1、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 narro
2、w and mossgrown 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 redfisted, shortbreathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedst
3、ead, 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, 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 cha
4、nce is for her to want to live。 This way people have of liningu on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly。 Your little lady has made up her mind that shes not going to get well。 Has she anything on her mind?”She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day. said Sue
5、. Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?” A man? said Sue, with a jewsharp 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
6、 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 oneinfive
7、 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 Johnsys room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the windo
8、w. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a pen-andink 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
9、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. Johnsys eyes were open wide。 She was looking out the window and counting counting backward. Twelve, she said, and little
10、 later ”eleven; and then ten, and nine;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,
11、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。 Theyre falling faster now。 Three days ago there were almost
12、 a hundred. It made my head ache to count them。 But now its 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。 Ive known that for three days. Didnt the doctor tell you?”Oh, I never heard of such
13、 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. Dont be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were lets see exactly what he said - he s
14、aid the chances were ten to one! Why, thats 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
15、pork chops for her greedy self。You neednt get any more wine,” said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window。 ”There goes another. No, I dont want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then Ill go, too.” ”Johnsy, dear, said Sue, bending over her,
16、”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。Couldnt you draw in the other room?” asked Johnsy, coldly。”Id rather be here by you,” said Sue。Beside, I do
17、nt 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. Im tired of waiting. Im tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and g
18、o 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。 Ill not be gone a minute。 Dont try to move til I come back。Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty a
19、nd had a Michael Angelos 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 Mistresss robe。 He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had ne
20、ver 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 c
21、oming 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 b
22、elow. 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 Johnsys fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world
23、 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
24、as a model for your fool hermitdunderhead。 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
25、me, you neednt. 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
26、 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
27、 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 hours sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wideopen eyes staring at t
28、he 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 su
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