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'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, 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, 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 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 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 masterpiece - he painted it there
the night that the last leaf fell."