O. Henry

                      The Last Leaf

            

   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-storey brick house 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 tasters 
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 finger. 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 the lay, scarcely moving, on her 
painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch windowpanes 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 chance is for her 
to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of the 
undertaker makes the entire pharmacopœia 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 about 
twice-a man, for instance?"
   "A man?" said Sue, with a jews'-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 on 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 a little later, "eleven"; and then "ten," 
and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven," almost together.
   Sue looked solicitously out 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 these 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. "Besides, 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 a 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 
till 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 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 mastiffin-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 vill not bose as a model for your fool 
hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der 
prain of her? Ach, dot poor lettle 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 vill 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 avay. 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 on the vine. Still dark-green 
near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of 
dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a 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 posses 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 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."
   An 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've 
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 on 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 colours 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 master-piece-he painted it there the night 
that the last leaf fell."