clock on the mantel, its chintz-cushioned rocking-chairs, and the dancing shadows of the lilac leaves on its yellow floor, looked pleasant and peaceful.
Just before six o’clock a neighbor dropped in with her cream pitcher to borrow some milk for tea, and she sat down for a minute’s chat after she had got it filled. They had been talking a few moments on neighborhood topics, when all of a sudden Priscilla let her work fall and raised her hand. “Hush!” whispered she.
The other two stopped talking, and listened, staring at her wonderingly, but they could hear nothing.
“What is it, Miss Priscilla?” asked the neighbor, with round blue eyes. She was a pretty young thing, who had not been married long.
“Hush! Don’t speak. Don’t you hear that beautiful music?” Her ear was inclined towards the open window, her hand still raised warningly, and her eyes fixed on the opposite wall beyond them.
Mary turned visibly paler than her usual dull paleness, and shuddered. “I don’t hear any music,” she said. “Do you, Miss Moore?”
“No-o,” replied the caller, her simple little face beginning to put on a scared look, from a vague sense of a mystery she could not fathom.
Mary Brown rose and went to the door, and looked eagerly up and down the street. “There ain’t no organ-man in sight anywhere,” said she, returning, “an’ I can’t hear any music, an’ Miss Moore can’t, an’ we’re both sharp enough o’ hearin’. You’re jest imaginin’ it, sister.”
“I never imagined anything in my life,” returned the other, “an’ it ain’t likely I’m goin’ to begin now. It’s the beautifulest music. It comes from over the orchard there. Can’t you hear it? But it seems to me it’s growin’ a little fainter like now. I guess it’s movin’ off, perhaps.”
Mary Brown set her lips hard. The grief and anxiety she had felt lately turned suddenly to unreasoning anger against the cause of it; through her very love she fired with quick wrath at the beloved object. Still she did not say much, only, “I guess it must be movin’ off,” with a laugh, which had an unpleasant ring in it.
After the neighbor had gone, however, she said more, standing before her sister with her arms folded squarely across her bosom. “Now, Priscilla Brown,” she exclaimed, “I think it’s about time to put a stop to this. I’ve heard about enough of it. What do you s’pose Miss Moore thought of you? Next thing it’ll be all over town that you’re gettin’ spiritual notions. today it’s music that nobody else can hear, an’ yesterday you smelled roses, and there ain’t one in blossom this time o’ year, and all the time you’re talkin’ about dyin’. For my part, I don’t see why you ain’t as likely to live as I am. You’re uncommon hearty on vittles. You ate a pretty good dinner today for a dyin’ person.”
“I didn’t say I was goin’ to die,” replied Priscilla, meekly: the two sisters seemed suddenly to have changed natures. “An’ I’ll try not to talk so, if it plagues you. I told you I wouldn’t this mornin’, but the music kinder took me by surprise like, an’ I thought maybe you an’ Miss Moore could hear it. I can jest hear it a little bit now, like the dyin’ away of a bell.”
“There you go agin!” cried the other, sharply. “Do, for mercy’s sake, stop, Priscilla. There ain’t no music.”
“Well, I won’t talk any more about it,” she answered, patiently; and she rose and began setting the table for tea, while Mary sat down and resumed her sewing, drawing the thread through the cloth with quick, uneven jerks.
That night the pretty girl neighbor was aroused from her first sleep by a distressed voice at her bedroom window, crying, “Miss Moore! Miss Moore!”
She spoke to her husband, who opened the window. “What’s wanted?” he asked, peering out into the darkness.
“Priscilla’s sick,” moaned the distressed voice; “awful sick. She’s fainted, an’ I can’t bring her to. Go for the doctor—quick! quick! quick! The voice ended in a shriek on the last word, and the speaker turned and ran back to the cottage, where, on the bed, lay a pale, gaunt woman, who had not stirred since she left it. Immovable through all her sister’s agony, she lay there, her features shaping themselves out more and more from the shadows, the bedclothes that covered her limbs taking on an awful rigidity.
“She must have died in her sleep,” the doctor said, when he came, “without a struggle.”
When Mary Brown really understood that her sister was dead, she left her to the kindly ministrations of the good women who are always ready at such times in a country place, and went and sat by the kitchen window in the chair which her sister had occupied that afternoon.
There the women found her when the last offices had been done for the dead.
“Come home with me tonight,” one said; “Miss Green will stay with her,” with a turn of her head towards the opposite room, and an emphasis on the pronoun which distinguished it at once from one applied to a living person.
“No,” said Mary Brown; “I’m a goin’ to set here an’ listen.” She had the window wide open, leaning her head out into the chilly night air.
The women looked at each other; one tapped her head, another nodded hers. “Poor thing!” said a third.
“You see,” went on Mary Brown, still speaking with her head leaned out of the window, “I was cross with her this afternoon because she talked about hearin’ music. I was cross, an’ spoke up sharp to her, because I loved her, but I don’t think she knew. I didn’t want to think she was goin’ to die, but she was. An’ she heard the music. It was true. An’ now I’m a-goin’ to set here an’ listen till I hear it too, an’ then I’ll know she ain’t laid up what I said agin me, an’ that I’m a-goin’ to die too.”
They found it impossible to reason with her; there she sat till morning, with a pitying woman beside her, listening all in vain for unearthly melody.
Next day they sent for a widowed niece of the sisters, who came at once, bringing her little boy with her. She was a kindly young woman, and took up her abode in the little cottage, and did the best she could for her poor aunt, who, it soon became evident, would never be quite herself again. There she would sit at the kitchen window and listen day after day. She took a great fancy to her niece’s little boy, and used often to hold him in her lap as she sat there. Once in a while she would ask him if he heard any music. “An innocent little thing like him might hear quicker than a hard, unbelievin’ old woman like me,” she told his mother once.
She lived so for nearly a year after her sister died. It was evident that she failed gradually and surely, though there was no apparent disease. It seemed to trouble her exceedingly that she never heard the music she listened for. She had an idea that she could not die unless she did, and her whole soul seemed filled with longing to join her beloved twin sister, and be assured of her forgiveness. This sister-love was all she had ever felt, besides her love of God, in any strong degree; all the passion of devotion of which this homely, commonplace woman was capable was centred in that, and the unsatisfied strength of it was killing her. The weaker she grew, the more earnestly she listened. She was too feeble to sit up, but she would not consent to lie in bed, and made them bolster her up with pillows in a rocking-chair by the window. At last she died, in the spring, a week or two before her sister had the preceding year. The season was a little more advanced this year, and the apple-trees were blossomed out further than they were then. She died about ten o’clock in the morning. The day before, her niece had been called into
