The Last Leave
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themlves into small strips called "places." The "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street cross itlf a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppo a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himlf coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'h?te of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager st
rode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick hou.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow. "She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well.
Has she anything on her mind?"
"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"
"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promi you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."
After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japane napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.
As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horshow riding trours and a monocle of the figure of the
hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, veral times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.
Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.
"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "ven", almost together.宫峻崎
Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be en, and the blank side of the brick hou twenty feet away.
An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wa ll. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.如何登录qq邮箱
"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.
"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy.
There goes another one. There are only five left now."
"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."
"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"我的花园作文
"Oh, I never heard of such nonn," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you ud to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a gooy. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's e exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can ll the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy lf."
"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to e the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."
"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promi me to keep your eyes clod, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand tho drawings in by to-morrow. I need the
light, or I would draw the shade down."
"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.
"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at tho silly ivy leaves."
"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "becau I want to e the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loo my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of tho poor, tired leaves."
"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Mos beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe.
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He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For veral years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by rving as a model to tho young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himlf as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.
Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an eal that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herlf, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.
Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.
"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die becau leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bo as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."
"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to po for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."
"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bo? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bo. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."
Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the
window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his at as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.医护礼仪
When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull,
海豚湾电影wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
"Pull it up; I want to e," she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its rrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground. "It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."
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"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourlf. What would I do?"
But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy emed to posss her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were lood.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could e the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again lood, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raid. The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.
"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack蔗怎么读
