“This is the outfit I’ve been looking for! Here’s where I could go over great! I could beat that English preacher both ways from the ace. And Sharon—Oh, the darling!”
She was coming along the line of converts and near-converts, laying her shining hands on their heads. His shoulders quivered with consciousness of her nearness. When she reached him and invited him, in that thrilling voice, “Brother, won’t you find happiness in Jesus?” he did not bow lower, like the others, he did not sob, but looked straight up at her jauntily, seeking to hold her eyes, while he crowed, “It’s happiness just to have had your wondrous message, Sister Falconer!”
She glanced at him sharply, she turned blank, and instantly passed on.
He felt slapped. “I’ll show her yet!”
He stood aside as the crowd wavered out. He got into talk with the crisp young Englishman who had read the Scripture lesson—Cecil Aylston, Sharon’s first assistant.
“Mighty pleased to be here tonight, Brother,” bumbled Elmer. “I happen to be a Baptist preacher myself. Bountiful meeting! And you read the lesson most inspiringly.”
Cecil Aylston rapidly took in Elmer’s checked suit, his fancy vest, and “Oh. Really? Splendid. So good of you, I’m sure. If you will excuse me?” Nor did it increase Elmer’s affection to have Aylston leave him for one of the humblest of the adherents, an old woman in a broken and flapping straw hat.
Elmer disposed of Cecil Aylston: “To hell with him! There’s a fellow we’ll get rid of! A man like me, he gives me the icy mitt, and then he goes to the other extreme and slops all over some old dame that’s probably saved already, that you, by golly, couldn’t unsave with a carload of gin! That’ll do you, my young friend! And you don’t like my check suit, either. Well, I certainly do buy my clothes just to please you, all right!”
He waited, hoping for a chance at Sharon Falconer. And others were waiting. She waved her hand at all of them, waved her flaunting smile, rubbed her eyes, and begged, “Will you forgive me? I’m blind-tired. I must rest.” She vanished into the mysteries behind the gaudy gold-and-white pyramid.
Even in her staggering weariness, her voice was not drab; it was filled with that twilight passion which had captured Elmer more than her beauty. … “Never did see a lady just like her,” he reflected, as he plowed back to his hotel. “Face kinda thin. Usually I like ’em plumper. And yet—golly! I could fall for her as I never have for anybody in my life. … So this darn’ Englishman didn’t like my clothes! Looked as if he thought they were too sporty. Well, he can stick ’em in his ear! Anybody got any objection to my clothes?”
The slumbering universe did not answer, and he was almost content. And at eight next morning—Sautersville had an excellent clothing shop, conducted by Messrs. Erbsen and Goldfarb—and at eight Elmer was there, purchasing a chaste double-breasted brown suit and three rich but sober ties. By hounding Mr. Goldfarb he had the alterations done by half-past nine, and at ten he was grandly snooping about the revival tent. … He should have gone on to the next town this morning.
Sharon did not appear till eleven, to lecture the personal workers, but meanwhile Elmer had thrust himself into acquaintanceship with Art Nichols, a gaunt Yankee, once a barber, who played the cornet and the French horn in the three-piece orchestra which Sharon carried with her.
“Yes, pretty good game, this is,” droned Nichols. “Better’n barberin’ and better’n one-night stands—oh, I’m a real trouper, too; play characters in tent shows—I was out three seasons with Tom shows. This is easier. No street parades, and I guess prob’ly we do a lot of good, saving souls and so on. Only these religious folks do seem to scrap amongst themselves more’n the professionals.”
“Where do you go from here?”
“We close in five days, then we grab the collection and pull out of here and make a jump to Lincoln, Nebraska; open there in three days. Regular troupers’ jump, too—don’t even get a Pullman—leave here on the day coach at eleven p.m. and get into Lincoln at one.”
“Sunday night you leave, eh? That’s funny. I’ll be on that train. Going to Lincoln myself.”
“Well, you can come hear us there. I always do ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ on the cornet, first meeting. Knocks ’em cold. They say it’s all this gab that gets ’em going and drags in the sinners, but don’t you believe it—it’s the music. Say, I can get more damn’ sinners weeping on a E-flat cornet than nine gospel-artists all shooting off their faces at once!”
“I’ll bet you can, Art. Say, Art—Of course I’m a preacher myself, just in business temporarily, making arrangements for a new appointment.” Art looked like one who was about to not lend money. “But I don’t believe all this bull about never having a good time; and of course Paul said to ‘take a little wine for your stomach’s sake’ and this town is dry, but I’m going to a wet one between now and Saturday, and if I were to have a pint of rye in my jeans—heh?”
“Well, I’m awful’ fond of my stomach—like to do something for its sake!”
“What kind of a fellow is this Englishman? Seems to be Miss Falconer’s right-hand man.”
“Oh, he’s a pretty bright fellow, but he don’t seem to get along with us boys.”
“She like him? Wha’ does he call himself?”
“Cecil Aylston, his name is. Oh, Sharon liked him first-rate for a while, but wouldn’t wonder if she was tired of his highbrow stuff now, and the way he never gets chummy.”
“Well, I got to go speak to Miss Falconer a second. Glad met you, Art. See you on the train Sunday evening.”
They had been talking at one of the dozen entrances of the gospel tent. Elmer had been watching Sharon Falconer as she came briskly into
