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.