"In the days before this last calamity befel me, Captain Norcliff," said Miss Auriol, "when my poor father was wont to take my face caressingly between his tremulous old hands, and kissing my forehead, and smoothing my hair, would tell me that my name, Agnes, signified gentleness—a lamb, in fact—that it came from the Latin word Agnus; and when he would bless me with a heart as pure as ever offered up a prayer to God, how little could I foresee the creature I was to become! Oh, my father—oh, my mother! what a life mine has been; and after my father died, what a youth!
"I have often thought of the words of Mademoiselle de Enclos, when, in the flush of her beauty, she exclaimed to the Prince of Condé, 'Had any one proposed such a life to me at one time, I should have died of grief and fright!'
"So my father passed away; the new incumbent came to take our mansion, with its humble furniture at a valuation. After paying a few debts, with a small sum, I found myself with my little brother, who was sickly and ailing, in London, seeking subsistence by exerting the talents I possessed—music, chiefly, for I am pretty well accomplished as a musician."
She continued to tell me of all her heart-breaking struggles, her perils and bitter mortifications, and of the acute sufferings of that little fair-headed brother, on whom all her love and hope were centred; and how, daily, in the fetid atmosphere of a humble lodging, far away from the green fields, the bright sunshine and the rustling woods of that dear old parsonage on the slope of the Denbigh hills, the poor child grew worse and more feeble; and how her crushed heart was wrung as her little store of money melted away like snow in spring; her few ornaments went next, and no employment came.
How misery depressed, and horrible forebodings of the future haunted her; how she remembered all the harrowing tales she had read—and such as we may daily read—of the poor in London, and how they perish under the feet of the vast multitude who rush onward in the race for existence, or in the pursuit of pleasure; and how thoughts and doubts of God himself, and of His mercy and justice, at times came over her, even as they came at times now, when the man she loved and trusted most on earth had deceived her.
Employed at last as a hired musician, she was out frequently to play the piano at balls and evening parties, for half a guinea per night, in London, and thus made a slender subsistence for the suffering child and for herself.
After receiving her fee from the hand of some sleepy butler or supercilious upper-servant, as she nightly wrapped her scanty cloak about her, and, quitting the heated and crowded rooms, hurried through the dark, wet, and snowy streets, to an almost squalid lodging, which even her native neatness failed to brighten, and to the couch where the poor, thin, wakeful boy, with his great, sad, earnest eyes, awaited her; ere long she began to find a cold and cough settling upon her delicate chest; and then the terror seized her that if she became seriously ill, and failed to obey her patrons at the nearest music-shop, where would the boy get food? And if she died—in a hospital, perhaps—what would be his fate, his end, in other and less tender hands than hers?
Then, as she wept over him in the silence of the night, and remembered the prayers her old father had taught her, she would strive to become more composed, and to sleep like that child that lay hushed in her bosom; but her dreams, if not full of terrors for the present, were ever haunted by the sad memories of the past; for the kind faces and sweet smiles of the dead came vividly before her, and the familiar sound of their voices seemed to mingle in the drowsy hum of the London streets without, or with the murmur of her native Dee, and the pleasant rustle of the summer leaves in the woods of the old parsonage she would never see again, or the green hills of Denbigh that overshadowed it.
Foreseeing and fearing that the child would be taken from her, she assumed her pencil, in the use of which she was very skilful and accomplished, and thus produced the likeness that hung in her little parlour. In this labour of love I was struck by the close resemblance it bore to herself.
On one occasion, at some West-end party, she remembered having seen me. On beholding me in uniform now the recollection came fully upon her; and it would seem that, on the night in question, when all else had forgotten the pale and weary musician amid the crush and merriment of the supper-room, I had sent her cake and wine, and the former she had secretly pocketed for her little brother; but of this casual rencontre I had no recollection whatever.