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.
Couldnt you draw in the other room? asked Johnsy, coldly.
Id rather be here by you, said Sue. Besides I dont 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. Im tired of waiting. Im tired of thinking. I went 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. Ill not be gone a minute. Dont 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 Angelos 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 Mistresss 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 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 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 prain of her? Ach, dot poor lettle Miss Johnsy.
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 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 Johnsy 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 hours 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 wont 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.