I
Two more series of meetings Sharon Falconer held that summer, and at each of them the power in the machinery world appeared and chronicled his conversion by the Gideon Bible and the eloquence of Sister Falconer.
Sometimes he seemed very near her; the next time she would regard him with bleak china eyes. Once she turned on him with: “You smoke, don’t you?”
“Why, yes.”
“I smelled it. I hate it. Will you stop it? Entirely? And drinking?”
“Yes. I will.”
And he did. It was an agony of restlessness and craving, but he never touched alcohol or tobacco again, and he really regretted that in evenings thus made vacuous he could not keep from an interest in waitresses.
It was late in August, in a small Colorado city, after the second of his appearances as a saved financial Titan, that he implored Sharon as they entered the hotel together, “Oh, let me come up to your room. Please! I never have a chance to just sit and talk to you.”
“Very well. Come in half an hour. Don’t phone. Just come right up to Suite B.”
It was a half-hour of palpitating, of almost timorous, expectancy.
In every city where she held meetings Sharon was invited to stay at the home of one of the elect, but she always refused. She had a long standard explanation that “she could devote herself more fully to the prayer life if she had her own place, and day by day filled it more richly with the aura of spirituality.” Elmer wondered whether it wasn’t the aura of Cecil Aylston for which she had her suite, but he tried to keep his aching imagination away from that.
The half-hour was over.
He swayed upstairs to Suite B and knocked. A distant “Come in.”
She was in the bedroom beyond. He inched into the stale hotel parlor—wallpaper with two-foot roses, a table with an atrocious knobby gilt vase, two stiff chairs and a grudging settee ranged round the wall. The lilies which her disciples had sent her were decaying in boxes, in a washbowl, in a heap in the corner. Round a china cuspidor lay faint rose petals.
He sat awkwardly on the edge of one of the chairs. He dared not venture beyond the dusty brocade curtains which separated the two rooms, but his fancy ventured fast enough.
She threw open the curtains and stood there, a flame blasting the faded apartment. She had discarded her white robe for a dressing-gown of scarlet with sleeves of cloth of gold—gold and scarlet; riotous black hair; long, pale, white face. She slipped over to the settee, and summoned him, “Come!”
He diffidently dropped his arm about her, and her head was on his shoulder. His arm drew tighter. But, “Oh, don’t make love to me,” she sighed, not moving. “You’ll know it all right when I want you to! Just be nice and comforting tonight.”
“But I can’t always—”
“I know. Perhaps you won’t always have to. Perhaps! Oh, I need—What I need tonight is some salve for my vanity. Have I ever said that I was a reincarnated Joan of Arc? I really do half believe that sometimes. Of course it’s just insanity. Actually I’m a very ignorant young woman with a lot of misdirected energy and some tiny idealism. I preach elegant sermons for six weeks, but if I stayed in a town six weeks and one day, I’d have to start the music box over again. I can talk my sermons beautifully … but Cecil wrote most of ’em for me, and the rest I cheerfully stole.”
“Do you like Cecil?”
“Oh, is a nice, jealous, big, fat man!” She who that evening had been a disturbing organ note was lisping babytalk now.
“Damn it, Sharon, don’t try to be a baby when I’m serious!”
“Damn it, Elmer, don’t say ‘damn it’! Oh, I hate the little vices—smoking, swearing, scandal, drinking just enough to be silly. I love the big ones—murder, lust, cruelty, ambition!”
“And Cecil? Is he one of the big vices that you love?”
“Oh, he’s a dear boy. So sweet, the way he takes himself seriously.”
“Yes, he must make love like an ice-cream cone.”
“You might be surprised! There, there! The poor man is just longing to have me say something about Cecil! I’ll be obliging. He’s done a lot for me. He really knows something; he isn’t a splendid cast-iron statue of ignorance like you or me.”
“Now you look here, Sharon! After all, I am a college graduate and practically a B.D. too.”
“That’s what I said. Cecil really knows how to read. And he taught me to quit acting like a hired girl, bless him. But—Oh, I’ve learned everything he can teach me, and if I get any more of the highbrow in me I’ll lose touch with the common people—bless their dear, sweet, honest souls!”
“Chuck him. Take me on. Oh, it isn’t the money. You must know that, dear. In ten years, at thirty-eight, I can be sales-manager of the Pequot—prob’ly ten thousand a year—and maybe some day the president, at thirty thou. I’m not looking for a job. But—Oh, I’m crazy about you! Except for my mother, you’re the only person I’ve ever adored. I love you! Hear me? Damn it—yes, damn it, I said—I worship you! Oh, Sharon, Sharon, Sharon! It wasn’t really bunk when I told ’em all tonight how you’d converted me, because you did convert me. Will you let me serve you? And will you maybe marry me?”
“No. I don’t think I’ll ever marry—exactly. Perhaps I’ll chuck Cecil—poor sweet lad!—and take you on. I’ll see. Anyhow—Let me think.”
She shook off his encircling arm and sat brooding, chin on hand. He sat at her feet—spiritually as well as physically.
She beatified him with:
“In September I’ll have only four weeks of meetings, at Vincennes. I’m going to take off all October, before my winter work (you won’t know me then—I’m dandy, speaking indoors, in big halls!), and I’m going down to our home, the old Falconer family place, in Virginia. Pappy and Mam are dead now, and I own it. Old plantation. Would you like to come down there with me, just us two, for a fortnight in October?”
“Would I? My God!”
“Could you get away?”
“If it cost me my job!”
“Then—I’ll wire you when to come after I get there: Hanning Hall, Broughton, Virginia. Now I think I’d better go to bed, dear. Sweet dreams.”
“Can’t I tuck you into bed?”
“No, dear. I might forget to be Sister Falconer! Good night!”
Her kiss was like a swallow’s flight, and he went out obediently, marveling that Elmer Gantry could for once love so much that he did not insist on loving.