A Short Story by O Henry
The
Last Leaf
by O
Henry
In a
little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken
themselves into small strips called "places." These
"places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a
time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street.
Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in
traversing this route, suddenly meet himself 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'hôte 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, unseen 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 strode 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 house.
One
morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray
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 promise
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 Japanese 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 horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the
figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several 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 "seven", almost
together.
Sue
look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a
bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet
away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way
up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the
vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.
"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?"
"Oh,
I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn.
"What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to
love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me
this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see
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 sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick
child, and pork chops for her greedy self."
"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 see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go,
too."
"Johnsy,
dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your
eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand
those 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 those silly ivy leaves."
"Tell
me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying
white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one
fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold
on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those 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 Moses 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. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never
yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a
daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a
model to those 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 himself 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 easel 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 herself, 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 because
leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No,
I will not bose 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 pose 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 bose? Go
on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to
bose. 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 seat as the hermit miner on an
upturned kettle for a rock.
When
Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull,
wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
"Pull
it up; I want to see," 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 serrated
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."
"Dear,
dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of
me, if you won't think of yourself. 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 seemed to
possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship
and to earth were loosed.
The
day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf
clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night
the north wind was again loosed, 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 raised.
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 some pillows about me, and I
will sit up and watch you cook."
And
hour later she said:
"Sudie,
some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
The
doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as
he left.
"Even
chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his.
"With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I
have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe.
Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no
hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more
comfortable."
The next
day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and
care now - that's all."
And
that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a
very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her,
pillows and all.
"I
have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died
of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor
found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with
pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't
imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a
lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and
some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it,
and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you
wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's
Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."