Shivers for Christmas (31 page)

Oh, how that dreadful thought troubled and pained her! She struggled with it for days, and wept and wept and wept again. At one moment she resolved to take her mother into her confidence, and tell her all. But whenever this feeling came upon her the mysterious Cornell seemed to be at her side, and then all her will power went again. She felt that she hated him one moment, but the next she could and would have grovelled at his feet, overcome by a curious fascination, mingled with a sort of admiration, for the daring, reckless, wicked, iron-willed fellow.

A week later the ship was in the London docks.

Lily and her mother went on shore at Gravesend. The poor girl was bowed with sorrow, and she felt as though she would never again hold up her head. Before she left the ship Cornell begged hard to be allowed to call upon her. She wanted to refuse him, but could not, and, with the consent of her mother, she gave him permission to do so, for the mother felt she was indebted to him.

Lily and Mrs Hetherington went to reside in the West End of London, and Cornell, availing himself of their permission, was almost a daily visitor. He announced his intention of not going to sea again for some time, and the old fascination he had exercised over Lily was exerted now to a greater degree; and though she was sure she possessed no love for him, she felt drawn towards him in a strange manner. One day, four months after their arrival home, he pressed her to become his wife, and she reluctantly gave her consent. She would have said ‘No’ if she could, but she was powerless; and believing that she had previously misjudged him and done him a wrong, she said:

‘I will be a dutiful and faithful wife to you, but you must never hope to win my love.
That
is buried in the cruel sea.’

It was arranged that the wedding was to take place in a few months’ time. He objected to the delay, but she was firm on the point, for she felt that it would not be respectful to her dead love to marry so soon after the calamity. Many a girl who knew Lily and her lover envied her. Cornell was so ‘handsome’, so ‘fascinating’, so ‘manly’, ‘such a splendid type of a sailor’; but when her friends congratulated her she only sighed. She felt as if she were sacrificing herself; but then her affianced husband had so nobly risked his life for her lover’s sake, notwithstanding his previous strange conduct, and on that account alone she was going to give him her hand. She little dreamed that his jumping overboard was only part of his diabolical plan, and was meant to avert suspicion—which it did most effectually. So far as the risk to himself was concerned, it was reduced to a minimum, for he was a magnificent and powerful swimmer, and before he took the leap he was careful to see that plenty of life buoys had been dropped over, and that the boat was all ready for lowering.

In the course of the next few months Mrs Hetherington and her daughter removed to the village of Bowness, on the banks of Windermere, as they had friends living there; and it was arranged that the marriage should take place in the parish church of that place.

The wedding day came. It was a glorious summer’s morning, and the air was filled with the music of birds and the scent of flowers. The wedding was to be very quiet, and but few guests had been invited. Those who knew Lily well said that the ‘Red Lily had drooped.’ All the brightness was out of her life, for she felt that her heart was beneath the waves of the Bay of Biscay.

The wedding party had assembled in the church, and the ceremony had commenced. When the grey-haired clergyman asked if anyone knew any just cause or impediment why the man and woman should not be joined together in the bonds of holy matrimony, there rose up a man in the body of the church, and in a loud and steady voice exclaimed:

‘I forbid this marriage.’

Had a thunderbolt fallen through the roof the consternation and confusion could not have been greater. With a great cry the Red Lily threw up her arms, and then fell forward on her face in a swoon. For a few moments Cornell stood as if petrified. His face was ghastly pale. By this time the man had come forward to the altar rails, and then Cornell found tongue.

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, ‘is it possible that the dead can come to life?’

‘No; but the living can thwart the machinations of a villain, and I am here to do that,’ said Dick Fenton, for he it was. ‘This man,’ continued Dick, addressing the astonished spectators, ‘attempted to murder me.’

No one moved. They were dumb with amazement, for they naturally thought a madman was amongst them. Dick himself stooped and lifted up the inanimate form of the Lily, and bore her into the vestry. Taking advantage of the confusion—for everyone seemed bewildered—Cornell stole from the church, got clear away, and was never heard of more.

It was some time before Lily recovered consciousness. It is better to leave the reunion of the lovers to the imagination of the reader, for words always fail to convey anything like an adequate notion of such a scene. The news of the affair had rapidly spread over the village; an enormous crowd had gathered about the church, and the uproar was immense. The wedding party had to wait a considerable time before they could get back to their homes; then explanations were given.

On that dreadful night in the Bay of Biscay Dick had escaped death almost by a miracle, as it were. He was a good swimmer, but was a little stunned by striking his head against the side of the vessel in his descent. He had a recollection, however, of making a powerful effort to swim, and in a little while he felt something touch his hand, and found it was a life buoy. On this he supported himself for a long time—it seemed to him two or three hours. Then he saw the outlines of a vessel, which he took to be the
Sirocco
, and he shouted with all his might, and presently had the satisfaction to hear the plash of oars. He had only a faint recollection of hearing a human voice, and feeling the grasp of hands about him. Then ensued a blank. When next he opened his eyes he found himself in a comfortable cabin, and he soon learnt that it was not the
Sirocco
that had picked him up, but an outward bound ship, called the
Golden Fleece
. She was bound for the Cape, and so Dick was mortified to find that he must accompany her there, unless a homeward bounder should be fallen in with, and he could get on board. This chance did not occur, and so to the Cape he went, but the vessel made a long voyage. As soon after arrival as possible he took ship for England, and on reaching there he soon discovered to his amazement that the Red Lily was on the eve of being married to Cornell. He hurried down to the Lake district, and was there a whole week determining not to declare himself until the last moment, so that the discomfiture of his enemy might be the more complete.

For some months after this strange and startling incident Lily remained in such delicate health that grave fears were at one time entertained. Sudden joy is almost as bad as great sorrow at times, and the unexpected return of her lost lover had been too great a shock. Care, attention, and change of air, however, gradually restored her, and again she made preparations for her marriage, which was to take place on Christmas Day, twelve months after the terrible scene in the Bay of Biscay, when Dick was hurled into the sea.

The day came at last—cold, crisp, and bright. The earth was wrapped in a robe of spotless white, and the church was decorated with holly and winter flowers. As the bells pealed forth merrily, and the winter sun shone out from the dull sky, Dick Fenton led his bride down the pathway to the carriage that waited them at the gate, and the crowd of villagers that had gathered in the old churchyard declared that no bonnier bride had ever been seen than the Red Lily.

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The celebrated Wilkie Collins, author of
The Moonstone
and
The Woman in White
, wrote several mystery stories, some in collaboration with his friend Charles Dickens.
Mr Wray's Cash Box
, one of his early novellas, was written for Christmas 1852 and was published on its own as a small book in an identical format to
A Christmas Carol
and Dickens' other Christmas books. Unlike these, Wilkie Collins's story was never reissued, and this is its first appearance in nearly 140 years.

I
should be insulting the intelligence of readers generally, if I thought it at all necessary to describe to them that widely celebrated town, Tidbury-on-the-Marsh. As a genteel provincial residence, who is unacquainted with it? The magnificent new hotel that has grown on to the side of the old inn; the extensive library, to which, not satisfied with only adding new books, they are now adding a new entrance as well; the projected crescent of palatial abodes in the Grecian style, on the top of the hill, to rival the completed crescent of castellated abodes, in the Gothic style, at the bottom of the hill—are not such local objects as these perfectly well known to any intelligent Englishman? Of course they are! The question is superfluous. Let us get on at once, without wasting more time, from Tidbury in general to the High Street in particular, and to our present destination there—the commercial establishment of Messrs Dunball and Dark.

Looking merely at the coloured liquids, the miniature statue of a horse, the corn plasters, the oil-skin bags, the pots of cosmetics, and the cut-glass saucers full of lozenges in the shop window, you might at first imagine that Dunball and Dark were only chemists. Looking carefully through the entrance, towards an inner apartment, an inscription; a large, upright, mahogany receptacle, or box, with a hole in it; brass rails protecting the hole; a green curtain ready to draw over the hole; and a man with a copper money shovel in his hand, partially visible behind the hole; would be sufficient to inform you that Dunball and Dark were not chemists only, but ‘Branch Bankers' as well.

It is a rough squally morning at the end of November. Mr Dunball (in the absence of Mr Dark, who has gone to make a speech at the vestry meeting) has got into the mahogany box, and has assumed the whole business and direction of the branch bank. He is a very fat man, and looks absurdly over-large for his sphere of action. Not a single customer has, as yet, applied for money—nobody has come even to gossip with the branch banker through the brass rails of his commercial prison house. There he sits, staring calmly through the chemical part of the shop into the street—his gold in one drawer, his notes in another, his elbows on his ledgers, his copper shovel under his thumb; the picture of monied loneliness; the hermit of British finance.

In the outer shop is the young assistant, ready to drug the public at a moment's notice. But Tidbury-on-the-Marsh is an unprofitably healthy place; and no public appears. By the time the young assistant has ascertained from the shop clock that it is a quarter past ten, and from the weather-cock opposite that the wind is ‘Sou'-sou'-west', he has exhausted all external sources of amusement, and is reduced to occupying himself by first sharpening his penknife, and then cutting his nails. He has completed his left hand, and has just begun on the right-hand thumb, when a customer actually darkens the shop door at last!

Mr Dunball starts, and grasps the copper shovel: the young assistant shuts up his penknife in a hurry, and makes a bow. The customer is a young girl, and she has come for a pot of lip salve.

She is very neatly and quietly dressed; looks about eighteen or nineteen years of age; and has something in her face which I can only characterize by the epithet—lovable. There is a beauty of innocence and purity about her forehead, brow, and eyes—a calm, kind, happy expression as she looks at you—and a curious home-sound in her clear utterance when she speaks, which, altogether, make you fancy, stranger as you are, that you must have known her and loved her long ago, and somehow or other ungratefully forgotten her in the lapse of time. Mixed up, however, with the girlish gentleness and innocence which form her more prominent charm, there is a look of firmness—especially noticeable about the expression of her lips—that gives a certain character and originality to her face. Her figure—

I stop at her figure. Not by any means for want of phrases to describe it; but from a disheartening conviction of the powerlessness of any description of her at all to produce the right effect on the minds of others. If I were asked in what particular efforts of literature the poverty of literary material most remarkably appears, I should answer, in personal descriptions of heroines. We have all read these by the hundred—some of them so carefully and finely finished, that we are not only informed about the lady's eyes, eyebrows, nose, cheeks, complexion, mouth, teeth, neck, ears, head, hair, and the way it was dressed; but are also made acquainted with the particular manner in which the sentiments below made the bosom above heave or swell; besides the exact position of head in which her eyelashes were just long enough to cast a shadow on her cheeks. We have read all this attentively and admiringly, as it deserves; and have yet risen from the reading, without the remotest approach to a realization in our own minds of what sort of a woman the heroine really was. We vaguely knew she was beautiful, at the beginning of the description; and we know just as much—just as vaguely—at the end.

Penetrated with the conviction above-mentioned, I prefer leaving the reader to form his own realization of the personal appearance of the customer at Messrs Dunball and Dark's. Eschewing the magnificent beauties of his acquaintance, let him imagine her to be like any pretty intelligent girl whom he knows—any of those pleasant little fire-side angels, who can charm us even in a merino morning gown, darning an old pair of socks. Let this be the sort of female reality in the reader's mind; and neither author, nor heroine, need have any reason to complain.

Well; our young lady came to the counter, and asked for lip salve. The assistant, vanquished at once by the potent charm of her presence, paid her the first little tribute of politeness in his power, by asking permission to send the gallipot home for her.