Anyway, he satisfied the day’s lust for humanitarianism, and he turned back the seat in front of his, stretched out his legs, looked sleepy so that no one would crowd in beside him, and rejoiced in having taken up a life of holiness and authority.
He glanced out at the patchy country with satisfaction. Rustic, yes, but simple, and the simple honest hearts of his congregation would yearn toward him as the bookkeepers could not be depended upon to do in Prosperity Classes. He pictured his hearty reception at Banjo Crossing. He knew that his district superintendent (a district superintendent is a lieutenant-bishop in the Methodist Church—formerly called a presiding elder) had written the hour of his coming to Mr. Nathaniel Benham of Banjo Crossing, and he knew that Mr. Benham, the leading trustee of the local church, was the chief general merchant in the Banjo Valley. Yes, he would shake hands with all of his flock, even the humblest, at the station; he would look into their clear and trusting eyes, and rejoice to be their shepherd, leading them on and upward, for at least a year.
Banjo Crossing seemed very small as the train staggered into it. There were back porches with washtubs and broken-down chairs; there were wooden sidewalks.
As Elmer pontifically descended at the red frame station, as he looked for the reception and the holy glee, there wasn’t any reception, and the only glee visible was on the puffy face of the station agent as he observed a City Fellow trying to show off. “Hee, hee, there ain’t no bus!” giggled the agent. “Guess yuh’ll have to carry your own valises over to the hotel!”
“Where,” demanded Elmer, “is Mr. Benham, Mr. Nathaniel Benham?”
“Old Nat? Ain’t seen him today. Guess yuh’ll find him at the store, ’bout as usual, seeing if he can’t do some farmer out of two cents on a batch of eggs. Traveling man?”
“I am the new Methodist preacher!”
“Oh, well, say! That a fact! Pleased to meet yuh! Wouldn’t of thought you were a preacher. You look too well fed! You’re going to room at Mrs. Pete Clark’s—the Widow Clark’s. Leave your valises here, and I’ll have my boy fetch ’em over. Well, good luck, Brother. Hope you won’t have much trouble with your church. The last fellow did, but then he was kind of pernickety—wa’n’t just plain folks.”
“Oh, I’m just plain folks, and mighty happy, after the great cities, to be among them!” was Elmer’s amiable greeting, but what he observed as he walked away was “I am like hell!”
Altogether depressed now, he expected to find the establishment of Brother Benham a littered and squalid crossroads store, but he came to a two-story brick structure with plate-glass windows and, in the alley, the half-dozen trucks with which Mr. Benham supplied the farmers for twenty miles up and down the Banjo Valley. Respectful, Elmer walked through broad aisles, past counters trim as a small department-store, and found Mr. Benham dictating letters.
If in a small way Nathaniel Benham had commercial genius, it did not show in his aspect. He wore a beard like a bath sponge, and in his voice was a righteous twang.
“Yes?” he quacked.
“I’m Reverend Gantry, the new pastor.”
Benham rose, not too nimbly, and shook hands dryly. “Oh, yes. The presiding elder said you were coming today. Glad you’ve come, Brother, and I hope the blessing of the Lord will attend your labors. You’re to board at the Widow Clark’s—anybody’ll show you where it is.”
Apparently he had nothing else to say.
A little bitterly, Elmer demanded, “I’d like to look over the church. Have you a key?”
“Now let’s see. Brother Jones might have one—he’s got the paint and carpenter shop right up here on Front Street. No, guess he hasn’t, either. We got a young fella, just a boy you might say, who’s doing the janitor work now, and guess he’d have a key, but this bein’ vacation he’s off fishin’ more’n likely. Tell you: you might try Brother Fritscher, the shoemaker—he might have a key. You married?”
“No. I’ve, uh, I’ve been engaged in evangelistic work, so I’ve been denied the joys and solaces of domestic life.”
“Where you born?”
“Kansas.”
“Folks Christians?”
“They certainly were! My mother was—she is—a real consecrated soul.”
“Smoke or drink?”
“Certainly not!”
“Do any monkeying with this higher criticism?”
“No, indeed!”
“Ever go hunting?”
“I, uh—Well, yes!”
“That’s fine! Well, glad you’re with us, Brother. Sorry I’m busy. Say, Mother and I expect you for supper tonight, six-thirty. Good luck!”
Benham’s smile, his handshake, were cordial enough, but he was definitely giving dismissal, and Elmer went out in a fury alternating with despair. … To this, to the condescension of a rustic storekeeper, after the mounting glory with Sharon!
As he walked toward the house of the widow Clark, to which a loafer directed him, he hated the shabby village, hated the chicken-coops in the yards, the frowsy lawns, the old buggies staggering by, the women with plump aprons and wet red arms—women who made his delights of amorous adventures seem revolting—and all the plodding yokels with their dead eyes and sagging jaws and sudden guffawing.
Fallen to this. And at thirty-two. A failure!
As he waited on the stoop of the square, white, characterless house of the Widow Clark, he wanted to dash back to the station and take the first train—anywhere. In that moment he decided to return to farm implements and the bleak lonely freedom of the traveling man. Then the screen door was opened by a jolly ringleted girl of fourteen or fifteen, who caroled, “Oh, is it Reverend Gantry! My, and I kept you waiting! I’m terrible sorry! Ma’s just sick she can’t be here to welcome you, but she had to go over to Cousin Etta’s—Cousin Etta busted her leg. Oh, please do come in. My, I didn’t guess we’d have a young preacher this time!”
She was charming in her excited innocence.
After a faded provincial fashion, the square hall was stately, with its Civil War chromos.
Elmer followed the child—Jane Clark, she was—up to
