“Too old? Ha, ha, ha!” he cried. “Why, you look younger than ever. Smithson asked me the other day if you and Hazel were my daughters.”
“Did he, Frederick,” said Mrs. Thorne, in a rather less lachrymose tone.
“To be sure he did; and of course I am going to bring you a bouquet as well.”
He bought the two bouquets, and they were kept fresh in water, taken to pieces, and spread over his breast, as he lay cold and stern in his coffin: for as he was carefully bearing the box containing the flowers across Waterloo Place on his way home that evening, there was a cry, a shout, the rush of wheels, and the trampling of horses; a barouche came along Pall Mall at a furious rate, with two ladies therein clinging to the sides, and the coachman and footman panic-stricken on the box. One rein had broken, and the horses tore round the corner towards Regent Street as if mad with fear.
It was a gallant act, and people said at the inquest that it saved the ladies and the servants, but it was at the sacrifice of his own life. For, dropping the box he was carrying, Fred Thorne, a hale strong man of five-and-forty, dashed at the horses’ heads, caught one by the bit and held on, to be dragged fifty or sixty yards, and crushed against the railings of one of the houses.
He stopped the horses, and was picked up by the crowd that gathered round.
“Stop a moment, he wants to say something—he is only stunned—here, get some water—what say, sir!”
“My—poor—darlings!”
They were Fred Thorne’s last words, uttered almost with his last breath.
The shock was terrible.
Mrs. Thorne took to her bed at once, and was seriously ill for weeks, while Hazel seemed to have been changed in one moment from a merry thoughtless girl to a saddened far-seeing woman.
For upon her the whole charge of the little household fell. There was the nursing of the sick mother, the care and guidance of Percy, a clever, wilful boy of sixteen, now at an expensive school, and the management of the two little girls, Cissy and Mabel.
For the first time in her life she learned the meaning of real trouble, and how dark the world can look at times to those who are under its clouds.
The tears had hardly ceased to flow for the affectionate indulgent father, when Hazel had to listen to business matters, a friend of her father calling one morning, and asking to see her.
This was a Mr. Edward Geringer, a gentleman in the same way of business as Mr. Thorne, and who had been fully in his confidence.
He was a thin, fair, keen-looking man of eight-and-thirty or forty, with a close, tight mouth, and a quick, impressive way of speaking; his pale-bluish eyes looking sharply at the person addressed the while. He looked, in fact, what he was—a well-dressed clear-headed man, with one thought—how to make money; and he found out how it was done.
That is hardly fair, though. He had another thought, one which had come into his heart—a small one—when the late Mr. Thorne had brought him home one day to dinner and to discuss some monetary scheme. That thought had been to make Hazel Thorne his wife, and he had nursed it in silence till it grew into a great plant which overshadowed his life.
He had seen Hazel light and merry, and had been a witness, at the little evenings at the house in Kensington, of the attentions to her paid by Archibald Graves. He knew, too, that they pleased Hazel; and as he saw her brightened eyes and the smiles she bestowed, the hard, cold City man bit his lips and felt sting after sting in his heart.
“Boy-and-girl love,” he muttered though, when he was alone. “It will not last, and I can wait.”
So Edward Geringer waited, and in his visits he was in Hazel’s eyes only her father’s friend, to whom she was bright and merry, taking his presents of fruit and flowers, concert tickets, and even of a ring and locket, just as one of her little sisters might have taken a book or toy. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Geringer; it was so good of you!” That was all; and the cold calm, calculating man said to himself: “She’s very young—a mere child yet; and I can wait.”
And now he had come, as soon as he felt it prudent after the funeral, to find that he had waited and that Hazel Thorne was no longer a child; and as he saw her in her plain, close-fitting mourning, and the sweet pale face full of care and trouble, he rose to meet her, took both her hands in his, and kissed them with a reverence that won her admiration and respect. “My dear Hazel,” he said softly.
She did not think it strange, but suffered him to lead her to a chair and saw him take one before her. He was her father’s old friend, and she was ready to look up to him for help and guidance in her present strait.
For some minutes they sat in silence, for she could not trust herself to speak, and Geringer waited till she should be more composed.
At last he spoke.
“Hazel, my dear child,” he said.
“My dear child!” What could have been kinder and better! It won her confidence at once. Her father’s old friend would help and counsel her, for she needed the help much; and Archibald had seemed since those terrible days to be thoughtless and selfish instead of helpful.
“I have come to talk to you, Hazel, on very grave matters,” Geringer went on; and she bowed her head for him to continue. “I have to say things to you that ought by rights to be spoken to your mother; but I find here that in future you will be the head of this household, and that mother, brother, sisters will turn to you.”
“Poor mamma! she is broken-hearted,” sighed Hazel. “I shall try to do my best, Mr. Geringer.”
“I know you will, Hazel, come what may.”
“Yes, come what may,” she replied, with another sigh.
“Shall I leave what I have to say for a few weeks, and then talk it over? I can wait.”
“I would rather hear it now,” replied Hazel. “No trouble could be greater than that we have had to bear, and I see you have bad news for us, Mr. Geringer.”
“I regret to say I have—very bad news.”
“Tell me,” said Hazel sadly, as she gazed in her visitor’s face.
“It is about the future, my dear child,” he said slowly; and he watched the effect of his words. “You and your brother and sisters have been brought up here quite in luxury.”
“Papa was always most indulgent and kind.”
“Always,” assented Geringer. “There, I will not hesitate—I will not go roundabout to tell you. I only ask you, my dear Hazel, to try and bear with fortitude the terrible news I have to inflict upon you, and to beg that you will not associate it in future with me.”
“I shall always think of you as my father’s most trusted friend. But pray, pray tell me now, and—and—I will try to bear it as I should.”
She was choked now by her sobs, and as Geringer tenderly took one of her hands, she let him retain it while he spoke.
“My dear Hazel,” he said, “your late father always passed for a wealthy man, but I grieve to say that of late he had embarked in some most unfortunate speculations.”
“Poor papa!”
“They were so bad that at last all depended upon one change in the market—a change that did not take place till after his death.”
Hazel sobbed.
“If he had lived two days longer he would have known that he was a ruined man.”
Hazel’s tears ceased to flow, and Geringer went on:—
“I grieve, then, to tell you, my dear child, that instead