III

We’ll think of thee where’er we be,On plain or mountain, town or sea,Oh, let us sing how round us clings,Dear Abernathy, thoooooooooughts—of—thee.

We’ll think of thee where’er we be,On plain or mountain, town or sea,Oh, let us sing how round us clings,Dear Abernathy, thoooooooooughts—of—thee.

We’ll think of thee where’er we be,On plain or mountain, town or sea,Oh, let us sing how round us clings,Dear Abernathy, thoooooooooughts—of—thee.

We’ll think of thee where’er we be,

On plain or mountain, town or sea,

Oh, let us sing how round us clings,

Dear Abernathy, thoooooooooughts—of—thee.

President Dodd was facing Elmer, and shouting:

“—and now we have the privilege of conferring the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon one than whom no man in our honored neighboring state of Winnemac has done more to inculcate sound religious doctrine, increase the power of the church, uphold high standards of eloquence and scholarship, and in his own life give such an example of earnestness as is an inspiration to all of us!”

They cheered—and Elmer had become the Reverend Dr. Gantry.

It was a great relief at the Rotary Club. They had long felt uncomfortable in calling so weighty a presence “Elmer,” and now, with a pride of their own in his new dignity, they called him “Doc.”

The church gave him a reception and raised his salary to seventy-five hundred dollars.

The Rev. Dr. Gantry was the first clergyman in the state of Winnemac, almost the first in the country, to have his services broadcast by radio. He suggested it himself. At that time, the one broadcasting station in Zenith, that of the Celebes Gum and Chicle Company, presented only jazz orchestras and retired sopranos, to advertise the renowned Jolly Jack Gum. For fifty dollars a week Wellspring Church was able to use the radio Sunday mornings from eleven to twelve-thirty. Thus Elmer increased the number of his hearers from two thousand to ten thousand—and in another pair of years it would be a hundred thousand.

Eight thousand radio-owners listening to Elmer Gantry—

A bootlegger in his flat, coat off, exposing his pink silk shirt, his feet up on the table. . . . The house of a small-town doctor, with the neighbors come in to listen—the drug-store man, his fat wife, the bearded superintendent of schools. . . . Mrs. Sherman Reeves of Royal Ridge, wife of one of the richest young men in Zenith, listening in a black-and-gold dressing-gown, while she smoked a cigarette. . . . The captain of a schooner, out on Lake Michigan, hundreds of miles away, listening in his cabin. . . . The wife of a farmer in an Indiana valley, listening while her husband read the Sears-Roebuck catalogue and sniffed. . . . A retired railway conductor, very feeble, very religious. . . . A Catholic priest, in a hospital, chuckling a little. . . . A spinster school-teacher, mad with loneliness, worshiping Dr. Gantry’s virile voice. . . . Forty people gathered in a country church too poor to have a pastor. . . . A stock actor in his dressing-room, fagged with an all-night rehearsal.

All of them listening to the Rev. Dr. Elmer Gantry as he shouted:

“—and I want to tell you that the fellow who is eaten by ambition is putting the glories of this world before the glories of Heaven! Oh, if I could only help you to understand that it is humility, that it is simple loving kindness, that it is tender loyalty, which alone make the heart glad! Now, if you’ll let me tell a story: It reminds me of two Irishmen named Mike and Pat—”

For years Elmer had had a waking nightmare of seeing Jim Lefferts sitting before him in the audience, scoffing. It would be a dramatic encounter and terrible; he wasn’t sure but that Jim would speak up and by some magic kick him out of the pulpit.

But when, that Sunday morning, he saw Jim in the third row, he considered only, “Oh, Lord, there’s Jim Lefferts! He’s pretty gray. I suppose I’ll have to be nice to him.”

Jim came up afterward to shake hands. He did not look cynical; he looked tired; and when he spoke, in a flat prairie voice, Elmer felt urban and urbane and superior.

“Hello, Hell-cat,” said Jim.

“Well, well, well! Old Jim Lefferts! Well, by golly! Say, it certainly is a mighty great pleasure to see you, my boy! What you doing in this neck of the woods?”

“Looking up a claim for a client.”

“What you doing now, Jim?”

“I’m practising law in Topeka.”

“Doing pretty well?”

“Oh, I can’t complain. Oh, nothing extra special. I was in the state senate for a term though.”

“That’s fine! That’s fine! Say, how long gonna be in town?”

“Oh, ’bout three days.”

“Say, want to have you up to the house for dinner; but doggone it, Cleo—that’s my wife—I’m married now—she’s gone and got me all sewed up with a lot of dates—you know how these women are—me, I’d rather sit home and read. But sure got to see you again. Say, gimme a ring, will you?—at the house (find it in the tel’phone book) or at my study here in the church.”

“Yuh, sure, you bet. Well, glad to seen you.”

“You bet. Tickled t’ death seen you, old Jim!”

Elmer watched Jim plod away, shoulders depressed, a man discouraged.

“And that,” he rejoiced, “is the poor fish that tried to keep me from going into the ministry!” He looked about his auditorium, with the organ pipes a vast golden pyramid, with the Chubbuck memorial window vivid in ruby and gold and amethyst. “And become a lawyer like him, in a dirty stinking little office! Huh! And he actually made fun of me and tried to hold me back when I got a clear and definite Call of God! Oh, I’ll be good and busy when he calls up, you can bet on that!”

Jim did not telephone.

On the third day Elmer had a longing to see him, a longing to regain his friendship. But he did not know where Jim was staying; he could not reach him at the principal hotels.

He never saw Jim Lefferts again, and within a week he had forgotten him, except as it was a relief to have lost his embarrassment before Jim’s sneering—the last bar between him and confident greatness.

It was in the summer of 1924 that Elmer was granted a three-months leave, and for the first time Cleo and he visited Europe.

He had heard the Rev. Dr. G. Prosper Edwards say, “I divide American clergymen into just two classes—those who could be invited to preach in a London church, and those who couldn’t.” Dr. Edwards was of the first honorable caste, and Elmer had seen him pick up great glory from having sermonized in the City Temple. The Zenith papers, even the national religious periodicals, hinted that when Dr. Edwards was in London, the entire population from king to navvies had galloped to worship under him, and the conclusion was that Zenith and New York would be sensible to do likewise.

Elmer thoughtfully saw to it that he should be invited also. He had Bishop Toomis write to his Wesleyan colleagues, he had Rigg and William Dollinger Styles write to their Nonconformist business acquaintances in London, and a month before he sailed he was bidden to address the celebrated Brompton Road Chapel, so that he went off in a glow not only of adventure but of message-bearing.

Dr. Elmer Gantry was walking the deck of theScythia, a bright, confident, manly figure in a blue suit, a yachting cap, and white canvas shoes, swinging his arms and beaming pastorally on his fellow athletic maniacs.

He stopped at the deck chairs of a little old couple—a delicate blue-veined old lady, and her husband, with thin hands and a thin white beard.

“Well, you folks seem to be standing the trip pretty good—for old folks!” he roared.

“Yes, thank you very much,” said the old lady.

He patted her knee, and boomed, “If there’s anything I can do to make things nice and comfy for you, mother, you just holler! Don’t be afraid to call on me. I haven’t advertised the fact—kind of fun to travel what they call incognito—but fact is, I’m a minister of the gospel, even if I am a husky guy, and it’s my pleasure as well as my duty to help folks anyway I can. Say, don’t you think it’s just about the loveliest thing about this ocean traveling, the way folks have the leisure to get together and exchange ideas? Have you crossed before?”

“Oh, yes, but I don’t think I ever shall again,” said the old lady.

“That’s right—that’s right! Tell you how I feel about it, mother.” Elmer patted her hand. “We’re Americans, and while it’s a fine thing to go abroad maybe once or twice—there’s nothing so broadening as travel, is there!—still, in America we’ve got a standard of decency and efficiency that these poor old European countries don’t know anything about, and in the long run the good old U. S. A. is the place where you’ll find your greatest happiness—especially for folks like us, that aren’t any blooming millionaires that can grab off a lot of castles and those kind of things and have a raft of butlers. You bet! Well, just holler when I can be of any service to you. So long, folks! Got to do my three miles!”

When he was gone, the little, delicate old lady said to her husband:

“Fabian, if that swine ever speaks to me again, I shall jump overboard! He’s almost the most offensive object I have ever encountered! Dear——  How many times have we crossed now?”

“Oh, I’ve lost track. It was a hundred and ten two years ago.”

“Not more?”

“Darling, don’t be so snooty.”

“But isn’t there a law that permits one to kill people who call you ‘Mother’?”

“Darling, the Duke calls you that!”

“I know. He does. That’s what I hate about him! Sweet, do you think fresh air is worth the penalty of being called ‘Mother’? The next time this animal stops, he’ll call you ‘Father’!”

“Only once, my dear!”

Elmer considered, “Well, I’ve given those poor old birds some cheerfulness to go on with. By golly, there’s nothing more important than to give people some happiness and faith to cheer them along life’s dark pathway.”

He was passing the veranda café. At a pale green table was a man who sat next to Elmer in the dining salon. With him were three men unknown, and each had a whisky-and-soda in front of him.

“Well, I see you’re keeping your strength up!” Elmer said forgivingly.

“Sure, you betcha,” said his friend of the salon. “Don’t you wanta sit down and have a jolt with us?”

Elmer sat, and when the steward stood at ruddy British attention, he gave voice:

“Well, of course, being a preacher, I’m not a big husky athalete like you boys, so all I can stand is just a ginger ale.” To the steward: “Do you keep anything like that, buddy, or have you only got hooch for big strong men?”

When Elmer explained to the purser that he would be willing to act as chairman of the concert, with the most perspiratory regret the purser said that the Rt. Hon. Lionel Smith had, unfortunately, already been invited to take the chair.

Cleo had not been more obnoxiously colorless than usual, but she had been seasick, and Elmer saw that it had been an error to bring her along. He had not talked to her an hour all the way. There had been so many interesting and broadening contacts; the man from China, who gave him enough ideas for a dozen missionary sermons; the professor from Higgins Presbyterian Institute, who explained that no really up-to-date scientist accepted evolution; the pretty journalist lady who needed consolation.

But now, alone with Cleo in the compartment of a train from Liverpool to London, Elmer made up for what she might have considered neglect by explaining the difficult aspects of a foreign country:

“Heh! English certainly are behind the times! Think of having these dingy coops instead of a Pullman car, so you can see your fellow-passengers and get acquainted. Just goes to show the way this country is still riddled with caste.

“Don’t think so much of these towns. Kind of pretty, cottages with vines and all that, but you don’t get any feeling that they’re up and coming and forward-looking, like American burgs. I tell you there’s one thing—and don’t know’s I’ve ever seen anybody bring this out—I might make a sermon out of it—one of the big advantages of foreign travel is, it makes you a lot more satisfied with being an American!

“Here we are, coming into London, I guess. Cer’nly is smoky, isn’t it.

“Well, by golly, sothisis what they call a depot in London! Well, I don’t think much of it! Just look at all those dinky little trains. Why, say, an American engineer would be ashamed to take advantage of child-sized trains like them! And no marble anywhere in the depot!”

The page who took their bags up to their room in the Savoy was a brisk and smiling boy with fabulous pink cheeks.

“Say, buddy,” said the Rev. Dr. Gantry, “what do you pull down here?”

“Sorry, sir, I don’t think I quite understand, sir.”

“Whadda you make? How much do they pay you?”

“Oh. Oh, they pay me very decently, sir. Is there anything else I can do, sir? Thank you, sir.”

When the page was gone, Elmer complained, “Yuh, fine friendly kidthatbell-boy is, and can’t hardly understand the English language! Well, I’m glad we’re seeing the Old Country, but if folks aren’t going to be any friendlier thanheis, I see where we’ll be mighty darn glad to get back. Why, say, if he’d of been an American bell-boy, we’d of jawed along for an hour, and I’d of learned something. Well, come on, come on! Get your hat on, and let’s go out and give the town the once-over.”

They walked along the Strand.

“Say,” Elmer said portentously, “do you notice that? The cops got straps under their chins! Well, well, that certainly is different!”

“Yes, isn’t it!” said Cleo.

“But I don’t think so much of this street. I always heard it was a famous one, but these stores—why, say, we got a dozen streets in Zenith, say nothing of N’ York, that got better stores. No git up and git to these foreigners. Certainly does make a fellow glad he’s an American!”

They came, after exploring Swan & Edgar’s, to St. James’s Palace.

“Now,” said Elmer knowingly, “that certainly is an ancient site. Wonder what it is? Some kind of a castle, I guess.”

To a passing policeman: “Say, excuse me, Cap’n, but could you tell me what that brick building is?”

“St. James’s Palace, sir. You’re an American? The Prince of Wales lives there, sir.”

“Is that a fact! D’you hear that, Cleo? Well, sir, that’s certainly something to remember!”

When he regarded the meager audience at Brompton Road Chapel, Elmer had an inspiration.

All the way over he had planned to be poetic in his first London sermon. He was going to say that it was the strong man, the knight in armor, who was most willing to humble himself before God; and to say also that Love was the bow on life’s dark cloud, and the morning and evening star, both. But in a second of genius he cast it away, and reflected, “No! What they want is a good, pioneering, roughneck American!”

And that he was, splendidly.

“Folks,” he said, “it’s mighty nice of you to let a plain American come and bring his message to you. But I hope you don’t expect any Oxford College man. All I’ve got to give you—and may the dear Lord help my feebleness in giving you even that—is the message that God reigns among the grim frontiersmen of America, in cabin and trackless wild, even as he reigns here in your magnificent and towering city.

“It is true that just at the present moment, through no virtue of my own, I am the pastor of a church even larger than your beautiful chapel here. But, ah, I long for the day when the general superintendent will send me back to my own beloved frontier, to——  Let me try, in my humble way, to give you a picture of the work I knew as a youth, that you may see how closely the grace of God binds your world-compelling city to the humblest vastnesses.

“I was the pastor—as a youngster, ignorant of everything save the fact that the one urgent duty of the preacher is to carry everywhere the Good News of the Atonement—of a log chapel in a frontier settlement called Schoenheim. I came at nightfall, weary and anhungered, a poor circuit-rider, to the house of Barney Bains, a pioneer, living all alone in his log cabin. I introduced myself. ‘I am Brother Gantry, the Wesleyan preacher,’ I said. Well, he stared at me, a wild look in his eyes, beneath his matted hair, and slowly he spoke:

“ ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘I ain’t seen no strangers for nigh onto a year, and I’m mighty pleased to see you.’

“ ‘You must have been awfully lonely, friend,’ I said.

“ ‘No, sir, not me!’ he said.

“ ‘How’s that?’ I said.

“ ‘Because Jesus has been with me all the time!’ ”

They almost applauded.

They told him afterward that he was immense, and invited him to address them whenever he returned to London.

“Wait,” he reflected, “till I get back to Zenith and tell old Potts and Hickenlooperthat!”

As they rode to the hotel on the ’bus, Cleo sighed, “Oh, you were wonderful! But I never knew you had such a wild time of it in your first pastorate.”

“Oh, well, it was nothing. A man that’s a real man has to take the rough with the smooth.”

“That’s so!”

He stood impatiently on a corner of the Rue de la Paix, while Cleo gaped into the window of a perfumer. (She was too well trained to dream of asking him to buy expensive perfume.) He looked at the façades in the Place Vendôme.

“Not much class—too kind of plain,” he decided.

A little greasy man edged up to him, covertly sliding toward him a pack of postcards, and whispered, “Lovely cards—only two francs each.”

“Oh,” said Elmer intelligently, “you speak English.”

“Sure. All language.”

Then Elmer saw the topmost card and he was galvanized.

“Whee! Golly! Two francs apiece?” He seized the pack, gloating——  But Cleo was suddenly upon him, and he handed back the cards, roaring, “You get out of here or I’ll call a cop! Trying to sell obscene pictures—and to a minister of the gospel! Cleo, these Europeans have dirty minds!”

It was on the steamer home that he met and became intimate with J. E. North, the renowned vice-slayer, executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press—affectionately known through all the evangelical world as “the Napap.” Mr. North was not a clergyman (though he was a warm Presbyterian layman), but no clergyman in the country had more furiously pursued wickedness, more craftily forced congressmen, through threats in their home districts, to see legislation in the same reasonable manner as himself. For several sessions of congress he had backed a bill for a federal censorship of all fiction, plays, and moving-pictures, with a penitentiary sentence for any author mentioning adultery even by implication, ridiculing prohibition, or making light of any Christian sect or minister.

The bill had always been defeated, but it was gaining more votes in every session. . . .

Mr. North was a tight-mouthed, thin gentleman. He liked the earnestness, uprightness, and vigor of the Reverend Dr. Gantry, and all day they walked the deck or sat talking—anywhere save in the smoking-room, where fools were befouling their intellects with beer. He gave Elmer an inside view of the great new world of organized opposition to immorality; he spoke intimately of the leaders of that world—the executives of the Anti-Saloon League, the Lord’s Day Alliance, the Watch and Ward Society, the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals—modern St. Johns, armed with card indices.

He invited Elmer to lecture for him.

“We need men like you, Dr. Gantry,” said Mr. North, “men with rigid standards of decency, and yet with a physical power which will indicate to the poor misguided youth of this awful flask-toting age that morality is not less but more virile than immorality. And I think your parishioners will appreciate your being invited to address gatherings in places like New York and Chicago now and then.”

“Oh, I’m not looking for appreciation. It’s just that if I can do anything in my power to strike a blow at the forces of evil,” said Elmer, “I shall be most delighted to help you.”

“Do you suppose you could address the Detroit Y. M. C. A. on October fourth?”

“Well, it’s my wife’s birthday, and we’ve always made rather a holiday of it—we’re proud of being an old-fashioned homey family—but I know that Cleo wouldn’t want that to stand in the way of my doing anything I can to further the Kingdom.”

So Elmer came, though tardily, to the Great Idea which was to revolutionize his life and bring him eternal and splendid fame.

That shabby Corsican artillery lieutenant and author, Bonaparte, first conceiving that he might be the ruler of Europe—Darwin seeing dimly the scheme of evolution—Paolo realizing that all of life was nothing but an irradiation of Francesca—Newton pondering on the falling apple—Paul of Tarsus comprehending that a certain small Jewish sect might be the new religion of the doubting Greeks and Romans—Keats beginning to write “The Eve of St. Agnes”—none of these men, transformed by a Great Idea from mediocrity to genius, was more remarkable than Elmer Gantry of Paris, Kansas, when he beheld the purpose for which the heavenly powers had been training him.

He was walking the deck—but only in the body, for his soul was soaring among the stars—he was walking the deck alone, late at night, clenching his fists and wanting to shout as he saw it all clearly.

He would combine in one association all the moral organizations in America—perhaps, later, in the entire world. He would be the executive of that combination; he would be the super-president of the United States, and some day the dictator of the world.

Combine them all. The Anti-Saloon League, the W. C. T. U., and the other organizations fighting alcohol. The Napap and the other Vice Societies doing such magnificent work in censoring immoral novels and paintings and motion-pictures and plays. The Anti-Cigarette League. The associations lobbying for anti-evolution laws in the state legislatures. The associations making so brave a fight against Sunday baseball, Sunday movies, Sunday golfing, Sunday motoring, and the other abominations whereby the Sabbath was desecrated and the preachers’ congregations and collections were lessened. The fraternities opposing Romanism. The societies which gallantly wanted to make it a crime to take the name of the Lord in vain or to use the nine Saxon physiological monosyllables. And all the rest.

Combine the lot. They were pursuing the same purpose—to make life conform to the ideals agreed upon by the principal Christian Protestant denominations. Divided, they were comparatively feeble; united, they would represent thirty million Protestant church-goers; they would have such a treasury and such a membership that they would no longer have to coax Congress and the state legislatures into passing moral legislation, but in a quiet way they would merely state to the representatives of the people what they wanted, and get it.

And the head of this united organization would be the Warwick of America, the man behind the throne, the man who would send for presidents, of whatever party, and give orders . . . and that man, perhaps the most powerful man since the beginning of history, was going to be Elmer Gantry. Not even Napoleon or Alexander had been able to dictate what a whole nation should wear and eat and say and think. That, Elmer Gantry was about to do.

“Abishop?Me?A Wes Toomis? Hell, don’t be silly! I’m going to be the emperor of America—maybe of the world. I’m glad I’ve got this idea so early, when I’m only forty-three. I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” Elmer exulted. “Now let’s see: The first step is to kid this J. E. North along, and do whatever he wants me to—until it comes time to kick him out—and get a church in New York, so they’ll know I’m A-1. . . . My God, and Jim Lefferts tried to keep me from becoming a preacher!”

“—and I stood,” Elmer was explaining, in the pulpit of Wellspring Church, “there on the Roo deluh Pay in Paris, filled almost to an intolerable historical appreciation of those aged and historical structures, when suddenly up to me comes a man obviously a Frenchman.

“Now to me, of course, any man who is a countryman of Joan of Arc and of Marshal Foch is a friend. So when this man said to me, ‘Brother, would you like to have a good time tonight?’ I answered—though truth to tell I did not like his looks entirely—I said, ‘Brother, that depends entirely on what you mean by a good time’—he spoke English.

“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can take you places where you can meet many pretty girls and have fine liquor to drink.’

“Well, I had to laugh. I think I was more sorry for him than anything else. I laid my hand on his shoulder and I said, ‘Brother, I’m afraid I can’t go with you. I’m already dated up for a good time this evening.’

“ ‘How’s that?’ he said. ‘And what may you be going to do?’

“ ‘I’m going,’ I said, ‘back to my hotel to have dinner with my dear wife, and after that,’ I said, ‘I’m going to do something that you may not regard as interesting but which is my idea of a dandy time! I’m going to read a couple of chapters of the Bible aloud, and say my prayers, and go to bed! And now,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you exactly three seconds to get out of here, and if you’re in my sight after that—well, it’ll be over you that I’ll be saying the prayers!’

“I see that my time is nearly up, but before I close I want to say a word on behalf of the Napap—that great organization, the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press. I am pleased to say that its executive secretary, my dear friend Dr. J. E. North, will be with us next month, and I want you all to give him a rousing greeting—”

CHAPTER XXXI

forover a year now it had been murmured throughout the church-world that no speaker was more useful to the reform organization than the Rev. Dr. Elmer Gantry of Zenith. His own church regretted losing his presence so often, but they were proud to hear of him as speaking in New York, in Los Angeles, in Toronto.

It was said that when Mr. J. E. North retired from the Napap because of the press of his private interests (he was the owner of the Eppsburg, N. Y.,Times-Scimitar), Dr. Gantry would be elected executive secretary of the Napap in his stead. It was said that no one in America was a more relentless foe of so-called liberalism in theology and of misconduct in private life.

It was said that Dr. Gantry had refused support for election as a bishop at the 1928 General Conference of the Methodist Church, North, two years from now. And it was definitely known that he had refused the presidency of Swenson University in Nebraska.

But it was also definitely known, alas, that he was likely to be invited to take the pastorate of the Yorkville Methodist Church in New York City, which included among its members Dr. Wilkie Bannister, that resolute cover-to-cover fundamentalist who was also one of the most celebrated surgeons in the country, Peter F. Durbar, the oil millionaire, and Jackie Oaks, the musical-comedy clown. The bishop of the New York area was willing to give Dr. Gantry the appointment. But— Well, there were contradictory stories; one version said that Dr. Gantry had not decided to take the Yorkville appointment; the other said that Yorkville, which meant Dr. Bannister, had not decided to take Dr. Gantry. Anyway, the Wellspring flock hoped that their pastor, their spiritual guardian, their friend and brother, would not leave them.

After he had discharged Miss Bundle, the church secretary—and that was a pleasant moment; she cried so ludicrously—Elmer had to depend on a series of incapable girls, good Methodists but rotten stenographers.

It almost made him laugh to think that while everybody supposed he was having such a splendid time with his new fame, he was actually running into horrible luck. This confounded J. E. North, with all his pretenses of friendship, kept delaying his resignation from the Napap. Dr. Wilkie Bannister, the conceited chump—a fellow who thought he knew more about theology than a preacher!—delayed in advising the Official Board of the Yorkville Church to call Elmer. And his secretaries infuriated him. One of them was shocked when he said just the least little small “damn”!

Nobody appreciated the troubles of a man destined to be the ruler of America; no one knew what he was sacrificing in his campaign for morality.

And how tired he was of the rustic and unimaginative devotion of Lulu Bains! If she lisped “Oh, Elmer, you are so strong!” just once more, he’d have to clout her!

In the queue of people who came up after the morning service to shake hands with the Reverend Dr. Gantry was a young woman whom the pastor noted with interest.

She was at the end of the queue, and they talked without eavesdroppers.

If a Marquis of the seventeenth century could have been turned into a girl of perhaps twenty-five, completely and ardently feminine yet with the haughty head, the slim hooked nose, the imperious eyes of M. le Marquis, that would have been the woman who held Elmer’s hand, and said:

“May I tell you, Doctor, that you are the first person in my whole life who has given me a sense of reality in religion?”

“Sister, I am very grateful,” said the Reverend Dr. Gantry, while Elmer was saying within, “Say, you’re a kid I’d like to get acquainted with!”

“Dr. Gantry, aside from my tribute—which is quite genuine—I have a perfectly unscrupulous purpose in coming and speaking to you. My name is Hettie Dowler—Miss, unfortunately! I’ve had two years in the University of Wisconsin. I’ve been secretary of Mr. Labenheim of the Tallahassee Life Insurance Company for the last year, but he’s been transferred to Detroit. I’m really quite a good secretary. And I’m a Methodist—a member of Central, but I’ve been planning to switch to Wellspring. Now what I’m getting at is: If you should happen to need a secretary in the next few months—I’m filling in as one of the hotel stenographers at the Thornleigh—”

They looked at each other, unswerving, comprehending. They shook hands again, more firmly.

“Miss Dowler, you’re my secretary right now,” said Elmer. “It’ll take about a week to arrange things.”

“Thank you.”

“May I drive you home?”

“I’d love to have you.”

Not even the nights when they worked together, alone in the church, were more thrilling than their swift mocking kisses between the calls of solemn parishioners. To be able to dash across the study and kiss her soft temple after a lugubrious widow had waddled out, and to have her whisper, “Darling, you weretoowonderful with that awful old hen; oh, you are so dear!”—that was life to him.

He went often of an evening to Hettie Dowler’s flat—a pleasant white-and-blue suite in one of the new apartment hotels, with an absurd kitchenette and an electric refrigerator. She curled, in long leopard-like lines, on the damask couch, while he marched up and down rehearsing his sermons and stopped for the applause of her kiss.

Always he slipped down to the pantry at his house and telephoned good-night to her before retiring, and when she was kept home by illness he telephoned to her from his study every hour or scrawled notes to her. That she liked best. “Your letters are so dear and funny and sweet,” she told him. So he wrote in his unformed script:

Dearest ittle honeykins bunnykins, oo is such a darlings, I adore you, I haven’t got another doggoned thing to say but I say that six hundred million trillion times. Elmer.

Dearest ittle honeykins bunnykins, oo is such a darlings, I adore you, I haven’t got another doggoned thing to say but I say that six hundred million trillion times. Elmer.

But—and he would never have let himself love her otherwise, for his ambition to become the chief moral director of the country was greater even than his delight in her—Hettie Dowler was all this time a superb secretary.

No dictation was too swift for her; she rarely made errors; she made of a typed page a beautiful composition; she noted down for him the telephone numbers of people who called during his absence; and she had a cool sympathetic way of getting rid of the idiots who came to bother the Reverend Dr. Gantry with their unimportant woes. And she had such stimulating suggestions for sermons. In these many years, neither Cleo nor Lulu had ever made a sermon-suggestion worth anything but a groan, but Hettie—why, it was she who outlined the sermon on “The Folly of Fame” which caused such a sensation at Terwillinger College when Elmer received his LL.D., got photographed laying a wreath on the grave of the late President Willoughby Quarles, and in general obtained publicity for himself and his “dear old Alma Mater.”

He felt, sometimes, that Hettie was the reincarnation of Sharon.

They were very different physically—Hettie was slimmer, less tall, her thin eager face hadn’t the curious long lines of Sharon’s; and very different were they mentally. Hettie, however gaily affectionate, was never moody, never hysterical. Yet there was the same rich excitement about life and the same devotion to their man.

And there was the same impressive ability to handle people.

If anything could have increased T. J. Rigg’s devotion to Elmer and the church, it was the way in which Hettie, instinctively understanding Rigg’s importance, flattered him and jested with him and encouraged him to loaf in the church office, though he interrupted her work and made her stay later at night.

She carried out a harder, more important task—she encouraged William Dollinger Styles, who was never so friendly as Rigg. She told him that he was a Napoleon of Finance. She almost went too far in her attentions to Styles; she lunched with him, alone. Elmer protested, jealously, and she amiably agreed never to see Styles again outside of the church.

That was a hard, a rather miserable job, getting rid of the Lulu Bains whom Hettie had made superfluous.

On the Tuesday evening after his first meeting with Hettie, when Lulu came cooing into his study, Elmer looked depressed, did not rise to welcome her. He sat at his desk, his chin moodily in his two hands.

“What is it, dear?” Lulu pleaded.

“Sit down—no,please, don’t kiss me—sit down over there, dearest. We must have an earnest talk,” said the Reverend Dr. Gantry.

She looked so small, so rustic, for all her new frock, as she quivered in an ugly straight chair.

“Lulu, I’ve got something dreadful to tell you. In spite of our carefulness, Cleo—Mrs. Gantry—is onto us. It simply breaks my heart, but we must stop seeing each other privately. Indeed—”

“Oh, Elmer, Elmer, oh, my lover,please!”

“You must be calm, dear! We must be brave and face this thing honestly. As I was saying, I’m not sure but that it might be better, with her horrible suspicions, if you didn’t come to church here any more.”

“But what did she say—what did shesay? I hate her! I hate your wife so! Oh, I won’t be hysterical but——  I hate her! What did she say?”

“Well, last evening she just calmly said to me——  You can imagine how surprised I was; like a bolt out of the blue! She said—my wife said, ‘Well, tomorrow I suppose you’ll be meeting that person that teaches cooking again, and get home as late as usual!’ Well, I stalled for time, and I found that she was actually thinking of putting detectives on us!”

“Oh, my dear, my poor dear! I won’t ever see you again! You mustn’t be disgraced, with your wonderful fame that I’ve been so proud of!”

“Darling Lulu, can’t you see it isn’t that? Hell! I’m a man! I can face the whole kit and boodle of ’em, and tell ’em just where they get off! But it’s you. Honestly, I’m afraid Floyd will kill you if he knows.”

“Yes, I guess he would. . . . I don’t know’s I care much. It would be easier than killing myself—”

“Now you look here, young woman! I’ll have none of this idiotic suicide talk!” He had sprung up; he was standing over her, an impressive priestly figure. “It’s absolutely against every injunction of God, who gave us our lives to use for his service and glory, to even think of self-slaughter! Why, I could never have imagined that you could say such a wicked, wicked,wickedthing!”

She crawled out after a time, a little figure in a shabby top-coat over her proud new dress. She stood waiting for a trolley car, alone under an arc-light, fingering her new beaded purse, which she loved because in his generosity He had given it to her. From time to time she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and all the time she was quite stupidly muttering, “Oh, my dear, my dear, to think I made trouble for you—oh, my dear, my very dear!”

Her husband was glad to find, the year after, that she had by some miracle lost the ambitiousness which had annoyed him, and that night after night she was willing to stay home and play cribbage. But he was angry and rather talkative over the fact that whenever he came home he would find her sitting blank-faced and idle, and that she had become so careless about her hair. But life is life, and he became used to her slopping around in a dressing-gown all day, and sometimes smelling of gin.

By recommendation of J. E. North, it was Elmer who was chosen by the Sacred Sabbath League to lead the fight against Sunday motion-pictures in Zenith. “This will be fine training for you,” Mr. North wrote to Elmer, “in case the directors elect you my successor in the Napap; training for the day when you will be laying down the law not merely to a city council but to congressmen and senators.”

Elmer knew that the high lords of the Napap were watching him, and with spirit he led the fight against Sunday movies. The State of Winnemac had the usual blue law to the effect that no paid labor (except, of course, that of ministers of the gospel, and whatever musicians, lecturers, educators, janitors, or other sacred help the ministers might choose to hire) might work on the Sabbath, and the usual blissful custom of ignoring that law.

Elmer called on the sheriff of the county—a worried man, whose training in criminology had been acquired in a harness-shop—and shook hands with him handsomely.

“Well, Reverend, it’s real nice to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” said the sheriff. “I’ve read a lot about you in the papers. Have a smoke?”

Elmer sat down impressively, leaning over a little, his elbow on the arm of the chair, his huge fist clenched.

“Thanks, but I never touch tobacco,” he said grimly. “Now look here, Edelstein, are you the sheriff of this county?”

“Huh! I guess I am!”

“Oh, you guess so, do you! Well then, are you going to see that the state law against Sunday movies is obeyed?”

“Oh, now look here, Reverend! Nobody wants me to enforce—”

“Nobody? Nobody? Only a couple of hundred thousand citizens and church-members! Bankers, lawyers, doctors, decent people! And only an equal number of wops and hunkies and yids and atheists and papes want you to let the Sabbath be desecrated! Now you look here, Edelstein! Unless you pinch every last man, movie owners and operators and ushers and the whole kit and bilin’ of ’em that are responsible for this disgraceful and illegal traffic of Sunday movies, I’m going to call a giant mass-meeting of all the good citizens in town, and I’m going to talk a lot less to ’em about the movie-proprietors than I am aboutyou, and it’s one fine, fat, nice chance you’ll have of being re-elected, if two hundred thousand electors of this county (and the solid birds that take the trouble to vote) are out for your hide—”

“Say, who do you think is running this county? The Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians?”

“Certainly!”

“Say, you look here now—”

In fact, upon warrants sworn to by the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, all persons connected with the profanation of the Sabbath by showing motion-pictures were arrested for three Sundays in succession (after which the motion-pictures went on as before), and Elmer received telegrams of esteem from the Sacred Sabbath League, J. E. North, Dr. Wilkie Bannister of the Yorkville Methodist Church of New York City, and a hundred of the more prominent divines all over the land.

Within twenty-four hours Mr. J. E. North let Elmer know that he was really resigning in a month, and that the choice for his successor lay between Elmer and only two other holy men; and Dr. Wilkie Bannister wrote that the Official Board of the Yorkville Methodist Church, after watching Elmer’s career for the last few months, was ready to persuade the bishop to offer him the pastorate, providing he should not be too much distracted by outside interests.

It was fortunate that the headquarters of the Napap were in New York City and not, as was the case with most benevolent lobbying organizations, in Washington.

Elmer wrote to Dr. Bannister and the other trustees of the Yorkville Church that while he would titularly be the executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (and, oh! what a credit it would be to dear old Yorkville that their pastor should hold such a position!), he would be able to leave all the actual work of the Napap to his able assistants, and except for possibly a day a week, give all his energy and time and prayers to the work of guiding onward and upward, so far as might lie within his humble power, the flock at Yorkville.

Elmer wrote to Mr. J. E. North and the trustees of the Napap that while he would titularly be the pastor of the Yorkville Methodist (and would it not be a splendid justification of their work that their executive secretary should be the pastor of one of the most important churches in New York City?) yet he would be able to leave all the actual work to his able assistants, and except possibly for Sabbaths and an occasional wedding or funeral, give all his energy and time to the work of guiding, so far as might lie within his humble power, the epochal work of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.

From both of these pious assemblies he had answers that they were pleased by his explanation, and that it would be a matter now of only a few days—

It was Hettie Dowler who composed these letters, but Elmer made several changes in commas, and helped by kissing her while she was typing.

It was too vexatious that at this climax of his life Elmer’s mother should have invited herself to come and stay with them.

He was happy when he met her at the station. However pleasant it might be to impress the great of the world—Bishop Toomis or J. E. North or Dr. Wilkie Bannister—it had been from his first memory the object of life to gain the commendation of his mother and of Paris, Kansas, the foundation of his existence. To be able to drive her in a new Willys-Knight sedan, to show her his new church, his extraordinarily genteel home, Cleo in a new frock, was rapture.

But when she had been with them for only two days, his mother got him aside and said stoutly, “Will you sit down and try not to run about the room, my son? I want to talk to you.”

“That’s splendid! But I’m awfully afraid I’ve got to make it short, because—”

“Elmer Gantry! Will you hold your tongue and stop being such a wonderful success? Elmer, my dear boy, I’m sure you don’t mean to do wrong, but I don’t like the way you’re treating Cleo . . . and such a dear, sweet, bright, devout girl.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean!”

“Now you look here, Mother! Allright, I’ll sit down and be quiet, but——  I certainly do not know what you mean! The way I’ve always been a good husband to her, and stood for her total inability to be nice to the most important members of my congregation——  And of all the chilly propositions you ever met! When I have folks here for dinner—even Rigg, the biggest man in the church—she hasn’t got hardly a thing to say. And when I come home from church, just absolutely tired out, and she meets me—does she meet me with a kiss and look jolly? She doesnot! She begins crabbing, the minute I enter the house, about something I’ve done or I haven’t done, and of course it’s natural—”

“Oh, my boy, my little boy, my dear—all that I’ve got in this whole world! You were always so quick with excuses! When you stole pies or hung cats or licked the other boys! Son, Cleo is suffering. You never pay any attention to her, even when I’m here and you try to be nice to her to show off. Elmer, who is this secretary of yours that you keep calling up all the while?”

The Reverend Dr. Gantry rose quietly, and sonorously he spoke:

“My dear mater, I owe you everything. But at a time when one of the greatest Methodist churches in the world and one of the greatest reform organizations in the world are begging for my presence, I don’t know that I need to explain even to you, Ma, what I’m trying to do. I’m going up to my room—”

“Yes, and that’s another thing, having separate rooms—”

“—and pray that you may understand. . . . Say, listen, Ma! Some day you may come to the White House and lunch with me and thepresident! . . . But I mean: Oh, Ma, for God’s sake, quit picking on me like Cleo does all the while!”

And he did pray; by his bed he knelt, his forehead gratefully cool against the linen spread, mumbling, “O dear God, I am trying to serve thee. Keep Ma from feeling I’m not doing right—”

He sprang up.

“Hell!” he said. “These women want me to be a house dog! To hell with ’em! No! Not with mother, but——  Oh, damn it, she’ll understand when I’m the pastor of Yorkville! O God, why can’t Cleo die, so I can marry Hettie!”

Two minutes later he was murmuring to Hettie Dowler, from the telephone instrument in the pantry, while the cook was grumbling and picking over the potatoes down in the basement, “Dear, will you just say something nice to me—anything—anything!”

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