I
Not till December did Sharon Falconer take Elmer on as assistant.
When she discharged Cecil Aylston, he said, in a small cold voice, “This is the last time, my dear prophet and peddler, that I shall ever try to be decent.” But it is known that for several months he tried to conduct a rescue mission in Buffalo, and if he was examined for insanity, it was because he was seen to sit for hours staring. He was killed in a gambling den in Juarez, and when she heard of it Sharon was very sorry—she spoke of going to fetch his body, but she was too busy with holy work.
Elmer joined her at the beginning of the meetings in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He opened the meetings for her, made announcements, offered prayer, preached when she was too weary, and led the singing when Adelbert Shoop, the musical director, was indisposed. He developed a dozen sound sermons out of encyclopedias of exegesis, handbooks for evangelists, and manuals of sermon outlines. He had a powerful discourse, used in the For Men Only service, on the strength and joy of complete chastity; he told how Jim Leffingwell saw the folly of pleasure at the deathbed of his daughter; and he had an uplifting address, suitable to all occasions, on Love as the Morning and the Evening Star.
He helped Sharon where Cecil had held her back—or so she said. While she kept her vocabulary of poetic terms, Elmer managed her in just the soapbox denunciation of sin which had made Cecil shudder. Also he spoke of Cecil as “Osric,” which she found very funny indeed, and as “Percy,” and “Algernon.” He urged her to tackle the biggest towns, the most polite or rowdy audiences, and to advertise herself not in the wet-kitten high-church phrases approved by Cecil but in a manner befitting a circus, an Elks’ convention, or a new messiah.
Under Elmer’s urging she ventured for the first time into the larger cities. She descended on Minneapolis and, with the support only of such sects as the Full Gospel Assembly, the Nazarenes, the Church of God, and the Wesleyan Methodists, she risked her savings in hiring an armory and inserting two-column six-inch advertisements of herself.
Minneapolis was quite as enlivened as smaller places by Sharon’s voice and eyes, by her Grecian robes, by her gold-and-white pyramidal altar, and the profits were gratifying. Thereafter she sandwiched Indianapolis, Rochester, Atlanta, Seattle, the two Portlands, Pittsburgh, in between smaller cities.
For two years life was a whirlwind to Elmer Gantry.
It was so frantic that he could never remember which town was which. Everything was a blur of hot sermons, writhing converts, appeals for contributions, trains, denunciation of lazy personal workers, denunciations of Adelbert Shoop for getting drunk, firing of Adelbert Shoop, taking back of Adelbert Shoop when no other tenor so unctuously pious was to be found.
Of one duty he was never weary: of standing around and being impressive and very male for the benefit of lady seekers. How tenderly he would take their hands and moan, “Won’t you hear the dear Savior’s voice calling, Sister?” and all of them, spinsters with pathetic dried girlishness, misunderstood wives, held fast to his hand and were added to the carefully kept total of saved souls. Sharon saw to it that he dressed the part—double-breasted dark blue with a dashing tie in winter, and in summer white suits with white shoes.
But however loudly the skirts rustled about him, so great was Sharon’s intimidating charm that he was true to her.
If he was a dervish figure those two years, she was a shooting star; inspired in her preaching, passionate with him, then a naughty child who laughed and refused to be serious even at the sermon hour; gallantly generous, then a tightfisted virago squabbling over ten cents for stamps. Always, in every high-colored mood, she was his religion and his reason for being.