Elmer Gantry (22 page)

It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the
most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since
even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three or four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of
the same disease.

Healing was later to become the chief feature of many evangelists, but in 1910 it was advertised chiefly by Christian
Scientists and the New Thoughters. Sharon came to it by accident. She had regularly offered prayers for the sick, but only
absent-mindedly. When Elmer and she had been together for a year, during her meetings in Schenectady a man led up his deaf
wife and begged Sharon to heal her. It amused Sharon to send out for some oil (it happened to be shotgun oil, but she
properly consecrated it) to anoint the woman’s ears, and to pray lustily for healing.

The woman screamed, “Glory to God, I’ve got my hearing back!”

There was a sensation in the tabernacle, and everybody itched with desire to be relieved of whatever ailed him. Elmer led
the healed deaf woman aside and asked her name for the newspapers. It is true that she could not hear him, but he wrote out
his questions, she wrote the answers, and he got an excellent story for the papers and an idea for their holy work.

Why, he put it to Sharon, shouldn’t she make healing a regular feature?

“I don’t know that I have any gift for it,” considered Sharon.

“Sure you have! Aren’t you psychic? You bet. Go to it. We might pull off some healing services. I bet the collections
would bust all records, and we’ll have a distinct understanding with the local committees that we get all over a certain
amount, besides the collection the last day.”

“Well, we might try one. Of course, the Lord may have blessed me with special gifts that way, and to him be all the
credit, oh, let’s stop in here and have an ice cream soda, I LOVE banana splits, I hope nobody sees me, I feel like dancing
tonight, anyway we’ll talk over the possibility of healing, I’m going to take a hot bath the minute we get home with losh
bath salts—losh and losh and losh.”

The success was immense.

She alienated many evangelical pastors by divine healing, but she won all the readers of books about will-power, and her
daily miracles were reported in the newspapers. And, or so it was reported, some of the patients remained cured.

She murmured to Elmer, “You know, maybe there really is something to this healing, and I get an enormous thrill out of
it—telling the lame to chuck their crutches. That man last night, that cripple—he did feel lots better.”

They decorated the altar now with crutches and walking-sticks, all given by grateful patients—except such as Elmer had
been compelled to buy to make the exhibit inspiring from the start.

Money gamboled in. One grateful patient gave Sharon five thousand dollars. And Elmer and Sharon had their only quarrel,
except for occasional spats of temperament. With the increase in profits, he demanded a rise of salary, and she insisted
that her charities took all she had.

“Yuh, I’ve heard a lot about ’em,” said he: “the Old Ladies’ Home and the Orphanage and the hoosegow for retired
preachers. I suppose you carry ’em along with you on the road!”

“Do you mean to insinuate, my good friend, that I—”

They talked in a thoroughly spirited and domestic manner, and afterward she raised his salary to five thousand and kissed
him.

With the money so easily come by, Sharon burst out in hectic plans. She was going to buy a ten-thousand-acre farm for a
Christian Socialist colony and a university, and she went so far as to get a three months’ option on two hundred acres. She
was going to have a great national paper, with crime news, scandal, and athletics omitted, and a daily Bible lesson on the
front page. She was going to organize a new crusade—an army of ten million which would march through heathen countries and
convert the entire world to Christianity in this generation.

She did, at last, actually carry out one plan, and create a headquarters for her summer meetings.

At Clontar, a resort on the New Jersey coast, she bought the pier on which Benno Hackenschmidt used to give grand opera.
Though the investment was so large that even for the initial payment it took almost every penny she had saved, she
calculated that she would make money because she would be the absolute owner and not have to share contributions with local
churches. And, remaining in one spot, she would build up more prestige than by moving from place to place and having to
advertise her virtues anew in every town.

In a gay frenzy she planned that if she was successful, she would keep the Clontar pier for summer and build an
all-winter tabernacle in New York or Chicago. She saw herself another Mary Baker Eddy, an Annie Besant, a Katherine Tingley.
. . . Elmer Gantry was shocked when she hinted that, who knows? the next Messiah might be a woman, and that woman might now
be on earth, just realizing her divinity.

The pier was an immense structure, built of cheap knotty pine, painted a hectic red with gold stripes. It was pleasant,
however, on hot evenings. Round it ran a promenade out over the water, where once lovers had strolled between acts of the
opera, and giving on the promenade were many barnlike doors.

Sharon christened it “The Waters of Jordan Tabernacle,” added more and redder paint, more golden gold, and erected an
enormous revolving cross, lighted at night with yellow and ruby electric bulbs.

The whole gospel crew went to Clontar early in June to make ready for the great opening on the evening of the first of
July.

They had to enlist volunteer ushers and personal workers, and Sharon and Adelbert Shoop had notions about a huge robed
choir, with three or four paid soloists.

Elmer had less zeal than usual in helping her, because an unfortunate thing had gone and happened to Elmer. He saw that
he really ought to be more friendly with Lily Anderson, the pianist. While he remained true to Sharon, he had cumulatively
been feeling that it was sheer carelessness to let the pretty and anemic and virginal Lily be wasted. He had been driven to
notice her through indignation at Art Nichols, the cornetist, for having the same idea.

Elmer was fascinated by her unawakenedness. While he continued to be devoted to Sharon, over her shoulder he was always
looking at Lily’s pale sweetness, and his lips were moist.

They sat on the beach by moonlight, Sharon and Elmer, the night before the opening service.

All of Clontar, with its mile of comfortable summer villas and gingerbread hotels, was excited over the tabernacle, and
the Chamber of Commerce had announced, “We commend to the whole Jersey coast this high-class spiritual feature, the latest
addition to the manifold attractions and points of interest at the snappiest of all summer colonies.”

A choir of two hundred had been coaxed in, and some of them had been persuaded to buy their own robes and mortar
boards.

Near the sand dune against which Sharon and Elmer lolled was the tabernacle, over which the electric cross turned
solemnly, throwing its glare now on the rushing surf, now across the bleak sand.

“And it’s mine!” Sharon trembled. “I’ve made it! Four thousand seats, and I guess it’s the only Christian tabernacle
built out over the water! Elmer, it almost scares me! So much responsibility! Thousands of poor troubled souls turning to me
for help, and if I fail them, if I’m weak or tired or greedy, I’ll be murdering their very souls. I almost wish I were back
safe in Virginia!”

Her enchanted voice wove itself with the menace of the breakers, feeble against the crash of broken waters, passionate in
the lull, while the great cross turned its unceasing light.

“And I’m ambitious. Elmer. I know it. I want the world. But I realize what an awful danger that is. But I never had
anybody to train me. I’m just nobody. I haven’t any family, any education. I’ve had to do everything for myself, except what
Cecil and you and another man or two have done, and maybe you-all came too late. When I was a kid, there was no one to tell
me what a sense of honor was. But—Oh. I’ve done things! Little Katie Jonas of Railroad Avenue—little Katie with her red
flannel skirt and torn stockings, fighting the whole Killarney Street gang and giving Pup Monahan one in the nose, by
Jiminy! And not five cents a year, even for candy. And now it’s mine, that tabernacle there—look at it!—that cross, that
choir you hear practising! Why, I’m the Sharon Falconer you read about! And tomorrow I become—oh, people reaching for me—me
healing ’em—No! It frightens me! It can’t last. MAKE IT LAST FOR ME, ELMER! Don’t let them take it away from me!”

She was sobbing, her head on his lap, while he comforted her clumsily. He was slightly bored. She was heavy, and though
he did like her, he wished she wouldn’t go on telling that Katie–Jonas-Utica story.

She rose to her knees, her arms out to him, her voice hysteric against the background of the surf:

“I can’t do it! But you—I’m a woman. I’m weak. I wonder if I oughtn’t to stop thinking I’m such a marvel, if I oughtn’t
to let you run things and just stand back and help you? Ought I?”

He was overwhelmed by her good sense, but he cleared his throat and spoke judiciously:

“Well, now I’ll tell you. Personally I’d never’ve brought it up, but since you speak of it yourself—I don’t admit for a
minute that I’ve got any more executive ability or oratory than you have— probably not half as much. And after all, you did
start the show; I came in late. But same time, while a woman can put things over just as good as a man, or better, for a
WHILE, she’s a woman, and she isn’t built to carry on things like a man would, see how I mean?”

“Would it be better for the Kingdom if I forgot my ambition and followed you?”

“Well, I don’t say it’d be better. You’ve certainly done fine, honey. I haven’t got any criticisms. But same time, I do
think we ought to think it over.”

She had remained still, a kneeling silver statue. Now she dropped her head against his knees, crying:

“I can’t give it up! I can’t! Must I?”

He was conscious that people were strolling near. He growled, “Say, for goodness’ sake, Shara, don’t HOLLER and carry on
like that! Somebody might HEAR!”

She sprang up. “Oh, you fool! You fool!”

She fled from him, along the sands, through the rays of the revolving cross, into the shadow. He angrily rubbed his back
against the sand dune and grumbled:

“Damn these women! All alike, even Shary; always getting temperamental on you about nothing at all! Still, I did kind of
go off half cocked, considering she was just beginning to get the idea of letting me boss the show. Oh, hell, I’ll jolly her
out of it!”

He took off his shoes, shook the sand out of them, and rubbed the sole of one stocking foot slowly, agreeably, for he was
conceiving a thought.

If Sharon was going to pull stuff like that on him, he ought to teach her a lesson.

Choir practise was over. Why not go back to the house and see what Lily Anderson was doing?

THERE was a nice kid, and she admired him—she’d never dare bawl him out.

He tiptoed to Lily’s virgin door and tapped lightly.

“Yes?”

He dared not speak—Sharon’s door, in the bulky old house they had taken in Clontar, was almost opposite. He tapped again,
and when Lily came to the door, in a kimono, he whispered, “Shhh! Everybody asleep. May I come in just a second? Something
important to ask you.”

Lily was wondering, but obviously she felt a pallid excitement as he followed her into her room, with its
violet-broidered doilies.

“Lily, I’ve been worrying. Do you think Adelbert ought to have the choir start with ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’
tomorrow, or something a little snappier—get the crowd and then shoot in something impressive.”

“Honest, Mr. Gantry, I don’t believe they could change the program now.”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Sit down and tell me how the choir practise went tonight. Bet it went swell, with you
pounding the box!”

“Oh, now,” as she perched lightly on the edge of the bed, “You’re just teasing me, Mr. Gantry!”

He sat beside her, chuckling bravely, “And I can’t even get you to call me Elmer!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare, Mr. Gantry! Miss Falconer would call me down.”

“You just let me know if ANYBODY ever dares try to call YOU down, Lily! Why—I don’t know whether Sharon appreciates it or
not, but the way you spiel the music gives as much power to our meetings as her sermons or anything else.”

“Oh, no, you’re just flattering me, Mr Gantry! Oh, say, I have a trade-last for you.”

“Well, I—oh, let’s see—oh, I remember, that Episcopalopian preacher—the big handsome one—he said you ought to be on the
stage, you had so much talent.”

“Oh, go on, you’re kidding me, Mr. Gantry!”

“No, honest he did. Now, what’s mine? Though I’d rather have YOU say something nice about me!”

“Oh, now you’re fishing!”

“Sure I am—with such a lovely fish as you!”

“Oh, it’s terrible the way you talk.” Laughter—silvery peals— several peals. “But I mean, this grant opera soloist that’s
down for our opening says you look so strong that she’s scared of you.”

“Oh, she is, is she! Are you? . . . Huh? . . . Are you? . . . Tell me!” Somehow her hand was inside his, and he squeezed
it, while she looked away and blushed and at last breathed, “Yes, kind of.”

He almost embraced her, but—oh, it was a mistake to rush things, and he went on in his professional tone:

“But to go back to Sharon and our labors: it’s all right to be modest, but you ought to realize how enormously your
playing adds to the spirituality of the meetings.”

“I’m so glad you think so, but, honest, to compare me to Miss Falconer for bringing souls to Christ—why she’s just the
most wonderful person in the world.”

“That’s right. You bet she is.”

“Only I wish she felt like you do. I don’t really think she cares so much for my playing.”

“Well, she ought to! I’m not criticizing, you understand; she certainly is one of the greatest evangelists living; but
just between you and I, she has one fault—she doesn’t appreciate any of us—she thinks it’s her that does the whole darn
thing! As I say, I admire her, but, by golly, it does make me sore sometimes to never have her appreciate your music—I mean
the way it ought to be appreciated—see how I mean?”

“Oh, that is so nice of you, but I don’t deserve—”

“But I’VE always appreciated it, don’t you think, Lily?”

“Oh, yes, indeed you have, and it’s been such an encouragement—”

“Oh, well, say, I’m just tickled to death to have you say that, Lily.” A firmer pressure on her frail hand. “Do you LIKE
to have me like your music?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But do you like to have me like YOU?”

“Oh, yes. Of course, we’re all working together—oh, like sister and brother—”

“Lily! Don’t you think we might ever be, uh, don’t you think we could be just a little closer than sister and
brother?”

“Oh, you’re just being mean! How could you ever like poor little me when you belong to Sharon?”

“What do you mean? Me belong to Sharon? Say! I admire her tremendously, but I’m absolutely free, you can bet your life on
that, and just because I’ve always been kinda shy of you—you have such a kinda flower-like beauty, you might say, that no
man, no, not the coarsest, would ever dare to ruffle it—and because I’ve stood back, sorta feeling like I was protecting
you, maybe you think I haven’t appreciated all your qualities!”

She swallowed.

“Oh, Lily, all I ask for is the chance now and then, whenever you’re down in the mouth—and all of us must feel like that,
unless we think we’re the whole cheese and absolutely OWN the gospel game!—whenever you feel that way, lemme have the
privilege of telling you how greatly ONE fellow appreciates the loveliness that you scatter along the road!”

“Do you really feel that way? Maybe I can play the piano, but personally I’m nothing . . . nothing.”

“It isn’t true, it isn’t TRUE, dearest! Lily! It’s so like your modesty to not appreciate what sunshine you bring into
the hearts of all of us, dear, and how we cherish—”

The door shot open. In the doorway stood Sharon Falconer in a black-and-gold dressing-gown.

“Both of you,” said Sharon, “are discharged. Fired. Now! Don’t ever let me see your faces again. You can stay tonight,
but see to it that you’re out of the house before breakfast.”

“Oh, Miss Falconer—” Lily wailed, thrusting away Elmer’s hand. But Sharon was gone, with a bang of the door. They rushed
into the hall, they heard the key in her lock, and she ignored their rapping.

Lily glared at Elmer. He heard her key also, and he stood alone in the hall.