Baby Mine

CHAPTER XIII

When Alfred Hardy found himself on the train bound for Detroit, he tried to assure himself that he had done the right thing in breaking away from an association that had kept him for months in a constant state of ferment. His business must come first, he decided. Having settled this point to his temporary satisfaction, he opened his afternoon paper and leaned back in his seat, meaning to divert his mind from personal matters, by learning what was going on in the world at large.

No sooner had his eye scanned the first headline than he was startled by a boisterous greeting from a fellow traveller, who was just passing down the aisle.

“Hello, Hardy!” cried his well meaning acquaintance. “Where are you bound for?”

“Detroit,” answered Alfred, annoyed by the sudden interruption.

“Where's the missus?” asked the intruder.

“Chicago,” was Alfred's short reply.

“THAT'S a funny thing,” declared the convivial spirit, not guessing how funny it really was. “You know,” he continued, so loud that everyone in the vicinity could not fail to hear him, “the last time I met you two, you were on your honeymoon—on THIS VERY TRAIN,” and with that the fellow sat himself down, uninvited, by Alfred's side and started on a long list of compliments about “the fine little girl” who had in his opinion done Alfred a great favour when she consented to tie herself to a “dull, money-grubbing chap” like him.

“So,” thought Alfred, “this is the way the world sees us.” And he began to frame inaudible but desperate defences of himself. Again he told himself that he was right; but his friend's thoughtless words had planted an uncomfortable doubt in his mind, and when he left the train to drive to his hotel, he was thinking very little about the new business relations upon which he was entering in Detroit, and very much about the domestic relations which he had just severed in Chicago.

Had he been merely a “dull money-grubber”? Had he left his wife too much alone? Was she not a mere child when he married her? Could he not, with more consideration, have made of her a more understanding companion? These were questions that were still unanswered in his mind when he arrived at one of Detroit's most enterprising hotels.

But later, having telephoned to his office and found that several matters of importance were awaiting his decision, he forced himself to enter immediately upon his business obligations.

As might have been expected, Alfred soon won the respect and serious consideration of most of his new business associates, and this in a measure so mollified his hurt pride, that upon rare occasions he was affable enough to accept the hospitality of their homes. But each excursion that he made into the social life of these new friends, only served to remind him of the unsettled state of his domestic affairs.

“How your wife must miss you!” his hostess would remark before they were fairly seated at table.

“They tell me she is so pretty,” his vis-a-vis would exclaim.

“When is she going to join you?” the lady on his left would ask.

Then his host would laugh and tell the “dear ladies” that in HIS opinion, Alfred was afraid to bring his wife to Detroit, lest he might lose her to a handsomer man.

Alfred could never quite understand why remarks such as this annoyed him almost to the point of declaring the whole truth. His LEAVING Zoie, and his “losing” her, as these would-be comedians expressed it, were two separate and distinct things in his mind, and he felt an almost irresistible desire to make this plain to all concerned.

But no sooner did he open his lips to do so, than a picture of Zoie in all her child-like pleading loveliness, arose to dissuade him. He could imagine his dinner companions all pretending to sympathise with him, while they flayed poor Zoie alive. She would never have another chance to be known as a respectable woman, and compared to most women of his acquaintance, she WAS a respectable woman. True, according to old-fashioned standards, she had been indiscreet, but apparently the present day woman had a standard of her own. Alfred found his eye wandering round the table surveying the wives of his friends. Was there one of them, he wondered, who had never fibbed to her husband, or eaten a simple luncheon unchaperoned by him? Of one thing he was certain, there was not one of them so attractive as Zoie. Might she not be forgiven, to some extent, if her physical charms had made her a source of dangerous temptation to unprincipled scoundrels like the one with whom she had no doubt lunched? Then, too, had she not offered at the moment of his departure to tell him the “real truth”? Might this not have been the one occasion upon which she would have done so? “She seemed so sincere,” he ruminated, “so truly penitent.” Then again, how generous it was of her to persist in writing to him with never an answer from him to encourage her. If she cared for him so little as he had once imagined, why should she wish to keep up even a presence of fondness? Her letters indicated an undying devotion.

These were some of the thoughts that were going through Alfred's mind just three months after his departure from Chicago, and all the while his hostess was mentally dubbing him a “dull person.”

“What an abstracted man he is!” she said before he was down the front steps.

“Is he really so clever in business?” a woman friend inquired.

“It's hard to believe, isn't it?” commented a third, and his host apologised for the absent Alfred by saying that he was no doubt worried about a particular business decision that had to be made the next morning.

But it was not the responsibility of this business decision that was knotting Alfred's brow, as he walked hurriedly toward the hotel, where he had told his office boy to leave the last mail. This had been the longest interval that Zoie had ever let slip without writing. He recalled that her last letters had hinted at a “slight indisposition.” In fact, she had even mentioned “seeing the doctor”—“Good Heavens!” he thought, “Suppose she were really ill? Who would look after her?”

When Alfred reached his rooms, the boy had not yet arrived. He crossed to the library table and took from the drawer all the letters thus far received from Zoie. He read them consecutively. “How could he have been so stupid as not to have realised sooner that her illness—whatever it was—had been gradually creeping upon her from the very first day of his departure?”

The boy arrived with the mail. It contained no letter from Zoie and Alfred went to bed with an uneasy mind.

The next morning he was down at his office early, still no letter from Zoie.

Refusing his partner's invitation to lunch, Alfred sat alone in his office, glad to be rid of intrusive eyes. “He would write to Jimmy Jinks,” he decided, “and find out whether Zoie were in any immediate danger.”

Not willing to await the return of his stenographer, or to acquaint her with his personal affairs, Alfred drew pen and paper toward him and sat helplessly before it. How could he inquire about Zoie without appearing to invite a reconciliation with her? While he was trying to answer this vexed question, a sharp knock came at the door. He turned to see a uniformed messenger holding a telegram toward him. Intuitively he felt that it contained some word about Zoie. His hand trembled so that he could scarcely sign for the message before opening it.

A moment later the messenger boy was startled out of his lethargy by a succession of contradictory exclamations.

“No!” cried Alfred incredulously as he gazed in ecstasy at the telegram. “Yes!” he shouted, excitedly, as he rose from his chair. “Where's a time table?” he asked the astonished boy, and he began rummaging rapidly through the drawers of his desk.

“Any answer?” inquired the messenger.

“Take this,” said Alfred. And he thrust a bill into the small boy's hand.

“Yes, sir,” answered the boy and disappeared quickly, lest this madman might reconsider his generosity.

Alfred threw down the time table in despair. “No train for Chicago until night,” he cried; but his mind was working fast. The next moment he was at the telephone, asking for the Division Superintendent of the railway line.

When Alfred's partner returned from luncheon he found a curt note informing him that Alfred had left on a special for Chicago and would “write.”

“I'll bet it's his wife!” said the partner.