"Ever go hunting?"
"I, uh— Well, yes!"
"That's fine! Well, glad you're with us, Brother. Sorry I'm busy. Say, Mother and I expect you for supper tonight, six-thirty. Good luck!"
Benham's smile, his handshake, were cordial enough, but he was definitely giving dismissal, and Elmer went out in a fury alternating with despair. . . . To this, to the condescension of a rustic store-keeper, after the mounting glory with Sharon!
As he walked toward the house of the Widow Clark, to which a loafer directed him, he hated the shabby village, hated the chicken-coops in the yards, the frowsy lawns, the old buggies staggering by, the women with plump aprons and wet red arms—women who made his delights of amorous adventures seem revolting—and all the plodding yokels with their dead eyes and sagging jaws and sudden guffawing.
Fallen to this. And at thirty-two. A failure!
As he waited on the stoop of the square, white, characterless house of the Widow Clark, he wanted to dash back to the station and take the first train—anywhere. In that moment he decided to return to farm implements and the bleak lonely freedom of the traveling man. Then the screen door was opened by a jolly ringleted girl of fourteen or fifteen, who caroled, "Oh, is it Reverend Gantry! My, and I kept you waiting! I'm terrible sorry! Ma's just sick she can't be here to welcome you, but she had to go over to Cousin Etta's—Cousin Etta busted her leg. Oh, please do come in. My, I didn't guess we'd have a young preacher this time!"
She was charming in her excited innocence.
After a faded provincial fashion, the square hall was stately, with its Civil War chromos.
Elmer followed the child—Jane Clark, she was—up to his room. As she frisked before him, she displayed six inches of ankle above her clumsy shoes, and Elmer was clutched by that familiar feeling, swifter than thought, more elaborate than the strategy of a whole war, which signified that here was a girl he was going to pursue. But as suddenly—almost wistfully, in his weary desire for peace and integrity—he begged himself, "No! Don't! Not any more! Let the kid alone! Please be decent! Lord, give me decency and goodness!"
The struggle was finished in the half-minute of ascending the
