Sharon relished these miracles. They showed her talent; they were sound manifestations of Divine Power. But sometimes they got the meetings a bad name, and cynics prostrated her by talking of “Holy Rollers.” Because of this maliciousness and because of the excitement which she found in meetings so favored by the Holy Ghost, Elmer had particularly to comfort her after them.
VII
All the members of the evangelistic crew planned effects to throw a brighter limelight on Sharon. There was feverish discussions of her costumes. Adelbert had planned the girdled white robe in which she appeared as priestess, and he wanted her to wear it always. “You are so queeeeenly,” he whimpered. But Elmer insisted on changes, on keeping the robe for crucial meetings, and Sharon went out for embroidered golden velvet frocks, and, at meetings for business women, smart white flannel suits.
They assisted her also in the preparation of new sermons.
Her “message” was delivered under a hypnotism of emotion, without connection with her actual life. Now Portia, now Ophelia, now Francesca, she drew men to her, did with them as she would. Or again she saw herself as veritably the scourge of God. But however richly she could pour out passion, however flamingly she used the most exotic words and the most complex sentiments when someone had taught them to her, it was impossible for her to originate any sentiment more profound than “I’m unhappy.”
She read nothing, after Cecil Aylston’s going, but the Bible and the advertisements of rival evangelists in the bulletin of the Moody Bible Institute.
Lacking Cecil, it was a desperate and cooperative affair to furnish Sharon with fresh sermons as she grew tired of acting the old ones. Adelbert Shoop provided the poetry. He was fond of poetry. He read Ella Wheeler Wilcox, James Whitcomb Riley, and Thomas Moore. He was also a student of philosophy: he could understand Ralph Waldo Trine perfectly, and he furnished for Sharon’s sermons both the couplets about Home and Little Ones, and the philosophical points about willpower, Thoughts are Things, and Love is Beauty, Beauty is Love, Love is All.
The Lady Director of Personal Work had unexpected talent in making up anecdotes about the deathbeds of drunkards and agnostics; Lily Anderson, the pretty though anemic pianist, had once been a school teacher and had read a couple of books about scientists, so she was able to furnish data with which Sharon absolutely confuted the rising fad of evolution; and Art Nichols, the cornetist, provided rude but moral Maine humor, stories about horse-trading, cabbages, and hard cider, very handy for cajoling skeptical business men. But Elmer, being trained theologically, had to weave all the elements—dogma, poetry to the effect that God’s palette held the sunsets or ever the world began, confessions of the dismally damned, and stories of Maine barn-dances—into one ringing whole.
And meanwhile, besides the Reverend Sister Falconer and the Reverend Mr. Gantry, thus cooperative, there were Sharon and Elmer and a crew of quite human people with grievances, traveling together, living together, not always in a state of happy innocence.
Chapter XIV
I
Sedate as a long married couple, intimate and secure, were Elmer and Sharon on most days, and always he was devoted. It was Sharon who was incalculable. Sometimes she was a priestess and a looming disaster, sometimes she was intimidating in grasping passion, sometimes she was thin and writhing and anguished with chagrined doubt of herself, sometimes she was pale and nun-like and still, sometimes she was a chilly business woman, and sometimes she was a little girl. In the last, quite authentic role, Elmer loved her fondly—except when she assumed it just as she was due to go out and hypnotize three thousand people.
He would beg her, “Oh, come on now, Shara, please be good! Please stop pouting, and go out and lambaste ’em.”
She would stamp her foot, while her face changed to a round childishness. “No! Don’t want to evangel. Want to be bad. Bad! Want to throw things. Want to go out and spank a bald man on the head. Tired of souls. Want to tell ’em all to go to hell!”
“Oh, gee, please, Shara! Gosh all fishhooks! They’re waiting for you! Adelbert has sung that verse twice now.”
“I don’t care! Sing it again! Sing songs, losh songs! Going to be bad! Going out and drop mice down Adelbert’s fat neck—fat neck—fat hooooooly neck!”
But suddenly: “I wish I could. I wish they’d let me be bad. Oh, I get so tired—all of them reaching for me, sucking my blood, wanting me to give them the courage they’re too flabby to get for themselves!”
And a minute later she was standing before the audience, rejoicing, “Oh, my beloved, the dear Lord has a message for you tonight!”
And in two hours, as they rode in a taxi to the hotel, she was sobbing on his breast: “Hold me close! I’m so lonely and afraid and cold.”
II
Among his various relations to her, Elmer was Sharon’s employee. And he resented the fact that she was making five times more than he of that money for which he had a reverent admiration.
When they had first made plans, she had suggested:
“Dear, if it all works out properly, in three or four years I want you to share the offerings with me. But first I must save a lot. I’ve got some vague plans to build a big center for our work, maybe with a magazine and a training-school for evangelists. When that’s paid for, you and I can make an agreement. But just now—How much have you been making as a traveling man?”
“Oh, about three hundred a month—about thirty-five hundred a year.” He was really fond of her; he was lying to the extent of only five hundred.
“Then I’ll start you in at thirty-eight hundred, and in four or five years I hope it’ll be
