V
If in Banjo Crossing Elmer had been bored by inactivity, in Zenith he was almost exhausted by the demands.
Wellspring Church had been carrying on a score of institutional affairs, and Elmer doubled them, for nothing brought in more sympathy, publicity, and contributions. Rich old hyenas who never went to church would ooze out a hundred dollars or even five hundred when you described the shawled mothers coming tearfully to the milk station.
There were classes in manual training, in domestic science, in gymnastics, in bird study, for the poor boys and girls of Old Town. There were troops of Boy Scouts, of Camp Fire Girls. There were Ladies’ Aid meetings, Women’s Missionary Society meetings, regular church suppers before prayer-meeting, a Bible Training School for Sunday School teachers, a sewing society, nursing and free food for the sick and poor, half a dozen clubs of young men and women, half a dozen circles of matrons, and a Men’s Club with monthly dinners, for which the pastor had to snare prominent speakers without payment. The Sunday School was like a small university. And every day there were dozens of callers who asked the pastor for comfort, for advice, for money—young men in temptation, widows wanting jobs, old widows wanting assurance of immortality, hoboes wanting handouts, and eloquent book-agents. Where in Banjo the villagers had been shy to expose their cancerous sorrows, in the city there were always lonely people who reveled in being a little twisted, a little curious, a little shameful; who yearned to talk about themselves and who expected the pastor to be forever interested.
Elmer scarce had time to prepare his sermons, though he really did yearn now to make them original and eloquent. He was no longer satisfied to depend on his barrel. He wanted to increase his vocabulary; he was even willing to have new ideas, lifted out of biology and biography and political editorials.
He was out of the house daily at eight in the morning—usually after a breakfast in which he desired to know of Cleo why the deuce she couldn’t keep Nat and Bunny quiet while he read the paper—and he did not return till six, burning with weariness. He had to study in the evening. … He was always testy. … His children were afraid of him, even when he boisterously decided to enact the Kind Parent for one evening and to ride them pickaback, whether or no they wanted to be ridden pickaback. They feared God properly and kept his commandments, did Nat and Bunny, because their father so admirably prefigured God.
When Cleo was busy with meetings and clubs at the church, Elmer blamed her for neglecting the house; when she slackened her church work, he was able equally to blame her for not helping him professionally. And obviously it was because she had so badly arranged the home routine that he never had time for morning Family Worship. … But he made up for it by the violence of his Grace before Meat, during which he glared at the children if they stirred in their chairs.
And always the telephone was ringing—not only in his office but at home in the evening.
What should Miss Weezeger, the deaconess, do about this old Miss Mally, who wanted a new nightgown? Could the Reverend Gantry give a short talk on “Advertising and the Church” to the Ad Club next Tuesday noon? Could he address the Letitia Music and Literary Club on “Religion and Poetry” next Thursday at four—just when he had a meeting with the Official Board. The church janitor wanted to start the furnace, but the coal hadn’t been delivered. What advice would the Reverend Mr. Gantry give to a young man who wanted to go to college and had no money? From what book was that quotation about “Cato learned Greek at eighty Sophocles” which he had used in last Sunday’s sermon? Would Mr. Gantry be so kind and address the Lincoln School next Friday morning at nine-fifteen—the dear children would be so glad of any Message he had to give them, and the regular speaker couldn’t show up. Would it be all right for the Girls’ Basket Ball team to use the basement tonight? Could the Reverend come out, right now, to the house of Ben T. Evers, 2616 Appleby Street—five miles away—because grandmother was very ill and needed consolation. What the dickens did the Reverend mean by saying, last Sunday, that hellfire might be merely spiritual and figurative—didn’t he know that that was agin Matthew V: 29: “Thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Could he get the proof of the church bulletin back to the printers right away? Could the officers of the Southwest Circle of Women meet in Mr. Gantry’s study tomorrow? Would Reverend Gantry speak at the Old Town Improvement Association Banquet? Did the Reverend want to buy a secondhand motor car in A-1 shape? Could the Reverend—
“God!” said the Reverend; and, “Huh? Why, no, of course you couldn’t answer ’em for me, Cleo. But at least you might try to keep from humming when I’m simply killing myself trying to take care of all these blame’ fools and sacrificing myself and everything!”
And the letters.
In response to every sermon he had messages informing him that he was the bright hope of evangelicism and that he was a cloven-hoofed fiend; that he was a rousing orator and a human saxophone. One sermon on the delights of Heaven, which he pictured as a perpetual summer afternoon at a lake resort, brought in the same mail four comments:
i have got an idea for you verry important since hearing yrs of last Sunday evening why do’nt you hold services every evning to tell people & etc about heven and danger of hell we must hurry hurry hurry, the church in a bad way and is up to us who have many and infaliable proofs of heven and hell to hasten yes we must rescew the parishing, make everywhere the call of the lord, fill the churches and empty these damable theatre.
The writer is an honest and unwavering Christian and I want to tell you, Gantry, that the only decent and helpful and enjoyable thing about your sermon last Sunday a.m. was your finally saying “Let us pray,” only you should have said “Let me prey.” By your wibbly-wabbly emphasis on Heaven and your fear to emphasize the horrors of Hell, you get people into an easygoing, self-satisfied frame of mind where they slip easily into sin, and while pretending to be an earnest and literal believer in every word of the Scriptures, you are an atheist in sheep’s clothing. I am a minister of the gospel and know whereof I speak.
I heard your rotten old-fashioned sermon last Sunday. You pretend to be liberal, but you are just a hidebound conservative. Nobody believes in a material heaven or hell any more, and you make yourself ridiculous by talking about them. Wake up and study some modern dope.
Dear Brother, your lovely sermon last Sunday about Heaven was the finest I have ever heard. I am quite an old lady and not awful well and in my ills and griefs, especially about my grandson who drinks, your wonderful words give me such a comfort I cannot describe to you.
And he was expected, save with the virulent anonymous letters, to answer all of them … in his stuffy office, facing a shelf of black-bound books, dictating to the plaintive Miss Bundle, who never caught an address, who always single-spaced the letters which should have been double-spaced, and who had a speed which seemed adequate until you discovered that she attained it by leaving out most of the verbs and adjectives.