EUGENE WALTER JOHN w, "HARDING THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 'NOW YOU'RE TALKING, MY LASS, AND I'LL TALK RIGHT BACK TO YOU." Frontispiece. Page 193. PAID IN FULL BT EUGENE WALTER. JOHN W. HARDING What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less pain 1 Illustrations from Scenes in the Play. G. W. DILLINGHAM .COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1908, BT O. W. DILLINGHA.M COMPANY *An> Iv Pin* Issued Mar, 1906 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE. I ......... - ........ - ...... 7. II ........ ........ .... ...... ,..,..._ 17 III ________ .............. .^......... w 28 IV...... ........ ...... ..^.. ...... i 44 V........ ............... .... -------- 5? VI ........ :.;..... ...... _____________ ..... 71 VII ............. ... ............. ... 84 VIII ...... .....:._-., ............. ..,.,.,., 93 IX .............................. .... I0 3 X.. ............... ;.., .......... ... : 124 XI ......................... ,.: ....... 133 XII.... ...................... ...... I 45 XIII ................ . .;._.; ........ . . . ., 155 XIV ......... ...... ............. ______ 167 XV .................. ..... .:.,.> . . .,. ., 177 XVI. . ........ . . . . _________ ......... ., 203 XVII... ... . . .:.,., ________ > . . ........... . .: 211 XVIII ............ . . __________ .......... 228 XIX .............. .... .......... .... 239 XX .................... >r . : . . ___________ 249 XXI ............ .......... .......... 262 XXII.. . . . ... ..... ,,.. ............ ...... 285 XXIII. . . ........ . . . . . ..... , . . s . . . . . . . ., 298 XXIV. .... . ... . : .^ ...... . ....... ..... . ; 3U XXV ________ . . . ............... , . ...... 319 XXVI., ... ......... . . ... ............. , ., 326 ILLUSTRATIONS Page. ** Now you're talking, my lass, and I'll talk right back to you." 193 Frontispiece. " I could take it all, and then not be caught." .... 51 " Mother, dear, please don't find fault." 109 " Joe, Joe, this ain't no time to fourflush with me." . . 120 " You are a good man, Jimsy a good man." .... 131 " If I had a girl like you I'd earn enough money to make her happy eh, Brooks ? " 140 " Please don't, Joe ! " 214 From scenes in Wagenhals and Kemper Co.'s New York Astor Theatre production of " Paid in Full." PAID IN FULL CHAPTER I NO, I'll not give 'em a raise of three cents an hour, nor of one cent an hour; nary a raise, understand ? And I don't want you to come here thinking you can bulldoze me, be cause you'll find mighty quick you're mistaken. If any man thinks he can do that I want to see him." The words, uttered in a wrathful bellow, came through the closed door of the president's room and were heard by every employe and visitor in the main office of the Latin-American Steamship Company, which occupied an entire floor of a big building in Bowling Green, New York City. The score of clerks busy at their desks and counters in the railed off enclosure and the cashier and bookkeepers behind the brass latticed guards of the windows of their boxes looked up, and the customers and others whom business had 7 PAID IN FULL brought to the place gazed with curious aston ishment in the direction of the voice. Some of the employes smiled and passed the remark that the boss "had 'em bad" that day; but the smiles were of the sickly, apprehensive order, ready to straighten out into solemnity on the instant, and the remark was entirely superflu ous, for the fact that he was in execrable humor was perfectly well known to each and all, having been impressed upon them very forcibly at inter vals from the minute the great man had made his appearance with his unvarying punctuality as the clock, regulated by United States Observatory time, struck 9 A. M. Others scowled and kept their reflections to themselves. The voices of the other parties to the conversa tion were not audible to the listeners, but that of the president, with its all-penetrating roar, burst forth again : " I don't give a tin whistle what you or your unions do, understand ? Let 'em strike ; strike and be damned; but you tell 'em this from me, that any man who's fool enough to throw up his job does so for good and all. He'll never work again for the Latin-American Steamship Company in 8 PAID IN FULL this or any other port. I'll take care of that. I'll show 'em who and what I am, if they don't know." The door opened and two white-faced, intim idated men emerged, cap in hand. They were rough-looking men, evidently laborers inured to the hardest kind of work. They shuffled quickly past the neatly dressed clerks, made their way out of the uncongenial precincts of the offices and did not breathe freely until the elevator had landed them on the ground floor and they found themselves in the cross streams of hurrying passers-by on the street. There, as they mopped their brows and looked around for a saloon, something of the arrogant insolence with which they had demanded audience of the head of the company, and which had been speedily cowed out of them by that formidable and choleric person age, returned to them. Meanwhile, at the open door of the room in which they had been through the ordeal of their interview, Capt. Amos Williams, president and general manager of the line, glared after his de parting visitors and round the office as though in challenge to anyone else who might be there for the purpose of confronting him. There was dead 9 PAID IN FULL silence, and every employe, from the highest to the office boys, impudent and irrepressible there, as everywhere else, save when Capt. Williams was nigh, became deeply engrossed in his work. It was plain that the president was feared by his entire staff. " Call up Mr. Smith and tell him I want to see him at once," he growled to no one in particular, hien he re-entered his room and slammed the door. In a few minutes, however, his bell rang and a boy responded to it with an alacrity not custom ary in any other office in all New York. " Tell Mr. Brooks to come here," was the or der he received. The boy hurried out and approached one of the men behind the brass lattice screens. " Mr. Brooks, the Captain wants you," he announced. Mr. Brooks did not reply, but he got down leisurely and with bad grace from his stool and moved with equal deliberation to the president's room. " Brooks, has Fernandez & Co., that Pernam- buco firm, been heard from yet?" demanded his 10 PAID IN FULL employer, without looking up from the papers he was turning over on his desk. " Check came to-day," was the laconic reply. "Full amount?" " Yes, four thousand, eight hundred and sev enty-five." "All right; that's all." Brooks went out, closing the door behind him, and returned to his desk. He was in a bad tem per himself and made no effort to conceal it, for a sullen scowl marred his handsome and usually genial face. Not only was Joseph Brooks hand some, but a rather distinguished-looking young fellow, whose clothes set well and becomingly updn him, albeit they were somewhat shiny from wear and from ironing by unexpert hands at home. And if his collar and cuffs also were just a trifle the worse for wear, at least they were immaculately clean, which by disguising, or rather distracting attention from it, more than made up for the shortcoming of excessive use. " Cheer up ! " admonished one of his fellow- clerks, noticing his ill-humor. Brooks's moods were never taken seriously, for with him fits of despondency alternated with a contagious cor- ii PAID IN FULL diality and an optimism that knew no limit. His days of cheerfulness predominated, and at these times his manner was almost affectionate, and he was ever ready to oblige and help others, with the result that he was well liked. Of late, how ever, his spells of gloominess had become weari somely frequent, and usually they were accom panied by a nervous irritability. " Cheer up ? " he answered with some heat. " I don't see any reason for cheering up, and I don't feel like cheering up. Did you hear how the brute received those delegates of the Longshoremen's Union because they asked him to add a little to their starvation pay to help them keep skin and bone together? Why shouldn't he raise them why shouldn't he raise all of us? He's rotten with money, stinking, reeking with it; doesn't know what to do with it ; yet what does he do but grind us down ; grind and grind and grind ; grind us as a grain of wheat is ground to powder b? tween the millstones, grind us with his heJ squeezing from us the very sap of brain and life that he may add to his pile? " The clerks near him had listened to this out burst with amused surprise. 12 PAID IN FULL "Well," said the man who had addressed him before, "I haven't noticed you sweating blood to any extent under the grinding process." " Jenkins, you're a a camel," retorted Brooks. "For a whisp of hay you'd let yourself be loaded till the last straw broke your back and then you'd lick the hand that crushed you." "Sure," said Jenkins enthusiastically. "Any body can load me up that wants to." " And I'll back his liquid capacity to equal that of any camel," chimed in another clerk, while everyone within earshot grinned. " Oh, you can laugh," grumbled Brooks, " but it doesn't alter the truth of what I say. It's men like him that have made our society to-day what it is a soulless, heartless, oppressive civilization in which Croesuses walk roughshod over the men who are down and thrust them deeper into the slough with one foot as they climb higher and higher to the power that the possession of incon ceivable wealth carries with it." " 'Twas ever thus !" sighed Jenkins. " But there is yet hope. Our Joseph hath received a call to uplift the downtrod." "How did he get it? What is his record?" 13 PAID IN FULL went on Brooks, ignoring- the interruption. " Why, he started out as a sealer or a South Pa cific trader, which in those days was the same as being a pirate, and you know and I know that his name was a terror to sailormen from San Fran cisco to Australia. He made his first money by bullying and ill treating other men, and killing them, too, on occasion. It's a matter of common knowledge. And he's been a buccaneer ever since. Didn't he bunco and sandbag my father-in-law out of control of this company? And what has he done since then but act the brutal tyrant over everybody connected with it, beating us down to the lowest wage a man can exist on that he may add to his dirty heap, running this office with fist, boot and rope-end as though it were his lawless ship and we were his groveling Lascar crew. I hope the longshoremen do strike! I hope they will make such a hole in the floor under his heap that he will be forced to go whining to them for mercy. They would be doing humanity a service if they'd fill him full of bullets." " There's a lot of truth in what Brooks says," assented a youthful clerk in low tones, looking around cautiously as he did so. 14 PAID IN FULL "Well, after all, I don't see that you've got such a fierce kick coming," observed Jenkins to the disgruntled orator. "You don't, eh?" sneered Brooks. "You think twenty dollars a week is big pay for an ac countant and collector who's handled half the money of the line for five years, eh ? " " No, I mean that you are at least solid with the boss and sure of your job, which is more than anybody else here is, and that you stand to be come an officer high up in the company one of these days. Williams is a friend of your family, isn't he? You yourself have boasted often that he visits you and your wife." " That's just it. The swine takes advantage of his relations with my wife's people to keep me down and rub it in. Other people get their sal ary raised, but I don't. Do you call that a square 'deal?" " It hardly seems so, but perhaps there's a rea son. He may have some object that will appear in due course, and you'll go up several numbers at one swoop. In the meantime," continued Jen kins, lowering his voice, " I wouldn't let on like you have this afternoon, if I were you, Joe. It 15 PAID IN FULL can't do any good and might do you a deal of harm. You don't know who might hear you, and the boss somehow knows everything that goes on in the office." " I don't care," affirmed Brooks, sulkily, " I'd just as lief tell him to his face what I think of him, and, by gum, I will one of these days, darn him ! " " All right," laughed Jenkins. " I hope I'll be around at the time, so that I can perform for you the last sad rite of gathering up your scattered remains. Ah, here's Jimsy Smith ! " PAID IN FULL CHAPTER II JAMES SMITH, superintendent of the Latin- American Steamship Company's docks, had arrived in response to the president's sum mons, conveyed to him by the telephone. Smith, known to his familiars as Jimsy, and so called when referred to among themselves by all the men employed on the docks of the line in every port where they were situated, was a tall, gaunt, angular man, bearing all over him the stamp of Westerner. He was, in fact, from Colorado, where he began his active career by engaging in mining. Scant success attended his efforts in this direction, however, and after working with the dogged determination that was one of his traits, until even his patience was exhausted, he moved East, drifted down to South America, and finally entered the employ of the steamship com pany in whose service he had risen to his present position, with headquarters in New York. There was something about Smith that caused 17 PAID IN FULL men, and women also, for that matter, to take to him on sight. The unbounded good nature, big- heartedness and unselfishness beaming in his blue eyes and in his whimsical smile, were written in every line of his clean-shaven face. And these made up in ample measure for any deficiency in the matter of comeliness of feature due to nature's oversight. Another thing that made him remarked by all who came in contact with him was his ab solute imperturbability. In all his thirty-seven years of existence he never had been known to "get a move on," not even when a premature blast in a mine had sent the diggers helter-skelter for safety and carried death and suffering to many. Smith had walked tranquilly away amid the rain of rock and earth, until it was all over. Then he had returned and organized the work of rescue, his placidity causing the others in stinctively to look to him for direction. Nor was his speech more hurried than were his move ments. He spoke but little, and then his words came in a quiet, even, distinct drawl. But he "got there" as quickly as most men, and a good deal quicker than some whose nerves were highly strung and with whom rapidity of action was as 18 PAID IN FULL necessary as breathing; for he was possessed of keen powers of observation and common sense, an earnestness of purpose that gave his utter ances weight, and an integrity as unshakable as the rock of Gibraltar. As a fitting, almost neces sary, complement of such a nature he was en dowed with a sense of humor that added not a little to the attraction he exercised for those who knew him sufficiently well to be able to appreciate his qualities of heart and mind. He took a calm, all-embracing survey of the office as he entered, looked over to Brooks's desk and saluted him with a cordial motion of the hand and instructed a boy to notify Capt. Williams of his arrival. He was ushered immediately into the chief's presence. That worthy, who, like his superintendent, was clean shaven, was seated at his desk in his shirt sleeves, and the whole room, despite the wide- open windows, was thick from the smoke from an old blackened corncob pipe at which he was puf fing vigorously. He was a burly man, amd the short, thick neck, the broad shoulders, the power ful, big-jointed fingers and the muscles that stood out in bunches on the hairy arms disclosed 19 PAID IN FULL by his rolled-up shirt sleeves, denoted that he possessed unusual physical strength. An ugly man to get into an argument with was Williams, one who, it needed no mind reader to judge, would be capable of following the word with a olow that would crush an ordinary opponent. For years, as Brooks had intimated, he had led the roughest life a man can lead, hammering by sheer brute strength a way to wealth by ways in which scruple had counted for nothing at all and ex pediency for a good deal ; and his entrance upon a higher plane of civilization had not imparted much polish to his appearance, habits or speech, which were those o.f the old-time sailing ship mariner, although of late years he had striven to conform more closely to the examples of refine ment he witnessed in the only polite society he cared for, which was that of the family of his dead friend, Stanley Harris, who was general manager of the Latin-American line when he obtained con trol of it. He had a way of glaring at a person from under his bushy eyebrows with a scrutiny that seemed to read through and up and down him, and made him most ill at ease under it. Few men, whatever their importance in the business 20 PAID IN FULL world, cared to prolong an interview with him when he himself had no interest in prolonging it. He made his decisions promptly, authoritatively, after the manner of a man accustomed to com mand and to be obeyed without question, and he never changed them, at least in his business and administrative dealings. Add to all this a voice like a foghorn, the effect of which, when he raised it, was, as he knew full well, to make his subor dinates quake and to intimidate others who had to do with him, and it will be realized that he lived up fully to his reputation of being a hard man. For his quiet, unmovable and thoroughly ca pable dock superintendent he entertained a cer tain respect. He knew from experience that the man was not the least bit afraid or even disturbed by his bullying manner and his bellowing, and that his glare, always squarely met, had no more ef fect upon him than it would have upon the bronze statue of Washington which stands sentinel on the steps of the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street. Smith lowered himself slowly and easily into a big arm-chair beside the president's desk, pulled an extension out of the latter, upon which he de- 21 PAID IN FULL posited his soft felt hat, and waited for his em ployer to speak. " Two delegates from the Longshoremen's Union were here just now," announced the Cap tain, turning to him when he was ready. " They say the freight handlers are going to strike." " Ya-as ? " said Smith, interrogatively. "Yes; what d'you know about it?" " Nothing, except that they came to me with a demand for higher pay for the men. I referred them to you." "Well, I didn't leave 'em any loophole for doubt as to my position in the matter." "You turned them down?" The Captain's bushy eyebrows came together in a frown and his little eyes lighted up menac ingly. "Turned 'em down! Of course; what d'you think? Suppose I handed 'em a raise on a silver platter and bowed 'em out of the door?" " I don't suppose anything about it. I'm ask ing for information." " Them two blatherskites came swaggering and blustering in here and said every last one of the men would quit to-morrow morning at 1 1 o'clock 22 PAID IN FULL unless they got three cents more an hour. They wasn't swaggering when they went out of here, I tell you. I pretty soon took the starch out of 'em." A faint smile flitted over the superintendent's face, but he ventured no remark. "I told 'em," Williams went on "that I wouldn't give 'em a cent a century more, and to strike and be damned. I also told 'em that any man who did go out would never get another job with this company, and, by Sam, he won't ! " The captain's voice had risen to a roar, and he brought his fist down on the desk with such force that pens and pencils went flying in all directions and the ink splashed from the wells in their solid crystal stand. "Them labor agitators ain't got no notion of the fitness of things. They ain't got a grasp on economic conditions for a cent. They got to do something to live without working, so every once in a while they go to the men as pays 'em to be walking delegates, gives 'em some glib talk about their rights and advises 'em to strike for more money. Do they look around and try to find out whether an advance is warranted by the 23 PAID IN FULL conditions? Nary a look. Do any of the men they hand out their advice to try to find out? Not on your life ! They go ahead like a lot of sheep, and strike and starve, and blame the result on capital." Smith nodded. " If they carry out their threat and quit," con tinued the Captain, " you will clear all the strikers from the docks, throw 'em off if necessary, knock their silly blocks off, but tell them as wants to work that full protection will be given. I'll arrange with Police Headquarters to have a sufficient force of bluecoats on hand to guard our property, and will also notify our docks at other ports to be prepared. You will fix up accommo dation for the strike-breakers in the sheds here until the trouble is over, and make arrangements to bring men from the inland cities. In this mat ter you need spare no expense. Understand?" " I guess so," replied the superintendent. "Then it's up to you." " Anything else you want to see me about ? " " Not now. You can get in touch with me any time you want me. You know about where I'm to be found." 24 PAID IN FULL Smith drew in his long legs, raised himself from the chair and took up his hat to go. " See here, Smith," said the Captain, with some feeling and rising choler, his voice rising gradu ally also to its fearsome bellow, " it's nigh onto two score year since I took my first vessel, the Sally Moran, out of 'Frisco as master and owner, bound for the South Sea Islands to trade, and I've commanded my own ship every minute since, and held my own against all sorts of lubbers as would have done me, and done for me, if they could. And do you think I'm going to be dic tated to by any white-livered gasbag of a crawling delegate who comes here holding a knife to my throat by threatening a turn-out without giving me a chance to meet it if I don't give in to his demands on the spot? No, sir, not by an all- fired sight. No, sir, not in a thousand years! I own this outfit from keel to main peak, and if I can't run it my own way I'll scuttle it and go down with it. Understand? And if any man's looking for a fight with me, he'll find me quick enough and I'll break him, no matter who or what he is. Yes, sir, by Sam, sir, like this." Seizing a thick ruler on the desk, he snapped 25 PAID IN FULL it without apparent effort, and as he sat glaring there with his dishevelled hair, his pugnacious, massive underjaw protruding and his big fists tightly clenched on the broken wood, causing the muscles of his arms to bulge like knots on a gnarled tree, he presented the embodiment of might and ferocity. " I don't know but what you're right, Cap'n Williams," drawled the superintendent with his unchangeable equanimity. " Anyhow you sure are entitled to do what you like with your own." He went out, and on his way to the office exit stopped at Brooks's desk. "Well, how's things, boy?" he inquired, with an interest so kindly that one might have thought there was nothing else in the world with which his mind was occupied, and never could have sus pected that there lay before him for immediate solution the problem of preparing for a great strike that threatened to tie up the business of one of the most important steamship lines in the country, with ramifications extending from Bos ton all around the coast of South America to San Francisco. " Oh, so, so," answered Brooks. " By the by, 26 PAID IN FULL I'd be awful glad if you'd come up to supper to night. Emma was saying only this morning that we hadn't seen anything of you for a week." "That's so. I've got to square myself with Emma, though it hasn't been my fault alto gether." "Then we'll expect you to supper?" " I can't promise, because I've quite a deal to do between now and this evening, but I'll come if I can." " Well, you know the way." " I ought to by this time." " So long, Jimsy." " So long." And Smith sauntered out to attend to one of the greatest emergencies he had ever been called upon to meet in his life. PAID IN FULL CHAPTER III HE was a skillful architect indeed who first devised the bandbox apartment houses so common now in all parts of New York, and must have sat up many nights working out how to extract the maximum of rent revenue from the area on which he had to fit the struc ture. The measure of his success was the great revolution that ensued in the building trade and extended to the furniture industry. Doll's house ameublements had to be constructed to meet the diminished room space, and folding furniture came into fashion. In this way the New Yorker gradually accustomed himself ten living in a cup board and to holding himself in t and folding him self up like his bed, in order to avoid overturning the chairs and table and knocking the globes off the gas or electric light fixtures suspended from the ceiling. In due time beneficent nature, through the process of evolution by which all living creatures are brought to adapt themselves 28 PAID IN FULL to their environment, will come to his relief by curtailing his stature to conform to the exiguous- ness of his abode, and he will have nothing to envy the pigmies of Central Africa. In the meantime there is naught for him to do but get along the best way he can, as cheerfully as he can, which, it must be confessed, he succeeds in doing pretty well. This said, let it be remarked that 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 up, as easily might have been, in fact certainly must have been, the case, at least there was none, what ever its size, that was kept cleaner or neater, or in which more effective use of available material had been made than that over which Mrs. Emma Brooks presided as mistress and factotum. And Mrs. Brooks herself. How she graced it ! Altogether unconsciously. As the elder of two 29 PAID IN FULL daughters of Stanley Harris, who while not rich had been well to do, she had been brought up in the comfort of a good home and had enjoyed the advantage of an education at a private seminary. Her father, whose constant companion she had been, and whose sense of democracy in the mat ter of association she had inherited, had adored her, and when she had given her heart to Joseph Brooks, electing him from among numerous suitors, including James Smith, he gave his con sent to their union, against his own judgment and in face of the strenuous opposition of his wife, esteeming the girl's happiness superior to all other considerations. Brooks, who had been in the employ of the Latin-American Steamship Company for one year and had been brought into relations with the family by virtue of his selection as secretary to her father, the general manager, had no means whatever of his own, and his salary, then $60 a month, was a desperately small income on which to begin housekeeping for a girl reared as she had been, but her father helped them, and the young couple counted upon his influence to pro cure the advancement of his son-in-law to a more 30 PAID IN FULL remunerative post, and eventually to a position of importance. Unfortunately for them, however, Mr. Harris had died a few weeks after their wedding, and they found themselves thrown upon their own re sources. Mrs. Harris, a selfish, shallow, unfeel ing woman with social pretensions, who regarded her daughter's marriage with the young clerk as a mesalliance, and Brooks himself with disdain, left them to shift for themselves and with her other daughter Beth, who was seven years younger than Emma and shared her mother's views, as she imitated her haughtiness, settled down to the enjoyment of the modest fortune her husband had left her, and the indulgence of the ostentation she loved, but which during Mr. Harris's lifetime she had never been able to gratify to the top of her bent. She did not for this, however, withdraw altogether from associa tion with Emma and Brooks and continued on more or less amicable terms with them. Now and then she condescended to call upon them with Beth, but her visits as a rule were a good deal of a trial to the young couple, for she re garded Brooks's faiktre to get on in the steam- 31 PAID IN FULL ship company as a vindication of her opinion as to his ability and the judiciousness of their mar riage, and was prone to condone with her daugh ter, assume an exasperating I-told-you-so atti tude, and lament what might have been. During the four years of their married life Brooks's salary had been raised only $20 a month, although in addition to his work as ac countant, to which he had been assigned after Mr. Harris's death, that of collector had been thrust upon him. It had been a hard, bitter experience for pretty little Mrs. Brooks, this un accustomed drudgery of housework, this con tinuous scouring of greasy pots and pans and washing of dishes, which she loathed, this depri vation of comforts and luxuries that she had known all her life, this privation of many personal things considered indispensable by the dainty woman, this necessity of perpetual rigid econo mizing which barely sufficed to make both ends meet. She deprived herself of much needed clothing, to say nothing of finery, that Joe might go properly clad to his office, but she never for that reason descended to slovenliness, never " let herself go," as so many women in their own PAID IN FULL households make the mistake of doing-. Her dress might be of poor material, but it was natty, neat and clean, and she was always as attractive as she could make herself consistently with the work on hand when her husband came home to his meals. And never had she allowed one word of complaint, one indication of regret, to escape her. She had married Joe for love, for better or for worse, and resigned herself bravely and cheer fully to the consequences, however hard to bear, hoping for the better times that were so long in corning, and encouraging her husband to fight on and win. Joe for his part lacked his wife's grit and energy, and constant disappointment had under mined his fortitude. He loved Emma he hardly could have done otherwise, though calculation had entered largely into his courting of her. Chivalrously, while the sweet bliss of their early married life held him in its spell, he had done as much of the heavier work of the menage as he could, to spare her, when time and opportunity afforded, but very naturally he had soon tired of this where is the man who does not? and by degrees had left as much of it as he could to her, 33 PAID IN FULL except when his moods of optimism and affec tionate solicitude impelled him to go to her as sistance. At such times he wanted to do it all. Usually, however, he responded reluctantly when called upon to help in such duties as there were to perform on Sundays and of evenings, as clear ing the meal table and washing and sweeping up. He never actually refused. On the evening following his outburst at the office he was still resentful and " down hi the mouth " when he let himself into his little flat$ and the smiles of his wife as she raised her rose bud lips to receive his kiss of greeting failed to dispel his gloom. " You seem out of sorts to-night, dear," she said solicitously. " Anything go wrong at the office?" " Nothing in particular. I'm tired and hungry after slaving all day in this awful heat, that's all." " Never mind, supper's all ready, so sit down and tuck in." "What did you get?" " Chops and potatoes." Joe turned up his nose, but took his seat at table and began to eat. He answered his wife's 34 PAID IN FULL questions in monosyllables. His thoughts, it was plain, were not on his meal or Emma's conversa tion, and, seeing that he was preoccupied and troubled, she ceased to try to engage his atten tion, deeming it best to leave him alone and knowing that he would unbosom himself before long. " I paid the gas bill to-day," 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 I, but we can't, so what's the use of wishing?" " No, we can't, and I don't see any prospect of our being able to." PAID IN FULL A look of anxiety and comprehension came into his wife's eyes. " Didn't you get the raise you asked Captain Williams for?" she inquired. " No." He hung his head and lapsed into gloomy silence. She dropped the morsel she was raising to her mouth and rose from the table, filled with dis may, 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 complied 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, Joe 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 PAID IN FULL 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 to-day," he said. "Three other men in the office, who also asked for a raise last month, got it so did Smith." "What, Jimsy?" 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." " I 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 five thousand a year now. Great for him, isn't it?" " Yes, indeed it is." " I saw Jimsy to-day. Asked him to come to supper." "Ah!" " He said he would if he could." "I wonder why he didn't?" 37 PAID IN FULL Her husband 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." " Why, Joe, how absurd," she laughed, begin ning to gather up the supper plates. "Jimsy knows it's pot-luck." "That's the trouble. Jimsy knows your mother knows Williams knows everybody knows, and they're always talking about it." "About what?" " How you've got to work and slave because you married me, and all that sort of stuff." "Jimsy 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 you " " Oh, don't mind mother, you know her." " She never did want us to marry." " But dear old dad did, and he 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, and I'm equally 38 PAID IN FULL sure that I don't understand her, so we won't bother about her. Just sweep up a bit, will you, while I 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 in which he used the broom. Several times he gazed toward the open door of the kitchen, hesitating to speak. Finally, with an expression of determination, he said in a firm voice : " Emma, you know it will be six months or a year before I get another chance at a raise un less, of course, I quit and get a job somewhere else." " Yes, I know," she answered, rather wearily. " I can't quit and hunt for work, we haven't saved enough." " There hasn't been much chance to save." " No, and I was thinking " The words came slowly, hesitatingly. "What?" she demanded. 39 PAID IN FULL "That perhaps you're tired and want to call it off." "Call what off?" " Why, everything the whole business." She advanced to the door and eyed him curi ously, wonderingly. " I don't quite know what you mean by 'every thing,' Joe," she told him. He turned and faced her. " I mean our marriage," he said desperately. Her eyes opened wide with incredulous aston ishment. " 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 wait until I com plain?" " You have complained. " No at least I can't remember." " Not in words, but " "But what?" " Look here," he said impatiently, "don't you 40 PAID IN FULL suppose I have eyes ? Don't you suppose I have feelings? I've seen I know." "What have you seen?" " 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. "I didn't mean " She followed him and placed her hand on his shoulder. " Joe, I married you because I 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 hsfven't been treated right, but bad luck and ups and downs are what a woman PAID IN FULL 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 r do. But there are some things " Sh2 paused, reluctant to carry her thoughts further into words. "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 might make me regret it." He ventured no further remark and lapsed into his gloomy reflections. Emma went about her work for a little while, glancing at him with grow ing sympathy as she entered with the crockery from time to time. At last she deposited on the table the burden of cups and saucers she was car rying, and going to him put her arm round his neck and snuggled her face against his. " Poor old boy," she murmured, " that setback we got to-day when we had it all fixed up was enough to make you feel sore and glum. Never 42 PAID IN FULL 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 knock out punch some time.' ' It was of no use, however. Joe's sulkiness had sunk in; his temper was vicious, deep and in growing, a temper such as she had never sus pected in him, and all her petting, all her loving coaxing, could not ween 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. " I'll bet that's Jimsy now," he muttered. Much hurt, but disguising her feelings, Emma hurried into the kitchen and pressed the button that opened the entrance door of the house. 43 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER IV THERE was a knock, the unlatched door opened and James Smith walked in. " Anybody at home ? " he demanded. " Not a solitary living soul," Emma assured him. " Come in." " Hello, Joe you a dead one, too? " he said. "Almost," replied Brooks, brightening up a little in spite of himself under the influence of his friend's good natured smile and the cheeriness that positively emanated from him. " Just come up?" " Yep, and I reckon in about time to help," he said, glancing at the crockery on the table. " Just in time," assented Emma, whose droop ing spirits also began to rise under the diversion caused by his advent. " But first explain what you mean by not coming to dinner." " I couldn't come, really. I tried my best, but I had to attend to such a lot of business that rouldn't be put off that I was unable to get here 44 PAID IN FULL in time. I hope you didn't wait long for me. I'm awfully sorry." "You look it I don't think," she scolded. " Go on, get busy if you're going to ! " "All right," he answered, taking up a small pile of cups and saucers very gingerly. "Where do these go? If you left it to me like as not I'd be putting a sowp plate behind the door and slip a broom into the sideboard." " They go right in here." He stopped on the way to the sideboard and turned to Brooks. " Seen the latest extra, Joe? " he inquired. "Nope. Anything new?" answered that un- amiable person. " Nothing special. The Orinoco wasn't hardly scratched getting out of Rio Janeiro." "You don't say!" " Kind o' scraped over the bar. She'll only be a day late now." " Do be careful with those cups, Jimsy," ad j monished Emma. " They're china." "Don't you suppose I know that?" " I mean real china," she emphasized. "All china and Chinamen look alike to me. 45 PAID IN FULL Here's the paper, Joe. You'll find all about the Orinoco on the inside page." He drew it from his pocket, and as he did so one of the two cups balanced on the saucers slipped off and smashed to bits on the carpet. " Now, Jimsy, you certainly are going to get it," commented Joe, rising and taking the paper extended to him. Smith looked appealingly at his hostess. " Jimsy," she chided, assuming an expression of mock gravity, " how could you my very best Sunday-go-to-meeting china ! How could you ! " " Not how could I how did I ? " he corrected, stooping and picking up the pieces. " You know, Emma, I've had butter fingers ever since I was a little shaver, and I guess I always will have in business and everything else." " Why, how do you mean ? " " I've been clumsy all my life, that's all. Everything I've ever had in my hands that was worth much I've generally let slip and fall. Out in Colorado when I was a kid around Leadville they used to say that I sure would turn out to be a sawed-off and hammered-down, good-for-noth ing man. So you see, the way things have 46 PAID IN FULL turned out, I've broken about even with that prophesy." " How broken even? " " Taking their side for the book, I win the first bet, and lose the second. There ain't nothin' sawed off and hammered down about me, is there?" " I should say not," she said with a merry laugh. " You've been pulled out like a piece of taffy." " Then I win, but it was in doubt quite some time. Oh, yes, quite some time." "Yes?" " Never really did start to grow until I was fifteen, and then I just eased out into my present altitude. But the second proposition that good-for-nothing bet I guess they win." " Nonsense, Jimsy ; how can you say suc4i a thing; you're good for a whole lot." " Emma," he declared solemnly, " there have been moments of financial stringency when that ^declaration seemed to be open to doubt." " Jimsy, you're an idiot ! " she laughed. " Discovered ! " he avowed, bowing ceremoni ously. 47 PAID IN FULL Brooks, who had been reading the paper, threw it down angrily. " Damn him ! " he growled. " Joe ! " exclaimed his wife reproachfully. " Damn who ? " inquired Smith. "Why, Williams," he replied. " Lots have done that," said the superinten dent. "But what's the matter now, Joe?" " His luck," went on Brooks. " The Orinoco isn't scratched. If any one else owned a ship ^and she got into a muss like that the chances are one hundred to one that she'd have foundered been a complete loss." " That's right," assented Smith. "But Williams he don't lose her he couldn't." " I should think you'd be glad," remarked Emma. "She's a brand new ship, isn't she?" " No, I'm not glad," he declared furiously, rising and walking about the room. " I'm tired of him, of his rotten old steamship line of all of it you hear? Of all of it." "Joe, please!" she protested. "You know j " " I know you've slaved and bore with me long 48 PAID IN FULL enough ! Here I am 'handling all the money of that line, ain't that so, Jimsy?" "That's right," admitted the latter, "but that's the matter?" "Matter? Isn't it matter enough that I should do all thi? for a mean, miserable living? I suffer and work, and work and suffer, for that nasty, niggardly salary and this beast, this wild animal of a Williams, keeps us all starving yes, starving ! " "Joe," remonstrated Emma, "you don't mean " " You know what I mean. Suppose there are three meals a day, and a place to sleep? Don't I deserve something a little better? Do you know what I could do? I could steal thousands and no one would ever know it ! " "Joe!" she ejaculated, greatly shocked. " Oh, I'm not going to do it, but with all this responsibility, when I ask for money, I don't get it not a dollar. You do, Jimsy, you're single and you can quit. And then Williams what does he do ? Comes around here to my wife with my mother-in-law damn him and rubs it in." Emma looked at him pleadingly. 49 " Joe, you mustn't. Captain Williams means well, but " He turned upon her savagely. "That's it he means well. He meant well when he was a South Pacific trader he meant well when he treated his crew like dogs he meant well when he'd kill a sailor with as much thought as a spider kills a fly he meant well when he cheated natives, murdered men, smuggled Chinamen into this country, sunk ves sels for insurance he meant well when he came East, bought the Latin-American Company and put your father out of business, and now, now that he has his money, his millions maybe, he means well when he refuses to give his men a fair share of what they produce. Means well? Yes, he does not! " "Joe, are you crazy?" demanded his wife, alarmed and a little angry at his outburst. "What ever is the matter?" "Well, there's a whole lot of truth in what Joe says," put in Smith, conciliatingly. " You see, Williams did start out as a captain of a South Pacific trader, but, like most of them fel lows, I guess he stole a good deal more than he 50 l l COULD TAKE IT ALL, AND THEN NOT SB 0/.-.UGHT. Page 51. PAID IN FULL traded. He had the reputation of being the strongest man on the coast or in the tropics could break a man's arm with as much ease as you'd snap a straw. He's harsh, Williams is harsh! When he came East he got control of the Latin-American. He loved money, and he got it most anyway he could. Yes, Joe ought to have more, that's sure, he ought to have more." " You know I should," went on Brooks some what mollified by his friend's acquiescence and support, and drawing a bulky pocketbook from the inside pocket of his waistcoat. " I've got control of all the money of the company. That's my job! Why here, this alone is the afternoon collections, too late to put in the safe nearly three thousand more than twice as much as I get in a year. I could take it all and then not be caught, or at least not for months, but " " Why, Joe, I'm surprised ! " his wife broke in. " Of course Joe wouldn't take a cent that don't belong to him," said Smith. " I know that. Williams does, too. So I guess he figures him safe and don't see the least bit of use in paying him more." PAID IN FULL " But I won't stand it ! " Brooks declared, wax ing wroth again and flinging himself in his chair. " Why do you get raises, Jimsy ? You've been advanced time and time again." " Lord, I don't know," he replied. " I just tell the old fellow that I calculate I'm worth more money. ' Come across or we separate/ I say, and so far he's always come." " I was so glad to hear of your last good luck," remarked Emma sincerely. A look of regret came over Smith's face. " I only wish Joe had got it instead of me," he said. Brooks jumped to his feet. " You don't need to wish that, Smith," he cried excitedly. " I'm no object of charity, no, I ain't. And you're like all the rest of the capitalistic crowd grind grind grind. Well, look out, there's going to be a smash-up you understand ? A smash-up, and you all go millionaires, toadies and well, that's all I've got to say." He snatched his hat from a hook in the hall and went out without another word, slamming the front door behind him so heavily that the glasses on the sideboard rattled. 52 PAID IN FULL Emma gazed at Smith in blank dismay. " I can't understand Joe," she said, shaking her head in worry and perplexity. " He's growing so morose and discontented." " It's funny, ain't it," observed Smith reflec tively. "Joe's just rushed out, filled up to the throat with anarchy, socialism, smash-ups, and all that stuff, almost ready to throw a bomb." "Nonsense!" " He is; yet if Williams had raised him to-day ten dollars a week he would have been a firm believer in capital and the way it works." She sighed, took a seat opposite to him at the table and with great earnestness started in to question him. There were many things she did not understand, and while they were upon the subject of her husband and his troubles she re solved to obtain elucidation, if she could, of some of the things that puzzled her. "Jimsy," she began, "tell me honestly; why doesn't Joe get on? " " I really don't know," he averred. " I'm afraid you do," Emma insisted. " Honest, I don't. I've been so busy getting; 53 PAID IN FULL along myself that I haven't paid much attention to any one else." He paused and gazed up at the ceiling, en grossed in thought. " You know, Emma," he went on suddenly, turning toward her, " this getting along busi ness is a funny game. Such a lot depends on what a man means when he gets along. Some get along when they have got a lot of money; some when they have a wife and a home and a bunch of kids; some when they are able to pick pockets and fool the coppers. Getting along, and why you do, or why you don't, depends a good deal on where you want to get." "And you, Jimsy?" she questioned. "Have you been getting along?" " Oh, yes, I guess so. I ain't got a whole lot to kick about perhaps a little less, maybe a little more, than Joe. But the great idea is not to get sore. Joe's all right. Maybe he's just being prepared for a better living. When it comes he'll appreciate it more." Mrs. Brooks looked doubtful. She was sorely troubled. " Somehow I don't seem to understand him as 54 PAID IN FULL I used to," she confessed. " There's been A change that worries me that worries wie greatly." Three sharp rings of the bell put an end to further conversation, and she rose, disappointed, and pushed the button. " That's mother's ring," she said. " Please help me to bring some chairs from the parlor. We can't go there because everything's covered up and in disorder. They're papering the room." She added: " I shouldn't wonder if Captain Williams were with them." "No? Why so?" " Oh, he's a frequent caller. He takes mamma and Beth out in his new auto and has brought them around here quite frequently of late." "Does he ever take you for a ride?" " He asks me to go, but I won't." "Why not?" " That's just what I can't tell. There's some thing about the man that is repulsive he looks at me so strangely. And then I know just how he has treated Joe, and " "And what?" 55 PAID IN FULL " I don't like him that's all." " That's enough, it seems to me. After all, I guess he figures all to the bad with women de cent women." " Mamma and Beth like him." " Well, your mother never did shine up to me more'n the law allowed, and as for Beth she's a nice enough girl, but her education hurts her, I think." " Hush, here they are." And the little woman hurried into the hall to open the door for them. PAID IN FULL CHAPTER V, WHEN broad-minded Mrs. Brooks ob served to her husband that she did not understand her mother any more than her mother understood her she had expressed exactly the mental relation in which they stood towards each other. Mrs. Harris was one of those women occasionally to be met with who continue to treat their grown-up sons, and espe cially their grown-up daughters, as children and feel it incumbent upon them, nay, consider it their bounden duty, to interfere with advice and comment in the natural progress of domestic sophistication of their young wedded offspring, forgetting, or, rather, not realizing, that there is no short cut to it, that it can be attained only by actual experience of husband and wife in the obli gations and responsibilities of their own family life, and by the final comprehension of each other which comes through that intimacy which lays bare all defects as it reveals all perfections, and 57 PAID IN FULL through that alone. All of which takes time. Moreover, as already has been intimated, she was a woman wholly lacking in tact and depth of mind, and possessed to an exaggerated degree that " quicksand of reason," vanity, which is Dangerously juxtaposited to the snare-shoal of ridicule. Mrs. Harris and Miss Beth Harris were out for a ride with Capt. Williams, who accom panied them, and all were in automobile tenue. Her mother and sister greeted Emma effusively. sTheir escort extended his hand, but Mrs. Brooks was too much occupied for once in responding to her parent's embraces to notice it. He stalked in with rude familiarity, without removing his automobile cap upon which he had pushed up his goggles, and found himself face to face with Smith. " Hello! You here? " he said by way of greet ing, greatly surprised to see his superintendent there on that above all nights. " Ya-as," replied Jimsy. " I'm here again." " Ought to take a berth here/' grunted his employer, looking round for the most comfort- 58 PAID IN FULL able chair and installing himself in it. " You're always around." " Much as possible," admitted Smith tranquilly, remaining standing. " How do you find your, new car?" " Good enough. Cost five thousand dollars > ought to be good ought to be." Mrs. Harris and Beth bustled in, throwing 1 open their automobile coats and disclosing very handsome gowns that contrasted strangely with Emma's poor little cotton frock. " Why, good evening, Jimsy," cried Mrs. Har ris, adding in the same breath as she looked around and failed to see her son-in-law, " Where's Joe?" " Gone out for a walk, I guess," he answered. "Howdy, Beth?" " Very well, thank you, Mr. Smith," responded! that young person somewhat frigidly. "Mr. Smith?" he echoed, looking at her curi ously. The girl raised her eyebrows and affected sur prise. " Isn't that right? " she inquired. " Yes Smith is the name," he replied. " It 59 PAID IN FULL ain't that I've forgot it no only to remind you that the first one Jimsy ain't been changed." " No, dearie, Jimsy wouldn't know what it meant to be mistered," observed Mrs. Harris with an intonation of disdain. " Me neither," put in WilUams, " but a man's got to get used to it." "Have you got used to it, Captain?" asked Emma. " Yes and no. I never had it given to me until I came East always used to be Cap'n Bill or something on that order but with Eastern airs and a bit of prosperity your old ways have got to change." Mrs. Harris had been gazing about her depre- catingly. She wanted to know why they should stay in the dining-room. Emma explained that they had succeeded in inducing the janitor to have the sitting-room papered, and that it was all upset. "This ain't bad," commented Capt. Will iams. " It's real cozy, and you can see a woman's had a hand in the arrangement." " But it's a little bit ,of a stuffy four-roomed flat," objected Beth, turning up her pretty nose 60 PAID IN FULL for, like her sister, she was exceedingly prepos sessing. " Really, I should die in one." " Well, Beth," remarked Smith with his quiet drawl, " you never can tell. Maybe you will." Beth made a grimace. " I would, if I had to do my own work, washing dishes ugh ! " " I don't see how Emma stands it." declared Mrs. Harris. " It's just drudgery !" " Well, mother, please remember it's Emma who does stand it after all," retorted that little woman patiently, " so please, please, don't you mind." " I think it's a great little nook, Mrs. Brooks," opined Williams. " Thank you, Captain," she said gratefully. "And fixed up nice and comfortable. Can't say as anything looks cheap." " Thank you again. Perhaps it isn't." "You know, Captain, you ain't the only one who's found out the secret of making a dollar produce five hundred cents," said Smith with his whimsical smile. "Has he done that?" inquired Mrs. Harris, affecting surprise and admiration. 61 PAID IN FULL "Figuratively speaking, I presume?" chimed in Beth primly. " I always thought five hundred was figura tively speaking," said Smith. Capt. Williams had produced his pipe, filled it and lighted it without asking permission. " Smith says I'm close I'm not," he declared. " To me, business is business. If I've got money nobody gave it to me. I earned what I earned, md then I made that earn more." " You sure ain't given it no vacations, Cap tain," commented his superintendent dryly. "And that's right," affirmed Mrs. Harris with some heat. " I believe in men getting money. Mr. Harris was one of those soft-hearted men who never made the best of his opportunities always trying to be fair and square with other men, and what thanks did he get?" "Mother, please!" remonstrated Emma. " It's true," went on her parent. " If he hadn't been that way, Emma, do you suppose you'd be here doing your own work ? " " Mother, I insist you must not " " Mother is perfectly right," interrupted Beth. "Emma, you don't deserve this kind of a life." 62 PAID IN FULL " But have I complained ? " demanded Mrs, Brooks desperately. " Why do you say such things?" " Because I've got myself to think of," snapped her mother. " You're wasting yourself tied up to the house all the time and everybody, all my friends, know just how you're fixed. You're never invited anywhere any more." " Completely forgotten," said Beth. Brooks, who had let himself in silently and unobserved, stood in the hall irresolutely, watch ing them and listening to the conversation. " Please don't," entreated Emma, greatly dis tressed, " it's my affair, and besides, before people " " You might say the Captain's almost one of the family since your father died," put in her mother. " I knew you should never have mar ried Joe, that he couldn't take care of you the way he ought." " It's too late now," said Beth, shrugging- her shoulders. " Captain, don't you thiak Emma should have more ? " " Well, Mrs. Brooks must know her own mind," he replied. " Your fatfeer, when he 63 PAID IN FULL worked for me, always had a way of his own. But it does seem as if she should at least have a hired girl and more than four rooms to a flat, but " Brooks strode into the room, livid with pas sion, goaded to a white heat of fury, reckless of everything, murder in his heart, and, hurling his hat to the floor, faced the company. "It does seem so, does it?" he fairly hissed, going over to his employer. " I'm glad you think so. And why hasn't she? Will you tell me that? Speak, will you tell me that? I'll tell you why, you slave driver ! " Mrs. Harris and Beth sat speechless and pale, but Smith rose. "Steady, Joe, boy!" he admonished. Emma had hurried to her husband and grasped his arm. "Oh, Joe, don't!" she implored. "You don't " He flung her roughly from him. " Let me alone ! " he shouted, and turned to Williams again, quivering with rage. " Do you know why she hasn't?" he continued. "Well, I'll tell you all. It's because this man ain't on the square. He began by cheating and murdering; 64 PAID IN FULL niggers who worked for him aboard his rotten trading ships. Then, after he got through with the belaying pin, after he got his money, he (picked up the salary list for a club and he's mur dered and wounded and maimed with that. You see my wife here? She's only one of hundreds, and she suffers. It is too bad she married me. It is too bad that she's got to do her own work ; it is too bad that she's got to wash and scrub and sweat in the heat, but that man's to blame. If you gave me a fair share of what I produce, if you didn't grind down, oppress and pinch, she wouldn't have to. I've worked for you five years, hard, honest, and all the time you've been grind ing me down, down, and thousands of others, thousands. You know, all of you know my mother-in-law and smart sister-in-law know you've piled up your money on the blood and sweat and misery of others. That's the kind of a man you are, and you might as well know it." Capt. Williams had listened to this denuncia tion at first in utter amazement. Then his shaggy eyebrows had knitted together and his little eyes narrowed to slits, while the blood had spread over his face in a deep glow through the veins 65 PAID IN FULL that swelled out like cords on his neck and throat. " There ain't no one ever said them things to me and got away with it," he thundered, clench ing his fists and gathering all his tremendous strength as he rose to crush his accuser. Mrs. Harris and Beth sprang up in great alarm, and at the Captain's terrifying voice and his ferocious aspect Brooks shrank back. Smith stood impassive, but watching Williams, toward whom he had been edging. Emma had stepped quickly between the Cap tain and her husband. " Please please Captain for my sake," she pleaded. " I don't care let him come on," cried Brooks, doggedly, but his voice faltering. Williams gazed at the sweet, frail woman standing imploringly before him, and as he gazed his muscles gradually relaxed, the wrath faded from his eyes and finally the corners of his mouth twitched in a faint smile. " All right," Mrs. Brooks, he said gently. " I almost forgot where I was. I apologize." Smith, his hands in his pockets, moved away across the room. 66 PAID IN FULL " Joe you know it's your home, our home," expostulated his wife. " I I forgot. Excuse me," he muttered sulkily, looking ashamed. Smith spoke up, his winning smile lighting his face: " You know it's been an all-fired hot day just the kind of weather when about every mother's son is on edge. Now, Joe, he slipped a cog and that sort of put the whole confounded machine out of gear including the Captain. But now, you see, it's just all forgotten." " Possibly ; as far as I'm concerned I must be going," declared Mrs. Harris, coldly. " Indeed, yes ! " chirped Beth. Brooks, now, his rage having spent itself and his bravado fizzled out, was almost crying. " I I " he began. But the words choked in his throat, and, pick ing up his hat, he hastened out of the room and the flat. " Will you please take us away, Captain ? " re quested Mrs. Harris. " Just a moment," he said. " Mrs. Brooks, I'm almighty sorry about what happened just now." 67 PAID IN FULL " I I'd rather you wouldn't speak of it," she told him. But the man had something on his mind that he was bent on delivering himself of. " Perhaps I have been a little hard," he said, earnestly and apologetically. " I want you all to understand that I've lived a hard life with hard people. Since the day I shipped before the mast in a North Pacific sealer I learned what a cuff and a blow was ; what rotten grub, the scurvy and all them things meant, and I knew that the only thing between them things and comfort, decency and the respect of folks was money. I started to get money, and maybe I have been a little hard, just a little hard." " No one would call you easy, Captain," agreed Smith. "Anyway, Mrs. Brooks," continued Williams, " Joe keeps his job, and it ain't going to make a bit of difference between us." " Not the least? " she asked with wonder. " Certainly not," said Mrs. Harris. " Joe," declared Beth languidly, " was absurd ; he quite bores me!" 68 PAID IN FULL Smith smiled at her and injected a good deal of irony into his tone as he said : *' Yes, you looked as if something was wrong, Beth." Whereupon that forward young person sub sided and ventured no further remark. The Captain approached Mrs. Brooks with an attempt at gallantry that was elephantine and grotesque, and seized her hand, which she suf fered to remain limply in his clasp. "Well, Mrs. Brooks," he said, "if it's all squared you will come riding with us, won't you?" " Not to-night. You will excuse me," she re plied. " Certainly," he assured her, warmly shaking her hand as though it were a pump handle, "Good night." "Good night !" she answered. Then she advanced to receive the parting kisses of her mother and sister, which were a good deal less cordial than those with which they had greeted her on their arrival. Their osculatory reserves seemed to have been kept in cold stor age during the interval. 69 PAID IN FULL The fact that in the engrossing ceremony of leave taking with Mrs. Brooks everybody forgot to be polite enough to say good-night to Smith did not ruffle his equanimity in the least PAID IN FULL w CHAPTER VI 'HEN the door had closed behind the vis itors Mrs. Brooks and Smith sat down and gazed at each other in silence for some minutes. " Well ? " exclaimed Emma, interrogatively, at last. " Well," he replied, " between you and me, Joe came as near getting skinned alive as anyone I ever saw." " It was terrible ! " " It was terribly true. You saved him." " I know." " The Captain must like you. I never did think he could like anybody." " I hate him ! " she declared, with a grimace of disgust. " Ugh ! what a beast ! " Smith reflected. " Maybe, and maybe not," he mused. " I can't just make him out" 71 PAID IN FULL At this juncture the front door opened and Brooks entered. " I saw them drive off," he said, dropping into a chair. " I hope they'll stay away in future. That mother and sister of yours make me tired ! I can't stand for them, and, what's more, I won't ! They'd drive a saint to drink, and I'm no saint, and don't purpose to be, either." His wife began to reproach him for his attack upon Capt. Williams and for his general ill humor during the evening, but he cut her short sharply : " We won't talk about that not a word, you understand? Not from you or anyone else. That's final." " Very well, it's dropped," she said, and, angry; at last in turn, rose and went to her room. Indifferently he watched her go, then turned to Smith. "Got anything to smoke, Jimsy?" he de manded. " No," he replied, fumbling in his pockets, " as usual, I'm just out, but I'll run around to the cor ner store and get some cigars." Left alone, Brooks began to give way to the uneasiness and apprehension that had followed 72 PAID IN FULL upon his scene with Capt. Williams when he had cooled down and was able to consider the prob able consequences. " I wonder if Williams will fire me ? " he mut tered. " If he doesn't it's on account of Emma. He acted as if he'd go a long ways for Emma." He was anxious to know what had happened after his brusque departure. He went into the bedroom and found his wife in tears. " Don't cry, Emma," he said, soothingly, go ing 1 to her and taking her in his arms. " I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I know I've got a fierce grouch on to-night, but I can't help it. So would you have one if you'd had to put up with what I have to-day." Mrs. Brooks was one of those sweet-natured women who could not sulk for more than five minutes if they tried. It needed but his caress and apparent contrition to dispel her resentment incontinently. " You certainly have had cause to worry, dear," she assented. " After what's happened to-night I'll have to hunt another job," he said. "But I don't care. I'm glad I told the beast what I thought of him. 73 PAID IN FULL Some day somebody'll tell him what they thin* of him, and plug him, too, as sure as he's born." " You'll not have to hunt for another job yet awhile," she told him. "The Captain said he would overlook it, and that it wouldn't make any difference." Her husband looked at her in astonishment, half incredulous. "He said that?" " Yes, and I'm glad it's turned out as it has, for how we'd manage if you were out of work just now goodness knows. I don't ! " "Just how did he put it?" " He said he was almighty sorry for what had occurred; that he knew he had been hard at times, and that as far as your place and we were concerned there would be no change." Brooks's relief showed in his face. " Well, that knocks me," he commented. " No body else ever bucked up against him and got off scott free. I can't understand it. Did your mother put in a word for me? " " No." " Then it's you who must have a pull. He died right down when you spoke to him. I never 74 PAID IN FULL would have believed such a thing. If you had been a man standing there in front of him he'd have smashed you Darn it, I wonder who's ringing now? Can't be Jimsy; he hasn't had time to get to the street at the gait he goes." He went to the head of the stairs, and met a messenger boy who was bearing a letter, and had received instructions to wait for an answer. He re-entered, telling the boy to remain at the door, and hastily broke open the envelope. " Sure ! " he exclaimed joyfully, as he perused the missive. " Tickled to death ! Go and get your things on, Emma. It's from Beatrice Langley and Willie Ferguson. Willie's giving a sort of theatre party, and they want us to go with them. There's going to be a little supper afterward." She shook her head. " Tell them we can't go." "Can't go! Why not?" " I simply can't." " I don't see why." "Well, then, I won't; so there! You'd better make some excuse." " Write it yourself, then," he said, irritated and 75 PAID IN FULL deeply disappointed. " I'm not going to lie to them." Without another word she fetched some writ ing material, indited the note and sent it off by the messenger. '"What's the matter? Are you sore over what happened to-night?" he demanded, sulkily. " No, I'm not sore, Joe." " Then why can't you go ? " " Because I can't. ' That's all." " I think you might. If you didn't want to go yourself you might have accepted for my sake. I never get any amusement and you're always complaining." " When do I complain, and of what? " " It's the selfish way you act, I mean. For once we get a chance to go and see a decent show and afterward have a supper party, you get sore you simply don't want to go. You haven't any con sideration for me." Burning with indignation, she went up to him and forced him to look her in the face. " You say I have no consideration for you ! " she said. " You know as well as I do why I can't go. I haven't had a new dress in a year. My 76 PAID IN FULL gioves are all worn out. I've skimped and strug gled and economized until I can't do any more. I'd go to the theatre if I could go alone or with yon, or with Jimsy, and hide somewhere in the corner ; but do you think I want to go to a party looking like a kitchen maid? My shoes are cracked. Everything is second hand and old and ugly. And look at me! D- piness and abates misery by the doubling- of our joys and dividing of our griefs. This was the sort of friendship that animated Jimsy Smith. His regard began in love for Emma Harris, but when he found that this love was not requited he did not for that reason withdraw his interest in her. Accepting the cold reality with his usual philosophy, he thrust deep down in his heart the passion that never could be eradicated, and his sterling, unflinching honesty transformed it in time into a fraternal affection as self-sacrificing as it was loyal, which he extended to the man Emma had chosen for her life partner. With his keen perception he had soon seen that that man was morally weak, irresolute of purpose, in competent in business, and that his love for his wife was not of that kind which counted sacrifice 124 PAID IN FULL for her as a privilege, and forbearance, indulgence and unfailing consideration for her gentler and purer nature as a duty. But it was not for him to judge or to condemn. That Emma was satis fied was sufficient. No other consideration mat tered a particle. And he esteemed himself happy in being admitted to the little household on terms of the intimacy of an elder brother, which he fostered with a tact and a discretion that were perfect. In all the world there was no one else he cared for, or whc cared for him. He had not a single relative that he knew of. When Mrs. Brooks and he re-entered the apartment and she turned to him and told him that it was good to see him back, she meant it. " It is good to me to be back again," he ad mitted, " if only for a few hours." " Why a few hours, Jimsy ? " " Williams expects me to take the midnight train for Boston. There is some legal tangle about our dock lease there." " Oh, I see. Did Joe tell you about our good fortune? Of course, you can see the change," and she made a gesture that took in the whole room. 125 PAID IN FULL ** You mean the raise in salary and back pay? '" "Yes wasn't it splendid of Captain Will- lams?" " It certainly has agreed with you," he re sponded evasively. " Never saw you look so well." " Did the Captain tell you about it? " " No, he never mentioned it." "Why not?" " Captain Williams has a habit of keeping a whole lot to himself." " It came as a complete surprise at least to me." " Seems to have done your mother a whole lot of good. She never did shine up to that Harlem flat." " The change has done her a great deal of good. She still finds fault, but " " That's part of her daily diet." " She a dear, though. She always did think there was nothing too good for me." "That's the mother of it. I guess, as a rule, |hey are certainly a great institution." " In all the years I've known you, Jimsy, you've 126 PAID IN FULL never spoken of your mother or father. I sup pose you don't care to." An expression of pain flitted over his face. " No, it ain't pleasant," he confessed. Mrs. Brooks was sincerely sorry for her rather thoughtless remark. " Forgive me, Jimsy. I wish I hadn't said that. Could I help to make it more pleasant ? I'd like to," she said sympathetically. He gazed at her with a queer look, and for a few moments did not speak. He appeared to be debating something in his mind. "Well, you know, Emma," he said at last, "a lot of people are pitched into this world without their knowledge or consent and when they get old enough to take stock of what has been left 'em, and what they've got, they suddenly find themselves shy some very valuable assets in the way of name and character." " How, Jimsy I mean with you ? " she asked, surprised. " I am one of them duffers," he avowed sadly. " My mother as near as I have been able to find out hiked out into Colorado when it was a Ter ritory. There wasn't much law and I guess no 127 PAID IN FULL conventionalities. Everybody kind o' drifted along the best, or the worst, they could, the majority voting the straight ticket for the worst. A shake of the hand was as good as a bond and there wasn't any law in the land except that be tween man and woman. Some of them out there: yearned as much for the sanctity of the marriage vows as an Arab in the Sahara does for a sun bath. It was a loose country full of loose people. My mother fell in love with a roving miner and he promised to marry her, but before the parson wandered into the camp to make a little loose change tying matrimonial knots, pa got into an argument concerning alcoholic capacity and got plugged with a .45." "Killed?" " Yes. He passed on. Later I was shoved into the midst of an unsuspecting public. My coming into the world witho fl t the usual legal credentials hit my poor mother awful hard, and before I could open my eyes she died. Then there was an awful argument about where I be- 'Jonged." "How?" ""Two cities claimed me. Denver said I was 128 PAID IN FULL born in Omaha and Omaha blamed it on Denver. Those that looked after me when I was a kid got a little careless about my education and finally the city of Denver adopted me as a favorite son. Father's only known name was Jim ; I grabbed it. I had to have a last one on the handle so I chose Smith, feeling tolerably certain it would pass the scrutiny of an inquisitive world without raising a storm of curiosity." He paused, then concluded with a wan smile : " You see, Emma, I am some shy." " I'm awfully sorry, Jimsy, but it doesn't make a lot of difference, does it ? " she said consolingly. " No only that's why I came East the .West ain't conducive to pleasant recollections." " It's nothing you could help." " No I figure you can't always blame people for what they can't help. If a fellow comes into the world shy, he's shy, and the chances are he's doing the best he can the very time he goes to the bad." "How? In what way?" " You seem puzzled," he said, moving his chair so that it brought him squarely facing her. "Well, for instance out in Denver I knew a 129 PAID IN FULL fellow who married a girl who'd had pretty much what she wanted, but he'd been in hard luck. It was a love match all right, both parties being clean foolish over each other. Well, he didn't get on and she had to work pretty hard. Finally he thought her health and spirits were about busted up on account of the work and he com menced appropriating other folks' money got 'way in, and the harder he tried to get out the deeper he floundered. Finally, the big exposure came off. He was a thief. Now, what do you think about him, Emma? Do you think because he was long on love and short on honor he was all bad, eh?" She hesitated, pondering the question as some thing so utterly beyond ordinary cogitation that it could not have presented itself to her and was not to be lightly decided. " I don't know what to think," she mused. " I've always loathed a thief and a liar. I know there's an awful lot of dishonesty in business. Father always declared that a man to drink or gamble or dissipate might be weak, but that a man who stole, or lied to injure people, was vicious. Somehow, I think that, too." 130 "YOU ARE A GOOD MAN, .JIMSY A GOOD MAN." Page 131. PAID IN FULL " Maybe you're right, but I wondered if you'd been in his wife's place you'd sort of forgiven the man and helped him get right." " Perhaps I don't know," she replied doubt fully. " But I think if anything like that ever happened it would almost kill me." Her thoughts were diverted from the subject by the ringing of the telephone bell. She answered it. " Captain Williams calling," she said to Smith. Then through the 'phone : " Ask the gentleman to come up, please." Jimsy, anxious and much troubled, regarded her thoughtfully. She turned from the telephone and advanced to him holding out her hand. He took it, hesi tatingly and wonderingly. " Jimsy," she said earnestly, " I've never quite understood you before." "No?" he interrogated. " But after what you told me to-night," she went on, " I've had a little peek behind the cur tains. You are a good man, Jimsy a good man. That means everything." For the second time in his entire life the first 13* PAID IN FULL having been when he proposed to her Smith displayed trepidation. " Now, Emma, be careful," he reproved. "There ain't no celestial medals pinned on my coat signifying an angelic career, and don't you start tossing bouquets in my direction." The doorbell rang as he settled himself in his chair again. "Ah! there's the old sea dog," said Mrs. Brooks, hastening to let the Captain in. PAID IN FULL G CHAPTER XI IOOD evening, Mrs. Brooks, glad to see you." Capt. Williams grasped her hand, as his 'eyes wandered over the comfortable room, and he added : " Hello, Smith ! Meet you every time I come here." " One of my hangouts," agreed the superin tendent genially. " Sit down, Captain," invited Emma, motion ing him to a chair. "Thanks," he said. "Where's your hus band?" " He's just gone out. He'll be back in a little while. Jimsy has been telling us about your eventful trip." "Eventful trip?" He echoed the words with a bewildered air. Smith pushed his chair back so that Mrs. Brooks could not see him without turning in his 133 PAID IN FULL direction and unobserved by her motioned warn ing signals to his employer, who did not under stand them. " Spinning a yarn about that little revolution down at Guatemala," he prompted. "Eh? Guatemala oh, yes the revolution very bloody affair very serious," replied Will iams, who had suddenly realized that he was ex pected to confirm a story that Smith had found it expedient to relate to Mrs. Brooks. " Jimsy said there wasn't a shot fired," she told him. Smith, seeing that the Captain understood, drew his chair forward. " Emma, don't you let the Captain fill you full of yarns. He can lie faster than I can," he laughed. " No," protested Williams, " there ain't noth ing can beat you, Smith. Well, Mrs. Brooks, how have you been?" " Splendid." " You look it." " Have you seen mother and Beth ? " " Not yet too busy." " When did you get in ? " 134 PAID IN FULL "When did I get in? Let me see Smith, when did I get in? " " You look as if you had just got," suggested the superintendent. "To-day yes, but what time? I should say at ten maybe eleven o'clock." " That's probably why Joe hasn't seen you," observed Emma. " He's just taken mother and Beth as far as the theatre. I don't know what keeps him he should be back before this." " I guess he ain't run away," opined the Cap tain, with a suspicion of grimness. " I'll wait." " You know, Emma, that's one of the best things the Captain does," said Smith. "What?" " Waiting. When it comes to patience and persistency, he's got most Indians beat a dozen city blocks." " Don't you mind what Smith says, Mrs. Brooks," grinned the Captain. " The years he's been working for me he never showed any special signs of hurry or nervousness." " I don't believe Jimsy ever lost his temper." " Not so a fellow could see him hunting for it. How's your husband?" 135 PAID IN FULL " Fairly well. I think he seems a little worried over business." " That so ? What's the matter ? " " You see, in his new position he feels his re sponsibility." Williams looked surprised. "Has he any special new responsibility?" he asked, his eyes wandering inquiringly to Smith, who did some more warning signaling unob served by their hostess. " Well, since you raised his salary, Captain, and gave him his extra work, naturally he's anxious to make good," again prompted the superin tendent. "Anxious to make good? Well, he'll have a chance and soon at that." Mrs. Brooks rose, hand outstretched, and went to him with a happy, grateful smile. " Now that it's out, I want to thank you ever so much," she said. "Thank me?" " Yes, for Joe's raise and that six months' back pay." "He told you that?" " Sure he did," put in Smith. 136 PAID IN FULL " He has forbidden me to speak of it to either you or Jimsy," Emma told him, " but since you have mentioned it first I can thank you, can't I? " He did not return a direct answer, but rubbed his chin dubiously as he said : "So I raised his pay, eh? And dated it back six months?" " Of course you did," asseverated Smith with emphasis. " Don't let him fool you, Emma." " You don't know how happy it's made us all," went on Mrs. Brooks gratefully. " I feel like a new woman, and mother appreciates it." " Well, seems that I done all these things '" He stopped abruptly as the door opened and his eyes rested on Brooks. The latter's under jaw dropped and he turned livid with fear at the unexpected presence of the Captain. He was, in fact, so startled that he nearly collapsed. He braced himself, however, and entered before his wife could perceive his trouble. " Ca-Captain Williams ! " he stammered, ad vancing tremblingly towards him. " W-will you shake hands, Captain?" 137 PAID IN FULL " Sure," replied Williams in a firm voice. "How are you, Brooks?" " I-I'm all right, I guess." " You know, Joe, you told me not to thank the Captain, but he brought it up the raise and the money," said his wife, still full of the subject and her gratitude. " No, I did Joe," corrected Smith. " You see the Captain feels -" Brooks turned upon them snarling like a wolf at bay. " What are you trying to do make fun of me ? Don't you think that's it " Now, Brooks," interrupted the Captain au thoritatively, " you sure are nervous. Your wife has just been telling me how she enjoys your new income." Mrs. Brooks, startled and alarmed, gazed at her husband. "Why, Joe, are you sick? " she demanded. " No no maybe it's the heat," he replied weakly, passing his tongue over his dried lips. There was a moment of general embarrassment, during which Capt. Williams took stock of the room. 138 PAID IN FULL "You are fixed up mighty snug here, Mrs. Brooks," he commented, breaking the awkward silence. " Yes, it is pleasant," she answered, now seri ously worried. Williams rose. " Well, I must go," he remarked. " Do you want me to go with you? " asked Joe. " No, to-morrow morning will do to see you. You know my lonely little quarters ain't more'n half a block from here and I like to hang out there." " The Captain," added Smith, "lives in a little South Sea Island nook moved into his flat. He keeps it so dirty that some say it's attractive." " That's what you get for being a bachelor," laughed Williams. He moved towards the door and the others rose. " I'm glad to see you so happy, Mrs. Brooks," he observed, pausing and looking about him again. " Thank you," said she. " I never did know before what a little money meant to a woman." PAID IN FULL " Perhaps that's because you don't know women." " Oh, I know women one kind, anyway. Bui Brooks is lucky in having a girl like you for a wife." " Emma, he's giving you a little South Pacific blarney," put in Jimsy. " Maybe I am and maybe I'm not," said the Captain. " But," he continued emphatically, " it's a sure thing that if I had a girl like you I'd knuckle down and earn enough money to make you happy eh, Brooks?" " I suppose that's what you'd do," assented that individual. " Yes, I'd work pretty hard without kicking, to please you, Mrs. Brooks, if you looked to me to make good for you." " Emma," declared Smith with his quiet smile, " if you were single I'd suspect Captain of getting a little soft." " But I'd earn the money," went on the Cap tain, pursuing his train of thought. " That's the only way to get along. Well, I'll say good night, Mrs. Brooks." " Good night, Captain. Thank you again." 140 ' IP I HAD A GIRL. LIKE YOU I'D EARN ENOUGH MONET TO MAKE YOU HAPPY- EH, BROOKS ? " Page 140. PAID IN FULL " Good night, Smith." " I may drop over later," remarked the super intendent by way of reply. " Wish you would," the Captain assured him with some eagerness. " I'd like to smoke a pipe and talk a while. Good night, Brooks." " Good night, sir." Brooks went forward and opened the door. " Try and get down to the office by eight in the morning," recommended the Captain, gazing at him with sinister contempt. " Yes, sir." " There'll be some gentlemen there who may be anxious to meet you." " I'll be there." " Didn't know but what you might oversleep, now that you're so prosperous. Good night." Brooks shut the door and stood leaning against it, clutching the handle for support. The muscles of his face were twitching, and he gazed with frightened, haunted eyes from his wife to Smith. " Have you told her, Jimsy?" he demanded. Smith raised his hand in protest. 141 PAID IN FULL " No, Joe, it ain't the right time yet, and- "Why, isn't it the right time? I'm trapped and Williams " " Joe, see here," he expostulated, " you can't talk." "What is it? What do you mean?" de manded Mrs. Brooks, very pale. Smith still sought to spare her, to keep the dreadful truth from her. " There's just been a little trouble, Emma," he said evasively. "Joe here is all worked up excited." " I'll tell you what happened," cried her hus band in a choking voice, staggering to the table. " You think I got a raise. I didn't. You think that man Williams gave me six months' back pay. He didn't. All this money you've been living on all of it I stole I took it from the com pany ! Williams trapped me. He wanted me to steal. Now he knows. Now he knows, and I'm done for!" He fell into a chair and doubled forward, bury ing his face in his hands. For once Smith was at a loss what to say. Mrs. Brooks, paler than ever, stood rigid, a* 142 PAID IN FULL though turned to stone, staring at her husband, while the significance of his confession developed in her brain. "You mean," she articulated in low, slow tones, " you mean that you " " I'm a thief," he moaned, brokenly, without raising his head. " They know it. D'etectives are downstairs watching watching. To-morrow to-morrow I'll be in jail." Another long, awkward silence ensued. Smith ended it. " You see, Emma, Joe here ain't so much to blame, he " "And you didn't let me know?" There was cold reproach in her voice and in her gaze. " It wasn't time," explained Jimsy, uneasily. " There's a chance things can be squared there's still a chance." " Still, you didn't let me know ! " "The thing to do is to sit down quietly and talk this over. To begin with " " No, Jimsy. Please go home. I I want to be with Joe alone." 143 PAID IN FULL Smith took up his hat reluctantly and prepared to depart. " Just as you say, Emma just as you say," he said. " I'll do all I can to-night and let you know. Maybe it'll be all right." " I know, Jimsy. Good night." " Good night," 144 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XII FOR a long time Mrs. Brooks stood gazing* in silence at her husband, her heart rent with conflicting emotions. Her happiness of the past few months, then, had been built upon the precarious foundation of peculation. Her husband, who had sunk forward, hiding his head on the table, and lay there sobbing, tortured by that conscience which is the hell of the living soul and by the fear of the consequences of the sin that had found him out, had slid into the abyss of deceit and dishonesty instead of being ad vanced, as she had believed, upon the ladder of success as a reward for ability, integrity and faith ful service. Oh! the horror, oh! the shame of it! On the very morrow the name she bore would be held up to disgrace and derision. He would be cast into prison. The misery of their struggles with poverty was as nothing compared with that of their sudden downfall. Numbed though her heart was with the shock, PAID IN FULL shrunk by the terror of their ghastly position, it was yet not impervious to pity and the hope less wretchedness of her husband inspired it. The provocation for the first false step, the others, prompted by illusory hope that had made his downward course easier and easier until he had gone so far that he could **ot struggle back, was all comprehensible to her, and she thought of how he had lavished his stealings upon her, how he appeared to be moved by the one desire to make her comfortable and happy. She went to him and put her hand on his head, smoothing his hair. " Oh, Joe oh, my boy," she said brokenly, " how could you do it? Didn't you know sooner or later you'd be found out ? Now I know why you've been interested in the races you've been betting on the horses." " I I wanted to get the money back," he sobbed. "But didn't you know you couldn't? Oh! why didn't you leave things as they were the flat, the struggle and all that? Why did you bring me here and show me all this this happi ness with money that you stole?" 146 His sobbing ceased and he pushed her away, and rose. "That's right you call me a thief! If there was one person in the world I thought I could turn to it's you and you turn on me." " Joe, you mustn't say that, I haven't turned on you. Only I can't help but think " " What ? That man Williams drove me to tak ing the money." "Drove you?" " Yes, he did he went away so I could take it. I expected you to stand by me. Do you know the hole I'm in? There are three Central Office men downstairs watching. If I make a move I'll be nabbed. It's all very well for you to stop and preach, you always were so damned saintly; but what of me? That's the question, what of me?" He thumped his breast violently. She drew back, hurt by his reproaches. " If I thought you were yourself, I'd never for give you for saying that to me," she declared. " I'm not asking your forgiveness, nor your mother's, nor your sister's. What I want now is somebody to help me out I don't vyant to go to jail it would kill me ! " 147 PAID IN FULL " Do you think I want you to go to jail? Do you think I want the disgrace " " The disgrace that's it ! I knew that would come sooner or later 'but I didn't think it would come from you. There's always somebody to hammer that into a fellow when he's down." " I'm not trying to hammer anything into you. What I want to know is what can be done?, What are we going to do ? " " I don't know unless " " Unless we can get the money to pay back. There's Jimsy." "That won't do it's too much. He hasn't got it. Besides, it's too late. Williams means business. He wouldn't take the money, he's not that kind." " Oh, if I only knew a way if I could only help!" She wrung her hands and sank hopelessly into a chair by the table. Brooks paced the room restlessly, like a wild animal in a cage. Now and then he shot a peculiar, furtive glance in the direction of his wife. Finally, he sat opposite to her, leaned 148 PAID IN FULL towards her on the table and said in a low, in tense voice : " If anything is to be done, it's got to be done to-night, Emma. Williams is the only man. You can square it with him." "I can?" " Yes, and no one but you." "What can I do?" He looked at her meaningly. " He likes you." Startled, she returned his gaze, inquiringly. " Yes, he does," he went on, " he always did. Women are his weak point. He's liked you for years, that's why he hangs around. I've seen it, and heard what he said to-night, about what he'd do for a girl like you. He meant that, Emma he'll do anything you ask him if if you go to him right." Beginning to understand what he wanted of her she rose slowly, incredulous horror in her eyes. He rose also and went towards her. " He's home now," he urged eagerly. " You can go. No one will know but just Williams, you and me. And you can do more than that you can make him give us money, more money, 149 PAID IN FULL to keep on living like this, and there won't be any risk." She recoiled from him, consumed with rage and shame, her eyes blazing. "I hope I don't understand aright!" The words came in quivering gasps. " You mean me to go to his apartment to-night, to see him and _and " " No one will know the difference," he coaxed softly. " You can handle him all right. Be sides, you know how far you can let a man go all women know that." " Oh ! I can't believe I'm listening to you ! A husband to ask a wife " She stopped, pressing her cheeks between her clenched hands, appalled at his infamy. " Then you won't do it ? " he cried angrily. "You won't come to the front? I suppose you don't think I ought to ask? Why shouldn't I? Who did I steal the money for? I did it because you made me." " That's a lie ! " "You know it's the truth. When I married you your father was to help me and he died, and 150 PAID IN FULL then you had to do your own work and yots whined and complained. " That's another lie ! " " Oh ! you never said so in so many words, but I saw it for four years around the house. I saw you sighing and moping because you didn't have enough to live on. Then there was that mother of yours and your sister they never stopped. You tried to make yourself a martyr. Every moment of your life was a mute protest against our poverty yes it was, and you know it. Do you remember that night when you said you couldn't go to the theatre because you didn't have clothes? That was the first time I took money. That's when I began." "You knew I wouldn't have gone if I had known." " But you did go you kept on going, and I kept on stealing for you. God! how I've suf fered for you for the clothes on your back. Every night has been a nightmare. Now I'm going to jail you know that. I'm going up there on the river for years because you won't do your part." " I can't do what you want.'* PAID IN FULL He became satanically persuasive again. " Why can't you? " he urged. " Other women have for less reason one to get control of a transcontinental railroad for her husband. I've risked everything for you. If you go there to night I won't go to jail, I won't be hauled into court, no one will know but the three of us. No one will think the less of you. I've gone through to the limit for you, it's up to you to go through for me." " Then if you go to jail you mean that I've sent you there?" " Yes, and down in your heart you know you have." Every instinct of her pure womanhood, every fibre of her flesh, revolted at this cynical exhibi tion of his vileness. She contemplated him with loathing. " Now that I see you naked in all your nasty meanness, your contemptible viciousness, I won der how I ever made the mistake of thinking you even half a man," she said. This scathing denunciation made no impres sion on his deadened sense of honor and decency. " You can't dodge the responsibility with fine 152 PAID IN FULL speeches," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. " I've gone wrong for you. What are you going to do? Be square with me and take this chance an easy chance and you know you're safe." She did not answer, but stood there, her face set in its expression of abhorrence and indigna tion, deliberating as to the best course to pursue towards this unspeakable villain to whom she was bound. Slowly she decided what she had to do, while he watched her with anxious, cringing mien. She addressed him, finally, in cold, harsh tones : "Whatever I may do or promise to do, I promise simply because you blame me." " Emma, I knew you'd " " Don't make the mistake that I care for you. Whatever I felt for you, and I thought it was love, you've assassinated in the last ten minutes. But I don't want you to go to jail pointing a finger of accusation at me." " Then you'll be square you'll help you'll " " You understand that if I bargain with Cap tain Williams for your freedom, I make the bar- gain." 153 PAID IN FULL " I know. I'll never ask." " It will be my business alone." " Yes, just yours." "Is he home?" "Yes, I think so. He said he was going 1 there." "Telephone and ask him if he can see me now alone." He jumped to the instrument, but as his hand grasped the receiver he hesitated, and a flush suffused his white, drawn cheeks, brought there by the first true consciousness of the enormity of his crime. He looked around guiltily at his wife. She was standing rigid, her back towards him. He took down the receiver. " Seven-six-eightfour Bryant," he called. T54 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XIII WHEN Jimsy Smith had told Emma and Joe that Capt. Williams lived in a little South Sea Island nook moved into his flat and that it was dirty the description had done justice to the place in a general way. It was in a hotel not far from that in which the Brookses had so recently taken up their resi dence, and the living- room was a curious combi nation of natural history museum and ship's cabin. It was crowded with curious mementoes collected in the course of his many voyages. A wooden capstan in the centre did duty for a: round table, and on it, in addition to an electric reading lamp, an untidy litter of papers and magazines, some writing paper, envelopes, pens and ink, was a huge tin box of tobacco, and a rack containing pipes of wood and meerschaum, of all sizes, shapes and colors. Remarkable among the few chairs of rattan or rush was one, a large rocking chair, partially constructed of two 155 PAID IN FULL small anchors, the flukes forming the rockers. In a corner, over a comfortable lounge, was a canopy made of a piece of sail canvas supported by South Sea Island spears, and decorated with leather shields, war clubs, boomerangs and other native weapons, together with necklaces and various ornaments of sharks' teeth. Covering the walls were stuffed fishes of weird shape, the sword of a swordfish, strange images and trinkets, and a few marine paintings one a whale-hunting scene darkened by age, smoke and dirt. Over the entrance door was a ship's wheel, and on the mantel a model of an old-time trading schooner with all sails set. Among other objects on the mantel also was a faded daguerreo type, showing Capt. Williams as a young man, in uniform. On each side of the capstan was a dirty cuspidor. The carpet also was dirty and spotted, and some rugs of matting scattered about the room would have been all the better for a thorough scrubbing. For the rest, dust had settled thickly everywhere. In this queer abode Williams lived alone, save for Sato, a Japanese valet, who had served him for many years. The massive form of the Captain himself 156 PAID IN FULL minus his coat, might have been descried in the: light of the lamp through the cloud of tobacco smoke that enveloped him, as he sat reading a magazine, some time after his departure from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Brooks. He was rather annoyed when the telephone bell rang, and had he not been expecting Smith would not have troubled to answer it. As it was, he swore a little and rose lazily to respond. "Hello! Yes, this is Captain Williams," he said in his usual stentorian voice. " What, Brooks ? I won't talk with you over the 'phone no what ? Mrs. Brooks ? What, here ? Well, well ! Yes, I'm at home yes. Right away, you say? Yes, I'll wait." Williams could hardly believe what he had heard. He turned it over in his mind for fully three minutes figuring out just what it could mean. " Going to send his wife here ! What a skunk he is!" he grunted. He ambled to the telephone again and in structed the hotel clerk that if any visitors called to see him they were to be shown right up. 157 PAID IN FULL From there he went to the door of an adjoining room, and roared for his valet. "Any beer on ice?" he demanded when the Japanese, who evidently had been asleep, pre sented himself." " Yes, saar." "Got limes?" " Yes, saar." "Any rum the kind I brought up from the West Indies?" " Yes, saar." "Plenty ice?" " Yes, saar." " Good ! Be sure you're telling the truth, un- 'derstand ? " " Yes, saar." "That's all." He could not get over the wonder Brooks's telephone communication had caused him, for as he settled into his chair again and lit his pipe, after rilling it with fuel from the tin, he muttered to himself: "Told her he'd got a raise of pay, eh? What a skunk he is ! And what a fine girl she is ! " He gazed abstractedly at the model of the 158 PAID IN FULL schooner on the mantel opposite to him, and be came buried in thought so deep that he actually stopped smoking and let his pipe go out. Pres ently he roused himself, fished a sheet of writing paper from among the reading matter on the cap stan table and wrote something upon it, after which he folded the paper carefully and hid it be tween the leaves of a magazine. Then he shouted again for his valet. " Sato," he ordered, " bring my slippers and smoking jacket." The man did so, and helped him on with the coat, a garment of thin holland. " You didn't think of going out, did you? " de~ manded the Captain. " No, saar." " Then begin to think about it. There's a lady coming to see me." The man grinned knowingly. " You might as well take a walk, Sato." " Yes, saar." " And you needn't come back rig.ht away." " No, saar." " Here's a couple of dollars for you. Take 'em and get to blazes out of here. Sabe? " 159 PAID IN FULL " Yes, saar." "And stay out," he recommended, as the Japanese prepared to obey. When the valet had vanished the Captain took a survey of his domain rather anxiously. " It's a little dirty, a little dirty, but it'll have to do/' he muttered. There was a knock at the door. Williams wreathed his physiognomy in the most amiable smile of which it was capable, felt his tie to assure himself that it had not slipped round towards his left ear, as it had a bad habit of doing 1 when not hauled taut and clamped in place, and went to let his visitor in. The caller, however, was only Smith. " Come in, but make your business short," was Williams's blunt greeting. " I'm expecting an important visitor." " All right, Captain," responded Smith, tran quilly, entering and helping himself to a chair. " Have a pipe ? " invited his host, pushing the tobacco tin toward him. " Too hot," was the laconic declination. " Well, how did you leave the Brooks family ? " " She knows." 160 "Yeu tell her?" "No; Joe did." " Didn't think he had the nerve." " He hasn't." "How's that?" " It was because he lost it that he told her. Busted right out the moment the door was closed on you." " Did they have a row? " " Don't know. She took it like a major and asked me to leave 'em alone." " That's natural." " Have you got the exact figures? " "What figures?" " Of how much he took." " I guess so to the penny," said Williams, reaching for a memorandum book and consulting it. " It was just sixteen thousand, eight hundred and fifty, three days ago." " Any more now? " " Not that I know of. Guess that covers it." Smith shook his head moodily. " That's too bad too bad," he murmured. "That's right, it is too bad," agreed the Caotain. 161 PAID IN FULL Smith thought for a minute, looked straight at the Captain, who was regarding him curiously, and said firmly, and more quickly than his em ployer had ever heard him speak before: "Williams, I don't think it'll take three min utes for you and me to come to an under standing." "What about?" " Brooks." "What about him?" " I want to square this thing for him." " Where do you come in, Smith? " " In plain words, Williams, that's my business. But I want to square it." " How do you think you can square it, Smith ? " As Jimsy prepared to answer the question he fell back into his old familiar drawl. " Well, Williams," he said, " you ain't got any callous on your fingers from handing out coin to the folks who've worked for you, but I've always been treated about right." "You were always worth treating" right, Smith." " Thanks." 162 rAiD IN FULL "Always found you a fair man doing things you said you'd do in a fair way." "I ain't never been much of a spendthrift, ^Williams. I've saved and been a little lucky in investing the little I've had." " You were always keen, Smith, always b&eu." " I ain't got quite enough to square all of that." "No?" " I can raise about fourteen thousand by noon to-morrow, and I'll give you my note for the rest, with security I mean collateral." "'So it ain't none of my business why you do this?" " Exactly." " Smith, I don't think you can square this Kttle matter for Brooks." " Don't think my note's good, eh ? " " 'Tain't that. You couldn't square this, Smith, if you had a million right in your clothes this minute." . "Why not?" " To tell the truth, I'm going to open negotia tions with another party." "That so?" 163 IN FULL " Mrs. Breaks." "How?" " She's earning up here to see me soon. Maybe she and me can come to some mutually pleasant arrangement that will keep Brooks out of jail." " When is she coming ? " The Captain puffed at his pipe and scrutinized Smith's face closely as he replied : " Expect her any moment." "How do you know?" " Telephoned." If Williams expected to see any sign in his visitor of the utter amazement, the profound con sternation, the imparting of this information caused he was doomed to disappointment. Smith remained as unreadable as the Sphinx. But it was sixty seconds before he spoke. " I suppose that's a hint for me to be on my way?" he interrogated. " That's about the meaning I meant to con vey," admitted the Captain, without circumlo cution. Jimsy rose slowly, took his hat and went towards the door. Before he reached it he turned. " Williams," he said, " you know I've known 164 PAID IN FULL Emma Mrs. Brooks ever since she was in short clothes, and used to come down to the of fice to go home with her daddy." " So I've heard." " She's always been able to look into my face with them big blue eyes and smile. Some time some day if I get back I'm going to make it my business to see her." " All right." " And if she shouldn't happen to look up into my face and smile I'm going to find you, Will iams, and I'm coming heeled." The Captain puffed his pipe placidly. " What style heels might you be wearing now, Smith ? " he inquired, with great deliberation. " Well," answered the always deliberate Jimsy, " if you should consult the particular shoemaker who furnishes them he'd describe that heel as of forty-five calibre." " Good night, Smith," said the Captain dryly. Smith did not reply. Williams gazed in the direction of the door after his superintendent had closed it. There was an enigmatical smile his face. It slowly died away, and his pugnacious under jaw pro- 165 PAID IN FULL truded orniaously. Reaching 1 round to his hip pocket he brought out a revolver. It was a for midable-looking- weapon, with a long- barrel. He broke the breach, examined the cartridges and replaced it in his pocket. " Darned if he wouldn't do it, too," he muttered. CHAPTER XIV REMORSE may be the least active of all the moral senses ; still, there is no heart abso lutely without it. No sooner had his wife passed from his view than it became active in Brooks, having- been fired by the flicker of shame that the full realization of his villainy had pro voked as he took down the receiver of the tele phone to call Capt. Williams. la forcing Emma to deliver herself into the hands of his employer he had not actually be lieved that it would be necessary for her to make the supreme sacrifice. " You can handle him all right," he had told her; "you know how far you can let a man go all women know that." But he had been willing to take the chance that this sacrifice would be exacted, and, knowing only too well the brutal sensuousness of Williams, his notorious depravity, and that he had east what he had tateen to be lustful eyes on Emma, he now had no doubt whatever that it would be. The 167 Captain was not the man to give anything 1 for nothing, to part with money without receiving full value. With his great physical strength and his will that overbore and wore down all opposi tion, how would the gentle, submissive nature of Emma be able to hold out against him ? Reduced to helplessness by his all-dominating power, with the alternative of compliance or their ruin held out to her, she would have to submit. Brooks pictured the scene as though it were being enacted before him, and he went hot and cold and a sweat of agony broke out all over him. "No! No! No!" He uttered aloud the protest wrung from his writhing soul by his half-resuscitated manhood. He clutched his throat, struck himself in the mouth with such violence that his teeth cut his under lip and the blood dyed his chin, seized his hat and dashed wildly for the door. Fear met him there and held up a restraining finger. Downstairs were the three Central Office de tectives. On the morrow, in a few hours, at the office where he had worked for five years, these men, at the behest of his employer, would place their hands on his arms and he would be under 1 68 PAID IN FULL arrest. He saw himself being 1 led @ut, hand cuffed, under the mocking- eyes of his fellow- clerks and the customers. He closed the door again and turned from it, Cowardice at his heels, whispering sophistic prudence, counseling the poltroon's discretion, throwing specious sops to his conscience. Some thing had to be done. No other course than that he had taken had been possible under the cir cumstances. Between him and State's prison stood Emma. She alone on earth could save him, if salvation were possible. Punishment and im munity, at that moment, perhaps, held the bal ance even. The giving or withholding of a kiss would turn the scales either way. The giving of it would brand him with that particular stamp of infamy which, when recognized by men, caused them to draw away with rising gorge and spurn the bearer. But none would know of the sacrifice no one save the victim, Williams and himself. Other women had done as much in pressing emergencies to save their husbands from public dishonor. Some had bargained their favors to insure office or advancement for hus bands or sons, some for dress and jewels their husbands could not give them. He himself would never seek to know just what had passed between his wife and the Captain. He was free to assume that he had worried unnecessarily; that nothing f what he felt certain was happening had oc curred, to surmise that it had not been necessary for Emma to resort to complete surrender. What he did not know could not trouble him. Anyhow, it was too late now, the die had been cast. The chief thing, nay, the one thing, he had to fear was that her mission might be unsuccessful, that she could not purchase his freedom at any price whatsoever. The possibility of this twisted his selfish heart with anguish again. Oh, why had he got himself into this trouble? Why had he not kept within bounds ? It was opportunity, that handmaiden of sin, that had made him a thief and started him on the way that had brought him to the threshold of the jail. When goaded to desperation and recklessness he had taken the first ten dollars from the money he had collected he had had no idea of not return ing it somehow. It had brought a good deal of pleasure to Emma and himself, lightened their 170 PAID IN FULL hard penury with a gleam of brightness. But ten dollars then had been a lot of money. It had not been possible to replace it at once. It was far easier to fix his accounts so that the sum would not be missed. He had yielded to the temptation and had so fixed them. Jenkins, his fellow-employe in the office, was a follower of horse racing in his small way. Now and then he risked a dollar or two in a nearby poolroom, and sometimes he won. A few days after Brooks had falsified the books to cover up his deficit of ten dollars Jenkins had confided to his office cronies that he had a tip of which he felt so sure that he was prepared to pawn his last shoestring to back it- Many others had decided to take a chance, and, having no money of his own, Brooks had taken an advance on his salary out of his collections and followed their example. The odds they had obtained were six to one, and the horse had won. Out of his winnings Brooks had replaced the money he had helped himself to. The poolroom and the availability of the com pany's money had offered to him a great oppor tunity to win what he could not earn, and en couraged by his first success he had taken ad- 171 PAID IN FULL vantage of it. He had begun by making a study of racing and risking small sums. Luck had been with him, and he had won time and time again. He had wanted his wife to share his good for tune, but had not dared to tell her how he had obtained the money, so he had invented the story of outside work. His run of luck had continued, however, until it had become phenomenal, and this it was that had caused his extravagant op timism. He had wagered larger and larger sums until his winnings had represented a secret bank account of three thousand dollars. It was one day when he had " plunged " and won a thousand dollars that he had conceived the fiction of his promotion with reward of back pay. His jubila tion had been so great that he had not been able and had not wanted to conceal it. Moreover, with his bank account reserve he had been so sure of himself that he had aspired to expansion of their mode of living. Soon after their installation in their more ex pensive quarters, however, a series of reverses had come. His luck had deserted him. First his bank account went. Then he had drawn on the collections in his efforts to retrieve his losses. He 172 PAID IN FULL had plunged and lost, plunged and won, plunged again and lost. It had not been long before his " borrowings " had reached such a terrifying amount that he had realized that discovery was inevitable unless he could replace the money within brief delay. It was fear of this that had worried him into a condition bordering on nerv ous collapse. He had not expected to be able to recover all that he had lost, but he had clung to the despairing hope that by wagering heavily he could win enough during Williams's absence to hide his pilfering and postpone examination. While this could be deferred there was hope. Now he knew that his cunning, relentless em ployer had been watching his gradually tottering progress on the tightrope of dishonesty and, pre paring a trap to catch him in, had chosen his own time to spring it. At the thought of this Brooks worked himself into a perfect frenzy of fury. He raged up and down the room, cursing Williams, vomiting all the vile epithets that he had ever heard or could imagine. He hurled a cushion to the floor and ground it with his foot as though it were his enemy's hated face. 173 " You have cheated me out of a living, you fiend ! " he almost howled. "And now you have taken my wife." The sound of his own voice startled and cahned him, and he peeped out in the corridor appre hensively, for fear any one might by chance have been nigh and heard him. He was exhausted by the violence of his paroxysm. His breath came quickly, in gasps, and he stood with staring eyes and heaving bosom until the nervous reaction set in. Then he staggered to the sofa, threw himself upon it and burst into tears. The lachrymose effusion was of brief duration, and it was succeeded by deep dejection. He sat up and glanced at his watch. It was eleven o'clock. He reached for a newspaper and tried to read it, but he could not concentrate his thoughts on the news items his eyes lighted upon. In quietude was gnawing at his heart again. He picked up another paper, but met with no better success. One after another he got all the papers and magazines there were, only to throw them impatiently to the floor; it was impossible for him to read them. 174 PAID IN FULL Emma had been gone a long time. What was detaining her? What, except His face began to twitch. He rose, lit a cigarette, took two puffs at it and put it down. After all, the chief thing was that she slwuld be successful. He filled a glass with water that a bellboy had brought up iced for his mother-in-law, and drained it at a draught. Then he picked up the newspaper nearest to him and tried to read again, but it was useless. He threw it down. What if Williams had refused to be persuaded? The suspense was becoming unendurable. A look of determination came into his face and he went to the telephone, but as his hand touched it he changed his mind, walked back to the table and lit another cigarette. Then he went to the window and stared out at the opposite houses with unseeing eyes. Presently his hand sought his watch pocket. The timepiece it drew out marked ten minutes past eleven. He held it to his ear ; it was ticking steadily. Only ten minutes since he had looked at it be fore! Impossible! Fully an hour had elapsed. The watch must have stopped in the interim. Im- 175 PAID IN FULL patient, he went to the telephone and asked foe the right time. The hotel clerk replied that it was just ten minutes past eleven. On his way to the table to get another cigarette he happened to catch sight of himself in the mirror over the man telpiece. The thin, haggard, ashen visage he saw there frightened him. He laughed nervously. As he did so the door behind him opened. Starting so violently that he let fall the box of cigarettes, he turned. Mrs. Harris, in high dudgeon, walked in, fol lowed by Beth. PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XV WHEN Mrs. Brooks found herself alone in the street she walked along mechan ically, stunned by what had just oc curred. Her heart seemed to be pressed down by a weight, and her breath came painfully through her contracted throat. She could not believe that what she had gone through was real. The thing was so monstrous, so utterly inconceivable. Her husband, Joe, for love of whom she had given up a life of ease, for whom she had borne cheerfully the trials of poverty, in whom she had placed her entire faith this man, to whom she had yielded herself trustingly, in whom, up to that hour, she had believed as the soul of honor, had stood ex posed as a thief and a liar. There had not been one word of truth in the stories he had told her of how, through perseverance and efficiency, he had won recognition, with its prize of enlarged means. And as a climax he had thrown off all dissimu lation and shown that he was rotten to the core, 177 PAID IN FULL of a cowardice that was the most contemptible with which humankind could be debased, that his soul had sunk to the lowest slime layer in the manure pit of moral turpitude. To save himself from the impending punishment of his dishonesty he was willing to trade the honor of his wife ! To maintain himself in the material ease that his thieving had brought them for a few brief weeks he wanted her to prostitute herself for money had entreated and threatened in his efforts to force her to do this thing! And she, driven to desperation, had let him arrange a rendezvous for her with Capt. Williams in the latter's rooms ! She stopped and leaned against a wall for support. A violent trembling had seized her, and the street lights were whirling about her. " My God ! " she groaned. " What shall I do ? What shall I do?" The fit of faintness passed off and she was able to collect her thoughts and consider the best course of action. When she had undertaken to call on Capt. Williams at that hour it was with no thought of lending herself to her husband's hideous plan. In a vague, hopeless way she had resolved to beg mercy for him, to see if there was 178 PAID IN FULL not some manner in which atonement and resti tution could be made for she had no idea as to the amount of his defalcation whether anything whatever could be done to save him from prison and the family from disgrace. Now she was afraid. If she went to him how could she ap proach him what could she say? What would he think of her coming to his rooms, at night, too? He would think, and under the circum stances naturally think, only one thing. And she would be completely in the power of this colossus, this ogre whom she secretly feared and detested, who so often had leered his lascivious admiration of her when she was powerless to resent it. Her impulse was to turn from the ordeal and fly from her husband, leaving him to the fate he merited. She could go to her mother's home and await her return from the theatre. She would at least find a refuge there. But in the morning would come the public exposure and disgrace. No, she must make the effort, whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice. Ten minutes later she was knocking at Capt. .Williams' s apartment. 179 PAID IN FULL The door swung open and the Captain stood (before her. " Come right in, Mrs. Brooks," he invited. "I've been waiting for you." " I was delayed a little," she said, timidly. "Your husband telephoned that you were coming." " Yes I know." The words came falteringly, and she stood, knowing not what to say or what to do. "Did you meet Smith?" he inquired. "Smith?" " Your friend, Jimsy. He just left." "No why?" " Must have passed you in the elevator. It does not matter. Won't you sit down? " She took the chair he advanced for her, close to the table. " You must excuse the looks of these quar ters," he went on. " I am an old bachelor, you know, and my Jap valet ain't allowed to dust up or clean much. Knocks out all my idea of ar rangements." " It is a quaint place," ventured Emma. " Yes lived here ever since I've been in New 1 80 PAID IN FULL York. I fixed it up to suit myself. It ain't what you'd call exactly pretty, but as I'm the only one to be pleased I guess it'll do." " Almost a curiosity shop," she commented, surveying the room with a good deal of nervous ness. " Yes stuff I've collected from time to time while I was at sea. Got about everything I ever wanted to keep, from the wheel of my first schooner down to spears from head-hunters. There's models of boats and a lot of stuff. You : see, I call this my main cabin sort of grand salon. Over there I bunk with my crew just one Jap and the galley's to the rear. In them rooms Sato gets my breakfast, steals my loose change and lies most of the time. Got another room over there. Seldom use that got it fixed up nice and civilized. Guess that's why I ain't feeling com fortable if I try it." These details were of no interest to Mrs. Brooks, who desired only to bring the interview to an end as speedily as possible. "I came right up asked the elevator boy. Perhaps I should have asked at the office ? " she Said. 181 PAID IN FULL " Not at all," he answered, in a manner in tended to be reassuring. " I have my own way in this place. I got the money to pay for what I want, and there ain't no one in this hotel asking me any ' if,' ' and ' or ' but.' " " No one knew me. I didn't care that they should hear my name." " It's nobody's business. What I'm entitled to, I'm entitled to; and so long as I pay the money no one else can interfere with the way I run my ship." " Still a woman at this hour." " Makes no difference although you are the first lady to call on me, night or day." '* You mean that no woman has ever been in here before?" " I said the ' first lady.' " Mrs. Brooks shuddered and instinctively she glanced towards th* door. " You have a telephone here, haven't you, Cap tain?" she asked. " Right over there by the door," he said, point ing to it. " Want to use it? " " Not now, thank you." 182 PAID IN FULL She cleared her choking throat and staited right in to the business that had brought her. " Captain Williams, since you left us to-night Joe, Mr. Brooks, has told me about his difficulty." " So Smith said." " That's what I came to talk about." "Well, that little matter can rest," he said, affably. " You've called, and it's the first chance I've had to speak to you alone." " I want to know if there is any way some arrangement " " No use in looking so glum over a little stolen money. I want to show you my quarters." " I didn't come to see your quarters, Captain. I came to " " I don't care what you came for, Mrs. Brooks," he declared, with mastodonian playfulness. " I make it a rule that everybody who drops in here, man or woman, has got to listen to me spinning yarns. Now " Emma was becoming more and more nervous. " I know you will think me rude, but I can't delay," she insisted. " Joe is in great trouble, and some other time I'll hear the yarns." He rose with mock dignity. 183 PAID IN FULL " You're on my ship, Mrs. Brooks. Please re member every captain is master of his ship, and if you don't listen and like it, mind you, I say like it, I'll clap you in double irons for mutiny." " Captain Williams," she pleaded, " I am sure that you would not displease " i "This little fore-and-after, Mrs. Brooks," he broke in, picking up the model of the ship on the mantel, " is a model of the Sally Moran, my first command out of 'Frisco. That's her wheel up there over the door. She laid the cornerstone of my fortune, but she taught me how to fight and have nerve. Took her up into the North Pacific sealing, and then down on the Japanese coast. Had a crew who wouldn't adorn any high-back rover Captain Kidd ever could wish for. If there was any good in that schooner God must 'a' saw it first and hit it." To humor him she had advanced to the mantel. " And is that where you got your awful repu tation?" she inquired. The bushy eyebrows came down until the lids were hidden, and his eyes, shining like live coals, were alone visible as he directed his gaze upon her. 184 PAID IN FULL " Just how bad is that ' awful reputation/ Mrs. Brooks?" " They say," she returned, meeting his gaze steadily, " that you have no heart, no pity in you; that you'd kill a man in those days with as little feeling as I would kill a mosquito." " Well, I guess the reason you'd kill a mos quito isn't because it's just a mosquito, and that you'd like to kill it, but because you're afraid it will bite you. Ain't it?" " Yes." " I had men, Mrs. Brooks, who, if you let 'em go too far, they'd bite, and if you let 'em bite too deep they'd kill. Them were the early days of sealers. It was a hard life and it made hard men. I ain't any better, but I guess I ain't no worse, than lots of others would be fixed just as I was at that time." " I'm glad to hear you say that, Captain," she declared, seizing the opportunity. " It opens the way for the business I came on." "Business?" " Yes, business." " But it's after business hours, Mrs. Brooks, and I ain't half spun my yarn. Now, over here I 185 PAID IN FULL want to show you a couple of spears I got from a lot of head-hunters down in the Malay Archi pelago. You may not know where that is, but I've always had an idea it's where God battened down the devil after that first big row they had you read about in the Bible. I was going ashore, seeing what was doing, when this crew of niggers come down on us like a squall. We had an awful time getting back to the boats, I tell you. We were some cut up, and all I got out of. the ex pedition was one of the big chief's wives." He looked into Mrs. Brooks's eyes. " Took her back to 'Frisco with me," he added. " Women were scarce in them times good-look ing ones." " You took her away from where she be longed?" questioned Emma, slowly and in credulously. " She was willing to go. No one ever beat her about the ship and she lived pretty much as she wanted. Three meals a day and no hard work." " What became of her ? " " Died. I guess from overeating. You see them two little anchors that chair's made of?" 186 PAID IN FULL But she had recoiled from him, shuddering with horror and aversion. " She died from overeating? " she interrogated. "Have there been many of those?" " No. I learned a lesson. I put the rest on a diet." He seemed to think that this was particularly; clever and humorous, for he burst into a loud guffaw. Emma did not laugh. She was more disgusted and apprehensive than ever. The clock struck eleven. "Did you hear that?" she said. "I must in sist that you let me talk over what I came here for." " Eleven ! It ain't late," he replied, coaxingly. " Would you like a little something to drink ? It's 'hot to-night." " No, I thank you." " You can have it just as well as not.*' " I don't care for it." "All right, only I thought I might get it for you. You see, when I heard you were coming: here I sent my Jap away." "Why?" 187 PAID IN FULL " What he don't know won't hurt him." " Is there anything, Captain, you're afraid he'll find out?" she demanded, frigidly. " Sit down. There, opposite me. I was only thinking of you." " Joe has stolen some money from you." "Too bad! Too bad!" "How much is it?" " What do you want to know for? " " I am his wife. It is my business to know." " There you go, talking business again ! " he protested, trying to be gallant and throwing an ogling glance at her. " I so seldom have the pleasure of your company, Mrs. Brooks, that this ' business ' thing knocks all the romance out of your visit." " I didn't intend there should be any romance in it, Captain Williams," she retorted, stiffly. " Mrs. Brooks," he went on, ignoring the snub, " a sailorman always finds romance in an evening spent with a pretty woman. I can remember well when the Solly Moran put into Nagasaki for water and fresh provisions, a little Japanese girl called on me and I had a terrible time. I wanted to make things right nice and pleasant for her, 1 88 PAID IN FULL but, Lord! she couldn't talk a word of English. There she sat all the evening, grinning and mak ing signs, while I was talking my head off trying to tell her how much I loved her. All my pretty speeches were lost." He laughed aloud as the scene rose before his mind's eye. " Now," he continued, meaningly, with an in tonation intended to be tender, " when I have a girl like you, who can understand " " I beg your pardon, Captain," she said, very coldly and sternly. " I must tell you that I did not come here to make a social call. I never came to a place like this, at a time like this, to talk to a man like you before in my life." His lower jaw advanced and his piggish eyes contracted. He threw off his too amiable de meanor. His voice became harsh and cruel as his natural brutality asserted itself. "A man like me, eh?" he rasped. "That's pretty hard language, Mrs. Brooks." " Please forgive me and let me talk." " If you didn't come here to see me sort ol socially, what did you come for ? " " About Joe, my husband." 189 PAID IN FULL "What about him?" " I asked you the amount of the defalcation." "You said it was your business. Well, it's more than sixteen thousand dollars." Emma was astounded and her heart sank. She had not imagined that it could be so large a sum. " Is that the truth ? " she asked. " I ain't never been noted for lying." " Captain Williams, I've come here to plead with you to save Joe and me and my family from disgrace to keep him out of jail. You knew my father, you were in business with him. You al ways liked him and knew he was an honest man." " He was square in his business dealings with me, Mrs. Brooks, but that's not less than every man has got to be who ueals with me." " I know that," "he said, her manner becoming supplicating ; " I know that, but you must have some respect for his memory you must have had some affection for him at the time every body had and some pity for me in this trouble. I thought all these things might soften you> might open a way to some arrangement that would save us from the exposure that seems now IQC PAID IN FULL bound to come to-morrow morning. Isn't there some way out of it ? " But he was all business now. He had satisfied himself that he had wasted his time with her. " Have you got the money? " he snapped. " No." " Then what's your proposition? " " I have none," she confessed, hopelessly, hanging her head. " Humph ! " he grunted, settling himself in his chair. " I thought I thought you might be a little more charitable and suggest some way," she murmured. " Your husband sent you here, didn't he?" " Yes." " What did he say to you ? " " Told me I might have some influence with you." " Put the blame on you for stealing the money, 'didn't he?" " How did you know that? " She raised her head and looked at him in sur prise. " I know the man. Didn't he ? " 191 PAID IN FULL "Yes." " Told you, didn't he, that you could fix it up with me to call everything off? " " Yes, that's what he said," she admitted, wonderingly. " And I suppose he said that if you didn't come you'd have to take the blame for him going to the penitentiary?" " It it was some-thing like that." " Didn't happen to mention, did he, that he thought I liked you pretty well ? " "Y-yes," she stammered, now utterly bewil dered." I I think that was part of what he said." " Didn't forget that, eh? Well," he continued, looking once more straight into her eyes and putting the issue squarely to her. " I'm here and you're here. That part seems all right. What have you got to say?" She sustained his gaze bravely and answered, though with no hope in her heart : " Is there any honorable way in which I can help him?" " What do you mean by ' honorable? ' ' Emma lost all patience. Her nerves that had 192 PAID IN FULL been under such severe strain were getting be yond control. She rose, flushing angrily : " You know what I mean by ' honorable ! ' You know what any good woman means when she says ' honorable.' You're beating about the bush, Captain Williams. If you want to come to the point, come to it, and come to it quickly. I am going home." " Now you're talking, my lass," he said, grimly, getting up also, " and I'll talk right back to you. If I took your opinion of me and that of your thieving husband I wouldn't have to talk. I'd tell you in plain words that if you wanted to go to San Francisco with me I'd take a chance on the overeating and wouldn't put you on a diet like I put the rest. What would you do then? W'hat if I did make the proposition that's in your mind and was in the mind of that sneaking husband of yours when he tried to put you on the bargain counter and send you over to me to see if I'd put the price up to sixteen thousand? What if I looked you over and was pleased and thought you cheap at that figure? You say I've killed men. Yes, I have wrung their heads off with this hand like you'd sling a chicken in the air. 193 1 J AID IN FULL You came here for a purpose. You ain't no child. What if I am the beast and the brute you say I am? What'll you do then? I said you was the first lady to come in here. Maybe I made a mis take, but if I did I'll find it out before you leave this room, you understand? I've talked now you talk." Her reply came with withering scorn : " Now I know that you're everything people say you are." " All right," he said, making a step toward her. " If I am what everybody says I am what you think I am you know what to expect and I 'don't need to talk." The peril of her situation roused her to des peration, and with it came the courage despera tion sometimes imparts, the courage that im pels a defenseless animal hunted into a corner from which there is no escape to turn and fight for its life. "You think I'm afraid of you?" she cried, throwing up her head and clenching the hands at her sides. " I tell you I'm not. We've been too long at cross purposes. What you want me to do I know; what my husband sent me for I know. 194 "PAID IN FULL You can be the beast and the brute that you are ; he can be the contemptible cur that he is. He can offer me for sale and you can stand ready to buy me. But I've got something to say about it, and I desire you to know that if I wanted to place my self on the market, as you say, I couldn't ! You disgust me, but I shan't shirk and I am not afraid of you or of him or of anyone. Here ! " She turned quickly, locked the door, threw the key at his feet and confronted him unflinchingly again. " There's the key to your room. The door is locked and I am alone with you. You kill men? You wring their necks ? Well, Captain Williams, here's your first chance to kill a woman, for that's just exactly what you'll have to do ! " She saw the glare in the little savage optics under the beetling brows fade out, to be replaced by a gleam of admiration, not the covetous ad miration of her shapely, panting form, of her handsome, resolute face, but honest admiration of the pure soul that shone in her eyes. " I knew you were that kind of a woman," he said, thankfulness and real tenderness in his voice. " If you hadn't done just what you did I'd 195 PAID IN FULL 'a' been the most disappointed man in the world." " What do you mean? " " I mean," he continued, almost reverently, " that I banked on you being good, and you are good. I know women I've bought mine all over the world, from Hindoos to niggers. But I paid for 'em and they was always willing to sell. There ain't but two kinds, the good and the bad, and there's no half way. When they're bad they're bad through and through and can't be good, and when they're good they can't be bad, and they're next to heaven. I figured you good, and if you hadn't been it would have hit me and hit me hard. You're safer here, young woman, than with your mother, because I'd fight for you, and don't for get I can wring men's necks like chickens'." Emma could not comprehend it. " I don't understand you," she faltered. " Maybe you mean you don't believe me," he said, going to the table and taking the paper he had written upon and then slipped between the pages of one of the magazines. " Here. I've had this waiting for you. Read it." She made no motion to take it from his hand. 196 PAID IN FULL "Well, I'll read it for you," he said. " It's a3- rlressed to that husband of yours : " * Your resignation is accepted. I wish to thank you for your services and to assure you that your accounts with the Latin-American Steamship Company have been audited and * found to be correct.' " Now, Mrs. Brooks if you'd acted in any way but what you did you wouldn't have got this ; but I knew you were good, and you are good." He added with deep feeling, holding out the paper to her again : " It's worth that much to me, and a lot more, to have a good woman for a sort of daughter. Take it." This time she accepted it, mechanically. " Thank you, Captain Williams," she said. The words came in a whisper, almost inaudibly. She tried to read the writing, but tears in her feyes blurred her sight. " You know, Mrs. Brooks," said Williams, in a light tone and his usual voice, seating himself in his chair and looking away from her, " before we got to discussing this business I was telling you about the Sally Moran, my first ship. Now, that 197 PAID IN FULL ship hear me say ship? She was only a schooner " She walked up to him and interrupted him, smiling gratefully through her tears. "What can I do now, Captain? " she asked. The telephone bell rang as she spoke. " You might answer the 'phone," he told her. " I'm getting almighty lazy." She did so. " It's Jimsy Mr. Smith," she announced. " I kind o' thought that fellow'd be nosing around instead of going to Boston," he solilo quized. " What's the trouble ? " " He's downstairs and wants to know if he can come up." "Sure he can!" " Yes, come up, Jimsy," she called. The Captain stroked his face thoughtfully. "When you let him in you sort o' smile and look into his face," he said " He's a kind of an old baby, Smith is, and it does him a lot of good." 1 " I always smile at Jimsy," she replied. " No one could help that, could they?" " He is an amusing cuss," he conceded. He reached for the tin of tobacco. 198 PAID fN FULL " You don't mind if I smoke, do you? " " No, I don't think I'd mind if you committed arson." " It's too hot to burn up everything," he laughed. " Besides, there's a lot of folks say I'll get enough fire after my will's read." "They don't know you, that's the trouble," she said, the thankful tears welling to her eyes again as she looked at him. " Smith ain't particular quick about getting here, is he?" he remarked, changing the subject. " After all he said you'd expect him to be a reg ular hero and drop in from the ceiling." "What did he say?" "That's telling," he added, puffing stolidly at his pipe. " You're going to have a hard time let ting that man in if you don't find the key you threw around so careless like." She picked up the key and unlocked the door. As she did so Smith knocked, and she let him in. He looked keenly at her as she smiled up into his face and he took the hand she extended. " We've been waiting for you, Jimsy," she said. A glad light came into his own eyes. 199 PAID IN FULL " Emma," he observed, " I think that's the prettiest smile I ever saw you smile." " Hello, Smith, ain't going to Boston to-night, eh? " queried the Captain. " No, I guess them docks will be there to-mor row," he replied. He drew his revolver, extracted the cartridges with even more than ordinary deliberation and threw them on the table. " I just thought I'd take the pegs out of the heel of that shoe we were discussing some time since and hand 'em to you as souvenirs," he re marked. " Thank you," was the dry rejoinder. " I'd give you the whole darn shoe," added Jimsy, with heartiness, " only a fellow never can tell when he's going to have another sore foot." " The trouble with you is, Smith, your foot hurts you before you stub your toe," commented Williams. " I guess that's right," he avowed. " Ready to go home, Emma?" " You wait for me a moment, Jimsy, I want to speak to the Captain," she said. 200 PAID IN FULL "All right," he responded, going 1 outside to ring up the elevator. " Captain, this paper shall I give it to him?" she inquired. "Who, Brooks?" " Yes." " I would. It clears you." "And you? How can I thank you?" " Don't mind me. Only some time when you get settled down and are living happy again, in vite me up to tea let me put on my slippers and smoke my pipe in the parlor." " Indeed I will. Good night." "And, Emma," he added, ere she had reached the door, " I suppose I can call you Emma now, can't I?" " Always." " Pay a lot of attention to that fellow Smith. He's an awful good friend of yours." " I've found that out to-night," she answered. " Good night." " Good night, Emma." When she had gone the old man sat for some time, smoking his pipe meditatively. Finally he off his slippers, rose, stretched himself, sat 201 PAID IN FULL 'down again, smiled and uttered his thoughts aloud. " Well, Captain Bill," he told himself " I guess you've paid up a part of that deficit you've owed decency for such a long time," 202 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XVI OH, there you are!" Mrs. Harris stood glaring at her son- in-law as who should say, " Ah ! Jacker- snaps, I've caught you, have I? " " I thought you were going to meet us," said Beth, with a toss of her head. " We waited until every one had left the the atre," snorted her mother, flopping into a chair and fanning herself vigorously. " I'm sorry. I forgot," explained Brooks, who this time spoke the truth. " Forgot ! Forgot ! That's a nice excuse ! " " I didn't realize it was so late." "You have a watch, haven't you? There are clocks in existence ! " " I know it's my fault." " We looked all over for you," chimed in Beth. " I said I was sorry," he snapped. " I've been worried about something else." "Just spoiled the whole evening, leaving us 203 PAID [N FULL there to be insulted by a lot of men," declared Mrs. Harris. " No one spoke to you? " " Yes. When we were standing in front of the theatre, waiting for you, a snip of a boy came up to me and said, ' Hello, little one, aren't you lone some?'" " Why, I thought he spoke to me ! " affirmed Beth. Her mother looked at her indignantly. " No, he didn't," she retorted, with asperity. " I guess I know when I'm spoken to. The very idea!" Brooks requested to be informed as to what she had done in this trying situation. She replied that she had taken Beth by the arm and run as fast as she could until she had found a policeman. " And he was almost as bad," she added. " When mother told him some one had called her a little one he grinned and walked away," said Beth, maliciously. " Well, I'm sorry I wasn't there," asserted Brooks, in a tone of weariness. " So am I," returned Mrs. Harris. " But that 204 PAID IN FULL doesn't help matters. My nerves are all gone." " Where's Emma ? " inquired Beth. He told her that she had gone out for a few minutes. "Who with?" demanded Mrs. Harris promptly. " I think she went alone." " You think she went alone ? Don't you know ? " "Yes, I do know. Suppose she did go alone what difference does it make ? " "What difference does it make? I don't see how you dare let your wife go out alone in this part of New York at this time of night." " Emma will be all right," opined Beth. " She's different." " Different? She runs just as much risk as we do." " Well, nobody stole you," growled Joe, " so I guess Emma'll get home safely." "Where did she go?" " I said she went out; that's enough." "Out? Out where?" " Emma was called out on a little business," he said savagely. " She should have been home be fore this. Something has probably detained her. 205 PAID IN FULL That's all I know about it. If she wants to tell you more when she comes that's her business, not mine." " I certainly do not approve of her being out without a proper escort. It isn't ladylike." " You can talk to her about that. If she wants to go I suppose she will without your permission. How was the play, Beth? " " Oh, it was simply great ! " cried the girl, en thusiastically. " And the handsomest man ! I just raved over him ! " " Beth," reprehended her mother with a shocked air, " I don't think it right to ' rave ' over actors. It's all very well for them to be romantic on the stage, but when I was a girl they were al ways kept in their places." " You told me that when you were a girl you never went to a theatre," she retorted. " I didn't. But I used to hear about them, and the papers are full now of actors and actresses who seem to do nothing but get divorced and have their pictures printed." " Don't worry I haven't sent him any notes. I wonder where Emma is?" " So do I," said Brooks, who was becoming 206 PAID IN FULL nervous again. " She's been gone long enough to get back. It's after eleven." " What I want to know is, where did she go ? " insisted her mother. Brooks turned upon her, and an oath almost escaped him as he snarled : " You want to know a good many things, but it seems to me that a man and his wife can have some privacy. I told you she went on business. If she wants to tell you, all right; but don't try to mother-in-law it out of me ! " The entrance of Emma and Smith stopped on Mrs. Harris's lips the wrathful retort that had risen to them. She rose and greeted her daugh ter with an air of maternal solicitude. " Ah, there you are, dear ! Where have you been? We've been so worried." " I am a little late." " We were wondering about you, and Joe wouldn't tell," said Beth. Smith reassured them. " I was taking care of Emma all right," he declared. " You see, I'm a sort of utility man with the ladies always trailing along in the rear, 207 PAID IN FULL ready to touch my cap and do all the chores and errands necessary." Emma had taken no notice of her husband, whose eyes from the moment of her appearance had been glued avidly upon her. There was noth ing in her demeanor to indicate that she had succeeded. Indeed, she appeared haggard and worn out, as she was, for the emotions of the night had left her exhausted to the point of breaking down. His anxiety and apprehension increased as he marked her condition. " Where did you meet her?" he demanded of Smith, with an effort. " On the way home," he answered. Then, turning to the women, he inquired. " How did you like the play, Beth? " " I thought it was fine," she said. " So did mother." " The play was all right," agreed Mrs. Harris, " but the evening was spoilt. Joe forgot to come for us, and since we've been here he's been al most insulting." " I'm sorry," he said. " I lost track of the time. Besides, I'm nervous and tired." " It sure is a hot night and sort of takes the 208 PAID IN FULL life out of everybody," Smith remarked, concil- iatingly. Emma went to Mrs. Harris and put her arm around her. " Mother, I'm very tired to-night," she said, appealingly. " You won't mind if I ask you to go home and leave me. I've something to tell you some time, but I want to be alone now." " You do look all tuckered out, Emma," com mented Beth. "I am. You won't mind, will you, mother?" " Certainly not. I'm hot and sticky myself." " I'll take you to the subway and put you on the car," volunteered Brooks. " You needn't mind," declined Mrs. Harris. k You're too disagreeable to-night. If you bring my purse from Emma's room Jimsy will take us, won't you, Jimsy?" " I'm still the utility man," responded the com plaisant Smith, as Brooks went on the errand. While Beth was putting her mother's hat straight Mrs. Brooks whispered to Smith : ' Tell mother as much as I told you and then come back." 209 PAID IN FULL He nodded. " Come on, folks," he said, as Brooks reap* peared with the purse. " You know time and the subway wait for no man." 210 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XVII TORTURED by suspense, Brooks stood watching his wife. She had sunk on to the sofa and sat there, still wearing her hat, the picture of weari ness and sorrow. The color came and went in his sunken cheeks. It was certain from her attitude that her mission had failed, yet he feared to learn it from her lips. She gave no indication of intention or desire to break the silence, or even that she was aware of his presence. He could bear it no longer. " He wouldn't do anything? It's all up? " The words escaped him tremulously, in de spairing tone, as though they answered the in terrogation. She did not reply, but rising and drawing from her bosom the paper Capt. Williams had given her, handed it to him. He took it hesitatingly, almost fearfully. 211 PAID IN FULL "Forme?" " For you." As he read it the blood rushed to his face and he gave a sigh of immense relief. Joyfully he looked over to her, but there was no responsive exultation. She appeared crushed. It might have been his death warrant. Doubting whether he had read it aright, he perused the acquittal again, with increasing ex ultation. " Emma, you've succeeded ! " he cried. " This means he won't prosecute and it's all right. You made him do it. You have saved me ! " She nodded her acquiesence, and he went to her, brimming over with relief and gratification, to take her in his arms. " You're the best little girl that ever happened, the pluckiest " Gently she pushed him from her. "Please don't, Joe!" "Why, what's the matter?" " I'm tired very tired." " Of course you are," he said, in a tone of con cern and tenderness. " You sit down there. I'll 212 PAID IN FULL bet you had a hard time. I know what Williams is." He would have led her to the sofa, but again she repulsed him gently. He went to the table and took up the acquittal he had laid on it. . " Found my accounts to be correct," he mut tered. " That means he will have the books fixed up and nothing will show. Did he say much about me?" " Not very much." " But I bet he gave you an awful argument. Williams is not an easy man to get to give in. But here it is, in black and white, and he can't go back on this. Did you ask him to put it in writing?" " No." " Then he did it of his own accord. Wonder if he called the detectives off? Did he say anything about them ? " " No." " But it's all clear sailing now," he went on, selfishly jubilant, already planning for the future. " I can get another position and a better one. There's enough money left to give me time to 213 PAID IN FULL find one. Do you think he'll interfere any more, Emma?" " I don't know." "What do you think you must have some idea?" " I haven't the slightest." "Well, anyway, Emma, you did splendidly. You came right to the front." As he uttered the commendation he tried again to caress her. " Please don't, Joe ! " This time she rebuffed him sharply and moved away from him. " Oh, all right, if that's the way you feel about it!" He turned from her with an injured air, and, lighting a cigarette, began to pace the room. Although in his remorse during her absence he had resolved not to ask her what had passed in the Captain's rooms, curiosity, now that his con fidence had been restored by the proof of im munity, tormented his vicious mind. He was not only ready, but desired to know everything that had occurred, even to unavowable details, if any such there were. 214 \ PLEASH DON'T, JOB!" Page 214. PAID IN FULL "He was there when you arrived?" he ques tioned, seeing that she showed no disposition to talk. " Yes." "Anybody else?" " He was alone." " You must have caught him in a good humor. He'd never have done this in one of his usual grouches. I didn't know you were such a dip lomat. What did you say to him?" " A good many things." " Didn't tell him I sent you, did you?" " He knew." "He knew? How did he know? Who told him?" " I don't know. He just knew." " Somebody must have told him, and you were the only one who knew." " No, he knew, too. I didn't tell." " But how did you open the conversation ? " he demanded impatiently. "What did you say? What's the matter? Can't you answer me? " " I don't see why I should." "I do. I want to know, and I've a right to know." 215 PAID IN FULL She vouchsafed no reply. He dropped his authoritative tone and became persuasive. " You say he was alone when you arrived. How did he receive you? " he coaxed. She remained silent. " What did he say to you what did he do ? " Still she did not answer, but sat as though in a stupor. " Come, Emma, don't be contrary. Tell all that took place. You know that between us Did he ask you to kiss him ? " "I wonder what time it is?" she said, with a shiver, as though she had not heard him. " Never mind the time. What did he say when you asked him to let me off? He must have said a lot. You were gone long enough." " Will you please tell me what time it is? " "It's about eleven-thirty. What of it? Why don't you tell me what happened at Williams's ? " She rose, still in her stupor of weariness. " Good-bye, Joe," she said. " Good-bye ? " he echoed, amazed. " Where are you going ? " " To mother's. Jimsy's coming back for me." 216 PAID IN FULL "You didn't say anything to your mother while she was here about this?" " That was for your sake. Everyone doesn't need to know." "What are you going to your mother's for? This is where you belong your home. And what's Jimsy got to do with it? " " I said good-bye." "What's the reason you can't stay here? " " You couldn't expect me to live with you after what happened to-night ? " "Why not?" There was consternation as well as anger in his voice. " Because it is quite impossible you ought to realize that." " I don't see why it is impossible. Everything is all right now unless you've got some reason that makes it impossible." " Yes, I think I've all the reason in the world to make it impossible. I think it's time for you to realize it." She moved towards the door, but he ran and intercepted her. c( Wait a minute ; you can't go that way," he 217 PAID IN FULL said, determinedly. " You're my wife and you can't leave here without some explanation." " I've no explanation to make," she retorted coldly. " You will please let me go. I've done my part and it's my right to leave." " I tell you I won't let you go until you tell me the truth. What happened with Williams and how did you induce him to agree? " " You've no right to ask that. The price I paid for that letter is none of your business. You set that price at the highest possible figure a woman can pay. Now, how I bargained or what I paid is none of your affair." " It is my affair. I want to know, and I will know!" " When you sent me to that man, Joe Brooks, I told you that if I made the bargain I was to make it alone ; that it was to be my business alone and that I should never be asked. You agreed. I've carried out my part. You carry out yours. I gave you your freedom. You give me mine." " There is only one reason why you should leave here now, and that is Williams. Are you going back to him ? " 218 PAID IN FULL She stepped back from him and swept him with a look of cold disdain. " If there was one thing left for you to do to make you the most contemptible cad, you've done it now," she exclaimed. " When you sent me to Williams I thought you'd sunk as low as you could, but I see I was mistaken. There was a depth that even in my disgust, my loathing of you, I never imagined existed. But now you've reached it. I don't hate you. I just pity you." A gleam of fury glowed in his eyes under this merciless castigation, and he moved towards her menacingly. " That's not the answer I want," he said, harsh ly. " You're quibbling. Tell me the truth about Williams." " You'd better let me go." " You'll tell me the truth about Williams be fore you leave this room ! " he shouted. " Make up your mind to that now, because that's just the way it's going to be ! " She realized that she had gone too far in her denunciation ; that his anger was dangerous and that he would stop at nothing, not even blows, not even murder. He was white, his teeth were 219 PAID IN FULL set and on his quivering face was an expression of ferocious determination that warned her that she must temporize and appear to give in to him. " Very well," she assented, turning from the door. " If that's the way it's going to be I'm perfectly willing." " Then answer me." " I intend to do that, but I intend to do some thing more than merely answer that question. If you don't mind we'd better sit down." She motioned him to a chair and seated he r self so that the table was between them. " In the first place," she went on, very calmly, " in order to relieve your mind I might tell you that I have done nothing to-night which can re flect upon me as a good woman. I had no inten tion of doing any such thing. So far as I can find out you are the only person who had my degradation in mind and was willing that it should happen if it resulted in your escaping the conse quences of being a thief." "What do you mean?" " I mean that Captain Williams did not have the slightest idea of putting a price on your free- 'dom toward which I in any way would have to 220 PAID IN FULL contribute. You seem to be the only one who thought that I, with all I hold precious, was a fair figure to offer. Had I gone, had he demanded, had I submitted and brought back that paper and given myself to you again, as well as your free dom, you would have been contented and happy." " You know that's not true, Emma," he pro tested. The white heat of his ire had been dulled by her quietness, and little by little he was be coming cowed. " I know it is true, Joe, and so do you. I wanted to go to mother without having all this talk, but now that we have to talk let's be frank with each other and with ourselves. And you try to appreciate the truth as much as you are able. To begin with, it seems that I have been alone in not realizing how worthless you are. My father, when we were to be married, warned me not to take you unless I thought you indispensable to my happiness. You know that everyone else put it a little more bluntly. But I thought I loved you I'm sure I did. Now, it seems utterly be yond belief. But then it must have been love. I mistook your egotism for a deeper sentiment, a determination of purpose, and I thought in my 221 PAID IN FULL girlish way that the things you preached about socialism, the cruelty of the rich, and all that, meant that you were noble, self-sacrificing, even brilliant. Now I know the difference. You fight capital? God sometimes is kind to a fighter, but he can't have much use for a man who whines." " You believed me then, Emma," he said, brokenly, "you know you did you know you did." " That's the wonderful part of it. I've always believed you till to-night, and now I know I never should have believed you. You've always been a liar and you've always been dishonest at heart. Your incompetency, the way you were distrusted by your employers, I thought was hard luck, in justice ; but now I know that you never were and never will be the least bit of good to yourself or anyone else. You married me to help yourself. You tried to disgrace me to help yourself. I was willing to meet the situation, but you couldn't, and to-night you wanted to sell me to help your self. I pity you from the bottom of my heart. I think I've told you the reason why I cannot live with you any longer." She rose. He raised his head that had sunk 222 PAID IN FULL upon his hand during this dispassionate exposi tion of his worthlessness and pusillanimity, this laying bare to him of his own heart, and rose also. " Emma," he supplicated, humbly, " it will all be different. Let me start out again. Give me another chance. I'll never lie to you again and I'll never take a cent that isn't my own. I promise you I won't." She shook her head. " Oh, yes, you will. You can't help it. Captain Williams told me to-night that a woman who was good couldn't be bad, and a woman who was bad couldn't be good. It's that way with men. One who is inherently honest could never be dis honest, and one who is inherently dishonest could never be honest. You are both a thief and a liar and there is no hope for you. You've struck the downward path and you'll keep on going until the end. If you ever had a chance it was with me, and you've thrown it away. I'm sorry, more sorry than I can tell. Good-bye." He leaped to the door, which she was about to open, and placed his hand against it. " Emma, you mustn't go you can't go I will not let you go." PAID IN FULL " I will go, and I request that you will open the door," she said, firmly. She grasped the handle, but he put out his arm and forced her away. " Enough of this tomfoolery ! " he cried, with a savage scowl, following her up menacingly as she staggered back. " I'm your husband ; I order you to stay here, and here you'll stay ! " " It only remained for you to strike me ! " she gasped. " Strike you ! I'll strangle you if you ever dare to try to speak to me again as you have done this night. I've borne with you and humored you and put up with your insults too long. What I did was for you, and you know it. What you did, about which you are giving yourself such airs, is no more than any wife would do for a husband! who'd acted as I did. That's all there is to it, and I don't want to hear any more about it, now or at any other time. I'm master in this house, and I'm going to remain master." "You are not my master, and you can't frighten me with your threats," she retorted. " Open the door this instant ! " He grasped her roughly by the arm. 224 PAID IN FULL "You take your hat off and go to bed," he ordered, pushing her towards the bedroom. " That's the best place for you." "Never!" she panted, wrenching herself free and grasping a vase on the table to defend her self with, " If you make one step towards me, you coward, I'll scream for help." Rushing at her, he seized her by the throat and hurled her on the sofa. His fingers tightened their grip, choking all utterance. " You will leave me, will you ! " he cried, shak ing her with all his strength. "Leave me ! Leave me ! Then you will leave me dead ! " He did not hear a knock nor the opening of the door that followed it. A hand gripped him by the collar and his own grasp of Emma's frail form relaxed. The hand swung him round and sent him reeling across the room. " What's the matter with you, Brooks, has it got to wife-beating now? " Smith stood looking at him scornfully. Emma struggled up, more dead than alive. " Oh, Jimsy ! " she cried, " he tried to kill me because I would not stay with him ! " 225 PAID IN FULL " All right, Emma, you go now," he replied. "You stop here!" commanded her husband, furiously. " What does this man mean by inter fering in my affairs ? " " I guess that man has a big claim on your gratitude," said Smith. "That's two escapes you've had to-night one from the penitentiary and one from the electric chair. You've a whole lot to be thankful for if you only knew it, Brooks, but it looks like you don't." Emma had reached the door and hurried out without looking back. Her husband would have rushed after her, but between him and the exit stood the tall form of Smith, and there was some thing in Jimsy's look, in the lines that had tight ened about his mouth, that caused him to hes itate. He had never imagined that the kind, genial face could take on such an expression. The eyes had become hard and forbidding, and under their keen gaze the man's feeble courage wilted. " Brooks," said Smith, " you have no more rights ; you relinquished them all under the terms of your deal with Emma, and you have been paid in full. Of course, if you repent of the bargain 226 PAID IN FULL Captain Williams, as a party to the contract, may be induced to cancel the receipt and leave the matter as it was earlier in the evening. I will get him on the 'phone in a jiffy if you say so." A smile so sickly, so distorted with baffled rage that it became a hyena-like grimace, flickered on Brooks's visage. " I see," he said. "You've all turned against me, now you think I'm down. Well, as you like. Consider I've been paid in full. I'm agreeable. I've done nothing but slave for her for five years and been kept down by her. I didn't send her away, but seeing she's going against my wishes she'll stay gone. It let's me out. In future I'll only have myself to think of, and you bet I'm going to do it." "That's up to you," retorted Smith, senten-^ tiously. Without saying good night he turned and left the room to rejoin Emma, who was waiting for him at the bottom of the elevator shaft. 227 PAID (N fULL CHAPTER XVIII WASHED with rain the stars, " forget-me- nots of the angels," blinked limpidly from the sky of violet blue. The moon light flooded the country, percolated in soft, refulgent cascades through the spruces and hem locks, and traced with its witchery weird arabesques in the glades. At its touch the rain drops that quivered at the tips of leaves and pine needles were transformed into pure white bril liants. It threw into relief the upper wood-clad slopes of the mountains, which deepened with shadow as they descended, billowed out boldly again into the light and rolled into the sombre, mysterious abysses of the valleys. On the loftiest peak which undulated unevenly on the skyline as though it sought to surge still nearer the firmament, a tree, towering above the rest of the forest, stood out like a cross. Down through the clearings glinted a lake splashed with a wide cloth of silver sheen. Unseen waterfalls and riv- 228 PAID IN FULL ulets plashed and gurgled their joy most mu sically as they hurried down to it. The drop-curtain of night had shut out the rain mists that had made a day of gray dreariness and had risen again after a while to disclose a scene in which Titania and her court would have held gleeful revel. On the road that ribboned through the forest and up from the lake walked Emma Brooks and her sister Beth, the latter grumbling. " You are the queerest girl," she complained. " No one but you would think of coming out in such weather not a soul. My shoes are so heavy -with mud I can hardly lift my feet." " Oh ! I just had to ! I love it," replied Emma, " I simply could not stay indoors. I know now what a bird must feel like when it is caged. You must humor me, little sister. I have been born again awakened to a new life. If I could I would climb to that cross on the sky, cling to it and ask God never to let me return to earth. May His name be praised for ever and ever, world without end. My soul, snatched from the swirlfire of sordidness, of sorrow, of baseness, that seared it, must expand or burst. My life 229 PAID IN FULL for so long was depressed in the fog, like that we came up through to-day to emerge at last into the brightness of the mountain tops. It is hard to realize that I have left all this behind and am free in the light." " You certainly have had a hard time of it with that beast," admitted Beth, stopping to take breath. " Listen ! " went on Emma. " Don't you love that chorus of the frogs and the grasshoppers? I think there is sometking weirdly exquisite in these noises of the night that we do not hear in the city, that I have not heard for ages and ages. Oh, I wish the woods here were full of the old- world nightingales that the poets say ' feed the heart of the night with fire/ ' satiate the hungry dark with melody' don't you? And don't you love this incense of the soaked earth and its ver dure? It lifts me to the clouds there, that drift like silver snow past the moon. I am a cloud: "I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 230 PAID IN FULL Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march With hurricane, fire and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow: The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove While the moist earth was laughing below." She laughed aloud in her light heartedness and the joyous peal went echoing through the wood. " Lor/ Emma, how you talk ! " said Beth, mar veling at her sister's exaltation, which she did not understand. Since she had grown to young womanhood herself she had been rather prone to patronize Emma, the little housekeeper, follow ing in this the lead of her mother. Emma had al ways submitted with amused indulgence her ex perience of the grim, unromantic duties of her married life had made her wondrous wise in some respects and she had never opened her heart to her. Now she stood revealed as a woman trans formed, of an elevation of thought and sentiment that impressed the unpoetic Beth with a little awe and a good deal of respect. She could find no suitable comment to make, and they trudged on 231 PAID IN FULL and upwards in silence through the mud, past cheerful lights that glowed through windows of bungalows and cottages among the trees, until they came to a miniature dwelling ensconced in a bower of laurels. At the door stood Mrs. Harris. She was dis pleased. " For goodness sake, where have you been?" she exclaimed, as the girls entered. " I began to think you had fallen into the lake or off a rock, or that some other dreadful thing had happened to you, and was scared to death." " Emma," said Beth, dropping into a chair, " is impossible. She insisted on walking right to the lake, though the roads were awful and ankle deep in mud so sticky that I thought I'd have to leave my rubbers in it. Don't forget, too, that it's all uphill coming back." "Oh, I never enjoyed a walk so in my life!" declared Emma. " It was magnificent ! I couldn't have slept, I couldn't have stayed in bed if I hadn't taken it." But Mrs. Harris refused to be mollified. " And I won't be able to sleep because you've made me so nervous," she complained. 232 Emma went to her, put her arm about her and kissed her. " Don't be cross, mother," she pleaded. " You know this is my first sniff of real country for a century, and I have never been in the Catskills before, and therefore never so near heaven. I am a little girl again, as full of childish joy as I used to be when father took us on those trips which now seem like a dream, they were so long ago." " If your father hadn't been so ' easy ' we'd be owning a handsome cottage at one of the fash ionable places in the Adirondacks instead of hiring a mean little bungalow here," lamented Mrs. Harris. " I don't believe there's any spot in the Adiron dacks or anywhere else on earth more beautiful than this, from what I've seen of it to-night," re turned Emma, enthusiastically. " And this tiny bungalow, perched on the hillside among the bays and hemlocks, is a fairy castle of delight. From it you can look out upon paradise." " My child, you say that because you've never seen anything. It's a place one comes to hide one's self in. No fashionable people ever come 2 33 PAID IN FULL liere, and one has to be so particular. But what is one to do one can't remain in New York in the dog days ! " " For me, I'm sick and tired of the mountains," announced Beth. " I'd like to go to Newport, where we'd stand a chance of meeting somebody, and where, anyhow, we'd be able to see real society people. But mamma insists on coming up here year after year because she thinks sea air >cloesn't agree with her." " I don't think anything about it ! I know what tloes and what does not agree with me, I sup pose!" snorted her mother. " Bother society ! " said Emma happily. Both her mother and Beth looked shocked. " Emma, how can you say such a thing?" re proved Mrs. Harris, enveloping herself in an air of loftiness. " I hope you have not allowed your self to be influenced by the anarchistic vaporings of your of that unspeakable person whose name is not to be mentioned?" " I've read somewhere that fine society is only & self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern," chirped Beth, primly. 234 PAID IN FULL " That all depends on how you define ' fine society/ Beth," said Emma. " I mean the society of wealth, the 'Four Hun dred,' of course. I pray every night that I may- marry a duke or a count." " Beth has such elevated ideas," commented her mother, admiringly. "Such petitions," observed Emma, becoming grave, " never reach the Mercy Seat. It is said that at midnight every New Year's Eve, when the bells of the churches ring out the dying year, there issue from the belfries streams of vapory spirits with distracted, terrified faces, their hands clasped to their ears. They are the prayers that never rose any higher, prayers of worshipers in the churches who repeated them mechanically, as they are accustomed to do every Sunday, with out realization of the significance of the words they utter; prayers muttered by those whose thoughts were on other things; prayers of the hypocrite; prayers of the humbug; supplications to the Most High for the preposterous and the impossible ; prayers of those who do not practice what they preach ; prayers of those who do those things which they ought not to do and leave un- 235 PAID IN FULL done those things which they ought to do, and think their weekly glib confession of it and their obolus in the collection plate absolve them. With the jangling and clanging of the bells they are borne by the winds over mountain and sea, and are lost forever in the eternal void between the worlds. All such prayers, wherever uttered, must share this fate." By this time Mrs. Harris was agape, too as tonished to utter a word. " Gracious, Emma!" gasped Beth. "You talk like a book. I don't know what's come over you." " It is my new birth. I told you it was as though I had been born again. I hope you will marry a duke or a count if you want to, Beth. As a rule I believe they are real men, every whit as worthy as good men who don't bear this distinc tion of title. Still, the field is necessarily re stricted, and you mustn't forget that there are other noble men, as distinguished from noblemen men of sterling value, who ring true under every test." " Like like Jimsy," ventured Beth, with a 'dubious air, casting about and on the spur of the 236 PAID IN FULL moment thinking 1 of none other she knew wht would fit the description. " Like Jimsy," assented Emma, emphatically. " But he's so ungrammatical, so er shy on education. Besides which he hasn't any money," objected Mrs. Harris. " None to speak of," seconded Beth, pursing her lips deprecatingly. "Aside from that, though," conceded Mrs. Harris, " I must say that Jimsy's a real good man and most obliging. He can't help his up bringing." "How about Capt. Williams?" questioned Emma. " How would you class him ? " " My dear," answered her mother, " you wouldn't put him in the same class with Jimsy I mean socially. He's so rich ! I wouldn't be sur prised if he were several times a millionaire. Re member, he has two automobiles. And the hand some way he treated you ! Why, he crossed out the sixteen thousand dollars that abomination stole as though it were a matter of sixteen cents." "A man's true wealth is the good he does in this world, mother, according to Mahomet." ''' That is how it may have appeared to that for- 237 PAID IN FULL eign prophet in the year one," retorted Mrs. Harris, with a tone of finality, " but in this age of horse sense in the United States a million dollars in the bank is the real standard of wealth. With money you can do everything. If you have plenty of it you can do plenty of good, and everybody felse will sit on the fence and clap; but if you haven't any you are no good to yourself, can do no good to others and everybody else will get idown from the fence to kick you," 238 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XIX LEFT to his own devices, Brooks took a sur vey of the position in which he found him self, and his conclusion was not without gratification to him. For his immediate needs he had no cause to worry, notwithstanding that he was without employment. As he had observed to his wife, he had enough money on hand to give him time to look for a better place. The clean " bill of health " she had been the means of ob taining for him from Capt. Williams had, in fact, left at his free disposal, as his own property, several hundred dollars from his stealings and last " plunge " on the horses, which had been a winning one. Then there was the furniture and the piano. The piano was supposed to be Emma's and he felt sure she would send for it, but he had no intention of surrendering it. Not one stick, not one penny would she ever get out of him after the way in which she had treated him. The very day after her departure he sold the 239 PAID IN FULL instrument to the piano house from which it had been purchased. Within three days he had removed from the hotel where they had lived in state for such a brief period, and transferred such furniture as he required to one room in a bachelor apartment house. The rest he disposed of for cash. In tak ing a room and furnishing it himself, instead of following his first impulse and going to a board ing house to live, which would have been cheaper, he had been influenced by the reflection that it would give him more freedom to do as he liked. He was a bachelor again to all intents and pur poses, and he resolved to enjoy his liberty to the full. He had had enough of married life with its cares and the discipline of restraint it imposed. Once more he was " one of the boys." There was no one to consider but himself. As he thought of this and counted up his available funds his selfish heart leaped with glee. To make his position un mistakable and discourage any disposition on his wife's part to return to him he forwarded, care of her mother, her portrait, that had been conspic uous on the parlor mantel after taking it from 240 PAID IN FULL the gilded frame in which it had stood. >n back of it he wrote a verse of an old song : " My wife she ran away from me Some two or three weeks ago, And now she wants to come back again, But I tell her it's no go. ' Once bit twice shy,' is my reply, And if it was to rain Cats and dogs and mussels and frogs, I'd never have her back again." There was no word of explanation beyond this insulting doggerel, and he was careful not to give his address. He chuckled as he put it in the letter-box. No doubt she was already repeating of her action and wanting to return to him, but he would never take her. At times he was a little uneasy lest she should seek to discover his whereabouts for the purpose of making a claim for support, but as the weeks wore on and noth ing was heard from her he became reassured. He had had little difficulty in procuring work, thanks to Capt. Williams's note accepting his resignation, and soon was established as assistant to the receiving teller in a bank with a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. With this and the 241 PAID IN FULL money already in his possession he deemed him self rich, and his fitful optimism obtained the as cendancy once more in its usual extravagant form. But his escape from arrest had been a lesson that had sunk in deeply. He vowed never again under] any circumstances to "borrow" from the funds he handled in the course of his duties. He es chewed horse racing also, knowing that if the bank officials became aware that he was gambling 1 he would lose his place that very instant. Thus Joseph Brooks, bachelor de facto if not de jure, reformed and led a model and strictly selfish life. He was his own household god. After awhile his fellow employes noticed that Brooks, the spry, genial Brooks, who had won the good will of everybody, as he had in the gen eral office of the Latin-American Steamship Company, manifested a tendency towards mo- roseness, that his face at times assumed an ex pression of melancholy. Despite his love of self, he was of those natures which do not thrive in solitude. At first his new life had been all that he could have desired and he had enjoyed to the full the liberty for which often he had sighed in secret. He had found ample distraction in the 242 society of his male acquaintances with whom he had dined oat and whom he had accompanied to places of amusement. As the novelty had worn off, however, he had begun to find their company less satisfying. He never had cared much for the companionship of men ; his inclination always had been towards that of the opposite sex. Ac customed, also, as he had been for so long to the consolations of home life, to the thoughtful, affectionate ministrations and bright presence of Emma, he was bound, sooner or later, to miss her. " There's nothing in this living alone." The avowal came one night after he had spent an evening at the theatre with two sociable fel low clerks and he gazed around his silent, cheer less bedroom. The deadly feel of solitude was upon him and his abode, and had been for some time. It had grown stronger and stronger until jthe thing which he had refused to admit to him self would not be suppressed and welled to blurted utterance. Although he had not at any time loved Emma with that ineffable passion which is the golden ladder upon which the soul mounts to heaven, yet she had filled a larger 243 place in hie heart than he had ever had any com plete i^ea of prior to her absence. His senti ment, fostered by his selfishness, revived with violence under his introspection. He yearned for Emma's smile of greeting and the kiss that accompanied it at his homecoming, for the num berless sweet attentions she had lavished upon him. He asked himself whether his present mode of living forlornly, which cost him more than he had bargained for, zvas living. He con trasted what he was getting with the comforts his little manager would have procured for the same outlay in their home and was compelled to admit that he was existing rather more than less miserably. And quite aside from all these things to which she had accustomed him there was Emma her self. How pretty she was, how gentle; how sweetly she had put up with his ill-humor. She was different from any of the girls and women he had ever been acquainted with. He was sorry he had sent the photograph not alone because he felt that he had made gratui tously a false move, but because he wished he had kept it for himself. There was not one per- 244 serial object remaining that had belonged to her. The little ornaments she had liked, her clothes, the trinkets she had left behind, he had disposed of in his haste to get rid of everything that could recall her or to which she might lay claim. He wondered if she, too, was sorry for their separation. She must be. How could she live under the eternal nagging and fault-finding- of her mother, and the lording proclivities of Beth and not long to return to the independence of her own home? The fit of anger and resent ment in which she had left him once passed her love for him must have returned. She had loved him. His memory evoked the distant vision of her frail, lithe form clinging to him as she gazed up into his eyes, her own aglow with the glory of her adoration and its delirious inte-nsity. He felt the blissful pulsations of her heart throbbing against him its paean of passion, heard the red, reason-drawing lips murmur her soul's ecstasy in words of flame and beauty, felt the thrill that shivered through him as his fingers threaded caressingly the shimmering clotid o-f her tresses. That was long ago in their early posses sion of each other, when she had awakened to 245 PAID IN FULL knowledge of herself and had worshiped him as a god, fountainhead of joy and light for her on arth. This transcendent passion had not found in him the responsiveness it craved and which alone could nourish it ; he had been incapable of main taining himself on the pedestal of idealism on which it had placed him, and, like a storm wave tlaat piles impetuously again and again against a perpendicular cliff only to recede upon itself, its violence had gradually subsided. He who had had surfeit of love, whose soul was not attuned! to the magic music of its lyre had not been fash ioned to an appreciation of its esthetic sub limity began, now that it was his no longer, to get a glimmering of what it all meant, to com prehend vaguely what his material mind had been unable to grasp. Emma had been an enigma to him often, a riddle that had bored him at times. His blunted senses sharpened by desire of her! perceived that stupidly, ignorantly, he had dis dained a treasure beyond price. But remembering what he had been to her, and that she was still his wife, he believed that a feconciliation could be brought about. This be- 246 PAID IN FULL lief was long in growing upon him, and when it took shape it was the offspring of his wishes. Other factors, also, had a share in forming it. Sentiment and Desire took counsel with Advisa bility ; Selfishness weighed the pros and cons. In the end Sentiment and Desire, being the stronger, adjusted objections to their own point of view. But even then it was some time before he could summon up courage enough to take any steps in the matter. Summer had given place to winter and re turned again since Emma had left him. In all that time he had not heard from or of her. He had made no attempt to see Jimsy Smith or any of his former friends and associates, having at the time of his wife's separation from him vowed to keep to himself and break with the past alto gether. Now he bent his thoughts upon how best to effect the rapprochement. Should he write Emma, expressing his contrition and begging 1 her forgiveness? His pride stiffened at this proposition. Should he write and request an in terview with her? If he could see her he be lieved he would have little trouble in persuading 247 PAID IN FULL her. But, counseled by her hateful mother who always had despised him, she might refuse to see him. Perhaps the best way would be to ap proach her through some one else. The only person he knew of who by any possibility could act as intermediary was Jimsy Smith, the general utility man. Requisitioning Jimsy's services did not appeal to him. He had long been jealous of his pros perity, and of the fact that he had once been a suitor for Emma's hand, although jealousy on account of the latter circumstance was rather the outcome of envy of his success in business. Nevertheless, Jimsy, like the objections to taking Emma back, was brought into harmony with the needs of the situation. He was indispensable, and the more Brooks realized this the higher became the degree of favor to which he re stored him. It had been bad policy not to keep in touch with Jimsy, a serious mistake. Smith, however, was such an " easy," obliging, warm hearted fellow that there would be no difficulty in squaring things with him and getting him to act as go-between. He resolved to call on Jimsy. 248 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XX. DESTINY is a strange thing 1 . Under many a quiet exterior smoulder fires of volcanic passion that never are fanned into activity because the essential puff of cause has never stirred them. The patient dullard whom chance or opportunity would have transformed into a leader of men and a great organizer plods n with docility to his obscure grave. Jimsy Smith had had conceptions of comfort and life on a large scale that he had never attempted to carry out even in petto, for the reason that the one thing upon which they were based, the one in centive, was lacking a wife. Given wealth and a woman responsive in the same degree to the profound devotion and large ideas of which he was capable Smith might have developed into a magnificent nabob, a great statesman, or a great " captain of industry ;" certainly into a great and wise philanthropist. Given such a woman as an inspiration, he might with his strength of mind 249 and self-control have won from nothing to a position that would have enabled him to live in some accord with the aspirations that once had illumed his day-dreaming. As it was, he had banished day-dreaming from his plan of existence. His philanthropic streak had found a natural outlet in consideration for the rights and weaknesses of those with whom his daily life brought him in contact, and in un sparing service-rendering for the few beings on earth for wfeom he entertained real regard. He had fixed a rigid line of demarkation between right and wroag for the governance of his own conduct that he never permitted himself to over step, but the failings of others he was prone to condone and ever was ready to stretch forth a hand and help a weakling to set himself straight. For luxuries unshared he cared nothing, where fore his habits were plain and his needs of the simplest, though he never stinted himself when he fancied he wanted anything. He earned enough and had saved enough to gratify every reasonable desire. Jimsy occupied two furnished rooms in a small, jguiet boarding house. He had lived in the place 250 PAID IN FULL \ ever since his arrival in New York, and the only; change he had made was to take a private sitting- room in addition to his bedroom when his means admitted of it. It was here that Brooks found him when late one evening he called there. In the old days he had had unrestricted access to the rooms, there fore when he presented himself at the boarding 1 house the landlady who responded to his ring merely exchanged a good evening with him and , let him in without announcing his arrival. Jimsy, cigar in mouth, was working at some plans and figures in the light of a reading lamp when Brooks opened the door. He looked up from the table with no evidence of surprise as his visitor entered. "Hullo, Jimsy!" " Hullo ! " Smith might have expected him and regarded his presence as an ordinary thing for all the tone of his response to the salutation indicated. "How have you been all this time?" " About as usual. How have you been getting 1 on ? Take a chair, won't you ? " He did not see the hand that Brooks extended 251 PAID IN FULL for the reason that he was rolling- up the plans that had been stretched before him. Brooks sat down in the only other armchair, on the same side of the table. On entering he fcad been very nervous. His customary aplomb revived as he found that Smith was apparently the same old Jimsy. " Oh, fine," he replied. " Thought I'd just drop in on you and see how things were." " Thanks. Have a cigar." Smith pushed the box towards him and he helped himself to one and lit it. " I feel like I owe an apology for keeping out of the way so long. I suppose you wondered what had become of me ? " " I have often wondered." " Well, you see, I was sort of cut up after the way Emma left me. It was enough to make me feel sore. There was no excuse for it. Then I've been awfully busy. I got a job in a bank as assistant receiving teller, at a real living salary. A fellow isn't ground down there and there's a chance to get on. They treat you like a gentle man, not like a Lascar cabin boy. I ought to have quit the Latin-American Line long ago. 252 PAID IN FULL I'd have been something by this time and would never have been any trouble. I was afraid, though. A fellow can't do as he likes when he's got a wife to keep, you know. I sup pose old Williams is still slave driving? " "Williams is still president of the company." " Well, he'll get what's coming to him from somebody one of these days." Smith made no comment. His visitor puffed smoke rings towards the ceiling. " Say, Jimsy, you don't give one the impres sion that the world disagrees with you you look immense." "There's never much the matter with me," Brooks." " ' Brooks' ! Why ' Brooks ? ' What's the matter with ' Joe ? ' You needn't be so darned ceremonious. You haven't got a grudge against me because I stayed away so long, have you?" " No grudge whatever." His visitor frowned. He was in some doubt as to the precise significance of the reply. "Oh, well let it go," he said. "How's the old woman? " 253 PAID IN FULL " You mean Mrs. Harris ? " "Who else would I mean except my saintly mother-in-law? " " She was well at last reports." There was another pause in the conversation and Brooks stared hard at the ceiling. " I guess you're a fixture here you wouldn't be happy in any other lodgings," he went on, Jooking at Jimsy, who was eyeing him with his usual calm expression that was neither cold nor kind, yet partook, if anything, of kindness. "You ought to see the cute little quarters I have. They're in a bachelor apartment house. I want you to come around one of these evenings. We'll have a bite of dinner and go to a show afterwards. Here's my card, so's you won't be able to say you've forgotten the address. You'll come, won't you?" " Maybe, one of these odd evenings. You see, I'm working early and late just now. The com pany's going to make some extensive improve ments. We've got to provide accommodations for more boats, and I'm a busy man, so you mustn't bank on me for awhile." ** All right, if that ain't a refusal any evening 254 PAID IN FULL you can dispose of will suit me. Just let me know you're corning, that's all." For the hundredth time his eyes wandered to portraits of himself and his wife in a silver stand on the table. They had presented photographs and stand to Smith soon after their marriage. " You've still got that, I see," he said, indicat ing it with a nod of the head. " Of course." " How is she, by the by? " At last he had brought the conversation round to where he wanted it. He had lacked the cour age to come to the point at once and declare the object of his visit. " Emma ? Oh, she was all right when I last heard about her." "Heard about her? She's living with her mother, isn't she?" " Certainly." " Doirt you visit them quite often?" " I haven't seen them for some time. All tlie family's out of town." Brooks could not conceal his disappointment. "Where are they staying is it far from the city?" 255 PAID IN FULL " Quite some distance." " Well, where is it at the seaside in the country ? " he demanded, exasperated. " Why don't you come out with a straight answer in stead of dodging? What do you think I am? What do you think I came here for? " " You said you came to see how I was getting along." Brooks could have kicked himself for having been betrayed into losing his temper. It was a bad break for a man having a favor to ask. " Of course I came for that, Jimsy," he said, the anger gone from his voice. " But it's only natural I should ask for news of my family. You don't seem to think I have any rights or feelings. 1 am still Emma's husband, and it ain't because we've had a tiff that we're to be at cat and dog lor the rest of our lives, I suppose ?" " I haven't forgotten that you're Emma's hus band, Joe, but the matter of your ' rights ' is open to a difference of construction, and I'm entitled to my own opinion. I do consider it perfectly natural, however, that you should be curious about your family, and I've answered every ques tion you've put to me except the last. I'm under 256 PAID IN FULL promise not to disclose their whereabouts to any body. That's why." " Yes, you've answered my questions, but you've confined yourself to ' yes ' and * no/ as if you were a witness under cross-examination." He passed his hand over his eyes and sighed. "It ain't like you, Jimsy," he continued, "it ain't like you a bit. I thought you, at least, wouldn't turn against me. He's a good man who never does anj'thing wrong." " That's right. I guess there are more men who do wrong and aren't found out than there are men who do wrong and are discovered, and I ain't in the business of heaving rocks at any man certainly not at you." " I'm glad to hear you say that. It ain't be cause I was led by my feelings for her into taking what didn't belong to me that I'm to have it tagged all over me and be avoided like a leper all my life. I've been living on the level ever since. You can believe me, Jimsy ask the bank if my accounts ain't in order and I'm going to keep straight, too. What more can I do, except say I'm sorry? What more does anybody want me to do?" 257 PAID IN FULL " Nothing, I should think." " You believe me, Jimsy? " " Joe, I believe you're speaking the truth, and I hope with all my heart and soul you'll keep right on the way you're going. And now you know how I feel about it, come right out and tell me what brought you here." " I will, then. I want to know about Emma. It's a year now since she since we separated, and I won't stand it any longer. I want her to come back to me. I simply can't do without her." He looked at Smith expectantly, but the phlegmatic Jimsy made no remark. " You see them often. Do they ever speak about me?" il They have never mentioned you in my pres ence since the night Emma left you." " Do you mean to say that nobody has made a remark about me or tried to find out what had become of me?" " Not to my knowledge." " I never believed Emma would sulk so long. I'll bet she's as sick and tired of this business as I am. If she ain't had enough of the old woman 258 PALO IN FULL and that stuck-up little chit of a Beth by this time I'm no good as a guessen I know Emma they must have baited her to death." " Maybe, but if they have she hasn't told me about it, and she don't carry it writ on her coun tenance so's you'd notice it." " Jimsy, I must see her. Tell me where she is/* " I can't do that." " I insist on knowing-." " You can't find out from me, I'd tell you will ingly enough, but she served an injunction on me ages before you came here, and I'm not going to put myself in contempt of court." "Well, I'll find her pretty quickly when they get back to town." " All right." Brooks jumped up and nervously knocked the ash from his cigar onto a tray. " You've known Ernma and me for over six years, Jimsy," he said. " And you know all about us and how happy we were together how I tried to make her happy, risked everything for her. You were always a good friend to both of us. That's why I'm here that's why I'm going to you to do me a favor. Will you ? " 259 "Joe, I'll do anything within the bounds of reason." '* I knew you wouldn't refuse. Here's what I'd like you to do : I want you to see Emma alone not with her mother and Beth around; they'd queer everything. I want you to ask her to let by gones be bygones and come back to me. We'll begin all over again, and this time we'll begin right. Tell her I'm well fixed. I'm ahead of the game. I've got money by, earned and saved it, and a good place. There'll be no more hard pull ing like there was in the old time. Tell her I'm more sorry than I can express for our little mis understanding sorry and miserable. Tell her 1 love her more than ever, and that if she will see me she will understand." Smith nodded assent. " And, Jimsy, put in a good word for me plead for me do it as if it was for yourself. Emma will listen to you when she won't to any one else. You know she thinks a whole lot of you. Will you do this for me?" " Yes, I'll do it, Joe." "Soon?" 260 PAID IN FULL " Let's see~ this is Tuesday. I'll see her Sun day go on purpose." Brooks went to him and seized his hand with both his own. " Jimsy, you are the best ever ! " he exclaimed, fervently. " I knew I could count on you. I'll never forget this turn you're doing me, never! And Emma will appreciate it, too. Good night and God bless you." He wrung Smith's hand again. " You needn't get up, old boy," he insisted, holding him down in the chair. "I know the way out with my eyes shut." At the door he turned with this recommenda tion: f ' Don't forget, Jimsy ; plead with her as if it was for yourself." Smith sat staring straight before him for an hour. 261 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XXI UP in the Catskills little chrome-hued clouds had groped into the valley below Mrs. Harris's bungalow during the night, and, surprised by the daylight, were drifting slowly about, utterly lost, trying to find their way out of the trap to the plain at the foot of the mountains, dotted with groups of toy houses and Noah's Ark trees. Across the valley the forested slopes loomed blurred and softly blue in mist. Save for some attenuated fleecy feathers that streaked straight to the horizon and brushed the tips of the hills there the sun had the whole sky to itself. Everything presaged a hot day. Early though the hour was the clock had not yet struck six Emma was out on the piazza, dressed for walking. She wore a cool, clinging costume of pale, straw-colored tussah so short that it descended little below the tops of her high buttoned light tan shoes. A soft felt hat, such as men travelers roll up and carry in their pockets, 262 PAID IN FULL 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, Jimsy's judgment was biased. He had always considered Emma pretty, and found something to admire in her, even when, with grimy hands and in soiled cotton dress, she was engaged in the unpoetical occupation of pol-~ ishing the kitchen stove. Beth, her hair twisted into little wave knots with queer pins, and attired in a pink wrapper, joined her. " Why don't you get your things on and come with us?" urged Emma. "Jimsy will be here at six o'clock." " Me ? North Mountain ? No, thank you ! I had enough walking yesterday. I'm going to 263 PAID IN FULL church ; mother's coming-, too. We didn't go last Sunday, and the whole park will be gossiping if the family isn't represented sometimes by some one or other. They'll think we're all pagans. Be sides, I'm going to wear the new gown Jimsy brought up for me from the dressmaker's. Wasn't it lucky he was coming? It wouldn't have been here till Tuesday or Wednesday. That man's al ways on hand just when he's wanted. Won't those Parsons girls stare ! It'll give them some thing to talk about all day." Jimsy walked down through the laurel bower. " Beth," he said, by way of salutation, " that's the most common-sense mountain-climbing out fit I ever saw." " It's very rude to make remarks about peo ple's clothing when they're not dressed to re ceive," she retorted. " You're not privileged to express any opinion. It's too early." " This is where the early ungodly bird catches the matutinal angel unawares. It's rather unusual for you to be up at this hour, isn't it? " " I should say so ! On a Sunday morning, too ! It's perfectly heathenish! But it's quite impos sible to stay abed with Emma carrying on as if it 264 PAID IN FULL was the middle of the day. She's been humming- all over the house since five o'clock, and 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," ob served Smith, " we shall be several hundred feet nearer the other cherubs, listening to the solemn 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." "Does Emma do that?" " Does she ? Oh, my, you just ought to hear her when she Jets herself loose ! " " I don't know that I've sampled that partic ular brand of strophes, and I ain't quite sure that I know just what strophes are; but if Emma thinks they're all right I'll stand for 'em." " Oh, come en, Jimsy; don't listen to her non- 265 PAID IN FULL sense," laughed Emma. " You've had your break fast, haven't you?" " Yes, I'm all ready." 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 under brush that kept Smith busy breaking a way for his dainty, but hardy and seemingly tireless com panion, 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. Some of these had been blasted, rent asunder, broken off where the glaive of the storm king had flashed. Some, stricken prostrate dim 266 PAID IN FULL ages before, were crumbling into the dust to which all things must return. 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 im mensity. The long unfelt influence of the bor derless prairies, the mammoth mountain chains far 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, where it could expand unrestrained. Burning words, never used, unimagined before in his unlettered mind, adequate to depict this liberated spiri tuality, compelling words that would have lifted to his range of vision and comprehension, surged tumultuously to his lips to die there. For the source of their inspiration, of this tremendous flight into the divine azure from his regulated role of the commonplace and coldly practical, was the woman at his side, the one being in the world who was dear to him, and ever had been, whom he held in little less reverence than he didi his Maker. For Duty, which before had trans- 267 PAID IN FULL formed his passion into a fraternal affection, but which Circumstance had transmuted again into love, intense, profound, consuming, confronted him with withering austerity, inexorable. He broke off his description of the forest giants and vast freedoms of the West with a conclusion in his ordinary street-surface language. " But there it's no use me trying to do any lecture platform stunts. I wasn't born with the gift of the gab. Emma, them things have got to be seen to be appreciated. There's no other way. You understand." Yes, Emma understood. She had listened to his brief, unsuspected elo quence, catching her breath, watched the uncon scious, all-embracing gesture sweeps that rounded out and imparted the very sense of the grandiose horizons limned by his words 'had read his 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 his habitual non-committing smile, as he turned to her and said, " You understand." They continued the climb in silence, Emma's 268 PAID IN FULL bosom rising and falling- rapidly upon the rush and swirl of the torrent that raged beneath it, al most sweeping her self-control before it. Jimsy indeed loved her! Why had this chance revela tion of what her intuition had divined long before torn open the floodgates of her own emotions? Because it had set vibrating every chord of her being, and every chord of that being, as she had come to understand also, was attuned to his. To gether 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. From all of these the sun, now high, exacted its tribute of fragrance, a fragrance heavy but exhilarating, that caused Emma and Jimsy to inhale it with deep breaths, that augmented the fever of their blood on fire coursing swiftly through their veins. We are all helpless corks on the sea of life, tossed hither and thither on the wave crests of passion, themselves the sport of the wind of chance. Jimsy bared his head to the cool breeze that swept the clearing and watched Emma, who, with a little cry of delight, had stooped among the 269 PAID IN FULL 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 overpower- ingly violent though it was, was not of the morn ing's forming. She had known the calm, sympa thetic Westerner as he had reminded Capt. Williams ever since she was a girl in short frocks. She had soon come to look upon him as a big brother, with whom she shared her girlish troubles and in whom she confided freely, nat urally, as a matter of course. When she had be come a woman and 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. There seemed to be something in congruous in the thought. After the scales formed there by the blandish ments and personal pulchritude of Brooks had fallen from her eyes, and she saw that she had bowed down to an empty, painted fetish 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 270 PAID IN FULL she was. Household drudgery and the stern verities of her existence had vanquished and put to flight all her illusions. With them had gone the poetic inspirations that had caused her as a girl to see things as they were not, and for lack of the responsiveness and conditions that alone could have given it full development she had brought under absolute control and repressed the passionate ardor that had burst forth gloriously for a space. Love was a delusion. It was not what she had conceived it to be. It existed in per fect, 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. As she had grown wise and come to look upon Jimsy's visits as pleasant breaks in the monotony of her existence, however, she had obtained glimpses of his inner self, flashes of the profundity of his mind, an inkling of his elevation of senti ment that escaped him in spite of himself, quite 271 PAID IN FULL unconsciously. Her woman's keen perception had divined a spirituality that was buried pur posely by speech and conduct. This had inter ested her and given her food for thought, but she could find no satisfactory explanation. The clue to the mystery, which, truth to tell, interested her but mildly, had come to her first on the evening of her husband's attack on Capt. Williams in the little Harlem flat, when, after he had let fall and smashed the cup, he had remarked a little ruefully that he had let slip everything he had ever had in his life that was worth while. The confirmation of her deduction that his unrequited love for herself had been the death of ambition and accounted for his aimless, lonely existence, which she had been inclined to reject as absurd, was obtained on that momentous night just be fore her husband extinguished utterly and for ever the few embers of love for him that still were live. After he had told her the story of his life in his quaint, everyday speech, and her heart had gone out to him in that burst of irrepressible sympathy, the consternation this had caused him had uncovered his secret as in a book, for, in that 272 PAID IN FULL moment she had seen beyond tke mere start of timid modesty. Later, after the shock of Brooks's action had ceased to obsess her, and he had receded farther and farther towards a memory, a disagreeable memory that her mind would have shwt out for ever, she had set free her imprisoned inclinations. Once more her rejuvenated fancy had taken wing to the heights of the ideal and romantic. Some how it had come to associate Jimsy with its ex cursions. Possessor of his secret, she had set herself, while disguising her task with cunning, to the dangerous study of the heart that had held it so long inviolate. The knowledge that he loved her with such steadfast intensity rekindled love on the dead ashes her husband had left be hind ; and for the very reason that Jimsy betrayed his sentiments in nothing, held unswervingly to the line of conduct towards her he had followed ever since she had refused to take seriously his offer of marriage, this love had grown stronger, fiercer, until it had filled her life. She saw that she had passed happiness by. She exalted Jimsy's secret passion until in her imagining he became the incarnation of nobleness, of desire, of all mor- 273 PAID IN FULL tal joys. This is why his lifting of the corner of the curtain behind which he concealed h'is real self, that seemed to prove- that her most romantic visions had nothing of hallucination, that he was as she would have him, as she had molded him, that his soul was hers, had suffocated her with rapture. She brought a heap of blueberries to him and poured them into his joined hands, and they seated themselves on a rock to eat them and to rest. " This is the most enjoyable picnic I've had in years," she said, gayly. '"It was quite an inspira tion of yours to run up to visit us. Why don't you come often, instead of spending your week ends in the hot city? You ought to take a vaca tion and stay here for a few weeks." " I'd like to, awfully," he told her, " but the fact is I'm too busy to think of getting away. Williams is piling a whole lot of work and re sponsibility on me these days. Williams, you know', isn't what you'd call an easy boss. If he raises a man's salary he sees to it that he gets his money's worth. Why, he won't even help me out. If I think I ought to ask his advice he 274 PAID IN FULL growls that he's told me in a general way what he wants, and it's up to me to do the rest. He simply won't be bothered, even with matters that ain't precisely details. 5 * " It's because he trusts you, Jimsy," she as sured him, with an intonation perilously near to tenderness. " So you see," he went on, " it's easier to talk about holidays than to get them. I shouldn't be here now, for I'm working Sundays as well as other days at present, only that I had to come up on a matter of importance." " Oh ! " she said, with a pout, " I thought you came to see us for ourselves; not on a business trip. No more berries for you." " I came for the express purpose of seeing you and of talking to you alone." Her heart fluttered violently, suffocatingly, again. " To me alone ? " " Yes ; I've seen Joe.*' The pronouncing of her husband's name was to her as a heavy blow. Sweet, timorous ex pectancy, hot, turbulent blushes that she had bent 2/5 to hide, vanished instantly, and she looked up at him startled. "Joe walked in on me five nights ago. He looks well and is doing well." "What is that tome?" The words came in chilling accents and her eyes grew hard. " Emma, do you remember that on that night just before you learned the truth I told you about that chap in Denver who was long on love and short on honor, and kind of took the view that it was his wife's place to overlook things and help him get right ? " "Well?" " Well, I'm still of that opinion." " Do I understand that you that you " She did not finish the sentence, but sat gazing at him with wide eyes, stark with agony and amaze. " I guessed you'd be kind of surprised to hear from him. That's one reason why I judged it best to explain the situation to you alone. Since you left Joe he's been leading a strictly honest life. He has a good job in a bank, at a good salary, has saved money, and all he wants is for 276 PAID IN FULL you to forgive and forget and start over again. Joe's all right now, there's no doubt about that, for I've looked up the record he's made since you've been separated. Not only that, but he loves you more than ever. That's Gospel truth, too, I know." " Forgive and forget ! Yes, I have forgotten, and oblivion enshrouds forgiveness with it. Joseph Brooks is dead, as dead for me as though he were in his grave. I have even ceased to bear his name. Sometimes I have wondered if he ever existed. If I remember him it is as one recalls a nightmare from which one is glad to have awakened." She laughed a little mirthless laugh, and, pluck ing a fern branch, began to pick the fronds from, it nervously, letting them fall to the ground. " That's all very well, Emma," he objected, gently. " But Joe is none the less very much alive, and he is your husband. You mustn't for get that, ever. And he's all right, I honestly be lieve. If he did fall into temptation he meant well he thought he could put the money back easily enough, and he wanted you to have more comfort and be happy. The best of us ain't no 277 PAID IN FULL better than we should be, if you come right down to the contemplation of the naked fact. You know that the Book says ' there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not.' TQ me, the man who is real sorry for having done wrong especially when his wrongdoing had such a pardonable motive as Joe's had is as good as he was before he did the thing." " You are the one man I know whom I would never have suspected of harboring a treasury of such homely platitudes," she said, scornfully. " If it were only a question of forgiving a man who had sinned so weakly as that, but it isn't," he went on. " More is involved his absolution and salvation by duty, if not by love. Emma, you are Joe Brooks's wife. You took oath before God and you meant it then to stick by him in adversity as in prosperity, to help him in time of trouble. Your place is by his side now. Yours is the only hand that can guide him right." She rose and placed both of her little gloved hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. " Do you beliere what you are telling me, Jimsy Smith ? " she asked, gently. " Do you, 278 PAID IN FULL speaking from your inmost heart, order me to return to the arms of that man ? " He rose, holding- her wrists firmly against his shoulders, and speaking with intense earnestness : " Emma, there are some things on this earth that we're called on to do, ordained by an all- wise and merciful Providence. We may not like to do them, but it is not a matter of inclination. We have to make our decisions by the rule of right or wrong. We can't shirk it and cast about for excuses. Is it right or is it wrong? It's an arbitrary rule, but I guess it works out for the best in the end. Yes, I reckon it is for the best in the end. It has always seemed to me so. There fore I say go back to Joe, your husband. Joe pleads to your heart that was his. ' Tell her,' ke said, 'that I'm more sorry than I can express; that I'm sorry and miserable. Tell her that there is no light in life without her.' Those were about his words." He released her wrists. She had listened to him at the last with averted face that was blood less and looked ghastly under its coat of sun tan. She walked away wrestling with herself. Smith stood as impassive as fate. But on his 279 PAID IN FULL brow a dampness had gathered, and she had seen the sweat beads ooze there as he spoke. The little cool-clad form with its clinging skirt returned slowly. " Jimsy, why did he charge you to tell me these things?" "Why? I don't know. Because I'm his friend and yours, I suppose. Because there was no one .else could do it." "And, like the good man you are, you were governed in your decision by the rule of right and wrong." " That was about it, if you cut out the qualifi cation of me." " And having been influenced to assume this role of ambassador by a sense of duty and loy alty, feeling bound to do so for the very reason that would have deterred a man of ordinary moral calibre, you would have adhered to the rule though every word of your counsel had been to you as the sear of a white-hot iron and its Utterance had been death." For the first time in her life she saw a look of Sternness pass over his face. And it was mingled 'with pain. 280 PAID IN FULL " Emma," he said, " I guess we'll go dwn now. And we'd better take a short cut, if there is one, or we won't be home for dinner. You must be hungry and of all the " " No, Jimsy, hear me," she interrupted. " You must and shall hear me. You have said what you had to say; now it is my turn, and I, too, will speak plainly. You believe you know I am, and always have been, a good woman. You be lieve that I was faithful, as far as was humanly possible, to the spirit as well as the letter of my marriage vows, made fervently, trustingly. I swore to love and honor Joe Brooks. It was easy, for I did then love and honor him, beyond understanding now. But neither love nor honor is kept alive eternally by the virtue of an oath in the face of delusion and worthlessness. Gold was tinsel, diamond was glass. You were witness to the slow murdering of love and you saw it strangled and thrown down at the last as he would have strangled me had you not prevented." He would have spoken, but she checked him with a gesture of command. " No, don't interrupt ; hear me to the end and then speak. What is this thing that you are 281 PAID IN FULL asking me to do? Do you know? Let us bring your own rule to the consideration and decision of it. Is it the pardoning of a dear one turned thief for love of me? No; that were compre hensible to any wife, perhaps, and already done were that all. But it is not. You are asking me to go to a living death, to make of my heart a sepulchre of all sweet or elevating emotion, to surrender my lips to the fetid kiss of an Iscariot, to deliver my body to his loathsome embraces, while my soul sickens with disgust and horror rny body that he would have betrayed, hired out for a piece of silver, and, gloating, taken back again. You are asking me to immolate myself with all that I hold sacred and beautiful on an altar that you style duty. Now apply your rule to Ais> Is it right? Is it wrong? Ofa, Jimsy, answer me ! Before God, is it right ? " She stood trembling with the vehemence of her defense and the strength of her feeling, her arms outstretched in interrogation and appeal A great sigh was the indication of the conflict tfeat was raging in Smith's heart, and for one smgie instant the mask of impenetrability fell from Ms face. 282 PAID IN FULL She read the answer there. Removing feverishly the glove from her left hand, she forced from her finger the wedding ring; that in the years had tightened closely upon it, and hurled it from her. It ricochetted on a rock and went bounding over the outer edge of the plateau far down into the pathless, tangled brush of the almost perpendicular declivity. Smith turned away in silence, and in silence they made their way back along the little path up which they had come. Neither spoke, even at the difficult places when he stretched out his hand and helped her with its. strong, sustaining clasp. Jimsy was grave and abstracted. In his Gethsemane he had drunk too deeply of the waters of knowledge, and they were bitter-sweet, heavily impregnated with regret and dismay. Emma had discovered the secret which for years he had guarded so jealously and oh ! the blissful torture of it ! had revealed to him that she loved him. This was the outcome of his self-sacrificing; mission on behalf of the husband who stood be tween them with the right of the might of law; and the conventions, and whose trust was in the keeping of his honor. His role of platonic friend- 283 PAID IN FULL ship was ended. His privileged relations with the woman who was dearer to him than life could no longer be maintained. The home of the Harris family could no longer be the refuge of his loneli ness, the pleasant oasis in the desert of his exist ence, where he could find consolation and rest for his suffering heart; beyond which the world lay dark and indiscernible. 284 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XXII ' was to Brooks an interminable week that elapsed between his visit to Smith and the latter's return from his mission. Patience was not one of his virtues. Having taken the de cisive step towards a reconciliation with Emma, he yearned more than ever for his wife herself. He saw her now only as she was when he had made her his bride, only as she had been in the full flowering of her rhapsodic adoration, and the vision abided with him by day as well as by night, enthralling all his senses. That the rapprochement would be effected he entertained no doubt whatever. Her present po sition, he was convinced, must be intolerable. He planned to make her homecoming an occasion of festivity and voluptuous joy that would mark the beginning of a new, unending honeymoon. He had learned much from the desolation of a love less life. Things that had bored him would now 285 PAID IN FULL be delights. He would comport himself differ ently towards her in many ways. He spent his leisure time after business hours and on the Sunday while Smith was away in look ing up apartments and in other preparations for the resumption of housekeeping; also in elaborat ing the programme of celebration. It was with eagerness and confidence that he repaired to Smith's lodgings on the Monday evening, having ascertained at the boarding house during the day that his friend had returned that morning from his trip out of town. To him it was now merely a question of making definite arrangements for Emma's reception. His spirits were high, and it was with effusive cordiality that he greeted Jimsy when, in his usual uncere monious manner, he invaded his sanctum. Smith was of too frank a nature to keep him. for one minute under the delusion he saw by his manner he entertained. Emma had demonstrated to him the impossibility of cohabitation with her husband and the futility of further effort to that end; shown him that a new and brighter flame, all consuming, all purifying, had enveloped her heart, and that it had purged it of every trace of 286 PAID IN FULL the old slain sentiment. The knowledge that it burned for him made his present task a peculiarly hard and painful one. " I'm sorry, Joe," he said, almost before his visitor had seated himself, " but there's nothing doing." Brooks's expectant smile died out. "How do you mean nothing doing? Wasn't she there? Weren't you able to see her?" " Yes, I saw her, and she refused." "Refused?" " Absolutely. She will have nothing further to do with you." Incredulity gave place quickly to bitter dis appointment. " How's that? What did you say to her? " " I told her that you were leading a straight life, all about your circumstances, that you were sorry for what had occurred and that in future it would be all different, and you would do every thing in your power to make her happy. I told her that you loved her more than ever. But it was no use." " Didn't you advise her to make up? " " I did, Joe. I urged her to forget and forgive 287 PAID IN FULL pleaded hard for you told her I thought she ought to return to you. She said she could have forgiven the matter of the money, but that in sending her to Captain Williams's that night you killed every bit of her love for you, and she would never pardon your act as long as she drew breath. ' He is dead to me for all time, dead and buried,' she said. I hate to have to tell you these hard things, but you asked me to act for you, and I am bound in common honesty to give you the result, just as it is." " You believe she really meant it? " " I am convinced she did and that nothing will make her change her mind." "It's all rot!" remonstrated Brooks, angry and aggrieved. " She knew she was talking rot, too. She herself told me that nothing happened to her when she went to Williams's. She gave him some soft talk, cried a little, maybe, when she pleaded for me, and because he liked her he gave her the paper releasing me. That's all there was to it. It was as easy as rolling off a log, and I don't see why she should still be making such a fuss about it, do you?" " I think I do. You took the chance that some- 288 PAID IN FULL thing might happen to her. You must have ex pected that it would, and you were prepared to shut your eyes so long as she got what you wanted. That's what she can't overlook." " Then you think she did right in leaving me? " "That is a question I'd rather not pass upon. It ain't any part of what you asked me to do." " But I want to know what you think." " And I'd rather not express any opinions one way or the other. I'm a friend of both of you, and you ought not to ask me such a thing." " Oh, you needn't be afraid! We're us two to gether. Her attitude's most unreasonable, I think, and I'd be surprised if you didn't think so, too." " My views wouldn't help the situation one way or the other, and we'll cut them out if you please." " You know as well as I do that something had to be done done at once and there was no other way out of it than by getting her to see Williams. In the morning it would have been too late. She's making a mountain out of a mole hill, and I shouldn't wonder if you've been help ing her, with your straight-laced ways." 289 PAID IN FULL " Thanks. I didn't bring that subject up at all never opened my mouth about it." " You must have rubbed her temper up the wrong way, then. I ought to have seen her my self. I might have known you'd bungle the whole business." " Joe, I did the very best for you I could, the best I knew how. I can imagine how you feel about it, and I'm sorry for you, real sorry for you." Brooks made a savage dive for the matchbox and relit his cigar that had gone out. " Look here, Jimsy," he said. " I don't want your pity nor anybody else's. What I want is help. We've gone about this matter all wrong. I ought to have seen her myself, and then every thing would have been O. K. I could have fixed it up with her in two minutes. I will see her at once. Give me the address." " It would be useless, and would only make matters worse." " Never mind about that. That's my affair. Give me the address." " I can't." " You mean you won't ? " 290 PAID IN FULL " Well, I won't, if you wish me to put it that way." " You have no right to stand between a man and his wife." " No, Joe, and God is my witness that I would not wittingly do such a thing for all earth has to offer." " Then tell me where she is to be found." " I am still enjoined from doing so, and it's quite out of the question." Brooks rose excitedly, an ugly scowl on his face. " There is some other motive for this," he said, " and I'll tell you what it is. You don't want us to come together again. It ain't to your interest. You're standing in with that mother of hers." " You know that is not true," returned Smith, earnestly. " I have done all I could for you." " Yes, you have! " sneered Brooks, his temper rising rapidly and getting more and more beyond control. "Why don't you want us to make up? Do you think I don't know? Do you think I "haven't seen that you've been jealous of me ever since Emma turned you down ? Do you " "Joe!" 291 PAID IN FULL Smith also rose and faced him, very white, all the kindliness gone from his visage. " Do you think I don't know why you've been snooping around her skirts, installing yourself as one of the family in my home? I'm not blind when it doesn't suit me to be, and I've had enough of being fooled and walked all over by everybody who wanted to wipe their feet on me." " Joe, my boy, you don't know what you're saying, and you'll be sorry when you cool down." " Sorry, nothing ! " he shouted, beside himself with fury. " You make me sick with your slow talk and oily ways! What do you think I am? You'll give me that address this minute, or by heck I'll hack it out of your carcass ! " He picked up a jack-knife which at the time of his arrival Smith had been using to cut the leaves of a book, and rushed at him. Jimsy's big hands descended on both his as sailant's wrists. Brooks was strong, but he strained in vain in the grasp of iron. His right arm slowly weakened and twisted gradually until the fingers opened, and with a groan of pain he dropped the blade. Smith continued to twist until he had wrung all the fight out of him and 2Q2 PAID IN FULL he had him limp and helpless. Then he let him go and picked up the knife. " You'd better leave lethal weapons out of your arguments, Brooks, or you'll sure be hurt ing somebody one of these days," he recom mended. " It's dangerous dangerous to your self as well." Brooks, sullen and panting, dropped into a chair, tears of humiliation and baffled rage hover-, ing tremulously in his eyes. " It was your fault you drove me to it," he declared. " It's a mighty bad thing, as a general rule, to let your ill humor get away with your nerves," chided Smith, " because you're apt to say and do things that are utterly foolish. You have acted to-night like a petulant kid, instead of like a man I've tried to help. As far as I'm concerned, you've put yourself out of court, and I'm through trying to do anything for you." " And I'm through asking you to do anything fer me," he retorted, jumping up and clapping his hat on his head. " I don't want any more favors of the kind you've been handing out so smugly. I know what I've said to-night, and it 293 PAID IN FULL doesn't carry any apology with it, either. You can all go plumb to Podunk, every one of you you, my loving wife and the old woman. I'm shut of the whole crowd, for good and all." He rushed out, bounded down the stairs and the front door slammed violently. Smith lighted a cigar, solace and sedative of the wrought-up man, and ruminated sadly for awhile. He thought of Emma, of the worthless husband to whom she was tied, and of the false position all round in which he found himself as the result of his peacemaking effort. Ah ! God, how he loved her ! With a weary sigh he fetched out plans and figures and began to work. It was hard to con centrate his mind, but application at length sub dued the turmoil of his thoughts and work, that "pledge of cheerful days and nights without a groan," his unfailing narcotic for the perturba tion of his spirit, absorbed him until tired nature, coming to its support, did the rest. While Jimsy Smith worked that he might for get, Brooks, the heat of his anger cooled, sat down in his lonely room to consider the unex pected change in the situation. The failure of his 294 PAID IN FULL plans was a blow to him, but this time the prick ing of the bubble of his optimism, which had soared so high, instead of plunging him imme diately into the gloomiest despondency, found its contrast in bitter resentment against both his wife and Smith. In the moral abasement that glossed the heinousness of his own action he really did believe that he had just cause for grievance in Emma's attitude, that she was making much ado about nothing. What nonplussed him was that she had not be come so wearied of her life with her mother and Beth as to have left a way open for further nego tiation. He still believed that could he have seen her himself he would have been able to work upon her feelings so that she would have re turned with him. He cursed Smith for a fool and a blunderer. At least he did not believe the ac cusations he had hurled at him in his rage and disappointment. He had never considered him in any other light than that of a good-natured, old-womanish friend of the family, who did any thing for anybody, and with whom anybody could take liberties. He could see nothing in him cal culated to inspire any woman with more than or- 295 PAID IN FULL dinary liking and indulgent toleration, not to speak of Emma, who was one of those quiet, good little women whose always correct de meanor and devotion to home and husband con stituted the most effective discouragement of any tendency to undue familiarity. He never had had the slightest scruple in leaving them together. Her reception of his overtures had practically dispelled the glamour of romance in which he had clothed her in his visions, but he was still un willing to forego the advantages and gratification of desire he had associated with her return. To find her was impossible. He had ascertained per sonally that the Harris family had been away for several months, and that no one at the house knew where they had gone. He resolved to make one final attempt to soften her by means of a letter, and he set about it forthwith. It was an epistle of many pages, a melodramatic jumble of contrition, amorousness and despairing supplica tion, for he was no master in the art of writing. But he was highly satisfied with it. To make it the more impressive he blurred it here and there with drops of water, thinking this would convey 296 PAID IN FULL the idea that he had been moved to tears as he penned it. " If this doesn't do the trick nothing will," he muttered, after he had perused it for the third time. " And if it doesn't I'll quit. She'll never get another chance from me." He addressed it to her care of Jimsy Smith, knowing the latter would see that it reached its destination. It came back under cover through the same medium, unopened, with the word "Refused" written large across the envelope in Beth's handwriting. The word was a full con firmation of Jimsy's report of his mission. Brooks gnashed his teeth, banished his dreams of a renewal of happiness with his wife and clinched a resolution that had been forming in his mind as an alternative to seek relief in an other and facile love from the depression of his solitary existence, 297 PAID IN FULL CHAPTER XXIII AUTUMN, chilly and wet, had brought sojourners in the country early to town among them Mrs. Harris and her daughters. Mrs. Harris had requisitioned Jimsy Smith's services before she descended from the mountains. There was a lot to do on their arrival. Would he mind attending to this and that for them, and would he meet them? Jimsy duly attended to this and that, met them in his old genial way, saw them installed in their home, dined with them, as per Mrs. Harris's schedule and, although the winter was well ad vanced, had never been there since, except to make a brief call at Christmas. At each of these visits Emma had thrilled at sight of him and at the sound of his voice, and her heart had beat as though it would burst through her body. It was with timidity that she riad extended her hand to him, but neither by pressure of his clasp nor by any sign of manner, 208 PAID IN FULL expression or intonation had he given indication of remembrance that their secret was known to each other. He was the same quiet, kindly un changeable Jimsy. By her alone was his pro longed absence understood. Mrs. Harris and Beth marveled greatly and were offended. They could net imagine why he should have ceased his formerly frequent visits. He answered their written reproaches with the excuse that pressure of work precluded proper attention to the social duties he owed his only friends. His letters always reflected his good humor, and they be came satisfied that it was not pique at any fancied slight that kept him away. Mrs. Harris and Beth finally attributed it to a reluctance to meet continually on an equal footing his employer, Capt. Williams, who had taken Jimsy's place as extra member of the family and usurped all his prerogatives. To Emma the Captain was no longer an object of fear and detestation. She knew that his affection was purely paternal, and he knew that she under stood him as no one dead or living ever had or did. She manifested her appreciation of his re gard by a confidence which was to the old fellow 299 PAID IN FULL a comfort and huge delight. Not that his de light took a demonstrative form; that was not in his nature; and Emma would have been greatly astonished could she have known what a, boon to him her frank friendliness was. It showed itself in divers ways, though, notably in a disposition to ascertain her opinion of things. This was remarkable, considering the man, who all his life had formed his own judgments from his own observations and cared nothing for what others might think, despising especially the opinions of women. The fact was that his good deed to Emma had been the first striking effect of a softening process that had been going on very, very slowly, so slowly as not to be noticeable to any extent, for several years, which began when he had been admitted to the family circle of his late general manager, and with which, all unconsciously, Emma had had a good deal to do. He had an chored himself to the family as his one connection with refinement and home life. But it had been a cautious anchoring, maintained with distrust, and carrying with it no reciprocity in the shape of business or any other favors. A fighter who had 300 PAID IN FULL got nothing out of existence without fighting, ever on the alert to forestall an expected treach erous blow, his hand had flown to his hip pocket, so to speak, at the slightest movement that ap peared to him to be suspicious. As time wore on, however, his distrust had vanished and Mrs. Harris and her daughters had become a necessity to him. He was being civil ized. He preferred Emma to the others, which is saying that she was the person he liked best on earth, but his manner of showing it had been repellent because misunderstood. In the first place she had hated him for his supposed injus tice to her husband, whereas, having read Brooks through from the start, he despised him, and would not help him even to make her lot easier. In the second place there had been his reputa tion for licentiousness, exaggerated by Brooks, and his notorious brutality and lack of scruple in the past. But when reawakened distrust, bat tling with unwillingness to believe that his high estimate of her had been unmerited, had caused him to try her out relentlessly on the occasion of her appeal for Brooks, alone with him and at his mercy in his rooms, she had seen that a warm 301 PAID IN FULL heart, full of pure regard for her, beat beneai.w his forbidding exterior. From that night she had learned to respect him and judge him at his real value. His actions and idiosyncrasies re ceived at last their true interpretation. As for Williams, the proof that he had not been deceived in her fortified his faith and made him really happy. He was getting old. He had won his hard-fought, life-long battle with the world and was as rich as he cared to be. The devil was disposed to turn monk. His mag nanimity to her, carrying with it as it had the re ward of much self-satisfaction, had vivified a latent generosity that was putting him on better terms with humanity. In the home of the Har ris's he enjoyed the sweet intimacy of member ship by right of old acquaintance and latterly of unreserved welcome. The yearning for affec tion, not demonstrative, but existent, that came with the approach of life's sunset and which was not to be found elsewhere, was gratified there. He put on slippers, smoked his pipe, had his favorite chair, expressed his views in his authori tative way, and liked to be consulted. But he never ceased to be impressed with the 302 PAID IN FULL ostentatious proclivities and aristocratic airs of Mrs. Harris and Beth, though he laughed in dulgently at many of the mother's foibles. To him the two women represented the beau monde, and were authorities on all that pertained thereto. He deemed it a privilege to place one of his automobiles at the family's exclusive command, and it was the most luxurious vehicle money could buy. That he did not give it outright was because he knew their circumstances would not enable them to maintain it. He had developed a most commendable instinct of delicacy in some things in the recent course of the taming and civilizing process. Emma was different from her mother and sis ter. She never gave herself airs. He felt him self nearer to her, and the more intimate they grew the more she became endeared to him. She had changed much since she had left Brooks. A spirituality that he had not, of course, known in her in the old days had increased the charm of her personality, but her sensible, unaffected manner, her gentleness, were always the same. More than once he had surprised a wistful, far away look in her eyes, a fleeting expression of PAID IN FULL melancholy, and his solicitude had been aroused. Something caused him to refrain from question ing her, but he did considerable pondering about it. " What a shame it is that a girl like Emma isn't married to some nice fellow worthy of her," he remarked one evening, uttering his thoughts aloud, after a lull in the conversation during which he had witnessed one of her moments of absence. Thoughtfully he knocked the ashes out of his pipe as he continued: "There are some things that no man can understand, and this is one of 'em, that she should be handcuffed to a dirty scallawag like Brooks." " Captain ! " ejaculated Mrs. Harris, raising her hands. " You musn't ! You know it is under stood that the person's name is never to be men tioned." " I know," he said, " but you can't alter facts because, being disagreeable, you don't want to remember 'em. Brooks is a disagreeable fact a darned disagreeable fact and' he's Emmafs husband into the bargain. As such he ain't to be ignored altogether, because he's the open sewer that stands between her and the fair pas- 34 PAID IN FULL ture lands, and can't be crossed, and can't be got around." "Why, Captain," smiled Emma, "I'm happy enough. What more could I want than the peace I have?" "Are you sure, girl?" he answered, shaking his head doubtfully. " I don't know I don't know." " Certainly she's happy," put in Beth. " Why shouldn't she be? She herself says she has everything she could possibly want. And as for getting married again I should think she'd had enough of that to last her all her life." " Indeed, yes," concurred her mother. " It's your turn, now, Beth," observed Emma. "Me? Oh, I shall never marry!" "Bless me, and why not?" demanded Mrs. Harris. " It doesn't follow because I have been unfor tunate that you should be," said Emma. " It doesn't follow at all. It is easy to conceive of perfect happiness with the right husband." " Of course I mean I won't marry until the proper man comes along. 7 should never make the mistake of binding myself to such a man 305 PAID IN FULL as as that beast, or even Jimsy, for instance, though I'm not comparing Jimsy with him in any way." "What's the matter with Smith?" grunted the Captain. " Well, you would never think of him as a lover. He's so old and so unromantic. Besides, his education's terribly defective." " And he isn't rich," added her mother. " When Beth marries I hope it will be to a gentleman in the position to keep her as she ought to be kept. I hope fate will be kinder to you in this respect, child, than it was to me and your sister." " Harris was all right," said the Captain un easily. " You couldn't have found a better man on the footstool." " None better ever breathed/' she sighed, raising her handkerchief to dab her eyes. " If he hadn't been so slow in business ! " " I wonder why Jimsy doesn't come around any more," said Beth. " He hasn't been here since Christmas." " He says he's too busy," observed Mrs. Har ris. " Captain, you must be working him to death." 306 PAID IN FULL " Smith's a good man, a corking good man," replied the Captain thoughtfully. " He's doing more work than any three. He's a good execu tive, too keeps his grasp on things." " Jimsy always was that conscientious," com mented Mrs. Harris, "There ain't no necessity that I know of for him to work all night, though, if that's what he's doing." "Then what do you think can keep him away ? " " I can't hazard a guess." Emma appeared to be absolutely indifferent to the turn the conversation had taken, though in truth she was listening greedily to Williams's encomiums. " D' you know," went on the Captain, " I've often thought that a man like Smith would be just the right kind of a husband for Emma." " Like Jimsy? " Mrs. Harris laughed. She did not know whether he was joking or not, but thought he was. This time a sudden flush dyed Emma's cheeks and deepened over her face to the very ears. No one noticed it, however, unless it was the Cap- 307 tain, but when he was leaning forward with his hands between his knees, as he was then, his bushy eyebrows bent in thought, it was impos sible to tell where he was looking. "That's what I said," he emphasized. "Take Smith himself, for the sake of argument. We're talking among ourselves, so it don't matter, as it won't go any further. Suppose Emma 'd mar ried him ? Is his heart all right ? Yes, he's good to everybody wouldn't hurt a fly kind of man one likes to have around, as I've seen here. Is he on the level? I'd bank on him, and that's more'n I'd say of any other man I know. Is he capable ? Brainy as they make 'em. Is he good looking*? He ain't bad looking, and with that smile of his he has most good lookers I've seen beat a mile. Beth says he ain't poetic and all that sort of thing. Maybe maybe, but what of that? Also she says he ain't what you'd call educated. That may be, too, but when he wants to he can bring an amount of cold sense to bear that'H upset most men's logic and gives a bluff no chance. He'll go far if he keeps on, for all his slow ways, and let me tell you it ain't the man 308 PAID IN FULL who starts off at top speed that always wins the race." " What you say may be all true, and it's all very well; but just the same, these qualities haven't made Jimsy rich, so far, and I doubt if they ever will. A man can't have everything, but money, as I've often told my girls, makes up for a lot of shortcomings, and without it what? Here's Emma, married for seven years, separated from her husband, can't get a divorce, unless it's of the Dakota sort, which I'd never consent to, hasn't got a cent in the world and couldn't collect a cent of alimony if she had the right to it, because the beast's a pauper." " No, and if he were as wealthy as the Grand Turk I'd starve to death before I'd touch any money, or anything else belonging to him," com mented Emma. " Mrs. Harris," answered the Captain with deep feeling. " To a certain extent you're right, and I don't blame you for wanting to see the girls well fixed in money matters. But money, while it's a whole lot, ain't everything, as I've found, though it's taken me sixty-five years to do it. It's no fault of Emma's that she's poor, and I 309 PAID IN FULL tell you that if she was to marry a man like Smith I'd settle half a million dollars worth of Latin-American Line stock on her for a wedding present, I would, by God, m'am!" t "You would do that?" asked Mrs. Harris, open mouthed, overwhelmed with astonishment at this outburst. " This minute." "Well!" It was all she could find to say about the reiter ation. But if the family were amazed Williams was evidently alarmed at having allowed his feelings to get the better of his discretion in this way, for he lapsed into gloomy silence, from which a change of subject, discreetly introduced by Emma, failed to draw him, and very soon de parted abruptly. 310 PAID IN FULL MR. BROOKS would like to see you, sir. I told him you were in, but he wouldn't come up, and asked me to let you know he was downstairs." "Tell him it's all right. I'll see him," " You mean that he's to come up?" "Yes, if he doesn't mind." The landlady went out, gathering- from the visitors unusual request and her boarder's reply that there had been trouble between them. Jimsy pushed away the book he had been read ing and leaned back in his chair to await his for mer friend's coming. Brooks shuffled rather than walked in. He did not offer to shake hands, but with a subdued " Hello, Jimsy," seated himself on the edge of the armchair that in former days he occupied as his own. Then he seemed to forget where he was, sank back, shrinking into his overcoat, and 3" PAID IN FULL sat as though stupefied, twisting his hat in his hands slowly and mechanically. Smith was shocked at the change in his ap pearance. His face was white and thin, and the eyes, which were almost expressionless, were deep sunk in the sockets. There was stubble on his chin; his formerly neatly plastered hair was dishevelled. Jimsy held out the cigar box to him, and the action roused him, but he refused the proffered smoke with a gesture, following it up with : " Thanks, no, thanks." The words came with obvious effort. " Boy, you're ill," said Jimsy with concern. " Let me get a bracer for you." He rose and produced a decanter of whiskey, but again his visitor declined, this time with a wan flickering smile of appreciation. " No, thanks, Jimsy. I don't feel like it just now. I've been drinking too much of the stuff, and I haven't eaten since last night, I think." " For heaven's sake ! " exclaimed Jimsy. Brooks would have restrained him, but he was out of the door and bounding downstairs three steps at a time. Never since he had first set 312 PAID IN FULL eyes on him had he known Jimsy to hurry, yet this startling exhibition of alacrity, whatever effect it may have had on the landlady, did not appear to strike Brooks as unusual. He simply sank back into the chair and relapsed into his condition of hebetude. In a little while Smith returned, a plate heaped high with sandwiches in one hand, and a bowl of hot bouillon in the other. He was still wonder ing at Brooks's statement that he had partaken much of whiskey, for whatever other vices the man had possessed drinking spirits had not been one of them. Brooks refused the sandwiches, but he took the bowl, and, holding it in both hands which trembled as though to warm them, sipped its grateful contents. Jimsy let him drink and abstained from asking questions. By the time the bowl was empty the bouillon's stimu lating effect was apparent in a return of lustre to the eyes and the steadiness with which he de posited the utensil on the table. " Jimsy, you're awfully good," he sighed. " Oh, no none of that," protested Smith. "Tell me what brought you here. What can I eed. A movement of his finger would end all. He would not even know that the shot had been fired. A feeling almost of relief came with this thought, and he quickened his steps. There was only one thing to fear now, that he would be caught before he could reach his room. He had a long way to walk the idea of riding did not occur to him, for he did not know that he possessed the wherewithal to pay carfare, to buy another meal and as he trudged along he found himself at the corner of the street in which the Harrises lived. He wondered if they were still there. The house was only a few doors away. An irresistible impulse took him towards it. Yes, the name was on the letter-box. He turned away with a sigh. Emma doubtless was upstairs; he had been within a few feet of her. Emma ! How different she had been from the other! She had not taken, she had given. Love had not been dependent upon the bringing of gifts, it had been lavished upon him. When he had been despondent she had comforted him ; when things were going wrong she had encour aged him; when his head had ached she had rested it on her bosom. And it had come to this, 321 PAID IN FULL that he had lost her, and with her, all; that he was an outcast at her door. An insane desire to see her took possession of him. It grew, became overpowering, swept aside all the objections of reason. He was a dying man, and nothing was denied to the dying. Thus she could not refuse him the last, supreme consolation of pardon, humbly, penitently im plored. He retraced his steps and rang the bell. The door opened and he ascended the well-re membered stairs. Mrs. Harris's flat was on the first landing. A maid who did not know him answered his ring. " Is Mrs. Brooks at home? " he asked. The girl shook her head. " Mrs. Brooks? No, no one of that name lives here." "This is Mrs. Harris's apartments?" " Yes." "Is she in?" "No, Mrs. Harris and Miss Beth have gone out. Miss Emma is in." Miss Emma! She had even discarded his name, then. The blow was hard. " I would like to see her." 322 PAID IN FULL " Your card, sir, please." " Tell her Mr. Smith is calKng." The name had flashed to him with the convic tion that she would not receive him if he gave his own. He followed on the heels of the maid. " You needn't bother," he said, and brushed past her at the door of the parlor. Emma was arranging some ornaments on the mantelpiece. She turned with an inquiring look as he entered. For a moment she did not recog nize him. Then she recoiled with a little cry from the wild-eyed, dishevelled spectre who, hat in hand, stood before her. " Yes, Emma, it's me, or what is left of me," he said. " What brings you here ? How did you get in?" she demanded, with frightened eyes. " Don't be afraid, you have nothing to fear from me," he assured her. " I'm going on a long journey, yes, a long, long journey, and I've come to say good-bye. You'll never see me again. I shall be no more trouble to anybody." " There was no need to come here, I cannot receive you. You must go." 3 2 3 PAID IN FULL " I cannot listen to your excuses. It is useless to recall the past. Please go." " I have no wish to recall it. I ask only your forgiveness, ask it as a dying man. You