IV
Cleo and he had found a gracious old house in Old Town, to be had cheap because of the ragged neighborhood. He had hinted to her that since he was making such a spiritual sacrifice as to take a lower salary in coming to Zenith, her father, as a zealous Christian, ought to help them out; and if she should be unable to make her father perceive this, Elmer would regretfully have to be angry with her.
She came back from a visit to Banjo Crossing with two thousand dollars.
Cleo had an instinct for agreeable furniture. For the old house, with its white mahogany paneling, she got reproductions of early New England chairs and commodes and tables. There was a white-framed fireplace and a fine old crystal chandelier in the living-room.
“Some class! We can entertain the bon ton here, and, believe me, I’ll soon be having a lot of ’em coming to church! … Sometimes I do wish, though, I’d gone out for the Episcopal Church. Lots more class there, and they don’t beef if a minister takes a little drink,” he said to Cleo.
“Oh, Elmer, how can you! When Methodism stands for—”
“Oh, God, I do wish that just once you wouldn’t deliberately misunderstand me! Here I was just carrying on a philosophical discussion, and not speaking personal, and you go and—”
His house in order, he gave attention to clothes. He dressed as calculatingly as an actor. For the pulpit, he continued to wear morning clothes. For his church study, he chose offensively inoffensive lounge suits, gray and brown and striped blue, with linen collars and quiet blue ties. For addresses before slightly boisterous lunch-clubs, he went in for manly tweeds and manly soft collars, along with his manly voice and manly jesting.
He combed his thick hair back from his strong, square face, and permitted it to hang, mane-like, just a bit over his collar. But it was still too black to be altogether prophetic.
The two thousand was gone before they had been in Zenith a month.
“But it’s all a good investment,” he said. “When I meet the Big Bugs, they’ll see I may have a dump of a church in a bum section but I can put up as good a front as if I were preaching on Chickasaw Road.”