Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1910 — PAID IN FULL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PAID IN FULL

Novelized From Eugene Walter's Great Play

...By... JOHN W. HARDING

SYNOPBIB OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I—lntroduces1 —Introduces Captain Amos Williams, president of the. Latln-Amerl-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. II —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. Ill—Mrs. Emma Brooks, the handsome young wife of the discontented clerk, tries to encourage him on his return to their bandbox apartment, but he is bitter against his employer and also against his wife’s mother and sister, who dislike him on account of his Inability to gain position. In his desperation he turns on his wife and suggests that she must regret her choice of him when she might have had Smith, who had offered himself. IV—Smith, who is the Intimate friend of the family, makes his appearance on the scene, and Brooks continues his bitter arraignment of hlB employer and violent protest against hts own impoverished condition. The discussion becomes rather personal, gnd Brooks takes his hat and leaves the premises. V—Accompanied by Captain Williams, who is an old friend of the family, Mrs. Harris and daughter Beth, mother and sister of Mrs. Brooks, enter the room. During the visit Brooks returns and makes a scene, accusing Williams of being the cause of his unhapeiness. Mrs. Brooks reminds her husand of his breach of hospitality, and he apollglzes and leaves the house. VI When Brooks returns he astonishes his Wife and Smith by Inviting them to go to the theater. Smith offers to lend him 110, but he declines. Brooks extracts 810 from a roll of money collected for ihs company. Vll—Smith prevents a strike. Vlll—Williams and Smith go to South America, and Brooks' prospects Improve. Brooks tells hts wife that he has been promoted and money Is plentiful. The couple move Into an expensive apartment hotel, and Mrs. Harris ceases to reproach them for their poverty. IX— Smith makes his appearance suddenly and Informs Brooks that Williams knows of his dishonesty and that the going to South America was only a scheme to entrap him and that he Is shadowed by detectives. X and Xl—Smith tries to prepare Mrs. Brooks for the exposure by telling a story. Williams enters, and Emma thanks him for the change in their circumstances. He looks amazed, and Smith tries te avoid a climax. The captain takes the cue and holds his peace. Brooks enters suddenly and Is terrified. Williams goes, and Smith tries to keep up the delusion, but Brooks breaks down and confesses all to his wife. She asks Smith to le; ve them. XII —Emma endeavors to comfort him with her love and sympathy. Maddened by his disgrace and peril, he accuses her of being the cause of his downfall. Bhe declares herself willing to do anything to save him, and he asks he to go alone, late at night as it Is, to Williams' bachelor rpartment and obtain his freedom He tells her that the captain Is fond of her and will do what she asks. When she realises the baseness of the proposition she Is stunned, but finally consents. Brooks arranges the rendezvous by telephone, xm— While waiting for Mrs. Brooks, Williams has a call from Smith, who offers to pay the amount of Brooks’ stealings In full. Williams refuses, and Smith warns him to be careful In his treatment of the culprit’s wlfa. awaits his wife s return In an agony of suspense. Mrs. Harris and her daughter happen In and demand the reason of his wife's absence. XV—Mrs. Brooks meets Captain Williams and secures her husband’s freedom. XVI and XVII— Tbe wife returns home, Informs Brooks that she has succeeded and tells him that she regards the debt paid In full; that there has been no loss of honor; but that her love for him Is dead. He attempts to shake her resolution to give him up and finally tries to strangle her into submission. She is rescued by Smith and goes home to her mother XVin —Tells of the further doings of the separted pair, XlX—Brooks wearies of his release, goes to Smith and proposes that the latter act a a mediator. Smith consents.

CHAPTBK XX. UP in ttie Catskills tbe sun had the whole sky to itself. Everything? presaged a hot day. Early though the hour was —the clock had not yet struck o—Emma was out on the piazza, dressed for walking. She wore a cool, clinging costume of pale straw colored tussab •o short that It descended little below the tops of her high buttoned light tan •hoes. A soft felt hat, such as men travelers roll up and carry In their pockets, was secured to her fair hair by a hatpin, and Its limp border hung down and shaded her eyes. These, of a blue that rivaled the heavens, were sparkling with admiration of the scene, and her cheeks glowed with health. She made a lovely picture as she stood gazing out Into the valley. Jimsy Smith, who had stopped on the road above on his way from the hotel, where he had put up the night before and of whose presence there at that moment she was quite unconscious, thought he had never seen any picture so beautiful in all his life. But, then, Jlmsy’s Judgment was biased. lie had always considered Emma pretty and found something to admire in her even when, with grimy hands and in aolled cotton dress, she was engaged In the unpoeticai occupation of polishing the kitchen Btove. Beth, her hair twisted into little ware knots with queer pins and nttired iu a pink wrapper, joined her. “Why don’t you get your things on and come with us?” urged Emma. “Jimsy will be here at 6 o’clock.” "Me? North mountain? No, thank jou! I bad enough walking yesterday. Pm going to church; mother’s coming too. We didn’t go last Sunday, and the whole park will be gossiping if tbe - family Isn’t represented sometimes by «ome ona or other. They’ll think jve’re *ll pagans. Besides, I'm going to wear the new gown Jimsy brought up for me from the dressmaker’s. Wasn’t it f?: lucky he was coming? It wouldn’t lure been here till Tuesday or Wednesday. That man’s always on hand Just rajpiuu he’s wanted. Won’t those Par000* girls surer

Jlmsy walked down through the laurel bower. “Beth,” he said by way of salutation, “that's the most common sense mountain climbing outfit I ever saw.” “It’s very rude to make remarks about people’s clothing when they’re not dressed to receive,” she retorted. “You're not privileged to express any opinion. It’s too early. But it's quite impossible to stay abed with Emma carrying on as if it was the middle of the day. She's been humming all over the house since 5 o’clock, aiid all that because she’s going for a climb.” "Why, she hasn’t slept a wink thinking of her new dress,” laughed Emma. “Well, Beth, by the time you’ve got your halo out of curl and settle down In your pew,” observed Smith, “we shall be several hundred feet nearer the other cherubs, listening to the sol-

emn anthems of the whispering pines. Yes, I said ‘the solemn anthems of the whispering pines.’ ” “Jimsy, if I didn’t know different I’d suspect you of being a poet. The next thing we know you’ll be wearing your hair long and pouring out your soul in Sapphic strophes, like—like Emma, here.” “I don’t know that I’ve sampled that particular brand of strophes, and I ain’t quite sure that I know Just what strophes are, but if Emma thinks they are all right I’ll stand for ’em.” “Oh, come on, Jimsy; don’t listen to her nonsense,” laughed Emma. They started out briskly, Emma showing the way. “Do you know, It’s a real treat to go walking with you,” she said. “I know you love it I’ve heard you say so. Beth can’t bear long walks, and, as for mother, she rarely goes farther than her piazza rocking chair. But I’ve dragged Beth about and learned every path through the woods to the summits and plateaus. This Is the second summer I’ve been here, you know.” Deserting the beaten path, they ascended through forests of trees of every description, but as they proceeded along the path, in places ankle deep In wet moss, and pushed through underbrush that kept Smith busy breaking a way for his dainty but hardy and seemingly tireless companion they came Into the fir region, amid hoary giants that shot sheer to such a height that they seemed to form pillars for the canopy of the heavens. Emma regarded the great trees with awe, but Smith laughed. He told her they were as saplings compared with the mighty trees of the west. He tried to describe these and became filled with the fever of Immensity. The long unfelt Influence of the borderless prairies, the mammoth mountain chains fur flung through the prodigious spaces of the sunset lands that diminished their proportions, was upon him. His soul strained to burst Its tethers and soar upward Into the infinite, whore it could expand unrestrained. Burning words, never used, uniqmglned before in bis unlettered mind, adequate to depict this liberated spirituality, surged tumultuously to his lips—to die there. For the source of their inspiration, of this tremeudous flight into the dluine uzure from his regulated role of the commonplace and coldly practical, was the woman at his side, the one being iu the world who was dear to him and ever had been, whom he held in little less revercoice than he did his Maker. He broke off his description of the forest giants and vast freedoms of the west with a conclusion in his ordinary street surface lunguage. “But tuenf—it's no use me trying to do any lecture platform stunts. 1 wasn’t bom with the gift of the gab. Emma, them things have got to be seen to bu appreciated. There’s no other way. You understand.” Yes, Emma understood. She had listened to his brief, unsuspected eloquence and had read bis soul in the light of the celestial flicker that had emanated from It; had seen the glory of It In his face—a glory transient as a beacon flash, that was gone from It, leaving only bis habitual noncommittal smile, as be turned to her and said, “You understand,” 1 They continued tbe climb in silence, Emma’s bosom rising and falling rapidly upon the rush and swirl of the torrent that raged beneath it. almost sweeping her self control before it Jimsy indoed loved her! Why bad this chance revelation of what her intuition had divined long before torn

open the floodgates of her own emotions! Because it hod set vibrating every chord of her being, and every cbord of that being, as she had come to understand also, was attuned to his. Together they had beheld the mirage of heaven. At the upper edge of the forest labyrinth they emerged on to a rocky plateau studded with dwarfed firs and balsam pines, but covered thickly with aromatic ferns and blueberry bushes. ■ Jimsy bared his head to the cool brpeze that swept the clearing and watched Emma, who, with a little cry of delight, had stooped among the blueberry bushes and was gathering a handful of their ripe fruit. She was glad of the pretext to hide the upheaval in her heart that she felt must show in her eyes. 'This upheaval, sudden and almost overpowerlngly violent though It was, was not of the morning’s forming. She had known tbe calm, sympathetic westerner—as he had reminded Captain Williams—ever since she was a' 1 girl in short frocks. She had soon dome to look upon him as a big brother, with whom she shared her girlish troubles and In whom she confided freely, naturally, as a matter of course. When she had become a woman anO he had sought her for his bride she had not been able, with all her liking for him. to bring herself to consider him in the light of a lover. After the scales formed there by the blandishments and personal pulchritude of Brooks had fallen from her eyes and she saw that she had bowed down to an empty, painted fetich of plaster instead of to God in the flesh she had resigned herself to the lot destiny had brought her and sought to make the best of it like the pure woman she was. Household drudgery and the stern verities of her existence had vanquished and put to flight all her illusions. Love was a delusion. It was not what she had conceived it to be. It existed in perfect, ideal form only in the imaginings of the poets and litterateurs. Had any one suggested to her that Jimsy Smith was the depository of it, that his heart [was the altar on which the sacred fire burned unquenchable, that under the crust of his unemotional manner was a quiescent volcano of passion that could be roused to stupendous eruption, she would have laughed. (To be Continued.)

"It's a treat to go walking with you. know you love it.”