The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1901-09-11
y|ON BILLY 3aTHElL
Il DECEIVED HIS Wife.
Dy John g. Rafferty,.


Bar Harbor with many misgivings.
Florence, z years old, went with her.
She had two trunkfuls of stunning
apparel, enough money to splurge
for at least two months, and she
was SO tired of the continuous per-
formance of housekeeping in her
Hyde Park fat that she seemed emf
nently equipped for an ideal exist
cnce at the fashionable seaside re-
sort. But she wasn't. She had
Inisgivings, mountain of them,
and when Billy, her husband,
finally persuaded her to start and
rushed her and their daughter off
to the train she thought she saw
glesm of demoniacal joy in his eye,
and she was wretched without even
the satisfaction Of moving exactly
why.
Billy had been too anxious to get
rid Of her. and he showed it. For
two years she had begged him to
give her a season at The seashore,
and he had never felt financially
able till this summer. In Nav
he achieved famous coup on the
board Of thade and from that day
showed an almost offensive enthu-
siasm about sending her on fash
ionaLle vacation. As his eagerness
waxed, hers waned. He was a
youngish man of 40, with quite
streak Of boyish devilment yet in
him. She knew he was handsome
and that other women knew it as
well, and she tacitly resented his
evident delight over the plan to get
rid Of her and their daughter for
two months. She wasn't jealous.
Not bit! Billy had never given
her cause for that, but he had been
SO insistent about getting her
started and SO atrociously glad
when she agreed that she would
have refused to 60 at all if she could
have found single reasonable ex-
cuse.
She put. an anchor to wind
ward before going by asking Mrs.
Howard, her net door neighbor, to
shave an eye to the fiat" The ad-
monition was quite unnecessary, for
Mrs. Howard was all eyes and ears
when it came to keeping posted
about her neighbors' affairs. But
Mrs. Batwell's request to s'have an
eye" seemed to carry an unspoken
wish for occasional reports about
the deserted Batwell home, and the
Mnpressionable Mrs. Howard made
q mental resolution to keep tab on
Billy and bulletin his wife every
time he did anything out of the
routine. Women are so tactfuland
sympathetic that way!
So Mrs. Billy went away with
gloomy forebodings, and Billy, the
brute, hied himself to ssblind pig"
and, in the exuberancc of his JOY,
bought two rounds for every man
present.
Mrs. Batwell, who was quite
han isome young matron, contrived
to make something Of sshit" at Bar
Harbor, and after q week of min
gled uneasiness and pleasure she
was beginning to forget the cause
of his misgivings and learning to
make the most of her new surround
ings. Billy wrote every day. Not
since the days of their courtship
had his letters been so romantic, so
ardent, so soulful. They were
actually love letters, and the read
ing Of them awoke again in her
heart the girlish emotions thai had
slumbered beneath these later pro-
sale years. She had begun to re-
spond in kind when she got her first
letter from Mrs: Howard. It end
ed with this postscript:
"By the way, dearie, don't forget
to tell me who is this Hemingway
woman who is at your house now
nearly every day and often in the
evening. Her daughter is beauti-
fiji, I think, but the mother strikes
me as bit bizarre. I think the
name is Hemingway or something
like that. Who are they?" I
Mrs. Batwell nearly tainted when
she read that postscript. Grief, de-
spair, rage, humiliation, shook her
by turns. First she resolved to re-
turn to Chicago at once. Then
she vowed she would never look
upon her husbands face again. She
held her little daughter in her arms
for hours sobbiag, and when the
child fell asleep she walked the floor
planning and discarding a dozen
schemes for vengeance.
No wonder he was anxious to get
rid of her and their darling child!.
Entertaining a f1oud" widow and
her beautiful daughter" day and
night in her home-Hemingway!
She had never heard of, much less
met, such person. She began
dozen letters to Billy and tore them
allup. She would wait and see how
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