Buck nodded.
"I see."
"All I see is--perhaps through our efforts--we've turned loose a hell of drunkenness and debauchery upon earth. These people--perhaps through our efforts--have been driven along the very path we would rather have saved them from. The majority will end in disaster. Some have already done so. But for our help this would not have been."
"They'd jest have starved."
"We should not have sold our farm, and Ike and Pete would have been alive now."
"In Ike's case it would have been a pity."
The Padre smiled. He took Buck's protest for what it was worth.
"Yes, life's pretty twisted. It's always been the same with me. Wherever I've got busy trying to help those I had regard for I generally managed to find my efforts working out with a result I never reckoned on. That's why I am here."
The Padre smoked on for some moments in silence.
"I was hot-headed once," he went on presently. "I was so hot-headed that I--I insulted the woman I loved. I insulted her beyond forgiveness. You see, she didn't love me. She loved my greatest friend. Still, that's another story. It's the friend I want to talk about. He was a splendid fellow. A bright, impetuous gambler on the New York Stock Exchange. We were both on Wall Street. I was a gambler too. I was a lucky gambler, and he was an unlucky one. In spite of my love for the woman, who loved him, it was my one great desire to help him. My luck was such that I believed I could do it--my luck and my conceit. You see, next to the woman I loved he was everything in the world to me. Do you get that?"
Buck nodded.
"Well, in spite of all I could and did do, after a nice run of luck which made me think his affairs had turned for the better, a spell of the most terrible ill-luck set in. There was no checking it. He rode headlong for a smash. I financed him time and again, nearly ruining myself in my effort to save him. He took to drink badly. He grew desperate in his gambling. In short, I saw he had given up all hope. Again I did the best I could. I was always with him. My object was to endeavor to keep him in check. In his drinking bouts I was with him, and when he insisted on poker and other gambling I was there to take a hand. If I hadn't done these things--well, others would have, but with a different object. By a hundred devices I managed to minimize the bad results of his wild, headstrong career.