Elmer Gantry (Unabridged). Sinclair Lewis

give you an infallible rule. Never question the ways of the Lord!"

      "But why don't the doctors talk about having devils now?"

      "I have no time for vain arguments that lead nowhere! If you would think a little less of your wonderful powers of reasoning, if you'd go humbly to God in prayer and give him a chance, you'd understand the true spiritual significances of all these things."

      "But how about where Cain got his wife — "

      Most respectfully Jim said it, but Dr. Quarles (he had a chin-whisker and a boiled shirt) turned from him and snapped, "I have no further time to give you, young man! I've told you what to do. Good morning!"

      That evening Mrs. Quarles breathed, "Oh, Willoughby, did you 'tend to that awful senior — that Lefferts — that's trying to spread doubt? Did you fire him?"

      "No," blossomed President Quarles. "Certainly not. There was no need. I showed him how to look for spiritual guidance and — Did that freshman come and mow the lawn? The idea of him wanting fifteen cents an hour!"

      Jim was hair-hung and breeze-shaken over the abyss of hell, and apparently enjoying it very much indeed, while his wickedness fascinated Elmer Gantry and terrified him.

       5

      That November day of 1902, November of their Senior year, was greasy of sky, and slush blotted the wooden sidewalks of Gritzmacher Springs. There was nothing to do in town, and their room was dizzying with the stench of the stove, first lighted now since spring.

      Jim was studying German, tilted back in an elegant position of ease, with his legs cocked up on the desk tablet of the escritoire. Elmer lay across the bed, ascertaining whether the blood would run to his head if he lowered it over the side. It did, always.

      "Oh, God, let's get out and do something!" he groaned.

      "Nothing to do, Useless," said Jim.

      "Let's go over to Cato and see the girls and get drunk."

      As Kansas was dry, by state prohibition, the nearest haven was at Cato, Missouri, seventeen miles away.

      Jim scratched his head with a corner of his book and approved:

      "Well, that's a worthy idea. Got any money?"

      "On the twenty-eighth? Where the hell would I get any money before the first?"

      "Hell-cat, you've got one of the deepest intellects I know. You'll be a knock-out at the law. Aside from neither of us having any money, and me with a Dutch quiz tomorrow, it's a great project."

      "Oh, well — " sighed ponderous Elmer, feebly as a sick kitten, and lay revolving the tremendous inquiry.

      It was Jim who saved them from the lard-like weariness into which they were slipping. He had gone back to his book, but he placed it, precisely and evenly, on the desk, and rose.

      "I would like to see Nellie," he sighed. "Oh, man, I could give her a good time! Little Devil! Damn these co-eds here. The few that'll let you love 'em up, they hang around trying to catch you on the campus and make you propose to 'em."

      "Oh, gee! And I got to see Juanita," groaned Elmer. "Hey, cut out talking about 'em will you! I've got a palpitating heart right now, just thinking about Juanny!"

      "Hell-cat! I've got it. Go and borrow ten off this new instructor in chemistry and physics. I've got a dollar sixty-four left, and that'll make it."

      "But I don't know him."

      "Sure, you poor fish. That's why I suggested him! Do the check-failed-to-come. I'll get another hour of this Dutch while you're stealing the ten from him — "

      "Now," lugubriously, "you oughtn't to talk like that!"

      "If you're as good a thief as I think you are, we'll catch the five-sixteen to Cato."

      They were on the five-sixteen for Cato.

      The train consisted of a day coach, a combined smoker and baggage car, and a rusty old engine and tender. The train swayed so on the rough tracks as it bumped through the dropping light that Elmer and Jim were thrown against each other and gripped the arm of their seat. The car staggered like a freighter in a gale. And tall raw farmers, perpetually shuffling forward for a drink at the water-cooler, stumbled against them or seized Jim's shoulder to steady themselves.

      To every surface of the old smoking-car, to streaked windows and rusty ironwork and mud-smeared cocoanut matting, clung a sickening bitterness of cheap tobacco fumes, and whenever they touched the red plush of the seat, dust whisked up and the prints of their hands remained on the plush. The car was jammed. Passengers came to sit on the arm of their seat to shout at friends across the aisle.

      But Elmer and Jim were unconscious of filth and smell and crowding. They sat silent, nervously intent, panting a little, their lips open, their eyes veiled, as they thought of Juanita and Nellie.

      The two girls, Juanita Klauzel and Nellie Benton, were by no means professional daughters of joy. Juanita was cashier of the Cato Lunch — Quick Eats; Nellie was assistant to a dressmaker. They were good girls but excitable, and they found a little extra money useful for red slippers and nut-center chocolates.

      "Juanita — what a lil darling — she understands a fellow's troubles," said Elmer, as they balanced down the slushy steps at the grimy stone station of Cato.

      When Elmer, as a Freshman just arrived from the pool-halls and frame high school of Paris, Kansas, had begun to learn the decorum of amour, he had been a boisterous lout who looked shamefaced in the presence of gay ladies, who blundered against tables, who shouted and desired to let the world know how valiantly vicious he was being. He was still rather noisy and proud of wickedness when he was in a state of liquor, but in three and a quarter years of college he had learned how to approach girls. He was confident, he was easy, he was almost quiet; he could look them in the eye with fondness and amusement.

      Juanita and Nellie lived with Nellie's widow aunt — she was a moral lady, but she knew how to keep out of the way — in three rooms over a corner grocery. They had just returned from work when Elmer and Jim stamped up the rickety outside wooden steps. Juanita was lounging on a divan which even a noble Oriental red and yellow cover (displaying a bearded Wazir, three dancing ladies in chiffon trousers, a narghile, and a mosque slightly larger than the narghile) could never cause to look like anything except a disguised bed. She was curled up, pinching her ankle with one tired and nervous hand, and reading a stimulating chapter of Laura Jean Libbey. Her shirt-waist was open at the throat, and down her slim stocking was a grievous run. She was so un-Juanita-like — an ash-blonde, pale and lovely, with an ill-restrained passion in her blue eyes.

      Nellie, a buxom jolly child, dark as a Jewess, was wearing a frowsy dressing-gown. She was making coffee and narrating her grievances against her employer, the pious dressmaker, while Juanita paid no attention whatever. The young men crept into the room without knocking. "You devils — sneaking in like this, and us not dressed!" yelped Nellie.

      Jim sidled up to her, dragged her plump hand away from the handle of the granite-ware coffee-pot, and giggled, "But aren't you glad to see us?"

      "I don't know whether I am or not! Now you quit! You behave, will you?"

      Rarely did Elmer seem more deft than Jim Lefferts. But now he was feeling his command over women — certain sorts of women. Silent, yearning at Juanita, commanding her with hot eyes, he sank on the temporarily Oriental couch, touched her pale hand with his broad finger-tips, and murmured, "Why you poor kid, you look so tired!"

      "I am and — You hadn't ought to come here this afternoon. Nell's aunt threw a conniption fit the last time you were here."

      "Hurray for aunty! But you're glad to see me?"

      She would not answer.

      "Aren't you?"

      Bold eyes on hers that turned uneasily away, looked back, and sought the safety of the blank wall.

      "Aren't you?"

      She would