A THRILLING STORY AND YET A THRILLER.

Evening Star, Issue 3047, 23 November 1872, Page 2 (Supplement)

A THRILLING STORY AND YET A THRILLER.

The writer of “ Under the Verandah” in | the Auckland Herald gives the following 1 sensational story, which that journal vouches for as being correct A story with a thrill in it has been going the rounds of the newspapers, how a woman’s husband died somewhere about Invercargdl [Melbourne?], and how he left some property, and just as the widow got over her loss, and got into the property, out comes the first wife of the dead man, and seizes all of his possessions, leaving the second, who never knew anything about the tii at wife, to In come very hard up. Then some man pitied the first wife because she was young, plump, and good looking, and he asked her to marry him, and she did. Then in time the second husband died, and just as the widow was going in grief skirts and Dolly Vardcns for him, who should rap at the door one afternoon, all the way from Home, but the second husband’s first wife; then the double widow, who in law is no widow at all, 1 with her five children was in great distress, as anyone may believe if they will only try to imagine themselves similarly situated. The story, as 1 have said, fairly considered, j has a thrill in it ; hut I have a story I with a thriller. It all happened to my ; own knowledge, and illustrates a proverb ■ that “ Truth is stranger than fiction.” A few years ago I wai livi ig in a suburb of the | second city of Victoria, and two doors from i me there dwelt, in a neat cottage, a man well ! to do in the world. He had made some ! money on the Ballarat goldfields. '1 his man ! bad left his home and his wife to seek his I fortune in Victoria. If he succeeded he was to scud for his wife ; if he did not not, he was to work his way hack to her again the best ; way he could. He did succeed. And here, at , this part of my story, I have got to introduce I a villain Like a tool, the man, instead of i buying a bank draft to send home to bis wife to pay her passage out, entrusted it to a mate of his, who had worked wi' hj him in the lucky claim at Ballarat. This mate (t knew the scoundrel well) was going home to England with a little pile of his own. Well, be took from the husband the 100 sovereigns to give the wife when he reached Liverpool. Now then, what does one think this man did ? The answer will be—kept the money, to he sure ' Ah, he did that; but he did a great deal WQvsp. When be saw the wife, he saw a woman young and LA to look upon, and at that moment the Devil entered him. Instead of giving the woman good tidings of her husband, instead of gladdening her heart by dangling the purse of golden sovereigns before her eyes and then putting it into the palms of botli her hands, the dirty scoundrel told the woman her husband was dead. What did he care about her fainting, or her agony and her after misery ! Now I come to the romance in my story. When the woman’s gr.ef became assuaged and her tears dried, and a little time showed her destitute condition, this fellow—this mate of her living husband who he said was dead, prop sed to marry the poor woman, and she accepted him, The pex] act of dire rascality the fellow di! was to write to hie mate ar,d say that when he reached home he found that his wife was dead—although, mind you, hq never rem tted back the hundred sovereigns. I liree months passed over, and that scoundrel with his wife lived in that huge suburb of London known as Greenwich. One day ho was brought home on a stretcher, a dray having knocked him down, the wheel of i which smashed his ankle. He was stripped, j put to bed, and the doctor sent for. I pass I all this over, and say that in feeling her new i husband’s pockets to put away anything he > had in them, she discovered a letter ad- . dr. ssed to him from his former mate, requesting that the hundred sovereigns held by him should be remitted back. Then in an instant, almost in the twinkling of an eye, and with a surprise that will come to all when the lasi trump of £he anael shall have been sounded, she discovered the man’s villainy, and her own utter misery. Passing over au interval of time, I now bring the woman to Victoria to seek out her first husband, having fled from the second. She found him residing within two doors I from myself, who now relates this over true story. But she found him married to a second wife Believing the false tale of his mate respecting his first wife’s death, he had honestly courted a respectable woman, and as honestly took her to church, and put on the wedding-ring in the presence of the clergyman, the bridesmaid, and the best- ; man. When the woman knocked at her husband’s door, it was opened by the second wjfe, ajid when all came to be known between the two, how shall f describe the miserable state of both ; for i, a long married man, well-known in the suburbs, was sent for to try and find a solution to the difficulty. Here were the first man and wife—the man wed to another woman—the wife wed to another man in England. No guilt or fraud i on either side. Was the man to live with j his first wife, or should his second claim him ? It resolved itself into a question of • feeling. The man preferred his fiist wife to j his second. The second wife declared she i was about to become the mother of a child by her husband—and sorrow on the day ! ' the first wife was also to become a mother | by the scoundrel father of it in England. I What could I do in the matter? x'o- ' thing, but simply recommended the par- ; ties to seek advice of the stipendiary j magistrate. They did this, and it was ! so arranged that the man should take home I his first wife ; that ho should give half of all | he had to the second, who with broken heart J agreed to go her way. The two women j parted in hitter tears, but with tender £ed- j ings towards eaclj other. She who went her j way soon after gave birth tp a still-born : child, the mother dying three hours after ; ! and so the lifeless born child and the dead I mother were buried in a bush grave. Th s romance happened in the village of Ashby, ' within half a mile of Geelong, in Victoria, i

and there arc men now living in this city of Auckland who recollect the circumstances equally well with myself. So I think there is not nearly the thrill in the Invercargill widow’s trouble there was in that poor woman’s w ho winded her way into a bi'p 1 ’. settlement to die and be buried with the lirst fruit of her unhappy marriage. You see 1 have told this story in something like about a column of reading, which will cost the subscriber to this weekly publication, allowing for the other matter he gets with it, the fractional part of half a farthing. Had Wilkie Cullies or Miss Braddwii got bold of it, neither could have given it to the world in less titan three volumes demy octavo, price one guinea and a half.