V
When Elmer descended from the train in Lincoln Friday afternoon, he stopped before a red-and-black poster announcing that Elmer Gantry was a power in the machinery world, that he was an eloquent and entertaining speaker, and that his address “Increasing Sales with God and the Gideons” would be a “revelation of the new world of better business.”
“Jiminy!” said the power in the machinery world. “I’d rather see a sermon of mine advertised like that than sell ten million plows!”
He had a vision of Sharon Falconer in her suite in late afternoon, lonely and clinging in the faded golden light, clinging to him. But when he reached her room by telephone she was curt. “No, no, sorry, can’t see you ’safternoon—see you at dinner, quarter to six.”
He was so chastened that he was restrained and uncommenting when she came swooping into the dining-room, a knot-browed, efficient, raging Sharon, and when he found that she had brought Cecil Aylston.
“Good evening, Sister—Brother Aylston,” he boomed sedately.
“Evening. Ready to speak?”
“Absolutely.”
She lighted a little. “That’s good. Everything else’s gone wrong, and these preachers here think I can travel an evangelistic crew on air. Give ’em fits about tightwad Christian business men will you, Elmer? How they hate to loosen up! Cecil! Kindly don’t look as if I’d bitten somebody. I haven’t … not yet.”
Aylston ignored her, and the two men watched each other like a panther and a buffalo (but a buffalo with a clean shave and ever so much scented hair-tonic).
“Brother Aylston,” said Elmer, “I noticed in the account of last evening’s meeting that you spoke of Mary and the anointing with spikenard, and you quoted these Idylls of the King, by Tennyson. Or that’s what the newspaper said.”
“That’s right.”
“But do you think that’s good stuff for evangelism? All right for a regular church, especially with a high-class rich congregation, but in a soul-saving campaign—”
“My dear Mr. Gantry, Miss Falconer and I have decided that even in the most aggressive campaign there is no need of vulgarizing our followers.”
“Well, that isn’t what I’d give ’em!”
“And what, pray, would you give them?”
“The good old-fashioned hell, that’s what!” Elmer peeped at Sharon and felt that she was smiling with encouragement. “Yes-sir, like the hymn says, the hell of our fathers is good enough for me.”
“Quite so! I’m afraid it isn’t good enough for me, and I don’t know that Jesus fancied it particularly!”
“Well, you can be dead sure of one thing: When he stayed with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, he didn’t loaf around drinking tea with ’em!”
“Why not, my dear man! Don’t you know that tea was first imported by caravan train from Ceylon to Syria in 627 BC?”
“No-o, didn’t know just when—”
“Why, of course. You’ve merely forgotten it—you must have read in your university days of the great epicurean expedition of Phthaltazar—when he took the eleven hundred camels? Psaltazar? You remember!”
“Oh, yes, I remember his expedition, but I didn’t know he brought in tea.”
“Why, naturally! Rather! Uh, Miss Falconer, the impetuous Mr. Shoop wants to sing ‘Just As I Am’ for his solo tonight. Is there any way of preventing it? Adelbert is a good saved soul, but just as he is, he is too fat. Won’t you speak to him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let him sing it. He’s brought in lots of souls on that,” yawned Sharon.
“Mangy little souls.”
“Oh, stop being so supercilious! When you get to heaven, Cecil, you’ll complain of the way the seraphims—oh, do shut up; I know it’s seraphim, my tongue just slipped—you’ll complain of the kind of corsets they wear.”
“I’m not at all sure but that you really do picture that sort of heaven, with corseted angels and yourself with a golden mansion on the celestial Park Lane!”
“Cecil Aylston, don’t you quarrel with me tonight! I feel—vulgar. That’s your favorite word! I do wish I could save some of the members of my own crew! … Elmer, do you think God went to Oxford?”
“Sure!”
“And you did, of course!”
“I did not, by golly! I went to a hick college in Kansas! And I was born in a hick town in Kansas!”
“Me too, practically! Oh, I did come from a frightfully old Virginia family, and I was born in what they called a mansion, but still, we were so poor that our pride was ridiculous. Tell me: did you split wood and pull mustard when you were a boy?”
“Did I? Say! You bet I did!”
They sat with their elbows on the table, swapping boasts of provincial poverty, proclaiming kinship, while Cecil looked frosty.