Elmer Gantry (Unabridged). Sinclair Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ only way of putting it all over life was to understand these Forces that the scientists, with their laboratories and everything, couldn't savvy, but to a real Christian they were just as easy as rolling off a log —

      No. He hadn't taken any lab courses except Chemistry I, so he couldn't show where all these physicists and biologists were boobs.

      Elmer forlornly began to cross out the lovely scrawls he had made in his note-book.

      He was irritably conscious that Jim was awake, and scoffing:

      "Having quite a time being holy and informative, Hell-cat? Why don't you pinch your first sermon from the heathen? You won't be the first up-and-coming young messiah to do it!"

      Jim shied a thin book at him, and sank again into infidel sleep. Elmer picked up the book. It was a selection from the writings of Robert G. Ingersoll.

      Elmer was indignant.

      Take his speech from Ingersoll, that rotten old atheist that said — well, anyway, he criticized the Bible and everything! Fellow that couldn't believe the Bible, least he could do was not to disturb the faith of others. Darn' rotten thing to do! Fat nerve of Jim to suggest his pinching anything from Ingersoll! He'd throw the book in the fire!

      But — Anything was better than going on straining his brains. He forgot his woes by drugging himself with heedless reading. He drowsed through page on page of Ingersoll's rhetoric and jesting. Suddenly he sat up, looked suspiciously over at the silenced Jim, looked suspiciously at Heaven. He grunted, hesitated, and began rapidly to copy into the German notebook, from Ingersoll:

      Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for Music is the voice of Love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of the wondrous flower — the heart — and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven and we are gods.

      Only for a moment, while he was copying, did he look doubtful; then:

      "Rats! Chances are nobody there tonight has ever read Ingersoll. Agin him. Besides I'll kind of change it around."

       5

      When President Quarles called for him, Elmer's exhortation was outlined, and he had changed to his Sunday-best blue serge double-breasted suit and sleeked his hair.

      As they departed, Jim called Elmer back from the hall to whisper, "Say, Hell-cat, you won't forget to give credit to Ingersoll, and to me for tipping you off, will you?"

      "You go to hell!" said Elmer.

       6

      There was a sizable and extremely curious gathering at the Y.M.C.A. All day the campus had debated, "Did Hell-cat really sure-enough get saved? Is he going to cut out his hell-raising?"

      Every man he knew was present, their gaping mouths dripping question-marks, grinning or doubtful. Their leers confused him, and he was angry at being introduced by Eddie Fislinger, president of the Y.M.C.A.

      He started coldly, stammering. But Ingersoll had provided the beginning of his discourse, and he warmed to the splendor of his own voice. He saw the audience in the curving Y.M.C.A. auditorium as a radiant cloud, and he began to boom confidently, he began to add to his outline impressive ideas which were altogether his own — except, perhaps, as he had heard them thirty or forty times in sermons.

      It sounded very well, considering. Certainly it compared well with the average mystical rhapsody of the pulpit.

      For all his slang, his cursing, his mauled plurals and singulars, Elmer had been compelled in college to read certain books, to hear certain lectures, all filled with flushed, florid polysyllables, with juicy sentiments about God, sunsets, the moral improvement inherent in a daily view of mountain scenery, angels, fishing for souls, fishing for fish, ideals, patriotism, democracy, purity, the error of Providence in creating the female leg, courage, humility, justice, the agricultural methods of Palestine circ. 4 A.D., the beauty of domesticity, and preachers' salaries. These blossoming words, these organ-like phrases, these profound notions had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use.

      But even to the schoolboy-wearied faculty who had done the ramming, who ought to have seen the sources, it was still astonishing that after four years of grunting, Elmer Gantry should come out with these flourishes, which they took perfectly seriously, for they themselves had been nurtured in minute Baptist and Campbellite colleges.

      Not one of them considered that there could be anything comic in the spectacle of a large young man, divinely fitted for coal-heaving, standing up and wallowing in thick slippery words about Love and the Soul. They sat — young instructors not long from the farm, professors pale from years of napping in unaired pastoral studies — and looked at Elmer respectfully as he throbbed:

      "It's awful' hard for a fellow that's more used to bucking the line than to talking publicly to express how he means, but sometimes I guess maybe you think about a lot of things even if you don't always express how you mean, and I want to — what I want to talk about is how if a fellow looks down deep into things and is really square with God, and lets God fill his heart with higher aspirations, he sees that — he sees that Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds.

      "Yes, sir, just Love! It's the morning and evening star. It's — even in the quiet tomb, I mean those that are around the quiet tomb, you find it even there. What is it that inspires all great men, all poets and patriots and philosophers? It's Love, isn't it? What gave the world its first evidences of immortality? Love! It fills the world with melody, for what is music? What is music? Why! Music is the voice of love!"

      The great President Quarles leaned back and put on his spectacles, which gave a slight appearance of learning to his chin-whiskered countenance, otherwise that of a small-town banker in 1850. He was the center of a row of a dozen initiates on the platform of the Y.M.C.A. auditorium, a shallow platform under a plaster half-dome. The wall behind them was thick with diagrams, rather like anatomical charts, showing the winning of souls in Egypt, the amount spent on whisky versus the amount spent on hymn-books, and the illustrated progress of a pilgrim from Unclean Speech through Cigarette smoking and Beer Saloons to a lively situation in which he beat his wife, who seemed to dislike it. Above was a large and enlightening motto: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

      The whole place had that damp-straw odor characteristic of places of worship, but President Quarles did not, seemingly, suffer in it. All his life he had lived in tabernacles and in rooms devoted to thin church periodicals and thick volumes of sermons. He had a slight constant snuffle, but his organism was apparently adapted now to existing without air. He beamed and rubbed his hands, and looked with devout joy on Elmer's broad back as Elmer snapped into it, ever surer of himself; as he bellowed at the audience — beating them, breaking through their interference, making a touchdown:

      "What is it makes us different from the animals? The passion of Love! Without it, we are — in fact we are nothing; with it, earth is heaven, and we are, I mean to some extent, like God himself! Now that's what I wanted to explain about Love, and here's how it applies. Prob'ly there's a whole lot of you like myself — oh, I been doing it, I'm not going to СКАЧАТЬ