An instant he saw Jim Lefferts, and heard him insist: “Why, sure, course they believe it. They hypnotize themselves. But don’t let ’em hypnotize you!”
He saw Jim’s eyes, that for him alone veiled their bright harshness and became lonely, asking for comradeship. He struggled; with all the blubbering confusion of a small boy set on by his elders, frightened and overwhelmed, he longed to be honest, to be true to Jim—to be true to himself and his own good honest sins and whatsoever penalties they might carry. Then the visions were driven away by voices that closed over him like surf above an exhausted swimmer. Volitionless, marveling at the sight of himself as a pinioned giant, he was being urged forward, forced forward, his mother on one arm and Judson on the other, a rhapsodic mob following.
Bewildered. Miserable. . . . False to Jim.
But as he came to the row kneeling in front of the first pew, he had a thought that made everything all right. Yes! He could have both! He could keep Judson and his mother, yet retain Jim’s respect. He had only to bring Jim also to Jesus, then all of them would be together in beatitude!
Freed from misery by that revelation, he knelt, and suddenly his voice was noisy in confession, while the shouts of the audience, the ejaculations of Judson and his mother, exalted him to hot self-approval and made it seem splendidly right to yield to the mystic fervor.
He had but little to do with what he said. The willing was not his but the mob’s; the phrases were not his but those of the emotional preachers and hysterical worshipers whom he had heard since babyhood:
“O God, oh, I have sinned! My sins are heavy on me! I am unworthy of compassion! O Jesus, intercede for me! Oh, let thy blood that was shed for me be my salvation! O God, I do truly repent of my great sinning and I do long for the everlasting peace of thy bosom!”
“Oh, praise God,” from the multitude, and “Praise his holy name! Thank God, thank God, thank God! Oh, hallelujah, Brother, thank the dear loving God!”
He was certain that he would never again want to guzzle, to follow loose women, to blaspheme; he knew the rapture of salvation—yes, and of being the center of interest in the crowd.
Others about him were beating their foreheads, others were shrieking, “Lord, be merciful,” and one woman—he remembered her as a strange, repressed, mad-eyed special student who was not known to have any friends—was stretched out, oblivious of the crowd, jerking, her limbs twitching, her hands clenched, panting rhythmically.