CHAPTER IX--TOM SAILS, AND SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS

"You can see your son, Second Lieutenant Thomas Cameron, before he sails for France, if you will be at the Polk Hotel, at eight o'clock to-morrow p. m."

There have been other telegrams sent and received of more moment than the above, perhaps; but none that could have created a more profound impression in the Cameron household.

There have been not a few similar messages put on the telegraph wires and received by anxious parents during these months since America has really got into the World War.

There is every necessity for secrecy in the sailing of the transports for France. The young officers themselves have sometimes told more to their relatives than they should before the hour of sailing. So the War Department takes every precaution to safeguard the crossing of our boys who go to fight the Huns.

With Mr. Cameron holding an important government position and being ready himself to go across before many weeks, it was only natural that he should have this information sent him that he might say good-bye to Tom. The latter had already been a fortnight with "his boys" in the training camp and was fixed in his assignment to his division of the expeditionary forces.

Ruth chanced to be at the Outlook, as the Cameron home was called, for over Sunday when this telegram was received. Both she and Helen were vastly excited.

"Oh, I'm going with you! I must see Tommy once more," cried the twin with an outburst of sobs and tears that made her father very unhappy.

"My dear! You cannot," Mr. Cameron tried to explain.

"I can! I must!" the girl cried. "I know I'll never see Tommy again. He--he's going over there to--to be shot----"

"Don't, dear!" begged Ruth, taking her chum into her arms. "You must not talk that way. This is war----"

"And is war altogether a man's game? Aren't we to have anything to say about it, or what the Government shall do with our brothers?"

"It is no game," sighed Ruth Fielding. "It is a very different thing. And our part in it is to give, and give generously. Our loved ones if we must."

"I don't want to give Tom!" Helen declared. "I can never be patriotic enough to give him to the country. And that's all there is to it!"

"Be a good girl, Helen, and brace up," advised her father, but quite appreciating the girl's feelings. There had always been a bond between the Cameron twins stronger than that between most brothers and sisters.

"I know I shall never see him again," wailed the girl.

"I hope he'll not hear that you said that, dear," said the girl of the Red Mill, shaking her head. "We must send him away with cheerfulness. You tell him from me, Mr. Cameron, that I send my love and I hope he will come back a major at least."

"He'll be killed!" Helen continued to wail. "I know he will!"

But that did not help things a mite. Mr. Cameron went off late that night and reached the rendezvous called for in the telegram. It was in a port from which several transports were sailing within a few hours, and he came back with a better idea of what it meant for thousands of men under arms to get away on a voyage across the seas.

Tom was busy with his men; but he had time to take supper with his father at the hotel and then got permission for Mr. Cameron to go aboard the ship with him and see how comfortable the War Department had made things for the expeditionary force.

Mr. Cameron stopped at Robinsburg on his return to tell Ruth about it, for she had returned to Headquarters, of course, on Monday, and was working quite as hard as before. He brought, too, a letter for Ruth from Tom, and just what their soldier-boy said in that missive the girl of the Red Mill never told.

Ruth was left, when her friends' father went on to Cheslow, with a great feeling of emptiness in her life. It was not alone because of Tom's departure for France; Mr. Cameron and Helen, too, would soon go across the sea.

Mr. Cameron had repeated Helen's offer--that Ruth should accompany them. But the girl, though grateful, refused. She did not for a moment belittle his efforts for the Government, or Helen's interest in the war.

But Mr. Cameron was a member of a commission that was to investigate certain matters and come back to make report. He would not be over there long.

As for Helen, Ruth was quite sure she would join some association of wealthy women and girls in Paris, as Jennie Stone had, and consider that she was "doing her bit." Ruth wanted something more real than that. She was in earnest. She did not wish to be carefully sheltered from all hard work and even from the dangers "over there." She desired a real part in what was going forward.

Nevertheless, while waiting her chance, she did not allow herself to become gloomy or morose. That was not Ruth Fielding's way.

"I always know where to come when I wish to see a cheerful face," Mr. Mayo declared, putting his head in at her door one day. "You always have a smile on tap. How do you do it?"

"I practice before my glass every morning," Ruth declared, laughing. "But sometimes, during the day, I'm afraid my expression slips. I can't always remember to smile when I am counting and packing these sweaters, and caps, and all, for the poor boys who, some of them, are going to stand up and be shot, or gassed, or blinded by liquid fire."

"It is hard," sighed the chief, wagging his head. "If it wasn't knowing that we are doing just a little good----But not as much as I could wish! Collections seem very small. Our report is not going to be all I could wish this month."

He went away, leaving Ruth with a thought that did not make it any easier for her to smile. She saw people all day long coming into the building and seeking out the cashier's desk, where Mrs. Mantel sat, to hand over contributions of money to the Red Cross. If only each brought a dollar there should be a large sum added to the local treasury each day.

There was no way of checking up these payments. The money passed through the hands of the lady in black and only by her accounts on the day ledger and a system of card index taken from that ledger by Mr. Legrand, who worked as her assistant, could the record be found of the moneys contributed to the Red Cross at this station.

Ruth Fielding was not naturally of a suspicious disposition; but the honesty of Mrs. Mantel and the real interest of that woman in the cause were still keenly questioned in Ruth's mind.

She wondered if Mr. Mayo knew who the woman really was. Was her story of widowhood, and of her former business experience in New Orleans strictly according to facts? What might be learned about the woman in black if inquiry was made in that Southern city?

Yet at times Ruth would have felt condemned for her suspicions had it not been for the daily sight of Mrs. Mantel's hard smile and her black, glittering eyes.

"Snakes' eyes," thought the girl of the Red Mill. "Quite as bright and quite as malevolent. Mrs. Mantel certainly does not love me, despite her soft words and sweet smile."

There was some stir in the headquarters at last regarding a large draft of Red Cross workers to make up another expeditionary force to France. Two full hospital units were going and a base supply unit as well. Altogether several hundred men and women would sail in a month's time for the other side.

Ruth's heart beat quicker at the thought. Was there a prospect for her to go over in some capacity with this quota?

Most of the candidates for all departments of the expeditionary force were trained in the work they were to do. It was ridiculous to hope for an appointment in the hospital force. No nurse among them all had served less than two years in a hospital, and many of them had served three and four.

She asked Mr. Mayo what billets there were open in the supply unit; but the chief did not know. The State had supplied few workers as yet who had been sent abroad; Robinsburg, up to this time, none at all.

"Why, Miss Fielding, you must not think of going over there!" he cried. "We need you here. If all our dependable women go to France, how shall we manage here?"

"You would manage very well," Ruth told him. "This should be a training school for the work over there. I know that I can give any intelligent girl such an idea of my work in three weeks that you would never miss me."

"Impossible, Miss Fielding!"

"Quite possible, I assure you. I want to go. I feel I can do more over there than I can here. A thousand girls who can't go could be found to do what I do here. Approve my application, will you please, Mr. Mayo?"

He did this after some hesitation. "Am I going to lose everybody at once?" he grumbled.

"Why, only poor little me," laughed Ruth Fielding.

"Yours is the seventh application I have O.K.'d. And several others may ask yet. The fire is spreading."

"Oh! Who?"

"We are going to lose Mrs. Mantel for one. I understand that the Red Cross wants her for a much more important work in France."

For a little while Ruth doubted after all if she so much desired to go to France. The fact that Mrs. Mantel was going came as a shock to her mind and made her hesitate. Suppose she should meet the woman in black over there? Suppose her work should be connected with that of the woman whom she so much suspected and disliked?

Then her better sense and her patriotism came to the force. What had she to do with Mrs. Mantel, after all? She was not the woman's keeper. Nor could it be possible that Mrs. Mantel would disturb herself much over Ruth Fielding, no matter where they might meet.

Was Ruth Fielding willing to work for the Red Cross only in ways that would be wholly pleasant and with people of whom she could entirely approve? The girl asked herself this seriously.

She put the thought behind her with distaste at her own narrowness of vision. Born of Yankee stock, she was naturally conservative to the very marrow of her bones. This New England attitude is not altogether a curse; but it sometimes leads one out of broad paths.

Surely the work was broad enough for both her and the woman in black to do what they might without conflict. "I'll do my part; what has Mrs. Mantel to do with me?" she determined.

Before Ruth had a chance to tell her chum of the application she had put in, Helen wrote her hurriedly that Mr. Cameron's commission was to sail in two days from Boston. Ruth could not leave her work, but she wrote a long letter to her dearest chum and sent it by special delivery to the Boston hotel, where she knew the Camerons would stop for a night.

It really seemed terrible, that her chum and her father should go without Ruth seeing them again; but she did not wish to leave her work while her application for an assignment to France was pending. It might mean that she would lose her chance altogether.

She only told Helen in the letter that she, too, hoped to be "over there" some day soon.

But several days slipped by and her case was not mentioned by Mr. Mayo. It seemed pretty hard to Ruth. She was ready and able to go and nobody wanted her!

The weather chanced to be unpleasant, too, and that is often closely linked up to one's very deepest feelings. Ruth's philosophy could not overcome the effect of a foggy, dripping day. Her usual cheerfulness dropped several degrees.

It drew on toward evening, and the patter of raindrops on the panes grew louder. The glistening umbrellas in the street, as she looked down upon them from the window, looked like many, many black mushrooms. Ruth knew she would have a dreary evening.

Suddenly she heard a door bang on the floor below--a shout and then a crash of glass. Next----

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

In an instant she was out of her room and at the head of the stairs. It was an old building--a regular firetrap. Mr. Mayo had dashed out of his office and was shouting up the stairs:

"Come down! Down, every one of you! Fire!"

Through the open transom over the door of Mrs. Mantel's office Ruth saw that one end of the room was ablaze.