I
ELMER, in court, got convictions of sixteen out of the twenty-seven
fiends whom he had arrested, with an extra six months for Oscar Hochlauf
for resisting arrest and the use of abusive and profane language. The
judge praised him; the mayor forgave him; the chief of police shook his
hand and invited him to use a police squad at any time; and some of the
younger reporters did not cover their mouths with their hands.
Vice was ended in Zenith. It was thirty days before any of the gay
ladies were really back at work—though the gentlemanly jailers at the
workhouse did let some of them out for an occasional night.
Every Sunday evening now people were turned from the door of Elmer’s
church. If they did not always have a sermon about vice, at least they
enjoyed the saxophone solos, and singing “There’ll be a Hot Time in the
Old Town Tonight.” And once they were entertained by a professional
juggler who wore (it was Elmer’s own idea) a placard proclaiming that he
stood for “God’s Word” and who showed how easy it was to pick up weights
symbolically labeled “Sin” and “Sorrow” and “Ignorance” and “Papistry.”
The trustees were discussing the erection of a new and much larger
church, a project for which Elmer himself had begun to prepare a year
before, by reminding the trustees how many new apartment-houses were
replacing the run-down residences in Old Town.
The trustees raised his salary to five thousand, and they increased the
budget for institutional work. Elmer did not institute so many clubs for
students of chiropractic and the art of motion-picture acting as did Dr.
Otto Hickenlooper of Central Methodist, but there was scarcely an hour
from nine in the morning till ten at night when some circle was not
trying to do good to somebody . . . and even after ten there were often
Elmer and Lulu Bains Naylor, conferring on cooking classes.
Elmer had seen the danger of his crusading publicity and his Lively
Sunday Evenings—the danger of being considered a clown instead of a
great moral leader.
“I’ve got to figure out some way so’s I keep dignified and yet keep
folks interested,” he meditated. “The thing is sort of to have other
people do the monkey-business, but me, I got to be up-stage and not
smile as much as I’ve been doing. And just when the poor chumps think my
Sunday evening is nothing but a vaudeville show, I’ll suddenly soak ’em
with a regular old-time hell-fire and damnation sermon, or be poetic and
that stuff.”
It worked, reasonably. Though many of his rival preachers in Zenith went
on calling him “clown” and “charlatan” and “sensationalist,” no one
could fail to appreciate his lofty soul and his weighty scholarship,
once they had seen him stand in agonized silent prayer, then level his
long forefinger and intone:
“You have laughed now. You have sung. You have been merry. But what came
ye forth into the wilderness for to see? Merely laughter? I want you to
stop a moment now and think just how long it is since you have realized
that any night death may demand your souls, and that then, laughter or
no laughter, unless you have found the peace of God, unless you have
accepted Christ Jesus as your savior, you may with no chance of
last-minute repentance be hurled into horrible and shrieking and
appalling eternal torture!”
Elmer had become so distinguished that the Rotary Club elected him to
membership with zeal.
The Rotary Club was an assemblage of accountants, tailors, osteopaths,
university-presidents, carpet-manufacturers, advertising men,
millinery-dealers, ice-dealers, piano salesmen, laundrymen, and like
leaders of public thought, who met weekly for the purposes of lunching
together, listening to addresses by visiting actors and by lobbyists
against the recognition of Russia, beholding vaudeville teams in
eccentric dances, and indulging in passionate rhapsodies about Service
and Business Ethics. They asserted that their one desire in their
several callings was not to make money but only to serve and benefit a
thing called the Public. They were as earnest about this as was the
Reverend Elmer Gantry about vice.
He was extraordinarily at home among the Rotarians; equally happy in
being a good fellow with such good fellows as these and in making short
speeches to the effect that “Jesus Christ would be a Rotarian if he
lived today—Lincoln would be a Rotarian today—William McKinley would
be a Rotarian today. All these men preached the principles of Rotary:
one for all and all for one; helpfulness towards one’s community, and
respect for God.”
It was a rule of this organization, which was merry and full of
greetings in between inspirational addresses, that every one should, at
lunch, be called by his first name. They shouted at the Reverend Mr.
Gantry as “Elmer” or “Elm,” while he called his haberdasher “Ike” and
beamed on his shoe-seller as “Rudy.” A few years before, this intimacy
might have led him into indiscretions, into speaking vulgarly, or even
desiring a drink. But he had learned his rôle of dignity now, and though
he observed, “Dandy day, Shorty!” he was quick to follow it up
unhesitatingly with an orotund “I trust that you have been able to enjoy
the beauty of the vernal foliage in the country this week.” So Shorty
and his pals went up and down informing the citizenry that Reverend
Gantry was a “good scout, a prince of a good fellow, but a mighty deep
thinker, and a real honest-to-God orator.”
When Elmer informed T. J. Rigg of the joys of Rotary, the lawyer
scratched his chin and suggested, “Fine. But look here, Brother Elmer.
There’s one thing you’re neglecting: the really big boys with the long
pockets. Got to know ’em. Not many of ’em Methodists—they go out for
Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism or Congregationalism or Christian
Science, or stay out of the church altogether. But that’s no reason why
we can’t turn their _money_ Methodist. You wouldn’t find but mighty few
of these Rotarians in the Tonawanda Country Club—into which I bought my
way by blackmailing, you might say, a wheat speculator.”
“But—but—why, T. J., those Rotarians—why there’s fellows in there
like Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the _Advocate_, and Win Grant,
the realtor—”
“Yeh, but the owner of the _Advocate_, and the banker that’s letting Win
Grant run on till he bankrupts, and the corporation counsel that keeps
’em all out of jail, you don’t find _those_ malefactors going to no
lunch club and yipping about Service! You find ’em sitting at small
tables at the old Union Club, and laughing themselves sick about
Service. And for golf, they go to Tonawanda. I couldn’t get you into the
Union Club. They wouldn’t have any preacher that talks about vice—the
kind of preacher that belongs to the Union talks about the new model
Cadillac and how hard it is to get genuwine Eye-talian vermouth. But the
Tonawanda—— They might let you in. For respectability. To prove that
they couldn’t have the gin they’ve got in their lockers in their
lockers.”
It was done, though it took six months and a deal of secret politics
conducted by T. J. Rigg.
Wellspring Church, including the pastor of Wellspring, bloomed with
pride that Elmer had been so elevated socially as to be allowed to play
golf with bankers.
Only he couldn’t play golf.
From April to July, while he never appeared on the links with other
players, Elmer took lessons from the Tonawanda professional, three
mornings a week, driving out in the smart new Buick which he had bought
and almost paid for.
The professional was a traditionally small and gnarled and sandy
Scotchman, from Indiana, and he was so traditionally rude that Elmer put
on meekness.
“Put back your divots! D’you think this is a church?” snapped the
professional.
“Damn it, I always forget, Scotty,” whined Elmer. “Guess it must be hard
on you to have to train these preachers.”
“Preachers is nothing to me, and millionaires is nothing to me, but gawf
grounds is a lot,” grunted Scotty. (He was a zealous Presbyterian and to
be picturesquely rude to Christian customers was as hard for him as it
was to keep up the Scotch accent which he had learned from a real
Liverpool Irishman.)
Elmer was strong, he was placid when he was out-of-doors, and his eye
was quick. When he first appeared publicly at Tonawanda, in a foursome
with T. J. Rigg and two most respectable doctors, he and his game were
watched and commended. When he dressed in the locker-room and did not
appear to note the square bottle in use ten feet away, he was accepted
as a man of the world.
William Dollinger Styles, member of the Tonawanda house committee,
president of the fabulous W. D. Styles Wholesale Hardware Company—the
man who had introduced the Bite Edge Ax through all the land from
Louisville to Detroit, and introduced white knickers to the Tonawanda
Club—this baron, this bishop, of business actually introduced himself
to Elmer and made him welcome.
“Glad to see you here, dominie. Played much golf?”
“No, I’ve only taken it up recently, but you bet I’m going to be a real
fan from now on.”
“That’s fine. Tell you how I feel about it, Reverend. We fellows that
have to stick to our desks and make decisions that guide the common
people, you religiously and me commercially, it’s a good thing for us,
and through us for them, to go out and get next to Nature, and put
ourselves in shape to tackle our complicated problems (as I said
recently in an after-dinner speech at the Chamber of Commerce banquet)
and keep a good sane outlook so’s we won’t be swept away by every breeze
of fickle and changing public opinion and so inevitably—”
In fact, said Mr. William Dollinger Styles, he liked golf.
Elmer tenderly agreed with “Yes, that’s certainly a fact; certainly is a
fact. Be a good thing for a whole lot of preachers if they got out and
exercised more instead of always reading.”
“Yes, I wish you’d tell my dominie that—not that I go to church such a
whole lot, but I’m church treasurer and take kind of an
interest—Dorchester Congregational—Reverend Shallard.”
“Oh! Frank Shallard! Why, I knew him in theological seminary! Fine,
straight, intelligent fellow, Frank.”
“Well, yes, but I don’t like the way he’s always carrying on and almost
coming right out and defending a lot of these crooked labor unions.
That’s why I don’t hardly ever hear his sermons, but I can’t get the
deacons to see it. And as I say, be better for him if he got outdoors
more. Well, glad to met you, Reverend. You must join one of our
foursomes some day—if you can stand a little cussing, maybe!”
“Well, I’ll try to, sir! Been mighty fine to have met you!”
“H’m!” reflected Elmer. “So Frank, the belly-aching highbrow, has got as
rich a man as Styles in his fold, and Styles doesn’t like him. Wonder if
Styles could turn Methodist—wonder if he could be pinched off Frank?
I’ll ask Rigg.”
But the charm of the place, the day, the implied social position, was
such that Elmer turned from these purely religious broodings to more
esthetic thoughts.
Rigg had driven home. Elmer sat by himself on the huge porch of the
Tonawanda Club, a long gray countryhouse on a hill sloping to the
Appleseed River, with tawny fields of barley among orchards on the bank
beyond. The golf-course was scattered with men in Harris tweeds, girls
in short skirts which fluttered about their legs. A man in white
flannels drove up in a Rolls-Royce roadster—the only one in Zenith as
yet—and Elmer felt ennobled by belonging to the same club with a
Rolls-Royce. On the lawn before the porch, men with English-officer
mustaches and pretty women in pale frocks were taking tea at tables
under striped garden-umbrellas.
Elmer knew none of them actually, but a few by sight.
“Golly, I’ll be right in with all these swells some day! Must work it
careful, and be snooty, and not try to pick ’em up too quick.”
A group of weighty-looking men of fifty, near him, were conversing on
the arts and public policy. As he listened, Elmer decided, “Yep, Rigg
was right. Those are fine fellows at the Rotary Club; fine, high-class,
educated gentlemen, and certainly raking in the money; mighty cute in
business but upholding the highest ideals. But they haven’t got the
class of these really Big Boys.”
Entranced, he gave heed to the magnates—a bond broker, a mine-owner, a
lawyer, a millionaire lumberman:
“Yes, sir, what the country at large doesn’t understand is that the
stabilization of sterling has a good effect on our trade with Britain—”
“I told them that far from refusing to recognize the rights of labor, I
had myself come up from the ranks, to some extent, and I was doing all
in my power to benefit them, but I certainly did refuse to listen to the
caterwauling of a lot of hired agitators from the so-called unions, and
that if they didn’t like the way I did things—”
“Yes, it opened at 73½, but knowing what had happened to Saracen
Common—”
“Yes, sir, you can depend on a Pierce-Arrow, you certainly can—”
Elmer drew a youthful, passionate, shuddering breath at being so nearly
in communion with the powers that governed Zenith and thought for
Zenith, that governed America and thought for it. He longed to stay, but
he had the task, unworthy of his powers of social decoration, of
preparing a short clever talk on missions among the Digger Indians.
As he drove home he rejoiced, “Some day I’ll be able to put it over with
the best of ’em socially. When I get to be a bishop, believe me I’m not
going to hang around jawing about Sunday School methods! I’ll be
entertaining the bon ton, senators and everybody. . . . Cleo would look
fine at a big dinner, with the right dress. . . . If she wasn’t so darn’
priggish. Oh, maybe she’ll die before then. . . . I think I’ll marry an
Episcopalian. . . . I wonder if I could get an Episcopal bishopric if I
switched to that nightshirt crowd? More class. No; Methodist bigger
church; and don’t guess the Episcopalopians would stand any good
red-blooded sermons on vice and all that.”
II
The Gilfeather Chautauqua Corporation, which conducts week-long
Chautauquas in small towns, had not been interested when Elmer had
hinted, three years ago, that he had a Message to the Youth of America,
one worth at least a hundred a week, and that he would be glad to go
right out to the Youth and deliver it. But when Elmer’s demolition of
all vice in Zenith had made him celebrated, and even gained him a
paragraph or two as the Crusading Parson, in New York and Chicago, the
Gilfeather Corporation had a new appreciation. They came to him,
besieged him, offered him two hundred a week and headlines in the
posters, for a three-months tour.
But Elmer did not want to ask the trustees for a three-months leave. He
had a notion of a summer in Europe a year or two from now. That extended
study of European culture, first hand, would be just the finishing
polish to enable him to hold any pulpit in the country.
He did, however, fill in during late August and early September as
substitute for a Gilfeather headliner—the renowned J. Thurston Wallett,
M. D., D. O., D. N., who had delighted thousands with his witty and
instructive lecture, “Diet or Die, Nature or Nix,” until he had
unfortunately been taken ill at Powassie, Iowa, from eating too many
green cantaloupes.
Elmer had planned to spend August with his family in Northern
Michigan—planned it most uncomfortably, for while it was conceivable to
endure Cleo in the city, with his work, his clubs, and Lulu, a month
with no relief from her solemn drooping face and cry-baby voice would be
trying even to a Professional Good Man.
He explained to her that duty called, and departed with speed, stopping
only long enough to get several books of inspirational essays from the
public library for aid in preparing his Chautauqua lecture.
He was delighted with his coming adventure—money, fame in new quarters,
crowds for whom he would not have to think up fresh personal
experiences. And he might find a woman friend who would understand him
and give to his own solid genius that lighter touch of the feminine. He
was, he admitted, almost as tired of Lulu as of Cleo. He pictured a
Chautauqua lady pianist or soprano or ventriloquist or soloist on the
musical saw—he pictured a surprised, thrilled meeting in the amber
light under the canvas roof—recognition between kindred fine and lonely
souls—
And he found it of course.
III
Elmer’s metaphysical lecture, entitled “Whoa Up, Youth!” with its
counsel about abstinence, chastity, industry, and honesty, its
heaven-vaulting poetic passage about Love (the only bow on life’s dark
cloud, the morning and the evening star), and its anecdote of his fight
to save a college-mate named Jim from drink and atheism, became one of
the classics among Chautauqua masterpieces.
And Elmer better than any one else among the Talent (except perhaps the
gentleman who played national anthems on water glasses, a Lettish
gentleman innocent of English) sidestepped on the question of the K. K.
K.
The new Ku Klux Klan, an organization of the fathers, younger brothers,
and employees of the men who had succeeded and became Rotarians, had
just become a political difficulty. Many of the most worthy Methodist
and Baptist clergymen supported it and were supported by it; and
personally Elmer admired its principle—to keep all foreigners, Jews,
Catholics, and negroes in their place, which was no place at all, and
let the country be led by native Protestants, like Elmer Gantry.
But he perceived that in the cities there were prominent people, nice
people, rich people, even among the Methodists and Baptists, who felt
that a man could be a Jew and still an American citizen. It seemed to
him more truly American, also a lot safer, to avoid the problem. So
everywhere he took a message of reconciliation to the effect:
“Regarding religious, political, and social organizations, I defend the
right of every man in our free America to organize with his fellows when
and as he pleases, for any purpose he pleases, but I also defend the
right of any other free American citizen to demand that such an
organization shall not dictate his mode of thought or, so long as it be
moral, his mode of conduct.”
That pleased both the K. K. K. and the opponents of the K. K. K., and
everybody admired Elmer’s powers of thought.
He came with a boom and a flash to the town of Blackfoot Creek, Indiana,
and there the local committee permitted the Methodist minister, one
Andrew Pengilly, to entertain his renowned brother priest.
IV
Always a little lonely, lost in the ceaseless unfolding of his
mysticism, old Andrew Pengilly had been the lonelier since Frank
Shallard had left him.
When he heard that the Reverend Elmer Gantry was coming, Mr. Pengilly
murmured to the local committee that it would be a pleasure to put up
Mr. Gantry and save him from the scurfy village hotel.
He had read of Mr. Gantry as an impressive orator, a courageous fighter
against Sin. Mr. Pengilly sighed. Himself, somehow, he had never been
able to find so very much Sin about. His fault. A silly old dreamer. He
rejoiced that he, the mousy village curé, was about to have here,
glorifying his cottage, a St. Michael in dazzling armor.
V
After the evening Chautauqua Elmer sat in Mr. Pengilly’s hovel, and he
was graciously condescending.
“You say, Brother Pengilly, that you’ve heard of our work at Wellspring?
But do we get so near the hearts of the weak and unfortunate as you
here? Oh, no; sometimes I think that my first pastorate, in a town
smaller than this, was in many ways more blessed than our tremendous
to-do in the great city. And what _is_ accomplished there is no credit
to me. I have such splendid, such touchingly loyal assistants—Mr.
Webster, the assistant pastor—such a consecrated worker, and yet right
on the job—and Mr. Wink, and Miss Weezeger, the deaconess, and _dear_
Miss Bundle, the secretary—_such_ a faithful soul, _so_ industrious.
Oh, yes, I am singularly blessed! But, uh, but— Given these people,
who really do the work, we’ve been able to put over some pretty good
things—with God’s leading. Why, say, we’ve started the only class in
show-window dressing in any church in the United States—and I should
suppose England and France! We’ve already seen the most wonderful
results, not only in raising the salary of several of the fine young men
in our church, but in increasing business throughout the city and
improving the appearance of show-windows, and you know how much that
adds to the beauty of the down-town streets! And the crowds do seem to
be increasing steadily. We had over eleven hundred present on my last
Sunday evening in Zenith, and that in summer! And during the season we
often have nearly eighteen hundred, in an auditorium that’s only
supposed to seat sixteen hundred! And with all modesty—it’s not my
doing but the methods we’re working up—I think I may say that every
man, woman, and child goes away happy and yet with a message to sustain
’em through the week. You see—oh, of course I give ’em the straight
old-time gospel in my sermon—I’m not the least bit afraid of talking
right up to ’em and reminding them of the awful consequences of sin and
ignorance and spiritual sloth. Yes, sir! No blinking the horrors of the
old-time proven Hell, not in any church _I’m_ running! But also we make
’em get together, and their pastor is just one of their own chums, and
we sing cheerful, comforting songs, and do they like it? Say! It shows
up in the collections!”
“Mr. Gantry,” said Andrew Pengilly, “why don’t you believe in God?”