Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1909 — PAID IN FULL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PAID IN FULL

Novelized From Eugene Walter’s Great Play

By JOHN W. HARDING

SYNOPSES OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I—lntroduces1 —Introduces Captain Amos Williams, president of the Latin-Ameri-can Steamship company, in very bad humor over a threatened strike of his dock laborers. Joseph Brooks, underpaid accountant and collector for Williams, expresses his sympathy for the strikers and is ridiculed by his fellow clerks. ll—The president sends for James Smith, superintendent of the company's docks, and instructs him to spare no expense in crushing the strikers. Smith advises pacific measures, but is overruled and prepares to obey orders.

CHAPTER 111. HE was a skillful architect im deed who first devised the bandbox apartment bouses so common now in all parts of New York and must have sat up many nights working out how to extricate the maximum of rent revenue from the area on which he had to fit the structure. If there were any flats In Harlem of smaller dimensions than the one of four rooms occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Brooks the most experienced and persistent hunter after a place in which to lodge his family with relative economy and some semblance of comfort would have had the time of his or her life finding it. And if other flats there were more luxuriously fitted tip. as easily might have been—ln fact, certainly must have been—the ?ase. at least there was none, whatversation, and, seeing that he was preoccupied and troubled, she ceased tc try to engage bls attention. “I paid the gas bill today.” he vouchsafed at length. “Ninety cents more than last month.” “Ninety cents more!” she commented with concern. “I’m sure we didn’t use half as much. And we owe the butcher four-sixty.” “Every month it costs more to live. I don’t know what we are going to do. I’m sure.” “I’m sorry, Joe. Goodness knows I try to be as economical as I can.” "I know, but it’s all wrong. It’s all wrong that you should be spoiling your hands with those beastly greasy pans. They weren’t meant for such work. I wish we could afford a hired girl." “So do 1. but we cftn’t, so what’s the use of wishing? Didn’t you get the raise you asked Captain Williams for?” she inquired. “No.” He bung his head and lapsed into gloomy silence. She dropped the morsel she was raising to her mouth and rose from the table, filled with dismay. her appetite completely gone. Tears of disappointment followed the realization of what the failure of their plans meant, for neither had doubted that his request would be cpmplled with, and she had built many castles in the air on the strength of it. A few dollars more a week added to their distressingly small income would have meant much to them. But, gazing at her husband sitting there utterly dejected and crushed, her heart went out to him in pity and love, and she moved over to his chair and put her arm consolingly round his neck. “Never mind, .Toe, boy,” she urged: “don’t look so solemn. We’re no worse off than we were before, and you’ll win out some day.” She placed her hand under his chin and raised his head to kiss him. He saw that she was smiling at-him encouragingly through her tears, but refused to be comforted. "I made out the payroll today,” he said. “Three other men in the office who also asked for a raise last month got it; so did Smith.” “What, Jlmsy?” she asked. “I said Smith. There’s only one Smith in the office,” he replied somewhat surlily. “Well, I’m glad for Jimsy’s sake he got what he wanted.” “1 think he told Williams to come across with more money or he’d quit." “How much did he ask for?” “Eighteen hundred.” “Eighteen hundred? My gracious, isn’t that fine?” “It means that he’ll be getting nearly $5,000 a year now. Great for him, isn’t it?” “Yes, indeed it Is.” “1 saw Jlmsy today. Asked him to come to supper. He said he would if he could.” “1 wonder why he didn’t?” Her busband did not answer immediately. When he did he burst out savagely : "Suppose he thought we couldn’t afford it. Two don’t eat as much as three.” j “Why. Joe, how absurd,'” she laughed, beginning to gather up the supper plates. “Jlmsy knows it’s pot luck.” “That’s the trouble. Jlmsy knows—your mother knows—Williams knows—everybody knows, and they’re always talking about how you’ve got to work and slave because you married me and all that sort of stuff.” “Jlmsy doesn’t.” “Well, he thinks it, and your mother's always rubbing it in. harping on the same old string—that I ain’t worthy of you, that it's a shame the way you have to work and slave, that I don't seem to get along at all and that IoT-

"Oh. don’t mind mother; you Know her." "She bever did want us to marry.” v “But dear old dad did. and be was the one I wanted to please—after you, Joe. of course. Mother is just a bit peculiar. I’m sure she doesn't understand me much, hnd I’m equally sure that 1 don’t understand her, so we won’t bother about her. Just sweep up a bit, will you. while 1 wash the dishes? Jimsy may drop in by and by.” Brooks went into the kitchen, donned an apron from force of habit instilled into him by his wife, ever careful of his clothes, and reappeared with a carpet broom and a dust cloth. He was laboring under excitement, as was manifest by the reckless manner tn which he used the broom. Finally, with an expression of determination, he said in n firm voice: “Emma, you know it will be six months or a year before I get another chance at a raise—unless, of course, 1 quit and get a job somewhere else. I was thinking that perhaps you’re tired and want to call it off.” “Call what off?” “Why, everything—the whole business. I mean our marriage.” he said desperately. Her eyes opened wide with incredulous astonishment /‘You mean separation?” “That’s exactly what I mean.” “What for—because I’m tired?” “Something like that.” “What an idea! You must have the blues badly to talk such nonsense as that. Don’t you think it would be as well to watt until I complain?” “You have complained.” , "No—at least I can’t remember.” “Not in words, but”— “But what?” “Look here.” he said impatiently, “don’t you suppose I have eyes? Don’t you suppose I have feelings? I’ve seen —I know that you’re sick of this drudgery and all the rest—sick of it and sorry’. There’s Smith with his five thousand—he wanted you first. You could have”— She interrupted him sharply, her face flushing. “Joe!” “Well, I think”— “That’s enough of that!” “Oh, well.” he declared sullenly, turning away and dropping into a chair. “1 didn’t mean”— She followed him and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Joe, I married you because 1 loved you,” she said gently, “and for nothing else in the world. There wasn't any influence except that, and that overcame all the rest—mother and all of them.” “I know all about that.” “There has been a little hard luck”— “There has been a precious sight too much of it” “I know you haven't been treated right, but bad luck and ups and downs are what a woman ought to expect when she marries. She has to take the bad as well as the good, and she ought to know enough to accept the one as cheerfully as the other when the bad is nobody’s fault. That is

what I think, and that Is what I have tried to do. But there are some thlngs”She paused, reluctant to carry her thoughts further Into words. c “What? You may as well say all you’ve got to say while you’re about It,” he snapped. “It’s just this,” she went on. “Never refer to Jimsy in the way you did. I married you, Joe. Please try and leave unsaid things that mlyM make me regret IL” He ventured no further remark and lapsed Into his gloomy reflections. Emma put her arm around his neck and snuggled her face against his. “Poor old boy!” she murmured. “That setback we got today when we had It all fixed up was enough to make you feel sore and glum. Never mind; cheer up. You know what Jimsy says, ‘Hard luck can give you an awful battle, but If you’re on the square you can hand It a knockout punch some time/ ” It was no use, however. Joe’s sulkiness had sunk in; his temper was vicious, deep and Ingrowing, a temper such as she had never suspected in him, and all her petting, all her loving coaxing, could not him from it She pressed her cheek more closely to his and fondled him, but he jerked away from her embrace and surlily sought another chair. As he did so the .bell rang from downstairs. “Pl! bet that's Jimsy now.” he mut-

tered. - Much hurt, but disguising her feelings, Emma hurried Into the kitchen and pressed the button that opened the entrance door of the bouse. (To be Continued.)

“Joe, I married you because I loved you.”