Page 12 - DENG105_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_II

Unit 1: The Last Leaf by O. Henry

”Couldn’t you draw in the other room?” asked Johnsy, coldly. Notes

“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.

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