Elmer Gantry (Unabridged). Sinclair Lewis
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come in and aired the place out. I thought, Elmer Gantry, you weren't supposed to smoke in Terwillinger! By the rules of the college! I thought, young man, that you lived up to 'em! But never mind."
Uneasily — for Jim had never before seen him demoted to childhood, as he always was in his mother's presence — Elmer grumbled, "But honest, Ma, what did you come up for?"
"Well, I read about what a nice week of prayer you were going to have, and I thought I'd just like to hear a real big bug preach. I've got a vacation coming, too! Now don't you worry one mite about me. I guess I can take care of myself after all these years! The first traveling I ever done with you, young man — the time I went to Cousin Adeline's wedding — I just tucked you under one arm — and how you squalled, the whole way! — mercy, you liked to hear the sound of your own voice then just like you do now! — and I tucked my old valise under the other, and off I went! Don't you worry one mite about me. I'm only going to stay over the night — got a sale on remnants starting — going back on Number Seven tomorrow. I left my valise at that boarding-house right across from the depot. But there's one thing you might do if 'tain't too much trouble, Elmy. You know I've only been up here at the college once before. I'd feel kind of funny, country bumpkin like me, going alone to that big meeting, with all those smart professors and everybody there, and I'd be glad if you could come along."
"Of course he'll go, Mrs. Gantry," said Jim.
But before Elmer was carried away, Jim had the chance to whisper, "God, do be careful! Remember I won't be there to protect you! Don't let 'em pick on you! Don't do one single doggone thing they want you to do, and then maybe you'll be safe!"
As he went out, Elmer looked back at Jim. He was shakily sitting up in bed, his eyes imploring.
3
The climactic meeting of the Annual Prayer Week, to be addressed by President Quarles, four ministers, and a rich trustee who was in the pearl-button business, with Judson Roberts as star soloist, was not held at the Y.M.C.A. but at the largest auditorium in town, the Baptist Church, with hundreds of town-people joining the collegians.
The church was a welter of brownstone, with Moorish arches and an immense star-shaped window not yet filled with stained glass.
Elmer hoped to be late enough to creep in inconspicuously, but as his mother and he straggled up to the Romanesque portico, students were still outside, chattering. He was certain they were whispering, "There he is — Hell-cat Gantry. Say, is it really true he's under conviction of sin? I thought he cussed out the church more'n anybody in college."
Meek though Elmer had been under instruction by Jim and threats by Eddie and yearning by his mother, he was not normally given to humility, and he looked at his critics defiantly. "I'll show 'em! If they think I'm going to sneak in — "
He swaggered down almost to the front pews, to the joy of his mother, who had been afraid that as usual he would hide in the rear, handy to the door if the preacher should become personal.
There was a great deal of decoration in the church, which had been endowed by a zealous alumnus after making his strike in Alaskan boarding-houses during the gold-rush. There were Egyptian pillars with gilded capitals, on the ceiling were gilt stars and clouds more woolen than woolly, and the walls were painted cheerily in three strata — green, watery blue, and khaki. It was an echoing and gaping church, and presently it was packed, the aisles full. Professors with string mustaches and dog-eared Bibles, men students in sweaters or flannel shirts, earnest young women students in homemade muslin with modest ribbons, over-smiling old maids of the town, venerable saints from the back-country with beards which partly hid the fact that they wore collars without ties, old women with billowing shoulders, irritated young married couples with broods of babies who crawled, slid, bellowed, and stared with embarrassing wonder at bachelors.
Five minutes later Elmer would not have had a seat down front. Now he could not escape. He was packed in between his mother and a wheezing fat man, and in the aisle beside his pew stood evangelical tailors and ardent school-teachers.
The congregation swung into "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder" and Elmer gave up his frenzied but impractical plans for escape. His mother nestled happily beside him, her hand proudly touching his sleeve, and he was stirred by the march and battle of the hymn:
When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more,
And the morning breaks eternal, bright and far. —
They stood for the singing of "Shall We Gather at the River?" Elmer inarticulately began to feel his community with these humble, aspiring people — his own prairie tribe: this gaunt carpenter, a good fellow, full of friendly greetings; this farm-wife, so courageous, channeled by pioneer labor; this classmate, an admirable basket-ball player, yet now chanting beatifically, his head back, his eyes closed, his voice ringing. Elmer's own people. Could he be a traitor to them, could he resist the current of their united belief and longing?
Yes, we'll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.
Could he endure it to be away from them, in the chill void of Jim Lefferts' rationalizing, on that day when they should be rejoicing in the warm morning sunshine by the river rolling to the imperishable Throne?
And his voice — he had merely muttered the words of the first hymn — boomed out ungrudgingly:
Soon our pilgrimage will cease;
Soon our happy hearts will quiver
With the melody of peace.
His mother stroked his sleeve. He remembered that she had maintained he was the best singer she had ever heard; that Jim Lefferts had admitted, "You certainly can make that hymn dope sound as if it meant something." He noted that people near by looked about with pleasure when they heard his Big Ben dominate the cracked jangling.
The preliminaries merely warmed up the audience for Judson Roberts. Old Jud was in form. He laughed, he shouted, he knelt and wept with real tears, he loved everybody, he raced down into the audience and patted shoulders, and for the moment everybody felt that he was closer to them than their closest friends.
"Rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race," was his text.
Roberts was really a competent athlete, and he really had skill in evoking pictures. He described the Chicago-Michigan game, and Elmer was lost in him, with him lived the moments of the scrimmage, the long run with the ball, the bleachers rising to him.
Roberts voice softened. He was pleading. He was not talking, he said, to weak men who needed coddling into the Kingdom, but to strong men, to rejoicing men, to men brave in armor. There was another sort of race more exhilarating than any game, and it led not merely to a score on a big board but to the making of a new world — it led not to newspaper paragraphs but to glory eternal. Dangerous — calling for strong men! Ecstatic — brimming with thrills! The team captained by Christ! No timid Jesus did he preach, but the adventurer who had joyed to associate with common men, with reckless fishermen, with captains and rulers, who had dared to face the soldiers in the garden, who had dared the myrmidons of Rome and death itself! Come! Who was gallant? Who had nerve? Who longed to live abundantly? Let them come!
They must confess their sins, they must repent, they must know their own weakness save as they were reborn in Christ. But they must confess not in heaven-pilfering weakness, but in training for the battle under the wind-torn banners of the Mighty Captain. Who would come? Who would come? Who was for vision and the great adventure?
He was among them, Judson Roberts, with his arms held out, his voice a bugle. Young men sobbed and knelt; a woman shrieked; people were elbowing the standers in the aisles and pushing forward to kneel in agonized happiness, and suddenly they were setting relentlessly on a bewildered Elmer Gantry, who had been betrayed into forgetting himself, into longing to be one with Judson Roberts.
His mother was wringing his hand, begging, "Oh, won't you come? Won't you make your old mother happy?