CHAPTER XII

THE IMAGE HE TOOK AWAY

Although Frank Barton was still manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company, he had turned his salary back into the treasury of the concern ever since joining the training camp at Lake Quehasset.

It was not long after the flurry regarding the Bogata Company order that a suggestion was made in the directors meeting of the Hapwood-Diller Company that Barton be removed and Mayberry be put in his place as manager. The suggestion came from Grandon Fuller. Macon Hammerly opposed it.

“I am told that Barton will sail shortly with a contingent of our brave boys for the other side,” Mr. Fuller declared pompously. “I fancy he has merely neglected to resign in the stress of other business. Mr. Mayberry has shown his ability and capacity for management. I do not see why Brother Hammerly should object.”

“Patriotic reasons,” said the opposing member of the board dryly. “I object to kicking a fellow out of his job because he is going off to fight his country’s battles. Let things rest as they are, Fuller.”

“Do you mean all through the war?” demanded Mr. Fuller, with some heat.

“Why not? Frank Barton pulled this company out of a slough of despond that pretty near swamped us. If he comes back alive I, for one, want to see him manager again.”

“But what about Mr. Mayberry?”

“How is _he_ hurt?” snorted the old grain merchant. “He’s sitting here, tight enough, while another man is fighting in his place. The least he can do is to hold Barton’s job for him.”

That killed the suggestion for the time being. The matter leaked out of the board room, however, and Ethel Clayton heard of it. She wondered if, after all, the Fullers were such good friends of Frank Barton as they seemed to be.

Likewise she began to wonder what would happen to her if Jim Mayberry ever got the full power over the office force that he had in the factory. He might then discharge her on some easily trumped-up pretext. The thought was not a pleasant one.

Of late, on several occasions Mayberry had criticized her work, especially her management of the office staff. He aimed some shafts of his rough wit, too, at Benway Chase, although he could find no complaint to make in the new clerk’s work.

For Benway really showed a remarkable aptitude for his position. He was always energetic. When a member of the shipping room force was away for a while, Benway took on the duties of checker in addition to his usual work, which latter he did not in the least neglect.

When Mayberry noticed this he said:

“So you are out to master the whole business, are you, Chase? Going to be the wheelhorse, driver and spotted dog under the hind axle.”

“I told you, Mr. Mayberry, I was out for your job,” Benway said coolly. “Every little bit a fellow learns puts him so much farther ahead.”

“Think so, do you?” sneered the superintendent.

But Ethel knew Benway was getting a firm grasp on the details of the office work that made him exceedingly useful. He very quietly relieved her of some of the duties which had a way of falling upon her shoulders.

Barton had been in the habit of depending on her bright mind and willingness to a great degree. Mayberry deliberately shirked much of the routine work as he could. And of course it all fell upon Ethel and made her burden the heavier to bear. Sometimes she was held at her post until long after the others were gone for the day.

Benway Chase would have remained to help or to accompany her home on these occasions had she allowed him to, and she had fairly to drive Little Skinner home. The latter would have done all Ethel’s work for her had she been able.

“Take it from me!” the slangy Mabel declared. “That Jim Mayberry lets you slave here while he’s playin’ poker down to the Bellevue or runnin’ about the country in that flivver of his. I wish’t Mr. Barton would come back. He wouldn’t see you abused. Miss Clayton--’deed he wouldn’t!”

Ethel had not heard from Barton since her visit to the training camp, although she wrote to him briefly each week as she had promised. Nothing special had arisen in the daily affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company to cause her sufficient worry to bring it to Barton’s notice. And with the little trials, of course, she had no intention of troubling him.

Mailsburg’s first quota of drafted men marched past the factory one day to the railway station. The streets were lined with silent people for the most part. But the buildings were cheerful with bunting and flags. It was Ethel who insisted that the factory front be decorated in addition to the great silk flag which Barton had raised first with his own hands and which John raised each morning and took in at night.

Mayberry grudgingly shut down the shops for an hour that the hands might cheer more than a hundred of the drafted men who had left the Hapwood-Diller Company to don the army khaki.

Service flags began to appear all over the town after that. Mrs. Trevor, Barton’s former landlady, hung out one with a single star on it, and Ethel was told that the grim old woman kept Barton’s chair at the table for him and allowed nobody to sit in it.

Almost every day something happened to remind Ethel that the war was coming closer and closer to her. Her mother was knitting for the Red Cross. She did not say much about this work save to mention with a sniff that she hoped she could turn out as good work as those snips of girls she saw knitting in the cars and on the park benches.

“And I expect to see them take those awful looking knitting bags to church with them one of these days,” was likewise Mrs. Clayton’s tart comment.

One day Ethel saw Morry Copley in town. It was while she was out to lunch and, without seeing her, he bustled past so importantly that she could not escape the thought that there must be something afoot--perhaps some assignment of troops or officers that affected Frank Barton as well. Morry wore the insignia of a second-lieutenant.

She hurried back to the office with the expectation of seeing Barton. Surely he would not come to town without looking in upon them! But the afternoon dragged by without his appearance. She said nothing to her office mates regarding her expectations.

Each time the door opened she started and looked up, expecting to see him--tall and handsome in his khaki--enter the office. It made her nervous. There were mistakes in her work that put her back so she had to remain after hours again. When Benway wanted to help her she snapped at him and sent that surprised young man home “with a flea in his ear.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Barton had been cooling his heels in the Fullers’ reception hall. He had sent up his card to Helen and the maid had come down to say that the young lady was very busy. Would Monsieur wait?

Monsieur would--most assuredly he would! He had not seen or heard from Miss Fuller since the Sunday on which both she and Ethel Clayton had chanced to come to Camp Quehasset. And now, save for a conference with Mr. Hammerly, he had sacrificed most of his time in Mailsburg to speak confidentially to Grandon Fuller’s daughter.

He waited her pleasure with such patience as he could master. He had come to think of Helen during most of his waking hours. At least if his military duties and studies were to the fore, the thought of Helen was ever present in the back of his mind.

She was going to France he knew; but he might never see her over there. Just now he was feeling very keenly the fact that he was assigned to the Front and that he might, within a very short period, be in desperate danger of death.

A precious hour and more he waited. Occasionally he saw a soft-footed serving man or a maid pass his lonely alcove. Nobody spoke to him. Finally the noise of a car under the porte-cochère awoke hollow echoes. Immediately the sound of voices came from above. Down the broad staircase tripped Helen.

“Oh, mercy _me_, Mr. Barton! Are _you_ here? And waiting _all_ this time? That stupid maid! I was so busy with my dressmaker that I could not possibly come. And then--the maid never reminded me.”

She might have delivered him a physical blow in the face and he would have felt or shown it no more keenly. She was gorgeous in frock and hat, and she smiled upon him in her old alluring way. But his spirit fell from its heights. A dressmaker had been of more importance! She had depended upon her maid to remind her that he was waiting to see her!

“I hoped to see you for a few minutes, Miss Helen,” he said quietly. “I am going away.”

“Of course! So am I!” she cried. “But I must be off now to the Northup’s dinner. The car is waiting. It’s too late for me to refuse, Mr. Barton. And there is a dance afterward that I positively _must_ look in at. Dear _me_! I’ll really be _glad_ to be over there and at work in a hospital. This running around to dinners and dances and what Morry Copley calls ‘tea-fights’, is just killing me.

“Can’t I see you in the morning, Frank?”

He wanted to tell her that in the morning he would already be at sea. But that was forbidden.

“I am afraid not. I have to go back on the eight-ten.”

“Oh! Not so _soon_! Really?” There was much lacking in her tone--much of warmth that he had expected. “Well, best of luck! Hope to see you ‘over there,’ you know. Bye-bye!”

She ran out to the car, turning to wave her hand as she got in. And that after he had waited an hour! Had Macon Hammerly been right after all? He had said:

“The Fullers only want you for what they can get out of you. Grandon Fuller was never known yet to do anything without a purpose behind it. Look how he hung about Israel Diller--was right on the spot when the old chap died. You don’t suppose Diller made Grandon Fuller rich because he _deserved_ riches, do you?”

His wasted hour caused Barton to miss the office force at the factory; but he went that way to the station, hoping to see Mayberry at least. His mastery of the Hapwood-Diller Company’s affairs seemed a long way behind him now. Indeed when a man faces war the past grows small to him in any case. It is what is going to happen to him that completely obsesses his thought.

Barton thrust his head in at the office door, having opened it softly. A single strong light was ablaze over Ethel Clayton’s desk. The remainder of the room was in shadow.

The girl had evidently finished the task that had kept her so late, for her desk was cleared up and she sat back in her chair, dreaming. Her gaze was fixed on the door of the private office; but Frank Barton could not see her face until he spoke.

“Nobody here but you, Miss Clayton? I am certainly glad to see you. All the rest gone?”

She turned her face toward him slowly, appearing not to be startled at all by his coming. “They are all gone, Mr. Barton,” she said quietly, and reached up quickly to turn the shade of the electric lamp so that the light no longer fell on her face.

“Mayberry gone, too?” he asked, coming in with his hand held out.

“He is out of town, I believe,” Ethel told him, her voice unshaken, rising to meet him.

“I am sorry I missed them all,” Barton said, grasping her hand for a moment warmly. “You will have to give them my regards and best wishes.”

“Will you not stay over night?”

“I fear that will be impossible. I am on my way to catch the eight-ten.”

“You are not going away _now_? Not for _good_?”

Barton laughed. “I hope to come back safely,” he said. “But this is good-bye for some time, Miss Clayton----”

He caught her arm and steadied her as she swung against the desk. Her eyes closed and he saw suddenly that she was very pale.

“Are you faint? You’re working too hard!” he cried. “Look here, Miss Clayton, you must take better care of yourself. I shouldn’t feel half so safe in going away if you were not right here on the job. You’ve got to be good to yourself.”

“I--I was a little faint. It’s all right, Mr. Barton,” she murmured. “Nothing serious, I assure you. I’m not one of the fainting kind, as you know.”

“No indeed!” he cried admiringly. “I bank on you and your very good sense, Miss Clayton. You are not like other girls. I did not know for a moment but that my announcement startled you. I should have been flattered!” and he laughed.

She was silent. He could not see her face well, for she kept it turned from the lamp. Finally she said: “Naturally I am troubled that you should be going--so far away. Oh, this war is terrible, Mr. Barton!”

“Yes. All wars have been terrible. The one that touches you nearest seems the most terrible. But after all, Miss Clayton, it doesn’t matter much how one dies as long as death is inevitable.”

“That is fatalism! Perhaps it is the right soldier spirit,” she murmured. Then she turned to face him again and her countenance was quietly radiant. “But why should we who stop at home add to your burdens? We should send you away with a smile.”

“I wonder!” he exclaimed. “I wonder if we fellows ought not to go away with a smile--to furnish those we leave behind with courage? Those we leave behind must do our work. War is waste, you know, when all is said and done. I leave you, Miss Clayton, to keep things straight here,” and he smiled warmly again as his hand once more sought hers. “Write to me,” and he told her how to address him through the War Department. “Good-bye!”

He wheeled swiftly and marched to the door. His upright carriage and squared shoulders made his back look almost strange to her. She stood before the desk leaning against it, her hands clinging tightly to its edge. Her knuckles were perfectly white from the pressure of her hands upon the wood--that grasp which actually kept her from falling.

But her face showed none of her terror and weakness. He turned at the door to smile and nod to her again. The image he took away in his mind was of her perfectly composed, smiling face. And again it was the memory of Ethel Clayton, not of Helen Fuller, that he carried away as the Girl He Left Behind.