“Do you like Cecil?”
“Oh, is a nice, jealous, big, fat man!” She who that evening had been a disturbing organ note was lisping babytalk now.
“Damn it, Sharon, don’t try to be a baby when I’m serious!”
“Damn it, Elmer, don’t say ‘damn it’! Oh, I hate the little vices—smoking, swearing, scandal, drinking just enough to be silly. I love the big ones—murder, lust, cruelty, ambition!”
“And Cecil? Is he one of the big vices that you love?”
“Oh, he’s a dear boy. So sweet, the way he takes himself seriously.”
“Yes, he must make love like an ice-cream cone.”
“You might be surprised! There, there! The poor man is just longing to have me say something about Cecil! I’ll be obliging. He’s done a lot for me. He really knows something; he isn’t a splendid cast-iron statue of ignorance like you or me.”
“Now you look here, Sharon! After all, I am a college graduate and practically a B.D. too.”
“That’s what I said. Cecil really knows how to read. And he taught me to quit acting like a hired girl, bless him. But—Oh, I’ve learned everything he can teach me, and if I get any more of the highbrow in me I’ll lose touch with the common people—bless their dear, sweet, honest souls!”
“Chuck him. Take me on. Oh, it isn’t the money. You must know that, dear. In ten years, at thirty-eight, I can be sales-manager of the Pequot—prob’ly ten thousand a year—and maybe some day the president, at thirty thou. I’m not looking for a job. But—Oh, I’m crazy about you! Except for my mother, you’re the only person I’ve ever adored. I love you! Hear me? Damn it—yes, damn it, I said—I worship you! Oh, Sharon, Sharon, Sharon! It wasn’t really bunk when I told ’em all tonight how you’d converted me, because you did convert me. Will you let me serve you? And will you maybe marry me?”
“No. I don’t think I’ll ever marry—exactly. Perhaps I’ll chuck Cecil—poor sweet lad!—and take you on. I’ll see. Anyhow—Let me think.”
She shook off his encircling arm and sat brooding, chin on hand. He sat at her feet—spiritually as well as physically.
She beatified him with:
“In September I’ll have only four weeks of meetings, at Vincennes. I’m going to take off all October, before my winter work (you won’t know me then—I’m dandy, speaking indoors, in big halls!), and I’m going down to our home, the old Falconer family place, in Virginia. Pappy and Mam are dead now, and I own it. Old plantation. Would you like to come down there with me, just us two, for a fortnight in October?”
“Would I? My God!”
“Could you get away?”
“If it cost me my job!”
“Then—I’ll wire you when to come after I get there: Hanning Hall, Broughton, Virginia. Now I think I’d better go to bed, dear. Sweet dreams.”
“Can’t I tuck you into bed?”
“No, dear. I might forget to be Sister Falconer! Good night!”
Her kiss was like a swallow’s flight, and he went out obediently, marveling that Elmer Gantry could for once love so much that he did not insist on loving.
II
In New York he had bought a suit of Irish homespun and a heather cap. He looked bulky but pleasantly pastoral as he gaped romantically from the Pullman window at the fields of Virginia. “Ole Virginny—ole Virginny,” he hummed happily. Worm fences, negro cabins, gallant horses in rocky pastures, a longing to see the gentry who rode such horses, and ever the blue hills. It was an older world than his baking Kansas, older than Mizpah Seminary, and he felt a desire to be part of this traditional age to which Sharon belonged. Then, as the miles which still separated him from the town of Broughton crept back of him, he forgot the warm-tinted land in anticipation of her.
He was recalling that she was the aristocrat, the more formidable here in the company of F.F.V. friends. He was more than usually timid … and more than usually proud of his conquest.
For a moment, at the station, he thought that she had not come to meet him. Then he saw a girl standing by an old country buggy.
She was young, veritably a girl, in middy blouse deep cut at the throat, pleated white skirt, white shoes. Her red tam-o’-shanter was rakish, her smile was a country grin as she waved to him. And the girl was Sister Falconer.
“God, you’re adorable!” he murmured to her, as he plumped down his suitcase, and she was fragrant and soft in his arms as he kissed her.
“No more,” she whispered. “You’re supposed to be my cousin, and even very nice cousins don’t kiss quite so intelligently!”
As the carriage jerked across the hills, as the harness creaked and the white horse grunted, he held her hand lightly in butterfly ecstasy.
He cried out at the sight of Hanning Hall as they drove through the dark pines, among shabby grass plots, to the bare sloping lawn. It was out of a storybook: a brick house, not very large, with tall white pillars, white cupola, and dormer windows with tiny panes; and across the lawn paraded a peacock in the sun. Out of a storybook, too, was the pair of old negroes who bowed to them from the porch and hastened down the steps—the butler with green tailcoat and white mustache almost encircling his mouth, and the mammy in green calico, with an enormous grin and a histrionic curtsy.
“They’ve always cared for me since I was a tiny baby,”
