Elmer Gantry (7 page)

When President Quarles called for him, Elmer’s exhortation was outlined, and he had changed to his Sunday-best blue serge
double-breasted suit and sleeked his hair.

As they departed, Jim called Elmer back from the hall to whisper, “Say, Hell-cat, you won’t forget to give credit to
Ingersoll, and to me for tipping you off, will you?”

“You go to hell!” said Elmer.

There was a sizable and extremely curious gathering at the Y.M.C.A. All day the campus had debated, “Did Hell-cat really
sure-enough get saved? Is he going to cut out his hell-raising?”

Every man he knew was present, their gaping mouths dripping question-marks, grinning or doubtful. Their leers confused
him, and he was angry at being introduced by Eddie Fislinger, president of the Y.M.C.A.

He started coldly, stammering. But Ingersoll had provided the beginning of his discourse, and he warmed to the splendor
of his own voice. He saw the audience in the curving Y.M.C.A. auditorium as a radiant cloud, and he began to boom
confidently, he began to add to his outline impressive ideas which were altogether his own— except, perhaps, as he had heard
them thirty or forty times in sermons.

It sounded very well, considering. Certainly it compared well with the average mystical rhapsody of the pulpit.

For all his slang, his cursing, his mauled plurals and singulars, Elmer had been compelled in college to read certain
books, to hear certain lectures, all filled with flushed, florid polysyllables, with juicy sentiments about God, sunsets,
the moral improvement inherent in a daily view of mountain scenery, angels, fishing for souls, fishing for fish, ideals,
patriotism, democracy, purity, the error of Providence in creating the female leg, courage, humility, justice, the
agricultural methods of Palestine circ. 4 A.D., the beauty of domesticity, and preachers’ salaries. These blossoming words,
these organ-like phrases, these profound notions had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use.

But even to the schoolboy-wearied faculty who had done the ramming, who ought to have seen the sources, it was still
astonishing that after four years of grunting, Elmer Gantry should come out with these flourishes, which they took perfectly
seriously, for they themselves had been nurtured in minute Baptist and Campbellite colleges.

Not one of them considered that there could be anything comic in the spectacle of a large young man, divinely fitted for
coal-heaving, standing up and wallowing in thick slippery words about Love and the Soul. They sat—young instructors not long
from the farm, professors pale from years of napping in unaired pastoral studies—and looked at Elmer respectfully as he
throbbed:

“It’s awful’ hard for a fellow that’s more used to bucking the line than to talking publicly to express how he means, but
sometimes I guess maybe you think about a lot of things even if you don’t always express how you mean, and I want to—what I
want to talk about is how if a fellow looks down deep into things and is really square with God, and lets God fill his heart
with higher aspirations, he sees that—he sees that Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life’s
dark clouds.

“Yes, sir, just Love! It’s the morning and evening star. It’s— even in the quiet tomb, I mean those that are around the
quiet tomb, you find it even there. What is it that inspires all great men, all poets and patriots and philosophers? It’s
Love, isn’t it? What gave the world its first evidences of immortality? Love! It fills the world with melody, for what is
music? What is music? Why! MUSIC IS THE VOICE OF LOVE!”

The great President Quarles leaned back and put on his spectacles, which gave a slight appearance of learning to his
chin-whiskered countenance, otherwise that of a small-town banker in 1850. He was the center of a row of a dozen initiates
on the platform of the Y.M.C.A. auditorium, a shallow platform under a plaster half-dome. The wall behind them was thick
with diagrams, rather like anatomical charts, showing the winning of souls in Egypt, the amount spent on whisky versus the
amount spent on hymn-books, and the illustrated progress of a pilgrim from Unclean Speech through Cigarette smoking and Beer
Saloons to a lively situation in which he beat his wife, who seemed to dislike it. Above was a large and enlightening motto:
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The whole place had that damp-straw odor characteristic of places of worship, but President Quarles did not, seemingly,
suffer in it. All his life he had lived in tabernacles and in rooms devoted to thin church periodicals and thick volumes of
sermons. He had a slight constant snuffle, but his organism was apparently adapted now to existing without air. He beamed
and rubbed his hands, and looked with devout joy on Elmer’s broad back as Elmer snapped into it, ever surer of himself; as
he bellowed at the audience—beating them, breaking through their interference, making a touchdown:

“What is it makes us different from the animals? The passion of Love! Without it, we are—in fact we are nothing; with it,
earth is heaven, and we are, I mean to some extent, like God himself! Now that’s what I wanted to explain about Love, and
here’s how it applies. Prob’ly there’s a whole lot of you like myself—oh, I been doing it, I’m not going to spare myself—I
been going along thinking I was too good, too big, too smart, for the divine love of the Savior! Say! Any of you ever stop
and think how much you’re handing yourself when you figure you can get along without divine intercession? Say! I suppose
prob’ly you’re bigger than Moses, bigger than St. Paul, bigger than Pastewer, that great scientist—”

President Quarles was exulting, “It was a genuine conversion! But more than that! Here’s a true discovery—my discovery!
Elmer is a born preacher, once he lets himself go, and I can make him do it! O Lord, how mysterious are thy ways! Thou hast
chosen to train our young brother not so much in prayer as in the mighty struggles of the Olympic field! I—thou, Lord, hast
produced a born preacher. Some day he’ll be one of our leading prophets!”

The audience clapped when Elmer hammered out his conclusion: “— and you Freshmen will save a lot of time that I wasted if
you see right now that until you know God you know—just nothing!”

They clapped, they made their faces to shine upon him. Eddie Fislinger won him by sighing, “Old fellow, you got me beat
at my own game like you have at your game!” There was much hand-shaking. None of it was more ardent than that of his recent
enemy, the Latin professor, who breathed:

“Where did you get all those fine ideas and metaphors about the Divine Love, Gantry?”

“Oh,” modestly, “I can’t hardly call them mine, Professor. I guess I just got them by praying.”

Judson Roberts, ex-football-star, state secretary of the Y.M.C.A., was on the train to Concordia, Kansas. In the
vestibule he had three puffs of an illegal cigarette and crushed it out.

“No, really, it wasn’t so bad for him, that Elmer what’s-his-name, to get converted. Suppose there ISN’T anything to it.
Won’t hurt him to cut out some of his bad habits for a while, anyway. And how do we know? Maybe the Holy Ghost does come
down. No more improbable than electricity. I do wish I could get over this doubting! I forget it when I’ve got ’em going in
an evangelistic meeting, but when I watch a big butcher like him, with that damn’ silly smirk on his jowls—I believe I’ll go
into the real estate business. I don’t think I’m hurting these young fellows any, but I do wish I could be honest. Oh,
Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, I wish I had a good job selling real estate!”

Elmer walked home firmly. “Just what right has Mr. James B. Lefferts got to tell me I mustn’t use my ability to get a
crowd going? And I certainly had ’em going! Never knew I could spiel like that. Easy as feetball! And Prexy saying I was a
born preacher! Huh!”

Firmly and resentfully he came into their room, and slammed down his hat.

It awoke Jim. “How’d it go over? Hand ’em out the gospel guff?”

“I did!” Elmer trumpeted. “It went over, as you put it, corking. Got any objections?”

He lighted the largest lamp and turned it up full, his back to Jim.

No answer. When he looked about, Jim seemed asleep.

At seven next morning he said forgivingly, rather patronizingly, “I’ll be gone till ten—bring you back some
breakfast?”

Jim answered, “No, thanks,” and those were his only words that morning.

When Elmer came in at ten-thirty, Jim was gone, his possessions gone. (It was no great moving: three suitcases of
clothes, an armful of books.) There was a note on the table:

I shall live at the College Inn the rest of this year. You can probably get Eddie Fislinger to live with you. You would
enjoy it. It has been stimulating to watch you try to be an honest roughneck, but I think it would be almost too stimulating
to watch you become a spiritual leader.

J. B. L.

All of Elmer’s raging did not make the room seem less lonely.

President Quarles urged him.

Elmer would, perhaps, affect the whole world if he became a minister. What glory for Old Terwillinger and all the shrines
of Gritzmacher Springs!

Eddie Fislinger urged him.

“Jiminy! You’d go way beyond me! I can see you president of the Baptist convention!” Elmer still did not like Eddie, but
he was making much now of ignoring Jim Lefferts (they met on the street and bowed ferociously), and he had to have some one
to play valet to his virtues.

The ex-minister dean of the college urged him.

Where could Elmer find a profession with a better social position than the ministry—thousands listening to him—invited to
banquets and everything. So much easier than—Well, not exactly easier; all ministers worked arduously—great
sacrifices—constant demands on their sympathy—heroic struggle against vice—but same time, elegant and superior work,
surrounded by books, high thoughts, and the finest ladies in the city or country as the case might be. And cheaper
professional training than law. With scholarships and outside preaching, Elmer could get through the three years of Mizpah
Theological Seminary on almost nothing a year. What other plans HAD he for a career? Nothing definite? Why, looked like
divine intervention; certainly did; let’s call it settled. Perhaps he could get Elmer a scholarship the very first year—

His mother urged him.

She wrote, daily, that she was longing, praying, sobbing—

Elmer urged himself.

He had no prospects except the chance of reading law in the dingy office of a cousin in Toluca, Kansas. The only things
he had against the ministry, now that he was delivered from Jim, were the low salaries and the fact that if ministers were
caught drinking or flirting, it was often very hard on them. The salaries weren’t so bad—he’d go to the top, of course, and
maybe make eight or ten thousand. But the diversions—He thought about it so much that he made a hasty trip to Cato, and came
back temporarily cured forever of any desire for wickedness.

The greatest urge was his memory of holding his audience, playing on them. To move people—Golly! He wanted to be
addressing somebody on something right now, and being applauded!

By this time he was so rehearsed in his rôle of candidate for righteousness that it didn’t bother him (so long as no
snickering Jim was present) to use the most embarrassing theological and moral terms in the presence of Eddie or the
president; and without one grin he rolled out dramatic speeches about “the duty of every man to lead every other man to
Christ,” and “the historic position of the Baptists as the one true Scriptural Church, practising immersion, as taught by
Christ himself.”

He was persuaded. He saw himself as a white-browed and star-eyed young evangel, wearing a new frock coat, standing up in
a pulpit and causing hundreds of beautiful women to weep with conviction and rush down to clasp his hand.

But there was one barrier, extremely serious. They all informed him that select though he was as sacred material, before
he decided he must have a mystic experience known as a Call. God himself must appear and call him to service, and conscious
though Elmer was now of his own powers and the excellence of the church, he saw no more of God about the place than in his
worst days of unregeneracy.

He asked the president and the dean if they had had a Call. Oh, yes, certainly; but they were vague about practical tips
as to how to invite a Call and recognize it when it came. He was reluctant to ask Eddie—Eddie would be only too profuse with
tips, and want to kneel down and pray with him, and generally be rather damp and excitable and messy.

The Call did not come, not for weeks, with Easter past and no decision as to what he was going to do next year.

Spring on the prairie, high spring. Lilacs masked the speckled brick and stucco of the college buildings, spiræa made a
flashing wall, and from the Kansas fields came soft airs and the whistle of meadow larks.

Students loafed at their windows, calling down to friends; they played catch on the campus; they went bareheaded and
wrote a great deal of poetry; and the Terwillinger baseball team defeated Fogelquist College.

Still Elmer did not receive his divine Call.

By day, playing catch, kicking up his heels, belaboring his acquaintances, singing “The happiest days that ever were, we
knew at old Terwillinger” on a fence fondly believed to resemble the Yale fence, or tramping by himself through the minute
forest of cottonwood and willow by Tunker Creek, he expanded with the expanding year and knew happiness.

The nights were unadulterated hell.

He felt guilty that he had no Call, and he went to the president about it in mid-May.

Dr. Quarles was thoughtful, and announced;

“Brother Elmer, the last thing I’d ever want to do, in fairness to the spirit of the ministry, would be to create an
illusion of a Call when there was none present. That would be like the pagan hallucinations worked on the poor suffering
followers of Roman Catholicism. Whatever else he may be, a Baptist preacher must be free from illusions; he must found his
work on good hard scientific FACTS—the proven facts of the Bible, and substitutionary atonement, which even pragmatically we
know to be true, because it works. No, no! But at the same time I feel sure the voice of God is calling you, if you can but
hear it, and I want to help you lift the veil of worldliness which still, no doubt, deafens your inner ear. Will you come to
my house tomorrow evening? We’ll take the matter to the Lord in prayer.”

It was all rather dreadful.

That kindly spring evening, with a breeze fresh in the branches of the sycamores, President Quarles had shut the windows
and drawn the blinds in his living-room, an apartment filled with crayon portraits of Baptist worthies, red-plush chairs,
and leaded-glass unit bookcases containing the lay writings of the more poetic clergy. The president had gathered as
assistants in prayer the more aged and fundamentalist ex-pastors on the faculty and the more milky and elocutionary of the
Y.M.C.A. leaders, headed by Eddie Fislinger.

When Elmer entered, they were on their knees, their arms on the seats of reversed chairs, their heads bowed, all praying
aloud and together. They looked up at him like old women surveying the bride. He wanted to bolt. Then the president nabbed
him, and had him down on his knees, suffering and embarrassed and wondering what the devil to pray about.

They took turns at telling God what he ought to do in the case of “our so ardently and earnestly seeking brother.”

“Now will you lift your voice in prayer, Brother Elmer? Just let yourself go. Remember we’re all with you, all loving and
helping you,” grated the president.

They crowded near him. The president put his stiff old arm about Elmer’s shoulder. It felt like a dry bone, and the
president smelled of kerosene. Eddie crowded up on the other side and nuzzled against him. The others crept in, patting him.
It was horribly hot in that room, and they were so close—he felt as if he were tied down in a hospital ward. He looked up
and saw the long shaven face, the thin tight lips, of a minister . . . whom he was now to emulate.

He prickled with horror, but he tried to pray. He wailed, “O blessed Lord, help me to—help me to—”

He had an enormous idea. He sprang up. He cried, “Say, I think the spirit is beginning to work and maybe if I just went
out and took a short walk and kinda prayed by myself, while you stayed here and prayed for me, it might help.”

“I don’t think that would be the way,” began the president, but the most aged faculty-member suggested, “Maybe it’s the
Lord’s guidance. We hadn’t ought to interfere with the Lord’s guidance, Brother Quarles.”

“That’s so, that’s so,” the president announced. “You have your walk, Brother Elmer, and pray hard, and we’ll stay here
and besiege the throne of grace for you.”

Elmer blundered out into the fresh clean air.

Whatever happened, he was never going back! How he hated their soft, crawly, wet hands!

He had notions of catching the last train to Cato and getting solacingly drunk. No. He’d lose his degree, just a month
off now, and be cramped later in appearing as a real, high-class, college-educated lawyer.

Lose it, then! Anything but go back to their crawling creepy hands, their aged breathing by his ear—

He’d get hold of somebody and say he felt sick and send him back to tell Prexy and sneak off to bed. Cinch! He just
wouldn’t get his Call, just pass it up, by Jiminy, and not have to go into the ministry.

But to lose the chance to stand before thousands and stir them by telling about divine love and the evening and morning
star—If he could just stand it till he got through theological seminary and was on the job—Then, if any Eddie Fislinger
tried to come into his study and breathe down his neck—throw him out, by golly!

He was conscious that he was leaning against a tree, tearing down twigs, and that facing him under a street-lamp was Jim
Lefferts.

“You look sick, Hell-cat,” said Jim.

Elmer strove for dignity, then broke, with a moaning, “Oh, I am! What did I ever get into this religious fix for?”

“What they doing to you? Never mind; don’t tell me. You need a drink.”

“By God, I do!”

“I’ve got a quart of first-rate corn whisky from a moonshiner I’ve dug up out here in the country, and my room’s right in
this block. Come along.”

Through his first drink, Elmer was quiet, bewildered, vaguely leaning on the Jim who would guide him away from this
horror.

But he was out of practice in drinking, and the whisky took hold with speed. By the middle of the second glass he was
boasting of his ecclesiastical eloquence, he was permitting Jim to know that never in Terwillinger College had there
appeared so promising an orator, that right now they were there praying for him, waiting for him, the president and the
whole outfit!

“But,” with a slight return of apology, “I suppose prob’ly you think maybe I hadn’t ought to go back to ’em.”

Jim was standing by the open window, saying slowly, “No. I think now—You’d better go back. I’ve got some peppermints.
They’ll fix your breath, more or less. Good-by, Hell-cat.”

He had won even over old Jim!

He was master of the world, and only a very little bit drunk.

He stepped out high and happy. Everything was extremely beautiful. How high the trees were! What a wonderful drugstore
window, with all those glossy new magazine covers! That distant piano—magic. What exquisite young women the co-eds! What
lovable and sturdy men the students! He was at peace with everything. What a really good fellow he was! He’d lost all his
meannesses. How kind he’d been to that poor lonely sinner, Jim Lefferts. Others might despair of Jim’s soul—he never
would.

Poor old Jim. His room had looked terrible—that narrow little room with a cot, all in disorder, a pair of shoes and a
corncob pipe lying on a pile of books. Poor Jim. He’d forgive him. Go around and clean up the room for him.

(Not that Elmer had ever cleaned up their former room.)

Gee, what a lovely spring night! How corking those old boys were, Prexy and everybody, to give up an evening and pray for
him!

Why was it he felt so fine? Of course! The Call had come! God had come to him, though just spiritually, not corporeally,
so far as he remembered. It had come! He could go ahead and rule the world!

He dashed into the president’s house; he shouted from the door, erect, while they knelt and looked up at him mousily,
“It’s come! I feel it in everything! God just opened my eyes and made me feel what a wonderful ole world it is, and it was
just like I could hear his voice saying, ‘Don’t you want to love everybody and help them to be happy? Do you want to just go
along being selfish, or have you got a longing to—to help everybody?’”

He stopped. They had listened silently, with interested grunts of “Amen, Brother.”

“Honest, it was awful’ impressive. Somehow, something has made me feel so much better than when I went away from here.
I’m sure it was a real Call. Don’t you think so, President?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it!” the president ejaculated, getting up hastily and rubbing his knees.

“I feel that all is right with our brother; that he has now, this sacred moment, heard the voice of God, and is entering
upon the highest calling in the sight of God,” the president observed to the dean. “Don’t you feel so?”

“God be praised,” said the dean, and looked at his watch.

On their way home, they two alone, the oldest faculty-member said to the dean, “Yes, it was a fine gratifying moment.
And—herumph!— slightly surprising. I’d hardly thought that young Gantry would go on being content with the mild blisses of
salvation. Herumph! Curious smell of peppermint he had about him.”

“I suppose he stopped at the drug-store during his walk and had a soft drink of some kind. Don’t know, Brother,” said the
dean, “that I approve of these soft drinks. Innocent in themselves, but they might lead to carelessness in beverages. A man
who drinks ginger ale—how are you going to impress on him the terrible danger of drinking ALE?”

“Yes, yes,” said the oldest faculty-member (he was sixty-eight, to the dean’s boyish sixty). “Say, Brother, how do you
feel about young Gantry? About his entering the ministry? I know you did well in the pulpit before you came here, as I more
or less did myself, but if you were a boy of twenty-one or —two, do you think you’d become a preacher now, way things
are?”

“Why, Brother!” grieved the dean. “Certainly I would! What a question! What would become of all our work at Terwillinger,
all our ideals in opposition to the heathenish large universities, if the ministry weren’t the highest ideal—”

“I know. I know. I just wonder sometimes—All the new vocations that are coming up. Medicine. Advertising. World just
going it! I tell you, Dean, in another forty years, by 1943, men will be up in the air in flying machines, going maybe a
hundred miles an hour!”

“My dear fellow, if the Lord had meant men to fly, he’d have given us wings.”

“But there are prophecies in the Book—”

“Those refer purely to spiritual and symbolic flying. No, no! Never does to oppose the clear purpose of the Bible, and I
could dig you out a hundred texts that show unquestionably that the Lord intends us to stay right here on earth till that
day when we shall be upraised in the body with him.”

“Herumph! Maybe. Well, here’s my corner. Good night, Brother.”

The dean came into his house. It was a small house.

“How’d it go?” asked his wife.

“Splendid. Young Gantry seemed to feel an unmistakable divine call. Something struck him that just uplifted him. He’s got
a lot of power. Only—”

The dean irritably sat down in a cane-seated rocker, jerked off his shoes, grunted, drew on his slippers.

“Only, hang it, I simply can’t get myself to like him! Emma, tell me: If I were his age now, do you think I’d go into the
ministry, as things are today?”

“Why, Henry! What in the world ever makes you say a thing like that? Of course you would! Why, if that weren’t the
case—What would our whole lives mean, all we’ve given up and everything?”

“Oh, I know. I just get to thinking. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve given up so much. Don’t hurt even a preacher to face
himself! After all, those two years when I was in the carpet business, before I went to the seminary, I didn’t do very well.
Maybe I wouldn’t have made any more than I do now. But if I could—Suppose I could’ve been a great chemist? Wouldn’t that
(mind you, I’m just speculating, as a student of psychology)—wouldn’t that conceivably be better than year after year of
students with the same confounded problems over and over again—and always so pleased and surprised and important about
them!—or year after year again of standing in the pulpit and knowing your congregation don’t remember what you’ve said seven
minutes after you’ve said it?”

“Why, Henry, I don’t know what’s gotten into you! I think you better do a little praying yourself instead of picking on
this poor young Gantry! Neither you nor I could ever have been happy except in a Baptist church or a real cover-to-cover
Baptist college.”

The dean’s wife finished darning the towels and went up to say good-night to her parents.

They had lived with her since her father’s retirement, at seventy-five, from his country pastorate. He had been a
missionary in Missouri before the Civil War.

Her lips had been moving, her eyebrows working, as she darned the towels; her eyebrows were still creased as she came
into their room and shrieked at her father’s deafness:

“Time to go to bed, Papa. And you, Mama.”

They were nodding on either side of a radiator unheated for months.

“All right, Emmy,” piped the ancient.

“Say Papa—Tell me: I’ve been thinking: If you were just a young man today, would you go into the ministry?”

“Course I would! What an idea! Most glorious vocation young man could have. Idea! G’night, Emmy!”

But as his ancient wife sighingly removed her corsets, she complained, “Don’t know as you would or not—if
I
was
married to you—which ain’t any too certain, a second time—and if I had anything to say about it.”

“Which IS certain! Don’t be foolish. Course I would.”

“I don’t know. Fifty years
I
had of it, and I never did get so I wa’n’t just mad clear through when the ladies
of the church came poking around, criticizing me for every little tidy I put on the chairs, and talking something terrible
if I had a bonnet or a shawl that was the least mite tasty. ‘‘Twa’n’t suitable for a minister’s wife.’ Drat ’em! And I
always did like a bonnet with some nice bright colors. Oh, I’ve done a right smart of thinking about it. You always were a
powerful preacher, but’s I’ve told you—”

“You have!”

“—I never could make out how, if when you were in the pulpit you really knew so much about all these high and mighty and
mysterious things, how it was when you got home you never knew enough, and you never could learn enough, to find the hammer
or make a nice piece of corn-bread or add up a column of figures twice alike or find Oberammergau on the map of
Austria!”

“Germany, woman! I’m sleepy!”

“And all these years of having to pretend to be so good when we were just common folks all the time! Ain’t you glad you
can just be simple folks now?”

“Maybe it is restful. But that’s not saying I wouldn’t do it over again.” The old man ruminated a long while. “I think I
would. Anyway, no use discouraging these young people from entering the ministry. Somebody got to preach the gospel truth,
ain’t they?”

“I suppose so. Oh, dear. Fifty years since I married a preacher! And if I could still only be sure about the virgin
birth! Now don’t you go explaining! Laws, the number of times you’ve explained! I know it’s true—it’s in the Bible. If I
could only BELIEVE it! But—

“I would of liked to had you try your hand at politics. If I could of been, just once, to a senator’s house, to a banquet
or something, just once, in a nice bright red dress with gold slippers, I’d of been willing to go back to alpaca and
scrubbing floors, and listening to you rehearsing your sermons, out in the stable, to that old mare we had for so many
years—oh, laws, how long is it she’s been dead now? Must be—yes, it’s twenty-seven years—

“Why is that it’s only in religion that the things you got to believe are agin all experience? Now drat it, don’t you go
and quote that ‘I believe because it IS impossible’ thing at me again! Believe because it’s impossible! Huh! Just like a
minister!

“Oh, dear, I hope I don’t live long enough to lose my faith. Seems like the older I get, the less I’m excited over all
these preachers that talk about hell only they never saw it.

“Twenty-seven years! And we had that old hoss so long before that. My how she could kick—Busted that buggy—”

They were both asleep.