CHAPTER XXXII
twoevenings after Elmer’s mother had almost alienated him, he settled down in his study at home to prepare three or four sermons, with a hope of being in bed by eleven. He was furious when the Lithuanian maid came in and said, “Somebody on the ’phone, Doctor,” but when he heard Hettie the ragged edges went out of his voice.
“Elmer? Hettie calling.”
“Yes, yes, this is Dr. Gantry.”
“Oh, you are so sweet and funny and dignified! Is the Lettish pot-walloper listening?”
“Yes!”
“Listen, dear. Will you do something for me?”
“You bet!”
“I’m so terribly lonely this evening. Is oo working hard?”
“I’ve got to get up some sermons.”
“Listen! Bring your little Bible dictionary along and come and work at my place, and let me smoke a cigarette and look at you. Wouldn’t you like to . . . dear . . . dearest?”
“You bet. Be right along.”
He explained to Cleo and his mother that he had to go and comfort an old ladyin extremis, he accepted their congratulations on his martyrdom, and hastened out.
Elmer was sitting beside Hettie on the damask couch, under the standard lamp, stroking her hand and explaining how unjust his mother was, when the door of her suite opened gravely and a thin, twitching-faced, gimlet-eyed man walked in.
Hettie sprang up, stood with a hand on her frightened breast.
“What d’you want here?” roared Elmer, as he rose also.
“Hush!” Hettie begged him. “It’s my husband!”
“Your—” Elmer’s cry was the bleat of a bitten sheep. “Your—— But you aren’t married!”
“I am, hang it! Oscar, you get out of here! How dare you intrude like this!”
Oscar walked slowly, appreciatively, into the zone of light.
“Well, I’ve caught you two with the goods!” he chuckled.
“What do you mean!” Hettie raged. “This is my boss, and he’s come here to talk over some work.”
“Yeh, I bet he has. . . . This afternoon I bribed my way in here, and I’ve got all his letters to you.”
“Oh, you haven’t!” Hettie dashed to her desk, stood in despair looking at an empty drawer.
Elmer bulked over Oscar. “I’ve had enough of this! You gimme those letters and you get out of here or I’ll throw you out!”
Oscar negligently produced an automatic. “Shut up,” he said, almost affectionately. “Now, Gantry, this ought to cost you about fifty thousand dollars, but I don’t suppose you can raise that much. But if I sue for alienation of Het’s affections, that’s the amount I’ll sue for. But if you want to settle out of court, in a nice gentlemanly manner without acting rough, I’ll let you off for ten thousand—and there won’t be the publicity—oh, maybe that publicity wouldn’t cook your reverend goose!”
“If you think you can blackmail me—”
“Think? Hell! I know I can! I’ll call on you in your church at noon tomorrow.”
“I won’t be there.”
“You better be! If you’re ready to compromise for ten thousand, all right; no feelings hurt. If not, I’ll have my lawyer (and he’s Mannie Silverhorn, the slickest shyster in town) file suit for alienation tomorrow afternoon—and make sure that the evening papers get out extras on it. By-by, Hettie. ‘By, Elmer darling. Whoa, Elmer! Naughty, naughty! You touch me and I’ll plug you! So long.”
Elmer gaped after the departing Oscar. He turned quickly and saw that Hettie was grinning.
She hastily pulled down her mouth.
“My God, I believe you’re in on this!” he cried.
“What of it, you big lummox! We’ve got the goods on you. Your letters will sound lovely in court! But don’t ever think for one moment that workers as good as Oscar and I were wasting our time on a tin-horn preacher without ten bucks in the bank! We were after William Dollinger Styles. But he isn’t a boob, like you; he turned me down when I went to lunch with him and tried to date him up. So, as we’d paid for this plant, we thought we might as well get our expenses and a little piece of change out of you, you short-weight, and by God we will! Now get out of here! I’m sick of hearing your blatting! No, I don’t think you better hit me. Oscar’ll be waiting outside the door. Sorry I won’t be able to be at the church tomorrow—don’t worry about my things or my salary—I got ’em this afternoon!”
At midnight, his mouth hanging open, Elmer was ringing at the house of T. J. Rigg. He rang and rang, desperately. No answer. He stood outside then and bawled “T. J.! T. J.!”
An upper window was opened, and an irritated voice, thick with sleepiness, protested, “Whadda yuhwant!”
“Come down quick! It’s me—Elmer Gantry. I need you, bad!”
“All right. Be right down.”
A grotesque little figure in an old-fashioned nightshirt, puffing at a cigar, Rigg admitted him and led him to the library.
“T. J., they’ve got me!”
“Yuh? The bootleggers?”
“No. Hettie. You know my secretary?”
“Oh. Yuh. I see. Been pretty friendly with her?”
Elmer told everything.
“All right,” said Rigg. “I’ll be there at twelve to meet Oscar with you. We’ll stall for time, and I’ll do something. Don’t worry, Elmer. And look here. Elmer, don’t you think that even a preacher ought totryto go straight?”
“I’ve learned my lesson, T. J.! I swear this is the last time I’ll ever step out, even look at a girl. God, you’ve been a good friend to me, old man!”
“Well, I like anything I’m connected with to go straight. Pure egotism. You better have a drink. You need it!”
“No! I’m going to hold ontothatvow, anyway! I guess it’s all I’ve got. Oh, my God! And just this evening I thought I was such a big important guy, that nobody could touch.”
“You might make a sermon out of it—and you probably will!”
The chastened and positively-for-the-last-time-reformed Elmer lasted for days. He was silent at the conference with Oscar Dowler, Oscar’s lawyer, Mannie Silverhorn, and T. J. Rigg in the church study next noon. Rigg and Silverhorn did the talking. (And Elmer was dismayed to see how friendly and jocose Rigg was with Silverhorn, of whom he had spoken in most un-Methodist terms.)
“Yuh, you’ve got the goods on the Doctor,” said Rigg. “We admit it. And I agree that it’s worth ten thousand. But you’ve got to give us a week to raise the money.”
“All right, T. J. See you here a week from today?” said Mannie Silverhorn.
“No, better make it in your office. Too many snooping sisters around.”
“All right.”
Everybody shook hands profusely—except that Elmer did not shake hands with Oscar Dowler, who snickered, “Why, Elmer, and us so closely related, as it were!”
When they were gone, the broken Elmer whimpered, “But, T. J., I never in the world could raise ten thousand! Why, I haven’t saved a thousand!”
“Hell’s big bells, Elmer! You don’t suppose we’re going to pay ’em any ten thousand, do you? It may cost you fifteen hundred—which I’ll lend you—five hundred to sweeten Hettie, and maybe a thousand for detectives.”
“Uh?”
“At a quarter to two this morning I was talking to Pete Reese of the Reese Detective Agency, telling him to get busy. We’ll know a lot about the Dowlers in a few days. So don’t worry.”
Elmer was sufficiently consoled not to agonize that week, yet not so consoled but that he became a humble and tender Christian. To the embarrassed astonishment of his children, he played with them every evening. To Cleo he was almost uxorious.
“Dearest,” he said, “I realize that I have—oh, it isn’t entirely my fault; I’ve been so absorbed in the Work: but the fact remains that I haven’t given you enough attention, and tomorrow evening I want you to go to a concert with me.”
“Oh, Elmer!” she rejoiced.
And he sent her flowers, once.
“You see!” his mother exulted. “I knew you and Cleo would be happier if I just pointed out a few things to you. After all, your old mother may be stupid and Main-Street, but there’s nobody like a mother to understand her own boy, and I knew that if I just spoke to you, even if you are a Doctor of Divinity, you’d see things different!”
“Yes, and it was your training that made me a Christian and a preacher. Oh, a man does owe so much to a pious mother!” said Elmer.
Mannie Silverhorn was one of the best ambulance-chasers in Zenith. A hundred times he had made the street-car company pay damages to people whom they had not damaged; a hundred times he had made motorists pay for injuring people whom they had not injured. But with all his talent, Mannie had one misfortune—he would get drunk.
Now, in general, when he was drunk Mannie was able to keep from talking about his legal cases, but this time he was drunk in the presence of Bill Kingdom, reporter for theAdvocate-Times, and Mr. Kingdom was an even harder cross-examiner than Mr. Silverhorn.
Bill had been speaking without affection of Dr. Gantry when Mannie leered, “Say, jeeze, Bill, your Doc Gantry is going to get his! Oh, I got him where I want him! And maybe it won’t cost him some money to be so popular with the ladies!”
Bill looked rigorously uninterested. “Aw, what are you trying to pull, Mannie! Don’t be a fool! You haven’t got anything on Elmer, and you never will have. He’s too smart for you! You haven’t got enough brains to get that guy, Mannie!”
“Me? I haven’t got enough brains—— Say, listen!”
Yes, Mannie was drunk. Even so, it was only after an hour of badgering Mannie about his inferiority to Elmer in trickiness, an hour of Bill’s harsh yet dulcet flattery, an hour of Bill’s rather novel willingness to buy drinks, that an infuriated Mannie shrieked, “All right, you get a stenographer that’s a notary public and I’ll dictate it!”
And at two in the morning, to an irritated but alert court reporter in his shambles of a hotel room, Mannie Silverhorn dictated and signed a statement that unless the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry settled out of court, he would be sued (Emmanuel Silverhorn attorney) for fifty thousand dollars for having, by inexcusable intimacy with her, alienated Hettie Dowler’s affections from her husband.
CHAPTER XXXIII
whenMr. Mannie Silverhorn awoke at ten, with a head, he remembered that he had been talking, and with agitation he looked at the morning’sAdvocate-Times. He was cheered to see that there was no trace of his indiscretion.
But the next morning Mr. Silverhorn and the Reverend Dr. Gantry at about the same moment noted on the front page of theAdvocate-Timesthe photostat of a document in which Emmanuel Silverhorn, atty., asserted that unless Dr. Gantry settled out of court, he would be sued for alienation of affections by Mr. Oscar Dowler, of whose wife, Dowler maintained, Dr. Gantry had taken criminal advantage.
It was not so much the clamor of the Zenith reporters, tracking him from his own house to that of T. J. Rigg and out to the country—it was not so much the sketches of his career and hints of his uncovered wickedness in every Zenith paper, morning and evening—it was not so much the thought that he had lost the respect of his congregation. What appalled him was the fact that the Associated Press spread the story through the country, and that he had telegrams from Dr. Wilkie Bannister of the Yorkville Methodist Church and from the directors of the Napap to the effect: Is this story true? Until the matter is settled, of course we must delay action.
At the second conference with Mannie Silverhorn and Oscar Dowler, Hettie was present, along with Elmer and T. J. Rigg, who was peculiarly amiable.
They sat around Mannie’s office, still hearing Oscar’s opinion of Mannie’s indiscretion.
“Well, let’s get things settled,” twanged Rigg. “Are we ready to talk business?”
“I am,” snarled Oscar. “What about it? Got the ten thou.?”
Into Mannie’s office, pushing aside the agitated office-boy, came a large man with flat feet.
“Hello, Pete,” said Rigg affectionately.
“Hello, Pete,” said Mannie anxiously.
“Who the devil are you?” said Oscar Dowler.
“Oh—Oscar!” said Hettie.
“All ready, Pete?” said T. J. Rigg. “By the way, folks, this is Mr. Peter Reese of the Reese Detective Agency. You see, Hettie, I figured that if you pulled this, your past record must be interesting. Is it, Pete?”
“Oh, not especially; about average,” said Mr. Peter Reese. “Now, Hettie, why did you leave Seattle at midnight on January 12, 1920?”
“None of your business!” shrieked Hettie.
“Ain’t, eh? Well, it’s some of the business of Arthur L. F. Morrissey there. He’d like to hear from you,” said Mr. Reese, “and know your present address—and present name! Now, Hettie, what about the time you did time in New York for shop-lifting?”
“You go—”
“Oh, Hettie, don’t use bad language! Remember there’s a preacher present,” tittered Mr. Rigg. “Got enough?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” Hettie said wearily. (And for the moment Elmer loved her again, wanted to comfort her.) “Let’s beat it, Oscar.”
“No, you don’t—not till you sign this,” said Mr. Rigg. “If you do sign, you get two hundred bucks to get out of town on—which will be before tomorrow, or God help you! If you don’t sign, you go back to Seattle to stand trial.”
“All right,” Hettie said, and Mr. Rigg read his statement:
I hereby voluntarily swear that all charges against the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry made directly or by implication by myself and husband are false, wicked, and absolutely unfounded. I was employed by Dr. Gantry as his secretary. His relations to me were always those of a gentleman and a Christian pastor. I wickedly concealed from him the fact that I was married to a man with a criminal record.
I hereby voluntarily swear that all charges against the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry made directly or by implication by myself and husband are false, wicked, and absolutely unfounded. I was employed by Dr. Gantry as his secretary. His relations to me were always those of a gentleman and a Christian pastor. I wickedly concealed from him the fact that I was married to a man with a criminal record.
The liquor interests, particularly certain distillers who wished to injure Dr. Gantry as one of the greatest foes of the booze traffic, came to me and paid me to attack the character of Dr. Gantry, and in a moment which I shall never cease to regret, I assented, and got my husband to help me by forging letters purporting to come from Dr. Gantry.
The liquor interests, particularly certain distillers who wished to injure Dr. Gantry as one of the greatest foes of the booze traffic, came to me and paid me to attack the character of Dr. Gantry, and in a moment which I shall never cease to regret, I assented, and got my husband to help me by forging letters purporting to come from Dr. Gantry.
The reason why I am making this confession is this: I went to Dr. Gantry, told him what I was going to do, and demanded money, planning to double-cross my employers, the booze interests. Dr. Gantry said, “Sister, I am sorry you are going to do this wrong thing, not on my behalf, because it is a part of the Christian life to bear any crosses, but on behalf of your own soul. Do as seems best to you, Sister, but before you go further, will you kneel and pray with me?”
The reason why I am making this confession is this: I went to Dr. Gantry, told him what I was going to do, and demanded money, planning to double-cross my employers, the booze interests. Dr. Gantry said, “Sister, I am sorry you are going to do this wrong thing, not on my behalf, because it is a part of the Christian life to bear any crosses, but on behalf of your own soul. Do as seems best to you, Sister, but before you go further, will you kneel and pray with me?”
When I heard Dr. Gantry praying, I suddenly repented and went home and with my own hands typed this statement which I swear to be the absolute truth.
When I heard Dr. Gantry praying, I suddenly repented and went home and with my own hands typed this statement which I swear to be the absolute truth.
When Hettie had signed, and her husband had signed a corroboration, Mannie Silverhorn observed, “I think you’ve overdone it a little, T. J. Too good to be true. Still, I suppose your idea was that Hettie’s such a fool that she’d slop over in her confession.”
“That’s the idea, Mannie.”
“Well, maybe you’re right. Now if you’ll give me the two hundred bucks, I’ll see these birds are out of town tonight, and maybe I’ll give ’em some of the two hundred.”
“Maybe!” said Mr. Rigg.
“Maybe!” said Mr. Silverhorn.
“God!” cried Elmer Gantry, and suddenly he was disgracing himself with tears.
That was Saturday morning.
The afternoon papers had front-page stories reproducing Hettie’s confession, joyfully announcing Elmer’s innocence, recounting his labors for purity, and assaulting the booze interests which had bribed this poor, weak, silly girl to attack Elmer.
Before eight on Sunday morning, telegrams had come in from the Yorkville Methodist Church and the Napap, congratulating Elmer, asserting that they had never doubted his innocence, and offering him the pastorate of Yorkville and the executive secretaryship of the Napap.
When the papers had first made charges against Elmer, Cleo had said furiously, “Oh, what a wicked, wicked lie—darling, you know I’ll stand back of you!” but his mother had crackled, “Just how much of this is true, Elmy? I’m getting kind of sick and tired of your carryings on!”
Now, when he met them at Sunday breakfast, he held out the telegrams, and the two women elbowed each other to read them.
“Oh, my dear, I am so glad and proud!” cried Cleo; and Elmer’s mother—she was an old woman, and bent; very wretched she looked as she mumbled, “Oh, forgive me, my boy! I’ve been as wicked as that Dowler woman!”
But for all that, would his congregation believe him?
If they jeered when he faced them, he would be ruined, he would still lose the Yorkville pastorate and the Napap. Thus he fretted in the quarter-hour before morning service, pacing his study and noting through the window—for once, without satisfaction—that hundreds on hundreds were trying to get into the crammed auditorium.
His study was so quiet. How he missed Hettie’s presence!
He knelt. He did not so much pray as yearn inarticulately. But this came out clearly: “I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never look at a girl again. I’m going to be the head of all the moral agencies in the country—nothing can stop me, now I’ve got the Napap!—but I’m going to be all the things I want other folks to be! Never again!”
He stood at his study door, watching the robed choir filing out to the auditorium chanting. He realized how he had come to love the details of his church; how, if his people betrayed him now, he would miss it: the choir, the pulpit, the singing, the adoring faces.
It had come. He could not put it off. He had to face them.
Feebly the Reverend Dr. Gantry wavered through the door to the auditorium and exposed himself to twenty-five hundred question marks.
They rose and cheered—cheered—cheered. Theirs were the shining faces of friends.
Without planning it, Elmer knelt on the platform, holding his hands out to them, sobbing, and with him they all knelt and sobbed and prayed, while outside the locked glass door of the church, seeing the mob kneel within, hundreds knelt on the steps of the church, on the sidewalk, all down the block.
“Oh, my friends!” cried Elmer, “do you believe in my innocence, in the fiendishness of my accusers? Reassure me with a hallelujah!”
The church thundered with the triumphant hallelujah, and in a sacred silence Elmer prayed:
“O Lord, thou hast stooped from thy mighty throne and rescued thy servant from the assault of the mercenaries of Satan! Mostly we thank thee because thus we can go on doing thy work, and thine alone! Not less but more zealously shall we seek utter purity and the prayer-life, and rejoice in freedom from all temptations!”
He turned to include the choir, and for the first time he saw that there was a new singer, a girl with charming ankles and lively eyes, with whom he would certainly have to become well acquainted. But the thought was so swift that it did not interrupt the pæan of his prayer:
“Let me count this day, Lord, as the beginning of a new and more vigorous life, as the beginning of a crusade for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land. Dear Lord, thy work is but begun! We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.
[The end ofElmer Gantryby Sinclair Lewis]