II
He had to do nine days’ work, to visit nine towns, in five days, but he was back in Sautersville on Sunday evening and he was on the eleven-o’clock train for Lincoln—in the new brown suit.
His fancy for Sharon Falconer had grown into a trembling passion, the first authentic passion of his life.
It was too late in the evening for a great farewell, but at least a hundred of the brethren and sisters were at the station, singing “God Be with You Till We Meet Again” and shaking hands with Sharon Falconer. Elmer saw his cornet-wielding Yankee friend, Art Nichols, with the rest of the evangelistic crew—the aide, Cecil Aylston, the fat and sentimental tenor soloist, the girl pianist, the violinist, the children’s evangelist, the director of personal work. (That important assistant, the press agent, was in Lincoln making ready for the coming of the Lord.) They looked like a sleepy theatrical troupe as they sat on their suitcases waiting for the train to come in, and like troupers, they were dismayingly different from their stage roles. The anemically pretty pianist, who for public uses dressed in seraphic silver robes, was now merely a small-town girl in wrinkled blue serge; the director of personal work, who had been nun-like in linen, was bold in black-trimmed red, and more attentive to the amorous looks of the German violinist than to the farewell hymns. The Reverend Cecil Aylston gave orders to the hotel baggageman regarding their trunks more like a quartermaster sergeant than like an Oxonian mystic.
Sharon herself was imperial in white, and the magnet for all of them. A fat Presbyterian pastor, with whiskers, buzzed about her, holding her arm with more than pious zeal. She smiled on him (to Elmer’s rage), she smiled equally on the long thin Disciples-of-Christ preacher, she shook hands fervently, and she was tender to each shout of “Praise God, Sister!” But her eyes were weary, and Elmer saw that when she turned from her worshipers, her mouth drooped. Young she seemed then, tired and defenseless.
“Poor kid!” thought Elmer.
The train flared and shrieked its way in, and the troupe bustled with suitcases. “Goodbye—God bless you—God speed the work!” shouted everyone … everyone save the Congregational minister, who stood sulkily at the edge of the crowd explaining to a parishioner, “And so she goes away with enough cash for herself, after six weeks’ work, to have run our whole church for two years!”
Elmer ranged up beside his musical friend, Art Nichols, and as they humped up the steps of a day-coach he muttered, “Art! Art! Got your stomach-medicine here!”
“Great!”
“Say. Look. Fix it so you sit with Sharon. Then pretty soon go out for a smoke—”
“She don’t like smoking.”
“You don’t need to tell her what for! Go out so I can sit down and talk to her for a while. Important business. Here: stick this in your pocket. And I’ll dig up s’more for you at Lincoln. Now hustle and get in with her.”
“Well, I’ll try.”
So, in the dark malodorous car, hot with late spring, filled with women whose corsets creaked to their doleful breathing, with farmers who snored in shirtsleeves, Elmer stood behind the seat in which a blur marked the shoulders of Art Nichols and a radiance showed the white presence of Sharon Falconer. To Elmer she seemed to kindle the universe. She was so precious, every inch of her; he had not known that a human being could be precious like this and magical. To be near her was ecstasy enough … almost enough.
She was silent. He heard only Art Nichols’ twanging, “What do you think about us using some of these nigger songs—hand ’em a jolt?” and her drowsy, “Oh, let’s not talk about it tonight.” Presently, from Art, “Guess I’ll skip out on the platform and get a breath of air,” and the sacred haunt beside her was free to the exalted Elmer.
He slipped in, very nervous.
She was slumped low in the seat, but she sat up, peered at him in the dimness, and said, with a grave courtesy which shut him out more than any rudeness, “I’m so sorry, but this place is taken.”
“Yes, I know, Sister Falconer. But the car’s crowded, and I’ll just sit down and rest myself while Brother Nichols is away—that is, if you’ll let me. Don’t know if you remember me. I’m—I met you at the tent in Sautersville. Reverend Gantry.”
“Oh,” indifferently. Then quickly: “Oh, yes, you’re the Presbyterian preacher who was fired for drinking.”
“That’s absolutely—!” He saw that she was watching him, and he realized that she was not being her saintly self nor her efficient self but a quite new, private, mocking self. Delightedly he went on, “—absolutely incorrect. I’m the Christian Scientist that was fired for kissing the choir-leader on Saturday.”
“Oh, that was careless of you!”
“So you’re really human?”
“Me? Good Heavens, yes! Too human.”
“And you get tired of it?”
“Of what?”
“Of being the great Miss Falconer, of not being able to go into a drugstore to buy a toothbrush without having the clerk holler, ‘Praise God, we have some dandy two-bit brushes, hallelujah!’ ”
Sharon giggled.
“Tired,” and his voice was lulling now, “of never daring to be tired, which same is what you are tonight, and of never having anybody to lean on!”
“I suppose, my dear reverend Brother, that this is a generous offer to let me lean on you!”
“No. I wouldn’t have the nerve! I’m scared to death of you. You haven’t only got your beauty—no! please let me tell you how a fellow preacher looks at you—and your wonderful platform-presence, but I kind of guess you’ve got brains.”
“No, I haven’t. Not a brain. All emotion. That’s the trouble with me.” She sounded awake now, and friendly.
“But think of all the souls you’ve brought to repentance. That makes up for everything, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose it—Oh, of course it does. It’s the only thing that counts. Only—Tell me: What really did happen to you? Why did you get out of the church?”
Gravely, “I was a senior in Mizpah Theological Seminary, but I had a church of my own. I fell for a girl. I won’t say she lured me on. After all, a man ought to face the consequences of his own foolishness. But she certainly did—Oh, it amused her to see a young preacher go mad over her. And she was so lovely! Quite a lot like you, only not so beautiful, not near, and she let on like she was mad about church work—that’s what fooled me. Well! Make a long story short: We were engaged to be married, and I thought of nothing but her and our life together, doing the work of the Lord, when one evening I walked in and there she was in the arms of another fellow! It broke me up so that I—Oh, I tried, but I simply couldn’t go on preaching, so I quit for a while. And I’ve done well in business. But now I’m ready to go back to the one job I’ve ever cared about. That’s why I wanted to talk to you there at the tent. I needed your woman’s sympathy as well as your experience—and you turned me down!”
“Oh, I am so, so sorry!” Her hand caressed his arm.
Cecil Aylston came up and looked at them with a lack of sanctity.
When they reached Lincoln, he was holding her hand and saying, “You poor, dear, tired child!” and, “Will you have breakfast with me? Where are you staying in Lincoln?
“Now see here, Brother Gantry—”
“Elmer!”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous! Just because I’m so fagged out that it’s nice to play at being a human being, don’t try to take advantage—”
“Sharon Falconer, will you quit being a chump? I admire your genius, your wonderful work for God, but it’s because you’re too big to just be a professional gospel-shouter every minute that I most admire you. You know mighty good and well that you like to be simple and even slangy for a while. And you’re too sleepy just now to know whether you like me or not. That’s why I want us to meet at breakfast, when the sleepiness is out of the wonderful eyes—”
“Um. It all sounds pretty honest except that last stuff—you’ve certainly used that before. Do you know, I like you! You’re so completely brazen, so completely unscrupulous, and so beatifically ignorant! I’ve been with sanctimonious folks too much lately. And it’s interesting to see that you honestly think you can captivate me. You funny thing! I’m staying at the Antlers Hotel in Lincoln—no use, by the way, your trying to get a room near my suite, because I have practically the whole floor engaged—and I’ll meet you at breakfast there at nine-thirty.”