Elmer Gantry (2 page)

Chief adornment of their room was the escritoire of the first Gritzmacher, which held their library. Elmer owned two
volumes of Conan Doyle, one of E. P. Roe, and a priceless copy of “Only a Boy.” Jim had invested in an encyclopedia which
explained any known subject in ten lines, in a “Pickwick Papers,” and from some unknown source he had obtained a complete
Swinburne, into which he was never known to have looked.

But his pride was in the possession of Ingersoll’s “Some Mistakes of Moses,” and Paine’s “The Age of Reason.” For Jim
Lefferts was the college freethinker, the only man in Terwillinger who doubted that Lot’s wife had been changed into salt
for once looking back at the town where, among the young married set, she had had so good a time; who doubted that
Methuselah lived to nine hundred and sixty-nine.

They whispered of Jim all through the pious dens of Terwillinger. Elmer himself was frightened, for after giving minutes
and minutes to theological profundities Elmer had concluded that “there must be something to all this religious guff if all
these wise old birds believe it, and some time a fellow had ought to settle down and cut out the hell-raising.” Probably Jim
would have been kicked out of college by the ministerial professors if he had not had so reverent a way of asking questions
when they wrestled with his infidelity that they let go of him in nervous confusion.

Even the President, the Rev. Dr. Willoughby Quarles, formerly pastor of the Rock of Ages Baptist Church of Moline, Ill.,
than whom no man had written more about the necessity of baptism by immersion, in fact in every way a thoroughly than-whom
figure—even when Dr. Quarles tackled Jim and demanded, “Are you getting the best out of our instruction, young man? Do you
believe with us not only in the plenary inspiration of the Bible but also in its verbal inspiration, and that it is the only
divine rule of faith and practise?” then Jim looked docile and said mildly:

“Oh, yes, Doctor. There’s just one or two little things that have been worrying me, Doctor. I’ve taken them to the Lord
in prayer, but he doesn’t seem to help me much. I’m sure you can. Now why did Joshua need to have the sun stand still? Of
course it happened—it SAYS so right in Scripture. But why did he need to, when the Lord always helped those Jews, anyway,
and when Joshua could knock down big walls just by having his people yell and blow trumpets? And if devils cause a lot of
the diseases, and they had to cast ’em out, why is it that good Baptist doctors today don’t go on diagnosing
devil-possession instead of T. B. and things like that? DO people have devils?”

“Young man, I will give you an infallible rule. Never question the ways of the Lord!”

“But why don’t the doctors talk about having devils now?”

“I have no time for vain arguments that lead nowhere! If you would think a little less of your wonderful powers of
reasoning, if you’d go humbly to God in prayer and give him a chance, you’d understand the true spiritual significances of
all these things.”

“But how about where Cain got his wife—”

Most respectfully Jim said it, but Dr. Quarles (he had a chin-whisker and a boiled shirt) turned from him and snapped, “I
have no further time to give you, young man! I’ve told you what to do. Good morning!”

That evening Mrs. Quarles breathed, “Oh, Willoughby, did you ‘tend to that awful senior—that Lefferts—that’s trying to
spread doubt? Did you fire him?”

“No,” blossomed President Quarles. “Certainly not. There was no need. I showed him how to look for spiritual guidance
and—Did that freshman come and mow the lawn? The idea of him wanting fifteen cents an hour!”

Jim was hair-hung and breeze-shaken over the abyss of hell, and apparently enjoying it very much indeed, while his
wickedness fascinated Elmer Gantry and terrified him.

That November day of 1902, November of their Senior year, was greasy of sky, and slush blotted the wooden sidewalks of
Gritzmacher Springs. There was nothing to do in town, and their room was dizzying with the stench of the stove, first
lighted now since spring.

Jim was studying German, tilted back in an elegant position of ease, with his legs cocked up on the desk tablet of the
escritoire. Elmer lay across the bed, ascertaining whether the blood would run to his head if he lowered it over the side.
It did, always.

“Oh, God, let’s get out and do something!” he groaned.

“Nothing to do, Useless,” said Jim.

“Let’s go over to Cato and see the girls and get drunk.”

As Kansas was dry, by state prohibition, the nearest haven was at Cato, Missouri, seventeen miles away.

Jim scratched his head with a corner of his book and approved:

“Well, that’s a worthy idea. Got any money?”

“On the twenty-eighth? Where the hell would I get any money before the first?”

“Hell-cat, you’ve got one of the deepest intellects I know. You’ll be a knock-out at the law. Aside from neither of us
having any money, and me with a Dutch quiz tomorrow, it’s a great project.”

“Oh, well—” sighed ponderous Elmer, feebly as a sick kitten, and lay revolving the tremendous inquiry.

It was Jim who saved them from the lard-like weariness into which they were slipping. He had gone back to his book, but
he placed it, precisely and evenly, on the desk, and rose.

“I would like to see Nellie,” he sighed. “Oh, man, I could give her a good time! Little Devil! Damn these co-eds here.
The few that’ll let you love ’em up, they hang around trying to catch you on the campus and make you propose to ’em.”

“Oh, gee! And I got to see Juanita,” groaned Elmer. “Hey, cut out talking about ’em will you! I’ve got a palpitating
heart right now, just thinking about Juanny!”

“Hell-cat! I’ve got it. Go and borrow ten off this new instructor in chemistry and physics. I’ve got a dollar sixty-four
left, and that’ll make it.”

“But I don’t know him.”

“Sure, you poor fish. That’s why I suggested him! Do the check-failed-to-come. I’ll get another hour of this Dutch while
you’re stealing the ten from him—”

“Now,” lugubriously, “you oughtn’t to talk like that!”

“If you’re as good a thief as I think you are, we’ll catch the five-sixteen to Cato.”

They were on the five-sixteen for Cato.

The train consisted of a day coach, a combined smoker and baggage car, and a rusty old engine and tender. The train
swayed so on the rough tracks as it bumped through the dropping light that Elmer and Jim were thrown against each other and
gripped the arm of their seat. The car staggered like a freighter in a gale. And tall raw farmers, perpetually shuffling
forward for a drink at the water-cooler, stumbled against them or seized Jim’s shoulder to steady themselves.

To every surface of the old smoking-car, to streaked windows and rusty ironwork and mud-smeared cocoanut matting, clung a
sickening bitterness of cheap tobacco fumes, and whenever they touched the red plush of the seat, dust whisked up and the
prints of their hands remained on the plush. The car was jammed. Passengers came to sit on the arm of their seat to shout at
friends across the aisle.

But Elmer and Jim were unconscious of filth and smell and crowding. They sat silent, nervously intent, panting a little,
their lips open, their eyes veiled, as they thought of Juanita and Nellie.

The two girls, Juanita Klauzel and Nellie Benton, were by no means professional daughters of joy. Juanita was cashier of
the Cato Lunch—Quick Eats; Nellie was assistant to a dressmaker. They were good girls but excitable, and they found a little
extra money useful for red slippers and nut-center chocolates.

“Juanita—what a lil darling—she understands a fellow’s troubles,” said Elmer, as they balanced down the slushy steps at
the grimy stone station of Cato.

When Elmer, as a Freshman just arrived from the pool-halls and frame high school of Paris, Kansas, had begun to learn the
decorum of amour, he had been a boisterous lout who looked shamefaced in the presence of gay ladies, who blundered against
tables, who shouted and desired to let the world know how valiantly vicious he was being. He was still rather noisy and
proud of wickedness when he was in a state of liquor, but in three and a quarter years of college he had learned how to
approach girls. He was confident, he was easy, he was almost quiet; he could look them in the eye with fondness and
amusement.

Juanita and Nellie lived with Nellie’s widow aunt—she was a moral lady, but she knew how to keep out of the way—in three
rooms over a corner grocery. They had just returned from work when Elmer and Jim stamped up the rickety outside wooden
steps. Juanita was lounging on a divan which even a noble Oriental red and yellow cover (displaying a bearded Wazir, three
dancing ladies in chiffon trousers, a narghile, and a mosque slightly larger than the narghile) could never cause to look
like anything except a disguised bed. She was curled up, pinching her ankle with one tired and nervous hand, and reading a
stimulating chapter of Laura Jean Libbey. Her shirt-waist was open at the throat, and down her slim stocking was a grievous
run. She was so unJuanita-like—an ash-blonde, pale and lovely, with an ill-restrained passion in her blue eyes.

Nellie, a buxom jolly child, dark as a Jewess, was wearing a frowsy dressing-gown. She was making coffee and narrating
her grievances against her employer, the pious dressmaker, while Juanita paid no attention whatever. The young men crept
into the room without knocking. “You devils—sneaking in like this, and us not dressed!” yelped Nellie.

Jim sidled up to her, dragged her plump hand away from the handle of the granite-ware coffee-pot, and giggled, “But
aren’t you glad to see us?”

“I don’t know whether I AM or not! Now you quit! You behave, will you?”

Rarely did Elmer seem more deft than Jim Lefferts. But now he was feeling his command over women—certain sorts of women.
Silent, yearning at Juanita, commanding her with hot eyes, he sank on the temporarily Oriental couch, touched her pale hand
with his broad finger-tips, and murmured, “Why you poor kid, you look so tired!”

“I am and—You hadn’t ought to come here this afternoon. Nell’s aunt threw a conniption fit the last time you were
here.”

“Hurray for aunty! But YOU’RE glad to see me?”

She would not answer.

“Aren’t you?”

Bold eyes on hers that turned uneasily away, looked back, and sought the safety of the blank wall.

“Aren’t you?”

She would not answer.

“Juanita! And I’ve longed for you something fierce, ever since I saw you!” His fingers touched her throat, but softly.
“Aren’t you a LITTLE glad?”

As she turned her head, for a second she looked at him with embarrassed confession. She sharply whispered, “No—don’t!” as
he caught her hand, but she moved nearer to him, leaned against his shoulder.

“You’re so big and strong,” she sighed.

“But, golly, you don’t know how I need you! The president, old Quarles—quarrels is right, by golly, ha, ha, ha!—‘member I
was telling you about him?—he’s laying for me because he thinks it was me and Jim that let the bats loose in chapel. And I
get so sick of that gosh-awful Weekly Bible Study—all about these holy old gazebos. And then I think about you, and gosh, if
you were just sitting on the other side of the stove from me in my room there, with your cute lil red slippers cocked up on
the nickel rail—gee, how happy I’d be! You don’t think I’m just a bonehead, do you?”

Jim and Nellie were at the stage now of nudging each other and bawling, “Hey, quit, will yuh!” as they stood over the
coffee.

“Say, you girls change your shirts and come on out and we’ll blow you to dinner, and maybe we’ll dance a little,”
proclaimed Jim.

“We can’t,” said Nellie. “Aunty’s sore as a pup because we was up late at a dance night before last. We got to stay home,
and you boys got to beat it before she comes in.”

“Aw, come ON!”

“No, we CAN’T!”

“Yuh, fat chance you girls staying home and knitting! You got some fellows coming in and you want to get rid of us,
that’s what’s the trouble.”

“It is not, Mr. James Lefferts, and it wouldn’t be any of your business if it was!”

While Jim and Nellie squabbled, Elmer slipped his hand about Juanita’s shoulder, slowly pressed her against him. He
believed with terrible conviction that she was beautiful, that she was glorious, that she was life. There was heaven in the
softness of her curving shoulder, and her pale flesh was living silk.

“Come on in the other room,” he pleaded.

“Oh—no—not now.”

He gripped her arm.

“Well—don’t come in for a minute,” she fluttered. Aloud, to the others, “I’m going to do my hair. Looks just
TER-ble!”

She slipped into the room beyond. A certain mature self-reliance dropped from Elmer’s face, and he was like a round-faced
big baby, somewhat frightened. With efforts to appear careless, he fumbled about the room and dusted a pink and gilt vase
with his large crumpled handkerchief. He was near the inner door.

He peeped at Jim and Nellie. They were holding hands, while the coffee-pot was cheerfully boiling over. Elmer’s heart
thumped. He slipped through the door and closed it, whimpering, as in terror:

“Oh—Juanita—”

They were gone, Elmer and Jim, before the return of Nellie’s aunt. As they were not entertaining the girls, they dined on
pork chops, coffee, and apple pie at the Maginnis Lunch.

It has already been narrated that afterward, in the Old Home Sample Room, Elmer became philosophical and misogynistic as
he reflected that Juanita was unworthy of his generous attention; it has been admitted that he became drunk and
pugnacious.

As he wavered through the sidewalk slush, on Jim’s arm, as his head cleared, his rage increased against the bully who was
about to be encouraged to insult his goo’ frien’ and roommate. His shoulders straightened, his fists clenched, and he began
to look for the scoundrel among the evening crowd of mechanics and coal-miners.

They came to the chief corner of the town. A little way down the street, beside the red brick wall of the Congress Hotel,
some one was talking from the elevation of a box, surrounded by a jeering gang.

“What they picking on that fella that’s talking for? They better let him alone!” rejoiced Elmer, throwing off Jim’s
restraining hand, dashing down the side street and into the crowd. He was in that most blissful condition to which a
powerful young man can attain—unrighteous violence in a righteous cause. He pushed through the audience, jabbed his elbow
into the belly of a small weak man, and guffawed at the cluck of distress. Then he came to a halt, unhappy and doubting.

The heckled speaker was his chief detestation, Eddie Fislinger, president of the Terwillinger College Y.M.C.A., that
rusty-haired gopher who had obscenely opposed his election as president.

With two other seniors who were also in training for the Baptist ministry, Eddie had come over to Cato to save a few
souls. At least, if they saved no souls (and they never had saved any, in seventeen street meetings) they would have handy
training for their future jobs.

Eddie was a rasping and insistent speaker who got results by hanging to a subject and worrying it, but he had no great
boldness, and now he was obviously afraid of his chief heckler, a large, blond, pompadoured young baker, who bulked in front
of Eddie’s rostrum and asked questions. While Elmer stood listening, the baker demanded:

“What makes you think you know all about religion?”

“I don’t pretend to know all about religion, my friend, but I do know what a powerful influence it is for clean and noble
living, and if you’ll only be fair now, my friend, and give me a chance to tell these other gentlemen what my experience of
answers to prayer has been—”

“Yuh, swell lot of experience you’ve had, by your looks!”

“See here, there are others who may want to hear—”

Though Elmer detested Eddie’s sappiness, though he might have liked to share drinks with the lively young baker-heckler,
there was no really good unctuous violence to be had except by turning champion of religion. The packed crowd excited him,
and the pressure of rough bodies, the smell of wet overcoats, the rumble of mob voices. It was like a football line-up.

“Here, you!” he roared at the baker. “Let the fellow speak! Give him a chance. Whyn’t you pick on somebody your own size,
you big stiff!”

At his elbow, Jim Lefferts begged, “Let’s get out of this, Hell-cat. Good Lord! You ain’t going to help a
gospel-peddler!”

Elmer pushed him away and thrust his chest out toward the baker, who was cackling, “Heh! I suppose you’re a Christer,
too!”

“I would be, if I was worthy!” Elmer fully believed it, for that delightful moment. “These boys are classmates of mine,
and they’re going to have a chance to speak!”

Eddie Fislinger bleated to his mates, “Oh, fellows, Elm Gantry! Saved!”

Even this alarming interpretation of his motives could not keep Elmer now from the holy zeal of fighting. He thrust aside
the one aged man who stood between him and the baker—bashing in the aged one’s derby and making him telescope like a
turtle’s neck—and stood with his fist working like a connecting-rod by his side.

“If you’re looking for trouble—” the baker suggested, clumsily wobbling his huge bleached fists.

“Not me,” observed Elmer and struck, once, very judiciously, just at the point of the jaw.

The baker shook like a skyscraper in an earthquake and caved to the earth.

One of the baker’s pals roared, “Come on, we’ll kill them guys and—”

Elmer caught him on the left ear. It was a very cold ear, and the pal staggered, extremely sick. Elmer looked pleased.
But he did not feel pleased. He was almost sober, and he realized that half a dozen rejoicing young workmen were about to
rush him. Though he had an excellent opinion of himself, he had seen too much football, as played by denominational colleges
with the Christian accompaniments of kneeing and gouging, to imagine that he could beat half a dozen workmen at once.

It is doubtful whether he would ever have been led to further association with the Lord and Eddie Fislinger had not
Providence intervened in its characteristically mysterious way. The foremost of the attackers was just reaching for Elmer
when the mob shouted, “Look out! The cops!”

The police force of Cato, all three of them, were wedging into the crowd. They were lanky, mustached men with cold
eyes.

“What’s all this row about?” demanded the chief.

He was looking at Elmer, who was three inches taller than any one else in the assembly.

“Some of these fellows tried to stop a peaceable religious assembly—why, they tried to rough-house the Reverend here—and
I was protecting him,” Elmer said.

“That’s right, Chief. Reg’lar outrage,” complained Jim.

“That’s true, Chief,” whistled Eddie Fislinger from his box.

“Well, you fellows cut it out now. What the hell! Ought to be ashamed yourselves, bullyragging a Reverend! Go ahead,
Reverend!”

The baker had come to, and had been lifted to his feet. His expression indicated that he had been wronged and that he
wanted to do something about it, if he could only find out what had happened. His eyes were wild, his hair was a muddy
chaos, and his flat floury cheek was cut. He was too dizzy to realize that the chief of police was before him, and his
fumbling mind stuck to the belief that he was destroying all religion.

“Yah, so you’re one of them wishy-washy preachers, too!” he screamed at Elmer—just as one of the lanky policemen reached
out an arm of incredible length and nipped him.

The attention of the crowd warmed Elmer, and he expanded in it, rubbed his mental hands in its blaze.

“Maybe I ain’t a preacher! Maybe I’m not even a good Christian!” he cried. “Maybe I’ve done a whole lot of things I
hadn’t ought to of done. But let me tell you, I respect religion—”

“Oh, amen, praise the Lord, brother,” from Eddie Fislinger.

“—and I don’t propose to let anybody interfere with it. What else have we got except religion to give us hope—”

“Praise the Lord, oh, bless his name!”

“—of EVER leading decent lives, tell me that, will you, just tell me that!”

Elmer was addressing the chief of police, who admitted:

“Yuh, I guess that’s right. Well now, we’ll let the meeting go on, and if any more of you fellows interrupt—” This
completed the chief’s present ideas on religion and mob-violence. He looked sternly at everybody within reach, and stalked
through the crowd, to return to the police station and resume his game of seven-up.

Eddie was soaring into enchanted eloquence:

“Oh, my brethren, now you see the power of the spirit of Christ to stir up all that is noblest and best in us! You have
heard the testimony of our brother here, Brother Gantry, to the one and only way to righteousness! When you get home I want
each and every one of you to dig out the Old Book and turn to the Song of Solomon, where it tells about the love of the
Savior for the Church—turn to the Song of Solomon, the fourth chapter and the tenth verse, where it says—where Christ is
talking about the church, and he says— Song of Solomon, the fourth chapter, and the tenth verse—‘How fair is thy love, my
sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine!’

“Oh, the unspeakable joy of finding the joys of salvation! You have heard our brother’s testimony. We know of him as a
man of power, as a brother to all them that are oppressed, and now that he has had his eyes opened and his ears unstopped,
and he sees the need of confession and of humble surrender before the throne—Oh, this is a historic moment in the life of
Hell-c—of Elmer Gantry! Oh, Brother, be not afraid! Come! Step up here beside me, and give testimony—”

“God! We better get outa here quick!” panted Jim.

“Gee, yes!” Elmer groaned and they edged back through the crowd, while Eddie Fislinger’s piping pursued them like icy and
penetrating rain:

“Don’t be afraid to acknowledge the leading of Jesus! Are you boys going to show yourselves too cowardly to risk the
sneers of the ungodly?”

They were safely out of the crowd, walking with severe countenances and great rapidity back to the Old Home Sample
Room.

“That was a dirty trick of Eddie’s!” said Jim. “God, it certainly was! Trying to convert me! Right before those muckers!
If I ever hear another yip out of Eddie, I’ll knock his block off! Nerve of him, trying to lead ME up to any mourners’
bench! Fat chance! I’ll fix him! Come on, show a little speed!” asserted the brother to all them that were oppressed.

By the time for their late evening train, the sound conversation of the bartender and the sound qualities of his Bourbon
had caused Elmer and Jim to forget Eddie Fislinger and the horrors of undressing religion in public. They were the more
shocked, then, swaying in their seat in the smoker, to see Eddie standing by them, Bible in hand, backed by his two beaming
partners in evangelism.

Eddie bared his teeth, smiled all over his watery eyes, and caroled:

“Oh, fellows, you don’t know how wonderful you were tonight! But, oh, boys, now you’ve taken the first step, why do you
put it off— why do you hesitate—why do you keep the Savior suffering as he waits for you, longs for you? He needs you boys,
with your splendid powers and intellects that we admire so—”

“This air,” observed Jim Lefferts, “is getting too thick for me. I seem to smell a peculiar and a fishlike smell.” He
slipped out of the seat and marched toward the forward car.

Elmer sought to follow him, but Eddie had flopped into Jim’s place and was blithely squeaking on, while the other two
hung over them with tender Y.M.C.A. smiles very discomforting to Elmer’s queasy stomach as the train bumped on.

For all his brave words, Elmer had none of Jim’s resolute contempt for the church. He was afraid of it. It connoted his
boyhood . . . His mother, drained by early widowhood and drudgery, finding her only emotion in hymns and the Bible, and
weeping when he failed to study his Sunday School lesson. The church, full thirty dizzy feet up to its curiously carven
rafters, and the preachers, so overwhelming in their wallowing voices, so terrifying in their pictures of little boys who
stole watermelons or indulged in biological experiments behind barns. The awe-oppressed moment of his second conversion, at
the age of eleven, when, weeping with embarrassment and the prospect of losing so much fun, surrounded by solemn and
whiskered adult faces, he had signed a pledge binding him to give up, forever, the joys of profanity, alcohol, cards,
dancing, and the theater.

These clouds hung behind and over him, for all his boldness.

Eddie Fislinger, the human being, he despised. He considered him a grasshopper, and with satisfaction considered stepping
on him. But Eddie Fislinger, the gospeler, fortified with just such a pebble-leather Bible (bookmarks of fringed silk and
celluloid smirking from the pages) as his Sunday School teachers had wielded when they assured him that God was always
creeping about to catch small boys in their secret thoughts—this armored Eddie was an official, and Elmer listened to him
uneasily, never quite certain that he might not yet find himself a dreadful person leading a pure a boresome life in a clean
frock coat.

“—and remember,” Eddie was wailing, “how terribly dangerous it is to put off the hour of salvation! ‘Watch therefore for
you know not what hour your Lord doth come,’ it says. Suppose this train were wrecked! Tonight!”

The train ungraciously took that second to lurch on a curve.

“You see? Where would you spend Eternity, Hell-cat? Do you think that any sportin’ round is fun enough to burn in hell
for?”

“Oh, cut it out. I know all that stuff. There’s a lot of arguments—You wait’ll I get Jim to tell you what Bob Ingersoll
said about hell!”

“Yes! Sure! And you remember that on his deathbed Ingersoll called his son to him and repented and begged his son to
hurry and be saved and burn all his wicked writings!”

“Well—Thunder—I don’t feel like talking religion tonight. Cut it out.”

But Eddie did feel like talking religion, very much so. He waved his Bible enthusiastically and found ever so many
uncomfortable texts. Elmer listened as little as possible but he was too feeble to make threats.

It was a golden relief when the train bumped to a stop at Gritzmacher Springs. The station was a greasy wooden box, the
platform was thick with slush, under the kerosene lights. But Jim was awaiting him, a refuge from confusing theological
questions, and with a furious “G’night!” to Eddie he staggered off.

“Why didn’t you make him shut his trap?” demanded Jim.

“I did! Whadja take a sneak for? I told him to shut up and he shut up and I snoozed all the way back and—Ow! My head!
Don’t walk so fast!”