One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray 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 colors 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».
Stephen Crane showed his extraordinary gift for writing very early. He stuieded the Syracuse University only one semester. During the semester he hed already began to worc on his first novel, «Maggie: A Girl of the Striets». He announced: announced: «Your little brother knows that he is going on steadily to make his simple little place and he can’t be stopped, he can’t even be retarded. He is coming».
Crane was the last of 14 children born to a Methodist minister, Jonathon Townley Crane.
In 1894 he wrote «The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War and it would proveto be yis first finest literary achievement.
1879 the Cranes family settled in Port Jervis, New – York, In 1898 he covered the Greco-Turkish war and the Spanish-American war.
Crane’s «Wilomville Stories» (1900) In 1897 he wrote his short storey: «The Blue Hotel» whoch was published in 1898. «The Open Boat» is based on his experiences of being shirwprecked while travelling to Cuba. «The Red Badge of Courage» was America first great war novel. In 1882, two years after the father, death Stephen was acting as a reporter of vacation news items for his brother Townley’s news – service agency in the resort town of Asbury Park, New – Jersey. Crane’s University days (1890–1891) were limited to two semesters – one of Lafayette College. And one at Syracuse University. But something of importance was going forward during this uninspired academic year: he wrote at least the first draft of «Maggie: a girl of the Streets» – an America’s first wholly deterministic novel. Unable to find a publisher for his account of a tenement girls descent to prostitution and suicide. Crane borrowed money and in 1893 brought it out himself in yellow pepper wrappers under the pseudonym of «Johnson Smith». Financially the book was stillborn, but it did serve to bring the young writer to the attention of Garland and William Dean Howells.
It is not a little ironic that Crane subscribed to the notion that an artist had actually to touch a segment of life before he could recreate it imaginatively, for «The Red Badge of Courage», American’s first great war novel, was written before Cranehad «smelled even the power of a shame battle». Books, pictures and veterans accounts of Civil War fighting, rather than any fighting itself, were the sources for his psychological study of a boy soldier’s struggle with the enormous horrors, both with in and without, which war unleashes. As a reporter in New – York he had explored the bars and brothels and flophouses of the Bowerry. After the success of «The Red Bade of Courage», he covered the activities of the filibusters who were gunrunning from Florida to Cuba against Spain: in the course of this activity he suffered the shipwreck «The Open Boat». In 1897 he covered the Greco – Turkish War for two newspapers: the following year it was Spanish – American War. He died of tuberculosis in June of the following year. Although he didn’t reach his 29th birthday. His early stories ware published in a collectioned «Last Words» (1901). Stepen Crane wrote articles «The King’s Favour» (1891) and «A Foreign Policy in Three Glimpses». He published his book «The Monster». «Whilomville Stories» is a collection of stories about the children of a little American town. His books fills 12 volumes.
In addition to the titles mentioned above Crain’s works include «The Little Regiment» (1896), «George’s Mother» (1896), «The third Violet» (1897), «The Open Boat and other tales of Adventure» (1898), «Active Service» (1899), «The Wounds in the Rain» (1900), «Great Battles of the World» (1901), «Last Words» (1902), «The O’Ruddy, with Robert Barr» (1903).
Crane also wrote some poetry collected in two volumes – «The Black Riders» (1895) and «War Is Kind» (1899). These short, bitter poems reveal a man whose life had been filled with pain and hardship but who refused to shut his eyes to the grim truths he saw.
He began to write his novel «Vandover and the Brute» early but it was published later in Norris’s life was short but full. The son of a successful businessman and actress, Norris was born in 1870 in Chicago. When he was 14 his family moved to Oakland. California from Chicago. 3 years later he was in Paris as an art student 1887–1889 devoting himself, however, more to literature than painting. In 1890 at his father’s insistence, he returned home to become a student at the Berkley University of California, which he attended for 4 years without earning his degree. In 1894 he enrolled at Harvard as a special student in English. He completed «Miss. Teague» (1899), a relentless novel in the naturalistic manner of Zola. «Vandouver and the Brute» another daring piece of naturalism, was written about the same time, but it was not published until 1914, and then from an uncorrected draft of the novel. In 1903 his circle of articles was collected in «The Responsibilities of the Novelist».
University days behind him, Norris, took himself off to South Africa during the Boer war to write a serious of sketches; he was captured by the Boers, suffered an attack of fever, and was ordered to leave the country. Back home, he joined the staff of a San – Francisco magazine, then «Wave», to which he made frequent contributions. 1898, «Mc – Clures Magazine» sent him to Cuba to cover the Spanish – American War. The last few years of his life were spent in writing and, for a brief time, editorial reading for Doubleday, Page, the publishing company. In this latter activity, his work wasn’t without significance: Norris got the company to publish Driser’s «Sister Carrie». He died of post – operative complications resulting from an appendectomy.
Although Norris wasn’t himself a great novelist, he had a grandiose concept of the role of the novelistic society. Of the three great «molders of public opinion and public morals» – the press, the pulpit, and the novel – Norris felt the last to be potentially the most powerful. In 1899 he wrote to a friend «the big American novel is going to come out of the West». This is the origin if his projected «Epic of the Wheat», a trilogy which was to tell the story of the production, distribution, and consumption of American wheat. «The Octopus» (1901) portrays the struggle of the California wheat growers against more powerful interests: «The Pit» is about the old Chicago Board of Trade: «The Wolf» was to have dealt with the relation of American wheat to starving countries with old there faults, «The Octopus» and «The Pit» loan as large in the history of the American economic novel as does «Mc Teague» in the history of American literary naturalism. His story «A Deal in Wheat» is written after «The Pit» is about the defeat of the common people.