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.
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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.