Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/160

 "Sure, I ain't making fun of the church. But lemme finish my sermon."

"Sure, let him finish his sermon."

"Where was I? . . . What is Love? It is the evening and the morning star—those vast luminaries that as they ride the purple abysms of the vasty firmament vouchsafe in their golden splendor the promise of higher and better things that—that—Well, say, you wise guys, would I make a great preacher or wouldn't I?"

The applause was such that the bartender came and looked at them funereally; and Elmer had to drink with each of them. That is, he drank with four of them.

But he was out of practise. And he had had no lunch.

He turned veal-white; sweat stood on his forehead and in a double line of drops along his upper lip, while his eyes were suddenly vacant.

Ad Locust squealed, "Say, look out! Elm's passing out!"

They got him up to Ad's room, one man supporting him on either side and one pushing behind, just before he dropped insensible, and all that afternoon, when he should have met the Flowerdale Baptist committee, he snored on Ad's bed, dressed save for his shoes and coat. He came to at six, with Ad bending over him, solicitous.

"God, I feel awful!" Elmer groaned.

"Here. What you need's a drink."

"Oh, Lord, I mustn't take any more," said Elmer, taking it. His hand trembled so that Ad had to hold the glass to his mouth. He was conscious that he must call up Deacon Eversley at once. Two drinks later he felt better, and his hand was steady. The Pequot bunch began to come in, with a view to dinner. He postponed his telephone call to Eversley till after dinner; he kept postponing it; and he found himself, at ten on Easter morning, with a perfectly strange young woman in a perfectly strange flat, and heard Ad Locust, in the next room, singing "How Dry I Am."

Elmer did a good deal of repenting and groaning before his first drink of the morning, after which he comforted himself, "Golly, I never will get to that church now. Well, I'll tell the committee I was taken sick. Hey, Ad! How'd we ever get here? Can we get any breakfast in this dump?"

He had two bottles of beer, spoke graciously to the young