THE KING OF THE PLEDGERS
By H. R. R. Hertzberg
The Editor of Life,
31 West 17th Street,
New York City.
I send this communication to you rather than to the editor of one of the country’s daily papers, because your publication is national and even international, instead of being a more or less local one, and also because the sketch of my life it contains, true though it is, has an appearance sufficiently fictional to fit one of your short-story numbers.
My special purpose in wishing to have this autobiographical sketch published is that it may warn and protect a worthy body of men, the Roman Catholic priesthood of the United States, against a class of grafters which preys upon them and of which I was the “King” for nearly ten years.
But, knowing mankind in general, and myself in particular, fairly well, I have no doubt there is another reason for the wish, to wit, that vanity of vanities which compels all crooks, “con”-men, grafters, to brag of their exploits occasionally, and which—through a perverse viewing of viciousness as prowess—causes the most of men to be prouder of their falls from grace than of the good things they have done.
· · · · · · ·
Up to this very day ten years ago I was wealthy and happy. The wealth I had inherited and the happiness I had married. Then my happiness died—with my wife. And, the same evening, my wealth disappeared—with a dishonest manager.
There was nothing left me but our little daughter, a child of eight, and some two thousand dollars. The former I gave into the care of the Dominican Sisters at whose convent, in a small Eastern town, my wife had been educated, and who would, I felt sure, make a true woman and lady of the girl. And the money I also turned over to the nuns, for my child’s keep as a boarding-pupil, until she was eighteen.
So I remained alone with my responsibility: the need of providing for my daughter’s later future. This purpose simply had to be achieved, and that within ten years—because, when I recovered from the sickness, partly brought about by my wife’s death, the doctor, a scientist of note and a close friend, told me frankly that I was afflicted with a disease of the heart which would not let me live no longer than a decade, and this only if I remained as exceptionally temperate as I had always been.
God knows I did my best to obtain honest and fairly remunerative work. My very best. But I failed utterly. And, finally, I came to think of work that was not honest. Grafting began to seem almost a duty, what with my pennilessness and my responsibility. Still, I did not know how to graft, not at all.
A bit of street-corner talk it was that “put me wise.” I heard a fellow ask another to have a drink, and I heard the other’s answer: “No,” said he, “no more of that for mine. I’ve bin to Father O’Kelly’s ’n’ took the pledge fer keeps, ’n’ the good man’s give me five dollars to help the wife ’n’ the baby till I c’n git a new job.”
“He has taken the pledge and the priest has given him five dollars!” I repeated to myself. And then what poets call an inspiration came to me: there might be money in taking the pledge continually, as a business. First, I smiled at the odd, phantastically sacrilegious conceit. But I grew serious—the Responsibility (yes, it should be spelled with a capital) looming large in my mind’s eyes. Soon I was walking rapidly toward the nearest Catholic church and calling for the pastor, a priest whom I did not know and who did not know me. My clothes were rather shabby by this time and I may have looked dissipated, thanks to my several months’ incessant “worrying.”
And the priest received me, and I took the pledge “before God and His Mother and the whole Court of Heaven”; and the kindly old Father asked me whether I was in need, and, when I stammered a “yes,” he gave me a bill and his blessing, and I was again on the street, a successful grafter.
To appreciate the enormity of my self-contempt at that moment you must know that I had steadily been not only what is usually meant by “a gentleman,” but, also, a sincere, practical Catholic, while now I was a petty swindler—and a swindler of my Church.
Almost did I return to the priest and tell him the truth. Responsibility appeared, however, and led me away. At a distance from the priest’s house I looked at my “thirty pieces of silver” which were a ten-dollar greenback. Then I judged that my appearance—of decent poverty—was an asset of sorts, that the “gentleman-gone-wrong” naturally elicited more sympathy of heart and purse than the commoner bar-room loafer.
Thereafter I became the King of the Pledgers.
Yes, there are many pledgers in the land. Professional pledge-takers, who are also professional drunkards. For Catholic priests are easily imposed on, since they’re almost always warm-hearted men and since their faith and their calling render charity, helpfulness, imperative; impel them to extend the benefit of the doubt to every applicant, however worthless-looking, for fear of sinning against charity. Wherefore, even the least plausible pledger is sure to pocket a donation each time he takes the pledge.
The professional pledger must be a traveller, of course. The most of cities can be “worked to a finish” in a week. But there are three, at least, which have kept even the King of the Pledgers, with all his sobriety and diligence, busy for four or five months.
As I have said, I was exceedingly successful. Two weeks ago my bank account, piled up through pledging only, totalled $9,902. With eighty-eight additional dollars I would have enough to purchase for my daughter the annuity—sufficient to keep her comfortable all her life—that was the object of my more than nine years’ swindling.
Three times had I visited the little one since I took her to the convent. The last time she was sixteen and a happy, gentle, flower-like girl, gladdeningly and saddeningly like her mother. And I wrote her and heard from her every month.
Well, that day, two weeks ago, when I’d found myself so near my goal, I went out to “work” as usual. My victim was a young priest just ordained, the son of a multi-millionaire, who had given up a brilliant worldly position. I was the first person to whom he administered the pledge. He was moved to the core. And he gave me ... one hundred dollars.
My life work was done.
In almost childlike glee I ran back to my room there to draw the check necessary for the immediate purchase of my girl’s annuity. And there I found a letter from the child.
She asked for my fatherly consent—that she might enter the Dominican Sister’s Order as a novice. She had a true vocation, said she, had always meant to be a nun. And now that she was eighteen ... “it is my heart’s wish, father, dear,” were her words. A note from the Mother Superior confirmed her declaration.
Having read, I fell back in my chair and laughed crazily at the joke that was “on me.” Then I thanked God for the child. And then I wrote a check for all the money I had, went to my last victim at once, told him everything, handed him my check and his hundred dollars—to spend in charity but not by way of gifts to pledgers, and fell into unconsciousness.
From that hour on I have been dying in a hospital bed. My daughter has received my consent, and the young priest will send her her father’s love and last blessing when I am dead, in a day or so. And I shall die in peace.
Very truly yours,
The ex-King of the Pledgers.