can go to the ministerial association and so on—stay over till Monday noon every week—and make fine contacts, and maybe you’ll be in line for assistant in one of the big churches next summer. There’s a morning train to Monarch—10:21, isn’t it? You take that train tomorrow morning, and go look up a lawyer named Eversley. He’s got an office—where’s his letter?—his office is in the Royal Trust Company Building. He’s a deacon. I’ll wire him to be there tomorrow afternoon, or anyway leave word, and you can make your own arrangements. The Flowerdale Baptist Church, that’s the name, and it’s a real nice little modern plant, with lovely folks. Now you go to your room and pray, and I’m sure you’ll feel better.”
II
It was an hilarious Elmer Gantry who took the 10:21 train to Monarch, a city of perhaps three hundred thousand. He sat in the day-coach planning his Easter discourse. Jiminy! His first sermon in a real city! Might lead to anything. Better give ’em something red-hot and startling. Let’s see: He’d get away from this Christ is Risen stuff—mention it of course, just bring it in, but have some other theme. Let’s see: Faith. Hope. Repentance—no, better go slow on that repentance idea; this Deacon Eversley, the lawyer, might be pretty well-to-do and get sore if you suggested he had anything to repent of. Let’s see: Courage. Chastity. Love—that was it—love!
And he was making notes rapidly, right out of his own head, on the back of an envelope:
Love:
a rainbow
a.m. & p.m. star
from cradle to tomb
inspires art etc. music voice of love
slam atheists etc. who not appreciate love
“Guess you must be a newspaperman, Brother,” a voice assailed him.
Elmer looked at his seatmate, a little man with a whisky nose and asterisks of laughter-wrinkles round his eyes, a rather sportingly dressed little man with the red tie which in 1906 was still thought rather the thing for socialists and drinkers.
He could have a good time with such a little man, Elmer considered. A drummer. Would it be more fun to be natural with him, or to ask him if he was saved, and watch him squirm? Hell, he’d have enough holy business in Monarch. So he turned on his best good-fellow smile, and answered:
“Well, not exactly. Pretty warm for so early, eh?”
“Yuh, it certainly is. Been in Babylon long?”
“No, not very long.”
“Fine town. Lots of business.”
“You betcha. And some nice little dames there, too.”
The little man snickered. “There are, eh? Well, say, you better give me some addresses. I make that town once a month and, by golly, I ain’t picked me out a skirt yet. But it’s a good town. Lots of money there.”
“Yes-sir, that’s a fact. Good hustling
