I
SEDATE as a long married couple, intimate and secure, were Elmer and
Sharon on most days, and always he was devoted. It was Sharon who was
incalculable. Sometimes she was a priestess and a looming disaster,
sometimes she was intimidating in grasping passion, sometimes she was
thin and writhing and anguished with chagrined doubt of herself,
sometimes she was pale and nun-like and still, sometimes she was a
chilly business woman, and sometimes she was a little girl. In the last,
quite authentic rôle, Elmer loved her fondly—except when she assumed it
just as she was due to go out and hypnotize three thousand people.
He would beg her, “Oh, come on now, Shara, please be good! Please stop
pouting, and go out and lambaste ’em.”
She would stamp her foot, while her face changed to a round
childishness. “No! Don’t want to evangel. Want to be bad. Bad! Want to
throw things. Want to go out and spank a bald man on the head. Tired of
souls. Want to tell ’em all to go to hell!”
“Oh, gee, please, Shara! Gosh all fishhooks! They’re waiting for you!
Adelbert has sung that verse twice now.”
“I don’t care! Sing it again! Sing songs, losh songs! Going to be bad!
Going out and drop mice down Adelbert’s fat neck—fat neck—fat
hooooooly neck!”
But suddenly: “I wish I could. I wish they’d let me be bad. Oh, I get so
tired—all of them reaching for me, sucking my blood, wanting me to give
them the courage they’re too flabby to get for themselves!”
And a minute later she was standing before the audience, rejoicing, “Oh,
my beloved, the dear Lord has a message for you tonight!”
And in two hours, as they rode in a taxi to the hotel, she was sobbing
on his breast: “Hold me close! I’m so lonely and afraid and cold.”
II
Among his various relations to her, Elmer was Sharon’s employee. And he
resented the fact that she was making five times more than he of that
money for which he had a reverent admiration.
When they had first made plans, she had suggested:
“Dear, if it all works out properly, in three or four years I want you
to share the offerings with me. But first I must save a lot. I’ve got
some vague plans to build a big center for our work, maybe with a
magazine and a training-school for evangelists. When that’s paid for,
you and I can make an agreement. But just now—— How much have you
been making as a traveling man?”
“Oh, about three hundred a month—about thirty-five hundred a year.” He
was really fond of her; he was lying to the extent of only five hundred.
“Then I’ll start you in at thirty-eight hundred, and in four or five
years I hope it’ll be ten thousand, and maybe twice as much.”
And she never, month after month, discussed salary again. It irritated
him. He knew that she was making more than twenty thousand a year, and
that before long she would probably make fifty thousand. But he loved
her so completely that he scarce thought of it oftener than three or
four times a month.
III
Sharon continued to house her troupe in hotels, for independence. But an
unfortunate misunderstanding came up. Elmer had stayed late in her room,
engaged in a business conference, so late that he accidentally fell
asleep across the foot of her bed. So tired were they both that neither
of them awoke till nine in the morning, when they were aroused by
Adelbert Shoop knocking and innocently skipping in.
Sharon raised her head, to see Adelbert giggling.
“How _dare_ you come into my room without knocking, you sausage!” she
raged. “Have you no sense of modesty or decency? Beat it! Potato!”
When Adelbert had gone simpering out, cheeping, “_Honest_, I won’t say
_anything_,” then Elmer fretted, “Golly, do you think he’ll blackmail
us?”
“Oh, no, Adelbert adores me. Us girls must stick together. But it does
bother me. Suppose it’d been some other guest of the hotel! People
misunderstand and criticize so. Tell you what let’s do. Hereafter, in
each town, let’s hire a big house, furnished, for the whole crew. Still
be independent, but nobody around to talk about us. And prob’ly we can
get a dandy house quite cheap from some church-member. That would be
lovely! When we get sick of working so hard all the time, we could have
a party just for ourselves, and have a dance. I love to dance. Oh, of
course I roast dancing in my sermons, but I mean—when it’s with people
like us, that understand, it’s not like with worldly people, where it
would lead to evil. A party! Though Art Nichols _would_ get drunk. Oh,
let him! He works so hard. Now you skip. Wait! Aren’t you going to kiss
me good morning?”
They made sure of Adelbert’s loyalty by flattering him, and the
press-agent had orders to find a spacious furnished house in the city to
which they were going next.
IV
The renting of furnished houses for the Falconer Evangelistic Party was
a ripe cause for new quarrels with local committees, particularly after
the party had left town.
There were protests by the infuriated owners that the sacred workers
must have been, as one deacon-undertaker put it, “simply raising the
very devil.” He asserted that the furniture had been burned with
cigarette stubs, that whisky had been spilled on rugs, that chairs had
been broken. He claimed damages from the local committee; the local
committee sent the claims on to Sharon; there was a deal of fervent
correspondence; and the claims were never paid.
Though usually it did not come out till the series of meetings was
finished, so that there was no interference with saving the world, these
arguments about the private affairs of the evangelistic crew started
most regrettable rumors. The ungodly emitted loud scoffings. Sweet
repressed old maids wondered and wondered what might really have
happened, and speculated together in delightful horror as to
whether—uh—there could have been anything—uh—worse than drinking
going on.
But always a majority of the faithful argued logically that Sister
Falconer and Brother Gantry were righteous, therefore they could not do
anything unrighteous, therefore the rumors were inspired by the devil
and spread by saloon-keepers and infidels, and in face of this
persecution of the godly, the adherents were the more lyric in support
of the Falconer Party.
Elmer learned from the discussions of damages a pleasant way of reducing
expenses. At the end of their stay, they simply did not pay the rent for
their house. They informed the local committee, after they had gone,
that the committee had promised to provide living quarters, and that was
all there was to it. . . . There was a lot of correspondence.
V
One of Sharon’s chief troubles was getting her crew to bed. Like most
actors, they were high-strung after the show. Some of them were too
nervous to sleep till they had read the _Saturday Evening Post_; others
never could eat till after the meetings, and till one o’clock they fried
eggs and scrambled eggs and burnt toast and quarreled over the
dish-washing. Despite their enlightened public stand against the Demon
Rum, some of the performers had to brace up their nerves with an
occasional quart of whisky, and there was dancing and assorted glee.
Though sometimes she exploded all over them, usually Sharon was amiably
blind, and she had too many conferences with Elmer to give much heed to
the parties.
Lily Anderson, the pale pianist, protested. They ought all, she said, to
go to bed early so they could be up early. They ought, she said, to go
oftener to the cottage prayer meetings. The others insisted that this
was too much to expect of people exhausted by their daily three hours of
work, but she reminded them that they were doing the work of the Lord,
and they ought to be willing to wear themselves out in such service.
They were, said they; but not tonight.
After days when Art Nichols, the cornetist, and Adolph Klebs, the
violinist, had such heads at ten in the morning that they had to take
pick-me-ups, would come days when all of them, even Art and Adolph, were
hysterically religious; when quite privately they prayed and repented
and raised their voices in ululating quavers of divine rapture, till
Sharon said furiously that she didn’t know whether she preferred to be
waked up by hell-raising or hallelujahs. Yet once she bought a traveling
phonograph for them, and many records, half hectic dances and half
hymns.
VI
Though her presence nearly took away his need of other stimulants, of
tobacco and alcohol and most of his cursing, it was a year before Elmer
was altogether secure from the thought of them. But gradually he saw
himself certain of future power and applause as a clergyman. His
ambition became more important than the titillation of alcohol, and he
felt very virtuous and pleased.
Those were big days, rejoicing days, sunny days. He had everything: his
girl, his work, his fame, his power over people. When they held meetings
in Topeka, his mother came from Paris to hear them, and as she watched
her son addressing two thousand people, all the heavy graveyard doubts
which had rotted her after his exit from Mizpah Seminary vanished.
He felt now that he belonged. The gospel crew had accepted him as their
assistant foreman, as bolder and stronger and trickier than any save
Sharon, and they followed him like family dogs. He imagined a day when
he would marry Sharon, supersede her as leader—letting her preach now
and then as a feature—and become one of the great evangelists of the
land. He belonged. When he encountered fellow evangelists, no matter how
celebrated, he was pleased but not awed.
Didn’t Sharon and he meet no less an evangelist than Dr. Howard Bancock
Binch, the great Baptist defender of the literal interpretation of the
Bible, president of the True Gospel Training School for Religious
Workers, editor of _The Keeper of the Vineyard_, and author of “Fool
Errors of So-Called Science”? Didn’t Dr. Binch treat Elmer like a son?
Dr. Binch happened to be in Joliet, on his way to receive his sixth D.
D. degree (from Abner College) during Sharon’s meetings there. He
lunched with Sharon and Elmer.
“Which hymns do you find the most effective when you make your appeal
for converts, Dr. Binch?” asked Elmer.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Brother Gantry,” said the authority. “I think
‘Just as I Am’ and ‘Jesus, I Am Coming Home’ hit real folksy hearts like
nothing else.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t agree with you,” protested Sharon. “It seems to
me—of course you have far more experience and talent than I, Dr.
Binch—”
“Not at all, my dear sister,” said Dr. Binch, with a leer which sickened
Elmer with jealousy. “You are young, but all of us recognize your
genius.”
“Thank you very much. But I mean: They’re not lively enough. I feel we
ought to use hymns with a swing to ’em, hymns that make you dance right
up to the mourners’ bench.”
Dr. Binch stopped gulping his fried pork chops and held up a flabby,
white, holy hand. “Oh, Sister Falconer, I hate to have you use the word
‘dance’ regarding an evangelistic meeting! What is the dance? It is the
gateway to hell! How many innocent girls have found in the dance-hall
the allurement which leads to every nameless vice!”
Two minutes of information about dancing—given in the same words that
Sharon herself often used—and Dr. Binch wound up with a hearty: “So I
beg of you not to speak of ‘dancing to the mourners’ bench!’”
“I know, Dr. Binch, I know, but I mean in its sacred sense, as of David
dancing before the Lord.”
“But I feel there was a different meaning to that. If you only knew the
original Hebrew—the word should not be translated ‘danced’ but ‘was
moved by the spirit.’”
“Really? I didn’t know that. I’ll use that.”
They all looked learned.
“What methods, Dr. Binch,” asked Elmer, “do you find the most successful
in forcing people to come to the altar when they resist the Holy Ghost?”
“I always begin by asking those interested in being prayed for to hold
up their hands.”
“Oh, I believe in having them stand up if they want prayer. Once you get
a fellow to his feet, it’s so much easier to coax him out into the aisle
and down to the front. If he just holds up his hand, he may pull it down
before you can spot him. We’ve trained our ushers to jump right in the
minute anybody gets up, and say ‘Now, Brother, won’t you come down front
and shake hands with Sister Falconer and make your stand for Jesus?’”
“No,” said Dr. Binch, “my experience is that there are many timid people
who have to be led gradually. To ask them to stand up is too big a step.
But actually, we’re probably both right. My motto as a soul-saver, if I
may venture to apply such a lofty title to myself, is that one should
use every method that, in the vernacular, will sell the goods.”
“I guess that’s right,” said Elmer. “Say, tell me, Dr. Binch, what do
you do with converts after they come to the altar?”
“I always try to have a separate room for ’em. That gives you a real
chance to deepen and richen their new experience. They can’t escape, if
you close the door. And there’s no crowd to stare and embarrass them.”
“I can’t see that,” said Sharon. “I believe that if the people who come
forward are making a stand for Christ, they ought to be willing to face
the crowd. And it makes such an impression on the whole bunch of the
unsaved to see a lot of seekers at the mourners’ bench. You must admit,
Brother Binch—Dr. Binch, I should say—that lots of people who just
come to a revival for a good time are moved to conviction epidemically,
by seeing others shaken.”
“No, I can’t agree that that’s so important as making a deeper
impression on each convert, so that each goes out as an agent for you,
as it were. But every one to his own methods. I mean so long as the Lord
is with us and behind us.”
“Say, Dr. Binch,” said Elmer, “how do you count your converts? Some of
the preachers in this last town accused us of lying about the number. On
what basis do you count them?”
“Why, I count every one (and we use a recording machine) that comes down
to the front and shakes hands with me. What if some of them _are_ merely
old church-members warmed over? Isn’t it worth just as much to give new
spiritual life to those who’ve had it and lost it?”
“Of course it is. That’s what we think. And then we got criticized there
in that fool town! We tried—that is, Sister Falconer here tried—a
stunt that was new for us. We opened up on some of the worst dives and
blind tigers by name. We even gave street numbers. The attack created a
howling sensation; people just jammed in, hoping we’d attack other
places. I believe that’s a good policy. We’re going to try it here next
week. It puts the fear of God into the wicked, and slams over the
revival.”
“There’s danger in that sort of thing, though,” said Dr. Binch. “I don’t
advise it. Trouble is, in such an attack you’re liable to offend some of
the leading church-members—the very folks that contribute the most cash
to a revival. They’re often the owners of buildings that get used by
unscrupulous persons for immoral purposes, and while they of course
regret such unfortunate use of their property, if you attack such places
by name, you’re likely to lose their support. Why, you might lose
thousands of dollars! It seems to me wiser and more Christian to just
attack vice in general.”
“How much orchestra do you use, Dr. Binch?” asked Sharon.
“All I can get hold of. I’m carrying a pianist, a violinist, a drummer,
and a cornetist, besides my soloist.”
“But don’t you find some people objecting to fiddling?”
“Oh, yes, but I jolly ’em out of it by saying I don’t believe in letting
the devil monopolize all these art things,” said Dr. Binch. “Besides, I
find that a good tune, sort of a nice, artistic, slow, sad one, puts
folks into a mood where they’ll come across both with their hearts and
their contributions. By the way, speaking of that, what luck have you
folks had recently in raising money? And what method do you use?”
“It’s been pretty good with us—and I need a lot, because I’m supporting
an orphanage,” said Sharon. “We’re sticking to the idea of the free-will
offering the last day. We can get more money than any town would be
willing to guarantee beforehand. If the appeal for the free-will
offering is made strong enough, we usually have pretty fair results.”
“Yes, I use the same method. But I don’t like the term ‘free-will
offering,’ or ‘thank offering.’ It’s been used so much by merely
second-rate evangelists, who, and I grieve to say there are such people,
put their own gain before the service of the Kingdom, that it’s got a
commercial sound. In making my own appeal for contributions, I use ‘love
offering.’”
“That’s worth thinking over, Dr. Binch,” sighed Sharon, “but, oh, how
tragic it is that we, with our message of salvation—if the sad old
world would but listen, we could solve all its sorrows and
difficulties—yet with this message ready, we have to be practical and
raise money for our expenses and charities. Oh, the world doesn’t
appreciate evangelists. Think what we can do for a resident minister!
These preachers who talk about conducting their own revivals make me
sick! They don’t know the right technique. Conducting revivals is a
profession. One must know all the tricks. With all modesty, I figure
that I know just what will bring in the converts.”
“I’m sure you do, Sister Falconer,” from Binch. “Say, do you and Brother
Gantry like union revivals?”
“You bet your life we do,” said Brother Gantry. “We won’t conduct a
revival unless we can have the united support of all the evangelical
preachers in town.”
“I think you are mistaken, Brother Gantry,” said Dr. Binch. “I find that
I have the most successful meetings with only a few churches, but all of
them genuinely O. K. With all the preachers joined together, you have to
deal with a lot of these two-by-four hick preachers with churches about
the size of woodsheds and getting maybe eleven hundred a year, and yet
they think they have the right to make suggestions! No, sir! I want to
do business with the big down-town preachers that are used to doing
things in a high-grade way and that don’t kick if you take a
decent-sized offering out of town!”
“Yuh, there’s something to be said for that,” said Elmer. “That’s what
the Happy Sing Evangelist—you know, Bill Buttle—said to us one time.”
“But I hope you don’t _like_ Brother Buttle!” protested Dr. Binch.
“Oh, no! Anyway, _I_ didn’t like him,” said Sharon, which was a wifely
slap at Elmer.
Dr. Binch snorted, “He’s a scoundrel! There’s rumors about his wife’s
leaving him. Why is it that in such a high calling as ours there are so
many rascals? Take Dr. Mortonby! Calling himself a cover-to-cover
literalist, and then his relations to the young woman who sings for
him—I would shock you, Sister Falconer, if I told you what I suspect.”
“Oh, I know. I haven’t met him, but I hear dreadful things,” wailed
Sharon. “And Wesley Zigler! They say he drinks! And an evangelist! Why,
if any person connected with me were so much as to take one drink, out
he goes!”
“That’s right, that’s right. Isn’t it dreadful!” mourned Dr. Binch. “And
take this charlatan Edgar Edgars—this obscene ex-gambler with his
disgusting slang! Uh! The hypocrite!”
Joyously they pointed out that this rival artist in evangelism was an
ignoramus, that a passer of bogus checks, the other doubtful about the
doctrine of the premillennial coming; joyously they concluded that the
only intelligent and moral evangelists in America were Dr. Binch, Sister
Falconer, and Brother Gantry, and the lunch broke up in an orgy of
thanksgiving.
“There’s the worst swell-head and four-flusher in America, that Binch,
and he’s shaky on Jonah, and I’ve heard he chews tobacco—and then
pretending to be so swell and citified. Be careful of him,” said Sharon
to Elmer afterward, and, “Oh, my dear, my dear!”