MB. BIXBY'S BATHING SUIT. BY MARY KYLE DALLAS.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1642, 13 January 1883, Page 1 (Supplement)

MB. BIXBY'S BATHING SUIT. BY MARY KYLE DALLAS.

Mr. Bixby's bathing suit certainly was a very handsome bathing suit, and Mr. Bixby, being a very handsome man, looked well in it. It sometimes occured to Mis. Bixby that she would be quite as well pleased if this were not so, and if she did not so often hear of his figuring in the crowd of bathers, who played the mermaid at Splashtown beach, morning and afternoon. Mrs. Bixby was sure he was not so fond of ducking her under the waves. On those rare occasions when she did "go in," he allowed her to bob up and down, clutching at the rope for a while, and then asked her, very curtly, if she " wasn't tired of it ?" She generally teas to tell the truth. Under such circumstances who would not have been? Mr Bixby was one of those beauty- men who generally snub their female relatives, and keep their' charms for society ; but, besides this, he bore his wife a particular grudge : She was the niece of seven very old aunts and uncles, all immensely rich, and all " very fond of Matilda." But perhaps they were not as fond of Matilda's husband, for since their marriage six of them had died, without leaving her a penny. With each demise Mr. Bixby grew less affectionate. "He married me for my expectations, no doubt," poor Matilda thought to herself, as she regarded in the mirror, a countenance that had no particularly fine features; and she, too, thought of the thousands that might have been hers, if she had married some one more agreeable to her family. She sat on the porch alone, this pleasant July day, after Mr. Bixby had gone gallantly away seaward, with the little waterproof satchel in which he carried his bathing-suit, and Turkish towels, and thought of many things, and fell into such a deep brown study, that when some one addressed her with : " Your letters, Mrs. Bixby," she started, and gave a little cry. "Did I frighten you?" Baid the voice of a fellow-boarder. "I didn't know you were nervous. lam dreadfully, but you are always so composed. It is only to give you your letters. I brought them from the office." " Thank you," said Mrs. Bixby. " I think I must have been asleep," and as the other lady •passed on, she turned the missives over in her lap. There were five of them ; one, a letter with a black seal, Mrs. Bixby tore it open. It was as she had expected. Her Uncle Jedediah, aged ninety, was dead. That was sad. Mrs. Bixby took out her -handkerchief, and read on. Her uncle had left all his money to the Asylum for Attorneys' Orphans. This was sadder still. The handkerchief was wet in an instant, and as her tears fell, Mr. Bixby's voice fell on her ear. 0 '• I've come back, Tilly. I promised, to wait for some 6ne who is going to the beach. You have letters?" Mrs. Bixby wiped her eyes, and gave him those with his name upon their envelopes. He simply held them, staring at the, blackedged paper in her hand. " How you like to torment me, Tilly," he said at last, " what news have you?" " Uncle is dead," she answered. "Well?" •" He has left his money to a charity," sobbed Mrs. Bixby. Mr. Bixby muttered an oath, and marched away. In the hall of the hotel a lady of fascinating air, and little pencilled lines under, her handsome > eyes, met hjm — probably by accident. The two went toward the beach together, talking earnestly. " Certainly, he married me for my.expectations," said Mrs. Bixby, and went to Her room to weep with more freedom. She did not even go down to dinner that evening, and J Mr. Bixby did not come up to ask why. About midnight< there was consternation in the hotel. Mrs, Bixbv was making inquiries' about Mr. Bixby, and < the last seen- of him, was in. the water. Various 1 persons know of his entering it in his handsome bathing dress. . Nobody .had seen him' come « out. There was great excitement with the coming' id&wn. Various. young.ladiea reported him as " swim : ming beautifully" at five o'clock. He had, itried"to teach one to Swim. ' W, ( was'evident'th»t' hje was' drowned, Mr^i.' Bixby'was going 1 from'one room' into',' anqtKer upstairs,, and., calling oif her "dear. 'darling, lovely Augustus, lio forgive 'heif 'her boldness:' "wereeailed in, and. rejiort6rs 'were jotting down paragraphs., t , /",' "v ' ;'' „ \ ' ' ! J ! • r!< Meanwhile .another letter, a hlack seat, addressed to Mrs.' Bixby, arrived at wl§ Ijotei. fj*zroni iicr. iflhiYYGrs. A.uLter will off iiGr, I t&lten a diMitce $U on©' of *tE& ifrnljtees^Qf .f4t«eyV v :d^nans;''^ ifflm all

his fortune to his " doar niece, Matilda Bixby." . "If poor Augustus had but lived to share it," sobbed the widow. But, after all, it was a consolation. She remained at the hotel all winter, visited by grave legal gentlemen, and wearing the deepest weeds. In Spring she bought a cottage near the beach, furnished it luxuriously and became a regular summer resident. Wealthy, flattered, courted, she became quite handsome. Attentions were showered upon her. Serious offers were made for her hand. At length Jenkins, tfie reporter, mentioned, in -a long-winded paragraph, the facts of her "Bomantiq History;" how her fortune hud been left her when she was plunged in agonies of grief, how much her "residence" was worth, and what her crape cost a yard. And one suitor, more persistent than the others, wound himself about her heart. She had determined to remain & -widow, but she was very lonely. She had vowed to marry no handsome man. This man whom she preferred was not handsome; he had one crossed eye and a club foot ; but Matilda believed that she should be perfectly happy with him. Her mourning faded into lilac silk and violets, white tulle and pansies. And one day she walked upon the beach, slowly making up her mind as to the form in which her acceptance of a written offer, which she had received, 3hould be couched, when, looking out upon the sea, her eyes met an object which petrified her with amazement. It was simply a swimmer, who, having gained a spot where the water was only up to his waist, was advancing toward her; but the surprising point in this otherwise very ordinary object was that it wore Mr. Bixby's bathing costume. His wife knew it too well to be mistaken. Had she not embroidered that pattern on the collar herself ? Was not that braid made to order ? Were not the buttons som,e which, had 'descended from the past? Eeal gold buttons — too good, Mrs. Bixby had over and over again averred, for a bathing suit. The widow turned faint as she gazed, for not only did she know the dress, but the handsome head above it. She knew that it was Mr. Bixby's ghost. Her limbs failed her. She sat down on the sand, and hid her face in her trembling hands. But now a splashing sound of feet treading the damp beach roused her. She looked up. The spectre stood beside her, looking very solid, indeed, for a ghost, and it spoke, and said : "Don't be frightened, Tilly, dear. I am not an apparition. lam your own Augustus. Look up, love. Look up." And fell exhausted — or so it seemed to Matilda — at her side. Matilda shrieked, clasped him in her arms, wet as he was ; sobbed that the joy of that moment would be too much for her, .and never thought for a moment of marvelling how a gentleman who had disappeared in the sea should walk out of it alive and unharmed a year afterward. But Mr. Bixby explained, nevertheless. He had swam out too far, and been picked up by a boat attached to a whaling vessel — the Sea Gull, Captain Brown — he was careful to explain ; had been ill and delirious for weeks, and only recovered to find the ship driving before a fearful gale, which wrecked her in mid-ocean. With seven others he took to a raft, and was cast on a deserted island, where he had since lived tn his bathing suit, subsisting on shell-fish and berries. And how at last, knowing himself to be a good swimmer, he had resolved to make a bold stroke for life. " And here I am," added Mr. Bixby. Poor Matilda, crediting every word of his abominable falsehood, again embraced him. " And what must have been your struggles, my poor wife ?" sighed the the husband. Then Matilda astonished him by an account of her legacy, and conducted him home, to the amazement of every one who met them —joy in her eyes and in her poor, honest heart. Left alone in his apartment while the faithful wife prepared beef tea and other restoratives, for the individual she had recently been in the habit of alluding to as " her sainted husband," Mr. Bixby indulged in astonishing fits of silent laughter, and several times repeated to himself : "Hang it! was there ever such a fool as Tilly ?" and a tramp who wandered on the shore was at the same lime overjoyed by the discovery of a rather seedy suit of clothes, in the pockets of which, besides several reproachful pink notes, signed Bosalie, he found a Chicago newspaper in which the enterprising reporter's account of Mrs. Bixby's "romantic history," her good fortune, and her seaside mansion had been faithfully copied. However, Mrs. Bixby, having a good deal in her power, was not as often snubbed in the future as she had been in. the past. Her husband no longer flirted in her presence, and she considers herself an exceedingly happy woman, and is very fond of repeating the story of Mr. Bixby's adventures, which she has no doubt the whole world believes as thoroughly as she does.