than in his worst days of unregeneracy.
He asked the president and the dean if they had had a Call. Oh, yes, certainly; but they were vague about practical tips as to how to invite a Call and recognize it when it came. He was reluctant to ask Eddie — Eddie would be only too profuse with tips, and want to kneel down and pray with him, and generally be rather damp and excitable and messy.
The Call did not come, not for weeks, with Easter past and no decision as to what he was going to do next year.
2
Spring on the prairie, high spring. Lilacs masked the speckled brick and stucco of the college buildings, spiraea made a flashing wall, and from the Kansas fields came soft airs and the whistle of meadow larks.
Students loafed at their windows, calling down to friends; they played catch on the campus; they went bareheaded and wrote a great deal of poetry; and the Terwillinger baseball team defeated Fogelquist College.
Still Elmer did not receive his divine Call.
By day, playing catch, kicking up his heels, belaboring his acquaintances, singing "The happiest days that ever were, we knew at old Terwillinger" on a fence fondly believed to resemble the Yale fence, or tramping by himself through the minute forest of cottonwood and willow by Tunker Creek, he expanded with the expanding year and knew happiness.
The nights were unadulterated hell.
He felt guilty that he had no Call, and he went to the president about it in mid-May.
Dr. Quarles was thoughtful, and announced;
"Brother Elmer, the last thing I'd ever want to do, in fairness to the spirit of the ministry, would be to create an illusion of a Call when there was none present. That would be like the pagan hallucinations worked on the poor suffering followers of Roman Catholicism. Whatever else he may be, a Baptist preacher must be free from illusions; he must found his work on good hard scientific facts — the proven facts of the Bible, and substitutionary atonement, which even pragmatically we know to be true, because it works. No, no! But at the same time I feel sure the voice of God is calling you, if you can but hear it, and I want to help you lift the veil of worldliness which still, no doubt, deafens your inner ear. Will you come to my house tomorrow evening? We'll take the matter to the Lord in prayer."
It was all rather dreadful.
That kindly spring evening, with a breeze fresh in the branches of the sycamores, President Quarles had shut the windows and drawn the blinds in his living-room, an apartment filled with crayon portraits of Baptist worthies, red-plush chairs, and leaded-glass unit bookcases containing the lay writings of the more poetic clergy. The president had gathered as assistants in prayer the more aged and fundamentalist ex-pastors on the faculty and the more milky and elocutionary of the Y.M.C.A. leaders, headed by Eddie Fislinger.
When Elmer entered, they were on their knees, their arms on the seats of reversed chairs, their heads bowed, all praying aloud and together. They looked up at him like old women surveying the bride. He wanted to bolt. Then the president nabbed him, and had him down on his knees, suffering and embarrassed and wondering what the devil to pray about.
They took turns at telling God what he ought to do in the case of "our so ardently and earnestly seeking brother."
"Now will you lift your voice in prayer, Brother Elmer? Just let yourself go. Remember we're all with you, all loving and helping you," grated the president.
They crowded near him. The president put his stiff old arm about Elmer's shoulder. It felt like a dry bone, and the president smelled of kerosene. Eddie crowded up on the other side and nuzzled against him. The others crept in, patting him. It was horribly hot in that room, and they were so close — he felt as if he were tied down in a hospital ward. He looked up and saw the long shaven face, the thin tight lips, of a minister...whom he was now to emulate.
He prickled with horror, but he tried to pray. He wailed, "O blessed Lord, help me to — help me to — "
He had an enormous idea. He sprang up. He cried, "Say, I think the spirit is beginning to work and maybe if I just went out and took a short walk and kinda prayed by myself, while you stayed here and prayed for me, it might help."
"I don't think that would be the way," began the president, but the most aged faculty-member suggested, "Maybe it's the Lord's guidance. We hadn't ought to interfere with the Lord's guidance, Brother Quarles."
"That's so, that's so," the president announced. "You have your walk, Brother Elmer, and pray hard, and we'll stay here and besiege the throne of grace for you."
Elmer blundered out into the fresh clean air.
Whatever happened, he was never going back! How he hated their soft, crawly, wet hands!
He had notions of catching the last train to Cato and getting solacingly drunk. No. He'd lose his degree, just a month off now, and be cramped later in appearing as a real, high-class, college-educated lawyer.
Lose it, then! Anything but go back to their crawling creepy hands, their aged breathing by his ear —
He'd get hold of somebody and say he felt sick and send him back to tell Prexy and sneak off to bed. Cinch! He just wouldn't get his Call, just pass it up, by Jiminy, and not have to go into the ministry.
But to lose the chance to stand before thousands and stir them by telling about divine love and the evening and morning star — If he could just stand it till he got through theological seminary and was on the job — Then, if any Eddie Fislinger tried to come into his study and breathe down his neck — throw him out, by golly!
He was conscious that he was leaning against a tree, tearing down twigs, and that facing him under a street-lamp was Jim Lefferts.
"You look sick, Hell-cat," said Jim.
Elmer strove for dignity, then broke, with a moaning, "Oh, I am! What did I ever get into this religious fix for?"
"What they doing to you? Never mind; don't tell me. You need a drink."
"By God, I do!"
"I've got a quart of first-rate corn whisky from a moonshiner I've dug up out here in the country, and my room's right in this block. Come along."
Through his first drink, Elmer was quiet, bewildered, vaguely leaning on the Jim who would guide him away from this horror.
But he was out of practice in drinking, and the whisky took hold with speed. By the middle of the second glass he was boasting of his ecclesiastical eloquence, he was permitting Jim to know that never in Terwillinger College had there appeared so promising an orator, that right now they were there praying for him, waiting for him, the president and the whole outfit!
"But," with a slight return of apology, "I suppose prob'ly you think maybe I hadn't ought to go back to 'em."
Jim was standing by the open window, saying slowly, "No. I think now — You'd better go back. I've got some peppermints. They'll fix your breath, more or less. Good-by, Hell-cat."
He had won even over old Jim!
He was master of the world, and only a very little bit drunk.
He stepped out high and happy. Everything was extremely beautiful. How high
