Elmer Gantry (4 page)

With alarmed evangelistic zeal, Jim Lefferts struggled to keep Elmer true to the faith, after his exposure to religion in
defending Eddie at Cato.

He was, on the whole, rather more zealous and fatiguing than Eddie.

Nights, when Elmer longed to go to sleep, Jim argued; mornings, when Elmer should have been preparing his history, Jim
read aloud from Ingersoll and Thomas Paine.

“How you going to explain a thing like this—how you going to explain it?” begged Jim. “It says here in Deuteronomy that
God chased these Yids around in the desert for forty years and their shoes didn’t even wear out. That’s what it SAYS, right
in the Bible. You believe a thing like that? And do you believe that Samson lost all his strength just because his gal cut
off his hair? Do you, eh? Think hair had anything to do with his strength?”

Jim raced up and down the stuffy room, kicking at chairs, his normally bland eyes feverish, his forefinger shaken in
wrath, while Elmer sat humped on the edge of the bed, his forehead in his hands, rather enjoying having his soul fought
for.

To prove that he was still a sound and freethinking stalwart, Elmer went out with Jim one evening and at considerable
effort, they carried off a small outhouse and placed it on the steps of the Administration Building.

Elmer almost forgot to worry after the affair of Eddie and Dr. Lefferts.

Jim’s father was a medical practitioner in an adjoining village. He was a plump, bearded, bookish, merry man, very proud
of his atheism. It was he who had trained Jim in the faith and in his choice of liquor; he had sent Jim to this
denominational college partly because it was cheap and partly because it tickled his humor to watch his son stir up the
fretful complacency of the saints. He dropped in and found Elmer and Jim agitatedly awaiting the arrival of Eddie.

“Eddie said,” wailed Elmer, “he said he was coming up to see me, and he’ll haul out some more of these proofs that I’m
going straight to hell. Gosh, Doctor, I don’t know what’s got into me. You better examine me. I must have anemics or
something. Why, one time, if Eddie Fislinger had smiled at me, damn him, think of HIM daring to smile at me!—if he’d said he
was coming to my room, I’d of told him, ‘Like hell you will!’ and I’d of kicked him in the shins.”

Dr. Lefferts purred in his beard. His eyes were bright.

“I’ll give your friend Fislinger a run for his money. And for the inconsequential sake of the non-existent Heaven, Jim,
try not to look surprised when you find your respectable father being pious.”

When Eddie arrived, he was introduced to a silkily cordial Dr. Lefferts, who shook his hand with that lengthiness and
painfulness common to politicians, salesmen, and the godly. The doctor rejoiced:

“Brother Fislinger, my boy here and Elmer tell me that you’ve been trying to help them see the true Bible religion.”

“I’ve been seeking to.”

“It warms my soul to hear you say that, Brother Fislinger! You can’t know what a grief it is to an old man tottering to
the grave, to one whose only solace now is prayer and Bible-reading”—Dr. Lefferts had sat up till four a.m., three nights
ago, playing poker and discussing biology with his cronies, the probate judge and the English stock-breeder—“what a grief it
is to him that his only son, James Blaine Lefferts, is not a believer. But perhaps you can do more than I can, Brother
Fislinger. They think I’m a fanatical old fogy. Now let me see—You’re a real Bible believer?”

“Oh, yes!” Eddie looked triumphantly at Jim, who was leaning against the table, his hands in his pockets, as
expressionless as wood. Elmer was curiously hunched up in the Morris chair, his hands over his mouth. The doctor said
approvingly:

“That’s splendid. You believe every word of it, I hope, from cover to cover?”

“Oh, yes. What
I
always say is, ‘It’s better to have the whole Bible than a Bible full of holes.’”

“Why, that’s a real thought, Brother Fislinger. I must remember that, to tell any of these alleged higher critics, if I
ever meet any! ‘Bible whole—not Bible full of holes.” Oh, that’s a fine thought, and cleverly expressed. You made it
up?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“I see, I see. Well, that’s splendid. Now of course you believe in the premillennial coming—I mean the real, authentic,
genuwine, immediate, bodily, premillennial coming of Jesus Christ?”

“Oh, yes, sure.”

“And the virgin birth?”

“Oh, you bet.”

“That’s splendid! Of course there are doctors who question whether the virgin birth is quite in accordance with their
experience of obstetrics, but I tell those fellows, ‘Look here! How do I know it’s true? Because it says so in the Bible,
and if it weren’t true, do you suppose it would say so in the Bible?’ That certainly shuts them up! They have precious
little to say after that!”

By this time a really beautiful, bounteous fellowship was flowing between Eddie and the doctor, and they were looking
with pity on the embarrassed faces of the two heretics left out in the cold. Dr. Lefferts tickled his beard and crooned:

“And of course, Brother Fislinger, you believe in infant damnation.”

Eddie explained, “No; that’s not a Baptist doctrine.”

“You—you—” The good doctor choked, tugged at his collar, panted and wailed:

“It’s not a Baptist doctrine? You don’t believe in infant damnation?”

“W-why, no—”

“Then God help the Baptist church and the Baptist doctrine! God help us all, in these unregenerate days, that we should
be contaminated by such infidelity!” Eddie sweat, while the doctor patted his plump hands and agonized: “Look you here, my
brother! It’s very simple. Are we not saved by being washed in the blood of the Lamb, and by that alone, by his blessed
sacrifice alone?”

“W-why, yes, but—”

“Then either we ARE washed white, and saved, or else we are not washed, and we are not saved! That’s the simple truth,
and all weakenings and explanations and hemming and hawing about this clear and beautiful truth are simply of the devil,
brother! And at what moment does a human being, in all his inevitable sinfulness, become subject to baptism and salvation?
At two months? At nine years? At sixteen? At forty-seven? At ninety-nine? No! The moment he is born! And so if he be not
baptized, then he must burn in hell forever. What does it say in the Good Book? ‘For there is none other name under heaven
given among men, whereby we must be saved.’ It may seem a little hard of God to fry beautiful little babies, but then think
of the beautiful women whom he loves to roast there for the edification of the saints! Oh, brother, brother, now I
understand why Jimmy here, and poor Elmer, are lost to the faith! It’s because professed Christians like you give them this
emasculated religion! Why, it’s fellows like you who break down the dike of true belief, and open a channel for higher
criticism and sabellianism and nymphomania and agnosticism and heresy and Catholicism and Seventh-day Adventism and all
those horrible German inventions! Once you begin to doubt, the wicked work is done! Oh, Jim, Elmer, I told you to listen to
our friend here, but now that I find him practically a free-thinker—”

The doctor staggered to a chair. Eddie stood gaping.

It was the first time in his life that any one had accused him of feebleness in the faith, of under-strictness. He was
smirkingly accustomed to being denounced as over-strict. He had almost as much satisfaction out of denouncing liquor as
other collegians had out of drinking it. He had, partly from his teachers and partly right out of his own brain, any number
of good answers to classmates who protested that he was old-fashioned in belaboring domino-playing, open communion,
listening to waltz music, wearing a gown in the pulpit, taking a walk on Sunday, reading novels, trans-substantiation, and
these new devices of the devil called moving— pictures. He could frighten almost any Laodicean. But to be called shaky
himself, to be called heretic and slacker—for that inconceivable attack he had no retort.

He looked at the agonized doctor, he looked at Jim and Elmer, who were obviously distressed at his fall from spiritual
leadership, and he fled to secret prayer.

He took his grief presently to President Quarles, who explained everything perfectly.

“But this doctor quoted Scripture to prove his point!” bleated Eddie.

“Don’t forget, Brother Fislinger, that ‘the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose.’”

Eddie thought that was a very nice thought and very nicely expressed, and though he was not altogether sure that it was
from the Bible, he put it away for future use in sermons. But before he was sufficiently restored to go after Elmer again,
Christmas vacation had arrived.

When Eddie had gone, Elmer laughed far more heartily than Jim or his father. It is true that he hadn’t quite understood
what it was all about. Why, sure; Eddie had said it right; infant damnation WASN’T a Baptist doctrine; it belonged to some
of the Presbyterians, and everybody knew the Presbyterians had a lot of funny beliefs. But the doctor certainly had done
something to squelch Eddie, and Elmer felt safer than for many days.

He continued to feel safe up till Christmas vacation. Then—

Some one, presumably Eddie, had informed Elmer’s mother of his new and promising Christian status. He himself had been
careful to keep such compromising rumors out of his weekly letters home. Through all the vacation he was conscious that his
mother was hovering closer to him than usual, that she was waiting to snatch at his soul if he showed weakening. Their home
pastor, the Reverend Mr. Aker—known in Paris as Reverend Aker—shook hands with him at the church door with approval as
incriminating as the affection of his instructors at Terwillinger.

Unsupported by Jim, aware that at any moment Eddie might pop in from his neighboring town and be accepted as an ally by
Mrs. Gantry, Elmer spent a vacation in which there was but little peace. To keep his morale up, he gave particularly earnest
attention to bottle-pool and to the daughter of a nearby farmer. But he was in dread lest these be the last sad ashen days
of his naturalness.

It seemed menacing that Eddie should be on the same train back to college. Eddie was with another exponent of piety, and
he said nothing to Elmer about the delights of hell, but he and his companion secretly giggled with a confidence more than
dismaying.

Jim Lefferts did not find in Elmer’s face the conscious probity and steadfastness which he had expected.

Early in January was the Annual College Y.M.C.A. Week of Prayer. It was a countrywide event, but in Terwillinger College
it was of especial power that year because they were privileged to have with them for three days none other than Judson
Roberts, State Secretary of the Y.M.C.A., and a man great personally as well as officially.

He was young, Mr. Roberts, only thirty-four, but already known throughout the land. He had always been known. He had been
a member of a star University of Chicago football team, he had played varsity baseball, he had been captain of the debating
team, and at the same time he had commanded the Y.M.C.A. He had been known as the Praying Fullback. He still kept up his
exercise—he was said to have boxed privily with Jim Jefferies—and he had mightily increased his praying. A very friendly
leader he was, and helpful; hundreds of college men throughout Kansas called him “Old Jud.”

Between prayer-meetings at Terwillinger, Judson Roberts sat in the Bible History seminar-room, at a long table, under a
bilious map of the Holy Land, and had private conferences with the men students. A surprising number of them came edging in,
trembling, with averted eyes, to ask advice about a secret practice, and Old Jud seemed amazingly able to guess their
trouble before they got going.

“Well, now, old boy, I’ll tell you. Terrible thing, all right, but I’ve met quite a few cases, and you just want to buck
up and take it to the Lord in prayer. Remember that he is able to help unto the uttermost. Now the first thing you want to
do is to get rid of—I’m afraid that you have some pretty nasty pictures and maybe a juicy book hidden away, now haven’t you,
old boy?”

How could Old Jud have guessed? What a corker!

“That’s right. I’ve got a swell plan, old boy. Make a study of missions, and think how clean and pure and manly you’d
want to be if you were going to carry the joys of Christianity to a lot of poor gazebos that are under the evil spell of
Buddhism and a lot of these heathen religions. Wouldn’t you want to be able to look ’em in the eye, and shame ’em? Next
thing to do is to get a lot of exercise. Get out and run like hell! And then cold baths. Darn’ cold. There now!” Rising,
with ever so manly a handshake: “Now, skip along and remember”—with a tremendous and fetching and virile laugh—“just run
like hell!”

Jim and Elmer heard Old Jud in chapel. He was tremendous. He told them a jolly joke about a man who kissed a girl, yet he
rose to feathered heights when he described the beatitude of real ungrudging prayer, in which a man was big enough to be as
a child. He made them tearful over the gentleness with which he described the Christchild, wandering lost by his parents,
yet the next moment he had them stretching with admiration as he arched his big shoulder-muscles and observed that he would
knock the block off any sneering, sneaking, lying, beer-bloated bully who should dare to come up to HIM in a meeting and try
to throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery by dragging out a lot of contemptible, quibbling, atheistic, smart-aleck doubts!
(He really did, the young men glowed, use the terms “knock the block off,” and “throw a monkey-wrench.” Oh, he was a lulu, a
real red-blooded regular fellow!)

Jim was coming down with the grippe. He was unable to pump up even one good sneer. He sat folded up, his chin near his
knees, and Elmer was allowed to swell with hero-worship. Golly! He’d thought he had some muscle, but that guy Judson
Roberts—zowie, he could put Elmer on the mat seven falls out of five! What a football player he must have been! Wee!

This Homeric worship he tried to explain to Jim, back in their room, but Jim sneezed and went to bed. The rude bard was
left without audience and he was practically glad when Eddie Fislinger scratched at the door and edged in.

“Don’t want to bother you fellows, but noticed you were at Old Jud’s meeting this afternoon and, say, you gotta come out
and hear him again tomorrow evening. Big evening of the week. Say, honest, Hell-cat, don’t you think Jud’s a real
humdinger?”

“Yes, I gotta admit, he’s a dandy fellow.”

“Say, he certainly is, isn’t he! He certainly is a dandy fellow, isn’t he! Isn’t he a peach!”

“Yes, he certainly is a peach—for a religious crank!”

“Aw now, Hell-cat, don’t go calling him names! You’ll admit he looks like some football shark.”

“Yes, I guess he does, at that. I’d liked to of played with him.”

“Wouldn’t you like to meet him?’”

“Well—”

At this moment of danger, Jim raised his dizzy head to protest, “He’s a holy strikebreaker! One of these thick-necks that
was born husky and tries to make you think he made himself husky by prayer and fasting. I’d hate to take a chance on any
poor little orphan nip of Bourbon wandering into Old Jud’s presence! Yeh! Chest-pounder! ‘Why can’t you hundred-pound
shrimps be a big manly Christian like me!’”

Together they protested against this defilement of the hero, and Eddie admitted that he had ventured to praise Elmer to
Old Jud; that Old Jud had seemed enthralled; that Old Jud was more than likely—so friendly a Great Man was HE—to run in on
Elmer this afternoon.

Before Elmer could decide whether to be pleased or indignant, before the enfeebled Jim could get up strength to decide
for him, the door was hit a mighty and heroic wallop, and in strode Judson Roberts, big as a grizzly, jolly as a spaniel
pup, radiant as ten suns.

He set upon Elmer immediately. He had six other doubting Thomases or suspected smokers to dispose of before six
o’clock.

He was a fair young giant with curly hair and a grin and with a voice like the Bulls of Bashan whenever the strategy
called for manliness. But with erring sisters, unless they were too erring, he could be as lulling as woodland violets
shaken in the perfumed breeze.

“Hello, Hell-cat!” he boomed. “Shake hands!”

Elmer had a playful custom of squeezing people’s hands till they cracked. For the first time in his life his own paw felt
limp and burning. He rubbed it and looked simple.

“Been hearing a lot about you, Hell-cat, and you, Jim. Laid out, Jim? Want me to trot out and get a doc?” Old Jud was
sitting easily on the edge of Jim’s bed, and in the light of that grin, even Jim Lefferts could not be very sour as he tried
to sneer, “No, thanks.”

Roberts turned to Elmer again, and gloated:

“Well, old son, I’ve been hearing a lot about you. Gee whillikins, that must have been a great game you played against
Thorvilsen College! They tell me when you hit that line, it gave like a sponge, and when you tackled that big long Swede, he
went down like he’d been hit by lightning.”

“Well, it was—it was a good game.”

“Course I read about it at the time—”

“Did you, honest?”

“—and course I wanted to hear more about it, and meet you, Hell-cat, so I been asking the boys about you, and say, they
certainly do give you a great hand! Wish I could’ve had you with me on my team at U of Chi—we needed a tackle like you.”

Elmer basked.

“Yes, sir, the boys all been telling me what a dandy fine fellow you are, and what a corking athlete, and what an A-1
gentleman. They all say there’s just one trouble with you, Elmer lad.”

“Eh?”

“They say you’re a coward.”

“Heh? WHO says I’m a coward?”

Judson Roberts swaggered across from the bed, stood with his hand on Elmer’s shoulder. “They all say it, Hell-cat! You
see it takes a sure-enough dyed-inthe-wool brave man to be big enough to give Jesus a shot at him, and admit he’s licked
when he tries to fight God! It takes a man with guts to kneel down and admit his worthlessness when all the world is jeering
at him! And you haven’t got that kind of courage, Elmer. Oh, you think you’re such a big cuss—”

Old Jud swung him around; Old Jud’s hand was crushing his shoulder. “You think you’re too husky, too good, to associate
with the poor little sniveling gospel-mongers, don’t you! You could knock out any of ’em, couldn’t you! Well, I’m one of
’em. Want to knock me out?”

With one swift jerk Roberts had his coat off, stood with a striped silk shirt revealing his hogshead torso.

“You bet, Hell-cat! I’m willing to fight you for the glory of God! God needs you! Can you think of anything finer for a
big husky like you than to spend his life bringing poor, weak, sick, scared folks to happiness? Can’t you see how the poor
little skinny guys and all the kiddies would follow you and praise you and admire you, you old son of a gun? Am I a sneaking
Christian? Can you lick me? Want to fight it out?”

“No, gee, Mr. Roberts—”

“Judson, you big hunk of cheese, Old Jud!”

“No, gee, Judson, I guess you got me trimmed! I pack a pretty good wallop, but I’m not going to take any chance on
you!”

“All right, old son. Still think that all religious folks are crabs?”

“No.”

“And weaklings and pikers?”

“No.”

“And liars?”

“Oh, no.”

“All right, old boy. Going to allow me to be a friend of yours, if I don’t butt in on your business?”

“Oh, gee, sure.”

“Then there’s just one favor I want to ask. Will you come to our big meeting tomorrow night? You don’t have to do a
thing. If you think we’re four-flushers—all right; that’s your privilege. Only will you come and not decide we’re all wrong
beforehand, but really use that big fine incisive brain of yours and study us as we are? Will you come?”

“Oh, yes, sure, you bet.”

“Fine, old boy. Mighty proud to have you let me come butting in here in this informal way. Remember: if you honestly feel
I’m using any undue influence on the boys, you come right after me and say so, and I’ll be mighty proud of your trusting me
to stand the gaff. So long, old Elm! So long, Jim. God bless you!”

“So long, Jud.”

He was gone, a whirlwind that whisked the inconspicuous herb Eddie Fislinger out after it. And THEN Jim Lefferts
spoke.

For a time after Judson Roberts’ curtain, Elmer stood glowing, tasting praise. He was conscious of Jim’s eyes on his
back, and he turned toward the bed, defiantly.

They stared, in a tug of war. Elmer gave in with a furious:

“Well, then, why didn’t you say something while he was here?”

“To him? Talk to a curly wolf when he smells meat? Besides, he’s intelligent, that fellow.”

“Well, say, I’m glad to hear you say that, because—well, you see— I’ll explain how I feel.”

“Oh, no, you won’t, sweetheart! You haven’t got to the miracle-pulling stage yet. Sure he’s intelligent. I never heard a
better exhibition of bunco-steering in my life. Sure! He’s just crazy to have you come up and kick him in the ear and tell
him you’ve decided you can’t give your imprimatur—”

“My WHAT?”

“—to his show, and he’s to quit and go back to hod-carrying. Sure. He read all about your great game with Thorvilsen.
Sent off to New York to get the Review of Reviews and read more about it. Eddie Fislinger never told him a word. He read
about your tackling in the London Times. You bet. Didn’t he say so? And he’s a saved soul—he couldn’t lie. And he just
couldn’t stand it if he didn’t become a friend of yours. He can’t know more than a couple of thousand collidge boys to
spring that stuff on! . . . You bet I believe in the old bearded Jew God! Nobody but him could have made all the idiots
there are in the world!”

“Gee, Jim, honest, you don’t understand Jud.”

“No. I don’t. When he could be a decent prize-fighter, and not have to go around with angleworms like Eddie Fislinger day
after day!”

And thus till midnight, for all Jim’s fevers.

But Elmer was at Judson Roberts’ meeting next evening, unprotected by Jim, who remained at home in so vile a temper that
Elmer had sent in a doctor and sneaked away from the room for the afternoon.

It was undoubtedly Eddie who wrote or telegraphed to Mrs. Gantry that she would do well to be present at the meeting.
Paris was only forty miles from Gritzmacher Springs.

Elmer crept into his room at six, still wistfully hoping to have Jim’s sanction, still ready to insist that if he went to
the meeting he would be in no danger of conversion. He had walked miles through the slush, worrying. He was ready now to
give up the meeting, to give up Judson’s friendship, if Jim should insist.

As he wavered in, Mrs. Gantry stood by Jim’s lightning-shot bed.

“Why, Ma! What you doing here? What’s gone wrong?” Elmer panted.

It was impossible to think of her taking a journey for anything less than a funeral.

Cozily, “Can’t I run up and see my two boys if I want to, Elmy? I declare, I believe you’d of killed Jim, with all this
nasty tobacco air, if I hadn’t 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.