I
THE relations of Brother Gantry and Brother Shallard were not ardent,
toward Christmastide, even in the intimacy of pumping a hand-car.
Frank complained while they were laboring along the track after church
at Schoenheim:
“Look here, Gantry, something’s got to be done. I’m not satisfied about
you and Lulu. I’ve caught you looking at each other. And I suspect
you’ve been talking to the dean about Dr. Zechlin. I’m afraid I’ve got
to go to the dean myself. You’re not fit to have a pastorate.”
Elmer stopped pumping, glared, rubbed his mittened hands on his thighs,
and spoke steadily:
“I’ve been waiting for this! I’m impulsive—sure; I make bad
mistakes—every red-blooded man does. But what about you? I don’t know
how far you’ve gone with your hellish doubts, but I’ve been listening to
the hedging way you answer questions in Sunday School, and I know you’re
beginning to wabble. Pretty soon you’ll be an out-and-out liberal. God!
Plotting to weaken the Christian religion, to steal away from weak
groping souls their only hope of salvation! The worst murderer that ever
lived isn’t a criminal like you!”
“That isn’t true! I’d die before I’d weaken the faith of any one who
needed it!”
“Then you simply haven’t got brains enough to see what you’re doing, and
there’s no place for you in any Christian pulpit! It’s me that ought to
go to Pop Trosper complaining! Just today, when that girl came to you
worrying about her pa’s giving up family prayers, you let on like it
didn’t matter much. You may have started that poor young lady on the
doubt-paved road that leads to everlasting Hell!”
And all the way to Mizpah Frank worried and explained.
And at Mizpah Elmer graciously permitted him to resign his place at
Schoenheim, and advised him to repent and seek the direction of the Holy
Spirit before he should ever attempt another pastorate.
Elmer sat in his room flaming with his evangelistic triumph. He was so
sincere about it that not for minutes did he reflect that Frank would no
longer be an obstacle to his relations with Lulu Bains.
II
A score of times before March, in her own house, in an abandoned log
barn, at the church, Elmer contrived to have meetings with Lulu. But he
wearied of her trusting babble. Even her admiration, since she always
gushed the same things in the same way, began to irritate him. Her
love-making was equally unimaginative. She always kissed and expected to
be kissed in the same way. Even before March he had had enough, but she
was so completely devoted to him that he wondered if he might not have
to give up the Schoenheim church to get rid of her.
He felt injured.
Nobody could ever say he was unkind to girls or despised ’em, the way
Jim Lefferts used to. He’d taught Lulu an awful lot; got her over her
hick ideas; showed her how a person could be religious and still have a
good time, if you just looked at it right and saw that while you ought
to teach the highest ideals, nobody could be expected to always and
exactly live up to ’em every day. Especially when you were young. And
hadn’t he given her a bracelet that cost five good bucks?
But she was such a darned fool. Never could understand that after a
certain point a man wanted to quit love-making and plan his next
Sunday’s sermon or bone up on his confounded Greek. Practically, he felt
resentfully, she’d deceived him. Here he’d thought that she was a nice,
safe, unemotional little thing, whom it might be pleasant to tease but
who’d let him alone when he had more serious matters to attend to, and
then she’d turned out passionate. She wanted to go on being kissed and
kissed and kissed when he was sick of it. Her lips were always creeping
around, touching his hand or his cheek when he wanted to talk.
She sent him whining little notes at Mizpah. Suppose somebody found one
of ’em! Golly! She wrote to him that she was just living till their next
meeting—trying to bother him and distract his attention when he had a
man’s work to do. She mooned up at him with her foolish soft mushy eyes
all through his sermons—absolutely spoiled his style. She was wearing
him out, and he’d have to get rid of her.
Hated to do it. Always _had_ been nice to girls—to everybody. But it
was for her sake just as much as his—
He’d have to be mean to her and make her sore.
III
They were alone in the Schoenheim church after morning meeting. She had
whispered to him at the door, “I’ve got something I have to tell you.”
He was frightened; he grumbled, “Well, we oughtn’t to be seen together
so much but—— lip back when the other folks are gone.”
He was sitting in the front pew in the deserted church, reading hymns
for want of better, when she crept behind him and kissed his ear. He
jumped.
“Good Lord, don’t go startling people like that!” he snarled. “Well,
what’s all this you have to tell me?”
She was faltering, near to tears. “I thought you’d like it! I just
wanted to creep close and say I loved you!”
“Well, good heavens, you needn’t of acted as though you were pregnant or
something!”
“Elmer!” Too hurt in her gay affection, too shocked in her rustic sense
of propriety, for resentment.
“Well, that’s just about how you acted! Making me wait here when I’ve
got to be back in town—important meeting—and me having to pump that
hand-car all alone! I do wish you wouldn’t act like a ten-year-old kid
_all_ the time!”
“Elmer!”
“Oh, Elmer, Elmer, Elmer! That’s all very well. I like to play around
and be foolish jus’ well’s anybody, but all this—all this—— All the
_time_!”
She fled round to the front of the pew and knelt by him, her childish
hand on his knee, prattling in an imitation of baby-talk which
infuriated him:
“Oh, issums such cwoss old bear! Issums bad old bear! So cwoss with
Lulukins!”
“Lulukins! Great John God!”
“Why, Elmer Gantry!” It was the Sunday School teacher who was shocked
now. She sat up on her knees.
“Lulukins! Of all the damned fool baby-talk I ever heard that takes the
cake! That’s got ’em all beat! For God’s sake try to talk like a human
being! And don’t go squatting there. Suppose somebody came in. Are you
deliberately going to work to ruin me? . . . _Lulukins!_”
She stood up, fists tight. “What have I done? I didn’t mean to hurt you!
Oh, I didn’t, dearest! Please forgive me! I just came in to s’prise
you!”
“Huh! You _s’prised_ me all right!”
“Dear! Please! I’m so sorry. Why, you called me Lulukins yourself!”
“I never did!”
She was silent.
“Besides, if I did, I was kidding.”
Patiently, trying to puzzle it out, she sat beside him and pleaded, “I
don’t know what I’ve done. I just don’t know. Won’t you please—oh,
_please_ explain, and give me a chance to make up for it!”
“Oh, hell!” He sprang up, hat in hand, groping for his overcoat. “If you
can’t understand, I can’t waste my time explaining!” And was gone,
relieved but not altogether proud.
But by Tuesday he admired himself for his resolution.
Tuesday evening came her apology; not a very good note, blurry, doubtful
of spelling, and, as she had no notion what she was apologizing about,
not very lucid.
He did not answer it.
During his sermon the next Sunday she looked up at him waiting to smile,
but he took care not to catch her eye.
While he was voluminously explaining the crime of Nadab and Abihu in
putting strange fire in their censers, he was thinking with
self-admiration, “Poor little thing. I’m sorry for her. I really am.”
He saw that she was loitering at the door, behind her parents, after the
service, but he left half his congregation unhandshaken and unshriven,
muttered to Deacon Bains, “Sorry gotta hurry ’way,” and fled toward the
railroad tracks.
“If you’re going to act this way and deliberately _persecute_ me,” he
raged, “I’ll just have to have a good talk with you, my fine young
lady!”
He waited, this new Tuesday, for another note of apology. There was
none, but on Thursday, when he was most innocently having a vanilla
milk-shake at Bombery’s Drug Store, near the seminary, when he felt ever
so good and benign and manly, with his Missions theme all finished and
two fine five-cent cigars in his pocket, he saw her standing outside
peering in at him.
He was alarmed. She looked not quite sane.
“Suppose she’s told her father!” he groaned.
He hated her.
He swaggered out gallantly, and he did most magniloquently the proper
delight at encountering her here in town.
“Well, well, well, Lulu, this _is_ a pleasant surprise! And where’s
Papa?”
“He and Ma are up in the doctor’s office—about Ma’s earache. I said I’d
meet them at the Boston Bazaar. Elmer!” Her voice was like stretched
quivering wire. “I’ve _got_ to talk to you! You’ve got to—— Walk down
the street with me.”
He saw that she had tried to rouge her cheeks. It was not customary in
rural Midwest in 1906. She had done it badly.
The spring was early. These first days of March were soft with buds, and
Elmer sighed that if she weren’t such a tyrannical nagger, he might have
felt romantic about her as they walked toward the court-house lawn and
the statue of General Sherman.
He had expanded her education in boldness as well as vocabulary; and
with only a little hesitation, a little of peering up at him, a little
of trying to hook her fingers over his arm till he shook it free, she
blurted:
“We’ve got to do something. Because I think I’m going to have a baby.”
“Oh, good God Almighty! Hell!” said the Reverend Elmer Gantry. “And I
suppose you’ve gone squealing to your old man and the old woman!”
“No, I haven’t.” She was quiet, and dignified—dignified as a bedraggled
gray kitten could be.
“Well, that’s good, anyway. Well, I suppose I’ll have to do something
about it. Damn!”
He thought rapidly. From the ladies of joy whom he knew in the city of
Monarch he could obtain information—— But—
“You look here now!” he snarled. “It isn’t possible!” He faced her, on
the brick walk through the court-house lawn, under the cast-iron wings
of the rusty Justice. “What are you trying to pull? God knows I most
certainly intend to stand by you in every way. But I don’t intend to be
bamboozled, not by anybody! What makes you think you’re pregnant?”
“Please, dear! Don’t use that word!”
“Huh! Say, that’s pretty good, that is! Come across now. What makes you
think so?”
She could not look at him; she looked only at the ground; and his
virtuous indignation swooped down on her as she stammered her reasons.
Now no one had taught Lulu Bains much physiology; and it was evident
that she was making up what she considered sound symptoms. She could
only mumble again and again, while tears mucked her clumsy rouge, while
her bent fingers trembled at her chin, “Oh, it’s—— I feel so bad—oh,
please, dear, don’t make me go on explaining.”
He had enough of it. He gripped her shoulder, not tenderly.
“Lulu, you’re lying! You have a dirty, lying, deceitful heart! I
wondered what it was about you that bothered me and kept me from
marrying you. Now I know! Thank God I’ve found out in time! You’re
lying!”
“Oh, dear, I’m not. Oh, please!”
“Look here. I’m going to take you to a doctor’s. Right now. We’ll get
the truth.”
“Oh, no, no, no! Please, no! I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Oh, please!”
“Uh-huh! And that’s all you’ve got to say for yourself! Come here! Look
up at me!”
They must have hurt, his meaty fingers digging into her shoulder, but
then, he felt righteous, he felt like the Old Testament prophets whom
his sect admired. And he had found something about which he really could
quarrel with her.
She did not look at him, for all his pinching. She merely wept,
hopelessly.
“Then you were lying?”
“Oh, I was! Oh, dearest, how can you hurt me like you do?” He released
his grip, and looked polite. “Oh, I don’t mean hurting my shoulder. That
doesn’t matter. I mean hurting _me_! So cold to me! And I thought maybe
if we were married—— I’d do everything to make you happy. I’d go
wherever you did. I wouldn’t mind if we had the tiniest little small
house—”
“And you—_you_—expect a minister of the gospel to share _any_ house
with a liar! Oh, you viper that—— Oh, hell, I won’t talk like a
preacher. I don’t suppose I have done altogether right, maybe. Though I
noticed you were glad enough to sneak out and meet me places! But when a
woman, a Christian, deliberately lies and tries to deceive a man in his
deepest feelings—— That’s too much, no matter what I did! Don’t you
ever dare to speak to me again! And if you tell your father about this,
and force me into marriage, I’ll—I’ll—— I’ll kill myself!”
“Oh, I won’t! Honest, I won’t!”
“I’ll repent my own fault in bitter tears and as for you, young
woman—— Go and sin no more!”
He swung round, walked away from her, deaf to her whimperings. She
desperately trotted after his giant strides for a while, then leaned
against the trunk of a sycamore, while a passing grocery clerk
snickered.
She did not appear at church the next Sunday. Elmer was so pleased that
he thought of having another rendezvous with her.
IV
Deacon Bains and his good wife had noticed how pale and absent-minded
was their normally bouncing daughter.
“Guess she’s in love with that new preacher. Well, let’s keep our hands
off. Be a nice match for her. Never knew a young preacher that was so
filled with the power. Talks like a house afire, by golly,” said the
deacon, as they yawned and stretched in the vast billowy old bed.
Then Floyd Naylor came fretting to the deacon.
Floyd was a kinsman of the family; a gangling man of twenty-five,
immensely strong, rather stupid, a poor farmer, very loyal. For years he
had buzzed about Lulu. It would be over-romantic to say that he had
eaten his faithful heart out in lone reverence. But he had always
considered Lulu the most beautiful, sparkling, and profound girl in the
universe. Lulu considered him a stick, and Deacon Bains held in aversion
his opinions on alfalfa. He was a familiar of the household; rather like
a neighbor’s dog.
Floyd found Deacon Bains in the barnyard mending a whiffletree, and
grunted, “Say, Cousin Barney, I’m kind of worried about Lulu.”
“Oh, guess she’s in love with this new preacher. Can’t tell; they might
get hitched.”
“Yeh, but is Brother Gantry in love with her? Somehow I don’t like that
fella.”
“Rats, you don’t appreciate preachers. You never was in a real state of
grace. Never did get reborn of the spirit proper.”
“Like hell I didn’t! Got just as reborn as you did! Preachers are all
right, most of ’em. But this fella Gantry— Say, here ’long about two
months ago I seen him and Lulu walking down the brick schoolhouse road,
and they was hugging and kissing like all get-out, and he was calling
her Sweetheart.”
“Heh? Sure it was them?”
“Dead certain. I was, uh—— Well, fact is, another fella and me—”
“Who was she?”
“Now that don’t make no difference. Anyway, we was sitting right under
the big maple this side of the schoolhouse, in the shade, but it was
bright moonlight and Lulu and this preacher come by, near’s I am to you,
prett’ near. Well, thinks I, guess they’re going to get engaged. Then I
hung around the church, once-twice after meeting, and one time I kinda
peeked in the window and I seen ’em right there in the front pew,
hugging like they sure ought to get married whether or no. I didn’t say
anything—wanted to wait and see if he’d marry her. Now it ain’t any of
my business, Barney, but you know I always liked Lulu, and strikes me we
ought to know if this Bible-walloper is going to play straight with
her.”
“Guess maybe that’s right. I’ll have a talk with her.”
Bains had never been very observant of his daughter, but Floyd Naylor
was not a liar, and it was with sharpened eyes that the deacon stumped
into the house and found her standing by the churn, her arms hanging
limp.
“Say, uh, say, uh, Lu, how’s things going with you and Brother Gantry?”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“You two engaged? Going to be engaged? He going to marry you?”
“Of course not.”
“Been making love to you, ain’t he?”
“Oh, never!”
“Never hugged you or kissed you?”
“Never!”
“How far’d he go?”
“Oh, he didn’t!”
“Why you been looking so kind of peeked lately?”
“Oh, I just don’t feel very well. Oh, I feel fine. It’s just the spring
coming on, I guess—” She dropped to the floor and, with her head
against the churn, her thin fingers beating an hysterical tattoo on the
floor, she choked with weeping.
“There, there, Lu! Your dad’ll do something about it.”
Floyd was waiting in the farmyard.
There were, in those parts and those days, not infrequent ceremonies
known as “shotgun weddings.”
V
The Reverend Elmer Gantry was reading an illustrated pink periodical
devoted to prize fighters and chorus girls in his room at Elizabeth J.
Schmutz Hall late of an afternoon when two large men walked in without
knocking.
“Why, good evening, Brother Bains—Brother Naylor! This is a pleasant
surprise. I was, uh—— Did you ever see this horrible rag? About
actoresses. An invention of the devil himself. I was thinking of
denouncing it next Sunday. I hope you never read it—won’t you sit down,
gentlemen?—take this chair—— I hope you never read it, Brother
Floyd, because the footsteps of—”
“Gantry,” exploded Deacon Bains, “I want you to take your footsteps
right now and turn ’em toward my house! You’ve been fooling with my
daughter, and either you’re going to marry her, or Floyd and me are
going to take it out of your hide, and way I feel just now, don’t much
care which it is.”
“You mean to say that Lulu has been pretending—”
“Naw, Lulu ain’t said nothing. God, I wonder if I ought to _let_ the
girl marry a fellow like you? But I got to protect her good name, and
guess Floyd and me can see to it you give her a square deal after the
marriage. Now I’ve sent out word to invite all the neighbors to the
house tonight for a little sociable to tell ’em Lulu and you are
engaged, and you’re going to put on your Sunday-go-to-meeting suit and
come with us, right now.”
“You can’t bully me into anything—”
“Take that side of him, Floyd, but I get the first lick. You get what’s
left.”
They ranged up beside him. They were shorter, less broad, but their
faces were like tanned hard leather, their eyes were hard—
“You’re a big cuss, Brother Gantry, but guess you don’t get enough
exercise no more. Pretty soft,” considered Deacon Bains.
His fist was dropping down, down to his knee; his shoulder sloped down;
his fist was coming up—and Floyd had suddenly pinioned Elmer’s arms.
“I’ll do it! All right! All right!” Elmer shrieked.
He’d find a way to break the engagement. Already he was recovering his
poise.
“Now you fellows listen to me! I’m in love with Lulu, and I intended to
ask her the moment I finish here—less than three months now—and get my
first church. And then you two butt in and try to spoil this romance!”
“Hum, yes, I guess so,” Bains droned, inexpressible contempt in his
dragging voice. “You save all them pretty words for Lulu. You’re going
to be married the middle of May—that’ll give time enough after the
engagement so’s the neighbors won’t think there’s anything wrong. Now
into them clothes. Buggy waiting outside. We’ll treat you right. If you
use Lulu like you ought to, and honey her up and make her feel happy
again, maybe Floyd and me won’t kill you the night of your wedding.
We’ll see. And we’ll always treat you fine in public—won’t even laugh
when we hear you preaching. Now git, hear me?”
While he dressed, Elmer was able to keep his face turned from them, able
to compose himself, so that he could suddenly whirl on them with his
handsomest, his most manly and winning smile.
“Brother Bains, I want to thank Cousin Floyd and you. You’re dead wrong
about thinking I wouldn’t have done right by Lulu. But I rejoice, sir,
_rejoice_, that she is blessed by having such loyal relatives!” That
puzzled rather than captured them, but he fetched them complete with a
jovial, “And such husky ones! I’m pretty strong myself—keep up my
exercise lot more’n you think—but I guess I wouldn’t be one-two-three
with you folks! Good thing for ole Elmer you never let loose that darn’
mule-kick of yours, Brother Bains! And you’re right. No sense putting
off the wedding. May fifteenth will be fine. Now I want to ask one
thing: Let me have ten minutes alone with Lu before you make the
announcement. I want to console her—make her happy. Oh, you can tell if
I keep faith—the eagle eye of a father will know.”
“Well, my father’s eagle eye ain’t been working none too good lately,
but I guess it’ll be all right for you to see her.”
“Now, will you shake hands? Please!”
He was so big, so radiant, so confident. They looked sheepish, grinned
like farmers flattered by a politician, and shook hands.
There was a multitude at the Bainses’, also fried chicken and watermelon
pickles.
The deacon brought Lulu to Elmer in the spare room and left her.
Elmer was at ease on the sofa; she stood before him, trembling,
red-eyed.
“Come, you poor child,” he condescended.
She approached, sobbing, “Honestly, dear, I didn’t tell Pa anything—I
didn’t ask him to do it—oh, I don’t want to if you don’t.”
“There, there, child. It’s all right. I’m sure you’ll make a fine wife.
Sit down.” And he permitted her to kiss his hand, so that she became
very happy and wept tremendously, and went out to her father rejoicing.
He considered, meanwhile, “That ought to hold you, damn you! Now I’ll
figure out some way of getting out of this mess.”
At the announcement of Lulu’s engagement to a Man of God, the crowd gave
hoarse and holy cheers.
Elmer made quite a long speech into which he brought all that Holy Writ
had to say about the relations of the sexes—that is, all that he
remembered and that could be quoted in mixed company.
“Go on, Brother! Kiss her!” they clamored.
He did, heartily; so heartily that he felt curious stirrings.
He spent the night there, and was so full of holy affection that when
the family was asleep, he crept into Lulu’s bedroom. She stirred on the
pillow and whispered, “Oh, my darling! And you forgave me! Oh, I do love
you so!” as he kissed her fragrant hair.
VI
It was usual for the students of Mizpah to let Dean Trosper know if they
should become engaged. The dean recommended them for ministerial
appointments, and the status of marriage made a difference. Bachelors
were more likely to become assistants in large city churches; married
men, particularly those whose wives had lively piety and a knowledge of
cooking, were usually sent to small churches of their own.
The dean summoned Elmer to his gloomy house on the edge of the
campus—it was a house which smelled of cabbage and wet ashes—and
demanded:
“Gantry, just what is this business about you and some girl at
Schoenheim?”
“Why, Dean,” in hurt rectitude, “I’m engaged to a fine young lady
there—daughter of one of my deacons.”
“Well, that’s good. It’s better to marry than to burn—or at least so it
is stated in the Scriptures. Now I don’t want any monkey-business about
this. A preacher must walk circumspectly. You must shun the very
appearance of evil. I hope you’ll love and cherish her, and seems to me
it would be well not only to be engaged to her but even to marry her.
Thaddeldo.”
“Now what the devil did he mean by that?” protested Parsifal as he went
home.
VII
He had to work quickly. He had less than two months before the
threatened marriage.
If he could entangle Lulu with some one? What about Floyd Naylor? The
fool loved her.
He spent as much time in Schoenheim as possible, not only with Lulu but
with Floyd. He played all his warm incandescence on Floyd, and turned
that trusting drudge from enemy into admiring friend. One day when Floyd
and he were walking together to the hand-car Elmer purred:
“Say, Floydy, some ways it’s kind of a shame Lu’s going to marry me and
not you. You’re so steady and hard-working and patient. I fly off the
handle too easy.”
“Oh, gosh, no, I ain’t smart enough for her, Elmer. She ought to marry a
fella with a lot of book-learning like you, and that dresses swell, so
she can be in society and everything.”
“But I guess you liked her pretty well yourself, eh? You ought to!
Sweetest girl in the whole world. You kind of liked her?”
“Yuh, I guess I did. I—— Oh, well, rats, I ain’t good enough for her,
God bless her!”
Elmer spoke of Floyd as a future cousin and professed his fondness for
him, his admiration of the young man’s qualities and remarkable singing.
(Floyd Naylor sang about as Floyd Naylor would have sung.) Elmer spoke
of him as a future cousin, and wanted to see a deal of him.
He praised Lulu and Floyd to each other, and left them together as often
as he could contrive, slipping back to watch them through the window.
But to his indignation they merely sat and talked.
Then he had a week in Schoenheim, the whole week before Easter. The
Baptists of Schoenheim, with their abhorrence of popery, did not make
much of Easter as Easter; they called it “The Festival of Christ’s
Resurrection,” but they did like daily meetings during what the
heretical world knew as Holy Week. Elmer stayed with the Bainses and
labored mightily both against sin and against getting married. Indeed he
was so stirred and so eloquent that he led two sixteen-year-old girls
out of their sins, and converted the neighborhood object-lesson, a
patriarch who drank hard cider and had not been converted for two years.
Elmer knew by now that though Floyd Naylor was not exactly a virgin, his
achievements and his resolution were considerably less than his desires,
and he set to work to improve that resolution. He took Floyd off to the
pasture and, after benignly admitting that perhaps a preacher oughtn’t
to talk of such things, he narrated his amorous conquests till Floyd’s
eyes were hungrily bulging. Then, with giggling apologies, Elmer showed
his collection of what he called Art Photographs.
Floyd almost ate them. Elmer lent them to him. That was on a Thursday.
At the same time Elmer deprived Lulu all week of the caresses which she
craved, till she was desperate.
On Friday Elmer held morning meeting instead of evening meeting, and
arranged that Lulu and Floyd and he should have picnic supper in the
sycamore grove near the Bains house. He suggested it in a jocund idyllic
way, and Lulu brightened. On their way to the grove with their baskets
she sighed to him, as they walked behind Floyd, “Oh, why have you been
so cold to me? Have I offended you again, dear?”
He let her have it, brutally: “Oh, don’t be such a damned whiner! Can’t
you act as if you had _some_ brains, just for once?”
When they spread the picnic supper, she was barely keeping hold of her
sobs.
They finished supper in the dusk. They sat quietly, Floyd looking at
her, wondering at her distress, peeping nervously at her pretty ankles.
“Say, I’ve got to go in and make some notes for my sermon tomorrow. No,
you two wait for me here. Nicer out in the fresh air. Be back in about
half an hour,” said Elmer.
He made much of noisily swaggering away through the brush; he crept back
softly, stood behind a sycamore near them. He was proud of himself. It
was working. Already Lulu was sobbing openly, while Floyd comforted her
with “What is it, pretty? What is it, dear? Tell me.”
Floyd had moved nearer to her (Elmer could just see them) and she rested
her head on his cousinly shoulder.
Presently Floyd was kissing her tears away, and she seemed to be
snuggling close to him. Elmer heard her muffled, “Oh, you oughtn’t to
kiss me!”
“Elmer said I should think of you as a sister, and I could kiss
you—— Oh, my God, Lulu, I do love you so terrible!”
“Oh, we oughtn’t—” Then silence.
Elmer fled into the barnyard, found Deacon Bains, and demanded harshly,
“Come here! I want you to see what Floyd and Lulu are doing! Put that
lantern down. I’ve got one of these electric dinguses here.”
He had. He had bought it for this purpose. He also had a revolver in his
pocket.
When Elmer and the bewildered Mr. Bains burst upon them, saw them in the
circle from the electric flashlight, Lulu and Floyd were deep in a
devastating kiss.
“There!” bellowed the outraged Elmer. “Now you see why I hesitated to be
engaged to that woman! I’ve suspected it all along! Oh,
abomination—abomination, and she that committeth it shall be cut off!”
Floyd sprang up, a fighting hound. Elmer could doubtless have handled
him, but it was Deacon Bains who with one maniac blow knocked Floyd
down. The deacon turned to Elmer then, with the first tears he had known
since boyhood: “Forgive me and mine, Brother! We have sinned against
you. This woman shall suffer for it, always. She’ll never enter my house
again. She’ll by God marry Floyd. And he’s the shiftlessest damn’ fool
farmer in ten counties!”
“I’m going. I can’t stand this. I’ll send you another preacher. I’ll
never see any of you again!” said Elmer.
“I don’t blame you. Try to forgive us, Brother.” The deacon was sobbing
now, dusty painful sobbing, bewildered sobs of anger.
The last thing Elmer saw in the light of his electric torch was Lulu
huddled, with shrunk shoulders, her face insane with fear.