Elmer Gantry (30 page)

Ishuah Rogers was dead, and they were holding his funeral at the Methodist Church. As farmer, as store-keeper, as
post-master, he had lived all his seventy-nine years in Banjo Crossing.

Old J. F. Whittlesey was shaken by Ishuah’s death. They had been boys together, young men together, neighbors on the
farm, and in his last years, when Ishuah was nearly blind and living with his daughter Jenny, J. F. Whittlesey had come into
town every day to spend hours sitting with him on the porch, wrangling over Blaine and Grover Cleveland. Whittlesey hadn’t
another friend left alive. To drive past Jenny’s now and not see old Ishuah made the world empty.

He was in the front row at the church; he could see his friend’s face in the open coffin. All of Ishuah’s meanness and
fussiness and care was wiped out; there was only the dumb nobility with which he had faced blizzard and August heat, labor
and sorrow; only the heroic thing Whittlesey had loved in him.

And he would not see Ishuah again, ever.

He listened to Elmer, who, his eyes almost filled at the drama of the church full of people mourning their old friend,
lulled them with Revelation’s triumphant song:

These are they that come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God; and they serve him day and night in his temple; and he that sitteth
on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the
sun strike upon them, nor any heat; for the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide
them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.

They sang, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” and Elmer led the singing, while old Whittlesey tried to pipe up with
them.

They filed past the coffin. When Whittlesey had this last moment’s glimpse of Ishuah’s sunken face, his dry eyes were
blind, and he staggered.

Elmer caught him with his great arms, and whispered, “He has gone to his glory, to his great reward! Don’t let’s sorrow
for him!”

In Elmer’s confident strength old Whittlesey found reassurance. He clung to him, muttering, “God bless you, Brother,”
before he hobbled out.

“You were wonderful at the funeral today! I’ve never seen you so sure of immortality,” worshiped Cleo, as they walked
home.

“Yuh, but they don’t appreciate it—not even when I said about how this old fellow was a sure-enough hero. We got to get
on to some burg where I’ll have a chance.”

“Don’t you think God’s in Banjo Crossing as much as in a city?”

“Oh, now, Cleo, don’t go and get religious on me! You simply can’t understand how it takes it out of a fellow to do a
funeral right and send ’em all home solaced. You may find God here, but you don’t find the salaries!”

He was not angry with Cleo now, nor bullying. In these two months he had become indifferent to her; indifferent enough to
stop hating her and to admire her conduct of the Sunday School, her tactful handling of the good sisters of the church when
they came snooping to the parsonage.

“I think I’ll take a little walk,” he muttered when they reached home.

He came to the Widow Clark’s house, where he had lived as bachelor.

Jane was out in the yard, the March breeze molding her skirt about her; rosy face darker and eyes more soft as she saw
the pastor hailing her, magnificently raising his hat.

She fluttered toward him.

“You folks ever miss me? Guess you’re glad to get rid of the poor old preacher that was always cluttering up the
house!”

“We miss you awfully!”

He felt his whole body yearning toward her. Hurriedly he left her and wished he hadn’t left her, and hastened to get
himself far from the danger to his respectability. He hated Cleo again now, in an injured, puzzled way.

“I think I’ll sneak up to Sparta this week,” he fumed, then: “No! Conference coming in ten days; can’t take any chances
till after that.”

The Annual Conference, held in Sparta, late in March. The high time of the year, when the Methodist preachers of half a
dozen districts met together for prayer and rejoicing, to hear of the progress of the Kingdom and incidentally to learn
whether they were to have better jobs this coming year.

The bishop presiding—Wesley R. Toomis, himself—with his district superintendents, grave and bustling.

The preachers, trying to look as though prospective higher salaries were unworthy their attention.

Between meetings they milled about in the large auditorium of the Preston Memorial Methodist Church: visiting laymen and
nearly three hundred ministers.

Veteran country parsons, whiskered and spectacled, rusty-coated and stooped, still serving two country churches, or three
or four; driving their fifty miles a week; content for reading with the Scriptures and the weekly Advocate.

New-fledged country preachers, their large hands still calloused from plow-handle and reins, content for learning with
two years of high school, content with the Old Testament for history and geology.

The preachers of the larger towns; most of them hard to recognize as clerics, in their neat business suits and modest
four-inhands; frightfully cordial one to another; perhaps a quarter of them known as modernists and given to reading popular
manuals of biology and psychology; the other three-quarters still devoted to banging the pulpit apropos of Genesis.

But moving through these masses, easily noticeable, the inevitable successes: the district superintendents, the pastors
of large city congregations, the conceivable candidates for college presidencies, mission-boards, boards of publication,
bishoprics.

They were not all of them leonine and actor-like, these staff officers. No few were gaunt, or small, wiry, spectacled,
and earnest; but they were all admirable politicians, long in memory of names, quick to find flattering answers. They
believed that the Lord rules everything, but that it was only friendly to help him out; and that the enrollment of political
allies helped almost as much as prayer in becoming known as suitable material for lucrative pastorates.

Among these leaders were the Savonarolas, gloomy fellows, viewing the progress of machine civilization with biliousness;
capable of drawing thousands of auditors by their spicy but chaste denunciations of burglary, dancing, and show-windows
filled with lingerie.

Then the renowned liberals, preachers who filled city tabernacles or churches in university towns by showing that
skipping whatever seemed unreasonable in the Bible did not interfere with considering it all divinely inspired, and that
there are large moral lessons in the paintings of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur.

Most notable among the aristocrats were a certain number of large, suave, deep-voiced, inescapably cordial clerical
gentlemen who would have looked well in Shakespearean productions or as floor-walkers. And with them was presently to be
found the Reverend Elmer Gantry.

He was a new-comer, he was merely hoping to have the Conference recognize his credentials and accept him as a member, and
he had only a tiny church, yet from somewhere crept the rumor that he was a man to be watched, to be enrolled in one’s own
political machine; and he was called “Brother” by a pastor whose sacred rating was said to be not less than ten thousand a
year. They observed him; they conversed with him not only on the sacraments but on automobiles and the use of pledge
envelopes; and as they felt the warmth of his handshake, as they heard the amiable bim-bom of his voice, saw his manly eyes,
untroubled by doubts or scruples, and noted that he wore his morning clothes as well as any spiritual magnate among them,
they greeted him and sought him out and recognized him as a future captain of the hosts of the Almighty.

Cleo’s graciousness added to his prestige.

For three whole days before bringing her up to the Conference, Elmer had gone out of his way to soothe her, flatter her,
assure her that whatever misunderstandings they might have had, all was now a warm snugness of domestic bliss, so that she
was eager, gently deferential to the wives of older pastors as she met them at receptions at hotels.

Her obvious admiration of Elmer convinced the better clerical politicians of his domestic safeness.

And they knew that he had been sent for by the bishop—oh, they knew it! Nothing that the bishop did in these critical
days was not known. There were many among the middle-aged ministers who had become worried over prolonged stays in small
towns, and who wanted to whisper to the bishop how well they would suit larger opportunities. (The list of appointments had
already been made out by the bishop and his council, yet surely it could be changed a little—just the least bit.) But they
could not get near him. Most of the time the bishop was kept hidden from them at the house of the president of Winnemac
Wesleyan University.

But he sent for Elmer, and even called him by his first name.

“You see, Brother Elmer, I was right! The Methodist Church just suits you,” said the bishop, his eyes bright under his
formidable brows. “I am able to give you a larger church already. It wouldn’t be cricket, as the English say—ah, England!
how you will enjoy going there some time; you will find such a fruitful source of the broader type of sermons in travel; I
know that you and your lovely bride—I’ve had the pleasure of having her pointed out to me—you will both know the joy and
romance of travel one of these days. But as I was saying: I can give you a rather larger town this time, though it wouldn’t
be proper to tell you which one till I read the list of appointments to the Conference. And in the near future, if you
continue as you have in your studies and attention to the needs of our flock and in your excellence of daily living, which
the district superintendent has noted, why, you’ll be due for a MUCH larger field of service. God bless you!”

Elmer was examined by the Conference and readily admitted to membership.

Among the questions, from the Discipline, which he was able to answer with a hearty “yes” were these:

Are you going on to perfection?

Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?

Are you earnestly striving after it?

Are you resolved to devote yourself wholly to God and his work?

Have you considered the Rules for a Preacher, especially those relating to Diligence, to Punctuality, and to Doing the
Work to which you are assigned?

Will you recommend fasting or diligence, both by precept and example?

It was, the Conference members said, one to another, a pleasure to examine a candidate who could answer the questions
with such ringing certainty.

Celebrating his renunciation of all fleshy devices and pleasures by wolfing a steak, fried onions, fried potatoes, corn,
three cups of coffee, and two slices of apple pie with ice cream, Elmer condescended to Cleo, “I went through a-whooping!
Liked to of seen any of those poor boobs I was with in the seminary answer up like I did!”

They listened to reports on collections for missions, on the creation of new schools and churches; they heard ever so
many prayers; they were polite during what were known as “inspirational addresses” by the bishop and the Rev. Dr. S. Palmer
Shootz. But they were waiting for the moment when the bishop should read the list of appointments.

They looked as blank as they could, but their nails creased their palms as the bishop rose. They tried to be loyal to
their army, but this lean parson thought of the boy who was going to college, this worried-faced youngster thought of the
operation for his wife, this aged campaigner whose voice had been failing wondered whether he would be kept on in his
well-padded church.

The bishop’s snappy voice popped:

And Elmer listened with them, suddenly terrified.

What did the bishop mean by a “rather larger town”? Some horrible hole with twelve hundred people?

Then he startled and glowed, and his fellow priests nodded to him in congratulation, as the bishop read out “Rudd Center,
Elmer Gantry.”

For there were forty-one hundred people in Rudd Center; it was noted for good works and a large pop factory; and he was
on his way to greatness, to inspiring the world and becoming a bishop.

A year he spent in Rudd Center, three years in Vulcan, and two years in Sparta. As there were 4,100 people in Rudd
Center, 47,000 in Vulcan, and 129,000 in Sparta, it may be seen that the Reverend Elmer Gantry was climbing swiftly in
Christian influence and character.

In Rudd Center he passed his Mizpah final examinations and received his Bachelor of Divinity degree from the seminary; in
Rudd Center he discovered the art of joining, which was later to enable him to meet the more enterprising and solid men of
affairs—oculists and editors and manufacturers of bathtubs—and enlist their practical genius in his crusades for
spirituality.

He joined the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Maccabees. He made the Memorial Day address to the G. A. R., and he made
the speech welcoming the local representative home from Congress after having won the poker championship of the Houses.

Vulcan was marked, aside from his labors for perfection, by the birth of his two children—Nat, in 1916, and Bernice, whom
they called Bunny, in 1917—and by his ceasing to educate his wife in his ideals of amour.

It all blew up a month after the birth of Bunny.

Elmer had, that evening, been addressing the Rod and Gun Club dinner. He had pointed out that our Lord must have been in
favor of Rods and Guns for, he said, “I want you boys to notice that the Master, when he picked out his first disciples,
didn’t select a couple of stoop-shouldered, pigeon-toed mollycoddles but a pair of first-class fishermen!”

He was excited to intoxication by their laughter.

Since Bunny’s birth he had been sleeping in the guest-room, but now, walking airily, he tiptoed into Cleo’s room at
eleven, with that look of self-conscious innocence which passionless wives instantly catch and dread.

“Well, you sweet thing, it sure went off great! They all liked my spiel. Why, you poor lonely girl, shame you have to
sleep all alone here, poor baby!” he said, stroking her shoulder as she sat propped against the pillows. “Guess I’ll have to
come sleep here tonight.”

She breathed hard, tried to look resolute. “Please! Not yet!”

“What do you MEAN?”

“Please! I’m tired tonight. Just kiss me good night, and let me pop off to sleep.”

“Meaning my attentions aren’t welcome to Your Majesty!” He paced the floor. “Young woman, it’s about time for a showdown!
I’ve hinted at this before, but I’ve been as charitable and long-suffering as I could, but by God, you’ve gotten away with
too much, and then you try to pretend—‘Just kiss me good night!’ Sure! I’m to be a monk! I’m to be one of these
milk-and-water husbands that’s perfectly content to hang around the house and not give one little yip if his wife don’t care
for his method of hugging! Well, believe me, young woman, you got another guess coming, and if you think that just because
I’m a preacher I’m a Willie-boy—You don’t even make the slightest smallest effort to learn some passion, but just act like
you had hard work putting up with me! Believe me, there’s other women a lot better and prettier—yes, and more
religious!—that haven’t thought I was such a damn’ pest to have around! I’m not going to stand—Never even making the
slightest effort—”

“Oh, Elmer, I have! Honestly I have! If you’d only been more tender and patient with me at the very first, I might have
learned—”

“Rats! All damned nonsense! Trouble with you is, you always were afraid to face hard facts! Well, I’m sick of it, young
woman. You can go to the devil! This is the last time, believe me!”

He banged the door; he had satisfaction in hearing her sob that night; and he kept his vow about staying away from her,
for almost a month. Presently he was keeping it altogether; it was a settled thing that they had separate bedrooms.

And all the while he was almost as confused, as wistful, as she was; and whenever he found a woman parishioner who was
willing to comfort him, or whenever he was called on important but never explained affairs to Sparta, he had no bold swagger
of satisfaction, but a guilt, an uneasiness of sin, which displayed itself in increasingly furious condemnation of the same
sin from his pulpit.

“O God, if I could only have gone on with Sharon, I might have been a decent fellow,” he mourned, in his sorrow
sympathetic with all the world. But the day after, in the sanctuary, he would be salving that sorrow by raging, “And these
dance-hall proprietors, these tempters of lovely innocent girls, whose doors open to the pit of death and horror, they shall
have reward—they shall burn in uttermost hell—burn literally—BURN!—and for their suffering we shall have but joy that the
Lord’s justice has been resolutely done!”

Something like statewide fame began to cling about the Reverend Elmer Gantry during his two years in Sparta—1918 to 1920.
In the spring of ‘18 he was one of the most courageous defenders of the Midwest against the imminent invasion of the
Germans. He was a Four–Minute Man. He said violent things about atrocities, and sold Liberty Bonds hugely. He threatened to
leave Sparta to its wickedness while he went out to “take care of our poor boys” as a chaplain, and he might have done so
had the war lasted another year.

In Sparta, too, he crept from timidly sensational church advertisements to such blasts as must have shaken the Devil
himself. Anyway, they brought six hundred delighted sinners to church every Sunday evening, and after one sermon on the
horrors of booze, a saloon-keeper, slightly intoxicated, remarked “Whoop!” and put a fifty-dollar bill in the plate.

Not to this day, with all the advance in intellectual advertising, has there been seen a more arousing effort to sell
salvation than Elmer’s prose poem in the Sparta World–Chronicle on a Saturday in December, 1919:

Do you believe in old-fashioned womanhood, that can love and laugh and still be the symbols of God’s own righteousness,
bringing a tear to the eye as one remembers their brooding tenderness? Would you like to see your own dear mammy indulging
in mixed bathing or dancing that Hell’s own fool monkeyshine, the one-step?

will answer these questions and others next Sunday morning. Gantry shoots straight from the shoulder.

While he was in Sparta, national prohibition arrived, with its high-colored opportunities for pulpit-orators, and in
Sparta he was inspired to his greatest political campaign.

The obviously respectable candidate for mayor of Sparta was a Christian Business Man, a Presbyterian who was a
manufacturer of rubber overshoes. It is true that he was accused of owning the buildings in which were several of the worst
brothels and blind tigers in the city, but it had amply been explained that the unfortunate gentleman had not been able to
kick out his tenants, and that he gave practically all his receipts from the property to missionary work in China.

His opponent was a man in every way objectionable to Elmer’s principles: a Jew, a radical who criticized the churches for
not paying taxes, a sensational and publicity-seeking lawyer who took the cases of labor unions and negroes without fee.
When he consulted them, Elmer’s Official Board agreed that the Presbyterian was the only man to support. They pointed out
that the trouble with the radical Jew was that he was not only a radical but a Jew.

Yet Elmer was not satisfied. He had, possibly, less objection to houses of ill fame than one would have judged from his
pulpit utterances, and he certainly approved the Presbyterian’s position that “we must not try dangerous experiments in
government but adhere courageously to the proven merits and economies of the present administration.” But talking with
members of his congregation, Elmer found that the Plain People—and the plain, the very plain, people did make up such a
large percentage of his flock—hated the Presbyterian and had a surprised admiration for the Jew.

“He’s awful’ kind to poor folks,” said they.

Elmer had what he called a “hunch.”

“All the swells are going to support this guy McGarry, but darned if I don’t think the Yid’ll win, and anybody that roots
for him’ll stand ace-high after the election,” he reasoned.

He came out boisterously for the Jew. The newspapers squealed and the Presbyterians bellowed and the rabbis softly
chuckled.

Not only from his pulpit but in scattered halls Elmer campaigned and thundered. He was smeared once with rotten eggs in a
hall near the red-light district, and once an illicit booze-dealer tried to punch his nose, and that was a very happy time
for Elmer.

The booze-dealer, a bulbous angry man, climbed up on the stage of the hall and swayed toward Elmer, weaving with his
fists, rumbling, “You damn’ lying gospel-shark, I’ll show you—”

The forgotten star of the Terwillinger team leaped into life. He was calm as in a scrimmage. He strode over,
calculatingly regarded the point of the bootlegger’s jaw, and caught him on it, exact. He saw the man slumping down, but he
did not stand looking; he swung back to the reading-stand and went on speaking. The whole audience rose, clamorous with
applause, and Elmer Gantry had for a second become the most famous man in town.

The newspapers admitted that he was affecting the campaign, and one of them swung to his support. He was so strong on
virtue and the purity of womanhood and the evils of liquor that to oppose him was to admit one’s self a debauchee.

At the business meeting of his church there was a stirring squabble over his activities. When the leading trustee, a
friend of the Presbyterian candidate, declared that he was going to resign unless Elmer stopped, an aged janitor shrieked,
“And all the rest of us will resign unless the Reverend keeps it up!” There was gleeful and unseemly applause, and Elmer
beamed.

The campaign grew so bellicose that reporters came up from the Zenith newspapers; one of them the renowned Bill Kingdom
of the Zenith Advocate–Times. Elmer loved reporters. They quoted him on everything from the Bible in the schools to the
Armenian mandate. He was careful not to call them “boys” but “gentlemen,” not to slap them too often on the back; he kept
excellent cigars for them; and he always said, “I’m afraid I can’t talk to you as a preacher. I get too much of that on
Sunday. I’m just speaking as an ordinary citizen who longs to have a clean city in which to bring up his kiddies.”

Bill Kingdom almost liked him, and the story about “the crusading parson” which he sent up to the Zenith
Advocate–Times—the Thunderer of the whole state of Winnemac—was run on the third page, with a photograph of Elmer thrusting
out his fist as if to crush all the sensualists and malefactors in the world.

Sparta papers reprinted the story and spoke of it with reverence.

The Jew won the campaign.

And immediately after this—six months before the Annual Conference of 1920—Bishop Toomis sent for Elmer.

“At first I was afraid,” said the bishop, “you were making a great mistake in soiling yourself in this Sparta campaign.
After all, it’s our mission to preach the pure gospel and the saving blood of Jesus, and not to monkey with politics. But
you’ve been so successful that I can forgive you, and the time has come—At the next Conference I shall be able to offer you
at last a church here in Zenith, and a very large one, but with problems that call for heroic energy. It’s the old
Wellspring Church, down here on Stanley Avenue, corner of Dodsworth, in what we call ‘Old Town.’ It used to be the most
fashionable and useful Methodist church in town, but the section has run down, and the membership has declined from
something like fourteen hundred to about eight hundred, and under the present pastor—you know him—old Seriere, fine noble
Christian gentleman, great soul, but a pretty rotten speaker—I don’t guess they have more than a hundred or so at morning
service. Shame, Elmer, wicked shame to see this great institution, meant for the quickening of such vast multitudes of
souls, declining and, by thunder, not hardly giving a cent for missions! I wonder if you could revive it? Go look it over,
and the neighborhood, and let me know what you think. Or whether you’d rather stay on in Sparta. You’ll get less salary at
Wellspring than you’re getting in Sparta— four thousand, isn’t it?—but if you build up the church, guess the Official Board
will properly remunerate your labors.”

A church in Zenith! Elmer would—almost—have taken it with no salary whatever. He could see his Doctor of Divinity degree
at hand, his bishopric or college presidency or fabulous pulpit in New York.

He found the Wellspring M. E. Church a hideous graystone hulk with gravy-colored windows, and a tall spire ornamented
with tin gargoyles and alternate layers of tiles in distressing red and green. The neighborhood had been smart, but the
brick mansions, once leisurely among lawns and gardens, were scabrous and slovenly, turned into boarding-houses with
delicatessen shops in the basements.

“Gosh, this section never will come back. Too many of the doggone hoi polloi. Bunch of Wops. Nobody for ten blocks that
would put more’n ten cents in the collection. Nothing doing! I’m not going to run a soup-kitchen and tell a bunch of dirty
bums to come to Jesus. Not on your life!”

But he saw, a block from the church, a new apartment-house, and near it an excavation.

“Hm. Might come back, in apartments, at that. Mustn’t jump too quick. Besides, these folks need the gospel just as much
as the swell-headed plutes out on Royal Ridge,” reflected the Reverend Mr. Gantry.

Through his old acquaintance, Gil O’Hearn of the O’Hearn House, Elmer met a responsible contractor and inquired into the
fruitfulness of the Wellspring vineyard.

“Yes, they’re dead certain to build a bunch of apartment-houses, and pretty good ones, in that neighborhood these next
few years. Be a big residential boom in Old Town. It’s near enough in to be handy to the business section, and far enough
from the Union Station so’s they haven’t got any warehouses or wholesalers. Good buy, Reverend.”

“Oh, I’m not buying—I’m just selling—selling the gospel!” said the Reverend, and he went to inform Bishop Toomis that
after prayer and meditation he had been led to accept the pastorate of the Wellspring Church.

So, at thirty-nine, Cæsar came to Rome, and Rome heard about it immediately.