CHAPTER VI

TWO GOOD-BYES

After the porter, who dusted and removed the waste paper, Mabel Skinner was the first of the office force to arrive at the Hapwood-Diller Company the next morning.

Her startled face was preternaturally grave on this occasion. Before she even removed her hat and the tight little jacket she wore, the girl went to the mail basket on Ethel Clayton’s desk, dumped the outgoing letters on its flat surface, and ran through them quickly, scrutinizing each address. She did this twice and then puzzlement, as well as gravity, showed in her sharp features. She stacked the letters slowly again in the basket, deep in thought.

Then she went to the letter files. She found under the B heading a quantity of correspondence relating to the Bogata Company of Norville. But there was nothing of recent date. It seemed no letter had been written the day before by the Hapwood-Diller Company to the Bogata people.

“Well,” the girl sighed, “I know Boots is an awful liar. But this time he fooled me. Guess I’ll keep my nose out of what don’t concern me. But that Boots!”

And that evening she gave the recreant Boots a most decisive thrashing out behind the barn. For any older Skinner that could not trounce a younger Skinner, male or female, was not worthy of the clan.

Mabel’s appearance at her desk when the rest of the office force arrived caused much comment.

“Life is short and time is fleeting,” said Sydney, the bookkeeper. “We are warned of the Great Change to come. Little Skinner is here on time and at work.”

“That happens three days before you die, Syd,” responded Mabel sepulchrally, and made no further explanation, not even to Ethel.

Ethel went about her work with some feeling of depression. Barton had said nothing directly to her about going away. Indeed, he was not likely to take Ethel Clayton into his confidence in private matters. Yet she understood now, from several things he had been doing of late, that he had it in mind to absent himself from the offices.

Jim Mayberry was in conference with the general manager on more than one occasion during the next few days. Ethel could only be thankful that the superintendent seemed to have too much on his mind to bother her. He did not even mention her refusal to ride with him in his car. But the girl thought more than once of the possibility of Mayberry’s becoming objectionable when Barton was gone and he, the superintendent, had charge of affairs.

On Monday Benway Chase came into the offices. Ethel had paved the way for his reception by her associates, and Benway was made to feel welcome at once. Only Mayberry seemed surprised to see him.

“Why, say!” drawled the superintendent, “what does Barton expect to make of _you_?”

“I’m after your job, Mr. Mayberry,” responded Benway, smiling into the rather sneering face of the older man. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not if you can cop it,” said the other. “But it takes a two-fisted man to handle some of the huskies we’ve got in the shops. Don’t forget that.”

The intimation was brutal, but the boy with the withered arm only paled a little about the lips.

“You know,” he said coolly, “we left-handed chaps have all the luck. Ask any ball fan.”

Mayberry laughed shortly and passed on. Ethel was particularly kind to Benway for the rest of that day, and Mabel Skinner, who also had heard the superintendent, stuck out her tongue at his retreating figure.

“He’s such a nasty thing!” she whispered to Ethel. “I wish his old flivver would try to climb a telegraph pole with him--or go into the ditch!”

For Skinner was a strong partisan of Ethel’s. Her friends were Skinner’s friends and her enemies Skinner’s particular foes. Besides, the younger girl had at once taken a fancy to Benway Chase. In looks alone the young fellow had the advantage of any man Mabel Skinner had ever seen before--not barring the general manager, whom she worshipped as a kind of god.

A smile from Benway Chase would turn almost any girl’s head. He had the darlingest curls! His complexion was finer and clearer than any girl’s Skinner knew. There were shades of brown and red in his cheeks that reminded her of a ripe russet apple.

“My!” she whispered to herself, her china-blue eyes staring from her head more staringly than usual, “wouldn’t I just like to put my two hands into his hair and pull it--ever so gently? And his eyes are just as lovely as our setter-pup’s. Oh, my! And of course he’s set his heart on Ethel!”

She was not jealous of Ethel. Skinner was much too modest to feel such an emotion for one whom she so much admired. She considered Benway Chase as far above her as the moon and stars. She thought them beautiful in much the same way as she admired Benway.

In the middle of that week Ethel was called into the manager’s office at an unusual hour--not long before closing time. He usually dictated his letters in the morning. But she carried her notebook and pencil when she answered the summons.

“No letters, Miss Clayton,” Barton said, smiling and wheeling sideways in his chair to face her. “Sit down. This is a business conference----”

“Oh! Mr. Mayberry----”

“I’ve talked to Jim,” said Barton quickly. “I’ve been hammering things into him this fortnight, off and on. He has finally got to the point where he admits he may be able to swing things here for a bit while I run away.”

Ethel flashed him a glance that he could not help but note. He raised an admonishing hand.

“Don’t think I am running away from duty, Miss Clayton. I believe we are in such shape now--the Hapwood-Diller Company, I mean--that the business will run smoothly under the guidance of Mr. Mayberry--and you. I am banking a good deal on you, Miss Clayton,” his kindly smile again lighting up his face.

“On me, Mr. Barton?” she hesitated.

“You are such a perfectly capable person, Miss Clayton,” he said. “I believe you have a better grasp on details here than almost anybody else. Of course, Mr. Mayberry and I ought to know fully as much as you do; but the other day you proved that we did not,” and he laughed. “That Bogata matter, you remember. We had overlooked the very point which we should have remembered. You did not overlook it. Therefore----You see?

“That is exactly what I mean. Jim is all right. He has a grasp of the mechanical part of the business. But you must run the office end, more or less----”

“But, Mr. Barton! you are not going to remain away for long, are you?” she interposed.

“I cannot say, Miss Clayton,” he returned gravely. “We none of us know what this war may amount to. I only know that I can be of some help if the war continues; and with my experience in the Guard I should be preparing to give my country all the help in my power if I am called on. I am leaving for the training camp at Lake Quehasset this evening.”

She could not suppress a murmur, and the pallor of her cheek was marked, but he noticed neither.

“The exemption board allowed my claim of business need. But I am promised to the service if the business here can get along without me. The time has now come to try it,” and he laughed a little whimsically. “You know, a dead man is seldom missed, no matter how important his place in life seems to be. After a little somebody is found to fill his shoes. I fancy it will not be so hard, Miss Clayton, to fill mine.

“I am depending on Mr. Mayberry and you, Miss Clayton, to keep the stockholders of the company satisfied that I can be spared. We have some months’ training in camp in any case. I have felt the call from ‘over there’ for a long time. I own frankly,” he added, his voice vibrant with emotion, “that had I been free, I should not have waited for our Government to declare war before getting into the scrimmage.

“But never mind that! I was held here. You know something of the circumstances we faced two years ago when I took hold. Now we seem to have got out of the mire. We’re standing on firm ground. With ordinary care everything should go smoothly with the Hapwood-Diller Company. Can I depend on you to do your part, Miss Clayton?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Barton! I will! I will!” cried the girl with clasped hands, but looking away from him.

“Fine! Help Mr. Mayberry all you can. He’s rather brusk, perhaps, but he knows the business. Still----

“I’ve one favor to ask of you, Miss Clayton. It is important, and it is particular. I want you to write to me.”

She looked at him then. But there was nothing in his serious face to warrant the slight flush that came into her cheeks.

“I’d like to have you write me about once a week. Consult nobody as to what you write, but just detail as briefly as you please matters as they occur--business matters and whatever you may think will give me a correct impression of the situation of affairs in the factory and the office.

“I haven’t the least idea,” he added, once again smiling, “that things will not run along all right. But I shall be anxious--nervous, if you will. Mayberry will write, of course. But you will look on things with quite different eyes from the way he will look at them. In the first place, you are a woman and you have a different mental slant upon every occurrence from that of a man, it seems to me. I am sure anything you may have to report will be illuminating.”

“Yes, Mr. Barton.”

“Will you do it, Miss Clayton?”

“Am I to understand I am to render a weekly report and keep the matter secret from everybody--even from Mr. Mayberry?”

“I am exacting no spy-duty from you!” he said hastily. “That is not my meaning.”

“I understand you perfectly, I think,” Ethel said gently. “You undoubtedly will be anxious.”

“But I want the truth--the exact truth, Miss Clayton,” Barton went on.

“Yes, I understand that too,” she replied.

They arose at the same moment and Frank Barton put out his hand. “You will be of great help to me, I am sure, Miss Clayton,” he said, her hand lost for a moment in the embrace of his larger palm. “You have been of sure and practical assistance to me on many occasions. I know you will be of equal aid to Mayberry. Now, good-bye, Miss Clayton. I hope I shall not add much to your burdens.”

“Oh, Mr. Barton! I am glad to do anything within reason. I feel that it is but a small thing I do compared with what you must face.”

At that he flushed suddenly, and like a boy. “Oh that!” he murmured. “My duty has held me here. Now duty calls me elsewhere. Duty is our master, Miss Clayton. Good-bye.”

“And--I hope you--will return to us safely,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

“Thank you, Miss Clayton. I hope to come back all right. I believe I shall,” he said cheerfully, and sat down immediately to sort some papers upon his desk. He did not look again in her direction as she went out of the private office.

He heard the raucous note of an automobile horn a little later. He stacked the documents together and stuck them in their proper pigeonhole. He was leaving his desk open for Jim Mayberry to use if he wished.

Stepping quickly to the window Barton saw the Fuller car stopping at the curb. Helen was driving, and was alone. He took down his hat and dust-coat and passed rapidly through the office. But at the outer door he stopped a moment and looked back. He faced the entire office force from that position.

“Be good children till I return--all of you,” he said, laughing. “I am banking heavy on you, Sydney. Good-bye, all. I want to hear good reports of you while I am away.”

Mayberry was to meet him later and go to the train with him. But Helen Fuller had come to take him for a spin and for a little talk on this, his last day in town. Somehow, he had not been invited to dinner as she suggested. Was it because Grandon Fuller after all considered the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company of less importance to his schemes, now that he was going away?

“Dear _me_, Mr. Barton,” sighed Helen, dexterously turning the car, “my conscience _condemns_ me.”

“Why so?”

“I fear something I may have said is sending you off like this--so _suddenly_--and to train for the army. Dear me! suppose you should be killed or wounded?”

“Scarcely likely in the training camp,” he returned, happy in the concern the girl seemed to show.

“Oh, but _afterward_! For I know you will go over there, Mr. Barton. I feel it! And if anything _I_ have said----”

“I am sure,” he told her quietly, “that you have said nothing to me or to any of your gentlemen acquaintances regarding our duty in this trying time that was not perfectly justified, Miss Fuller.”

“Oh, do you _think_ so?” she cried. “Do you _know_, Mr. Barton, I am greatly tempted to go to France _myself_. Some girls I know have already gone. You know, really, it puts one on the _qui vive_ to hear so much about it--and--and all that,” she added rather vaguely.

He was so much in earnest himself, he felt so strongly the exaltation of his decision, that he did not notice the futility of her speech. And then Helen Fuller was strikingly, if a little flamboyantly, pretty. He nodded with pursed lips.

“It’s a job we all have to decide for ourselves. I can imagine how you feel, Miss Fuller. As for myself, I’ve got to be in it!”

“It’s too bad,” she drawled, “that you couldn’t influence Morry Copley to go with you.”

“Well, Mr. Copley now will have to decide for himself, won’t he?”

She laughed. “It seems he has allowed Mrs. Copley to decide for him,” she said.

Somehow their conversation did not take that personal tinge which Helen desired. To tell the truth, a girl cannot give her escort just the right feeling of intimacy when both her eyes and her hands are engaged in guiding a motor-car. Helen finally dropped Barton at his lodgings in time for dinner, and their good-bye was much more casual than she had intended it should be.

“But I shall go over to the camp to see you,” she promised, as she wheeled away from the curb. “Best of luck!”

The man stood bareheaded till the girl had turned the corner. But that night when he closed his eyes, in his Pullman berth, it was the face of another girl, with brown eyes tear-filled, that rose to his vision and dissolved only when he sank to sleep.