“Why, naturally! Rather! Uh, Miss Falconer, the impetuous Mr. Shoop wants to sing ‘Just As I Am’ for his solo tonight. Is there any way of preventing it? Adelbert is a good saved soul, but just as he is, he is too fat. Won’t you speak to him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let him sing it. He’s brought in lots of souls on that,” yawned Sharon.
“Mangy little souls.”
“Oh, stop being so supercilious! When you get to heaven, Cecil, you’ll complain of the way the seraphims—oh, do shut up; I know it’s seraphim, my tongue just slipped—you’ll complain of the kind of corsets they wear.”
“I’m not at all sure but that you really do picture that sort of heaven, with corseted angels and yourself with a golden mansion on the celestial Park Lane!”
“Cecil Aylston, don’t you quarrel with me tonight! I feel—vulgar. That’s your favorite word! I do wish I could save some of the members of my own crew! … Elmer, do you think God went to Oxford?”
“Sure!”
“And you did, of course!”
“I did not, by golly! I went to a hick college in Kansas! And I was born in a hick town in Kansas!”
“Me too, practically! Oh, I did come from a frightfully old Virginia family, and I was born in what they called a mansion, but still, we were so poor that our pride was ridiculous. Tell me: did you split wood and pull mustard when you were a boy?”
“Did I? Say! You bet I did!”
They sat with their elbows on the table, swapping boasts of provincial poverty, proclaiming kinship, while Cecil looked frosty.
VI
Elmer’s speech at the evangelistic meeting was a cloudburst.
It had structure as well as barytone melody, choice words, fascinating anecdotes, select sentiment, chaste point of view, and resolute piety.
Elmer was later to explain to admirers of his public utterances that nothing was more important than structure. What, he put it to them, would they think of an architect who was fancy about paint and clapboards but didn’t plan the house? And tonight’s euphuisms were full of structure.
In part one he admitted that despite his commercial success he had fallen into sin before the hour when, restless in his hotel room, he had idly fingered o’er a Gideon Bible and been struck by the parable of the talents.
In part two he revealed by stimulating examples from his own experience the cash value of Christianity. He pointed out that merchants often preferred a dependable man to a known crook.
Hitherto he had, perhaps, been a shade too realistic. He felt that Sharon would never take him on in place of Cecil Aylston unless she perceived the poetry with which his soul was gushing. So in part three he explained that what made Christianity no mere dream and ideal, but a practical human solvent, was Love. He spoke very nicely of Love. He said that Love was the Morning Star, the Evening Star, the Radiance upon the Quiet Tomb, the Inspirer equally of Patriots and Bank Presidents, and as for Music, what was it but the very voice of Love?
He had elevated his audience (thirteen hundred they were, and respectful) to a height of idealism from which he made them swoop now like eagles to a pool of tears:
“For, oh, my brothers and sisters, important though it is to be prudent in this world’s affairs, it is the world to come that is alone important, and this reminds me, in closing, of a very sad incident which I recently witnessed. In business affairs I had often had to deal with a very prominent man named Jim Leff—Leffingwell. I can give his name now because he has passed to his eternal reward. Old Jim was the best of good fellows, but he had fatal defects. He drank liquor, he smoked tobacco, he gambled, and I’m sorry to say that he did not always keep his tongue clean—he took the name of God in vain. But Jim was very fond of his family, particularly of his little daughter. Well, she took sick. Oh, what a sad time that was to that household! How the stricken mother tiptoed into and out of the sickroom; how the worried doctors came and went, speeding to aid her! As for the father, poor old Jim, he was bowed with anguish as he leaned over that pathetic little bed, and his hair turned gray in a single night. There came the great crisis, and before the very eyes of the weeping father that little form was stilled, and that sweet, pure young soul passed to its Maker.
“He came to me sobbing, and I put my arms round him as I would round a little child. ‘Oh, God,’ he sobbed, ‘that I should have spent my life in wicked vices, and that the little one should have passed away knowing her dad was a sinner!’ Thinking to comfort him, I said, ‘Old man, it was God’s will that she be taken. You have done all that mortal man could do. The best of medical attention. The best of care.’
“I shall never forget how scornfully he turned upon me. ‘And you call yourself a Christian!’ he cried. ‘Yes, she had medical attention, but one thing was lacking—the one thing that would have saved her—I could not pray!’
“And that strong man knelt in anguish and for all my training in—in trying to explain the ways of God to my fellow business men, there was nothing to say. It was too late!
“Oh, my brothers, my fellow business men, are you going to put off repentance till it’s too late? That’s your affair, you say. Is it? Is it? Have you a right to inflict upon all that you hold nearest and dearest the sore burden of your sins? Do you love your sins better than that dear little son, that bonnie daughter, that loving brother, that fine old father? Do you want to punish them? Do you? Don’t you love someone more than
